two paragraps

1.The American was the first Henry James novel I read, and it's a great one, about a nouveau riche American named Christopher Newman who, on his first visit to Europe, rather naively seeks respite from the vulgarities of his native country, only to learn of the great and gross things about Europe in the course of his search. One of the first writers to deal with the American experience in the Old World, and a relevant one it remains. And I love the slippery syntax of James' prose. American business , arrogant and smug in its focus on pragmatic efficiency, meets the Old World, which hangs on to tradition , custom and class in the face of rapidly encroaching Internationalist modernism.  

    

2. I've been harsh on Ezra Pound's poetry since my first full exposure to his work in college; as a lyricist I thought he was grandiose without rhythm, diffuse without those pockets of lyric genius that make critical interpretation worth the effort, prolix without purpose. There was more poetry in his critical rants , really, and he was a good scout for poets far superior to himself. Lately, I had the idea that maybe I would revisit him by picking up the Selected Poems of Ezra Pound, the same text I used in college , and see if being forty years older has allowed me to catch up with this man's fabled genius. Two days later, the ground beneath Pound's reputation remains charred and lifeless. This crypto- fascist was as much as a poet as Trump is a brilliant business man. What those two share is one tangible skill, that of self promotion and making millions your greatness is genuine. And both, it seems, harbor an affection for political strong men.

3 HASTY PARAGRAPHS ABOUT THE WIRE AND THE SOPRANOS

Not a slam dunk choice, deciding which was he better crime series, The Wire or The Sopranos. Some hasty reflection and equivocation, of a sort, are called for..Both are crime dramas, but both are entirely different creatures and sensibilities. The Wire was complex and multi-level on the society tiers it included, like a Dickens novel. And the show was contiguous in its complicated story line; it was more in league with the tradition of the police procedural , where the actual police work was always in the forefront. Characters all had their complexities and distinct personalities, of course, which made for compelling dramatic conflict, but no situation in any of the social levels--the street, the cops, the upper class, the press, the politicians--was unrelated to the criminal activity being committed and being investigated.The Wire was a true, crime drama. 

The genius of The Sopranos was that they seemed an inspired parody of the kinds of families you find on the vintage family saga dramas on broadcast tv, but in this case it was crime families instead of oil barons. Toss in the notion that a crime boss has a therapist and we have a show whose creators take license to introduce sudden shifts in moods, style, point of view, ranging from surreal and comic, seen in their frequent use of dream sequences, to comedic, to tragic and genuinely moving, those moments when our sympathies are truly with Tony Soprano. Since the show dealt so amazingly well with the issue of loyalty to family, both real and crime, and adherence to an inverted kind of tradition and notions of the right thing to do, I would also make a tenuous connection to King Lear, with Tony as the addled , ego-driven monarch whose demands for full obedience to his skittishly arrived at decisions creates the seeds of his eventual demise,

As mentioned, the show creators also liked abrupt changes in tone, and were mindful to remind us, just when we begin to feel that Tony or any of his colleagues are redeemable and wholly sympathetic, we witness again that these people are monsters, cruel, venal, and emotionally distanced  from the harm they cause others.For complexity of story line and epic scale of narrative accomplishment, I will take The Wire. The Sopranos, though, has its own kind of genius that no other show has 

Norman Mailer's 'The Deer Park,' Discussed by David Thomson | The New Republic

Norman Mailer's 'The Deer Park,' Discussed by David Thomson | The New Republic:

The authors argues that The Deer Park was one of the best novels ever written about Hollywood. I find it less so, and lesser Mailer at that, written in a period where the divisions of what Mailer wanted to do as fiction writer hadn't yet found a workable style. At times it is succinct to the point of resembling stammering, other times the passages meant to evoke nuance, speculation, self reflection in the poetry of longer sentences are overworked, over rehearsed, bordering on purple prose. And the character names were far too ridiculous for me to not laugh when the psychologies Mailer was trying to reveal and present in conflict demanded monikers that were less distracting. Mailer was still working toward his original style. David Thomason, though, makes an intriguing case for the novel and finds that it resonates into the new century.

