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FRIDAY RANDOM NOISE: Malcolm Young, Captain Sensible, and why I have issues with both Joe Jackson and the Flintstones

July 10, 2014

It is my understanding that AC/DC is readying a new album and tour without founding guitarist Malcolm Young.  I understand that these things are a necessity sometimes — people get old/tired/sick/need to set aside a year to FINALLY read Ulysses — but AC/DC without Malcolm Young is like the

Malcolm Young (AC DC website photo)

Ramones without Johnny Ramone.  When you hear AC/DC, when you IMAGINE that sound, the grunting, barking, dog-chewing-chain grunt of a guitar PLOWING OUT circular riffs like a medieval monk angrily chanting Kinks’ songs, that sound, that sound, THAT SOUND, is the sound of Malcolm Young.  See, Angus is just the cartoon character, the window dressing; the RIFFS, that sound of an ugly but very cute dog working his way up from Hades and banging on the gates of heaven, THAT SOUND IS MALCOM YOUNG.

So, whatever.

WHY IS THERE A MARTIAN ON THE FLINTSTONES?  This confuses me so goddamn much.

This is an incredibly un-timely and only marginally interesting observation…but, okay, you know that rather decent song by the thoroughly insufferably Joe Jackson, “Stepping Out”?   Okay?  WHY am I the ONLY person who has noticed that the central theme/melody/feel of “Stepping Out” is virtually completely lifted from the “spacey” middle section of “Who Are You” by The Who?  Now, this may have been a subconscious rip-off – in fact, I am going to give ol’ Joe the benefit of the doubt and say it probably WAS an unconscious rip-off – but it is STILL a complete lift.  You’ll find the “source” material starting at about 3:15-ish of “Who Are You.”  You will listen to it and go “Huh, how about that.  That is really something.  I am not 100 percent sure I agree, but I sure like what he had to say about that AC/DC fellow.  Do you feel like going to Carvel?  Can I talk you into that?  No?  Allright then, I’m going to open the salsa we just got.  While I’m up, can I bring you a Fresca?”

MAYBE THEY WERE THE SAME MARTIANS THAT HELPED BUILD THE PYRAMAIDS.  I’m not sure the time-line works out, but I have to wrap my head around something here to BALM MY DISORIENTATION.

Why isn’t EVERYONE raving about a recently-released album called A POSTCARD FROM BRITAIN by The Sensible Gray Cells?!?  This is EASILY my favorite album of the year, and an absolute FUCKING must for ANY lover of whimsical, quirky, sunny, bittersweet, ringing, singing, sighing, and chiming BRITISH POP.  Seriously, maaaan (or womaaaaan), IF ANYONE READING THIS LOVES XTC, ROBYN HITCHCOCK, the GOD-LIKE Bram Tchaikovsky, THE dBs, early R.E.M., you know THAT sort of thing, THIS RECORD IS A MUST-BUY.  Evan Davies are you listening?!?  The album also proves that “classic” artists can suddenly, well into their middle-age, pull their BEST work out of their ass; The Sensible Gray Cells are the AMAZING Captain Sensible of the Damned and one-time Damned’ bassist Paul Gray (Gray performs on two of the Damned’s masterpieces, Strawberries and The Black Album) (Yes! I Mentioned Strawberries three times in two weeks!).  Postcard From Britain is a gorgeous, intimate, wise and acidic look at Britain in the 21st Century, a bit reminiscent of a darker Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake (the Small Faces’ conceptual classic); if you love thoughtful, thought-provoking, melodic, melancholy British pop, you will adore this album, and “Lottery of Life” is one of the best songs of the decade.

(Evan Davies, by the way, lived across the hall from me in my freshmen year of college, when I resided at the legendary Weinstein Center of Student Living.  He has exquisite taste and is one of the only people I know who became a college radio DJ when he grew up, and he is a majestic treasure and treasury of American college rock. He can be found on WFMU.  In the fall of 1979 when Evan and I still had “teen” as the last four letters of our age, we went to the amazing New York niteclub Hurrah to see the afore-mentioned Bram Tchaikovsky [whose Strange Man Changed Man is one of the great masterpieces of powerpop].  We positioned ourselves at the front of the stage, as usual.  At some point during the ringing glory that was the set, Bram leaned down, while playing, and whispered into Evan’s ear.  He said “D’You like rock’n’roll?”  Evan happily answered in the affirmative.]

NOT ONLY THAT, but WHY do FRED and BETTY have “normal” eyes (with whites and pupils) BUT WILMA and BARNEY just have all-black/all-pupil-eyes?!?  This DISTURBS me.  It implies a genetic connection between Fred and Betty and between Wilma and Barney, or PERHAPS Barney and Wilma suffer from OCULAR MELANOSIS, a condition which could account for this discoloration of the whites of the eyes.  Ocular Melanosis occurs in roughly 1 out of every 5,000 people, but the odds of it appearing so SEVERELY in neighbors is rather odd.  It is also unlikely that Barney and Wilma can be cured, since OPTHALMOLOGY IN THE STONE AGE WAS PRIMITIVE AT BEST.

NOW, some FUN New York Times corrections from the last few days:

“A review on Thursday of a performance by Adam Schatz’s rock band Landlady at Rough Trade NYC misstated how many albums the group has released. It is two, not one; its latest is “Upright Behavior.” The band’s first album, “Keeping to Yourself,” came out in 2011.”

Ahem.  GODDAMMIT we are the NYFUCKINGTIMES and WE WOULD RATHER SIT SQUATTING IN ANNE FRANK’S ATTIC LISTENING TO TOM CARVEL HUM DANNY ELFMAN’S GREATEST SOUNDTRACK HITS THROUGH HOLE IN HIS THROAT THAN MAKE AN ERROR ABOUT SOME OBSCURE FUCKING BROOKLYN BAND, godforbid we should offend some Oberlin Dropout with a banjo and a couple of Elliot Smith records on vinyl, though apparently THE MOST MUNDANE DETAILS OF METALLICA’S CAREER MEAN NOTHING TO US (the latter being a reference to an egregious error the Times made last week, when in a RARE story NOT about Brooklyn hipsters, Alan Cumming, or Russian Billionaires, the Times completely MUFFED a fundamental detail about the career of ONE OF THE MOST FAMOUS BANDS OF ALL TIME).  Come on for the LOVE OF the formless beings who live in the Buddhist realm of Naivasaṃjñānāsaṃjñāyatana (the sphere of neither perception or non-perception) IF I REALLY GAVE A FUCK ABOUT THE SAD MEWLINGS OF SOME BROOKLYN HIPSTERS I WOULD EXCHANGE TEXTS WITH SOME DROOLING 22 YEAR OLD BARD GRAD I MET ON THE L TRAIN, I would not be TROLLING the Corrections section of the NYfuckingTimes.  Seriously.

More amusingly…”An article last Sunday about the history of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ misstated the opening tempo for a version of the song planned by the baritone Thomas Hampson. A jaunty one-beat pickup will substitute for the stately descent of ‘O say’ — not a two-beat pickup.”  I don’t get this AT ALL but I rather love the word “jaunty,” so on that note…

IF IT MAKES ME FEEL BETTER TO BELIEVE THAT THE MARTIAN ON THE FLINSTONES HELPED BUILD THE PYRAMIDS – Mayan or Middle Eastern, I really don’t give a damn, your choice – IS THAT ANY SKIN OFF YOUR ASS?

And finally Porcupine Tree are so much infinitely better than Radiohead, why don’t people get that?

From the Web

Life, Music

This Is The Greatest Rock ‘n’ Roll Song

July 10, 2014

Rock’n’roll is a beautiful lie.

A gorgeous, shimmering, inspiring, invigorating, energizing, calming, challenging, reassuringly ordinary beast…but a beautiful lie.

