tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-139309032024-03-11T06:51:39.745-04:00Holler If Ya Hear MeCommentary on Music, Culture, Social Change and the
Rest of the World.<br>
(Who we are will become obvious.)<br>
Holler back! Please comment, argue, encourage, or otherwise interact with what you read here.Eric Schumacher-Rasmussenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01191219744840675484noreply@blogger.comBlogger80125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13930903.post-60227254085977011302012-08-26T10:36:00.002-04:002012-08-26T10:47:52.787-04:00The Other Akin Comment(Bill Glahn writes)<br />I’ve been following the reaction to the Akin comments pretty closely and most of it is not especially surprising to me. I’m not surprised that he made the comment nor should anybody who has followed his career in politics and the legislation that he has sponsored. The outrage over the term "legitimate rape" is justifiable in its intensity - I’m not surprised by that. I’m not surprised that many Republicans are now throwing him under the bus for clearly stating the agenda of a large part of their party and representatives – including that of their VP candidate. Politicians are not supposed to state things that clearly in public.<br /><br />I’m not at all surprised that the 7th District Republican Assembly – who are quick to remind folks that they are "the home of the true conservative (you can read that as "klan" and be more right than wrong)" - is standing behind Akin, calling the group of current and former Missouri members of Congress who have called for Akin to withdraw, "cowards." And while they may, in fact, be cowards, you’re not supposed to say that in public either. But the Missouri 7th District is all about being ideologues first and politicians second. Those ideals do not include personal liberties and civil rights. In fact, in the 7th District, where the Republican Assembly holds sway, a Democrat has never been elected to the House since the passing of the Civil Rights Act (1964) and Voter Rights Act (1965).<br /><br />I’m not surprised that the Springfield News Leader had the headline "Akin supporters blast his critics" in 1-inch block letters above the fold, while placing the more newsworthy "meanwhile more party leaders push him to drop out" below the fold in much smaller letters. And a far too weak condemnation of his remarks as their main editorial. (I can see an endorsement for him coming after the furor wanes as a tainted but preferable alternative to Claire McCaskill.)<br /><br />Here’s what I do find surprising…<br /><br />I find it surprising that I’ve seen nothing – absolutely nothing – taking Akin to task for his follow-up comment that his desire is to "punish the rapist, not the child." Nothing from pro-choice advocates. Nothing from women’s groups. Nothing from liberal pundits or bloggers. Nothing from the psychiatric community. Nothing. Which doesn’t mean that that discussion hasn’t been presented, but that it has been buried so deep that even someone following the events doesn’t come across it. My belief is that it is equally as offensive, and maybe even more dangerous, than the "legitimate rape" quote.<br /><br />Dangerous because of Akin’s complete and unconscionable lack of recognition that there is a third person involved in a rape resulting in pregnancy – the rape victim. Pregnancy is not a minor rash that can be treated with some over-the-counter hydrocortisone. It poses very real dangers to the expectant mother in every instance. Every instance. I see no reason that a woman should be forced to accept those dangers and certainly not to be forced for no other reason than to satisfy Akin’s self-image as "morally superior." Because it’s not morally superior. It’s morally repugnant. And here’s why.<br /><br />A woman has hopes and dreams just like the rest of us, dreams that never included having a child by a man not of her choosing. Dreams that may include pursuit of an education, (put on hold if possible at all), dreams of financial independence (put on hold if possible at all), a life free of stigma (certainly not possible as long as people possess the Akin mindset), a life where she (and if married, her spouse) will not see the shadow of the rapist in the child’s face day after day after day. Dreams like those and many beyond, which the rest of society, unaffected by any such intrusion into their lives, has the ability to pursue. A fetus has no such dreams. Punish the victim.<br /><br />Adoption provides the answer? Maybe, but in the case of a minority or mixed race child, I don’t see a lot of pro-lifers lining up to take on the responsibility. 64% of children growing up in the foster care system are minorities. Children with disabilities are at least equally hard to place. And while there are certainly dedicated foster parents, that system is rife with problems. Whatever dreams the fetus – now a child – may develop, they will soon be dashed as well. With the fervor to eliminate support systems (also the agenda of Akin) – punish the child.<br /><br />In the group that contributes to this blog, we’ve had enough discussion on rapist’s motives– including expert testimony – to know that rape is not about sex, but about power. And the sociopath’s desire for the power to completely dominate and control other people’s lives. With that in mind, Akin’s extreme pro-life stance does not punish the rapist. It rewards him.<br /><br />To my mind, that makes Akin a rapist as sure as it does the man who did the deed.<br />billhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07170872030086589149noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13930903.post-6525853692154970672012-07-05T14:52:00.001-04:002012-07-05T14:57:00.597-04:00Class Meeting Down at the Laundromat(Bill Glahn writes…)<br /><br />Andy Griffith’s body wasn’t even cold yet and the masters of disaster were already at it. "While I prefer to remember Griffith as Sheriff Andy, I’m sure the Obama administration will always hold him in high regard for his role as a shill for ObamaCare," concluded one blog on blaze.com. A comment section that included even more vociferous condemnations of Griffith for the unpardonable sin of serving as a spokesperson for the Affordable Care Act followed.<br /><br />Let’s not forget that Sheriff Andy lived in a fantasy world, one where there was no discrimination (no minorities, in fact) and no unemployment. It seems even Otis, the lovable town drunk, had a job. He at least had a home to go to after sleeping one off in Andy’s jail. Bad guys, whether they be used car hucksters or bank robbers, always came to Mayberry from outside of town. The town folk loved their teachers and there was never a complaint about how much Helen Crump made. Cancer didn’t exist. And if someone came down with some minor malady, Aunt Bea’s chicken soup or apple pie was always good enough to get them back on their feet.<br /><br />Like Sheriff Taylor, Andy Griffith was a kind and decent human being. Unlike Sheriff Andy, he lived in the real world.<br /><br />The Laundromat where I usually go is in one of Springfield's most impoverished areas. It's not the closest to where I live now, but it's the cheapest and I'm something of a creature of habit. Especially when it comes to saving a quarter or three. Politics are never discussed there. The folks who go there are so disenfranchised, I suppose, most of them feel "what's the use?" This past weekend I had a lot of errands to run so I went to a more expensive one where I knew I wouldn't have to wait for a washer that worked.<br /><br />As I walked in there was a somewhat heated argument going on about the Affordable Care Act with three participants - the woman attendant, a jack-of-all-trades, and a woman I'll call Ms. Parrot. And plenty of available washing machines - all quite modern to those I’m used to. I proceeded to do my wash without comment, but you couldn't help to eavesdrop as the voices grew louder. The attendant and JOAT were not very well versed in economic speak but they had a pretty realistic grasp of what their own economics were and fell on the side that ACA was a step in the right direction. Ms. Parrot kept insisting it was a Communist program and the ruination of the middle class. The more they resisted, the more argumentative she got. At one point, when she called JOAT "a Communist"," he walked outside to grab a cigarette and leave the attendant to her own devises. "I don't think he's a Communist, but I think he cares about sick people."<br /><br />I thought that was a pretty strong statement. But Ms. Parrot persisted. She saw me taking my work uniforms out of the machine and said, "I can see you're a working man. How do you feel about paying taxes to support lazy people who don't want to work?" I know the uselessness of engaging rhetoric so I changed the subject instead.<br /><br />"I'm kinda interested in your definition of 'Communist,' but I'm far, FAR more interested in your definition of 'middle class.’"<br /><br />There was nothing – nothing at all – that would seem to indicate that Ms. Parrot was anywhere close to an economic status that she was claiming allegiance to.<br /><br />"I work for a living. I have health insurance at work."<br /><br />"So do I, but I'm not about to claim middle class until I can at least afford my own washer & dryer."<br /><br />"My washer and dryer broke down. I live within my means," she replied defensively.<br /><br />"So when your employer decides that he needs to cut your health benefits in order to compete with the same type of business down the street that doesn't provide any, do you continue to live within your means and die?"<br /><br />"Well, I suppose at that point I would just go out an find a different job. That's what working people do."<br /><br />"I wish you luck with that. I'd hate to see you die or, worse yet, become a Communist." I stuffed my clothes in the dryer and proceeded outside to join JOAT. She turned back towards the attendant. The attendant told her she wasn't in the mood to continue. Ms. Parrot called her "rude."<br /><br />I think the definition for "middle class" just got expanded to "anyone with a job." I suppose there are a lot of garment makers in Bangla Desh who are just thrilled to know that.<br /><br />In this world we live in today, corporations operating in the U.S. are cutting out jobs and benefits at a dizzying rate. The company I work for has lain off over forty in the last couple of months at our facility alone. The cost-savings are not figured out in wages. That is more than made up at time and a half as the additional workload is placed on fewer and fewer employees. It is the savings from health insurance from each laid off worker that increases the bottom line. It’s the reduction of safety programs. Benefits of all kinds are being erased. I was washing my uniforms because our company just discontinued uniform and laundry service to their employees and they have to be turned in next week. Beyond assuming another expense to an already depleted budget (work clothes), I’m dreading the day when they announce that health insurance must be cut back "in order to compete."<br /><br />This is the world that Andy Griffith lived in. To his great credit, he chose to live there with the same amount of empathy and decency that Sheriff Andy showed in his fantasy world. Maybe Ms. Parrot should look beyond Mayberry as well.billhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07170872030086589149noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13930903.post-58472249492789962872012-04-25T14:31:00.000-04:002012-04-25T14:33:14.211-04:00Fred Wilhelms<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvZZdZ_4M85GokWODExvsEwyA6Kb07ursE2ZNg-snYJ9JyV3rW6h2NA2O6q0pPpNQcfAlj7_hAdT9lYZS6wRi5G-ayqhZZJCVbr_YJaGTcKB0ykiu_GRe12_OGXgHC4_bhXNDS/s1600/Wilhelms.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvZZdZ_4M85GokWODExvsEwyA6Kb07ursE2ZNg-snYJ9JyV3rW6h2NA2O6q0pPpNQcfAlj7_hAdT9lYZS6wRi5G-ayqhZZJCVbr_YJaGTcKB0ykiu_GRe12_OGXgHC4_bhXNDS/s400/Wilhelms.jpg" width="400" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">Fred Wilhelms, who passed away on April 24, was a beloved member of this blog and the email group that produces it. Fred was a music lover, an attorney, a tireless advocate for artists' rights, a truth-teller, a wealth of "you couldn't make that up" stories, and the kind of human being we all strive to be like. We miss him terribly. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">Stewart Francke writes:</span></i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Fred Wilhelms was like the older brother I didn't have, or more accurately a mentor and a father figure--both Fred and my Dad were tall, elegant, Catholic Republicans who were deeply honest about what that meant, honest about themselves and very knowing and honest about this world. As Dave Marsh just said to me, "I don't even think Fred lied to himself." There was no tolerance of bullshit, and there was erudition and knowledge behind every opinion or word uttered. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">I know this kind of grief (as we all know this kind of grief), and I cannot stop crying. I spent one of the great afternoons of my life going around Nashville with Fred 2 days before my mother died, and he explained how to accept her death by not addressing it directly. He was so smart and articulate--he told me what an apple was by telling me what an orange wasn't. He always had time, or I should say he made time for me--he was busy but never deferred a call or ignored an email overnight--there was a response that day.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">I thought I knew a little bit about publishing (songs) until Fred told me a litany of stories about his various dealings with heavyweights from Barbara Orbison to Bettye LaVette and everyone and everything in between.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">One of our last phone calls was Fred in an unusual panic--he was talking very loudly about various medical things and details of his case and the clinical trial etc, until it just broke down to his fear of dying. I did my best to encourage and comfort. So I told him that as long as we're all alive, and Teri and his family and all others that know him and love him are alive, he remains alive. Sharing the same gracious but to-the-bone honesty that Dave has, he said what I thought he'd say: "Well, I don't know about</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><i>that</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">, but I get what you mean." I felt privileged to even be having this discussion with him, that he trusted my experience enough to hash it out, no matter how poorly I sought solace for him. Because he knew, and i know...what really can you say?</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">He once took me to a famous diner in Nashville for lunch, and we stayed for several hours. It was the most unusual ice breaker--Fred sat down, ordered a water or something, and just delivered his life story almost from birth. And it was funny, fascinating, political, familial, great story after great story--how he got to be sitting here, right now, with me. I fuckin loved it; more precisely, I fell in love with his life, with his stories and how he told them. It was like one of those Styron or Baldwin characters defining the world with their own biography, and I just had to sit and listen.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Fred & I corresponded a lot, about many things--never charging me for legal advice or publishing ideas, and I hoped and pleaded and prayed that he would somehow live through this ugly, heinous disgusting matter, through this horrible cancer that takes no prisoners, but it was as I knew it would be, only sooner. They all hurt, don't they? But this one aches, a deeper bruise to the soul, a loss that affects how you walk and talk.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">I loved Fred not in passing, or just a little; I loved Fred with my heart. He was somehow a 6'5" guy who always looked you in the eye, always on the level.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><i><br /></i></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>The picture above appeared in a newsletter for for the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network <a href="http://www.pancan.org/" target="_blog">http://www.pancan.org</a>, in February, 2012. At the time, Fred wrote, "</i></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">I chose the picture </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">... because getting to hold him was just about the best reason in the world for joining the trial. I am not above playing the pathos card, and I am not ashamed to say so."</span></i></span>Matt Orelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16216172951304608707noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13930903.post-8147632322254946112012-03-03T19:47:00.006-05:002012-04-27T23:36:52.499-04:00On "Jack of All Trades"<i>Bill Glahn writes:</i><br />
<br />
“The wonder is, these songs bring forth such personal stories, the kind of detail you'd expect to be a journalistic staple somewhere--mainstream or alternative--because Bruce made it personal, rather than the "normal" which is almost clinical. You hear people HURT, you hear some of the consequences of the systemic collapse, and for the most part, first-hand, not third-hand.” (from a conversation with Dave Marsh on fans' responses to Wrecking Ball)<br />
<br />
I didn't start digging into the album, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B006ZCWU5K/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=mattsbrucespr-20&linkCode=am2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B006ZCWU5K" target="_amazon">Wrecking Ball</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=mattsbrucespr-20&l=am2&o=1&a=B006ZCWU5K" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" />until yesterday. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B007CM9BNQ/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=mattsbrucespr-20&linkCode=am2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B007CM9BNQ" target="_amazon">Jack Of All Trades</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=mattsbrucespr-20&l=am2&o=1&a=B007CM9BNQ" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" />wasn’t the first song that grabbed me musically, but it is the song with the biggest connect. The biggest connect in a long, long time for me from a Springsteen song. And I think the reason for that is that it comes from the perspective of the lowest rungs of the working class – not the wider expanse of the middle class. I'm finally reading Daniel Wolff's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/159691114X/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=mattsbrucespr-20&linkCode=am2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=159691114X" target="_amazon">4th of July, Asbury Park: A History of the Promised Land,</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=mattsbrucespr-20&l=am2&o=1&a=159691114X" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" />which IMO, is a great piece of literature to read along with this new album. Especially the parts regarding attitudes of the Asbury Park business community toward the "great unwashed" of the west side. <br />
