At first it feels like Matt Whipkey peaks way way way too early on his double album 21 track, rock opera Penny Park, Omaha, Ne: Summer 1989, detailing a romance in the summer of 1989 when two 17 year olds fell in love at Peony Park in Omaha. only to break up with the end of the season. The first song, “Waterslide” begins like a warm summer evening in the park where it got its name. and the cooler evening glow with a surf-y guitar and a dream like atmosphere; before a word is spoken you have, if not a time and place, a youthfulness joyfulness. The first line throws you head first under the waterfall “School’s Out, Summer 1989, Penny Park with her pirate eyes, the boys swore she was out of sight, I said ‘meet me tonight beside the waterslide’. …” This is lyric writing as a real art form, it is all exposition and atmosphere. and the song has a magic to it. It is a dream haze of a song song
The very next song, “Cliff Burton”, is a character study but not of the bassist. It’s as if by writing about Penny Park’s obsession, and stealing into the sound of a poppier Metallica in the break, Matt is giving you the sketches of the girl who will change the boy who will become a man -he is setting up the ending early. And while the album doesn’t maintain this one-two punch (though, if I had ever been to Peony Park, its evocations might hit home with more directness more constantly), what it does have is the space and depth of memory and nostalgia and story. It is like the way Agatha Christie wrote a mystery novel by first writing the solution. The solution here is a girl obsessed with music trying to get out.
Whipkey is a 33 year old local hero in Omaha, an old fashion guitar slinger new waveish rock and roller whose The Whipkey Three is a fixture on the scene and who noted just the other day: “Within one week I will have played guitar in four bands: my own, Brad Hoshaw and The Seven Deadlies, Edge of Arbor and Billy McGuigan’s Rock Legend.” A master of rock and roll genre with a good ear for the hook, a sense of tune and also a sense of momentum, and a man out of time rock aesthetic, he has the ambitiousness of the not as young as he should be, still knocking on a breakout success, rock hero.
Penny Park, Omaha, NE, 1989 won’t take him where he wants to go careerwise, but god knows it should. At 21 songs it sprawls itelf in a marketplace where less is more, and the third song “Ticket Taker” is more story telling where he needed a another home run and “Been Waiting” is a mix of “I Wanna Be Your Mirror” and “I Think We’re Alone” which should really smack you as hard as “Waterslide” but doesn’t.
It takes another handful of tracks for the album to break through again, “She’s A Radio” is an Arena rocker but really one, you can hear it performed large in the back of your mind and “Long Distance Dedication” a slide guitar-y country rock ballad, also with another voice, Tara Vaughn, taking the lead, it is a transitional song.
But then the story gets sad and so do the songs and the album sighs a little -it goes from New Wave joy to country blueish hues. Here is the song list by side of the vinyl album:
Side 1
Waterslide
Cliff Burton
Ticket Taker
Been Waiting
Tornado’s Watch
Side 2
See Me Someday
She’s a Radio
Long Distance Dedication
DRMS
Roller Coaster
Side 3
83rd and Center St.
Sunburnt Lips
Brand New Black Eyes
Five Times So Far
La Festa Italiana
Side 4
Given to the Night
(I) Kind of Want to Die (Tonight)
Teenager
07-04-94
High Heel and The Sneekers
Sunshine
Starting at the end of the second and going into the third side things begin to drag. It isn’t bad. It might work on a single album because the problem isn’t song but mood, certainly there is no reason for “83rd And Center”, with its superb guitar solo on the bridge, not to sound great in a different setting, but we’ve been promised a nostalgia trip into the joys of summer and it begins to feel like we’ve been had.
Still, Matt has maybe the best song on the album ready to close Side Three “La Festa Italiana” with a full on rock band and the story of a sexual encounter that might mean as much as it claims to. “Given To The Night”, the following song, is countrypolitan and also, it seems to suggest a sexual repercussion neither purple nor apocalyptic, but oddly deflated.
Matt’s story takes too much reading between the lines but it seems like two 17 year olds spend the summer together and break up because the girl wants to follow her dreams into the world of rock and roll. Dreams that don’t come true. The ending is too depressing “where once there was the sunshine and the children laughing, broken glass left on the beach”.
The album is either a successful failure or a failure that succeed… but that doesn’t depend on the album itself. Whipkey exudes self-confidence and self-control, it is the least self-indulgent 21 song suite imaginable; everything is at service to song and movement. It is, indeed, some achievement. But it is in the wrong place and the wrong time. Look at it this way: during the Lebanese Civil war there was a famous singer named Sabah, who had an Arab pop hit with (rough translation) “Put Beirut On The Phone” recorded in Paris. The thing was just by saying “Hamra Street” or “The Corniche” Sabah could evoke nostalgia in the listener. But you? What would you care about it? Peony Park, where Penny Park happens, can be evoked in place with just the name of a ride if you are from Omaha. Now that it is closed, Peony Park brings nostalgia into the hearts of the kids who spent the summer there. But me? I don’t care in the slightest. And that means there is a dimension missing here.
Worse, and again not MUSICALLY NOT SONGS, but in time and place, it is difficult to sell a double album. Nobody has the time. Wipkey could have broke it into two and then released a third complete plus live performance. Not to rip people off but so people would give it a chance. I remember being completely intimated by Proust’s “Remembrance Of Things Past” so I just read the first book “Swan’s Place”. There is too much to absorb and while nobody is forcing you to hear it all at once, it feels like Matt wants a lot from the listener.
But that is also what it is great about it, it is like an endless summer day, it seems to unfold forever in front of you, in your memory, and it deserves to: it is melodic enough but loose as well. It may weary you but that is yours (or my) fault because we don’t have the attention span. Still, it is a POP MUSICIANS job to work with your audiences limitations.
And more, it is a story within a story, Whipkey is nearly ten years younger than Penny or her lover (if it is only one lover -it could be more than one) but time is passing Matt by as well and Peony Park is closed for him as much as Penny or his band. Then as “Sunshine” comes to an end “Waterslide” begins again and it is 1989 once more.
Grade: B+