It promises rebellion and engenders conformity; it calls for revolution and settles for a hair dye; it waves the banner of art and flies the flag of the pedestrian; it dresses the common in leather and calls it uncommon, the fascist in cowboy boots and calls him a libertarian; it charges you for the right to hear songs of the free, and it sings of peace and offers nothing but pdfs.

It’s very simple.  Music is a brilliant and effective and extremely important element to our social acclamation, even if it’s a liar. In his or her life, a music listener will go through five stages:  From infancy to approximately age 10, music is an experience shared with the family; it facilitates the learning of language and shared social customs, and underlines the bonding of the family unit.  Second: music becomes a way for an adolescent to differentiate themselves from their family and bond with their peers. This is the time when children share music and affection for musical personalities with others in their peer group, but in a way that excludes the parent. This stage generally lasts until age 12 or 13.  When a child reaches puberty and/or that moment when the foreshadows of high school become greater than the shadow of elementary school, Stage Three emerges:  having previously utilized music to differentiate themselves from their family and bond with a peer group, a teenager will use music to differentiate themselves from other members of their peer group.

Stage 4, which may emerge as early as 25, but generally settles in around 30, is when we find ourselves less didactic in our choices and more willing to compromise for the sake of expanding our social and economic circles (and because we recognize that perfectly nice and useful people may have very different tastes than ours).  Stage 5, which is also nebulous in regard to age of onset, is nostalgia; this is when we happily embrace musical memories from all prior four stages, without the weight of social pressure.

All of this underlines that there is a very positive and necessary function that music plays in all of our lives, from the most rabid record collector to the most casual music fan. But…

If you’re still with me…

What music is not, however, is an instigator of great social change, nor does it incite revolution; it may be the soundtrack for the great political shifts of the last half- century, but it does not lead or provoke those changes.  That is a myth.  A haircut is not a revolution; it’s a haircut.  The presence of a Doors or Jefferson Airplane song in a documentary about how shitty the Vietnam War was doesn’t mean that anything about that song actually effected the course of the war.  The Sex Pistols didn’t incite any true destabilization of the Monarchy or even instruct meaningful dialogue about it; they just incited people to wear t-shirts with a picture of the Queen with a safety pin through her nose.

Music is, at best, a camp follower when it comes to the stirring of rebellion and true cultural shifts, and at worst, false messiahs who may even impede active political and social modification.

Think:  if Rock’n’Roll wasn’t a lie, which is to say if it wasn’t a wolf in sheep’s clothing and a sheep in biker’s clothing and a biker in Gandhi’s clothing, if it wasn’t m/billionaire’s pretending to be hobos and Ronald Reagan’s pretending to be Elizabeth Warrens, the biggest bands in the world would be those who only spoke the truth, truths about the deepest art becoming the most meaningful noise; if Rock’n’Roll wasn’t a lie, Suicide would be Bon Jovi, Billy Childish or Jon Langford would be Springsteen, Tony Conrad would the Velvet Underground, and Gerry Hannah would be Billy Joe from Green Day (Hannah is the Vancouver punk rocker and bassist for the Subhumans who spent a decade in jail because he didn’t just sing about taking down big corrupt corporations, he actually tried to bomb them; I’m not advocating that, by any means, I’m just saying let’s see Billy Fucking Joe risk a night in jail by actually trying to turn words into action).

When I consider what the greatest Rock’n’Roll song is, it has to be a song that explodes in the furious, major-chord fury that I hear in my dreams of pure chord shambhala; it has to be sweet and angry, it has to pound and soar, it has to be beautiful and gruesome; but it also has to acknowledge, in a completely natural way, all the amazing ironies, contradictions, lies and half-truths inherent in the beautiful beast that has (at most) defined our lives with its’ lies, and (at the very least) been the liar’s soundtrack of all our other life’s lies.

So, friends, when I talk about the Greatest Rock’n’Roll Song, I am not talking about my favorite song, or the best song, or the most artistic song or the most popular song.  If we were talking about my personal “favorite” songs, this would be far easier:  I’d be raving to you about “Neat Neat Neat” by the Damned or “Hallogallo” by Neu! or “Albatross” by PiL or “Surf’s Up” by the Beach Boys or  “Know Your Product” by the Saints or “I Got A Right” by the Stooges or “The Lonely Surfer” by Jack Nitzsche.  That would be easy.

But the Greatest Rock’n’Roll Song has to be a song that gets it, while at the same time celebrating it, it has to be a song that damns it and praises it and all at the same time, it has to be a song you want to hear over and over and over.  It has to be a song that sings about the Big Lie while at the same time rejoicing in it; it has to be a song that defies the Big Lie while slamming you with chords that perpetuate it.

Without any doubt, the Greatest Rock’n’Roll Song is “Memphis Egypt” by the Mekons from their album Rock ‘n’ Roll.

Over crunching, dynamic, ligature-force punk guitars and a chord structure the Pistols or Husker Du would envy, it tells the whole story of The Beautiful Liar; and it compels us to consider that we could have – we should have – taken that power, the power Rock’n’Roll had to change our dialogue about race and money and bullying and sexism, and actually used this power for something, something other than a soundtrack to apply pimple cream; we should have used this gorgeous goliath, this gracious glimmering, glittering Golem, for something other than the perpetuation of all our every day lies about the way we deal with our world, our peers, our government, our land.

I cannot describe the joy this song brings me on a purely musical level, but when it is coupled with the extraordinary call-to-arms, a TRUE call-to-arms that the Mekons have trumpeted for the last thirty years, that’s when it becomes The Greatest Rock’n’Roll Song.  Now, you can find it on your own, and I will just quote one single lyric that in two lines says EVERYTHING I tried to say in 108 lines:

The battles we fought were long and hard
Just not to be consumed by rock’n’roll…

Yes, music should totally and completely be about sex and pissing off your parents and music to shop by; but it can and should be about something else, too, and the first thing you need to admit is that you’ve been lied to:  those punk rock bands lied to you – they were selling you hair gel and cigarettes, not useful engagement – John Lennon lied to you – he sang “Imagine No Possessions” when he owned an entire apartment in one of the most expensive apartment buildings in the world JUST to house his wives furs – he was a great man and a great singer/composer but he was no working class hero, and not even fit to draw a chalk outline around the shadow of Jon Langford or Billy Childish or Billy Bragg or Oscar Brand or even Benny Goodman, who risked EVERYTHING just for the right to have men of a different color perform in his band.

I am sick of the lies.  I am sick of the consumer/listener/fan just ASSUMING something is political because it has a few key words in the lyrics and it dresses right and mumbles the right shit in interviews.  I wish, I sorely fucking wish, that rock would one day truly be the active, engaged, suggestive, useful voice of political and social change, and was as creative as it always pretended to be; I wish it WALKED like a duck instead of just putting on feathers and quacking like one.

But until then, we’ve got the song “Memphis Egypt” by the Mekons.

Some small portions of this piece previously appeared and were barely read in The Big Takeover, and I thank Jack Rabid for inviting me to explore some of these thoughts in his wonderful publication.  

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Existential Stuff, News, Sports

My First Baseball Game. Your First Baseball Game.

July 9, 2014

 

Yesterday, July 8, was the 45th anniversary of my first visit to a Major League Baseball game.  Of course, it would have more been appropriate to write about this on the actual date, but I was too busy ranting about the Damned, my zealous distaste for Roger Waters, and my virtual deification of Scott Walker (I said DEIFICATION, not defecation, clean your eyes out).

On July 8, 1969, my father made a plan to take advantage of a Synagogue-sponsored trip to nearby Shea Stadium.  As a man richly aware of both the tradition of baseball and it’s long history of generating father-son moments, I am sure he was deeply cognizant of the significance of a  “First Game.”  We missed the bus – I don’t remember why, but our connection to Temple Emmanuel in Great Neck was tenuous at the best of times – so we set out on our own.

