SMALL TALK AT THE WALL

Late At Night / Gail Mazur

Reading awful poems late at night,
each word scratchy as a hog’s bristles,
my eyes ache and blur in the dimming light.
I don’t find one good line, one image,
one single flower piercing the mud—
only ponderous “ideas,” heavy
as boulders clogging a clear stream.
Or worse, it’s like eating bony little fish—
or boiled crabs, and breaking out in hives!
Nothing I hear or see tonight
is comfort or anodyne, nothing
to lose myself in for part of an hour …
Our lives passed like a morning mist,
or a flame whose candle’s burned away.
Why strain listening for beautiful music
in the witless peeps of an insect,
when I can just put the book aside
and study your last woodcut—blue night,
rain pelting the riddling moonlight
on a blue-black bay—more wondrous
than words on a page. Better for me.

These are thoughts late at night, the connecting articles and conjunctions between ideas missing, in large part, two or three ideas merging into the same drowsy stream; things seen in a haze, coming into view, then gone, suggesting nothing so much as a pondering of an object of desire gone missing amid the late hours , after a meal and perhaps two glasses of wine. The mind cannot hold a thought for very long and is unable to isolate a notion on which to construct a reasoned opinion; it's not so much that what first entered the mind had been dissolved and was no more,but rather that it had either morphed into something else all together . The words on a page, the lines of awful poetry one is trying to parse, the memory that one is attempting to  reconcile several contradictory opinions of.  The words on a page, the lines of awful poetry one is trying to parse, the memory that one is attempting to reconcile several contradictory opinions of. Language in the late hours that turn into the early morning has taken leave --only real images resonate. Actual things are the literal that one can "wrap " your mind around, a shape to emulate, study, improvise associations with. Language is merely the notes of muffled songs until rest turns up the volume and one utters sentences that are the equal of John Coltrane solos. But until then, just a book and poems that offer little but vapor in the hours reserved for slumber and dream indexes of the day's events.

This has the makings of a John Ashbery epic, the central genius of American who likewise cannot hold a single thought in his poems but who enthralls us as the physical and the nearly metaphysical interact in ways that make meaning irrelevant; his is a poetry of associative length, the manufacturing of associations as a consciousness epically steps down from the realm of Perfect Forms , Wallace Steven's Supreme Fiction, and investigates a world populated by imperfect representations. His mind, though, is alert, curious, melancholic to a degree, yet amused by the endless variety of forms he can speak into being. Mazur is less alert with "Late at Night" and has, I think, given us a poem about falling asleep. There is a feeling in this poem that makes me think of a person's grip on an object--a book, a glass, a ball--loosening and falling away. This is the equivalent of a sleeper mumbling into a pillow, talk to who knows what in the cloud of faint dreams.

The poem is elliptical in the sense that Mazur's narrator is arguing with what she finds on the page--this seems a search through books for a phrase or full declaration of the vague emotions that are stirring about her conscious--and what she considers briefly, intently is dismissed as inadequate  and inspires only more speculation. Late night and the fighting against the on set of sleep--and I think fatigue is conspicuous in this poems diffuse approach to a loosely gathered subject--makes the object of desire, whether a lover, a youthful past, a love of art and nature, dissolves and there are only fading sensations of sound, color, shapes as the task of night takes over. Mazur is wise enough to resolve the problem of not finding an appropriate analog of the somnambulist musings and decides, before closing her eyes finally, that a fading recollection of a pleasant experience and state of being is better than trying to force a set of words or some other thing embody the spiritual essence of that notion. Better for her. Better for the reader.

Alvin Lee

Alvin Lee, pioneer rock guitar hero and leader of the British blues band Ten Years After, died the other day at age 68 from a complication following what's been described as a routine surgery. Lee was not one of my favorites at the time, the late Sixties through the Seventies, mainly because despite his obvious skills--he played the blues clean and speedy and was the first man in rock and roll who's instrumental reputation was based largely on how fast he could negotiate relatively simple blues changes--I thought his guitar work and songwriting were strictly ordinary. Any number of bands were writing better blues-rock songs and riffs--Hendrix, Cream, Fleetwood Mac--and any number of other upcoming white blues guitarists,  British or American, were more interesting as stylists. Clapton had the phrasing , Peter Green had the tone and soul, Johnny Winter had the speed, fluidity and variety of approaches to make the basic structures of blues new and invigorating.

