SHORT RANTS FROM THE NEAR PAST, MOSTLY ABOUT MUSIC

 

There was a time when, halfway through my teen years with two years worth of blues harmonica wood- shedding behind me, I felt inferior for reasons maybe obvious, that I didn’t feel my chosen instrument was legitimate against whole orchestras of devices that could be performed without instrumentalist shame. But I got older, and I kept playing, obsessed with learning despite my minor case of self-loathing, and find myself in a position of being too old and actually too good a harmonica player to care what the rest of the universe thinks of the sounds I make. Worrying about the “relevance” of the harmonica in today's world is to miss the point entirely. The assumption behind the question--is it still relevant--implies that playing the harmonica is regarded more as a status symbol than as a tool for the legitimate and humanly necessary pursuit of making music that expresses, in music, the emotional life of the musicians playing. The question degrades the state of the instrument from being a tool to create some space for joy and wonder in the world, a thing that should be incorruptible, to that foul thing that only furthers neurotic obsessions with social standing. If one has survived the fads, concerns and the warring of stale ideologies over a long period of time, decades, say, if you've come to the point where what people think of your harmonica playing is meaningless and merely a reflection of their sense of irrelevance, then yes, harmonicas are relevant in today's world, your world, the only world that matters, finally, when you put the harmonica on the microphone and let loose with a timeless 1 1V V. Beyond that, worries about whether the instrument still matters seem a species of introspect that arises when there is nothing good on cable TV.

Some time ago, in the early internet days, I remarked on a music forum over in Salon’s old Table Talk readers comment section that I thought Mick Jagger was a horrible singer, but he was a vocalist of great genius. Stalwart Jaggernauts attacked me outright while I tried to make myself understood, but this was no use and really an event I should have seen coming. In fact, I wanted to stir up the conversation that was underway, which was a droning exchange of the usual accolades heaped on the Rolling Stones. The topic was sealed finally by forum moderators who tired of trying to control an angry mob of netizen Jagger fans poised to supply more poison posts. I should have clarified because my point is that there are white singers who have technically awful voices who brandish blues influences all the same and who have managed to fashion vocal styles that are instantly distinct, unique, recognizable. Mick Jagger is a vocalist who learned to work brilliantly with the little singing ability God deigned to give him: knowing that he didn't have the basic equipment to even come close to simulating Muddy Waters or Wilson Pickett, he did something else instead in trying to sing black and black informed music-- talk-singing, the whiny, mewling purr, the bull moose grunt, the roar, the grunts and groans, the slurs and little noises, all of which he could orchestrate into amazing, memorable performances. One Plus One (Sympathy for the Devil)Godard's film of the Stones writing, rehearsing and finally recording the song of the title, is especially good because it captures the irresolute tedium of studio existence (in between Godard's didactic absurdist sketches attempting to address the conundrum of leftist media figures being used by invisible powers to squelch true revolutionary change). More than that, we see Jagger piecing together his vocals, his mewling reading of the lyrics from the lyric sheet; his voice is awful, in its natural state. But we do witness Jagger getting bolder as the song progresses through the endless stoned jamming, a grunt added here, a raised syllable here, a wavering croon there. Finally, we are at the last take, and Jagger is seen with headphones on, isolated from the others, screaming his head off into a microphone while the instrumental playback pours forth, in what is presumably the final take. Jagger, all irony and self-awareness, created something riveting and for all time with the marginal instrument he was born with, and is part of what, I think, is a grand tradition of white performers who haven't a prayer of sounding actually black who nonetheless molded a style of black-nuanced singing that's perfectly credible: Mose Allison, Van Morrison, Felix Cavalari (Rascals), Eric Burdon (early Animals), Peter Wolf, late of the under appreciated J.Geils Band.We cannot underestimate Keith Richard's contribution to Jagger's success as a vocalist. Someone had to know how to write tunes Jagger could handle, and Keith was just the man to do it. Richard's guitar work, as well, riffs and attacks and staggers in ways that match Jagger's strutting and mincing. Writing is everything, as always.

