(An early review of a Dixie Dregs concert at San Diego State University, 1979, originally published in the UCSD Daily Guardian).

 Progressive rock—once a bold experiment in stretching the boundaries of popular music—has largely faded into a relic of its own ambition. What began as an earnest attempt to fuse rock with classical complexity and conceptual depth often collapsed under the weight of its own excess. Bands like Kansas and Styx, with their theatrical bombast and overwrought arrangements, helped steer the genre into a cul-de-sac of self-importance. Today, prog survives mostly as a niche curiosity, more admired for its audacity than its relevance—less a living movement than a museum piece, endlessly referencing itself. Right? Am I right? 

Hardly.

While progressive or “art rock” is often marred by overwrought theatrics and uneven execution, some bands continue to uphold a high standard of musicianship and creativity. Chief among them is America’s own Dixie Dregs, whose May 2 concert at SDSU’s Montezuma Hall was a striking reminder that this genre, when approached with discipline and imagination, still has something vital to offer.

The performance demonstrated that five musicians—guitarist Steve Morse, bassist Andy West, drummer Rod Morgenstein, keyboardist T. Lavitz, and violinist Allen Sloan—can reinvigorate a form many have dismissed as obsolete. Their music didn’t just impress; it engaged, challenged, and ultimately reaffirmed the value of instrumental rock when it’s crafted with purpose.

What sets the Dregs apart isn’t just their technical command—though they possess that in abundance—but their commitment to structure and clarity. Where many progressive and fusion acts rely on flashy displays to mask thin ideas, the Dregs, guided by Morse’s compositional vision, achieve a rare sense of cohesion. Their pieces unfold with logic and momentum, allowing their virtuosity to serve the music rather than distract from it.

Drawing from a wide spectrum of influences—classical, jazz fusion, funk, hard rock, and bluegrass—the Dregs don’t settle for superficial genre-blending. Instead, they weave these elements into intricate, interlocking arrangements that feel deliberate and unified. Their music avoids the disjointedness that plagues lesser acts and, refreshingly, sidesteps the burden of clumsy lyrics altogether.

Steve Morse stands out as one of the most distinctive voices in modern guitar. His playing blends the precision of Julian Bream, the agility of Roy Clark, the intensity of John McLaughlin, and the tonal inventiveness of early Jeff Beck. His solos are unpredictable yet coherent, moving fluidly through classical harmonies, rock dynamics, rapid-fire runs, and country-inflected phrasing—all executed with astonishing clarity and control. Among his contemporaries, only Allen Holdsworth rivals him in technical depth.

Yet Morse doesn’t dominate the spotlight. He shares it generously, allowing his bandmates to contribute equally to the group’s dynamic interplay. West and Morgenstein form a rhythm section that’s both agile and grounded, handling the band’s complex shifts with precision. Lavitz and Sloan, meanwhile, match Morse’s energy with their own inventive flourishes. Their exchanges—at times reminiscent of the Mahavishnu Orchestra—are full of momentum and wit, building to moments of exhilarating intensity.The Dixie Dregs aren’t preserving a relic—they’re redefining what progressive rock can be. Their music is intelligent, skillful, and deeply attuned to what makes instrumental rock compelling. For a taste of their vision, listen to _Night of the Living Dregs_ (Capricorn) or their latest, _Dregs of the Earth_ (Arista).

BOMBAST :APOCALYPSE NOW

 "...What I'm getting at is this: a native village is bombed and the bombs happen to be beautiful when they land. In fact, it would be odd if all that sudden destruction did not liberate some beauty. The form the bomb takes in its explosion may be...a picture of the potentialities (of the thing) it destroyed. So let us accept the idea that the bomb is beautiful..." ---Norman Mailer, 

 The quotation in question is classic Norman Mailer, circa 1963—an era when he often offered wild-eyed metaphors to drive home a point. To be fair, the passage is taken out of context from a dense, metaphysical discussion, and Mailer certainly wasn’t endorsing destruction for the sake of aesthetics. Yet the quote underscores a persistent issue of aesthetics, one that’s vividly present in Francis Ford Coppola’s *Apocalypse Now*. In many ways, Coppola seems to have embraced the idea that “the bomb is beautiful,” crafting a Vietnam War film brimming with explosions, firefights, and death—so visually arresting it could hang in a gallery. Its spectacle is breathtaking, but that very scale becomes its undoing, preventing *Apocalypse Now* from achieving the deeper film it aspired to be.