I would swear that nothing Lee ever put on record equaled the elegance of Mike Bloomfield's blues playing at his best; Lee, as Lester Bangs suggested, was more an IBM punch card: insert and listen to the machine crank it out , dependably fast and nerve wracking, as all efficient machines do.I would wager that Lee is the guy where the whole who--is-faster guitar theatrics came from.It began with Lee, back in the days when young males were starved for heros who weren't comic book characters or lead singers and older jazz critics  who should have known better than praise what they cannot hear correctly, when too many people were surprised that rock musicians could have technique and chops , and continued to absurd extremes through the glorious music of Johnny Winter through the galvanic jazz-fusion convulsions presented by John McLaughlin and Larry Coryell and onward, through the Sixties, Seventies , Nineties to this current time, when there is technique and speed to spare, but little that is soulful, moving.

Save for the off-center improvisations of Allan Holdsworth, a guitarist who combines speed with a sound that seems to replicate the subtle cues of a voice wordlessly indicating a mood with a sigh, a scream, a nuanced moan, there is not a  John Coltrane in the batch of fretsters. Instead of passion, there is only rage born of  computer game shoot-em-ups and a history of film violence; the guitars are less expressions of human emotion than they are musical wrecking balls, heavy , stupid things connected to severe chains of severely retarded belligerence. Coltrane's serpentine , register leaping solos were a high velocity response to  equivalent streams of emotion. Raging, arguing, laughing, crying, singing to praise to God and damning the Devil in his hole, JC's improvisations limned an inner terrain of spiritual conflict with an epoch changing technique; the rapidity of bebop modernism, with its breakneck time signatures and scalar improvisations, had found an emotional basis .

 This was not a replication of the human voice when the persona that owned it felt merely joyous or had the blues, this was the river of emotion where the emotions were multiform and simultaneous. That was the miracle of Coltrane's extemporaneous poetry. What Coltrane had introduce, rapid improvisation as a virtue in service to confirming a personal humanity, is lost in large measure among the guitarists who've followed Alivin Lee. By design or  by accident, their thinking is in line with Italian Futurism , a school of artists obsessed with machinery and the speed of production they made possible. Destroy the present and the past at  once, crash headlong into the future with the biggest steam shovel and wrecking ball you have and rid Humanity of it's faux notions of beauty and truth that only constrict us . There is not much room here to be happy or sensible, only busy and constantly, warily angry.The emphasis on fire power has infected the core fan base for this sort of stuff; it is not friendly from the reconnaissance I've been willing to do.   Go to YouTube for performances by Joe Satriani, Buckethead, Malmsteen and other rock technicians and then scroll down to the viewer commentaries. Sooner or later the discussions devolve to hateful flame wars regarding who is the most fleet fret monger is. I thought it had been settled in the Seventies when Johnny Winter came on the scene and showed how you could play accelerated blues and still be inventive and soulful. The topic, though, merely mutated and remains, to this day, one of the most absurd of obsessive niches in music fandom. 

Likewise, this emphasis on firepower has infected the core fan base for this sort of stuff; it is not friendly from the reconnaissance I've been willing to do.   Go to YouTube for performances by Joe Satriani, Buckethead, Malmsteen and other rock technicians and then scroll down to the viewer commentaries. Sooner or later the discussions devolve to hateful flame wars regarding who is the most fleet fret monger is. I thought it had been settled in the Seventies when Johnny Winter came on the scene and showed how you could play accelerated blues and still be inventive and soulful. The topic, though, merely mutated and remains, to this day, one of the most absurd of obsessive niches in music fandom. 

Here is as perfect demonstration of Lee's technique and style as you're likely to find. He was a solid musician and had good command . He was limited , though, and recorded several albums in a role where he offered substantially the same solo over and over. I stopped paying attention years ago. Still, the good stuff I still listen to; there is a first rate up tempo blues called "Me and My Baby" that I can't find at the moment where Lee and Co. just get into a swinging groove and play the blues naturally. His guitar work on that is bitter sweet, melodic , spare and right, in the best tradition of BB King. Would that he had done more of that kind of stuff. Meanwhile, here's his version of "Help Me". It's  as perfect demonstration of Lee's technique and style as you'll find. Even though I lost interest in his music overall decades ago, Mr. Lee deserves respect for helping to change the perception as to what a rock guitarist should be. The on going results of his innovation has given us results are both glorious and grating, but , I would argue, that is the aim of every artist who wants to be an influence, to change the way their craft is conducted. In that respect, Alvin Lee hit it out of the park.

Pat O'Brien, harmonica and guitar double threat.

I sought out Pat O'Brien on the net and after listening to some things he's done with Priests of Love and Scott Henderson, it seems that he is another case in point in how to use speedy playing techniques usefully, musically in a blues and blues/rock context. He is wickedly fast, among the fastest I've heard, and he is precise without seeming merely technically adept. He is very fine at playing a song's head arrangements in unison with his own guitar playing and whatever harmony instrument the particular ensemble happens to have, and he is simply awesome at building solos. He has control of his tone in that he warbles, vibratos, chokes, slurs and bends without nearly a vocal fluidity, and he shares with other masters like Sugar Blue and Jason Ricci the skill at building a solo.

