PUBLIC LISTENING: THE CHEESECAKE FACTORY
JOHNNY’S BACK IN JERSEY
Last Tuesday, I hit the Park Avenue Armory to check out Doom, a performance by the German artist Anne Imhof. The now-closed show, a restaging of Romeo and Juliet set inside of what a condescending Berliner might imagine an American high school to look like, was a three-hour signifier barrage that allowed the audience to roam freely around the massive space. It consisted of, among other elements: over 20 Cadillac Escalades; multiple rock performances, one with an artist playing black metal, another with a full band performing at a sort of prom situation; ballet dancers; a four-screen jumbotron; a European drill rapper; a live tattoo artist; an acapella rendition of “The End” by The Doors; a lot of Auto-Tune and a lot of vaping. I would rather listen to Bladee while the Cremaster Cycle plays on mute, but I might not be the target audience for this kind of thing.
There was plenty of music in the show, and it would’ve been an interesting place to do an edition of Public Listening. I wanted to go somewhere different, though; somewhere maybe no less convoluted but a whole lot more satisfying, a place where I could leave with a full belly: an outpost of The Cheesecake Factory in Jersey City.
7:23: Train “Hey, Soul Sister”
To be able to hear this Train song, I had to take multiple trains. From Union Square, I went downtown and hit a PATH to Jersey. Along the way, I listened to the new Playboi Carti record, which has an undeniable first and second song, a leadoff combo that is the result of an accidental mistake in programming, I guess, but still feels like it could lead to a classic record in the traditional, rockist sense of the word. Setting aside the matter of sonics, the durational freedom allowed by streaming makes sure it probably won’t be read that way by many older heads, and I say that knowing Sandinista! has six more songs. The Cheesecake Factory is located in the almost 40-year-old Newport Center. The mall was empty but the restaurant was packed. I killed the 30-minute wait time walking around, looking at photos of the Joker printed onto glossy canvas.
8:10: Neon Trees “Take Me For A Ride”
I was finally back in the damn Factory, with its dim lighting and its glowing amber fixtures. The energy in the front of the room felt like an airport gate when a flight is delayed. Neon Trees are from Utah. I’m not sure if they are Mormon or not, but I like to think of them as the “Mormon Strokes.” I’m losing my mind.
8:13: Harry Styles “Adore You”
The Cheesecake Factory gets their music programming from a company called RX Music, who claim to provide a “curated approach to elevated background music” for hotels, restaurants, and spas. That’s funny, because Public Listening (presented by John’s Music Blog) provides a “curated approach to listening to elevated background music” at fast food restaurants and competitive eating competitions. Here is RX Music on the work they do with bars: “Your bar’s music is an opportunity to show guests who you are and set you apart from the competition. Background music for bars is an art as refined as mixology, each ingredient felt and appreciated, with just the right influence on your guests’ perception.”
I turned my back and I spotted a sliver of the Duke versus North Carolina basketball game. Out of the window, an escalator marched upwards. A lot has been written about The Cheesecake Factory’s confusing interior aesthetic, a “mash-up,” if you will, of various eras and modes of design: Egyptian, Victorian, and Vegas-ian. If Imhof really wanted to understand American aesthetics, she would get the hell out of school. She would go to a Cheesecake Factory. The Jersey City location was somewhat understated, as I think a lot of mall Cheesecake Factory locations are, but I didn’t mind. It made me feel like I was inside of a particularly spirited Marriott.
8:19: Harry Styles “Late Night Talking”
Two Harry Styles songs in less than ten minutes. Working for RX Music seems like a great job. I would love to be flown out to the Hard Rock Cafe Las Vegas just to tell the managers that, in order to maximize customer spend, they need to be playing multiple Harry Styles songs within a ten-minute period.