 

 It's an inescapable fact that blues is an African American art form , as is jazz and, for that matter, rock and roll at its most vital, and that there are talented, brilliant and exciting black musicians who continue to play the music, innovate within its historical definitions and extend those definitions to keep the music contemporary, alive, and most important, relevant to the way people, players and listeners, live today. It's my belief, inscribed deeply in the most fundamental set of moral convictions I have, that to ignore the plenitude of black talent, whether they are young, middle-aged, or elderly, if you're a music editor, a record company executive, a promoter specializing in blues festivals, a club owner highlight blues and roots acts, is racism, clear and simple. Likewise, it's racism on a subtle level, but damaging all the same; a decision was made to exclude black musicians from this list. Compiling a list of the worthy is always problematic,fraught with all sorts of dangers because any number of readers can be offended for insular reasons no writer can predict. But what's offensive about this list is the laziness of the selection. I happen to like a number of the artists here and believe musicians like Black Keys, Joe Bonamassa, Susan Tedeschi and others are legitimate blues musicians.Skin color isn't their fault, and , to me,the quality of their chops and the authenticity of their feeling are "real". I will also give the writers credit for including a good number of women on the list.

Still, the lack of black musicians is inexcusable and reveals a conspicuous , egregious choice by the editors to remain loyal to their skin hue. Where was Sugar Blue? Lucky Peterson? The Eric Gale Band?Shemekia Copeland? Alvin Hart? Sapphire?Gary Clark Jr? Keb Mo? These players deserve wider recognition no less than the ones who made the list; I have a strong, strong suspicions that an inexcusable laziness directed the selection process, formed, no doubt, by a profound lack of curiosity on the part of the "critics" who, by the definition of their job, are supposed to knowledgeable and curious about things that fall outside their comfort zone. I suspect also that those making the selection were entirely white; as such,they stuck with the skin color they are most comfortable with.

 Jefferson Airplane was a side of psychedelic rock I found most appealing, being in their short-lived prime a volatile and imaginative forced marriage of folk tradition, jazzy "mystery chords", Joycean/Eliot/Huxlyian versifying, and piercing harmonies provided by the bulldozing Grace Slick and Balin's soaring, bittersweet tenor. Their albums were a fascinating, eclectic mess, indulgent and snotty and harsh; I would put them, along with the Stooges, MC5 and the Velvets, as stylistic forerunners of the punk rock anti-aesthetic. Balin was the ballast for the band, a balladeer, a genuine folk singer, a romantic who never abandoned his tendency for the oddly effective lyric that emphasized an actual relationship rather than a worldview. I liked this band up to Volunteers album.Afterward, the devolution set in, when Paul Kanter's sci-fi libertarian fantasizes turned JA into a plodding monstrosity of ego and half-measured music.

Those among the readership who followed the career arc of this band through the 60s and the 70s will recall, perhaps stifling a gag reflex, the slew of Jefferson Starship albums that evolved from the original band. It will suffice to say for this short note that the best thing the Starship ever did was recording and releasing Marty Balin's fabulous song "Miracles", a sensuous, radiant paen to making love with a partner. Alluring melody, a vocal aching with a combination of passion and a more primal lust, all of it buffeted by swirling guitar lyricism from the able-fingered Craig Chaquico. It was the best thing Jefferson Starship ever did, a masterpiece of pop-rock sexuality that rose to canonical heights over the increasing vapidity and knuckleheaded irrelevance. The band, or at least the management and record company, hung their heads in shame all the way to the bank, and it remains, I suppose, the supreme irony of things that a band beginning as Jefferson Airplane, counterculture revolutionaries singing of a society without pretense, class structure, false morality and , by implication, cash, evolved into the Jefferson Starship, a cash cow for corporate interests. So yes, money changes everything. That said, it should be mentioned that the guitar work of Jorma and Jack Cassidy's basslines were among the best teams of the era. And Balin was a fine musician, singer, and songwriter who might have done better if he had a less dicey means to bring his music to the public.