<br />
I've got a story...<br />
<br />
The last time I saw Dave Marsh in person was at a gathering following SXSW in 2007. A few days later Dave posted something in an email discussion among friends along the lines of "Bill looks great, if exceedingly tired."<br />
<br />
When I moved to Austin, about a month before I saw Dave, I was beyond broke and not quite over some ill health. I worked a lot of day labor jobs to get by. That's about as low on the ladder as you can get and still be working. But I learned a lot there.<br />
<br />
I learned the best places for finding unfinished cigarettes and how to smoke them in a semi-sanitary fashion (strip the unused tobacco and re-roll them in fresh papers). I learned that it didn't take much cheap high gravity malt liquor (one 99 cent 24 oz Steel Reserve) to put yourself in a deep sleep and allow your body to heal for the next day. I learned that Austin has a good (and mobile) support system for feeding hungry folks. And most important, I learned that you never EVER admit that you never did any specific job before.<br />
<br />
In fact, pretty much every person that showed up at Labor Ready was a Jack (or Jill) of all Trades. I mean - the worst that could happen would be that you wouldn't get sent back to the same job the next day, but you'd still make a day's wages on the deal.<br />
<br />
"Anyone with carpentry experience?" "Fuck yeah, my dad was a carpenter. I grew up on that shit."<br />
<br />
"Anyone ever run a commercial dish washer?" "You bet! I was the king of dish washing at the Denny's in my hometown."<br />
<br />
And my favorite? "Who has a valid driver's license and a clean driving record? It WILL be checked."<br />
<br />
Very few hands up on that one and I knew I'd be car hopping at the weekly Car Mart auto auction. If you could be convincing enough (and had a car) you could get work somewhere every day - often another shift at night as well - and even some weekend work in the bargain. But the pay was shit and the work (except for the car hop gig) grueling and everybody's hope was latching onto a permanent job and a return to some normalcy.<br />
<br />
Eventually that happened with an underground construction company (sewer and waterline installation) where "Jack of All Trades" was escalated to a whole new level.<br />
<br />
I lived in an apartment complex almost entirely inhabited by Hispanic construction workers - a mix of Texas natives, illegals with legal relatives, and green card immigrants, A couple neighbors worked for the same company I worked for and a few other co-workers lived in complexes near-by, so we hung out some both on and off the job. And I started to get some advice. "You work too hard, Beell. If you want to make better money, hop on a machine. Don't wait to be taught. Just hop on like you've been doing it all your life."<br />
<br />
When the bosses weren't around I'd jump on a backhoe and start trenching (under the watchful eye of my compadres to make sure I didn't hit any underground utilities or such). When the bosses would show up they'd tell them "Beell's pretty good on a backhoe." I learned all kinds of shit. Cement work (I really WAS good at that!) Road patchwork (cutting old portions out with a concrete diamond saw and filling in). Front end loader work. Roller work. Jack-hammer work. Pipe fitting. Really - becoming a real jack-of-all trades provided a degree of sanity while I was in Austin - something I miss greatly in the mundane labor I now do in Springfield. But I have med benefits. A much less rewarding reward system now, but a needed one. Which, for the most part, does not exist in the jack of all trades world.<br />
<br />
Back to the Springsteen song...<br />
<br />
The "tired" tone of the song is perfect. Even more so from a day labor perspective. And you never really get over the hostility toward bosses - who are always content to watch you shovel your way to your next meal no matter what toll that backbreaking work takes on your body and soul. The only real way to get around the bosses at that level is another song altogether. We take care of our own.<br />
<br />
<center><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/k1zj9LdesNU" width="560"></iframe></center>Matt Orelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16216172951304608707noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13930903.post-4934146987020564732011-05-17T12:30:00.005-04:002011-05-17T12:37:48.780-04:00100 Years of Robert Johnson<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQDJUYVYa3MVxTqSg-lGvLyX6BGmVn74weamiuOWgWqvElgYHIXlEMhsxk5lb5JTR9Ggef0DJB97KjRERDuAGACgYcY744Z14aRfSHCskDS8YhJFxF6PyI0ZjlCIhr-2WV8Eod/s1600/robert_johnson.medium.gif" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 250px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQDJUYVYa3MVxTqSg-lGvLyX6BGmVn74weamiuOWgWqvElgYHIXlEMhsxk5lb5JTR9Ggef0DJB97KjRERDuAGACgYcY744Z14aRfSHCskDS8YhJFxF6PyI0ZjlCIhr-2WV8Eod/s320/robert_johnson.medium.gif" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5607725107657322290" /></a><br /><div><i><a href="http://davemarsh.us/">Dave Marsh</a> writes:</i></div><div><br /></div>Somebody asked if <a href="http://www.robertjohnsonbluesfoundation.org/">Robert Johnson </a>ever got to Chicago. I looked for the fact in a few places and then realized that what I was going to get was somebody's version but that it was more complicated than anybody's version. I'm not sure I have a version, certainly not one I'm married to, but if I did, this is what it would be.<br /><br />There is no truth about hardly anything about Robert Johnson's travels. There are lots of stories. One is that he got as far north as Detroit and maybe even did a radio broadcast there.<br /><br />If we could get our friend <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Scott_Aldering">Greg Aldering</a> to use his telescope for a beneficial human purpose in addition to the mere discovery of how new universes are formed, that broadcast is still out there, some minuscule distance--less than a thousandth of a parsec--out there, and you could hear it. If it exists.<br /><br />In a certain sense, the Robert Johnson of our post-rock folklore never existed, and will always exist. The guy those mythologists found didn't smell unwashed or have bad breath and his back didn't ache and his fingers never scabbed and his shoes had soles and he was unhappy existentially but if he had another nickel he could get his ashes hauled so it was pretty close to happiness. And you can hear that. If you want to. If you want, you can hear something else, too.<br /><br />One of those Robert Johnsons was in Chicago. Another one of them didn't get there 'til<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Shines"> Johnny Shines</a> did. And another not until Steven Lavere or whoever it is bought the copyrights. And another one, maybe further back, maybe more recent, never left the Delta--he left Mississippi, because you only have to cross the river to do that. But did he leave it riding in a Terraplane or did he swim it alongside <a href="http://www.stagolee.org/">Stagolee</a> during the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Mississippi_Flood_of_1927">'27 flood</a> or a weekend before he died? That's worth knowing too and you have just as much chance of being certain of the answer.<br /><br />It's the same as figuring out a simple construct like "Homer was blind." He was? To what?Eric Schumacher-Rasmussenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01191219744840675484noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13930903.post-35071653158366027472010-06-18T00:42:00.008-04:002010-06-18T01:09:45.711-04:00Los Cenzontles change the world one class at a time<span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >"The only Mexico I knew was of photographs of my family. I found Mexico</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > here, in the music."</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > - from "El Pasajero"<br />---<br />One of my favorite CDs a few years ago was "</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >El Pasajero</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >(The Traveler)</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >," a soundtrack to a documentary by and about </span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >Los Cenzontles</span><span style=";font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" > with violinist Julian Gonzalez. I picked up the disc at Down Home Music in El Cerrito, but my introduction was weeks earlier in the cafeteria of the children’s hospital where I work.<br /><br />Los Cenzontles (the Mockingbirds) isn't a band per se, it is a performing group from a community center in San Pablo, CA located where the oil refineries belch into the mouth of the Sacramento Delta. The center was created by <span style="font-weight: bold;">Eugene Rodriguez</span> (who plays vihuela (oud) in the group) and <span style="font-weight: bold;">Berenice Zuniga-Yap</span>. (Eugene, Los Cenzontles, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Lalo Guerrero</span>, and <span style="font-weight: bold;">Los Lobos</span> received a Grammy nomination for the recording "<span style="font-style: italic;">Papa's Dream</span>".) The touring group's music features sones jarochos and sones de mariachi, Eugene and Julian accompanied by <span style="font-weight: bold;">Hugo Arroyo</span> on guitarron, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Tregar Otton</span> on 1st violin, and <span style="font-weight: bold;">Lucina Rodriguez</span> and <span style="font-weight: bold;">Fabiola Trujillo</span> on voice and zapateado (foot percussion).<br /><br />That day at the hospital was Cinco de Mayo, and with a neonatologist I'd arranged for Los Cenzontles to perform at lunchtime for patients, staff, and visitors. It was also the day that Mrs. Garner's 2nd grade class from Vallejo was visiting the hospital. Mrs. Garner's class held a penny fundraiser all year, collecting coins a fistful at a time to purchase beanie babies for our patients. I scheduled a visit to accept their donations, give them a tour, and share lunch.<br /><br />These beautiful six-year-olds are as animated as I've met. I introduce myself and say I heard they had a special story to tell. One by one they hand me waxy gift bags covered with tumbles of curling ribbon, each bag sheltering a beanie baby and a hand-written note of encouragement for a patient. With only the littlest<o:p></o:p></span><span style="font-size:100%;"> prompting, each child tells enthusiastically tells why they picked the bears they did -- this one is my favorite color pink! this is a lion and lions are strong and a sick boy needs to be strong! this is a parrot like my grampa has at home, it swears in spanish -- and I ooh and aah. Oohing<o:p></o:p></span> and aahing is an important part of my job description.<br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br />I ask what they think are the two most important things a child needs in the hospital. Hands shoot up urgently. Bandages! surgery! shots! a new brain! Good answers, I say, sick people need good medicine; but what's the other thing? It's as important. Their mother! comes a late answer. I nod. Then I say that a child in a hospital needs the same things they have when they’re at home: family, games, friends, toys to play with.<br /><br />I tell them our hospital is non-profit, and explain we don't have money to buy toys and beanie babies, we need donations of those so we can buy the bandages. They've done something important by thinking about what other people need and acting to fill that need. I tell them I am proud of them and I hope they feel that way inside.<br /><br />Their eyes are big that they've made a difference, that they can make change happen. Within those wide eyes I see doors swing open.<br /><br />I pass around a micropreemie diaper and demonstrate a baby that size by cupping my hand. One girl asks cautiously "Is this clean?" before touching the diaper. We chuckle and I assure her it's an unused diaper. "I was a preemie," says a black girl, the one who likes pink, her hand constantly shooting in the air. "I have diabetes," says a Pacific Island girl, the tallest in the class. "So do I" add a chorus of others. "I have asthma" says a smiling, skinny black boy in a football jersey and soon half of them, hands testifyin’, them too.<br /><br />Then I show them the footprint from the smallest baby we've had, delivered at 22 weeks gestation, eyes fused, stomach unable to process food, lungs unprepared for months. I don't share those details; instead I show that the footprint is the same size as a paperclip. They're quiet. "Did it die?" asks the girl with glasses. "No," I answer, not offering more, but it comes anyway. "Was it okay?" "Many times children and babies may still need to come to the hospital some more." "That makes me sad," says a very small Hispanic girl who has been absorbing every detail of this visit. So I address her, "But maybe if the baby comes here again, it will be your beanie baby that makes it feel better!" A smile bursts through her dimples and she swings her braided head around to look at her classmates, her ponytail decorations clacking.<br /><br />I show them where the emergency helicopters land (one puts on a show as it departs), and we go to the family resource center to look at displays of sugar in food and to touch the fake five-pounds-of-fat. They wonder aloud whether they should eat the chips and cookies they've brought for their lunch.<br /><br />With that, the teacher retrieves their lunches -- carefully labeled paper sacks and a spare package of cookies and fruit juices --<span style=""> </span>while I seat the children at a large cafeteria table directly in front of the plywood floor Los Cenzontles have set up.<br /><br />The band strikes up, the tumble of stringed percussion and melody I love so much, and the two female dancers smile at their young audience, encouraging them to dance. Several kids jump up without hesitation. One little girl looks at me for permission, and I nod, but she can't take her eyes off the dancers and the big guitarron. They shout and squeal when the players bring out the quijada, a donkey jaw bone used for percussion. Finally, the shy one gets up and dances til she throws back her headful of braids. I chuckle, imagining how the kids will describe this visit: the miniature footprint and the giant ass's jaw, the helicopter and the fake fat.<br /><br />My answer arrives a week later in a manila envelope filled with hand-written letters.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Dear Mrs. Martinez, My name is Keith. I'm one of the class mates. Thank you</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> for letting us watch the concert. The footprint was so cool that it changed</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> my life. Thank you very, very much. Love, Keith</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Dear Miss Martinez, Thank you for giving us an opportunity to learn about life. I've been to the Children's Hospital before because my Antie accidently dropped her hammer on my head. Now I have a lump in my head and I was only one year old. I will never forget that day. We went on another field trip to the Oakland Zoo and we all had fun. Love, Caiyante</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Dear Mrs. Martinez,</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">My name is Viridiana and I am in Room #7. I enjoyed seeing the little diaper and feet print. Thank you for taking us on the tour and showing us the building of the helicopter and the pad. We hope you like the Beanie Babies. Thank you for letting us go to Children's Hospital. And I liked dancing with the Mexican band in the cafeteria because I'm Mexican. I hope we come back soon. Love, Viridiana</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Dear Mrs. Martinez,</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I liked the tour because it was pretty important. I liked the beanie babies. Oh, and I forgot to tell you. I'm Mexican. I hope you speak Spanish. I have pride for what I've done. I can never believe every thing I've done. I'm just so happy, I can Never forget. Did you know I play baseball? Love, Patty</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-style: italic;"></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">--Susan Martinez<span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></span></p> <!--EndFragment-->Susan Martinezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16399629036367566875noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13930903.post-52051197270550958982010-05-21T02:12:00.003-04:002010-05-21T02:40:22.203-04:00Oliver Schroer's Last Show on His Tour of This Planet<span style="font-style: italic;">Susan Martinez writes:<br /><br />So this is the way it's going to be?</span><br /><br />This is the way it's going to be. We don't know the how or the when -- sometimes we get some advance notice -- as did my friend, fiddle player, producer and inspiration Oliver Schroer -- but we know the deal's going down.<br /><br />Along the way, on a good day we treat each other well, love and feel loved, and treat strangers with kindness also. It’s the living that matters, and the quality of each breath.<br /><br />These words came from Oli, upon learning his leukemia was end-stage and he’d been removed from the BMT list:<br />---<br />Hi friends,<br /><br />I have wanted to write more to all of you about my situation. I sentout a letter last weekend, but it was a pretty plain letter, and did not include a lot of stuff I feel is important to talk about at this point, for me and for everybody.<br /><br />The gist of that first letter was that the doctors have run out of ways to treat my disease, which is particularly aggressive and ornery. They have thrown every combo of chemotherapy and nasty drugs at my cancer, and in incredibly high doses. The doctors admitted that they were surprised already that the chemotherapy had not actually killed me. It turns out that I am very tough. (My friend Teresa says I’m tougher than a boiled owl.) So if there are no treatment options left for me, what they can and intend to do is make me as comfortable as I can be in the time left to me, so that I am not in pain and not suffering in any way.