The Mets were playing the Chicago Cubs.  It was a Tuesday.  There was nothing, I mean absolutely nothing, remarkable back then about weekday day baseball games; and if I had any question regarding why my father was so readily able to miss work, I didn’t ask then and I have only a frisson more curiosity about it now.

The Mets were just beginning to significantly challenge the Cubs’ stranglehold on first place in the (newly created) National League East, and I was at least a little aware of the significance of this contest.  I was seven years old, and that season I was following baseball intently for the very first time.

A witty, warm litany of the details of the game (as fascinating as they may be in hindsight) and a wistful roll call of the names of the extraordinary men who played that day…

… is not forthcoming.  You can look that stuff up, if you want.  The event, it’s memories, are bigger than that game; my memories are more common yet more individual then the no-doubt noteworthy achievements of that day; my memories of July 8, 1969, when the Chicago Cubs played the New York Mets at Shea Stadium, are more Rothko than Rockwell, and that’s as it should be.

My memories are fragmentary and impressionistic, befitting the recall of an event that took place when I was seven; and this is part of the instant nostalgia aspect inherent in baseball:  we meet the game as children, usually under the tutelage of a father or older sibling, whose impression is likewise warmed by the fires of remembrance and the instant joy of the event.   This scenario is replayed every day.  Nostalgia is literally built into the event.

Did I ever think I would be an old-ish man waxing nostalgic about the smoky ballparks of his youth, and the baggy-uniform’d men who paced the green fields and sandy diamonds?  Yes, of course I did.  The presence of future-nostalgia is absolutely inherent in baseball, implied in its’ nearly ancient rhythms and virtually unchanging uniforms and rules, as it is in no other sport.  The game is, essentially, the same game that was played 110 years ago, 90 years ago, 70 years ago, 45 years ago; the same cannot be said of any other sport — would today’s basketball fans even recognize the 1940s/50s game, plated jerkily by bony Jewish men and Midwestern farm boys, as the same game played today?  Do we not marvel at the un-masked, un-armored footballers and hockey artists of the past?

Instant, future nostalgia is also implied in the sense of camaraderie baseball brings about, and the pause-filled, rolling pace of the game; it is only breathless incrementally, incidentally.  It is perfect for sharing with friends, parents, even strangers, and therefore your companion (be it in the grandstand or in front of a TV screen) is as much a part of the memory as the game itself.

Even at a remarkably early age, we are conscious of this built-in nostalgia.  Just a year later, when I was 8, I recall sitting in the upper deck of Shea and staring down at Hank Aaron below me in the outfield, and very intently committing the image to memory, knowing he was a historic man.

On July 8, 1969, I remember a seat in the back of the mezzanine, in the comfy shadow of the upper-deck overhang; no sun scratched my 7-year old face, and the deck close above us made the cheers echo and roar with mythic rumble.  I remember the salty smell of beer and cigars (a smell that still, instantly, brings me back to the ballpark); and, perhaps oddly, perhaps not, I remember hats.  I recall seeing a lot of hatted men, that is, men wearing the kind of hats we associate with archival sportswriters or mid-60s businessmen.

(Years later, I argued about this with a friend; were men in 1969 still sporting hats?  Could that be possible?  Well, I remember hats.  If someone else attended a weekday baseball game in the summer of 1969 and doesn’t recall hats, they can write their own column, or investigate the edge-curled snapshots of their own sepia-tinged memories.)

I remember a dense crowd; and a little fact-checking, nearly half-a century after the fact, reveals an attendance of 55,096.

I remember cheering specifically for Mets’ catcher J.C. Martin, who, for some reason long-lost in the necessary fog of the decades, was my favorite Met.  I suspect this had something to do with ownership of a precious baseball card.

I remember a come-from behind victory for the Mets in the 9th inning, and an enormous roar of jubilation.

Somewhere in there, surely, there was a hot dog or three consumed; a wending of the way through the crowds with my father’s large, tan hand clutching mine; happy and knowing glances between tall father and small son at the small and tall victories on the field, set to the happy chug of Jane Jarvis’ organ; somewhere in there, surely, was father-son discussion of an upcoming trip to the moon, to launch just eight days hence, which surely occupied my imagination as much as the pile of Topps cards in my bedroom; somewhere in there, surely, there was studying of a scorecard, and patient instruction regarding its purpose and completion; and somewhere in there, surely, was a triumphant march back to the parking lot (a field of concrete so large in it’s breadth it actually frightened me) with others, fathers, sons, fatherless sons and sonless fathers, those slacking off from work and those altogether unemployed, all celebrating a triumph both unexpected and inevitable.

In other words, it was pretty much exactly like every child’s first baseball game.

It was just like yours, wasn’t it?

The score of yours doesn’t matter, either; it doesn’t matter that you were watching Killebrew and I was watching Clendenon, or that I was cheering from J.C. Martin and Gary Gentry and you were cheering for Jim Palmer and Clay Darymple.  It really, truly doesn’t matter, and I urge you not to cloud your most beautiful memories with the joyless ice of facts.

It was July 8, 1969, and I already know all the details that matter.

From the Web

Life, Music

Random Noise: Wilko Johnson, Pink Floyd, Scott Walker and What Elvis Costello Needs to Apologize for Right Now

July 8, 2014

No faux Joseph Mitchell reminiscences today, or Thor-babbling, just random noise.

If I could anoint THE GREATEST LIVING HUMAN IN MUSIC, it’s pretty certain that person would be named Wilko Johnson.  If you DON’T know Wilko, the fluid-but-choppy hyper r’n’b guitar style he developed in the early/mid 1970s as a member of Dr. Feelgood made him, quite literally, one of the most influential guitarists of his era (right alongside Ronson, Thunders, and Townshend); virtually the entire first generation of English punk guitarists joyfully, proudly, and admittedly absorbed and/or stole his style, and if you’ve ever listened to the guitar playing of Joe Strummer, early-ish Costello, or Jam-era Paul Weller, you’re hearing Wilko;  in fact, both Strummer and Costello took it a step further, and “borrowed” Wilko’s staggering, stumbling, running and wide-eyed on-stage persona. The Feelgoods (whom Wilko left in ’77) were a profoundly influential band who played an amphetamine’d R’n’B that bridged the gap between the Pretty Things and the Clash, and they are an essential band.

For the last few years, Wilko has been spitting bar-chords in the face of what could be terminal cancer, continuing to perform and record and FAR exceeding his doctor-pronounced best-by date — he even found time for a small but VERY memorable reoccurring role in Game of Thrones (he’s the tongue-less executioner)…and JUST NOW, he’s released a FIERCE and driven album with Roger Daltrey, called GOING BACK HOME.  It brings Roger back to the charging, chugging mod’n’b he played in the early days of the Who, and there is literally NO ONE better to be his Roger’s retro/now-tro rock co-pilot than Wilko.

Johnson in Game of Thrones

Wilko Johnson’s courage is astounding and inspiring, he is one of the 25-greatest/most important rock guitarists of all time (and very likely in the top dozen), and we need to HONOR HIM.  And also, Dear Elvis Fucking Costello, everything you did/do on stage that people associate with Elvis Fucking Costello was STOLEN from Wilko Goddamn Johnson, so find a way to pay him back, okay?   And while you are at it, Elvis, please issue a general apology BEGGING US TO FORGET THAT THE JULIET LETTERS EVER EXISTED.  There’s a chance that The Juliet Letters ISN’T the worst album made by a major credible artist; but it’s a very, very slim chance.

Where was I? 