Louise Gluck, RIP

 

Sad day for poetry. 2020 Nobel Prize winner for Literature Louise Gluck (pronounced "Glick”), the first America non-songwriting poet to garner the award since T.S. Eliot in 1948. Bob Dylan, I suppose, ought to be included in that slim roster of bards, but his 2016 award in the category always smelled fishy, more an award for being famous and influential and being a musician who has made indescribable amounts of capital. Small wonder he won, as his work, whether you liked his songwriting or not, could be listened to rather than read. He deserved something of a lifetime achievement award for all the brilliant and nitwit tunes he's both blessed and cursed the world for over a half century. But he is a songwriter, a complaint I lodge often enough here, he is a songwriter and not a poet and the dimensions of what genius has displayed belong in another category. No, I do not think his lyrics transcend their genre and ascend to the vaunted standard of page poetry. If it did, they'd be giving literary awards to composers who specialized in operas . But they don't give awards meant for book writers and page poets to opera composers or songwriters, and they ought not to have given Dylan one. And for the late Gluck? She is someone I admired more than enjoyed, as I was awed by her ability to deal with the history of her own critical times without lapsing into sef-mythologizing or solipsistic meandering. Her writing was clear and lyric, her tone firm but not inflexible, and she could render her personal verse in subtle virtuoso pieces that framed her experiences as bits of recognizable mythology or graspable folk tales. Her clarity gave her best work a certain lyric sharpness not often seen among contemporary poets who, one may suggest, dress up even their good work with linguistic window dressing and fashionable tropes and phrases that age none too well. She wasn't fearing a reader finding out what she was writing about , let alone who. She was the other side of spectrum from John Ashbery, who's closed off signature style is one I sometimes favor quite a bit. But Gluck was different and she was great and now she's gone.

RANDOM FILM NOTES REDISCOVERED

I enjoyed Ridley Scott's Aliens prequel Prometheus, proposed as a first step in the franchise that would establish the beginnings of this sci-fi saga up to the point where we first meet the fabulous action-babe Ripley. Scott's return to the franchise, and to space operas in general, was a joy to behold, with great acting, stunning special effects, a fascinating premise and, yes, a general feeling of creepiness as the hoary warnings against corporate greed and attending evil are made tangible yet again. Not a perfect film, but the scale and power of the storytelling, albeit incomprehensible at times, made it an entertainment worth revisiting. Not so much for the follow-up effort, Alien:Covenant, again directed by Scott. Where Prometheus added some new twists to the Alien mythos, this new effort offers intriguing little ; it is a make – work project. We do discover the origins of the Xenomorph and are expected to marvel at their many manifestations , different kinds, shapes, purposes. But there is something dispirited about this film. There is no spectacle to speak of, no real wow factor, conditions not improved by the pacing, which is strangely led footed. Especially surprising for a director of Scott's caliber: an inconsistent director for quality, even his worse films had a great veneer and, most of , all moved well. Covenant shuffles
along.

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The movies that DC Comics have made so far in their efforts to establish their franchises in contrast to that of their competition, Marvel Comics. The uniform negative responses, to be sure, have their points that deserve to be discussed, but the wave of hate seems more a product of the internet's tendency to encourage an echo chamber effect; nervous fans, not sure of what they actually desire from a movie, suspend their critical faculties and dive head long into the noisy bull run of nay saying . Objections are over stated, insults are hurled, feelings are hurt. And still, I like what DC and Warner Brothers have done, for the most part. Not to get off on a longish defense of particular films, I will assert here that Zack Snyder is one of the few directors who gets the dynamism and flair of the graphic novel and produces resolutely beautiful and exciting action sequences, however dark and grim they may be . And, of course,, "Man of Steel" is a masterpiece, in my view. You can find my longer defense of that film elsewhere on this blog. The fact that “Wonder Woman” is presently at 94 percent critic approval on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes makes me smile. Director Patty Jenkins directs with a sure, firm and confident hand, efficiently and effectively establishing the WW mythology as it relates to a re-imagined Greek mythology, the origin story of the young girl who would become the eventual superhero, and the first adventure of Wonder Woman in full costume, in the WW 1 trenches, fighting with the British against the Germans, searching for her foe Ares,the God of War. It works remarkably well, I think. A wonderful cast featuring wonderful work from Chris Pine and Robin Wright. Gal Gadot as WW, a controversial casting when first announced, is excellent here. Athletic, naive, ironic, fierce in combat sequences and sweetly ironic in the comic parts, she turns in a star-making performance.