<br /><br />What I did not talk about in that first letter was how I feel about all of this & I guess I feel that life is not only about quantity. It is about quality as well. We all have to die some time. None of us will live on this planet forever. I think some people live very intensely and burn very brightly during their time here. I think<br />I am one of those people. A shining star while I am here. So I look at my life as I have lived it, and I feel very satisfied with all I have achieved and gone through. As a musician and artist I have found my voice on my instrument of choice. That is what any artist wants to do. Whether you are a musician or a painter or a dancer or a writer, the bottom line as a creative person is to find that unique voice and express it in your art.<br /><br />I got to record many albums of my music, and to get that music out there, instead of just thinking about it. I had many great adventures with fellow musicians and travelers along the path. I have had a beautiful bunch of teaching relationships with a lot of students, not only individuals but entire communities of learning musicians -- the Valley Youth Fiddlers and the Twisted String in Smithers. I never got to have biological kids. But I did get to pass on my music in important ways to a whole generation of young people.<br /><br />So between finding my voice on my instrument, and being able to share my music directly with so many, I feel like a very lucky guy. There is also the fact that in life, I like to concentrate on the positive aspects of reality. Look at what you do have, and thank the Creator for that, and enjoy it all to the max. This is a stance you take in life. With just a little bit of practice, that becomes an attitude you can easily stick to. Let’s put it this way: if I can think like this in my present position, I would hope that you all can do the same. I would even ask you to do this for me. Take that stance in life for me and from me, and concentrate always on the positive.<br /><br />I have burned brightly in life, and lived life very fully. I feel I have achieved a great deal in life. And as I look back on the life I have lived, I am concentrating on all of the positive aspects, on all of the beauty I have experienced and generated, and getting a lot of satisfaction and pleasure from that. And the fact that my life is shorter than it might have been ceases to trouble me very much.<br /><br />One very amazing thing about my position right now is how I get a clear insight into my own situation at this exact time. In the time left to me, I get to contemplate my life, and to ponder about what I would like to do in the time left to me. I can make a wish list of things I want to do in my last days here. Who do I want to spend time with? Are there things I want to finish up? Things I want to see? My end is near, but I have the feeling that it is also not going to happen super quickly. I still have time to focus and be myself and live as myself for the time left to me.<br /><br />The very best, from the very edge,<br /><br />Oli<br />---<br />A couple of weeks later, a new letter from Oliver: he wanted to perform one more concert. He booked Trinity St. Paul's in Toronto, hired the techs and equipment, and tickets sold out in a flash.<br /><br />It was billed as Oliver Schroer's Last Show on His Tour of This Planet.<br /><br />I would have given anything to be there, but I'd already made plans to take my mom to the Big Island, her first trip, for her 70th birthday. The night of his show, mom and I were hunkered down in Kona in the wildest storm I've seen, a combination of a Midwest tornado-comin' thunderstorm with the crackling of an east coast August electrical storm. Beautiful and violent, it stayed on top of us for hours, stuck against the top of Mauna Kea, lightning and thunder never becoming more distant, never moving on. I remember looking at my watch and calculating the time in Toronto, realizing that Oliver was onstage. Somehow, that calmed me. Finally, at what would have been his encore, the storm simply stopped. No drifting off in the distance, it just stopped as if clouds and rain and electricity dissolved into Madam Pele.<br /><br />When I got home from Hawaii, friends had written about Oliver's show. It was a sauna. It was spellbinding. It was magical. One person wrote "...pushes and pulls and lulls and held breaths. It seemed a lot more tonal than usual though. Less tension-and-release and more smooth, flowing washes of sound. Pure joy all around. I find that Oliver has ghost notes...either they are purely scientific overtones or the result of imagination, notes created in my "mind's ear". Ghost rhythms, too. Rhythms that are there, but almost aren't. It really makes it sound like his music is all around you. But the second to last piece really did it for me - suddenly fiddlers popped up all over the audience (real, not ghosts), each playing the little melody that Oliver had started. It was a huge sound. And then little bursts of singing began, and soon the whole audience started singing too, just intuitively. Wow."<br /><br />Another person wrote "The tunes seemed to last forever, but were over all too soon. At the end of the evening, Oliver closed his final encore with his love march -- first played on the fiddle, then joined with whistling, humming, clapping, harmonizing, singing, all quietly, then more quietly still, the audience making the music last long after Oliver had left the stage. What a wonderful way to give each and every member of the audience their own Oliver song to take home with them. Unforgettable is such an<br />understatement."<br /><br />A few days after the show, Oliver sent this:<br /><br />Well, today is a special day, in a strange kind of way. Today is the day I was admitted into the hospital last year. I remember my feelings of trepidation, my nurse coming in with the first round of chemo, dressed in a full body protection suit with goggles and all, because the stuff was so toxic they couldn't even afford to get a drop on their skin. And this was the stuff they were injecting right into me.<br /><br />I have been so looking forward to the show, it is hard to believe it is over, and I am looking back on it. Well, what a concert it was. I was so happy with the way it went. Once I got to the venue, I remember thinking to myself: 'What did I get myself into here!' I sat on the couch in the green room and stared at the wall for 45 minutes before the show.<br /><br />And then, suddenly it was showtime. It felt wonderful to be on that stage. I could feel a wave of love and beautiful friendship coming my way from the audience. We all felt quite emotional, and then I just dove in and started navigating through the music. I felt very much on my game, musically and performance wise. I will admit that about 2/3rds of the way through the second half, I was ready to tear my clothes off and jump in the pool to cool down. I understand that the upstairs was like a Bikram Yoga studio.<br /><br />I feel like the concert left people in a good place -- there were lots of tears, but there was lots of joy as well, and it was not a bleak affair. There was one thing I forgot to say in the show. It should have gone in the intro to the friendship song. One of the things over the past year that has given me great joy is to see my various circles of friends connecting; I can only hope that that will all go on. That is human connective stuff of the first order.<br /><br />Fiddlingly yours, (and resting up or a few days)<br /><br />Oliver<br />---<br /><br />On Sunday, June 29, 2008, Oliver left the hospital long enough to attend a performance by three of his young fiddle students, his pride and joy. He sat in the front row beaming, giving the thumbs up as they played.<br /><br />That Wednesday night, he wrote his last tune, entitled "Poise."<br /><br />That Thursday morning at 11:30, he was carrying on with the nurse in his usual fashion and said “Well, I guess no excursions today!” and left the planet. Peaceful, very fast, no suffering. And giving us one more joyous laugh.<br />---<br /><br />I’ve been thinking a lot about Oli these days, journeying through my own cancer diagnosis this spring. Oli’s friendship and positive attitude have stayed with me these years and his music and spirit have been part of my fuel as I go through my own chemo treatments.<br /><br />When I read the news of his diagnosis some time back, I pulled for him. My heart broke when he wrote he'd been taken off the transplant list and that his end approached; but that night I had the most beautiful dream. I dreamt Oliver had written his wishes on a piece of yellow notebook paper. The handwriting was flowing, relaxed, spirited, elegant, strong. It was like his bowing and was beautiful to look at. And the words were beautiful too, and at the end of his list he requested that his friends get three little tomato seeds. He wanted his cremated ashes to feed the tomato seeds, and when the plants bore fruit he wanted us to have a late-summer bbq and cook and chop the tomatoes a thousand ways to feed our spirit and to celebrate rebirth.<br /><br />That dream still makes me happy. Those little tomato seeds are the dozens of young fiddle students he nurtured across Canada. I'm grateful for the memories and stories I had with Oliver, and for the thousands of tunes he wrote, but most of all I'm grateful for the joy these young fiddlers will find, and spread, in musicking.<br /><br />I told him at the time, how odd that such devastating news gave me a dream that made me happy. But Oliver was transformative that way, and this is a journey about living, not a journey about not-dying. He and I, and everyone who reads this now, are kin in that.<br />----<br />“SILENCE AT THE HEART OF THINGS,” a documentary about the late Canadian fiddler Oliver Schroer, is available on DVD from Borealis Records, www.borealisrecords.comSusan Martinezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16399629036367566875noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13930903.post-22156592917667056572009-03-08T12:57:00.001-04:002009-03-08T12:59:09.444-04:00Jason IsbellI would be remiss if I didn't note that Dave Marsh conducted two great interviews yesterday for Sirius radio.<br /><br />The first was with Van Morrison.<br /><br />The second was with Jason Isbell, former member of the Drive-By Truckers, current leader of the band, the 400 Unit. Dave was kind enough to let me sit in, and for someone as enraptured by the guy's music as I am, it was a total treat.<br /><br /> He's a big, quiet man, 30 years old, with dark hair slicked back, snaggly teeth, slightly pop eyes, and the big shoulders and neck of a worker. Thick Alabama accent. He's small town rural and smart as a whip. He has this quiet, slow way of talking where he considers your question and then puts complete answers together, confident but not arrogant. He looks like he doesn't much care for being interviewed, but he cares for the music and recognizes this is another way to get it heard.<br /><br /> The thing that Dave hit on and that struck me was the air of respect Isbell has. It's in his songs: his ability to see both sides of an issue like a soldier returning from war or a tough break-up. He listens. And he learns from all sides. And then he writes these big songs that don't lecture or even make points as much as ask questions.<br /><br /> That respect seems to come from where and how he was brought up. Like Drive-by, his perspective tends to be from the bottom-up. He said (or was it Dave?) that they were making not so much Southern rock as rural music. And in his case anyway, rural music refers to everything from Otis Redding to Muscle Shoals (where he recorded both his solo CD's) to Outkast to Jimi Hendrix. It's an outsider's, working person's take on the world.<br /><br /> Partly as a result of that and partly just cause he seems dead honest, he says he doesn't write too many happy or optimistic songs. He said that more often than not he finds himself facing dilemmas and worrying how things are going to turn out. I picture him writing songs the way you might look at a broken piece of equipment: "Damn! Now how am I gonna fix that?"<br /><br /> All of which may make Isbell sound far too serious and depressing. Last night, after the interview, I went to his show in NYC. And it was just this glorious, heart-felt, inspiring blow-out. He's got four other members in his band, including a little long-haired bass player who looks like he's from Star Wars (what were those fuzzy creatures?) and an angular, ratcheting fellow guitarist, both from Jason's part of the South. Drummer's from Northern Alabama, too; keyboard player presently living in Brooklyn.<br /><br /> His first CD was wonderful. But this second one is better: full of big pop hooks and a wide variety of styles all held together by the band's kick-ass approach and his big voice. There's what you might call a Percy Sledge ballad, complete with a tangy horn section; intense rockers that crescendo up and up; a country-western song or three but sung with no fake nostalgia, just dirt farm directness; and throughout (they played from 10:15 at night till 1:15, with a ten minute break) this amazing directness.<br /><br /> I see something similar with Ozomotli live. And Los Lobos. This sense of a band that's doing what it loves and recognizes it's work and is going to get it right both for its own self-worth and because it wants the crowd to get what they paid for. At one point, in the midst of a solo, Jason and the bass-player got into a quick balancing contest: each standing on one leg and seeing who'd be the first to fall over. This as the music teetered on what seemed like impossible heights and finally fell. On one of the great new songs, "Cigarettes and Wine," Isbell sings of the memory of this woman, saying it lingers inside him still: "wrapped up like a twenty dollar bill." Except you have to hear him drawing out the word "wrapped" till it's like winding up a rubber-band airplane, getting ready for release.<br /><br /> We talk a bunch about whether rock&roll is still alive. I stopped myself a couple of times last night to check that these five people playing guitars, drums and keyboards were really making this heroic, this demanding a storm of music. They were. Not a hint of nostalgia or condescension. Respect for what had come before but no sense that they were trying to duplicate it. Rather, the music seemed to say, times are tough. And this rock&roll thing is an honest way to talk about it.<br /><br /> You know that kind of loopy, dazed look someone gets when they're so deep into what they're doing that they're forgetting to breathe or swallow? Every member of Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit had it more than once last night. It was full fucking steam ahead; jump on if you want a ride.<br /><br /> Towards what? Ah. Their closing song, the crowd drenched and hoarse, was a cover: Into the Mystic.D Wolffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09715768702740015061noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13930903.post-26841147025657980752009-02-26T10:00:00.001-05:002009-02-26T12:49:31.691-05:00The Bridge<font style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" size="2"><font style="font-style: italic;">Dave Marsh writes:</font><br /><br /><font style="font-style: italic;">People ask me why I remain devoted to rock/blues/rap/soul music. You can see it in their eyes, even if they don’t ask, that they wonder why an almost 60-year-old man would still be so wrapped up in things that are so flimsy and childish (to them). I have spent most of my career trying to articulate the reasons. This morning I read an email from a friend, who lays it all out with extreme clarity. Granted, this is in some respects a singular story and certainly an example of lousy shrink/great patient. (“Intact” must be jargon. Nobody who is at all informed about this issue could think that anyone who has been abused is “intact” psychologically. But professionals insulate themselves from their own emotions by pretending otherwise.) Abuse isn’t the only reason that I—or my friend—love the music. But it is a huge part of why we regard the music as something that has saved our lives in the truest sense. </font><br /><br /><font style="font-style: italic;">I want to say this again, now, because I think there is a storm coming that will include more witch-hunts against hip-hop and maybe metal, especially with a Presidential administration run by someone associated with the Oprah Winfrey wing of punitive cultural criticism. I will join the fray again, on the side of free speech, and for as long as I am able. I hope people who read it will learn to think in the same terms. For every kid who needs what the email calls the “bridge,” we need to support this culture, no matter how off-track it may become in other ways. Somebody is surviving because of this and giving the worst parents an excuse to take it away (or for that matter, indulge in further abuse because of it) is unacceptable. Period. </font><br /><br />This shrink that deals with the cardiology patients asked me what I do to alleviate my stress. I told him, "Get out on the road. I get away from all this, and just get out on Route 66, Arizona, New Mexico. Just get me out on that road. Everything else is secondary. I don't feel any stress out there." I added that I can only go so often, due to finances and time. But that is the thing that alleviates my stress more than anything else in the world.<br /><br />Then he started asking me a lot of questions about my fucked-up childhood, and he asked me a lot of questions about how I could have survived all that.<br /><br />He kept saying, "There must have been some significant person that cared about you as a child. Statistically, that is the only way abused kids come out of that intact."<br /><br />I kept insisting to him that there was no such person. I never connected with any of my teachers as a kid. My grandmother on my dad's side cared about me, but she died of a heart attack when she was fairly young, when I was like 5 or 6 years old. And that was the end of anything with me and any grandparents.<br /><br />The shrink kept saying, "There had to have been someone." He was looking for some significant bonding person with me who got me through it. I kept telling him there *was* no one.<br /><br />I told him about when the cops came over, and how they did nothing.<br /><br />No one ever did anything.<br /><br />I said, "If I had grown up in the '90's or in this decade, I would have been removed from the home. Back then, no one did anything about this stuff."