"Hey 'chelle, you know it's kinda funny…" So goes Michelle Shock's tender missive for a best friend turned housewife from a "skakeboard punkrocker" in 1988. Michelle sends a letter to her friend in Dallas and the reply comes from Anchorage, Alaska.
The song is off Short, Sharp, Shocked, where, from the cover of Shocked being tackled in a neck hold by a burly cop, thru the folk punk ala Billy Bragg set of hard driving protest music, "Anchorage" sure does stand out.
The album is terrific but "Anchorage" -just an acoustic guitar and organ till strings join in for a solo at the half way mark, is something else again. Shocked is reading a letter from a friend she hasn't heard from in two years, with so much ache, nostalgia, loss. It is strange. All this sadness -just Michelle's voice is so oddly upset. Like a goodbye to youth and a goodbye to something else. The way people so important to us for so long can leave our life.
My friend, rock critic Kevin Ransom thinks the reason for the break is a serious rupture in their friendship. He wrote; "In the beginning, she says she 'reached across that burning bridge,' so you know the friendship was fractured somehow, but she doesn't specifiy why. And then, at the end, what kills me, emotionally, is when she says, "Leroy says hello, Leroy says send a picture…..Leroy says, 'Keep on rockin', girl."
"I find that very moving and compelling — cos it says they're proud of her, and affirms the choice she made, and speaks to the emotional power of rock n roll. And, it's just a great, affirmative story song about two old friends who went their separate ways, but the emotional bond is still there
" I've interviewed MIchelle a bunch of times, and I bring up that song every now and then, and tell I still find it very moving, and she says, "Yeah, I'm real proud of that song," and that it was inspired by a real event, and that it still means a lot to her".
" A woman FB friend says she thinks the friendship was fractured because Michelle focused on art / career, while her friend settled down and had a baby. I replied that I thought that would be a pretty minor thing to cause a "bridge to burn" — women friends make different choices about that all the time and remain friends. I think it was something more serious, but that Michelle just decided not to cite the specifics."