 Below is a video of O'Brien and the POL performing Django Reinhardt's classic gypsy swing piece  "Honeysuckle Rose",  and take note of the remarkable ease with which O'Brien performs on both guitar and harmonica. The unison lines he manages on both instruments as they state the tricky, bouncy melody has grace and swing mightily. The harmonica solo is fluid, melodic and turns around sweetly; the notes sparkle and glide through the rapid chord changes with a true sense of a tuneful, inventive jazz improvisation. Not unexpectedly, the guitar that comes after the restatement of the melody is no less agile, bluesy and true to the delicate rapidity of the Reinhardt original. Harmonica musicianship this good is uncommon even in a world that at times seems crowded with one virtuoso after another.

Tension and release is the name of the game, something the truly great blues guitarists have done pat-- BB, Albert and Freddie King, Buddy Guy, Johnny Winter, Clapton. He eschews flashy lines for good parts of his improvisations and rather offers up superb note choices from lower, middle and upper registers (his glissando skills in the high notes is enough to make me put my harmonica down for a while and get schooled), long low moans, chilling chord tremolos, short, terse riffs, building to what seems to be an instinctive instance where a cathartic onslaught of fast, crazy, exhilarating lines finally achieving release.

 I have no doubt that O'Brien's demonstrated skill as a blues/rock guitarist informs his sense of how to build a blues harmonica solo. Many, many technically adept players rely on and pat phrases and convenient power moves, too often, when they take their solos (I include myself in this category); this man strikes a player who has mastered his technique to the extent that like Butterfield and Blue it becomes something akin to a speaking. The phrases are spontaneous and individual, appropriate to the material. This is not a man who has only one solo he plays over and over. Pat O'Brien was unknown to me until now, and a big thanks to Adam for posting this. O'Brien combines technique and feeling and shows here and elsewhere a flawless sense of swing. Wild and wonderful harmonica work by someone who should be much, much better known than he already is.

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Woodward's Avenue of Broken Dreams

 It was suspicious enough when journalist-author Bob Woodward inferred that an email exchange he had with a highly placed White House representative was a veiled threat against him. Did anyone believe that a Presidential staff as media savvy as the one Obama has working for him would consider even on their worst day that threatening a celebrity political reporter was even remotely a good idea? It turns out , we learn , that Woodward, who of late has be absorbed into the alternate reality known as Fox News, mis-characterized the correspondence. If that wasn't pathetic enough, Woodward took the Fox  air again to defend is original remarks about the digital digression.      He has the look of someone caught  telling a lie, a self-inflicted wound to the reputation to someone who curried favor with presidents, Supreme Court justices, Generals and other power players.   

Beyond his ability to get interviews with the most powerful people in Washington and then write best selling books about them, Bob Woodward has struck me as a glorified ambulance chaser, an eavesdropper, a gossip hound only a screen door removed from the stench. In an another life he would be hosting a TMZ variant. In an digital era when information is available immediately to anyone who seeks it and when news breaks faster than we're able to blink, Woodward, a creature of newspaper culture and the author of  books that attempted to give broader context to complex personalities, must have felt his relevance fading rapidly,badly. I can only think that appearing on  Sean Hannity's show was a way for him to stay in the game and remain in the current discussion. 

The problem, though, is that his awkward attempts to give his email exchange with his White House contact a "Fox' spin only made him a story , separate from any real journalism and perspective he might have provided. The White House release of the emails after Woodward's characterization of them as somehow menacing --they sound anything but--just makes this once highly considered writer seem like another old , tired warhorse subjecting himself to the buffoonery that is the stock-in-trade of Fox News. It is a pathetic spectacle.

True Story

Some passing thoughts on the events at work is only a grieving for the passing of notes in fifth grades when the two sisters were turned to the blackboard chalking up the High Math of The Second Coming.

It was a note Tony Graciano  penned saying that after school he was going to kick my ass because I slammed his hand in the cloak room door .I looked at Tony behind me, the note under the desk,

and he was smiling the best his gummless mouth could manage, vapors of bacon and death on his breath.

“Would you like to share that with every one, Ted?” keened a voice, piercing with a hint of whistle swirling around each slippery  ’s’ that slid against the tongue to the enamel of each capped tooth .Sister Marie, basketball tall and looking grim as grime in her stiff, consigned vestments, held out her hand, wrinkled and thick veined at the knuckles, demanding to see the note .I looked up at her, knowing   God sees everything on a too-big TV screen as wide as the sky, and then handed the note up to her.

Her. long fingers wrapped around the paper like a satchel of loving snakes.