Active

FAST JABS:STONES, BYRDS, NEIL YOUNG'S "AFTER THE GOLDRUSH"

 

I’ve been a defender of the Stones’ late career work, admitting right off that nothing they can do will equal their best efforts of decades passed. However, the albums of more recent years have more quality than many cynics have let on. At this point, I have to evolve from my former stance that the Rolling Stones represent far less the idea that senior citizen rock musicians can still make credible rock and roll that can reflect a world view that took many decades to form. Instead, they have become an example of an institution completely irrelevant to anything that matters musically, socially, ironically. 

As more is being revealed to an aging audience and to a younger audience curious about the sort of dereliction their parents and grandparents might have indulged in youth, word is getting out that Jagger lived more on the edge than has been let on. He is portrayed as a pansexual satyr with a budget to afford his taste. This amounts to more of the old news that any dedicated listener already knows. Just as “Angry” are merely newer versions of the same riffs they deployed for decades. 

The upcoming album, Hackney Diamonds, is due to be released on October 20th, but the fact that the first single from it, "Angry"  resembles a tribute band more than anything else makes the impending release of the full album less exciting. I'm feeling just a bit of dread anticipating these elders coming around one more time, wondering how they can again make their usual riffs and tropes interesting once more.Although it does seem that they’ve had to remember how to be the Rolling Stones. In their attempt to remain relevant 23 years into the 21st century, they look kind of pathetic.

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"Eight Miles High by the Byrds, released in 1966, a brief but combustible mixture of Imagist lyrics, unusual time signatures that alternate between 5/4 and 4/4, jazz and raga overtones and guitarist Roger (née Jim) McGuinn's transcendent, Coltrane inspired solos. It's been argued that McGuinn was far out of his depth technically as he attempted the register-leaping dramatics of Coltrane's free-jazz period, but that pretty much misses the point and misses what the Byrds guitarist actually accomplished: on the twelve string Rickenbacker electric, the solo merges the open-ended flow of experimental jazz improvisation with an effective use of Ravi Shanker's raga-foundationed excursions.

It is rhythmically complex and unpredictable, and musically achieves that expansionist orientation of the most interesting rock music at the time. It may pale compared against the virtuoso furies embodied in 'Trane and Archie Shepp's work, but it is a masterpiece of rock guitar work, an experimental improvisation that set a standard for how far “out” a guitar solo could proceed beyond its blues foundation.

There were countless early experiments in mixing rock with other genres, specifically raga and jazz, and not a little hunt and peck improvisation happening during this period, the most successful efforts being the extended Bloomfield excursions on East West, Larry Coryell's invention of fusion method in the Free Spirits band, and some others, but "Eight Miles High" was a radio hit of a sort, ranking at 14 in the Billboard 100. It was banned from some stations because of the (too) obvious association with drugs, but where I was in Detroit, the tune was played much of the time on \ local AM and FM outlets. It was a surprise at the time, a song entirely unique and ahead of its time that stands as one of the artistically successful attempts at what would come to be termed fusion.

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Neil Young's sci-fi junkie lament "After the Goldrush" gets a harmonized rendition in this 1974 release. The lead vocal by Irene Hume reveals a slightly husky voice that characterizes the solo and chorus arrangement, with an appealing result that makes you think of a choir of Melanies. The power of Young's song is that it makes the whole idea of being a drug addict hallucinating in a bomb crater after a presumably nuclear apocalypse seem attractive, the perfect vehicle with which to compose stark imagery and espouse by implication what a waste the entirety of human history has been.