2 books I read while an Undergraduate

"Let be be the finale of seem..." Wallace Stevens, The Emporer of Ice Cream".

Wallace Stevens was the quintessential American Modernist, a man whose muse allowed him to consider the perfection of forms and the imperfections they garner as the human mind considers them and attempts to transform them. This is metaphysics with a memory , deconstruction with euphoric recall. There is a subdued music under the lithe lyricism of Steven's tuneful imagery, with varying degrees of joy, melancholy, desire, loss. The world he writes of is here because he was in the world. Heidegger likely would have admired Steven's reconsideration of Ideal and Idyll formations.

Read this in college both as undergraduate and graduate literature student, sociologist Goffman's "frame theory" of how people interact in various situations, people from diverse backgrounds both in public and private spaces, interacted according to what roles they were expected to play. As a curious student interested in digging a few layers deeper into the Southern and Russian novels I was reading, this analysis came in handy as a primary tool to interpret character motivation and how such characters could switch tones, loyalties, moral outlooks in short order. So far as I know, no one else, including faculty, were using Goffman or his dramatically analysis as a means to discern the narrative complexity of particular writers. In any case, I found Goffman's ideas , examples and terse writing style compelling, essential elements to interest a would be know it all.

Michelle Wolfe : This is me not giving a fuck that you don't give a fuck

I took a wait and see stance regarding comedian Michelle Wolfe in the hubbub that followed her controversial at the White House Correspondent's Dinner earlier this year, Suddenly famous, she was thrust into the spotlight for a group of jokes that impaled the reputations of President Trump and those who worked in close quarters with him. I'm hardly a Trump fan, but there was something disconcertingly sub-par about her performance; she seemed as if she'd just walked in from the bar across the street and ad-libbed a series of punchlines she thought of on her cab ride over to that imaginary tavern. Her persona was the quintessence of don't=give-a-fuck, a quality that makes hipster-ism the most repugnant quality of those under twenty-one who have a year or two of college. Maybe I was missing something, I thought. Turns out I was looking for something that wasn't there, the funny. Wolfe's Netflix show "The Break" is a dud. Her sudden fame seems more a case of a person being in exactly the right place at the right moment in history, elevating her to a pay scale far beyond what her actual talents merit. Her anti-trump, anti-racist, anti-misogynist stances don't hide her glaring problem, which is that she's not consistently funny. Little effort seems to have gone into the writing, rehearsing of the material, and that may be the point, to give the thing an air of an undergraduate box theater class project where every idea, actually funny, half-baked and dead on arrival, are tossed into a set up where flubs, awkward pauses, word slurring and cold readings from a teleprompter are supposed to add an edgy element to the proceedings. I am attracted to the idea of an anti-aesthetic, but I suspect even Brecht and Artaud would have Wolfe and her fellow fellows, of the crusted-snot nose variety, go back and learn, finally, that comedy, however pure your politics may seem, is not easy.

BIG BOSS BUBELEH

(This originally appeared in the San Diego Troubadour. Used with kind permission.)

Café Europa is a bar and restaurant tucked away between a car wash and a VFW hall on Pacific Beach’s Turquoise Street, a seldom discussed passage the forms the official border between La Jolla and the funkier beach communities to the south. It’s relative geographical obscurity is fitting, in that the Café has tried to distinguish itself from the usual PB drinkery.  Café Europa is dark in tone, deep reds and a variety of earth tones and off kilter lighting cast the room is an atmosphere evoking black and white movie, Bogart smoking cigarettes over bourbon and piano jazz in the back ground, chatter in many languages and accents floating through the air along with the seductive tones of exotic music.