8:22: Lord Echo (Feat. Mara TK) “Just Do You”
The Cheesecake Factory menu is overwhelming. It’s a buffet folded up and stuffed into the closet at a business class hotel. It’s a flattening and misunderstanding of a global array of cuisines, and it reaches peak illegality—and some might argue, transcendence—in its “fusion” items. This is all to say that it wouldn’t have been right if I didn’t order the “avocado egg rolls.” I got them with Diet Coke and a plate of carbonara. Confusing order for a confusing restaurant. And a confusing country! Horrific sentence.
8:26: Kygo, Tina Turner “What's Love Got to Do with It”
The bread and the drinks were on the table. Kygo’s slopped-up EDM version of a Tina Turner classic provided the soundtrack. I would like to drop everything and devote my life to watching college basketball.
“So Far Away” was the sickest song I heard all night, a light breakbeat headnodder that sounds like Sublime got a degree from Frat Rap University. "Well, I was cruisin' down the street right out by the beach / Two Birkenstocks on my feet." That’s an actual lyric from the song. If you can’t fuck with that, I don’t know what to tell you.
8:32: VAX (Feat. Ellise) “What Are We Waiting For”
I don’t give a shit about this track. I want to talk more about “So Far Away.” I guess Surfaces come from Texas, which I consider to be a bit of a curveball considering just how good they are at being chill. I got invited to a Goose concert a week ago, but I couldn’t go because I was attending that Imhof performance. I might live in New York, but I will never not be an American, and in the future I will pick a middling jam band show over a both under- and overdetermined piece of European performance art. Which way, Western music blogger?
8:35: 5 Seconds of Summer “Old Me”
The food came out. I’m a gross eater, proof of my small-town Midwestern heritage, and I’ve recently been considering enrolling in a manners class on the Upper East Side. Then I could write an insufferable article about my experience for, I don’t know, GQ or something.
What’s more depressing: using your status as a D-list bloghouse artist as a conduit to ride some sort of half-assed nostalgia cycle, or being an Aging Millennial Hipster music writer? I’ve chosen the latter, but I don’t judge. Anyway, the line between the two is razor-thin. Sitting in a Cheesecake Factory in New Jersey, I felt my whole life slip out of my comprehension—my grasp is tenuous in the best of times—and I felt a sense of security wash over me, the kind of security that can only come from being inside of a nondescript American retail environment. Have I written this exact sentence before? It bears repeating.
8:44: Maggie Rogers “Love You for a Long Time”
I don’t have that much to say about Maggie Rogers, good or bad, but I will say that recent records by EST Gee and Icewear Vezzo have sounded like slight returns to form. For whatever that’s worth. Actually, now that I think about it more, certain Maggie Rogers tunes graft onto a larger genre I’ve been exploring on the blog: VH1core. Mild electronica inflections, optimistic Y2K tonality, light post-grunge lilt.
8:47: Post Malone & Swae Lee “Sunflower”
The amount of time I’ve spent listening to Harry Styles and Post Malone while eating microwaved food is not time I am going to get back.
8:50: Anna Nalick “Breathe (2 AM)”
“Breathe (2 AM)” is an important piece of late VH1core. Anna Nalick walked so Maggie Rogers could run.
8:54: Fleetwood Mac “Rhiannon”
There have been moments in my life where my listening diet consisted almost entirely of Fleetwood Mac. Blame any gaps in my knowledge of punk or rap on those fraught periods. I must be in a pretty “good place” right now, because I have the mental bandwidth to listen to Pissgrave and OsamaSon. I look forward to having a mental breakdown and making another mediocre pop rock EP. Until then, the new Gem Fumigation Spa single comes out soon.
I was tortured about my cheesecake order. In the end, I settled on a fairly plain chocolate mousse option. I guess this is growing up? For whatever reason, it took 30 minutes for the food to come out. By the time I was back in Brooklyn, it was late. I ended my night watching an episode of The Floor, a Fox game show hosted by Rob Lowe.
"surfaces" brought flashbacks from about 15 years ago of shwayze... which ties into you ruminating on time you can never get back. i love this country & the way you write about it