One Track Mind
The Train from Kansas City – The Shangri-Las
Given enough incentive and liquor and speed I could knock out a treatise on the use, imagery, and economic ramifications of the train in popular song that would rival the Harvard Classics for space on those dusty library shelves. But I’ll forego the composition of said doorstop and try to just treat you all to a little taste, like a sampler platter of fine meats and cheeses in the Saturday supermarkets, right here in the form of four beauties from New York – The Shangri-Las.
Like all trains the train that’s barreling in from Kansas City is an agent of doom. No mystery train this, but a fast-moving confrontation with a betrayed love. The poor schnook pacing the dining car with a hard-on and heart full of longing doesn’t have a clue. He’s got a date with the worst day of his life and he can’t stop staring at his watch and hoping, praying he won’t be late. After all, she’s waited for him this long. What kind of asshole would make her wait any longer?
But let’s back-up. Who are these crazy kids fated for disaster and broken hearts?
Our boy Jimmy is strictly a Johnny Thunders type; a street tough in leather jacket with a heart like a Stratocaster. The kind of guy who can dance in public and still look like a bad-ass. Mary is a virginal lass coming up tough in a too-big family of Irish Catholics. They’re both first generation Americans as wild and bumptious as the trash lined city streets, as young and exciting as neon signs and double cheeseburgers.
You know Jimmy, you’ve seen him around. He’s the boy from “Out in the Streets” who don’t hang around with the gang no more. He gave up the easy action and the cool felonies for Mary. But Mary knows she made a mistake asking him to give up the life he loved to suck malteds and hold hands in matinees with her. She can see it like a twitch in Jimmy’s face, the muscles contracting and releasing from lack of punky good times. What’s worse, he’s no longer so attractive to Mary. He looked hot and dangerous in the leather, but now he’s sporting a khaki windbreaker and that jacket don’t juice up Mary’s little nocturnal fantasies.
One night there’s a big rumble in the alleys and the old gang calls on Jimmy. They need his way with a blade or that east side trash is gonna make itself at home on this side of the river. East side hooligans, thinks Jimmy, my mortal foes. He argues with Mary. She cries and he disappears, engines revving in the night. If you know your Shangri-Las then you know shit’s gonna go wrong in a big way. One of the east side boys gets a silver gift in his soft gut and pirouettes face down in the dirt. The cops swarm and grab Jimmy. Our boy takes the fall and gets sent upstate to the county farm. Mary, wait for me he pleads. Mary promises she will. After all, Jimmy’s good-bad, not evil. She buys his innocent routine.
Picture it kiddies – Jimmy on the farm workin’ for the county banging out license plates and such, guarding his ass in the showers, munching gruel and bread crusts all the while dreaming about Mary and humming every 45 in his record collection as time crawls. He’s stuck on Dion and Gene Pitney and doesn’t recognize it for the premonition that it is. Why can’t he get that Del Shannon tune outta his head? He’s asking the stars to watch over his girl. He’s a teenager in love but the stars never answer and this, my friend, is a town without pity.
The trains roll past the prison every hour and Jimmy becomes the boy in “Folsom Prison Blues” tortured by the heavy motion and hell-hound howling coming from those big engines. He can hear the train a’comin’, rollin’ round the bend. What kills him is the visions of the people on those trains freely moving up and down the aisles and eating big meals and good coffee in the dining car and finishing off the fine day with a big cigar. Jimmy works hard looking for early release, some probation for good behavior. Then he’ll be one of those people. On the train and feeling fine on his way back into the arms of his good, good girl.
And there he is, our Jimmy on the day of his release pacing around the station, leaning against the wooden railing smoking cigarettes just waiting for his train, the train of every dream he’s had these last few years, the train that goes from here to Mary’s lips. It’s an erotic train, it’s every wish and fantasy the boy has ever had. You best believe he’s in love – L-U-V! Score this little interlude with the Velvets’ “Train Round the Bend” and you’ve got the whole scene. That skuzzy funk and the guitar like tin cans ripping in some jungle cat’s teeth. Cigarette smoke like the foggy fishtails spewing from ol’ smokestack lightning itself pouring out of Jimmy’s sweaty, demonic kisser.
But where’s our Mary been this whole time. After Jimmy got sent up she wrote him every day (at first) but then her best friend, also named Mary, got knocked up. She can’t go home anymore. Her past, present and future are all fucked now. Our Mary’s mother signs her up for the church group to save her from her namesake’s shameful deflowering. At first Mary resists. She sleeps in Jimmy’s leather jacket, has taken up smoking Jimmy’s brand, has been known to swear on occasion, and has voiced her opinion that Jayne Mansfield got a raw deal. She was booking passage to Satan’s kingdom so mother whipped her with a switch and handed her darling daughter over to the lord’s care and Father Patrick’s Jesus-N-Me club. Eventually Mary calms down and even begins to dig on crinoline. She meets a boy. They fall in love. He’s signed up for Viet Nam coz those commies are just evil, dammit. He asks Mary to marry.
And here we are, kiddos, Jimmy’s train, the one that started out in Kansas City (home to jazz bands and bad boys) is on schedule and Mary’s never told him anything about her new boyfriend or her newfound commitment to Jesus and the saints (a local doo wop group? sadly, no sir.) and certainly nothing about the ring on her finger. She tells her clean cut beau she’s got to go to the station and tell Jimmy. It’s the least she can do, right. But don’t worry, man, she’ll be back in the time it takes to break a heart.
And what happens next? The Shangs never tell us. Oh, Mary Weiss knows the answer and if you send her a letter I’m sure she’ll enlighten ya. As for me, well, I think those killer drums at the end of the tune say it all. None of these people will ever be happy and probably one, if not all of them, will lose a limb and gain a drug addiction. That’s rock ‘n roll, kids, and this tune is one of the greats of that macabre hysteria known as the heartbreak beat.
Dib Cochrane wishes Mary Weiss, his one and only, would drop that restraining order against him coz come on , Mary, we were meant for each other, baby!