<br /><br />When he finally accepted that I was a weird statistic, that despite what all the psychology books claim, I did *not* have a significant person in my life who cared about me, he was at a loss. (You are supposed to have at least one significant other that really cared about you for you to not end up as ultra-permanently damaged goods, beyond repair.)<br /><br />I decided to just put it on the line at this point, because I had already told him enough examples of the horrendous abuse I suffered as a kid.<br /><br />He seemed a bit dazed and stunned when I finally said, "Look. I didn't have a significant person. This is how I survived. It was my albums. It was my Rolling Stones albums, my Jimi Hendrix records, my Bob Dylan albums, Marvin Gaye, Zeppelin, Yardbirds, and whatever else I had. I listened to those albums over and over, and because of them, I knew there was some other world out there, other than the hell I was living in. I knew from listening to those albums there were people that existed out there, that did not have the warped values my parents had. And I was going to find those people one day. There was no doubt in my mind. Listening to those albums, I knew there was some better place, and one day I would be a part of it---away from all this. It wasn't like I was hoping, it was something I knew. There was no choice involved. One day, I would be out of that hell, and I would be in some other world, and that would be wherever that music came from. I listened to music constantly. Music was not my escape. It was my bridge."<br /><br />I told him, "It got me out of there, mentally. It individuated me from my parents. That is what got me the fuck out of there, that is what made me not end up like my little brother, who became bonded to the violence, and who could never stand up to my parents, and who could never individuate from them."<br /><br />I said, "Any guidance I ever got as far as coping came from those albums. That music was my significant person." I then quoted the lyrics from "Jumping Jack Flash" :<br /><br /><font style="font-style: italic;">I was raised by a toothless, bearded hag<br />I was schooled with a strap right across my back </font> <font style="font-style: italic;"><br />But it's all right now, in fact, it's a gas! </font> <font style="font-style: italic;"><br />But it's all right<br />I'm Jumpin' Jack Flash,</font><font style="font-style: italic;"> it's a gas!</font><br /><br />I said, "If that is not about survival, I don't know what is."<br /><br />He had this really stunned silence.<br /><br />Then he said he was entirely appalled by what he was hearing from me about my parents, and that he found it to be very disturbing. He then told me that when he ran the monitor on me to measure my stress and how it effects my heart (I forget the name of the equipment or the name of the test), when I was talking about the abuse I endured from my parents, that I did not react very much physiologically, which he found really surprising.<br /><br />I said, "Because it is just a matter of fact. Just like this wall here is white, or that the sky is blue, it is a matter of fact that I was abused to the point where someone should have removed me from that home."<br /><br />He said that my stress level on the heart thing when I talked about my parents not having major variations in it means I am "coping" with what I had been through, and he said it is surprising given how bad the incidents I told him were.<br /><br />He said most people would have had a far greater physiological reaction talking about things like that.<br /><br />He then told me I am "extremely gifted and talented." I don't know where he got that from.<br /><br />To my surprise, he told me I don't even need to come back to see him again. He said, "You have your survival skills as far as dealing with it. You know how to deal with what you have been through."</font>Eric Schumacher-Rasmussenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01191219744840675484noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13930903.post-35294669237582823642009-02-25T00:10:00.006-05:002009-02-25T14:10:27.474-05:00We Insist!<font style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" size="2">Lew Rosenbaum writes:<br /></font><font style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" size="2"><br />This is a note I would have written to Strat a year ago, and copied to my sister Greta; or perhaps the other way around. The point on the triangle that was Greta is not available, except in my imagination or to communicate in some way with the ancestors as some are wont to say. My saying this to you in no way attempts to lessen the value of what I am saying, nor am I simply dwelling on a hole in my life, nor am I only saying how glad I am for the many years I had to do what I had to do and the years I have with you as well. Perhaps it's all of the above and more.<br /><br />It's about a performance that Diana and I saw on the lucky Friday the 13th of February.<br /><br />Last fall, as I sat contemplating the Symphony Center series ticket offerings and ticking off the many things I'd like to see and would never see in the coming year, and thought of the times Diana and I discussed going to concerts, and agreed that THIS YEAR we would, but that because of our hectic schedules we'd wait to the last minute so that we wouldn't be obliged to go out when we were too tired, and then of course when the time came we WERE too tired or forgot or had scheduled something else and so we COULDN't GO -- this year as I contemplated that multifaceted list of offerings, I told Diana it is time we made time for what we wanted to do rather than just let it go by, and the two of us scraped away the concerts we could do without and came down to five during this season: 3 classical programs and one dance program and the program we heard tonight.<br /><br />We Insist! The Freedom Now Suite composed by Max Roach in 1960, a piece I had never heard before. I had no reference point to it except that it sounded interesting and I've heard Max Roach before and so we booked that.<br /><br />First, the performers were superb. Julian Priester on trombone was one of the people who originally recorded the piece. Ron and Clark Bridgewater on Sax and Trumpet were great, Ira Colman on bass had a stunning solo to start one of the five pieces that make up the suite, and the three percussionists talked to each other throughout. Ray Mantilla (75 years old!) on the congas was on the original recording and, in the last section dueled back and forth across the stage with percussionist Nelson Clarke, and holding the whole thing together was drummer Lewis Nash, center back, where Roach would have been playing. He was phenomenal.<br /><br />The most amazing phenomenon of the evening of phenomena was Dee Dee Bridgewater, who I thought wrung every ounce of emotion possible out of her not always verbal vocal performance -- at time shrieking what needed to be shrieked, and starting, in the first section called Driver Man, with a refrain that she hissed at the audience: "All I got in my mind, the driver man and quittin' time."<br /><br />The unit played off each other so well, with Bridgewater opening most segments up and closing each segment with repeat refrain[ but always in between, as the musicians played to each other, melding a kind of dance and appreciation with the others that was emotionally exhausting. The lyrics, written by Oscar Brown Jr., were spare and demanding as the music.<br /><br />The music howls, cajoles, screams in both birth pangs and the slash of the driver's lash, and wails as all good brass sections must. There is also something very sensual/sexual about the way a bass player makes love to his instrument, perhaps because the instrument is so life size that embrace, foreplay and orgasm seem to be happening on stage without any attempt to mask it. And in the long introduction to the one section of the suite Colman did make love to his instrument.<br /><br />The suite ends with a section titled Tears for Johannesberg -- and as Bridgewater brought all the performers out at the end to receive applause, she closed by saying that there are no more tears necessary for Johannesberg, but we have tears in our own back yard that we have to deal with. If we stand together, we can deal with them. We Insist.</font>Eric Schumacher-Rasmussenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01191219744840675484noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13930903.post-68643107057193832002009-02-22T02:02:00.011-05:002009-02-23T18:08:55.586-05:00<span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="color:#cc6600;">Precious</span><br /></span><p><em>Danny Alexander writes:</em><br /><br />One of my favorite Kansas City musicians, one of my favorite musicians period, is a woman named Kristie Stremel. When I first saw her, she was playing guitar with the band Frogpond, which had some notoriety in the late 90s after Art Alexakis produced its album, "Count to Ten."<br /><br />Stremel was the perfect foil for the somewhat reserved lead singer of that band, Heidi Phillips. While Heidi diffidently addressed the mic like Kurt Cobain's lost sister, Stremel would work the crowd, fist pumping, bounding around the stage, and eventually, climbing the rafters. It was a wonderful contrast live, but it never felt like it would last.<br /><br />After Stremel left and formed her own band, Exit 159, I understood why. She'd woodshedded with her two new bandmates all summer and emerged early in the fall with a full set of poignant, catchy and hard-rocking material. I still have the newspaper I was holding in my hand during that first show, its margins full of notes on songs I had never heard before. I knew I'd be writing about them. And I did, early and often, as they toured across the country twice and found their way into regular rotation on local alternative radio playlists.<br /><br />After the first year, the bassist left, and the band took on more of a punk style reflecting the sensibility of its newest member. They had a strong second year together, taking on yet another player, three of them having fronted their own bands before. They played the Viper Room in Los Angeles where, word had it, 26 labels were in the house. Nothing happened. And then the inevitable tensions tore them apart.<br /><br />Stremel went on to record as a solo artist, and her songwriting grew increasingly sophisticated both musically and lyrically, but, unfortunately, without a consistent band to back her up, she never regained the kind of audience she'd had with Exit 159.<br /><br />Friday night, Exit 159 reunited, and the show was fantastic. The band played to an attentive packed house, as hard as it ever did but with a more supple touch. The band members have all gotten better in the 10 years since they broke up.<br /><br />The drummer was always good, but he used to play on the stiff side of Max Weinberg, with perfect posture. The perfect posture's still there, but what's unusual about Rob VanBiber's style is also key to his strength--he's precise as hell, and Friday night he played more dynamically, with a deeper pocket and a ton of surprising fills, all the while hitting hard as ever.<br /><br />The bass player, Jamey Wheeler, was always a strong second vocalist for Stremel, kind of a warm, almost sweetening, complement. His vocals seem even stronger today, more self-assured. He takes a verse in one song, and it's a great moment, but the best thing about the two of them is a certain call and response between their vocals. I'd also forgotten how much his bass style, rooted in jam band fluidity, provided a unique counterpoint to everything else going on and helped define Exit's sound.<br /><br />My wife Lauren had never seen Exit before, except that she had gone with me last weekend to watch them rehearse in the studio. That day, they ended with this new cover of "Simply the Best," the Tina Turner song, that got Lauren beaming.<br /><br />Later, in the car, she said, "They need to play their own stuff the way they played that song." </p><p>I reassured her that, with the sound coming through a soundboard and with a crowd in front of them (rather than the two of us and the drummer's wife), it would all be at that level. I was hoping....betting...<br /><br />And, fortunately, I was right. They came out with every bit the intensity of that cover. Stremel and the crowd were ringing sweat midway through the set, and it only built from there.<br /><br />They played something like 90 minutes ending with covers of "Something So Strong" and "Little Red Corvette," an old rave-up of their own called "Cigarette Kiss" (the traditional set closer) and then "Simply the Best."<br /><br />One of the great things about Stremel with a 3 piece is that she takes lead on guitar. And it's not that she's some great guitarist, but she knows how to make you feel a solo, even if she fucks it up she salvages it (which happened at some point Friday night).<br /><br />That was always a highlight of the "Little Red Corvette" cover in the old days.... In that quiet bridge at the center of the song, she'd bend over and seemingly search for the notes on her lead--and it was always this moving moment, very hard and on the edge of atonality, but somehow perfect.<br /><br />She had several moments like that Friday, but one of the wonders of the Tina Turner song (which has never before been a favorite of mine) was not only how she made it her own but also how she managed to make it a vehicle for one hell of an exciting guitar solo after the bridge. Everything exploded into the final chorus, and it was a perfect finale to the night.<br /><br />Lauren, who never does this, went over to Lawrence to watch her play again Saturday. I'd already committed to reviewing the Pretenders show for our alternative weekly, the Pitch. I have an almost three decade old soft spot for Chrissie, but I wanted to be at Kristie's show again, watching the exact same set all over. Frustrated as I was, that's a good feeling to have.<br /></p>Danny Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10895177352804665940noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13930903.post-18787293080351790002009-02-12T11:15:00.009-05:002009-02-12T12:11:14.890-05:00Lester Bangs on Van Morrison's Astral Weeks<span style="font-style: italic;">Dave Marsh writes:</span><br /><br />I think Lester Bangs' <a href="http://www.rocksbackpages.com/article.html?ArticleID=12402">essay on<span style="font-style: italic;"> Astral Weeks</span></a> (from <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Stranded-Rock-Roll-Desert-Island/dp/B001OMHUZG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1234455730&sr=8-1"><span style="font-style: italic;">Stranded: Rock and Roll for a Desert Island</span></a>, edited by Greil Marcus) is probably as good as Lester ever got, which is more than just considerable. I am not sure to this day whether his vision of humanity was extremely limited or the most expansive one that I know—it is maybe both, kind of alternately—or whether it's just that we arrived at different solutions to the same problem, which is the problem of thinking you're dying, dying of fear and isolation, and then not dying but also not feeling quite as fearful and isolated and starting to betray yourself by growing up, maturing. We traveled different roads but they had points of nearness where we could reach out and touch—or almost touch, Lester might say—and there was never a time when I felt like we were on different sides of the wars fought to preserve individual humanity. (I ain't speaking for what he felt; I don't know, exactly. I know some of it but not all that much for sure.)<br /><br />Anyway, this is the guidelines by which the new <a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.amazon.com/Astral-Weeks-Live-Hollywood-Bowl/dp/B001O0EHXG/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1234455594&sr=8-1">Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl</a><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>should be judged, IMO, especially this passage:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">What this is about is a whole set of verbal tics—although many are bodily as well—which are there for reason enough to go a long way toward defining his style. They're all over </span>Astral Weeks<span style="font-style: italic;">: four rushed repeats of the phrases "you breathe in, you breath out" and "you turn around" in "Beside You'; in "Cyprus Avenue", twelve "way up on"s, "baby" sung out thirteen times in a row sounding like someone running ecstatically downhill toward one's love, and the heartbreaking way he stretches "one by one" in the third verse; most of all in "Madame George", where he sings the word "dry" and then "your eye" twenty times in a twirling melodic arc so beautiful it steals your own breath, and then this occurs: "And the love that loves the love that loves the love that loves the love that loves to love the love that loves to love the love that loves."</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Van Morrison is interested, obsessed with how much musical or verbal information he can compress into a small space, and, almost, conversely, how far he can spread one note, word, sound, or picture. To capture one moment, be it a caress or a twitch. He repeats certain phrases to extremes that from anybody else would seem ridiculous, because he's waiting for a vision to unfold, trying as unobtrusively as possible to nudge it along. Sometimes he gives it to you through silence, by choking off the song in midflight: "It's too late to stop now!"</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">It's the great search, fueled by the belief that through these musical and mental processes illumination is attainable. Or may at least be glimpsed.</span><br /><br />It truly may be that this is pretty much everything I have ever sought from music, and to those who damn transcendence as an object of desire—or maybe i mean, as a prospective achievement—all that I can say is, the answer to the question of who is damned is obvious and universal, and yes, it's the wrong question. The goal of what Lester is writing about here—the goal of what Lester writes here—is to transcend not one's humanity but the conditions of the world that make it so painful; and he understands the fundamental principle, which is that there is no way around the universal state of humanity, there is only a way through it. And if that is not transcendence, then I have no idea what it would be, in (this is ridiculous but important) practical terms.