I understand Dave Gilmour is readying a new Pink Floyd album for release (though the basics of recording, apparently, was done in the mid ‘90s, when Richard Wright was still very much alive).  GOOD FOR DAVID FUCKING GILMOUR.  He is a class act who “gets” what people loved about the Floyd more than that bitter snarling camel-faced Roger Waters ever did.  And if Roger wants to continue to fucking whine about this, let me state that he lost ANY AND ALL ability to fucking whine about what’s “really” Floyd when he fired Rick Wright during The Wall sessions because Wright was standing in the way of Roger’s personal vision (Wright toured on salary after that), Roger apparently having forgotten that IT WAS A FUCKING BAND AND MAYBE WE ALL GET A LITTLE TIRED EVERY NOW AND THEN OF LISTENING TO YOU WHINE, YEH, WE GET IT, we get it, WE GET IT, YOUR DAD DIED IN THE WAR AND YOU HAVE POWER ISSUES WITH WOMEN.  Go fuck yourself Roger Waters, THE BEST THING ABOUT FLOYD WAS ALWAYS SYD AND DAVE GILMOUR’S SHIMMERRING ARPEGGIO GUITAR, and Dear Mister Roger Waters get down on your knees and THANK GOD that John Fogerty is alive, because as long as Fogerty is alive YOU are not the bitterest and least-grateful person in rock’n’roll.

Where was I?

 

Yeh, so I am all for a new Floyd album, as long as it is with Gilmour at the controls and not Waters.

In an interview with my old friend Joe Bosso at MusicRadar, Fred Armisen lists the ten records that changed his life.  Number one, I SAID NUMBER ONE, is Strawberries by the Damned, an album I referred to in this column just last week!  And that DESERVES an exclamation point, dammit!  This is surprise of almost holy proportions and Armisen has now made me a fan for life.  The Damned are very likely one of the best bands of our era – you’ll recall, I mean I hope you recall, that in this VERY column I anointed them, via a process of careful academic analysis, The Most Underrated Band of All Time – and Strawberries is a MAGICAL album that comes from a delicious, almost Soft Boys/XTC land of power and whimsy, blending it with the kind of slashing ‘ello guvnor RAWWWWK that the Small Faces, the Who, and the Damned were KINGS of.  It is desperately hard to pronounce a “best” Damned album – Damned Damned Damned, Machine Gun Etiquette, and The Black Album all SERIOUSLY vie for the title (and any music collection that lacks these albums ain’t no music collection, in my book)– but when my ridiculously flat feet are held to the fire, I always say Strawberries is the best.  So good on ye, Mr. Armisen.

Let me also add that the aforementioned Mr. Joe Bosso is one of the last great purveyors of true music journalism, and his work at MusicRadar is a must read…and I was fortunate enough to see him KILL as Bon Scott at a lip-sync contest in the Weinstein Dorm cafeteria in the early 1980s.

Where was I? 

It surfaced last week that Scott Walker and Sunn O))) will be collaborating on an album together.  Very, very little leaves me speechless but this comes goddamn close.

Scott Walker is, almost without ANY doubt, the most interesting and creative “mainstream” musician alive (I am defining “mainstream” as someone who achieved fame working in a the pop field, and had major pop hits); for the last 25 years, he has made extraordinary and essential albums that blend emotion, noise, fiery singes of vocals, blurts of rhythm, dark cinematic grind-scapes, and deeply literate lyrics; NO ONE makes music like Scott Walker, at least until the day all of Frank Sinatra’s work gets remixed by Mike Gira.  Walker’s stuff isn’t easy – imagine someone reading you Ulysses while sitting on a very loud lawn mower – but it is deeply brilliant, vastly moving and attention-demanding,his recent music is a tortured and incredibly well realized and executed map to the darkest landmarks of the soul and music.

ANYWAY,  Walker (whose praises I cannot shriek more loudly and whose absolute singular genius and commitment to skin-peeling, bone-chipping individuality at any costs I cannot possibly say enough about) is collaborating with Sunn O))), the drone/ambient/metal band who make Earth seem like Bon Jovi.

The Walker/Sunn O))) collaboration – being teased as Scott O))) – could be the end.  I mean literally the end of music, by which I mean OUR UNNECESSARY ATTACHMENT to boring and tired and aging constraints like western tuning and childish melody.  And I welcome it.  I am tried of this playground singsong shit masquerading as “new.”  It ain’t new.  It ain’t “different.”    Bring on the end, and I cannot fucking wait for Scott O))).

Finally, I have never once, not in my entire life, spelled “Ulysses” correctly.  I WAS BORN WHEN JOHN F. KENNEDY WAS PRESIDENT, I WAS BORN FOUR WEEKS BEFORE THE NEW YORK METS PLAYED THEIR FIRST GAME, WHEN I WAS BORN THE BEATLES WERE STILL PLAYING THE CAVERN CLUB, and I have YET to spell “Ulysses” without assistance.

 

 

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hootie-and-the-blowfish
Arts and Entertainment, Brooklyn Bugle, Existential Stuff, History, Music

20 Years Ago Today I Started a Spectacular Voyage with Hootie and the Blowfish

July 5, 2014

People might tell you something is impossible, unfeasible, and ridiculous; but you do it anyway, because you think it’s possible, obvious, and beautiful.  It is virtually guaranteed that anything that is going to achieve the amazing is going to be something a lot of people are going to tell you is a bad idea.

20 years ago today, I went on a spectacular voyage with a group of underdogs.  We achieved the impossible, but it never seemed impossible to us.  We never doubted we were doing the right thing; we simply followed the instincts in our practical and artistic hearts.

On July 5, 1994, Atlantic Records released an album called cracked rear view (lower case not a typo) by Hootie & the Blowfish.  It would become one of the top selling albums in history.  I was an A&R person at Atlantic Records at the time, I signed Hootie & the Blowfish to that label, and was integrally involved with them between 1993 and 1998.  I am so fulsomely proud of having done so.  I am so happy to have helped a band of such sincerity, talent, kindness, warmth, and determination achieve the kind of success that is so rare in the music business that it is now extinct.

In 1993, major record labels were signing nothing virtually but grunge (in forms sincere, corrupted, insincere, misunderstood, and misinterpreted), and virtually every new band on the radio was grunge.  A band like Hootie & the Blowfish, whose dominant influences was Toad the Wet Sprocket, Foster & Lloyd, and early/mid period R.E.M., and who evoked in listeners the spirit of Bob Seeger or John Mellencamp, was, to put it efficiently but accurately, literally the last thing the major labels were looking for.  I mean literally.

It is difficult to imagine that a group that was to become such a phenomenon, that became such an almost comically ubiquitous part of our cultural background and musical foreground in 1995 and 1996, began life in the mainstream industry as such adamant underdogs; but that’s the truth, and I have never been involved with a project whose result so vehemently exceeded its expectations. (cracked rear view, which eventually achieved sales of half a million record sales a week, did not, at the time of its’ release, have a single unit stocked by Tower Records in New York or Los Angeles).

Yet I do not feel lucky to have been involved with the success of Hootie & the Blowfish.

Fortunate, yes — hugely, enormously, profoundly, gratefully, resoundingly fortunate, yes — lucky, no.  Luck had nothing to do with it. These factors built the almost unprecedented success of cracked rear view: Creativity, persistence, strategy, follow-though, joy, trust, faith in the advice of the right people and lack of bitterness in the doubting words of others.  Luck was involved barely, or not at all.  Most of all, the band had faith in their music, and we all had a belief that the happiness we saw on the faces of Hootie’s first fans, the fans who had been hearing those extraordinary songs in little mid-Atlantic clubs for years, could spread to the rest of the nation and the world…and we had a group willing to do the hard work to make that happen.

I have been asked many times how someone (uh, me) whose past musical history was so entwined with extreme forms of the artful and/or noisy could have ended up working with something so intrinsically linked with the mainstream.  After all, prior to my association with Hootie, I was best know for my work as a punk rock DJ and as a member of a profoundly artsy avant-pop band called Hugo Largo.

The answer to that is easy: Hootie & the Blowfish were the most musically natural, most creatively honest, and most personally warm and engaging band I ever met. I loved them, I loved their music. Period. Is any other justification even remotely necessary?