The undercurrent of this was that the only thing the narrator wanted from this life was love and bright, shining truth, which this catastrophe rudely made impossible. There was a vein of songwriting from Lou Reed, Joni Mitchell and the Rolling Stones that intentionally or not made drug use, addiction and just flat out being fucked- up an attractive , even morally superior state to be in; I can't speak to your experience, but I detect this song as being something of a scolding from Young to the parents of the angry young kids. "See what you made them do?!!"

Poetry and song lyrics make nothing happen, remember, that is nothing besides make listeners so inclined to feel momentarily nostalgic or even a bit guilty with how things turned out after the youthful years are spent. It allows for a momentary wallow before the citizenry presses on with family , bills, jobs they can't stand, which is another way of saying that Young's lyrics, intended as a warning and a message of spiritual importance, changed nothing in ways that counter culture utopians desired. Sing it, David Byrne, same as it ever was… .

The song is what it was always fated to be, a go-to song for a Classic Rock radio programmer. Prelude's syrupy harmonies bring a theme of ecological disaster and pharmed-out despair to the Starbucks, piped on, barely audible over the chatter and grinding of outside traffic. A perfect radio hit for the time, pleasant melody, depressed lyrics, alluring vocal craft.

IT'S ALL ABOUT CHOICES

 

Given the choice between listening to rock critics wax endlessly on garage-centric one-shot wonders who emerged from Decatur suburbs and wine critics swanning about a particular pour’s pretensions, bouquet, garish aftertaste, or the quality of the buzz it might give you, I would have to select the rock snobs, dreary as they might be or become after a duration.Rock and roll began as a legitimate grassroots alternative to the ossified white pop that had a stranglehold on post-forties pop music. Despite rock criticism’s sloven tendency toward self-fellatio, something honest, original, and artful might come through all that energy, anger, and quirkiness.Wine is merely a form of hooch. The sum of my aesthetic toward its qualitative states was whether it made me gag or went down the gullet without a fight. Art, subtlety, and self-expression had nothing to do with it. Wine was for getting a buzz, getting plastered, getting terrifically fucked up. In that sense, wine appreciation is democratic because alcoholism isn’t a respecter of race, class, gender, or sums of money one might have. The salient difference between the two is that rock and roll is something that sounds good when it is good, sober. Wine, after you quit drinking and stay sober, is just something you learn to live without and wonder how the fuck you spent so many years being wrong for so long about what a great thing spirits were to one’s quality of life.

Typing Lesson 3

Another typing lesson begins, by which I mean that it's not really a typing lesson I'm talking about, but rather an exercise to become re-acquainted with the habit of mind and task to sit at the keyboard and fill a computer screen full of words that form coherent sentences. So far, this is coherent, but it's also directionless, the point exactly of these alleged typing lessons. This places me in the odd spot of reading what I've composed so far--” composed” sounds too fine a word to apply to what I'm doing, as it suggests forethought and creation based on an actual idea, preferably new, rather than a stringing together of tropes sticky with too much varnish--as if I were the critic surveying the mess with a caustic and condemning eye. So far, so good, so far as grammatical and syntactical work goes. The question of purpose remains, however, and the sad fact of this very moment is that I need to log off and go elsewhere into the city and so leave this impractical chattering with myself in abeyance. Another potential masterpiece thwarted. But quickly, the aim of this paragraph, if any? It's a  warm up exercise for a thousand- word diatribe I will intensely cast forth anon. Stay tuned and hug your cat.