Nothing quite so cinematic, in fact, but that’s what the proprietors are aiming for, and in that respect, providing something different to San Diego’s many choices of nightlife, they’ve admirably succeeded. And as atmosphere is crucial to the venue, the music as well should be unique, possessing the allure of styles oddly familiar, but distinct, different. There is no trance music, no digital disco, so simpering glum rock or agitated rap. Big Boss Bubeleh is the entertainment on this Friday night in early May.

The music stands apart from the typical razzle-dazzle pop that dominate the nightly categories of available live music. Affectionately captured on their new album “A Droite!”, Big Boss Bubeleh music is, seductive and exotic, drawing the rich and sultry traditions of East European and Russian folk music, klezmer, old time jazz and Bessie Smith era blues. Their album has original songs of alluring yet skewed charm. Their sound suggests another era, and yet the music is made contemporary, performed with élan and a sense of movement. It swings, it rocks, it grooves and morphs through a splendidly blended. Above all else, they are as fun to see live as they are engaging to listen to.

Big Boss Bubeleh hails locally from Encinitas, and centers around the husband and wife team of Yael Gmach and Vladimir Yarovinski. She was born a French Jew in Paris, France, and he was reared a Russian Jew raised in the Ukraine. As with many wonderful stories of future soul mates who meet, marry and become creative through confounding circumstances, the families of both Yael and Vlad migrated to the United States, both households eventually landing in California. They met, at last, some years ago at an event Vladdy was playing music with friends. In attendance was Yael, who was sufficiently inspired by the music the ensemble played.

Recalls Vladdy:” I was playing at an event called the Encinitas Art Works out on 101, playing with a couple of people. What we did was play music that was based on Middle Eastern and Jewish/Arabic styles, with blues influencing the whole sound. At one point the guitar player needed to take a break, so he left his guitar on the chair he was sitting in and Yael came up, picked up the guitar and began to sing and play. When she sang, we just played along. It was very sweet, very nice, and we began to play together after that. We played at the East Street Café in Encinitas.  At first, I was just playing guitar on her songs, but then we started writing together, which was important. I showed her some things on guitar, some new progressions from the blues and jazz, so she’d be able to write songs in the blues form.”

“I was trying to confuse her a little. We came with this one song which seemed impossible to play, there was a lot going on in the song, and she was forced to listen to the changes that were coming up, and she did it!  She does it, she’s great! She was playing four chord progressions, like in Israeli and French music, and my idea was to twist it a little bit and show her elements from jazz and blues, and extend more colorfully between songs. Like what you do is like extend a simple song by inserting a twelve-bar blues progression in the middle of the song, so now instead of having three or four chords, the song now has eight.”

With time, Yael and Vladdy married and increased their musical collaborations resulting in the eventual formation of Big Boss Bubeleh, with them as the creative center. To be sure, the band highlights a fine ensemble of musicians that bring their experience and personality to the uniqueness that is this band’s stock and trade. Not surprisingly, musicians this dedicated to their art are able to draw on a wealth of talent from among their friends that add flavor and texture to the intoxicating swell of sound. In live performance, Big Boss Bubeleh calls on the serenely expressive vocal talents of Daryn Belinsky and Erica Adams. On any night one happens to see them, something wonderful and unexpected might unfold, some little miracle of circumstance. Two months ago, performing at Café Europa, a touring, uniformed group of Mariachi Musicians were in the venue, instruments, and joined in, guitars and trumpets, in the extended jam Big Boss Bubeleh was already cooking on. The temperature in the room increased a tad, and couples rose from their tables to dance. Later, in late April, again at Café Europa, a trumpet player asked if he could sit in. The evening had an unexpected ten minutes of superb blues, warm, deep, mellow as light rain. The improvisational aspect of the music draws from many sources, and it’s an element that works with glorious results when musicians are into the music, in the moment.