No, dammit.

We had hoped, at the time of release, to sell as many records as the Jayhawks. This truly was our goal. Something so much greater happened.  A few people helped a lot in the very beginning  — especially Danny Goldberg, a product manager named Kim Kaiman, and a publicist named Patti Conte — and in many ways, for the first half-year or so that the band were signed to the label, the project was our delicious and warm little secret; and a lot of others just wanted to wait and see, which makes perfect sense to me.  Some others actually didn’t believe in the project at all (one very prominent A&R exec told me the record was unreleasable and had no singles), but thank to the support of Danny, we were able to move forward.

I have tried to consider how to write about this absolute unique and important event in my life that happened twenty years ago today, this event that had such impact on the lives of my dear friends, my colleagues, and millions I will never meet.  But all I really find myself able to say us this:

No artistic dream is impossible if it is creatively honest.

Dream hard, but dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s.

Be grateful and gracious to every single person who helps you and be graciously firm to everyone who tells you it can’t be done.

Trust every single one of your instincts as if they were your children, but let those kids go to the movies with someone else every now and then.

It is not important to be right every time, or to stick to your guns every single time; it is important to stick to you guns that ONE time when you KNOW all the other rights and wrongs hang on a powerful, certain hunch.

Remember not to take the naysayers personally — even the most aggressive negative opinions are almost always based in fear, and people trying to protect their own turf.

In July of 1994, to virtually anyone on the corporate level, the later success of Hootie & the Blowfish would have seemed improbable or impossible.  I cannot even begin to tell you the other new groups “prioritized” over Hootie; if you recall a sweet but eminently second division (and ultimately tragic) grunge band named Surgery, let me apply some perspective by saying this: Surgery were considered an  “important” new release, and were guaranteed a video and radio support; Hootie, released at the same time had no video commitment.  To us close to the project, the level of success achieved was, and I mean this quite literally, beyond anyone’s wildest dreams (I honestly believe the band would have felt that their hopes and expectations had been met if they had gotten to open for Toad the Wet Sprocket and sold just enough to make a second record for the major label).

I believe cracked rear view sold 17 million copies in the United States.

But the most beautifully impossible and improbable about thing about the stupefying success of cracked rear view was this:  Hootie & the Blowfish were the single nicest band I’ve ever met, and ever will meet.

And the people around them were the kindest, warmest band organization I ever met or interacted with (Rusty Harmon, Paul Graham, Jeff Poland, Jeff Smith, Peter Hoslapple, John Nau, Don Gehman, Gena Rankin, Vanessa, Lynn, Squirrel, and so very, very many others). And they bought out the very best in all of us jaded industry types, making us gorgeously and gleefully un-jaded for a few beautiful months and years; to this day I cannot think of Danny, Kim, Patti, Bob Clark, Bix Warden, Nancy Bennett, Tom Carolan, Jim Lawrence, and many that I am unfortunately forgetting, without smiling and knowing that we shared an absolutely once in a lifetime adventure: to be part of one of the biggest selling albums of all time, on a ride alongside some of the nicest people I’ve ever met in the music business.

Most of all, I love you Darius, Dean, Mark, and Jim.  You created a dream that the world wanted to share, and I am so honored that I helped get you to the world, and if my part in your story is what’s engraved on my tombstone, I am just fine with that.  It was the best kind of story.  And what we believed in and went through will link us like brothers, and I will love you like brothers, always.

I wish every one reading this a chance to enjoy the same feeling.  You can find it by finding something you know is worth standing up for, worth working for joyfully, and worth enduring all the obstacles and nay-sayers for, while keeping an open heart and making art without the obstacle of dishonesty.

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Existential Stuff, History, Life

Declaration of Independence: July 4 1970, Great Neck

July 4, 2014

When I was a child, I would dutifully clip the facsimile Declaration of Independence that appeared on the back page of the New York Times every July 4.  It was one of my favorite traditions.  I did this every year, from about ages 7 to 11.

I would hang the newsprint declaration on my bedroom wall and stare at it.  I would carefully copy the signatures; I would parse the encyclopedia for the biographies of the famous men whose names were contained therein; I would consider the significance and gravity of this great document, this famous lodestone of our nation.

I would spend much of the day playing patriotic music, committing famous historical quotes to memory, listening to the musical 1776, and considering the great characters in the magical story it told.

I was not so much interested in fireworks – the noise frightened me, and the libidinous spirit their ignition seemed to encourage somehow made me uncomfortable. Also, on July 4, 1969, my brother had been bitten rather gruesomely by a dog deranged by the noise.  So this whole aspect of the holiday had no positive association for me.

Weirdly, this annual burst of patriotism was not limited to Independence Day itself. Somehow, the sweep and grandeur of the Independence legend seemed to affect my overall personality and worldview.  In fact, my fascination with the bewigged formation of the country, the great traditions and myths of Revolution and victory, and the traditional songs and stirring Broadway melodies inspired by America’s birth soon became a dominant aspect of my pre-teen personality (and a somewhat lonely one it was, too, no surprise there).

It was almost like the sweep of our country’s history became a myth full of giants, perfect to replace the dominant myth that occupies the young, the story of the dinosaur.

In fact, for all intents and purposes, I became a little neo-con.  I was so fascinated with the story of the country that I presumed I must love the country, too.  Being a wee-right winger also had the added benefit of being a truly rebellious act, something that set me apart from and even offended my peers.  As distasteful as my 10-year old point of view may have been, I now recognize that it was likely the first time in my life that I actively set out to define a consistent path that would set me apart from my peers, as opposed to seek to please them or conform to their perceived social norms .

At that young age, and in an era lacking the pluralism and media ubiquity of the later internet age, I was unable to distinguish my love of history from the love of the results of history.  I had not yet learned to discriminate between the fascinating, colorfully drawn actors and their actions, and there was no room in my worldview for accurate interpretation of the gray, black, and blue dynamic and results of those actions.   I was in the thrall of the archive, so I presumed I had to be in the thrall of the men who filled the archive.

I now know that the story of the United states is deeply troubled and often shameful;  full of extraordinary nobility, invention, and determination, but also laced with wrongful wars and obscene classism, and thoroughly weighted down – very nearly to the point of self definition — by the astoundingly ugly scar of racism, which was enabled by the almost unthinkable sin of slavery and the nearly as egregious corruption and failure of reconstruction.

But the characters in the story are beautiful, their stories fascinating, it’s history rich and gripping, and I love it, love it, love it:  From the rookeries of lower Manhattan’s 5 Points in the 19th Century to the manicured lawns of Asheville, North Carolina in the 21st; from the sepia shabbiness of old, beautiful Times Square to the grim, graceful heroes of the Confederacy eternally  standing unsmiling watch over Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia; from the Stonehenge-like remains of the U.S.’s most beautiful monument, Route 66, to the bleached bungalows on Los Angeles beaches; from all of these places and all of the characters who people these places, and all the 880 million sacred and profane sites in this country and all their stories and storytellers and story listeners and story makers, America is the sum of our worst actions, our most  fascinating stories, our most grotesque instincts and our most enlightened learning, and it is always, always bursting with the potential and the hope that  the people who will make the stories of the future will be compassionate, generous,   sympathetic, and kind.

From the Web

Existential Stuff, Life

Jim Morrison and the Dreaded Rear Admiral

July 3, 2014

First order of business — The New York Times correction of the day (which, quite bizarrely, appeared at conclusion of an article about the Monty Python reunion):

“This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: An earlier version of this review incorrectly described the era in which the band Metallica was first active. It was formed in 1981, not in the 1970s.”