Typing lesson 2

 

Here we are again, gathered in a paragraph next to a black and white photograph of a combination check-cashing service and liquor store in the testier blocks of the beach area, writing words to a digital page only for the sake of doing something sublimely inane when inspiration is in brief supply and a sentence is only as powerful as the fingers that rattled off the nonsense. Gathered together for no good purpose, but who is the commander who informs us what the good purpose is? Here we are again in the same room at the same desk with the same plastic coffee can filled halfway with bad pennies no one has loved. In the days of my youth, we used to drive from Michigan to Martinsville, Virginia to visit our southern cousins on my mom’s side of the family. In the recollection, I remember a house in a wooded area that was mountainous to an extent, and behind my grandmother’s abode was a canyon and railroad tracks that were still active on the transportation schedules. I remember seeing boxcars and passenger cars racing past at the bottom of the ravine, a blur partially obscured by thick bramble, bushes, tree branches in full leafy glory. Cut to a drive back home to a Detroit suburb, a straight, flat highway that is wide, occasionally curving around bends and ducking under bridges, a flat stretch without end under a steel grey sky and clouds the color of white cotton that soaked up a streak of black coffee. The radio was blaring news of the war and the newspaper strike between pitchmen screaming about smashing prices and the opening bars of a Doors song before Mom turned off the radio and Dad began to sing “I Love Paris” as he tapped a beat on the steering wheel and a big grin and an interstellar glint came to his eye. The stained clouds gave the cars their burden, a hard rain and punishing wind blew cascades of water across the road that looked like small California waves. My brother and sister next to me in the back seat while I claimed my spot by the rear window. Farmhouses, abandoned tractors hurried by, factories hid behind thick groves of pine trees. Mom lit another cigarette. My sister coughed and my brother farted, a wild, rasping, snorting sound. “I love Paris in the evening…when it’s raining…” my father sang. My mother’s face was obscured by grey smoke, but she began to sing along with him. Their harmony was grating and monotonous and the highway was straight and the sky was large and filled with clouds and fleeting streaks of lightning in the distance terrorizing farm animals or the counterman at a desolate gas station and snack bar just off the expressway exit.

ROBBIE ROBERTSON, RIP: Lead guitarist and songwriter for The Band

 

Robbie Robertson was a rare bird, and it’s not likely we’ll see a comparable talent again in most of our lifetimes. As a writer, he drew from a deep and flavorful stream of musical styles–field holler work songs, country blues, gospel, old-time jazz with hints of ragtime syncopation, country and western, classic rhythm and blues, and rock and roll–and shared with his splendid Band members the ability to cogently blend the styles into an unaffected, appealing organic sound. It’s been said before, but his best songs seemed beyond era, as Robertson could have written them one hundred years ago or two weeks ago. 

They were timeless, evocative, and put one in the center of what was a vividly and deftly portrayed idea of the American South, no less so than Faulkner or Carson McCullers. His lyrics, as well, were dually colloquial and surreal, presented in different guises of melancholy, a yearning for an idealized past, or which displayed an absurdist wit. The Weight is the prize example of Robertson’s talents–a rolling piano figure never far from gospel roots, the narrative details the oddness of small-town life and provides details that suggest hallucinations of religious fervor, incest, hidden insanity. It has the power of a storyboard from which a great novel or grand motion picture can be made. One can set up a half dozen songs by the late songwriter and notice a sublime variety of situations and emotional conflict, and notice Robertson's sure-handed use of first-person narrative, in a tone where someone was speaking about the contradictory elements of their life and how, somehow, the same said narrator was applying their shoulder to the wheel all the same despite the crushing circumstances that present little likelihood of abating. 

Aspirations, love, better fortunes, happier and more fulfilling years past, Robertson's tales were of the people who fell between the cracks when good times turned ill; often enough it seemed the only reason anyone of the frequently tragic figures in the songs carry on in the grim landscape not through hope or the illusion thereof, but from memory, a nostalgia for days when existence had meaning and a personal refusal to finally die a cipher in the bleak landscape. Robertson was an artist of great and delicate talents that was a large part of why The Band is one of the greatest bands of the rock and roll era. An aspect of Robertson's years ago, that his interest was in characters who were from small towns but who had full lives and palpable experiences, speaking in their unique voices in unpretentious language that suggested full histories without an excess of grandstanding detail. His songs were monologues of a sort and were economical in the way people tend to be when recollecting the joys or heartbreaks of the lives they've lived. Robertson had a brilliance for a character sketch ; even his wordiest songs are spare, free of mood killing literary language. He could take himself out of the narrative and let his passion and concern for Southern lives come across in masterfully understated testimonials:in his best songs are a slate of first-person narrative ambiguities that can be seen as an ongoing sequence of monologues as cleanly expressed and moving as the voices rising from  beneath the tombstones in Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology. 