<br /><br />I say this all so defensively because, I guess, sometimes people think that what Lester wrote is dated; sometimes I think it myself. But I think that the best of it is as close to timeless as needs be discovered in our lifetimes.Eric Schumacher-Rasmussenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01191219744840675484noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13930903.post-63992532377994598392009-02-08T11:07:00.001-05:002009-02-08T11:09:38.800-05:00More on Working on a Dream<span style="font-style: italic;">Barbara Hall writes:</span><br /><br />There's so much to listen to in this record. My ears are all jammed up with it. I love the operatic nature of it. As much as anything, I love the long phrasing which allows Bruce the time and space to sing. I just love hearing him sing. Not the modern Bruce staccato singing but the old Bruce chasing down these endless melody lines singing, but with a brand new, or old school, understanding of how to do it. It strikes me as funny and sad and weird that he is one of the best soul singers of our time.<br /><br />The romance of the record, and the phrasing, too, reminds me of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Wild, The Innocent and The E Street Shuffle</span>. Not in a nostalgic way, but in a way where those songs finally figured out what they were really meant to accomplish. <br /><br />There are only a couple of songs where he overloads the lines with lyrics. Mostly, he just creates this space to maneuver. I guess the overall thing, much as the last album, is the harmonics, the sense of space, and the unusual and unexpected forms of filling that all up.<br /><br />But here's the thing. This record isn't like anything we've heard before. You almost can't compare it. It's of a piece, or mise en scene as the filmsters like to say. A friend was asking me what it was like and I said it was mostly like a film score. In the best way. In that you can't really break it down or take anything out of context. Listening to it while I drive makes me a little drunk. I wonder what I'd say if I got pulled over.<br /><br />When I was studying film in school, I fell in love with it (Fellini, Bergman, Bunel, et al) because it was like entering someone's dream. This record is like entering some dream Bruce is having, too. Sonically, lyrically, atmospherically. I suspect it might take years to get it entirely. <br /><br />I guess that's why he's Working On A Dream.Eric Schumacher-Rasmussenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01191219744840675484noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13930903.post-40902833932143405042009-02-06T09:31:00.002-05:002009-02-06T09:33:38.810-05:00In Praise of The Cramps: Lux Interior R.I.P.<span style="font-style: italic;">John Floyd writes, in response to a question about what made The Cramps great:</span><br /><br />Jesus, where do I start? They cut their first and best records in Memphis, and I read about them at the time in the local paper and bought the records the minute I could find them (<span style="font-style: italic;">Gravest Hits</span> was the first I owned; the original singles collected on that record were sold out by the time I knew about them) and when I heard them, they ripped off my head. It was everything I grew up hearing, thanks to parents who loved rockabilly without knowing the music even had a name; my own interest in punk rock and the Memphis band Panther Burns, who were doing things similar to the Cramps' early work, had never met so definitively for me, and it all made sense. So the Cramps, for me, were rock and roll, forget about prefixes. I learned so much from them, through their ultra-obscure covers and the songs and artists they talked about in early interviews -- it was like a history lesson funneled through punk-rock noise, and that was right up my alley at the time, and probably still is. The Cramps helped to make me a rock and roll fanatic, one of those termites who cares about Link Wray outtakes and the Sonics and just how glorious weird rock and roll can be sometimes. They haven't made a record I've cared about since <span style="font-style: italic;">Smell of Female</span>, which must be from '83 at the latest, but what they did to me as a fan is immeasurable. I've loved the Cramps like I've loved the most important music in my life, and even though he farted off the last 30 or so of his, musically speaking, I hate that Lux Interior doesn't have one anymore.Eric Schumacher-Rasmussenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01191219744840675484noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13930903.post-60903819231735887882009-02-06T09:26:00.004-05:002009-02-06T09:49:25.993-05:00Rediscovering the Wonders of Music<span style="font-style: italic;">Danny Alexander writes from Overland Park, KS:</span><br /><br />I stopped off at Target on my way home from work and bought <span style="font-style: italic;">Working on A Dream </span>on the day it came out. I put it in, and "Outlaw Pete" lasted almost exactly the length of my ride home. It was a singular experience in my listening life. I didn't follow the lyric, aside from the refrains, but the music moved me close to tears at that first point where it grows quiet, and then the music swelled again, and I had that feeling I have watching an epic western, that I didn't know where it was going to go, but I was just glad to be along for the ride. I don't remember all the particulars of the sound swelling in my car, but at that point, where I turn off 95th Street onto Connell and wound through a neighborhood to 91st, I felt like I felt as a teenager-- when music told me of limitless possibilities, when I knew the feel of the key to the universe in that old parked car. But this was a different universe, and a different car.<br /><br />From 91st, I took another jog through a neighborhood on a street called Knox until I reach 89th, where I live. The music was drawing to a close, and I'd moved close to tears twice more. What I knew, pulling into my spot, was that I wasn't ready to go on to the next song yet. I thought of that moment in "This Magic Moment," when you talk about exchanging glances, lifting the needle and starting the record again.<br /><br />Fortunately, I didn't have to move on, or I had an excuse not to. I came in the house and showed the CD to my wife Lauren, and we went up to our room and put it on the beatbox. It reminded me how good music is when it's played by the side of your bed, filling up your room with worlds worth dreaming about. We wound up cuddling, and just listening. Lauren was beginning to doze by "The Last Carnival." but she was also surprised, in a good way, that it had flown by so quickly. <span style="font-family: georgia;">Lauren also said she appreciated Bruce writing "Queen of the</span> <span style="font-family: georgia;">Supermarket" for her, longtime checkout girl that she is.</span><br /><br />I haven't had this kind of reaction to a record in so long that I think I'd begun to think music couldn't do that for me anymore. It figures Bruce could prove that wrong. But even though I had a sense I was going to like this record more than anything since <span style="font-style: italic;">The Rising</span>, I didn't expect this, this feeling of Christmas morning coupled with a starry night on section roads.<br /><br />I suspect that's the happiness that critics keep noting. (I haven't read the reviews so much as comments about them, although I did read that lame <span style="font-style: italic;">Spin</span> thing.) There's a joy here, but it's nothing so simple as a man being content. It makes me think of Sonny finding that brand new piano in his hands in James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues." The joy I hear is a man (and a whole crew I'd guess) who's rediscovering the wonders of music. I feel certain he had to go there to take me there so completely, so quickly. As I've said many times, I'm a slow listener. It's very rare I'm affected in any way approaching this so quickly. I'm a happy man tonight, and that's not a simple thing at all; just precious.Eric Schumacher-Rasmussenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01191219744840675484noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13930903.post-58069151581473558592009-02-02T15:37:00.003-05:002009-02-02T15:46:38.936-05:00Springsteen at the Super Bowl<span style="font-style: italic;">Stewart Francke writes:</span><br /><br />All the sanctimonious hype around Bruce Springsteen playing the Super Bowl rubbed me the wrong way. Why is anyone shocked or surprised by Bruce playing the Super Bowl? What is there to "come to terms" with? Name any major successful act and he's made exactly the same mercenary concessions to sales and fame and money that any other act has--maybe even moreso than others. The only thing that's different is that they don't make claims otherwise. If you listened to him at the press conference, he doesn't either, yet his fans seem to make them for him and get all hung up on the past. <br /><br />He plays stadiums and has for 20 years; he pushes singles and records with more media concentration than anyone; he releases a <span style="font-style: italic;">Greatest Hits</span> to the highest bidding retailer; he charges an arm and a leg to see him; he lets his music be cut up with football sounds--- wherein all this is there a "shock" he's playing the Super Bowl? And his 12 minute mini-set, in the end, was fabulous.<br /><br />I guess it's because the biggest difference--and this is a big one--is that the music's a ton better, and a ton more meaningful and enduring than with other acts. His music has defined and framed our lives. But is it "selling out?" That's absurd. I have no problem paying an arm and a leg to see him; it's worth it, one of the few things in American life where that's so. But I don't get why the world keeps expecting him to behave like some fringe artiste, making decisions based on principles that would keep him out of the limelight. Everything he does is admittedly about the limelight. And it really should be no other way--the music is to be shared. And it's beautiful music. I'd do it exactly the same way, with as much honesty and class as he's displayed recently--he's doin all this cuz he loves it and needs it and wants the world to dig the music. No harm, no foul. As Greil Marcus famously wrote, and I paraphrase, the game of pop is not worth playing on a limited basis. <br /><br />All the erroneous rhetoric in Bob Lefsetz's bitter pollyanna trip--two columns worth of kvetching over Bruce "selling out," bemoaning rock's lost innocence. Hell, I'm a long time fan and I'm happy Bruce is so exposed currently--I get to see more of him and hear more of his music. He's pimpin a killer new record and a great body of work...what's the problem? Great things are hard to find in this world.<br /><br />I have to say I was turned off with the first couple listens of <span style="font-style: italic;">Working On A Dream</span>. Now I've lived with it in my car for some long drives and many listens, and in a lot of ways it's the Bruce album I've been waiting for. I bitched about him doing the dry-as-dust cowboy songs when he was capable of such florid, ornate and moving music...and now he's done it. I really like a lot of the same things as a songwriter and record-maker: The fluid string arrangements (with real strings), the simple groove, the arcing, long melody lines, the arpeggiated guitars often doubled, the piano as response to the vocal, played on the upbeat; the harmonic innovation (this is what's really blowin my mind with this new record) and the lyrics about contentment--which is to say you gotta know the other side of contentment before you can write about it. You gotta know suffering to sing wisely of contentment.<br /><br />I made my homage to the Beach Boys with <span style="font-style: italic;">Sunflower Soul Serenade</span>, and it's hip to hear Bruce mining those same sounds in intros and bridges--the bass lines built on thirds (straight outta the Carole Kay/Brian Wilson cookbook) the spry quarter note piano stabs, doubled by harpsichord and organ, the sleigh bells and glock (nothing new to Bruce of course) and of course the lovely vocal arrangements.<br /><br />"This Life" and "Kingdom of Days" are songs I wish I'd written and, in a weird way, songs I feel I've tried to write--"All The Love In a Day" and "Famous Times."<br /><br />I wrote to my friend Danny Alexander that at first the songs seemed impersonal and benign. But I was wrongheaded with my first couple listens--It's maybe his most personal record since <span style="font-style: italic;">Tunnel Of Love</span>, and the best lyrical commentary on a happy marriage ever in rock. Maybe it's the flipside to <span style="font-style: italic;">Blood On The Tracks</span> or <span style="font-style: italic;">Shoot Out The Lights</span>, those sad song cycles of marriages falling apart in bitterness and desperation.<br /><br />But it's the melodic and harmonic construction, along with the lead vocal timbre, that makes me say Home Run. From the relative "ease" of "Surprise Surprise"--a major key melody built around flatted fifths that is as fine as any Bacharach or McCartney melody--to the descending flow of "Kingdom of Days," these are melodies that not only resolve--they anticipate the melody line to come. Brilliant gifts that he lets shine through by getting out of the way in the writing process.<br /><br />It's almost not fair--just when you think of Bruce as a non-melodic "talking" songwriter, he pulls all these languid, gorgeous songs out. I could go on of course, about all the songs, but I really need to listen more. I don't really give a fuck if he plays in a Wal-Mart parking lot if he keeps making records this vital, this beautiful. I've always aspired to make "beautiful" music, because to my ears it works and there's a shortage of it in rock'n'roll. I hope he puts another another out in the fall. Keep 'em comin'.<br /><br />I do have to say I don't get "Outlaw Pete," if there is anything to "get." I know the image of a baby in a diaper robbing someone is funny, but I'm not sure it's supposed to be funny. I can't imagine writing a song like "Outlaw Pete" in a zillion years, but if I did I woulda made the baby have a dirty diaper on top of it all. The music is epic--a lost cross between Kris Kristofferson and Morricone. <br /><br />I initially thought this record would comment on our troubled times. Is it me or is this the longest, coldest, snowiest winter in 30 years? With the constant drone of job cuts, lawsuits, bailouts, plant closings, foreclosures and city corruption here in Detroit, this is a Turgenev Russian winter. Stark, lonely, frightening on one hand; on the other I see families and friends pulling together and at least trying to weather this. They talk about it being so bad in '82, but this is far worse to me. Dow cut 15% of its white collar jobs last week. We're all trying to find gigs but the climate is one of fear and abjuration. Everyone's just hangin on, and that includes me and my family, my band, many of my friends.<br /><br />At first, truth be told, I was miffed with Bruce putting out such a record in these times, seemingly without comment on how fucked up we are. Then I got it--this is the kind of record we need. We don't need more headlines and portrayals of lives betrayed in meager economic times; they're everywhere around us. This record is a reminder about life's bittersweet longing--a personal statement that is inclusive in its vision and breathtaking in its scope. It's such a deeply felt, (and I hate this term but it really really applies) life-affirming circle of songs. Shaped like a life-saver for a reason. As passionate about life and living in its totality as those great lines in "Badlands."<br /><br />Remarkable, really, when you think about how his motivation could so easily wane. More than any mythical thing surrounding him, or deals with stores, or support of labor, or the legendary 4 hour shows, or the legions of fans...the beauty and clarity and discipline and work ethic in these late-in-life records prove beyond any doubt how he's in it for the music, and only for the music.<br /><br />I'd like to think if I had all the money in the world and access to private jets etc that I'd still make a record a year and tour all year. But a part of me thinks I might drink at a small cafe in Majorca for 6 months. Nah...I only care about music and family and town too. It's just as hard to maintain discipline when you're broke. In the end, I'm happy Bruce wanted to play the Super Bowl. It was an iconic meeting of American institutions. For 12 minutes I forgot it was winter in Detroit.Eric Schumacher-Rasmussenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01191219744840675484noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13930903.post-10292490178071854412008-11-04T23:41:00.001-05:002008-11-04T23:43:56.264-05:00Voting<i>Susan Martinez writes</i><br /><br />We voted early yesterday, Sunday. The line wrapped around the county courthouse -- it had been that way all week and the previous weekend too. Weekend polling was extended 2 hours, and til the last minute people filled the line.<br /><br />There were first-time voters of all ages and backgrounds, many-time voters with crutches and wheelchairs, but mostly, families with babies and little kids waving flags. People with absentee ballots drove to the courthouse to physically put their ballot in the box rather than mail them. "This is historic, for a thousand reasons," we all said.<br /><br />I chatted with the fellow behind me for a while, but he tired of the line and was about to give up and try again on Tuesday. I talked him out of leaving and, in the end, he stayed and cast his ballot too. A woman held a sign with her wedding photo, asking us to vote No on Prop. 8 so her marriage wouldn't be declared invalid. Another woman was busy recruiting people to call undecided voters in swing states to vote for Obama; she did brisk business.<br /><br />My mom has campaigned in Pennsylvania, my sister has campaigned in North Carolina, and both will be working the polls tomorrow, probably longer hours than they anticipate. My friend Don is traveling with the campaign covering it for radio. My friend Bill Bragin in New York had an online fundraiser ($41 campaign donation in honor of his 41st birthday, bring your receipt to his favorite bar and he'd buy your drink for his birthday, mitzvah style fine whether $4.10 or $82 or $4200...the email went viral and he raised many tens of thousands of dollars for the campaign). I've given money to this campaign, multiple times (every time I got an email saying "We're picking ten people to be in the front row at Grant Park on election night", I thought "I want to be there" and sent another $100). The calls, the emails, friends traveling to Nevada and Colorado to canvass door to door...I've never been so involved in a movement so large, but I felt it most profoundly standing in that line to vote on Sunday. <br /><br />As I connected the arrow next to Barack Obama's name, I was overcome with emotion. I stared at the arrow to burn it in my memory. I sealed my envelope, signed it, and I paused. I don't know how many times I've heard Obama tell his story, but like mine it could only happen in this country. This day my vote was for my black great-great-grandmother working the underground railroad. This vote was for my Navajo grandmother who I look like and my white grandmother who I am like. This vote was for my Martinez grandfather who mined silver, and my immigrant white grandfather who mined atoms with the Manhattan Project. This vote was for my father, training in community organizing along side Cesar Chavez for farmworkers, and creating the first bilingual classroom in the state so that none of his students would be second-class citizens in their own school. This vote was for my parents, who couldn't get married because of miscegenation laws still being enforced. This vote was for the lunch counter sit-in my family staged when we couldn't get served at a Kansas HoJo unless we signed in as Martin. This vote was for the real working Joes chronicled by Studs, not the Joe the Plumber masquerade of Joe the McCarthy. This vote was for the 200,000 families I'll help at the hospital this year and the 900 volunteers I'll recruit to help me. This vote was for Saleh.