Coppola and screenwriter John Milius draw heavily from Joseph Conrad’s *Heart of Darkness*. The story centers on a CIA assassin named Willard (Martin Sheen), who, drowning in existential despair while holed up in a seedy Saigon hotel, is recruited for one last mission. His target: Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), a brilliant Special Forces officer who’s gone rogue in Cambodia, establishing a cult-like kingdom in the jungle. Willard’s assignment—coldly phrased by command—as to “terminate his command,” sends him on a surreal journey upriver with a small patrol boat and crew. As in Conrad’s tale, the river voyage becomes a metaphor for descending into madness and cultural dislocation. The deeper they venture, the more rationality dissolves. The film unfolds more as a series of stylized set pieces than as a tightly woven narrative. A beach assault, led by a surfing-obsessed officer (Robert Duvall), is staged with ludicrous bravado in the midst of chaos. Later, a surreal USO show floats in on a game-show-lit barge, and a riverside Army outpost—bombed senseless—houses a platoon of shell-shocked soldiers firing at ghosts. The jungle slowly devours Willard’s crew as they drift further into absurdity and detachment. Rather than exploring themes through character or dialogue, Coppola leans into visual extravagance. The result: a film that loses grip on Conrad’s psychological and political critique. *Heart of Darkness* used plot and prose to evoke the horrors of imperialism, *Apocalypse Now* substitutes spectacle for coherence. 

At its best, the cinematography (courtesy of Vittorio Storaro) renders warfare with a haunting, sculptural beauty. But therein lies the issue—battle becomes an aestheticized experience, numbingly detached from blood, pain, or moral weight. Coppola’s Willard is a blank slate, conveying little emotion or transformation, which leaves the viewer distanced rather than absorbed. Even the climax, where Willard finally reaches Kurtz’s compound, falls flat. Brando, shrouded in shadows, mumbles cryptic musings on horror, judgment, and moral dualism—statements that lack coherence or impact. Kurtz, seemingly ready for death, offers himself to Willard, who kills him during a simultaneous ritual slaughter. The moment echoes Conrad’s “The horror! The horror!” but Coppola fails to translate its visceral terror to the screen. Efforts to tether the film back to Conrad—via narration written by journalist Michael Herr—are uneven. The voiceover swings wildly in tone, from literary to slang, often contradicting itself. In contrast, Conrad’s Marlow subtly evolves throughout the narrative, pulling the reader with him into darkness. Coppola’s Willard drifts unmoored. In the end, *Apocalypse Now* is worth seeing not for its insights, but for the sheer audacity of its vision. Coppola’s talent remains undeniable—films like *The Godfather* and *You’re a Big Boy Now* cement that. *Apocalypse Now* also benefits from standout performances: Martin Sheen is convincingly haunted, Robert Duvall is gloriously unhinged, and Dennis Hopper crafts a gonzo archetype of the wartime hippie. As for Brando, his Kurtz borders on parody—whether it’s willful defiance or minimalist genius is debatable, but the final scenes are undeniably inert. For all its noise and ambition, *Apocalypse Now* ultimately falters under the weight of its own spectacle. It’s a masterclass in cinematic technique, but a muddled meditation on meaning.

---

THE BOUNTY OF "BEING THERE"

 

With a flurry of hype preceding its debut in San Diego, it’s understandable why someone might approach director Hal Ashby’s new film, Being There, with a “show me” attitude usually limited to citizens of Missouri. The film, based on the novel by Jerzy Kosinski (who also wrote the screenplay), had opened three months earlier in New York and Los Angeles, and the advance reports from taste-making critics sounded like a chorus singing the same old tune: Being There, they harmonized, was indeed a comic masterpiece—a work of art, proof that American filmmakers can make movies that do more than satisfy an audience’s urge for the cheap vicarious thrill. Feeling burned by what I thought was payola-influenced propaganda for Kramer vs. Kramer—and the irrational rush of national and local film writers to reaffirm the majority opinion—I expected a downright drag. The new TV campaign announced, “…this time the critics are unanimous.”  I approached Being There with my own case of “show me.”

Well—surprise. Being There is, in fact, a good film that gives the audience a rare dose of “something to think about” while supplying a constant stream of funny stuff. Even more surprising was Kosinski’s screenplay, with which he, to use an arcane adjective, miraculously salvages what worth there was in his weakest novel and retools it to fit the medium like a nut and bolt.Kosinski’s novel concerned the doings of a gardener with intellectual disabilities named Chance, whose worldview is limited to tending a garden and watching unwholesome amounts of TV. He’s forced to leave the only home he’s known when the old man who cared for him dies. Nattily dressed in a suit from the old man’s wardrobe, Chance meets Eve Rand, wife of Benjamin Rand—a dying multimillionaire industrialist and kingmaker courted by presidents, senators, and foreign dignitaries. Chance’s name is eventually misconstrued as  “Chauncey Gardiner.” When a Soviet ambassador recites his favorite Russian poet, Chance simply smiles and nods. His vague, uncertain replies—rooted in television and gardening metaphors—are mistaken by others as visionary truths. These desperate elites, hungry for a voice of optimism in a world of money, power, and deadpan cynicism, cling to his half-wit utterances as if they’re the insights of a poet.

Ashby must have had a long talk with Kosinski and given him some needed pointers. Gardener is taken to be a man of supreme taste and intellect. He impresses Benjamin enough to earn an introduction to the President. Asked what the country should do to stimulate economic “growth,” Chance draws from the only field he knows—gardening—and delivers a homily about strong roots and springtime renewal. From there, he’s catapulted into national celebrity. The President, enchanted by “Chauncey Gardiner’s” unique philosophical optimism, quotes him (with due credit) during a televised State of the Union speech. The President, impressed by "Chauncey Gardiner's" philosophical optimism, quotes him during a televised State of the Union speech. Chance attracts attention from a leading business magazine, appears on a talk show, is investigated by the CIA and FBI, and impresses a Soviet ambassador who thinks he is a genius.