His art is, of course, supplemented to no end by the superb contributions of his band mates--Richard Manuel, Garth Hudson, Rick Danko, Levon Helm-- and their astounding ability to incorporate so many hard-to-assimiliate musical genres in material that made a merging of gospel, old school blues, country music and ragtime into a natural and organic expression of musical emotion are the sort of things we can study for years to come, and there will likely remain debates as to the size of the contributions the other members made to the songwriting, but for the meantime I am content to acknowledge the profundity of Robertson's contributions

Some August Beach Reading

Costello is wonderful at the heightened awareness in the ways he presents his details, his comic touches, A beautiful agent who still receives alimony checks from her smitten ex-husband carries on a correspondence with him via the memo line of the checks, where he continually writes "come back to me". She writes "No, never" each time, deposits the check, knowing that her ex will see the reply when he receives the canceled checks. The book is full of these fine touches. We have a sense that it's the small things, the small frustrations as much as the larger disasters that conspire against our happiness. A fine book. First, this author isn't to be confused with another fiction writer named Mark Costello, who is the author of two brilliant collections of short stories called The Murphy Stories and Middle Murphy. Those books, a series of related tales involving the title character, is a sort of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man for a generation growing up in Illinois, and it is one of the most beautifully written sagas of dysfunction, alcoholism, and despair I've ever come across. This Costello does things with the language that take up where prime period John Cheever or John Updike left off and offer up a virtuoso prose only a handful of lyric writers achieve; it is the brilliance and beauty of the writing that makes the unrelieved depressive atmosphere of the two books transcend their grimness. The prose in these two books demonstrates the sloppier pretender Rick Moody cannot help but seem. Buy these books and experience a devastating joy.

The other mark Costello, a younger writer, has equal genius but a different approach to the world, and his novel Big If is perfect, and what makes it works is that Costello accomplishes the dual difficulty of handing us a small town/suburban comedy the likes of John Cheever would have admired. The other is with the rich detailing of the other secret service agents who work with Vi Asplund. There is something of a domestic comedy seamlessly interwoven with a skewed Washington thriller, with the elements of each spilling over and coloring the underlying foundations of both. In the first part of the novel, we have an atheist Republican insurance investigator who has a habit of crossing out the "God" in the "In God We Trust" inscription on all his paper money, replacing the offending word with "us". Vi, years later, winds up in a job where "in us we trust" is the operating rational, as she and her fellow agents strive to protect their protected from the happenstance of crowds, acting out on intricate theories and assumptions that can only be tested in the field. 

The Other Side of the Mountain by Michael Bernanos 

Easily one of the strangest and most spellbinding novels I've read in a lifetime of reading the same said books, this short novella begins as a sea adventure, a young man who signs on to a ship's crew as a cabin boy. Things ago awry before long once the trip commences, and the tale soon turns into a horror story, depraved to the least of all hope. The ship sinks, and the boy and the ship's cook wind up marooned on an uncharted island, where nothing is where it seems. It turns into a horror fantasy at this point, the island being a malevolent intelligence, a throbbing, menacing organism. The story becomes about humanity can persevere and have its virtues surmount the evil in its presence, known and metaphysical. It's hard for me to imagine that Damon Lindelof and J.J.Abrams didn't have this tense, lyric and succinct thriller in mind when he was developing their Lost television series. This book continues to make me ponder its moral perplexity. 

The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. A healthy man goes to visit a friend who is in a mountain-based sanitarium and winds up staying in the sanitarium for seven years. During the years that follow, we witness a character's spiritual and philosophical change and come to a sense of life that eludes the overly cerebral. Thomas Mann is a magnificent writer, and this is easily one of the truly great novels of the 20th century.