Yael Gmach and Vlady Yarovinsky, a North County duo performing and recording under the rubric Big Boss Bubeleh, are a flavor quite apart from what one would expect from local original music. Avoiding the obvious choices of styles, flavors, and stances that local original artists might assume, these two dig into the roots music they obviously love, an intoxicating alchemy of Gypsy jazz, torch songs, blues and swing, as well as calypso and assorted Latin references. And, to be sure, the grainy textures of American music one recollects from the Ozark Mountains to the Mississippi River,

Their new release, A Droite! (a French phrase, “on the right; to the right”), brings this myriad of influences to fruitful perfection, a selection of 14 original songs that, through uncluttered instrumentation and a natural feel for the varied grooves and uncommon weave of genres, makes it easy to willingly suspend disbelief and imagine, for a while, being in an Bohemian cafe on a side street of an East European capital, getting lost in the tales and bitter sweet melodies.

Especially effective is Yael Gmach’s wonderfully adaptable vocals, at once making one think of a Dietrich-like chanteuse from the film Blue Angel, a playful, bubbling style with eccentric elongation of syllables and vocal emphasis where you don’t expect them. Her voice is a low, seductive rumble, a hook that brings you for a full measure of Old-World immersion, particularly on the song “Recalling,” an ironic recollection lessons learned in an enticing minor key, wonderfully supported by Vlady’s precise guitar work and the lyric, ironic musical elaboration by guest violinist Marguerite-Marie Sort.

“Coffee” continues the sweet otherness of this duo’s marvelous world view, a more traditionally folkie number with Yael—in another gloriously alluring accent—lists the tribulations and work ways of doing what one must do on a daily basis only to come to the reward for one’s efforts: a cup of coffee and the caffeine therein. The epiphany of this odd lyric is that a cup of coffee, for all the energy and nervousness it might jolt the nervous system with, is merely coffee, a drink over which the life’s lessons, if any, can be pondered. Again, Sort’s violin commentary over Yael’s wide-eyed vocals lures you even deeper, closer into this unique world. Relatebly exotic, honestly off-beat, funny, and ingratiatingly wise in ways that suggests a intimate sharing among friends, Big Boss Bubeleh’s A Droite! has an effortless and persuasive eclecticism that makes this one of the most delightful entertainments I’ve encountered for a good while.

Says Vladdy of all this music making:

“Many like to stretch, to improvise, to let it breathe. You create cues, places other musicians recognize, and you’re able after a while to stretch the songs into a natural. Extending the songs, improvising around the changes, was something I picked up in playing with reggae musicians. I played with a reggae band from Barbados. It helped me keep a groove going, when it happened.”

The musical connection between Yael and Vladdy seems extra sensory at times. Yael tries her best to describe on why their musical bond is as strong as it is:

“ We meet on the Jewish Side. My dad survived the Holocaust, and at the deepest level of it all is just the joy of living. My father feels a profound joy in being alive. He has the French joi de vivre. I am pretty sure it’s the result that at four years he saw the horrors and maybe his brain said okay, what else can be as awful as that? So, he feels joy in being alive.  Vladimir has the same upbringing; his mother and father survived the Holocaust. So, the music we play is the feature of Jewish people, like black people with the blues, you know?    I would adapt Russian chord progressions, I didn’t even know what they chord were, but I would feel them out on guitar, it was a natural thing. And since I became a musician I noticed that a normal American doesn’t understand those notes or the feelings, they’re not with it. They don’t know the breaks or understand them, Americans don’t know when a song changes back to A minor and gives us the mood of the song a twist.

Vladimir is the one who introduced to how poetry has a relationship to the song, how it applies to the rhythm of the song, and how it can make something into the sort of universal song you’re grateful someone about grass or wind, something, making something common seem profound. He has that ability. As a young man he was considered a fine poet in Russia, he went to a special school for having the ability to write the way he did. BBB has the elements of me and Vladimir, who is kind of the old tree, who is obviously beautiful, Just old…. He’s an old soul. And it’s just that he’s an old soul, because he’s been focused on music for so many years without deviating into drugs or anything else. Never deviated, never bored with the Beatles, he was always gathering more information about music and musicians. It’s like anthropology and music when you meet Vladimir. You would not be bored for a week.  Our relationship is because of music, and that’s because Vladimir is of music. That’s really what he wants to do all day, play music with friends. If you’re hanging out with him, you’ll be playing music.”