Seriously, man.  With corrections like this, I truly wouldn’t be surprised to read this someday soon:

“This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:  The American Civil War was fought in the 1860s, not the 1940s, and was formally started on April 12, 1861 when Confederate batteries opened fire on Fort Sumter; it was not started, as we indicated earlier, on May 8, 1941 with the opening of the Olsen & Johnson film Helzapoppin.  Likewise, The Ding Dong is a chocolate cake produced by the Hostess Company and not a pet name that the formidable Swiss use for the Large Hadron Collider, as we reported yesterday in a story about Derek Jeter’s farewell tour.  We can confirm, however, that this past Sunday the Large Hadron Collider was gifted to the aforementioned Mr. Jeter by the Texas Rangers in recognition of his role as King of Baseball.”

The New York Times is, allegedly, the freaking newspaper of record, and  NOT knowing that Metallica, ONLY ONE OF THE VERY MOST SUCCESSFUL ROCK ACTS OF THE LAST QUARTER CENTURY, emerged in the ‘80s and not the ‘70s is, well, ludicrous.  Sorry, NYT, that you didn’t need to dig up some fact about Moby, Stephen Merritt, or Elvis Costello, as the details of those preemie newts’ careers are without a doubt forcibly tattooed on the inner thighs of every NY Times employee and freelancer. I mean, I DON’T expect the Times to be up-to-speed on all things metal – for instance, if they confused, say, the release dates of Goatwhore’s Funeral Dirge for the Rotting Sun with the release date of Carving Out the Eyes of God, I would probably be relatively forgiving – but this is freaking METALLICA, for the love of Odin.  I mean, probably every freaking journalist at the Times is forced to learn who played the freaking viola on the fucking Juliet Letters and the name of the church Alan Cummings’ mother was baptized in and where Marina Abramovic went to Nursery School, but somehow, the MOST GENERAL CAREER DETAILS OF THE BIGGEST ROCK BAND OF OUR GENERATION has escaped the Times copy editors.

Speaking of Times’ Copy Editors, today marks the 43rd anniversary of the death of Jim Morrison and the 45th anniversary of the death of Brian Jones.

Brian Jones invented the Rolling Stones and defined who they would be and that they would walk into the world with a virtually unprecedented mixture of Rabelaisian strut and Soho sleaze, carrying the flag of the American delta blues (a remarked contrast to the Beatles, who wouldn’t know the delta unless they were flying first class on a Delta plane, and were too busy learning songs from the fucking Music Man to worry too much about the blues).  Brian Jones is a tragic and remarkable symbol for all of us who feel we originated something, and then felt desiccated as our original contributions were dwarfed or forgotten.  Wherever you are, Brian, and whatever incarnation you walk, crawl, or fly above the earth in, I hope you’re happy.

Jim Morrison, of course, was a singer whose father started the Vietnam War.

It is one of the spectacular ironies of geo-cultural history that one of the men intrinsically involved in the giant lie that began the Vietnam War was the FATHER of a prime figure linked to the ‘60s counter culture associated with the opposition to that war.  I mean that is just fantastic. If you don’t know this amazing story, here are the (very) rough edges of it:

On August 2nd and August 4 1964, North Vietnamese Torpedo boats allegedly attacked a U.S. destroyer in the Gulf Of Tonkin (a body of water off the Western coast of Vietnam). The Johnson administration used these attacks as the pretext to escalate the U.S.’s military operations against the North Vietnamese; these attacks, and the response, mark the “true” beginning of the War in Vietnam.  The problem was…the August 2nd attack may have been greatly exaggerated, and most definitely was provoked by the U.S. forces in some fashion; and the August 4th attack, well, that probably didn’t happen at all.  It all appears to have been a very precisely calculated operation to create an excuse for getting the U.S. deeply involved in Vietnam, and the whole thing is similar – very goddamn similar — to the Weapons of Mass Destruction kerfuffle/war crime/hoax that was used as the pretext for invading Iraq.

The commander of U.S. Naval forces in the Gulf of Tonkin was Rear Admiral George Stephen Morrison.  He was most certainly “in” on this atrocity, or at the very least was a pathetic, used dupe.

Rear Admiral Morrison’s son James Douglas Morrison later became famous for writing extraordinary lyrics like “What are they doing in the hyacinth house?/What are they doing in the hyacinth house?/To please the lions in this day.”

To please the lions in this day, my friends, to please the lions in this day.  Yessiree that says it all. There have been days when I felt lower than Kato Kaelin trying to read Ulysses and I raised my spirits inexorably by remembering those incredible, meaningful words.

George Stephen Morrison, dupe or war criminal, lived until 2008.  He virtually never commented on his famous son, though towards the very end of his life, the Rear Admiral tautly said “The fact that he’s dead is unfortunate but looking back on his life it’s a very pleasant thought…I had the feeling that he felt we’d just as soon not be associated with his career. He knew I didn’t think rock music was the best goal for him. Maybe he was trying to protect us.”

Let me leave you with this thought:  In a Simpson’s episode deep in the last century, Milhouse exclaims that he lives in fear of “…wedgies, wet willies, or even the dreaded rear-admiral.”

Maybe dear Milhouse was trying to tell us something.

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Existential Stuff, Life

Thor Takes On Time Warner Cable!

July 2, 2014

Yesterday, I spent four hours on the phone with Time Warner Cable, accomplishing absolutely nothing.  I reckon that the fury and frustration I feel is not uncommon; perhaps you have experienced this horror, too. Now, I knew that I could not be trusted to have a reasoned response to my experience in the maw of the soul-crushing Time Warner phone gulag…so I decided that this was a matter best left to my alter-ego THOR SOMMERSETH, SCION OF THE CLAN SOMMERSETH.  Take it away, Thor:

Dear Sirs and/or Madams and/or Chimps Waving Diplomas from the University of Phoenix, Florida State, or the Carvel Ice Cream College of Knowledge:

My name is Thor Sommerseth.  Through my fathers’ fathers, I carry the bloodline of the god Heimdallr  (YES, HE WHO SOUNDED THE HORN OF GLALLAHORN), the VERY SAME Heimdallr who owns the golden-maned horse Gulltoppr and keeps watch for the onset of Ragnarök while drinking fine mead in his dwelling Himinbjörg, located where the burning rainbow bridge Bifröst meets heaven!   MY FATHER’S FATHERS have fought for the PRIDE of our people alongside Tyr, Loki, and the Valkyrie Sigrdrifa.  On my mother’s side, I am descended from the Clan Adelbaum of Bayside, a proud if occasionally fawning family who once got in an argument with the guy behind the meat counter in Waldbaums, for which we ultimately apologized (we did not know that the fellow’s son had just been hospitalized for shingles, and we wouldn’t have been so forceful in our opinion about the fattiness of the corned beef if we had known this).   Oh, and I believe my cousin, Marvin Adelbaum, played second trumpet in the Port Washington High School band sometime in the mid-1970s.

In other words, Time Warner Cable, you have met a formidable foe!

I, Thor Sommerseth, am a man who values every SECOND of his time on this planet, as I prepare for my entry into one of the 540 doors of Asgard, where I hope to spend eternity walking alongside the 800 Vikings in Valhalla! My time CANNOT be spent dealing with CHIMPS who obstruct my PLAN to relocate my Time Warner Cable Service to an apartment closer to a subway line that will carry I, Thor Sommerseth, into the Isle of Manhattan, where I occasionally need to go in order to serve the needs of Mammon. Am I, Thor Sommerseth, to SUFFER at the hands of your LAZY MINIONS because of MY NEED to move somewhere where I will not be held hostage by the transfers necessitated by the merciless irregularities of the G, J, and L Train!?!