Kosinski’s novel was a shaggy dog story. Once the punchline landed, readers had to wade through too many pages watching the same joke play out in minor variations. Kosinski, dealing with a genre—the comic novel—that didn’t suit him, couldn’t quite develop the premise. His real strength as a novelist lies in grim fatalism. His best characters—cast-iron, post-existential types brutalized by life—navigate bleak and violent encounters with an eerie grace. His prose, terse and distanced, has elevated novels like Steps, The Painted Bird, The Devil Tree, and Blind Date.

But in Being There, his detached tone left the humor dead on the page. Fortunately, Ashby coaxed him into adjusting that tone for the screen. The dialogue remains spare, but the lines carry greater weight. Ashby pulls powerful performances from his cast, bypassing Kosinski’s subtleties and translating them into broader comedy.

Peter Sellers, like Chance, is magical. Where the novel’s character was flat and abstract, Sellers brings him to life as a wide-eyed, well-meaning idiot savant—an uncomprehending soul riding the wave of events that lift him ever higher. Shirley MacLaine as Eve, Melvyn Douglas as Benjamin, and Jack Warden as the President all flesh out their roles with an unerring sense of closed-system gullibility. Ashby wisely avoids buffoonery. He has his actors treat their characters’ quirks as givens within everyday interaction. There’s a matter-of-factness about the film that I admire. Being There manages to be funny without descending into slapstick or drawing-room farce. This perspective reflects Kosinski's belief that life consists of random events—hence the name "Chance"—that influence the course of history in ways humans think they control.

 

 

Woody Allen's "Manhattan"

 

A vulgar comparison, perhaps, but it’s possible to think of writer/director Woody Allen as a latter-day Jerry Lewis. As with the usually denigrated Lewis, Allen's film persona is a paranoid who finds the world he knows conspiring to put him in the worst light. The bumbling Everyman, where social ineptitude is first nature, a superpower that benefits no one.  As with, Lewis, Allen’s characters are variations on a theme of failure, bad posture, poor self-esteem, is someone so lacking in finesse, agility, or aptitude in the well-heeled that most attempts to emulate sophisticated manners are inevitably catastrophic. This theme runs throughout all of Allen's films, with a central preoccupation with sex. Allen rarely gets any, and when he does, it never comes off as the instruction manuals or the Playboy philosophy promised. Allen presents himself as a victim of the sexual revolution's propaganda, he is Norman Mailer’s “ prisoner of sex” someone furiously trying to make his relationships with women adhere to a set of rose-hued promises.

Allen’s themes are deeper than what one could extrapolate from Jerry Lewis and Allen, long our favored conspicuously intellectual filmmaker, expanded his theme into a murkier tableau. Manhattan, comedy, is something of a treatise on what's wrong with modern man: a lack of moral certitude, the silence of God and man's attempt to fill the void with his own concepts, the meaninglessness of language, the obsession with surface. and the lack of spiritual reflection. All these strands, culled from the books of Tolstoy Sartre. Burroughs, and especially the films of Bergman, are all touched on during the film. Luckily, Allen, the writer and director, has developed a perfectly coherent visual style and a sense of dialogue that makes the film less foreboding than it sounds.

The story revolves around someone named Isaac Davis (Allen), a high paid writer of a trendy TV comedy who quits his job so he can work on a novel exposing the spiritual vacuity of the denizens of Manhattan. He is divorced from his bisexual wife, who left him for another woman, and who is writing a memoir that reveals the touchiest aspects of their relationships. Davis has taken up with a seventeen-year-old girl named Tracy (Mariel Hemingway), a bright teenager who loves Davis but whose love he rejects in the interest of a writer named Mary (Diane Keaton). who is currently dating his best friend. the already-married Yale (Michael) Murphy), on the sly. Davis waits for the two to break up before he makes his move. Mary and Davis finally get together, Davis breaks the relationship with Tracy but, after two weeks, Mary and Yale are seeing each other again. leaving Davis in the cold. Davis rushes. to catch Tracy, on her way to England to attend school, and the two rekindle their relationship. That, fundamentally, is the plot from beginning to end. Though the particulars don't promise much at first, Allen's Memorex ear for dialogue makes Manhattan one of the better serio-comic films in years. The characters are well-educated professionals, mostly writers, who walk around New York City's haunts Central Park, Greenwich Village. uptown publisher parties-rattling off vague utterances that sound nice, but which evaporate under close inspection. At a pro-ERA benefit, Davis listens to a novelist who tells the theme behind his new book to an audience of enthralled listeners.