At one point, Yael deftly explains her attraction music and her desire to make music and write songs.”.  I realize it’s a language and its one I wanted to learn. My influences growing up in a Jewish family, whether singing, playing. The whole family sang. I was born in Paris, France. It’s a French-Jewish upbringing. By the time we got to the United States, I had listened to everyone in the Eighties, like Duran Duran in rock and roll. They were cute boys. At some point I picked up the guitar learned to play James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, it was like holding a magic wand, when you got the feeling inside you want to release, and it does the same thing for everyone around you. You can feel it. I see it in people who are getting into the song.  I had discovered the feeling of being able to be a songwriter. It was a life change. I the first song I wrote by myself was “Song for Easy”, who is my niece. Suddenly, at the age of 38, I realize there was a new life that was going to be born to by little sister and her husband, it was there was this new life growing in my little sister. I put it out there about what life means to me…. It was amazing, it was like my first child, in a way. I felt like I’d a contribution somehow. How did I feel about that, after I wrote the song and performed it? It was like trees…I just looked suddenly. I was always planted, but after I wrote the song for my niece, I felt even more planted but also…beautiful. I felt as though I made a contribution.”

  

Contribute she did and continues to so with husband Vladdy in the wonderful troupe Big Boss Bubeleh, aided by a splendidly diverse and gifted support cast.

Big Boss Bubeleh plays frequently at Café Europa in Pacific Beach and at select venues through out the county. “A Droite!” is available from CD Baby.

MUSIC YOU CANNOT ADMIT YOU EVER LIKED

Seriousness shanghaied the joy of rock and roll and used it to wipe its furrowed rear. The worst offenders are the truly repellent likes of Yes, Gentle Giant, Jethro Tull, those bands with wind-up toy time signatures, castrati vocalists, and reams of wretchedly vacant philosophizing that was so steeped in skull-fuckingly dull cliches that I suspect even Rod McKuen and Edgar Guest would call these guys grunting, formless worms choking down their own fecal trails. Still, I think some of this ambitious stuff works on their own terms--King Crimson, The Mothers of Invention, Captain Beefheart, and his Magic Band. The lyrics from all three bands were idiosyncratic and free of pud-wilting platitudes. Overall, the music for the three of them was unique and entirely original blends of marginal influences that, when stirred the right way, created something just as authentic. Peter Townsend had been called an intellectual so often by both the rock and the mainstream press that I suspect he came to believe and sought to live up the image of the Thinking Artist. The irony was that he already was doing Art, a unique and original kind of music; his sagging jockstrap of an ego trip with Quadrophenia robbed him of that talent. He never got his groove back. I do think good rock and pop musicians and songwriters can be taken seriously to a degree. Still, there is always the danger of pomposity and self-congratulating bombast, the inflated sense of importance that nearly always saps the music of genuine inspiration and vitality. Yes, even the best of our generation's singer-songwriters have been maudlin, precious, and bordering on hard-edged baloney-mongering. But they have a knack, in general, to recover from their worst work and give us something actually inspired, focused, full of conviction. Still, others have not regrouped from their worst efforts. Sting, post-Police, is an autodidactic tourist in other cultures' music; he is lost in his pretensions, lost to us. Joni Mitchell decided she wanted to be a composer and a poet of a highly diffuse, Eliot ilk and tried to merge meandering imagery with poorly conceived, Mingus-inspired impressionism; she has been minor league ever since. Peter Gabriel, in turn, has been largely quiet on the solo front and involved himself instead in other projects; this keeps our memory of his music a fond one.