Yet I, Thor Sommerseth, spent FOUR HOURS on the phone yesterday, experiencing a torture akin to the FIRES of Múspellsheimr (which, as you surely know, is home to the fire demons and ruled by the giant Surt, the SWORN enemy of Aesir).  This is NOT a place where I, Thor Sommerseth, want to dwell! I had things to do!  I had to pay tribute, as I do every Monday and Tuesday, to my human ancestors in the land of Miðgarðr, as they continue to battle the Midgard Serpent who lives in the sea that surrounds our world!  I also had to see if the Pontiac Bonneville gifted to me in 2004 by The Clan Adelbaum was done at the shop; see, there were some problem with the Manifold Intake Gasket.  Oh and I also had to go to the CVS to pick up some prescriptions, and my daily quart of Clamato, THE NECTAR OF VILI AND VE, THE BROTHERS OF ODIN, and also a fine beverage I first became acquainted with when Sarah Adelbaum, another cousin of mine, married into the Clan Waxman of Toronto.

And thanks to the utter uselessness of the mewling, scratching, whining, 50 Shades of Gray-reading CHIMPS you have in your employ, my day was SHOT completely, and I, Thor Sommerseth, was able to accomplish NONE of these things, except I was able to call the shop that has the Bonneville, and wouldn’t you know, it turns out they found ANOTHER problem, apparently an engine coolant temperature sensor needs to be replaced, too.  Wouldn’t you just know it.

I am especially outraged by your INCOMPETENCY because I, Thor Sommerseth, have considerable experience in the Cable Television business! From 1992 to 1997, I was a Vice President at  Mørke Guder Systemer (Dark Gods Systems) , the second largest cable system in the city of Sandnessjøen!  I had total dominion over the realm of 3 AM to 6 AM programming, and I had full hiring and firing power over the mailroom!  Now, the mailroom was just one fellow, a slightly disabled but cheery chap named Håkon Øyvind, son of Torbjørn, but he was compelled to do my bidding; I, Thor Sommerseth was his Lord and Master, at least between 3 and 6 A.M.

During my Time at Mørke Guder Systemer, I, Thor Sommerseth, introduced some remarkable programming that made our cable system the second most successful cable system in the pre-dawn hours in the whole Arctic Region of Coastal Norway!  These shows, which you most certainly have heard of, included Leave It To The Beaver-like Creature, Maeritt, Who Gives Us Bad Dreams By Sitting On Us In Our Sleep, and That Girl (Who Married Fossegrimmen, Who Lives Under the Waterfall and Teaches Humans Violin If They Bring Him Meat).  I, Thor Sommerseth, was also responsible for the morning Death Metal Yoga Program, Pilates With Impaled Nazarene.  This was a very controversial show, because Impaled Nazarene is, of course, Finnish and NOT Norwegian!  Boy, I, Thor Sommerseth, sure took some flak for that!  In fact, the church I visited at the time was burned to the ground by followers of the band Keep of Kalessin; and then the church I went to because my primary church had been burned to the ground was, in turn, burned to the ground by followers of the band Obtained Enslavement.

In any event, to say that I, Thor Sommerseth, was outraged by your lack of professionalism and the inability of the CHIMPS on your staff to master the most rudimentary tasks required to meet even the loosest definition of customer relations and task fulfillment, would be an understatement worthy of Freyr, the son of Njord (ha!  Get it? I thought you might enjoy a little levity! Even CHIMPS at TWC enjoy a little joke now and then!).

Actually…I, Thor Sommerseth would like to apologize…

TO CHIMPS!  I have frequently compared them to Time Warner Cable’s employees in this missive, and that is deeply insulting TO CHIMPS!

Chimps are noble creatures who we now know have learned the Secret of Fire, and who also amuse I, Thor Sommerseth, by wearing suits and bow-ties and riding on bicycles and playing tambourines while wearing “hippy” wigs.  I have never been amused in such a fashion by any Time Warner Cable employee!

May Hod, the son of Odin who accidentally killed his own brother, flail you in your most buttery and vulnerable parts while chasing you through Niðavellir, the underground realm of the dwarves, and may any wise monkeys wearing Fez’s you encounter there fling poo at you!!!  And when your hubris impels you to be CAST from your place of employment and work as a waiter and/or waitress, may Izzy Adelbaum, the evil patriarch of my maternal ancestors, leave you a $1.25 tip on a $25 dollar tab, as I saw him do recently at the Eat In Time Diner in Uniondale, Long Island.

For the love of Höðr, God of Winter, I am, Thor Sommerseth

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Arts and Entertainment, Brooklyn Bugle, Existential Stuff, Music, Opinion

Shall we name the world’s most underrated rock band?

July 1, 2014

Since we are in the midst of the quadrennial potpourri of bonhomie known as the World Cup, it seems like a logical time to discuss a subject that is on the tongues of every Football fan, from Croatia to Cameroon, from Côte d’Ivoire to Costa Rica:

What is the single most underrated band of the rock era?

(First, a brief aside to discuss the rather gorgeous word Quadrennial…like wainscoting, Ossobucco, parasympathetic, or Dawn Wells, Quadrennial is a word that just rolls off the tongue and sluices across the lips like a sensuous puff of breath from Kamadeva, one of the Hindu Gods of Love…)

ANYWAY, at our advanced age, opinions have become dozens of stone babies clogging up our sad and disappointed souls; but we must take pride in our prejudices, as they are the only aspects of our teenage dream to have achieved full realization.  In other words, I’ve suffered for my opinions, and now it’s your turn.

So, how do we decide who is the most underrated rock band of all time?  Or is it “Who ARE the most underrated rock band of all time?”  WHERE IS REASON A. GOODWIN WHEN YOU NEED HIM?  Or her?  Because “Reason” could certainly be a woman’s name, nicht was?  And WHY am I speaking German (the “nicht was” bit)?  Anyway, how do we make this determination? What are our ground rules?  And WHY am I making references no one under 50 will even remotely understand (the “Reason A. Goodwin” bit)?  I will TELL you why:  BECAUSE I have just learned that there are now chimps that have MASTERED THE SECRET OF FIRE, and we humans have to get a LEG-UP on these FIRE-MAKING CHIMPS in ANY WAY POSSIBLE, and most certainly OUR ABILITY TO MAKE REFERENCES THAT REQUIRE RELATIVELY SPECIFIC KNOWLEDGE OF 1960S/70’s TV GAME SHOWS IS ONE WAY WE WILL ALWAYS BE SUPERIOR TO OTHER PRIMATES.  Nicht was?

First of all, some amazing artists linger in the land of obscurity, but it is important to underline that we are not discussing obscurity; we are discussing The Underrated.  Big Difference. In order to qualify as “The Most Underrated Band,” one has to be an artist that was capable of universal greatness and acceptance, an artist where there is an enormous disparity between the potential for their work to be accepted and the acceptance of that work. So we are not just talking about the artistically brilliant or groundbreaking.  This is why some of the greatest artists of our time do not qualify for this prize; for instance, the Velvet Underground, Neu!,  and P.i.L. are three of the primo art-rock bands of the last half-century, but they likely achieved precisely the level of cult-dom and appreciation they merited, so they could hardly be called underrated. The same goes for many other ineffably magical art rockers.  Also ineligible for the prize are Very Popular Bands Who Maybe Should Have Been Even More Popular.  So no R.E.M., okay?

In order to be designated the Most Underrated Band, one has to be an artist who didn’t get the attention or credit they deserved; an artist capable of bringing original and passionate music into the mainstream while simultaneously making something devilishly original; and an artist who also had a catalog large enough and long enough to allow the listener to distinguish differing stages and rewarding evolution, with each stage being rewarding in-and-of-itself (this requirement of a reasonably sizable catalog eliminates some phenomenal one-album bands, like the Rich Kids, Young Marble Giants, and Empire).

So where does that leave us?

It leaves us with two finalists – yes, only two — each of which should have been as artistically important and commercially successful as ANY act in the business.  Let me delineate a little further:  These are both acts that should have been the Stones/Beatles/Who, or acts that should have been U2 or Radiohead.