"This woman has never had an orgasm," says the writer, "she suffers from the quintessential emptiness of the age. She meets a man who is all essence. They make love. She has an orgasm. and then she dies." "I had an orgasm once," pipes in a comely but vacant-eyed blonde, "but my analyst told me it was the wrong kind…."  "That's never happened to me," says a bemused Davis, "even the worst one I ever had was right on the money."

Manhattan is the best made of all of Allen's films, and may establish a standard by which his future ms will be judged. Gone is the distressingly artificial intellectualism of the previous Interiors a film so text bookish that it was inseparable in content from any recent Bergman offering. The camera shots are spare and well-framed. basically, a series of medium close-up static shots that uses the screen as a kind of stage and allows the actors maximum leeway for effective facial expressions The cast is generally superb. but the biggest surprise is the young Hemingway, whose portrayal of a bright teen is remarkably unforced and natural. The black and white photography by Gordon Willis leaves something to be desired. though. The texture is too stylized, unnatural and washed-out in vocation of grays that have the resolution of a newspaper photo. Likewise. Allen's use of Gershwin archly-romantic music, intended no doubt as an ironic counterpart. is too much. The music doesn't underscore or suggest irony. but rather points to it. The film's point is clear enough without the ironic counterpoint the music might provide. The material is strong enough.

a note on Tom Petty's Damn the Torpedoes

Tom Petty has had problems with his image from the start. A thoroughly enjoyable and likable mainstream rock and roller in my book, Petty and the Heartbreakers first emerged on the scene with the sudden glut of arty New York New Wave bands like Television, Talking Heads and The Ramones, and was mistakenly categorized as being a punk outfit. After some exposure to his first record made it obvious that the Heartbreakers had little to do with the aesthetics of American punk posey (American new wave, like it or not, is loaded with semi-tough intellectuals who compromise a new generation of native "art-rockers," a dread thought to many who think being dumb somehow places you in a state of grace and frees you from good manners, healthy diets,and other conventions of everyday life: the classical artists' conceit), one too many critics made note of the similarity between Petty's nasal, braying voice and that of old Byrds helmsman Roger McGuinn, and concluded that the Heartbreakers were a band stuck in emulating the pop-rock shtick of the 60s. Petty, thankfully, is a feisty counter-puncher with enough good sense to ignore what others, aware, want him to be. Damn The Torpedoes, his new record, clears the ground, and should at once establish that Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers are their own men who play their own kind of rock and roll in a way that's all too rare: straight ahead, with conviction and feeling, without affectation or chest-thumping baloney. At the risk of sounding as though I'm over-reaching for a comparison, I consider Petty to be the closest thing to a Graham Parker that America has. Like Parker, Petty's lyrical persona is of someone who's overwhelmed by the vicissitudes of everyday life who, through a visage of someone scratching his head in a state of anger, confusion, and frustration, achieves a kind of calculated artlessness in his expression. There is little in Petty's words one would consider the equal of some of rock's better wordsmiths: nothing on the par with the Zen-like ambiguities of Steely Dan, the colloquized surrealism of the late Lowell George, the compounded paradoxes of Elvis Costello, or the sublimely etched ironies of Randy Newman. Rather, Petty's main lyrical strength is his directness. Like Parker, Bob Seger (when he's not being morose) or Garland Jefferies, Petty demonstrates that he can cut to the cause of disagreement, emotional snafus where equal combinations of anger and self-loathing make an ugly tattoo on a young man’s thin skin.

A TAKE ON JETHRO TULL , IN GENERAL

Jethro Tull was a band of superb musicians who played music that was decidedly more work than pleasure to bear with. There's no denying that leader and chief composer Ian Anderson could cook up artful and impressive ensemble pyrotechnics for this or any number of the other versions of Jethro Tull to blaze through. The leader's ideas were limited, however, and one-note throughout the band's peak and into their decline. English folk traditions wedded with baroque fussiness, wheezy flute solos over craggy hard rock interludes, much of it seasoned with the admittedly agreeable sweet and sour fills and riffing from longtime guitarist Martin Barre. Skill and discipline aside, though, the plentiful progressive/art rock elements of JT's music were directionless. This flaw worsened as soon as Anderson responded to the grandiosity of Yes and Emerson Lake and Palmer by going for the long format of single-song projects such as Thick as a Brick and Passion Play. Bits and pieces create sparks and actually ignite on both discs, but soon enough you're in a maze of a tricky time-signatures and agitated changes that are less inspiring and moving thematically. It was at this point in their career that Tull became a cure for insomnia. I'm the first to admit that Jethro Tull had "pretty parts", but I would reserve that classification for those musical moments where a shining bit of ensemble work actually clicked and highlighted a fine band raging happily along with some problematic time signatures. In that vein,

I rather like the Martin Barre—composed introduction to "Minstrel in the Gallery", a masterpiece of quirky transitions and sculpted dissonance that rises to actual art. Compression and brevity are the keys to those instances when JT catches my attention, but as often as not Anderson refuses to move from his signature amalgam of styles he likes and provides them is needed, or even effective, in the then-mistaken belief that length of composition and promiscuously convolutions of theme equals serious art. I was always one who preferred their progressive rock not to drag along the road. Lyrically, principle songwriter Ian Anderson is not so stunning; he had an effective light touch with imagery in the early work like "Living in the Past" or the particularly riveting tune "Nothing to Say"; 'though perhaps guised in a fictional persona, Anderson, all the same, connects with a convincing humanity as matters of being alive without certainty are sussed through impressionistically and, yes, concisely, closer to true poetry. The man had a knack, in the day, of getting to the point and getting you to think about things other than material gain. That wordsmithing, I think, has been far less in evidence since their career took off, from 'Aqualung" onward.