<br /><br />I thought of all these people and all the times they did not have a voice, and I heard Obama's words "there is not a red America or a blue America" and I put the ballot in.Matt Orelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16216172951304608707noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13930903.post-74264283503483584812008-10-18T12:34:00.003-04:002008-10-18T13:25:13.827-04:00<span style="font-size:130%;color:#cc6600;">Fountain of Light<br /></span><br />I've been hanging out with members of the Autism Self-Advocacy Network for the past 48 hours, so I want to say I'm perseverating over Jackson Browne. One of their great lines: "Where you are persistent, we perseverate...."<br /><br />Anyway, I missed the Fred Martin & Levite Camp CD when it came around, and maybe that's why this new record is such a revelation to me. But my wife, Lauren, and I went to Browne’s band show in KC last night, and I feel what I've been hearing in this record was born out live. Lauren said, in fact, that she could see what I meant live (the jury's out from her on whether I'm crazy in my love of the record). But she did love the show.<br /><br />The key thing really is the band, particularly its new members, Chavonne Morris and Alethea Mills. They play much more than the role of back up singers. They take verses, including the closing lines of "Culver Moon," significant pieces of songs recast by Fred Martin like "About My Imagination," the "sister's" response on "I Am A Patriot," and that brand new verse about 9/11 that Fred Martin's band wrote for "Lives In the Balance."<br /><br />Browne firmly anchors that stage, but it's hard to say he's the star of the show. He's not even star as director because the band feels like everyone in it is vibing off one another as a band. "I Am A Patriot" was one song that was more or less redefined for me by that kind of interplay, which segued into a version of "It's Your Thing," focused on the elections. "Drums of War" is particularly explosive live, with that great simple thing Jeff Young is doing over there on the keyboards (what, two notes?) adding just the dissonance to turn all the questions as they get asked.<br /><br />They played most of the new album, which surprised the hell out of me, to an enthusiastic seemingly-packed house in Kansas City, Missouri. And after the absolutely gorgeous "Far from the Arms of Hunger," which became a powerful visual prayer with all of the musicians bathed in these moving rays of golden light that came and went throughout the evening, it was amazing to me to hear "The Pretender" and "Running on Empty" reborn as songs about the contradictions at the heart of rock and roll, conceding the glass half empty, rejoicing in the glass half full.<br /><br />But the most powerful sounds and images of the night, again, I will associate with Morris and Mills. You couldn't take your eyes off of them for long, and that wasn't a bad thing; that seemed like the balance the show was striving for, the emphasis on listening more than anything, the sense that this was about musicians doing what they do, not an aging rock star.<br /><br />And the central image of it all was, for me, Chavonne Morris holding those hands up in those rays of light at crucial moments throughout the night, moments of testifying and moments physically expressing some rapture in the music, and she would do this thing where her arms would spread wide, like she could gather all those rays of light between them, and then she would bring her hands together in a clap of joy or rage or frustration, and the shadows made a sort of visual thunderclap that punctuated some climax in the music. It wasn't just one move she did, but it is that image I have to hold onto to try to suggest the kinds of things she and Alethea did time and time again. Those moments were key pieces of music as powerful as any I've experienced. The whole show was a reminder of what music is at its best--healing, soothing and bracing and invigorating all at once.<br /><br />Jackson Browne apparently just turned 60 (he responded to the crowd's "Happy Birthdays" by acknowledging his age, with a proud smile--"I wasn't sure I'd make it"). I'd be proud too if I were him still making space for this kind of music. Running into the sun indeed.Danny Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10895177352804665940noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13930903.post-14849145495187961102008-10-13T05:49:00.001-04:002008-10-13T05:53:55.167-04:00Beautiful DayLast Friday, Barack Obama spoke at a rally in downtown Columbus, on the waterfront, at Genoa Park which is between the Center of Science and Industry and the banks of the Scioto River. I decided to go. The gates opened at 11; I made it downtown around 11:30, and imediately saw that I would have difficulty finding a place to park. Eventually I parked about a mile away and walked, part of the throng that seemd to be arriving from all directions and converging on the park. It took a good 35-40 minutes to get past the security gates and enter the park, which was crowded. As I got to the park’s entrance, U2's "Beautiful Day" – one of my favorite U2 songs -- was playing over the loudspeakers, and it was oh so appropriate, because in every respect it was a beautiful day. Sunny, not a cloud in the gorgeous blue sky, and all around me a diverse sea of humanity, a big smile on every face.<br /><br />It was easily the most diverse crowd I have ever been a part of. Old and young, black and white, and asian and latino, gay and straight, poor, working class, middle class, upper middle class, school kids of all ages, union members, office workers from downtown. Obama volunteers passed out free water bottles to the crowd – standing in the sun for so long was beginning to bake people. At some point, I left the paved area to go stand in the grass under a tree. <br /><br />There I saw what appeared (based on clothing) to be a poor black mother with a beautiful little boy in a stroller who took refuge in the shade offered by the tree. A few moments later, a fashionably dressed (upper middle-class?) white woman, pushing a stroller with a beautiful little girl, also parked under the tree. As the music played over the loudspeakers, the little boy and the little girl started playing together, and then the two mothers started dancing to each other, and it was such a beautiful sight. I saw old white people, older than McCain, applauding this black man running for president, in the midst of a bunch of young black men, dressed "gangsta" style, who moments before had been wildly cheering the white governor. All around me their were happy, joyous faces.<br /><br />Obama gave a good speech, but I don't really remember what he said, I was too busy taking in the sight. The elderly black couple next to me made eye contact with me several times, and we just grinned at each other. A really old white guy who was there with a sweet little blond-haired 3 year old girl at one point looked at me and said, "there's no way McCain is beating *this* guy!" and laughed. Earlier in the line, as we snaked our way up to the security check point, a 9- or 10-year old black girl with her mother was visibly excited to see Obama, she kept going on and on about how excited she was and how there was no way she was gonna miss this rally. I saw white "trailer park"/typical Ohio redneck folk who brought their whole brood to the rally, and thought, as I saw them enthusiastically cheering Obama as he spoke, that this is truly a miracle.<br /><br />I know in my head that Obama's election is not likely to change lots of things, and certainly not the fundamentals of this system, but in my heart it felt like his candidacy has already changed much.<br /><br />After the rally, I, with several thousand others, marched across the street to Veterans Memorial, the early voting polling place for Franklin County, and cast my ballot for Obama. Intellectually I may have had some doubts and reservations, but in my heart it felt perfectly right. Afterwards, I walked around downtown for awhile before making my way to the parking garage where I’d left my car. I am not used to walking downtown and having black faces (or even white ones) smiling at me -- usually, folks downtown walk with their face to the ground, or staring ahead absent-mindedly. But not last Friday. Everyone walked with their heads held high, and everyone was looking at and smiling at everyone else. What a beautiful day it was!<br /><br />ChrisChris T Papaleonardoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05994825840636109878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13930903.post-15438812241583575812008-10-12T16:37:00.011-04:002008-10-12T17:05:37.544-04:00Getting Light From Darkness<em>Ron Brown writes:</em><br /><br />For some reason that I don't fully understand, I still have about a hundred or so aging music newspapers in slowly eroding cardboard boxes that I've now been hauling around with me for the past 30 years. I don't know and can't explain how they've survived. They've surely been somewhat mistreated. Other than a cardboard box, I can't say that I've protected them much, so they've seen extremes. Despite my lax attention to preservation, they managed to withstand lengthy stays in an open garage during brutally cold South Dakota winters, suffocating heat in a Mississippi storage shed during summer, assorted damp basements and dingy closets in tiny apartments. Everywhere I've been, they've been. Because I inexplicably refuse to throw them out.<br /><br />I have a few Melody Makers, some now obscure publications like one called Gig, but the bulk of the collection of course are old Rolling Stones. That was essential reading, when I could afford to buy one at the newsstand. At some point in time, I don't recall when, I did think of putting those in protective plastic sleeves. I don't know why. It's not as if they're particularly valuable. If you want, you can get any single one of 'em on eBay these days for about 5 bucks on average. Based upon who's on the cover, I might be able to sell five or six in about six months time. But even if I sold a hundred of them, that works out to a profit of about 16 cents per paper, per year. So, obviously, money's not a reason that keeps me hanging on.<br /><br />And it's not as if I really read them on any regular basis. I've found that I never take them out of the cardboard box except when I move. Recently we moved from an apartment to a house in Ridgeland, just north of Jackson, Mississippi. They've been sitting in the garage for three months.<br /><br />I spent this past weekend moving boxes around, deciding once again what to keep and what to discard. The plastic encased Rolling Stones, they went into the house. But last night I discovered another old box in the garage and at the bottom of that raggedy box were some old Chicago music publications, including a free monthly newspaper called the Illinois Entertainer. Not much on content, it was mostly filled with ads for live music shows at Haymaker's and Mother's, The Wise Fool's Pub and Huey's.<br /><br />But when I opened one of the papers from September 1978, there staring back at me was this beautiful full page ad:<br /><br /><br /><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNIPwiEeX8tGBGdOWq3A-axAF0H-OHK_LdwCpV6W_KSUKckz5ZafwrWmh7kkCHebrawXUPNatSvDsVD2lo3Jhxprs60QKcjane6m5yF5pgbY8LITLokrMTZljaI-KE4LHG4w7p0g/s1600-h/springsteen%2520uptown.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5256372482491941298" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNIPwiEeX8tGBGdOWq3A-axAF0H-OHK_LdwCpV6W_KSUKckz5ZafwrWmh7kkCHebrawXUPNatSvDsVD2lo3Jhxprs60QKcjane6m5yF5pgbY8LITLokrMTZljaI-KE4LHG4w7p0g/s320/springsteen%2520uptown.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />What makes this page extremely relevant to me is that it's an advance ad for one of the greatest rock and roll shows of my life: <em>"APPEARING AT UPTOWN THEATRE SEPT. 6" </em>I'd seen Bruce twice before, once in Chicago at the Auditorium in '77 during the chicken scratch tour, and again in Wisconsin earlier in this tour. But this was a show that still lives with me. I was 19 years old working in the packaging department at Bodine Electric, the same factory where my mom worked in the winding department. I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, but I knew damn well that I didn't want to do that, if I had any choice in the matter. I had never felt more alive than those first few Springsteen shows. I guess I didn't know it then, but what I saw in those shows was a glimpse of my future. I didn't want to become a musician. I can't keep steady time on a three-chord country song. It's not that I dreamt of becoming a song writer or performer. Seeing Springsteen sing Adam Raised a Cain made me realize that I wanted take risks. That I needed to take risks.<br /><br />It literally changed my life.<br /><br />How many times over the past 30 years had I opened this paper and seen this very same ad before? I don't know, maybe six, seven or eight times. Maybe not even once. But I know that last night it finally hit me right between the eyes.<br /><br />What's it worth to me now? You can probably guess. And there isn't a single dollar sign involved. </p><p>It won't be another ten, twenty or thirty years before I see this ad again. I'm framing the sucker. And you know what I'll see? <em>"APPEARING AT UPTOWN THEATRE SEPT. 6: THE BIG BANG."<br /></em><br />It only took me 30 years to realize it. That, and a couple of old cardboard boxes that I probably should have thrown away years ago, but for some reason, just couldn't.</p>Karen Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08189943814810829128noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13930903.post-51875744742982280032008-07-09T23:46:00.005-04:002008-07-10T22:53:28.342-04:00Why Does Barack Obama Hate My Family?<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Kevin Alexander Gray writes:</span><br /><br />Addressing a congregation at the Apostolic Church of God, one of Chicago's largest black churches, on Father's Day, Barack Obama said:<br /><br />"Too many fathers are M.I.A., too many fathers are AWOL, missing from too many lives and too many homes. They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men."<br /><br />This was his "Sister Souljah" moment. Just as Bill Clinton during his 1992 campaign tried to reassure whites that he wasn't too cozy with blacks by denouncing a rapper, Obama was appealing to whites by condemning his own.<br /><br />Even so, I wasn’t surprised to hear him referred to black men as “boys.” <div><br />Obama has often taken to “playin’ blacks.” Playin’ in blackspeak means to fool or use a person or persons. (George Bush’s selling of a war on the Iraqi people to America is an example that readily comes to mind or - “Bush played us cheap" or “he played us for fools.” )<br /><br />Early in the campaign year, Obama used one of the oldest racial stereotypes in a speech to black South Carolina state legislators: "In Chicago, sometimes when I talk to the black chambers of commerce, I say, 'You know what would be a good economic development plan for our community would be if we make sure folks weren't throwing their garbage out of their cars'.” Translation; black people are dirty and lazy.<br /><br />One would think getting money is a better plan.<br /><br />Then, the day before the Texas primary, he let loose again, in a predominantly black venue: "Y'all have Popeyes out in Beaumont? I know some of y'all, you got that cold Popeyes out for breakfast. I know. That's why y'all laughing. ... You can't do that. Children have to have proper nutrition. That affects also how they study, how they learn in school." Translation; black people are fat, stupid and lazy.<br /><br />How would people respond if John McCain (or any person of a different race, nationality or ethnicity) threw out stereotypes like these? What would we say if a white person had stood in the pulpit of a black church, or anywhere else for that matter, and referred to black men as “boys,” in any context?<br /><br />But since it’s Obama, sounding like Bill Clinton before his fall from black grace, or Bill Cosby speaking out of his own personal pain, the change candidate’s remarks were met with hosannas mostly by a vapid, racist, white-dominated corporate media, the black people who say what their white bosses want to hear, and blacks and whites alike who shout amen even when Obama’s saying something plainly contradicted by their own life experiences.<br /><br />It was no big surprise that after the speech those critical of Obama were dismissed “as out touch” with the new “post-racial” illusion. Bob Herbert of T<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">he New York Times</span> appearing on MSNBC’s <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Hardball</span> went so far as to say that anyone who disagreed with Obama’s Father’s Day admonition to black men was living in a racial “fog” of the past. Newspapers across the county affirmed the smear with headlines like “Obama tells black men to shape up” or “Obama speaks ‘inconvenient truth’ to black men” or “Obama calls black men irresponsible” or “He's saying things people don’t want to hear” - with the inference that truth was flowing from his tongue.<br /><br />I saw no headline lead with the word "some" black men.<br /><br />Playin’ folk on any day is bad enough. But, as a father, grandfather and a black person, I see playin’ black men on Father's Day as even more repulsive. The day is for honoring fathers. We don’t honor the vets on Veteran’s Day by pointing out those who choose not to fight, or the cowards, or even the enemy.