The Small Faces were every bit as good as any British rock act of the 1960s.  They’re better than the Stones, as remarkable as the Who (I won’t say as good as the Who, because, let’s face it, it’s hard to beat the Who at their best), and an utterly worthy counterpart to the Beatles. The Small Faces were a beautifully British, ferocious, musically complex group that married the power and the incendiary guitarisms of the Who with an element that was pure music hall, and which honored a tradition of British music that went far beyond (and further back from) the blues tradition of the Stones/Who/Yardbirds.  They wrote spectacular songs about the British way of life, they played them brilliantly, their albums were full of sugar experimentation and brutal rock, and they should have been right up there with all the cats I just mentioned.  There should be Broadway musicals full of their songs, and they are the missing link between Kinks-ish music hall and Zeppish heavy blues.

(Now, why weren’t the Small Faces bigger?  That’s a long story – books have been written about it – but a large part of it is likely due to having horrific, criminal management – something that did not hinder the Beatles, Stones, and Who).

(What about the Kinks, you ask?  Well, I freaking love the Kinks, but I would probably contend that the Kinks were just as popular as they should have been; they were best suited to be a delicious cult, and they actually likely exceeded expectations, at least in terms of their commercial success and acceptance.)

And the other contender for our prize would be the Damned.

The Damned should have been the other great classic rock band of our era, right up there with U2.  They were that good.  They were full of power and subtlety and absolutely genius songwriting, and a diversity that ranged from the unsubtle frantic burps of punk to delicate and orchestrated mood pieces that would have made the Moody Blues proud.  The Damned, with their predilection for both massive power and chaos and highly developed and subtle songwriting, were the natural and logical successors to the Who.  Everything they did between 1976 and 1983 is worth owning, worth analyzing, worth dissecting, worth disseminating, and worth proselytizing about: five magical, diverse, rewarding, complex albums (Damned Damned Damned, Music For Pleasure, Machine Gun Etiquette, Black Album, and Strawberries), which, together or apart, hold their own with anything else the rock produced.

I won’t detail here why the world missed out on the Damned (largely, it has to do with the unwillingness of the American music industry to take the first generation[s] of UK punk bands seriously, with very, very few exceptions), but they did, and it is a fucking shame.  There may be bands of that era I like almost as much as the Damned, but the Damned are the biggest loss.  Because they should have been the Who, goddammit.

Now, The Small Faces, in fact, came significantly closer to bridging the gap between achievement and acceptance, even if they didn’t quite reach the heights they should have…and because of that – because of  the disparity between the magic that was produced and the acceptance that should have been received – I have to name the Damned as The Most Underrated Band of the Modern Rock Era.

(Note:  Portions of this piece appeared earlier in the magazine The Big Takeover; if you were one of the four people who read any of this in its’ earlier form, buried in almost hysterically tiny type in the midst of a phone-book of didactic information about unbelievable obscure alt-rock marginalia, please accept my apologies and/or thanks.) 

 (Note II:  Please assist us in making the phrase “potpourri of bonhomie” a common catchphrase.) 

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Existential Stuff, History, News, Opinion

One Century In The Shadow of the Great War

June 30, 2014

This past Saturday was the 100th anniversary of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Imperial Crown of Austria-Hungary.  He was murdered while visiting the city of Sarajevo, one of the jewels in the Empire he was supposed to reign over.  This incident is generally considered the opening shot of the First World War.

There are no words available to us, and no words exist to aptly describe the incredible, horrible, fantastic and furious carnage and tumult of the First World War.

There are no words available to us, and no words exist to aptly describe the First World War’s impact on the human and physical map of this planet.  It is our civilizations’ greatest war, the war that changed everything that would come after and make us reconsider everything that came before.

There are no words.

Yet here come some words, these words, scribbled by a mere dilettante, the son of a son of a survivor, a mere ant looking up at this Golem of History that ended 43 years before his birth.

Until the Final War, the war that has not happened yet, the war we cannot imagine, until that final war, no war in human history will ever be such a monument to slaughter, no war will have as much impact on the HUMAN planet; until this species’ final war, the war that has not happened yet, the war we cannot imagine, no war in human history will ever topple as many systems of government, unseat as many Kings; no war will ever sacrifice such a significant portion of an entire continent’s youth; no war will ever result in such a destabilization of economic and political securities; no war will ever result in such universal butchery leading to nothing gained, and no war will ever result in such universal butchery leading to phenomenal change; no war will ever change so much and leave so much as it never was before; and no war will ever impact the world as the First World War did…until the last war.  Only the LAST WAR of this species, the LAST WAR of this civilization, will impact the world as much as the First World War, which began one hundred years ago this past Saturday.

Until that Final War, to be fought on a plane we cannot imagine, fought with weapons we cannot conceive of, at a human and social cost the species will not be able to bear, The First World War will be our most dramatic, most fundamentally altering war.  Until that final war, the Greatest War, the most Horrific War, the War that left our planet most altered than the way it was before that war began, will be the First World War.

Because The United States was only in the First World War for a relatively brief time – this unimaginable thresher of death lasted four and a quarter years, and our country was involved for just a year and a half – we have been taught relatively little about it.  Now, the U.S.’s role was very important – in many ways, we enabled the end of the murderous stalemate that was killing all the young men of Europe – but we did not suffer the incomprehensible death tolls that that the Europeans endured, nor did we suffer the complete alteration of our political, economic, literal, and social geography as the Europeans did.

This was the War to End All Wars.  There would be other wars, there will be other wars, but until the final war, the war that began one hundred years ago this past Saturday is The War.

There are no words, but there are facts…and just a few of the Eight Hundred Million Facts about the First World War are staggering:

17 Million Dead…almost half of them civilian non-combatants.

Repeat:  17 MILLION DEAD.

1.2 million DEAD at ONE battle, The Battle of the Somme; That’s the dead of 24 VIETNAMS IN ONE SINGLE BATTLE (and this is said NOT to downplay the tragedies of the American young who died in South East Asia, but to underline, to emphasize, to italicize, the sheer VOLUME OF DEATH poured in the fields of France in one single battle)…

Nearly one million dead at ONE battle, the Battle of Verdun – nearly twice the amount dead in the entire American Civil War, in one single battle…

Half a million dead at the Battle of Gallipoli, another Half a Million dead at the Battle of the Marnes…to CONCEIVE of these numbers, imagine this:  THINK OF ONE BOSTON MARATHON BOMBING EVERY DAY, EVERY HOUR FOR 19 YEARS.  That would be the toll of the Battle of Gallipoli, or the Battle of the Marne (NOT “and” but “OR”).  CAN YOU FUCKING IMAGINE?   I make this sick and sorry comparison NOT to lessen the impact that we have suffered from the sickness of social and political terrorism, but to underline the monstrous toll of these battles, which are beyond the scale of any kind of suffering that we as Americans have ever had to experience because of war.

The First World War also bought about…

The End of 1,000 Years of Russian Tsardom…and the creation of the nations of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and modern Poland…

The End of 700 Years of the Ottoman Empire, the kingdom who had stabilized the middle east since the middle ages…

The End of half a millennia of the Austria-Hungary Empire, ending the lineage of the Holy Roman Empire (and with the fall of the house of Hapsburg, the creation of Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Romania, and Hungary);

And lest we forget…that First World War led to The Bankrupting of Germany by unbelievably punitive War reparations, leading to the worst inflation and economic collapse the world has ever seen, leading to the rise of a Nationalist right wing who marched Europe into another World War…

The list could and should go on and on.  We should never forget that

We cannot and should not even think of the idea of War without remembering the war that began one hundred years ago this weekend.  Despite my truly meager attempts, in which I have stupidly attempted to trace the shadow of the chalk outline around this fearsome scar on history, there really are no words.

I leave you with a poem about the carnage, and the generation of men caught in the maw of death, by Wilfred Owen, the great, beautiful poet who died in battle, only one week before the end of the war:

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

      — Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

      Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle

Can patter out their hasty orisons.

No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells; 

      Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,—

The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;

      And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?

      Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes

Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.

      The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;

Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,

And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

 

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