 Their   body of work exhibits more than enough eclectic ingenuity to confirm that Ian Anderson is a man of solid musicianship. And kudos to him for maintaining one of the tightest and best disciplined group of musicians I've come across in a musically busy rock band. That said, Anderson wanted some extended suite  glories that were the sweet spot for  Zappa, Yes and Genesis (quality varies according to taste, of course) so he wrote this, a two-sided song meant as a serious piece of concert/theater music. What draws this down fatally is the sheer cement thickness of the lyrics, which seem to be going about something grave and scandalous but which are rendered in language so oblique that a reader/listener feels neither gravity nor is scandalized and likely couldn't care less. In     between all the verbiage are the instrumental parts, some of them fine, very fine, some even brilliant in the playing, drawing on old English and Celtic influences, the classics and certainly some hard rock intrusions; much of it , however, is musically unconnected, much of the      instrumental passages devolve into longish riffy filler , and then Anderson appears again , braying more and more about this matter he can't be clear about. I listened to it once when it was released and was impressed but the sheer effort, the workman like professionalism. Maybe I thought it was good. A second and third try to get through TAAB merely   told me that this was one of the dullest albums of the decade.

ANDY EDWARDS DECLARES WAR ON JAZZ SNOBBERY

 Andy Edwards is a manic YouTuber , a retired fusion drummer, music educator who presents the public with a wild assortment of critiques about nearly all things music; the depth of his love , no , let us say passion for music is obvious, his jeremiads are full of distractions, meltdowns, excoriations and self-recrimination, but his knowledge of the genres he concentrates on is incontestable. His the kind of music buddy you want to have, a contrarian who can make a good argument for his against-the-grain views. I can't stand his opinions most of the time, and I can't get enough of him most of the time. He is a Brit, he is Brit centric and proud, and he's a hoot,

On this posting in 2024, he insists that jazz has become an elitist music, the ad-libs of snobs and the snot-nosed.  So jazz has been absorbed by the mainstream and is now considered High Culture. It's a tendency that is , in many cases, inevitable. If the form as any resilient character as it gains popularity, it will be canonized and presented to the world from that point as being among the best things that society is capable of, elegant, inventive, beautiful. This happened with Theater, a wholly disreputable art form intended for lowlifes, beggars, fish merchants, the rabble in general, dealing with popular themes of lust, betrayal, revenge, always revenge, and expressed in loud and exclamatory terms to an audience that was in large part illiterate. Shakespeare wrote his plays to enthrall, distract, beguile, amuse and overall entertain an audience with it in mind to make a living, not create art that defined Literature as we understand it. History seems to have an unpredictable irony, as the elevation of art forms originating in the lower and marginalized quarters of society being elevated, after generations of changing standards and fresher habits of analysis, to the become something associated with a more sophisticated class of humanity.

Being in- the -moment is what jazz is about, but not the only thing, since brilliant improvisors required a musical super structure on which to create their spontaneous counter-compositions. Interesting that a body of chord-heavy songs with fleet, rhythmic melodies became the initial properties jazz players based their explorations upon. So composition, IE, composing music for improvisors, is no less a part of making it possible for soloists to be brilliant. The composed piece, setting the mood, establishing harmonies, rhythm, gives the soloist a more diverse field of expression. The metaphysical beauty of "in the moment" hasn't been destroyed, but in fact exists when the improvisors first states the melody as written and then essentially recreates it in the solo space he's given.

What possessed jazz in the beginning has perhaps moved onto rap, I suppose, but as any art that survives the faddish conditions of their origins and remain somehow credible generations from their starting point, the nature of that art changes with the prevailing conditions of overall culture of the time and that art becomes institutionalized, i.e., classified, historicized, studied, defined, given a set of formalized aesthetics . It becomes the stuff of graduate programs, references used in political and philosophical discourse. This certainly happened to jazz as it ascended to High Art, it happened to the great vulgarian enterprise of rock and roll ( it went from being the expression of confused, angry, impatient and passionate youth to being a branch of literature), and one can see it happening with rap and hip hop: the spontaneity of each becomes mythology. So where is jazz now? As it happens, there is quite a lot of exciting work being created by established artists , and a good number of younger improvisors emerging from across the world who are keeping a jazz tradition alive by insisting on their native voices being wedded to the musical form. Jazz as we understand is becoming jazz as we don't understand , which I regard as signs that there remains much to be created, much to be heard, much to learn. Where is it now? Not standing still, that's a fact.