I remember from the fourth grade that Tony had said he wanted to be a writer when asked

by a lait teacher what he wanted to be when he grew up. Why, asked the teacher, and Tony enthused over the adventure stories he liked too read, and that he wanted to write his own someday that’d be even more terrific.

Terrific, said the Teacher, Then you ought to take pride to signing your name one everything to write from now on. Tony beamed  that same gummless grin and nodded his head rapidly as though he’d just snapped a spring.

Sister Marie held Tony’s note in front of her face, an inch from her thick-lenses glasses that made her eyes seem to bulge frog like, and read the words quietly, a silent mutter moving her lips. Her face, already creased and lined with years of pure Catholic rapture, hardened even more as she lowered the paper and stared over and past me down the aisles of neatly lined school desks, her eyes finally stopping where Tony sat.

A vein popped out on her forehead. I looked back and saw Tony looking back at the sister with an innocent expression only guilty could provide. Sister Marie didn’t let him say a word.

“Mr. Graciano, into the hail, pleases, and bring your books with you”  “

She walked up the aisle briskly, as Tony stood after closing his books, and turning around for a good view, all I could see was the broad sweep of her water blue cloak spread like Superman’s’ cape that seemed to absorb Tony in whole. Next I remembered the classroom door slamming, and then there was silence, one nun and a class of scared kids observing

a ceremonial gravity. It was as though Tony had not been in the class at all, not even on the planet.

Sister John Mark, whose name I never understood, picked up a rubber tipped pointer and said “We must be well behaved when we’re learning of the good news of Christ.”

Tone is King

As regards harmonica playing, tone is technique, in my book. What's important for me isn't the amount of technique a player has, but rather the quality of what he does with it. Billy Gibbons, guitarist for ZZ Top, doesn't have a great deal of harmonica technique on their song "Waiting for the Bus", but his tone is perfect, blasting, crisp, distorted just right. The few notes he plays are punchy to say the least, precisely timed.

The same thing can be said of Taj Mahal's "Leavin' Trunk" and 'She Took the Katy"--neither are complicated, but Mahal's playing is sublime. In the solos in either song, his phrases are brief, terse, emotionally gratifying. This is a musician who, though not a virtuoso by the arbitrary standards of current thinking, still had the genius to compose memorable statements. Tone or technique isn't a real choice one needs to make, in most cases.

Tone is technique, for all reed  instruments. Technique is merely a fluent accumulation  of know-how. Tone represents the talent, the real genius to make it human, moving, worth taking note of,

The Rollilng Stones were not hippies

Honestly, I think this is one of the weakest songs from their most interesting and innovative period. The psychedelic sound and the druggy hippie vibe never suited them, and it shows in the general directionless sway of the music. So much is heaped on this track--angelic chorus, harpsichord--that is something of a bottomless pit of effects and fake sentiment. 

I doubt Jagger and Richard believed this stuff for a moment;sometimes great artists do great work in pandering to what they think is what the public flavor of the minute is,  but this happens when there is an angry energy that distances the nuanced likes of The Stones from the base sentiments the lyrics and the song's  ragged pastiche of  elements espouse. It's as if they wanted us to believe that they were on with the Haight-Ashbury thing.  Perhaps they were, though I suspect ambivalence more than belief was a more likely response from them regarding the Utopian thinking of the more addled minded in the counter culture.  

 It is interesting for historical reasons, though, one of the few times the Rolling Stones ever followed the Beatles lead for a musical idea. We can be thankful that the Stones stopped making music that reflected the way they dressed--like dandies--and returned to the rhythm and blues and cynical realism that keeps them musically brilliant and philosophically relevant. 'Musically brilliant" you repeat, eyes squinting, head skeptically tilted. Yes, emphatically . Technique is the accumulation of what ever level   of expertise you manage to make second nature in your professional-artistic skill set. Talent is something else, being that particular human element that gives the sum of one's know how  a humanity that convincingly adds some other wise inexpressible perception of existence to the common tongue. That the Stones have been able to make compelling music-randy, raucous, rude, insightful,poetic,ironic, compassionate, raging, spiritual, experimental, temperamental,even-keeled-for the better part   of a century is the expression of a genius of some sort. Precisely what kind will be the tasks of smarter critics than myself .

Think about it: how many times have we had designs, made plans, had reasonable and out-of-proportion expectations of what we thought our lives, short and long term, would amount to, only to have our daydreams thwarted in business, love, art, friendship? Plenty , I suspect.Things break, plans don't work out, people grow apart. Life, as it happens, has no interests in what plans, whatever the scale, we might have cobbled together  in order to conquer the world.

And how many times have you just sang the refrain from the Stones tune, "...you can't always get what you want..." as a means of gaining perspective. At first you might not believe it, but in time, choosing not to do drugs commit suicide, you accept the premise out  need.  A wise reflection needn't be verbose nor poetic, just direct.