<br /><br />The Obamalife narrative highlights that his dad abandoned him as a kid. So, maybe it’s his abandonment issues that he’s laying on the rest of us. That would explain why he kicked his father “under the bus” implying he had acted like a “boy” when he and his wife divorced each other. Was she acting like a “girl” at the time? It is as simple as one parent being good or a victim and the other a bad victimizer? And, what of the fact that both his mother and father remarried? Is it his wish that his mom and biological dad had remained unhappily married? Does he wish his half-sister had never been born? Is he against divorce? How does he feel about forced or even loveless marriages? Maybe he believes there should be a required economic declaration before a woman gives birth and that two signatures on paper are required before conception?<br /><br />No doubt, there’s a difference between being a sperm donor and being a nurturing, involved parent. But you don’t have to share a living space with a child to have an influence on him or her. And you can share a living space and be a lousy father or mother. That’s life. I was very young when I first heard the phrase “staying together for the good of the kids.” As I grew I learned that oftentimes living arrangements between ex-lovers have to change for the good of the kids.<br /><br />I’m not claiming to know the story behind the picture of Obama and his father at the airport, but I suspect that joint custody between Hawaii, Indonesia, Massachusetts, Kansas, New York, Illinois and Africa would have been tough.<br /><br />Writing about Obama’s speech gave me a headache. I found myself getting testy just thinking it through and what it means to me and those around me. A lot of people have approached me to talk about Obama’s speech. People walk up to me at the gas checkout line and strike up a conversation about Obama. Just the other day, a black woman behind me in line pipes up and says, “Things sho’ gonna be better when Obama gets elected.” She was not pleased with my response to her uninvited optimism. But I don’t think what she said was or is helpful in real terms.<br /><br />I was speaking to a single, black woman lawyer about my unease with the speech and she immediately went off on black men in general. Now, my lawyer friend is a smart, progressive person. She’s a former New York State prosecutor but I’ve never consciously deducted points from her humanity for her past employment choice. But in our conversation she threw out all the standard lines, “black men aren’t taking care of their kids,” and “they are sorry.” I countered by saying most social scientists believe that an adolescent girl is more mature than an adolescent boy, so, who do we pin being the most irresponsible on? I asked her: If we believe that it is a woman’s right to chose whether or not to be a mother, then why should irresponsible black fathers be the sole point of Obama’s attack? And why should any aspect of black male-female relations be grist for the campaign mill?<br /><br />What Obama’s "bash the black man" game leads to is an environment where black people – separate and not equal – is the issue.<br /><br />Moreover, it passes on one of the lowest of all the smears and stereotypes: the lie that black men have no morals. It reinforces the white supremacists’ notion of blacks as irresponsible, overly sexual beasts; a notion that far too many black folk as well as white unwittingly buy into.<br /><br />I happened to have what turned out to be a very short breakfast meeting with a white female friend who was also a former Hillary Clinton supporter. She’s now onboard with Obama. As we spoke, after not seeing each other for more than a month or so, the topic quickly went to Obama with me telling her I didn’t plan to vote for him, his speech being just one of the reasons. She responded by threatening to never speak to me again if I supported Ralph Nader or Cynthia McKinney. I don’t know if she was serious or not.<br /><br />On the subject of the Father’s Day speech she followed up by asking in a somewhat careful way, “Aren’t black women more responsible than black men? That’s what I’ve always heard.”<br /><br />She’s been married 3 times and has kids by her first husband.<br /><br />But I didn’t mention that. Instead, what I think might have ended our breakfast prematurely was my black man race card response to the "irresponsibility" question. It’s the answer I give to anyone – black or white - who raises the question: A black man would have to be full of self or group hate to believe that black men are more irresponsible then white men or men of other races or ethnic backgrounds. George Bush, Dick Cheney, and a host of other white guys who lied America into the Iraqi war, which has resulted in countless deaths, prove the point. And that’s just the most recent example of white, male irresponsibility. The history of the United States is drenched in blood due to the decisions of immoral, irresponsible white men.<br /><br />A couple of weeks after the Father’s Day speech while waiting for a plane at Chicago’s O’Hare airport, I found myself in a conversation with a white, female airport worker. The woman, also a mother of mixed-race children, worked out on the pad, most likely unloading baggage and other such laborious tasks. She was sitting down resting between flights in the employee section, just a couple of seats away from me. She overheard me talking to a friend about the Lorraine Motel in Memphis and the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s death. This prompted her to tell me about her taking her two kids on a trip to the historic site. I felt her pride as she told her story of her trip. She remembered how she welled up with tears looking up at the balcony, and her kids asked why she was crying. She recalled how her kids responded when they got on the old ‘50s city bus and the recording yelled out, “Niggers move to the back of the bus!” She said it was then her kids understood why she had cried earlier. It presented her the opportunity to tell them how far things have come and what it took to get here. It was one of those moments when a parent feels like they’re teaching their kids something important.<br /><br />At some point we started talking about Obama’s black man speech. She supports Obama. She told me of the pride her mixed-race kids felt in Obama’s success, him being mixed race like them. But at the end of our conversation she too concluded that Obama’s speech was aimed at white people.<br /><br />When I first heard Obama’s Father’s Day speech, my immediate thoughts were of Camille, my recently married 30-year-old daughter. Around the time she turned 25, she informed me and her mother that she planned to have a baby. I simply told her it was her choice since she had to bear the primary burden of raising a child. Or, as the song goes, “if you dance to the music, ya gotta pay to the piper...”<br /><br />When my daughter came to us, as parents, what we consciously didn’t do was lay a single-parent stigma on her, since nobody really raises a child alone. At least where I come from. So, we got a granddaughter to help raise and nurture along with our two other grandkids by my son and his wife who, coincidently, was a teenage mother before she and my son began dating in high school.<br /><br />One of the jobs of a parent or grandparent is to prevent a child in their care from being saddled with guilt, self-hate or any other baggage society would strap on their backs – regardless of the circumstance of their birth, which a child has no say in. I see our job as rejecting the stigma, which paints a child as “a mistake.” Or, in political terms, it’s as simple as reinforcing Jesse Jackson’s “I am somebody” in a kid.<br /><br />You don’t need to be Alvin Poussaint to know that a child – any child, regardless of color or economic status- who doesn’t value their life or feel their worth as a human or feels unloved grows up to be an adult who doesn’t value life – theirs or anyone else’s.<br /><br />When Camille and her child’s father were going through their breakup, I had one of those heartfelt talks with the both of them. She and the young man had dated since middle school. And, although they had a child together, they were at a fork in the road with one another. It was one of those moments when young people learn adult things, such as the fact that a child does not always make a relationship better nor can it keep an unhealthy or loveless relationship together. And, when a couple splits, in the heat of it all, it’s important not to do or say something stupid that would scar not only their individual lives, but their child’s future as well. We told the young man that he was the father of our grandchild and nothing could alter that fact. We assured him that we didn’t expect anything less than him having a full relationship with his child. He has done just that over the years. But we didn’t call him an irresponsible boy. That seemed not only counter-productive but holier than thou. Of course, we weren’t running for president; we were just trying to give a kid a chance.<br /><br />Camille married 5 years after NyAshia’s birth, but it wasn’t to her child’s biological dad. It was to a fellow who has three children of his own. He also shares joint parental custody with his ex-lovers. In the three or four years of his courtship of my daughter, his kids called my wife and I grandmama and granddaddy. While a marriage license and church service made it official, it didn’t take all that for us to be family. Everyone in this blended situation – the biological father of my granddaughter, the biological mother of our blended grandkids, and the rest of us – have always shared parental responsibilities.<br /><br />Now, I’m not trying to universalize my family’s experience. But I sure wouldn’t lay Obama’s take on responsibility on the people around me. Nor would I suggest that they adopt his worldview of what a family is or should be. Because by his two-biological, heterosexual parents residing in same household definition of a family, every other type of family setup is inherently deficient in every sense of the word: economic, social, moral.<br /><br />In the days after Obama’s speech, Ishmael Reed, Dr. Ron Walters and others rebutted the candidate’s targeting of black men with a Boston College social psychologisit's study which revealed – surprisingly to some – that black fathers not living in the same domicile as their children are more likely to have a relationship with their kids than white fathers in similar circumstances. Walters, an Obama supporter, warned his candidate, “Black people are not voting for a moralist-in-chief.”<br /><br />So, in light of the Brown study should we conclude that white men are more irresponsible than black men when it comes to spending time with their kids? Maybe Obama should find a white church and offer white men advice on Father’s Day? Can we expect to hear him call them “boys?”<br /><br />Or maybe he should take a trip to the hollows of Appalachia and tell the “trailer park crowd” that if they would just “pick up the garbage” from around their trailers and “stop engaging in incest” (or whatever other stereotype that comes to mind) they would not have it so bad.<br /><br />And shouldn’t he be advising the polygamist families out west? Or, hopping on a plane to Massachusetts to lecture the fathers and parents of the pregnant teens in Gloucester?<br /><br />According to Health and Human Services, “throughout the 1990s, black teens have had the largest declines in teen childbearing rates of any group” while "Latinas have had the highest teen birth rate of any major ethnic/racial minority in the country since 1995." Why doesn’t Obama take his message to the barrios? Maybe he could go to a Catholic Cathedral in the heart of an East L.A. Latino community and challenge Latino men’s machismo. He should use “boys” in his speech and admonish the parishioners not to eat so many burritos.<br /><br />Truth be told, I don’t wish to see a particular racial, sexual, religious or ethnic group singled out for derision or used as a campaign prop. Stereotypical remarks about blacks, Latinos and whites in Appalachia are just as inappropriate as remarks about Jewish materialism or Irish drunkenness.<br /><br />I’m old fashioned about some things. My mother is prone to say, “Keep your business out the streets.” I’m only putting out my family’s personal stories to illustrate why I’m leery about Obama.<br /><br />Many of those around me plan to vote for him. For the most part, my response is to ask folks to look at their lives and check whether or not what Obama is saying squares with their reality. Never mind how they “should” be living – never mind how Obama’s “current” family looks. I just ask if, with all the troubles of getting along day to day, is it helpful to have his polish on how they should be living piled on top?<br /><br />My new son-in-law has two young boys and a daughter. Like so many other black teens who weren’t as lucky as Obama, he got busted in his teen years and did a little time on a drug arrest. Obviously his life has turned around. Luckily, he’s a brick mason. If he didn’t work for himself in a skilled trade, it would be hard for him to find work. He knows that because he went to jail his sons have 60 percent likelihood of going to jail. He has to fight extra hard to make sure his kids are not that statistic. And it’s a tricky thing. You want your kids to understand the many race traps but not be defined by them.<br /><br />After Obama won the South Carolina primary, whenever I was asked, I’d say that in the general election my vote was his to lose. Prior to and after their wedding, my ex-offender son-in-law, somewhat of a race man (he planned to vote for Obama "because he is black"), who just recently found out he could vote despite his conviction, constantly reminded me of what I had said, “Remember, you said your vote was his to lose.”<br /><br />Shortly after his and my daughter’s wedding, a couple of day after Obama’s Father’s Day speech, we were sitting together with a friend of his, a young, married father of one, who was in their wedding party. Once again he reminded me of what I had said about "my vote to lose." I let loose with just about everything I’ve said in this article. I told him to look at his own life and then tell me what he thinks about Obama.<br /><br />I asked my son-in-law to think about his wedding and the people who were there. There were lots of young mothers and fathers and children, divorcees, second marriages, common-law arrangements, ex-lovers, step-parents and grandparents, etc. Many of those people, if they believed Obama, could be passed off as being “irresponsible” and their kids dismissed as “mistakes.” I asked him: Did he truly believe that many of the people in that church, whose lives he knew, were less moral or responsible than others, as Obama inferred? Ex-offender, former unmarried father of three, rap music producer, isn’t he who Obama is condemning? On paper, anyway. Yet, he has raised three good kids.<br /><br />Whenever I suggest to Obama insiders that he’s a lot like Bill Clinton, they go apoplectic. Yet, as race-baiting and race politics goes, Obama has proven himself to be as good, if not better than Clinton, long considered the modern master of race politics. If you believe, as I do, that he “played black men to court white voters,” then all Obama’s protestations about Bill Clinton’s race-baiting were just a ruse. And, in that light he is no better than Clinton when it comes to using race fears. He may even be worse than Clinton because he plays it both ways – assaulted and assailant. I’ll be willing to bet that if Clinton were honest in revealing how he really felt about Obama, that would be at the heart of his grievance.<br /><br />No doubt, people are excited about the prospect of a young, vibrant, black person as president. They see their choice as between John McCain and Obama, and conclude that Obama is “the only option,” or say “He will never be as bad as Bush. He will never be bad as Reagan.” Or they say their man Obama “has a chance to win. We need to give him some latitude.” “We need to let the man do what he needs to do to win.” “We should trust him.” “Barack is one of us, no matter what he sounds like right now.”<br /><br />As critical as I am, I actually want to believe he’s “one of us.” But I don’t see it.<br /><br />That isn’t necessarily a bad thing for Obama. If people like me don’t see Obama as “one of us,” that strengthens the powerful’s belief that he is “one of them.”<br /><br />For sure, Obama has most black voters in the bag. I’m pretty sure that my vote falls in the "doesn’t matter so much" column. And from listening to Obama, a whole lot of my family members’ lives don’t matter much either.<br /><br />I’m not really looking for change from Obama should he win. I’m looking for the fight to come.</div>Eric Schumacher-Rasmussenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01191219744840675484noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13930903.post-65076887479376195842008-04-12T21:32:00.003-04:002008-04-14T21:04:48.284-04:00Tom Who?<span style="font-style:italic;">Karen Brown writes:</span><br /> <br />I'll admit it. Although I've certainly heard of Rage Against the Machine, I'd never heard of Tom Morello and never heard him play. When Lauren Onkey supplied this You Tube link of Tom Morello playing with Bruce Springsteen in Anaheim, I wasn't all that eager to watch it. Why? I didn't know who Tom Morello was and as I read comments from others who'd been sent the link and heard that it was about his guitar solo, I thought, "I'm not going to get this." I seldom "get" musical solos because I have no basic understanding of what a good technical performance means. I know about singing; instruments not so much. It's why I don't participate in discussions about musicians and their abilities. It's beyo nd my area of expertise, over my head, out of my league. It would be like me showing up at the Indy 500 in a Model T Ford. But, finally, curiosity got the best of me and I thought I'd just privately watch and listen and see if I could decipher any nuance of brilliance out of Morello's sharing the stage with Bruce. <br /><br /><object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/dJT1EdKRF2g&hl=en"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/dJT1EdKRF2g&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object><br />At first, nothing. "Yup, as usual I don't get it," I thought with this sense of resignation. Then slowly, then quickly I started to get it. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. My heart seized up and filled up my chest. I drew in breath and didn't let it out again until I realized I was beginning to feel lightheaded. When Morello took the song away from Bruce, I felt whole. Completely whole. It was amazing. I still have no idea if what he did was technically brilliant but spiritually brilliant? Absolutely.Matt Orelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16216172951304608707noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13930903.post-60494861662957519172008-04-04T17:29:00.006-04:002008-04-04T23:06:03.318-04:00Ghosts In The Eyes . . .<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Lorenzo Wolff writes:</span><div><br /></div><div>So my old Buick Le Sabre broke down a bunch of times coming back from gigs or rehearsals in New York and I decided that it’s time to put the old girl to rest. Me and my Pops go down to the local used car dealership and after looking around for a minute we walk into the office and sit down in front of the salesman. He’s a shorter guy with a goatee that was probably hip five or ten years ago, smoking a chewed up cigar and staring at a computer screen, looking tired and a little unhappy that customers are coming in right when he’s trying to close up. He grudgingly starts to talk about what kind of car I want and I mention that I’m a bass player and I play a giant Hartke bass rig, so the car has got to be pretty big. His eyes light up as he puts down his cigar, smiles at me and asks me to follow him into the back room. Through the door and I see six or seven electric basses and a big electric upright on a stand. He tells me that he spent three years of his life as a session bass player, living on the Lower East Side and paying rent (barely) with money from music, and a day job at a guitar store. He never quite got that big break and had to quit for a job with a little more security. I talk to him for a minute about the things that musicians talk about, what kind of strings he uses and what bands he played with, more out of habit than interest. He tells me about the tour than he went on with his band where Blink 182 opened for <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">him</span>, and how he could have made it, if only the guitar player had been a little bit better. Eventually the talk comes back to cars so he shows me a few and I thank him and I leave.<br /><br />The next day I go to see Bruce Springsteen play at Nassau Coliseum. The crowd files in and the place is packed, I mean more drunk white old people than I’ve ever seen in one place. I’d never been so conscious of being eighteen in my entire life. It’s the Magic tour, so he’s playing with the E Street Band and they sound great. One look at Bruce and you can tell that this is what he was born to do, and this night is special. Just like every night when you step on a stage is special. But for some reason I can’t seem to enjoy myself like I ought to be. There’s something unsettling about the look on Garry Tallent’s face. He looks like a Vietnam vet tonight. Not that fresh shell shocked look, but that look of someone who’s had to think about the war every night, for thirty years. Thinking about his experiences and the experiences of his friends who were chalked onto the MIA column. I try to shake it off as Thunder Road hits the first pre-chorus. “Woa, Come take my hand, riding out tonight to case the promise land…” but Garry still looks exhausted and haggard. When the second chorus dies down I finally know what I’m feeling. I’m not just seeing Garry up there, I’m seeing all of the other bass players who didn’t make it. The old guys in Asbury Park, working at garages, telling anyone who’ll listen that back in 1973 Bruce Springsteen opened for <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">them</span>. And then the third verse starts, and I can hear Bruce’s voice, explaining it to me:</div><div><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">“There were ghosts in the eyes of all the boys you sent away,<br /> They haunt this dusty beach road and the skeleton frames of burned out Chevrolets</span>”</div><div><br /></div><div>(Lorenzo Wolff can be reached at lorenzowolff@gmail.com)<br /><br /></div>Eric Schumacher-Rasmussenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01191219744840675484noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13930903.post-35098038939675578392008-01-25T00:44:00.001-05:002008-04-04T17:36:39.681-04:00The State of Live Performance<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Mike Felten writes:</span><br /><br />I started in 1965 singing House of the Rising Sun at a place called Snoopy’s Lounge. Since then I picked up and started several different careers. Cover bands, country bands, solo singer/songwriter gigs, blues bands, metal bands. The last time I did it steady was ten years ago with a blues band, but I put out one CD and then did another and wanted to go out and sell it. Times have changed<br /><br />When I went back up to the UP last fall, I had hoped to look up some of the guys that I played in cover bands with. Always in the back of my mind, I figured that I could go up and play Proud Mary for a couple of weeks in hunting season and make a few bucks. We were the hot band in the mid 80's. We worked seven days a week, four hours a night and six on Sunday and got paid pretty well.<br /><br />There used to be a "what to do" page in the local newspaper that was basically a listing of who was playing at what bar. That was gone. It seemed like a lot of the bars were gone too. In the few bars I stopped in there was karaoke and DJ's. From talking to the bartenders the attitude seemed to be why hire four guys to play CCR when one guy could play the real thing on his I-pod. The only thing wrong was that DJ was playing Nelson.<br /><br />I wanted to get up to my favorite venue - the Amasa Hotel. We christened the place the Tiltin' Hilton because the floors sloped so badly we had to put blocks under our amps so they wouldn't roll out on the dance floor. When we plugged in - the lights of the town dimmed. The place was always packed with guys and girls from the sawmill. Al Kooper was trying to tell me about playing the Fillmore and I responded by telling him about playing the Amasa Hotel.<br />I remembered that the place was purchased by a couple who fixed the place up. They had adopted a couple of cute little Asian girls who I'm sure are college age by now. The future looked bright but the place was shuttered now.<br />I didn't know if the lumberjacks in Hardwood were out dancing to club DJ's playing Tupac. It would be so bizarre if that was the case and worth the trip to see.<br />The reservation bars were always steady work. Tough, chicken wire and fights but they needed a band on weekends and they paid. The Escanaba Hotel was shuttered too. We used to get the guys off the ore boats mixing it up with the Indians. Now there is a casino down the road in Hermansville. You drive out of the woods and it looks like five acres of Vegas. The first night that I played at the coffeehouse in Esky the owner said the turnout was light because ZZ Top was playing the casino. I didn't think our fan bases overlapped. I was more worried about conflicting with the high school football game or the stock car races or the county fair.<br />On the other hand, you used to have to drive to Green Bay or Marquette to see a ZZ Top before. Ted Nugent would come up hunting and do a show or two in Marquette. Kiss had a dedicated fan base and Seger used to come up and vacation. All the folks had was bands like us. They talked for months about Tammy Wynette's tour bus stopping for donuts. Somebody had written Neil Young’s name on a bathroom wall and people were convinced that it was him. Ruby Starr who sang the “go Jim Dandy” line with Black Oak Arkansas was a star. Maybe the people actually deserved something better than what we gave them.<br />Our annual gig up at Copper Harbor would draw people from about a hundred miles away. I remember one guy requesting "She Belongs To Me" and we did it for him. "Pretty good," he said, but Dylan does it in a different key." He was sitting somewhere in this remote end of the world and listening not only to Dylan, but figuring out the keys. There was a passion about the music then. I wonder if it is still there. Maybe that is the test. Are they still pulling the bounce in from Newfoundland to hear the BBC. Is the guy out there still downloading new stuff, like the guy who laid early Lucinda Williams tapes on me. Or did he give up?<br />Are all the Sunday jam sessions gone? Was it all gone? It sure seemed to be<br /><br />So it is 2008,Chicago and I mean the city proper, is one of the worst places to have a band. There are 10,000 kids in Iowa eager to come here and play for nothing so why should we pay you? The blues is by and large a tourist industry. When I had the blues band we had a regular Wednesday night gig. On weekends the place would employ a lot of the old Maxwell street guys. In what I thought was a humorous reverse racism, the club owners wanted Black faces on the stage for the weekend. We'd go and jam and sometimes play most of the night and that was OK as long as our white faces weren't on the window. We were playing Kingston Mines one afternoon when a nervous Japanese fellow asked us if the evening band was going to be Black American soul men. He was relieved when we assured him it was. You had to play ‘Sweet Home Chicago” and look the part.<br />Then we'd get the hot shot suburban guitarist who would sit there and say Johnny Dollar or Johnny B. Moore sucked because they were out of tune. Well, dickwad, this is the blues. It’s not any good if it is in tune.<br />Looking at the nurturing scenes in Austin or Detroit, I know it is not the same way everywhere. In Ferndale I had a guy pointed out to me who was Lenny from Lenny and the Thundertones. I guess Bob Seger used to hang around their garage. That doesn't happen in Chicago.<br />I wandered into a guy who used to play with Ral Donner and went on to play bass with everybody from John Lee Hooker to Bozo's Circus. Nobody gives a shit in Chicago, he’d be signing autographs in Detroit. Hayden Thompson, the rockabilly guy drives a limo in Chicago, in Europe he is driven in a limo.<br />You can make money in the burbs with tribute bands and blues bands that tend to the Stevie Ray type of blues. You can be the Blues Brothers. I hosted a jam session one night for a friend of mine and a lady came up and thanked me for playing authentic blues. I wanted to ask her if she was crazy.<br />I had a buddy who booked corporate events. They did their Elvis shows and disco bands and a lot of the putrid stuff you hear at the street fairs ( a guy singing "Like A Virgin") It is lucrative to a point, but he gave it up after twenty something years and bought a GOT-JUNK franchise in Phoenix.<br />Chicago used to be a folk mecca. Now there is only a few places that book it. They actually made a commercial about one of them with a depressed looking blond getting ready to strum, "another song about my ex-husband". Irish bands do better. The Old Town School has kids strumming Beatle tunes en masse and then doing a recital. They hit the world music pretty hard.<br />One of the saddest chapters was Fred Holstein. Aside from Bob Gibson and Hamilton Camp, he was THE Chicago folksinger. He couldn't make a living at it anymore. He tended bar down the street from my store and couldn't earn enough to get his teeth fixed.<br />The last time that I saw Jimmie Lee Robinson, one of the fixtures on Maxwell Street, he was playing a Borders and half of the people had their backs to him.<br />Thinking of Fred and Jimmie Lee, I can't be in my right mind to want to go out and play for people. The biggest apprehension that I had about resuming performance was my age. Just who is this old bastard standing her instead of an angst ridden teenager?<br />And then some kid in Tulsa asks me what I'm doing with that metal thing on my finger and what kind of music that is I’m playing and did I really talk to Willie Dixon and then climbing these mountains seem to be worth while.Mike Feltenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18386439436146474914noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13930903.post-65270010689150893362007-12-24T16:34:00.000-05:002007-12-24T16:39:02.683-05:00A Kinks Kristmas<i>Bill Glahn writes:</i><br /><br />A case could probably be made that Ray Davies is the Charles Dickens of rock 'n roll. They're both British. Both tell stories entrenched in the landscape of the British working class. Both are great writers who draw their audience in with the richness of their characters. Both celebrate the spirit of humans and the working class in particular.<br /><br />"Yes, and both have surnames that start with D," some stuffy Dickens scholar might scoff. But put academic prejudice aside, and the case could be made – with some notable differences.<br /><br />Dickens' influence on Davies shouldn't come as any great surprise considering Dickens' status in the world of British literature (second only to Shakespeare). Any British author who chooses to address the issues of class would almost have to be influenced by him to some degree. Davies body of work bears more than a casual resemblance.<br /><br />But to say that Davies is simply putting a new tread on an old tire, would be a huge misconception. The reasons are no more apparent than two short stories based in the Christmas season - A Christmas Carol and the Kinks "Father Christmas." In the Dickens story, Scrooge is redeemed. In the Kinks holiday single, the antagonist is not.<br /><br />The philosophy in Dickens' Christmas Carol is more black & white – the ruling class is redeemed when confronted by an outside manager or controlling force – a holy trinity of ghosts. In the Kinks' song, there is no outside manager and the antagonist is motivated by real life events – his father is out of work. In Dickens' moralistic world, Davies would be a schoolboy in disgrace. In Davies' pragmatic one, Dickens would be a used car spiv.<br /><br />I've always found Davies' body of work to be the more complicated to decipher – more shades of gray. More unanswered questions. At first glance, it's a darker world where it seems everybody has an agenda. And that agenda usually involves control of the working class.<br /><br />Unionists tell you when to strike.<br />Generals tell you when to fight.<br />Preachers teach you wrong from right.<br />They feed you when you're born.<br />And use you all your life.<br />(Uncle Son)<br /><br />The workers told the unions who blamed it on the government<br />The politicians blamed it on the strikers and the militants<br />And everybody's guilty and everybody's innocent<br />Nobody gives because nobody gives a damn anymore<br />(Nobody Gives)<br /><br />That's some pretty cynical stuff.<br /><br />Or is it? There's just too much in the Davies canon to suggest otherwise.<br /><br />Dickens' work is rooted in moral failures that transcend class boundaries. Davies work targets systemic problems in our society.<br /><br />To be fair, A Christmas Carol was written very early by Dickens (1843), while Father Christmas was written by Davies several years (1976) after his most notable commentary on class issues – The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society (1968) through Preservation (1973). Father Christmas is more like a coda where Christmas Carol is far less mature in nature. By the time Dickens gets around to writing Hard Times (1854), much of his criticisms fall in line with Davies'. A school system that stifles creativity in the name of economic progress. (Dickens gets the nod for creative names with Mr. McChoakumchild). An uncaring upper class who justify their importance with myths (industrialist and banker Josiah Bounderby). A perverse thought process that makes pollution a healthy commodity. But in the end, as with all of Dickens work, he hangs on doggedly to morality as if were synonymous with salvation. Bounderby dies of a fit. His cohort, Mr. Thomas Gradgrind is saved by renouncing his "just the facts" obsession and replacing it with a code of faith, hope, and charity. All's well that ends well.<br /><br />In 1856, British novelist George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) wrote… "The thing for mankind to know is not what are the motives and influences which the moralist thinks ought to act on the labourer or the artisan, but what are the motives and influences which do act on him." She goes on to criticize Dickens, ""if he could give us their psychological character . . . with the same truth as their idiom and manners, his books would be the greatest contribution Art has ever made to the awakening of social sympathies."<br /><br />Father Christmas is not the first time Davies utilizes dark humor to illustrate a truth. In Muswell Hillbillies' "Complicated Life" - he hits a bulls-eye with the story of an ill worker who is told by his doctor that he needs to slow down or face death. "Cut out the struggle and strife." So the guy quits the rat race and finds…<br /><br />Like old Mother Hubbard<br />I got nothing in my cupboard<br />I got no dinner and I got no supper<br />I got holes in my shoes<br />I got holes in my socks<br />I can't go to work cause I can't get a job<br /><br />When it comes to quality of life for the working class, capitalism is a deadly calamity. As for psychological evaluation – on Muswell Hillbillies Davies introduces the idea of mental illness as purposefully inflicted on workers by the ruling class (Acute Schizophrenia Blues). It's a reoccurring theme in Davies' writing, including his "autobiography," X-Ray – a book written in 1994 but culminating in his personal history at Preservation.<br /><br />On Preservation, Davies restrains from preaching (the domain of moralists). He, instead, looks both backwards and forwards in a pragmatic way and correctly predicts a more totalitarian existence should social change be directed by ideologues and moralists.<br /><br />At the beginning of X-Ray, Davies proclaims "I was born a king." His most affecting song opens with the words "Everybody's a dreamer and everybody's a star" Despite its title (Celluloid Heroes) and story line, it is not simply a song about Hollywood stars and starlets. It is a song about struggle. And it recognizes that, while struggle is not always successful, neither is it futile. We are not born cogs in a corporate reality. That is learned behavior. That is mental disease.<br /><br />Not too many people would call Dickens' feel-good endings to Christmas Carol and Hard Times cynical. But which is cynical? The idea that we are forever bound by a class system not of our making or that we are all born kings?<br /><br />Unlike Dickens' morality, Davies work offers no cure-alls for society. In fact, he often sounds as confused as the rest of us. But he does offer a starting point. Here's to the birth of kings.Matt Orelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16216172951304608707noreply@blogger.com2