Paul Rodgers, Blues Singer

 Muddy Water Blues --Paul Rodgers and Friends

Paul Rodgers, vocalist formerly of the English blues rock band Free and the riff-happy and radio friendly Bad Company, is as good as blue-eyed blues/rock belting has ever gotten--he can rasp and croon, belt and banter with equal measures of savvy and snap when all cans are firing. Sadly, he sings better than he writes, as just about all his post-Free efforts show. On this album, he digs into the bullet-proof songs of Muddy Waters, and has a hoot doing them: refreshingly, this is not a purist effort. Instead, it’s a throw back to British blues rock, which was louder, faster, flashier. Jeff Beck, Gary Moore, Brian Setzer and Trevor Rabin and Neal Schon all lend their fingers here, flash and feeling , and Rodgers applies the vocal cords for the best singing he'd done in easily ten years. "She Sends Me", "Born Under a Bad Sign", 'She's Alright" and "Rolling Stone" help me, for a moment, remember why I used to think he was the best singer on the planet. Stevie Ray is no more a wanker on the blues than are/were Albert King, Guitar Shorty, Buddy Guy or Vernon Reid, Blood Ulmer, Michael Hill or Sonny Sharrock, nor was he any less inspired by the pitched, aggravated dynamics the style demanded. He could keep a solo going, he could extend the sheer reams of bent notes, shadings, and feedback into reams of pure, sustained rapture, a pain that does not subside--he was easily continuing the work Hendrix started, by bringing the blues into something that was as emotionally relevant to the times he surveyed, and he kept his guitar heroics honest--one can listen to Gary Moore, for example, and be impressed and overwhelmed by the sheer ferocity and speed of his technique, yet not be moved by it, but with Vaughn, the heart of his feelings found their way to his fingertips and their calluses and managed a voice out of some dark night of the soul that exclaims, in high notes and low, rolling rumbles along the bass e string, that he has survived another midnight, another patch of bad luck, another bad fuck and worse drunk to see the sun of the following day again just to live the next twenty-four hours on the promise of more blues, the one thing that doesn't lie, the one set of notes in any scale and key you please that renews itself endlessly as long as there remains some capacity to feel deeply and longingly in that arena that is the province of being human alone, to find another reason to live another day. Stevie found his reason, a day at a time, with his guitar.

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2John McMeekan and Julie Hoye

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THE STOOGES and the victory of the marginal

 

Iggy Pop was a drummer in blues bands before he and his fellows formed the Stooges in the 60s, and as this song demonstrates, the experience wasn't wasted. Iggy and his mates understood, that is to say, felt the vaguely described but conspicuous force that blues had, simple, sonic, repetitive and impolite to any standard measure of tempo. This was the kind of music that was the blend of instinct and wits, a boxer's set of reflexes to things that get in your way. Guitar, drums and are a distorted grind and the tempo of nails hammered.

The Ashtons smashed mightily. Iggy, of course, was the man alone, a three-semester course of unreconstructed Id that inhabiting the center of every ganglion of nerves the brain tried to lay claim to; the superego to twitch and become more reptilian by the second. He was that kid in drainpipe jeans who carried a sharp stick with a brown, mung encrusted nail through it, waiting on the corner for someone as yet unknown to walk by and get poked with it. There was no fun, so you made your own, just to see what happens. These were Mailer's White Negros for a fact, except they shivved me a man who was tailing them and talking too much in the other muse mute streets of two-story burn pads and deserted storefronts that had their front windows sealed with concrete and layers of old concert posters and spray paint exclaiming gang signs and Jesus. Anyone daring to talk past this kid deserved to be whacked with the rusty nail. It was cruel and pointless until something genuine happened to change everything; the bit that everyone knows in the world of the Stooges is that transcendence is not on the agenda, ever.

No band embraced nihilism with more profound off-handedness than The Stooges. Part of their genius lies in t their lyrics, hardly cliché but not conventionally poetic, these were rhymes that were spare and simple, and powerfully to the point, talking about the small matters of frustration that send the young mind into paroxysms of rage and self-recrimination. Ever say something or overheard a phrase from someone else uttered in exasperation or another kind of brain locking state where what is said is so starkly simple and clear and unadorned by apology or other sorts of mental equivocation that it resembles brilliance? That’s my take on the collective lyrics of the Stooges, words as an instinctive reflex, Nor was their music dependent on the trivial concern of instrumental virtuosity.

This was the sticking point with many critics at the time when their first album, The Stooges, was released in 1969. In a counter-culture that was ironically putting premiums on the extreme professionalism of well-trained musicians who could hit notes precisely and improvise at length over increasingly tricky time signatures, the Stooges were the textbook example of the anathema, an insult to the taste-maker elite. Reviews were generally insulting to the band’s repetitive slam and clang approach, and it is one of the wonders of staying alive long enough to see a groundbreaking band, unfiltered from the start, outlast the negativity and change the critical consensus. The intelligentsia had to catch up with them. The Stooges rejected formal instruction on their musicianship and, in turn, weren’t about to suffer the instructions the snoots and snobs demanded they follow.