Crackpots by Sara PritchardBrief, beautifully written book about an awkward young girl being raised by an eccentric family. Note that there is no child abuse or other hot button stuff engineered in to make the book appeal to the Oprah book clubs, just a humorous and bittersweet novel of a girl, beset with any number of glum circumstances and embarrassments, maturing to a resilient adult with soft irony that gets her through the day. Pritchard is especially fine as prose stylist.

Comments from the listening booth

 

The harmonies of the fabled Tremeloes stood out in a crowded field of 60s Brit Pop bands who were notable for their vocal arrangements. As we see here, the harmonies decorate, embellish, and enhance the fetching melody with colors , textures and tones of of the tongue that could have been easily transposed, I would guess, to regular instruments. Solo voice subtly joined by a chorus, combined harmonies seamlessly sliding up the scale rather than abruptly switching keyes. I overstate the case, perhaps, but I've always found their performance of this tune stunning.

Brit-pop in the 60s was a wonderland of sterling harmonies and the Hollies, Graham Nash edition, were champions at musical hooks and vocal synchronization. This punchy little masterpiece grabbed me right away back when I was but a whelp, especially the chorus, a vocal traffic jam of different melody lines stacked atop one another, going in different directions, clashing and dissonant and structurally effective, the brief miasma brought together again with Nash's high note at the end.

Neil Young's sci-fi junkie lament 'After the Goldrush" gets a harmonized rendition in this 1974 release. The lead vocal by Irene Hume reveals a slightly husky voice that characterizes the solo and chorus arrangement, with an appealing result that makes you think of a choir of Melanies . A perfect radio hit for the time, pleasant melody, depressed lyrics, alluring vocal craft.

John Lennonhad a grudge against bandmate Paul , a resentment he dutifully burnished until it was shiny like an acrylic turd, a brown and gleeming chuck of ill will. Of course
he wrote a song about it , laying everything out except Sir McCartney's name. As an issue of disrespect, it's in a class by itself, but the howler of this whole enterprise centers around the most quoted lyric, "...the only thing you did was yesterday..." The longer view of the Beatles reveals PM's contributions to the creative surges was, in fact, profound, at which point it makes me consider the idea that McCartney would likely have been a pop star of some sort without Lennon. Lennon, always a raw dog who improved vastly as a tunesmith , singer and lyricist due to his association with McCartney, would likely have had a rougher go of it.

HORTON PLAZA AS IT WAS

 

In future years, the younger folks might be nostalgic as they reminisce about the supposed fun and convenience of Horton Plaza before it eventually became a dead mall now being repurposed. The truth of the matter is that even in its prime, it was an alienated space, full of architectural distractions, detours, and dead ends that seemed designed to magnify your unease and increase your desire to escape your sense of uselessness by exhausting your credit limit and begging creditors for an increase in your credit line. I worked there for several years as a bookseller and made my number one spot to see new movies, and over time you couldn't help by note the waning numbers of people coming to the Plaza, the number of stores advertising off-Holiday Sales with things up to 70 percent off, the closing of stores and the draping of butcher paper over the display windows with a sad sign promising a new retailer coming in soon, watching the calendar pages fly away and noting again the stores were still vacant and that more stores had joined them, that Horton Plaza had become an empty series of angular paths, walkways, bridges to more locked up storefronts, a structural case of architectural schizophrenia where all the eaves, overhangs, arches and such unusual twists cast deep and despairing shadows over the dead concrete few have reason to walk. Let's add here that Horton Plaza is having the finishing touches on a very extensive and expensive reconstruction, with the leviathan being converted to a space intended to attract tech companies with a smaller contingent of retail shops and eateries to placate tourists and dedicated downtowners. How that plays out is up in the air, as there are no facts about the future. I try to be optimistic about the future of the center, but failing to find a workable and effective method to house the many homeless currently on the city streets, I can't help but think that we're setting ourselves up for a bitter and expensive failure.