What’s ironic is that Rolling Stone, the arbiter of quality in matters of the New Rock, still had integrity in their record reviews at the time and allowed one of their original rock critics, Ed Ward, to let the air out of the inflated importance of over-serious rock music and the earnest critiques they inspired by his review of the album. The first two paragraphs have Ward offering a thumbnail sketch of the band’s background, quickly followed the expected litany of sins, that Iggy is a bad Jim Morrison imitator, the lyrics are sub-literate, the guitar and drum work is lifeless and lacking even the dignity of being mechanical. The something wonderful happened halfway through. He summarized his feelings thusly “Their music is loud, boring, tasteless, unimaginative and childish.” Then something remarkable happened.

With the grievances listed, and the verdict delivered,Ward added, in a single sentence, standing alone , unencumbered by other sentences, “I kind of like it”, Ward performed an endearing bit of proto-deconstruction, using the aforementioned deficiencies in the music as examples of virtue, value, honesty, artistic vision. It was one of the great pieces of rock criticism because here Ward created the basis of real aesthetic argument that maintained, essentially, that the Stooges were the true face and sound of a rock and roll that was relevant to life as it was being lived by millions, a voice, sound, and poetry from the curb, alley and shuttered doorway that wanted nothing to do with millionaire musicians with long hair striving to achieve legitimacy by mimicking and misreading the most superficial elements of High Culture. Ed Ward established the concerns that Lester Bangs soon picked up and turned into a masterful argument with the dying of the light. We can thank Ed Ward and the Stooges for that relief.

This was a band that went in the other direction when they began their quest to find what lay beyond avant-garde posturing in Music during the 60s away from trudging drum solos and long-form guitar essays. Iggy and the Stooges were primitive, out of tune, irritated and irritating in turn. It was a matter where the band and their frontman, Iggy Pop (nee Stooge) blended perfectly, given their ability to turn something that sounds horrible and repetitive into a crashing, sustained drone of attitude, and Iggy's serpentine stage presence and clipped verbal dexterity. He was the guy who couldn't sit stand and would stand for nothing less than what he wanted in full, and they were the grind of the city turned into a droning inner voice prodding him to smash down whatever walls came before him. It wasn’t that he was a bad boy going contrarily to the niceties of all things middle class and calcified, it wasn’t that he as a sentient being had identified an artifice he disliked and defined himself in opposition to it; it was more like Iggy Stooge was unaware of the feelings of others, greater ramifications of dangerous self-gratification, or any code of behavior the rest of us depend on keep drivers and pedestrians, for example, on the streets and the sidewalks, respectively. He was the unadulterated id, a squirming mass of impulse that transgressed boundaries, mashed together poetry and porn, and displayed no interest in theorizing about what he had done or about what he was thinking of doing. His was the case of living in the present tense solely, and whatever sensation presently was utmost.

Let us not be mistaken about this, as Iggy Stooge’s persona and psyche had the virtue of being monochromatic; his immediate impulse was not the only thing that mattered. There simply wasn’t anything else. All this play against the quarrelsome insomniac raunch of Ron Ashton’s guitar work, elementary, rudimentary, undeniable effective, endlessly influential. What he lacked in technique he made up for in essence, a counterpoint to the corrosive thrills of Iggy’s distilled juvenile delinquency; his guitar work might be politely described as “steady”, but this a dodge against the annoyance factor this band turned into a new aesthetic. “Persistent” is more apt, like a dislodged bit of a fender dragging along the highway, kicking up sparks near the gas tank, or a door slamming for hours in a strong wind, or jackhammers at night carving up your street at precisely the moment your brain demands you sleep or die inanely. Obnoxious, profound without knowing. We should all be grateful these guys wielded musical instruments, not guns. Or worse.

ASK THE DUST

 

The film version of John Fante's classic Los Angeles novel Ask the Dust has been available since it's theatrical release in 2006, and it will suffice to say that it's actually pretty good, excellent in fact. That's not the usual thing I say about screen adaptations of favorite novels of mine, as I have a grating habit of taking my favorite books too personally; anything less than a perfect transition from one medium to another seems nothing less than desecration, betrayal, blasphemy against a heaven of literary worth. Yes, I may have some personal problems I should address. But this isn't meant to be about the movie, but rather a plea to others who haven't seen it in the 20 years since it was first issued to please, please, please read the novel first. John Fante's prose is a delight to read and his tale of a young man determined to make a name for himself as a writer in the 1930's while a naive and impatient whelp in Los Angeles is gloriously clear, funny, ironic, with a snappy rhythm that makes you think of Raymond Chandler and a sardonic tone you find in later Bukowski. But he's better than either of those two scribes. That's blasphemy against Chandler, I guess, to suggest that anyone beat him at his own tough guy cadences, but Fante's words, images, brisk pacing and scene setting are without strain. Really, lets admit Raymond occasionally sounded unnatural as he reached for a way to finish a line. Bukowski , in turn, wrote the same story over and over. Most popular novelists do, one can say, but it's possible to read paragraphs from Post Office and Hollywood, two different novels from Bukowski, and find them indistinguishable in memory a scant two weeks late. The film version bodes well, despite the presence of the egregious rude boy Colin Farrell in the role of Arturo Bandini, the young , self-absorbed writer who is appealingly complex in his crazed vacillations between global egomania and desperate self-loathing. The novel is actually the second installment of a four novel sequence following the adventures and heartaches of Bandini, and it is a vivid, gritty bit of confession for Fante's own erring progress as a writer; Bandini is clearly his fictional stand in, a person so acutely aware of their discomfort in their own skin that only the giddy highs of self-mythology or the swan-dive into despair and personal loathing seem to give him armor against his emptiness. The irony of Ask the Dust, not to give too much away, is that it is the one thing he does well, writing, that makes for all the psychic warfare and self-sabotage; his writing is not an escape from his disequilibrium, but an entrée to even more spiraling chaos. Fante is far less didactic than I've just sounded and offers up saga that is colorful, funny, heartbreaking and emotionally raw; it is the perfect stuff for an HBO limited series. He writes as well as his Los Angeles contemporary Raymond Chandler ever did, and is by far the better, more sympathetic novelist than his most famous acolyte, Charles Bukowski. Robert Towne, the writer behind Roman Polanski's glorious Chinatown, writes and directs this effort, and has demonstrated an ability to convey LA in the thirties. But in the event that the movie is a stinker, you should arm yourself by reading Fante's novel; hard-boiled, lyric, skewed and comic, this is a coming of age story that takes believable twists and turns. The story is of a very human scale, and the seeming bipolar rages of young Arturo are moving and nuanced. He is a very flawed and complex character, and he stands as a significant creation the canon of American literature. Everyone who cares about a good story and great writing should experience Bandini on the page, lest the film version arrive flat line and motionless.

Notes on My Youthful Optimism

 

In revelations still dawning, that hindsight suggests that if  the Sex Pistols had never come to being, someone would have been compelled to invent them. In fact,  someone did, Malcolm McLaren, an experimental fashion designer who felt that the music current at that time in the 70s--lots of Led Zeppelin, Eagles ,Journey and the Who being replayed beyond death and into the spinning rings of limbo--wasn't a suitable backdrop for what he wanted, a style, attitude , manner, a way of thinking relevant to the current wave of alienated youth. The 60s utopianism was a bad joke at this point, a snicker and a fluid snort of disgust at the mention, and the 70s up   til then amounted to nothing much of interest happening in music or radio. I had read the Making of a Counter Culture, The Greening of America and Without Marx or Jesus and had assumed that the adult scholars who wrote these flighty, lyric and toxically optimistic forecasts that America would shed it's racist, sexist, imperialist, murderous ways and evolve to a higher rung on the dialectic's double helix ladder, i.e., it would be heaven on earth, one perpetual Eden of tranquility, enlightenment, tranquility, boundless creativity...well, you get the picture. 

My expectations were as great as my patience was short and nothing changed quickly enough as riots raged, friends continued to get thrown in jail , the musicians we admired seemed less poets and prophets than rich kids in odd clothes and private jets and yachts, and the reality of war and slums and self-seeking remained . The bad habits we had were merely given new names , but the grossness couldn't be disguised. Expectedly , self disgust became my middle name and I became the worst sort of poser, the bored cynic, an easy suit to wear when the glee of utopian expectations are crushed. But sadly, I was still a young jerk impatient for the gravitas being an old man could give me. I had no experience worth talking about , really, so the job for me was to dismiss all new things that came my way. But I knew nothing, Negativity didn't me through. But back to the alleged liberating qualities of rock and roll.

 The pretentiousness of the musicians and the gullibility of the audience had choked off the life force that made rock and roll exciting and worth caring about. Some of it might be laid at the feet of rock criticisms, since the advanced discussions of Dylan's relationship to Chuck Berry's existential Everyman demanded a musical technique and lyrical concept just as daunting. This is the danger when folk art is discovered: it stands to become something distorted, disfigured and bereft of vitality. I was lucky , I guess, in that I was a fan of the MC5 and Iggy and the Stooges long before the Sex Pistols caught the punk wave. They and bands like Blue Cheer and Black Sabbath were a grounding principle--rock and roll are beautiful because it's energetic, awkward, and stupid, but profoundly so. There are "concept albums" I admire and still like, if not listen to, but I won't name them here. 

I am pleased, though, that the idea of the Album being a literary object has been dropped in a deep grave and had dirt thrown over it's bloated remains.I miss albums, though. I like holding them, reading them, mediating on their physicality while listening to the record. It was part of the experience of absorbing what the musicians were doing, instrumentally and lyrically. Albums made you think that their size and shape were part of the home you made for yourself--house, room, cave, apartment--and that the collection of them, along with books and other such things marked your growing interest in the world around you. Now it seems like disembodied noise too much of the time piped into devices, not really played nor considered before the music commences. It seems much of the time like a streaming hurry to get done with the whole thing and then move onto another distraction which , as well, will provide no real reward.