1/5/09
The Good Die Young (Always)
There is a war between what's good and what isn't. In the conflict, both sides take casualties.
Sometimes we get them, and sometimes they get us. And when they get us, it really hurts.
There are good reasons for the pain. One of them follows the old saying that I've quoted in the title. It doesn't matter if the good in question die at the age of nine or at ninety -- whenever they leave us, it's still too soon.
And it seems The Good that evil hits are all of a piece: they are the ones who are really innocent, really sweet, really nice, really the type of person it hurts like hell itself to end up missing. All the while the rest of us -- the ones not always so nice, not always so sweet, not always so kind -- are left behind to feel the hurt. As well as the blame.
We are at fault in this awful war. We are the ones who didn't think to throw that switch in time, who failed to look behind us when we were supposed to have, who didn't realize that person (of all people!) was the one the Big Bad was gunning for, who refused to see how the Big Bad and his friends exploit us to get to the very ones on our side who are most vulnerable. And so forth, and so on.
It's that way because the Big Bad is a f***ing coward. He hits the nicest people because they're the easiest targets. He gets them when the rest of us aren't even looking. It usually happens while we are standing around congratulating each other on what good people we are (when, in fact, we aren't all that good). It happens when we could have made a difference, but we didn't.
That's the way it works, friends. In the aftermath, we often grieve by recrimination: "It's his fault," "It's my fault," "It's their fault."
OK, so we're right about something, for once. Yet, we can miss the real lesson in the tragedy.
We, the Semi-Good, are often cowards, too. We also nail the easy targets on Big Bad's team. And when he fires back, he employs the ones on his side we never seem to notice -- until it's too late.
Then it's hell bringing the Big Bad's best employees to justice. We have to redouble our efforts to get them, when all it would have taken was a stitch in time to have saved nine (or more) of our best and our brightest.
All this sounds like even greater recrimination! In a way, I guess it is. But nothing changes the reality that we are at war, and the other side is better at it than we are. Obviously better.
We've got to get better than him (the Big Bad, that is). There's no question about that.
But there's an irony here: the better we get, the more vulnerable we become. Is there an answer, besides just throwing in the towel?
Yes, I believe there is an answer.
The good are gone because they were good. They were not victims, and they are not martyrs. They are heroes who took bullets meant for us. Losing them, while it is hard as hell to take, should not dispirit us. Instead, our losses should inspire us.
Those we lost have won the war, in the truest sense.
And they got to go home early.
1/7/09
"He got caught in the spot ... light!"
This band had almost the reverse fortunes of the band I (re)posted on a week ago. Yet, they remain just as unforgettable.
They were just known as The Band. I bought their LP called, yes, "The Band" right after reading about them in Time magazine. This band made the cover of the periodical, as I recall, and I just went back to the newsstand/record store in our little town and used my Christmas money to buy it.
I never used to do that. I'd always listen for a song or two on the radio first, then wait for the hallway buzz on the album at school. The kids with older brothers and sisters might have gotten a copy just to hear what it was like, while I could not afford to be that reckless. I had to add to my collection with care, both for my "rep" and my wallet.
But this was different. You never heard of a hippie rock band getting this kind of article in a national magazine, unless it was the Beatles or the Stones or someone like that.
What was different? I found out when I dropped the needle on this disc. My jaw fell open. I could not believe it!
Here was Our Music -- the South's own music, the real thing, in a musical amalgam never heard before -- and I'd been listening! I was not familiar then with The Band's first LP, Music From Big Pink. I recall now thinking of the earlier record as what we would today call an "indie" release, although I don't recall the label it was on. "The Band" was The Band's first major-label recording (as I thought of it then), and there was just nothing like it.
A song from the LP was already on the radio, but I disliked it so much at first I just never sought out the name of the group who recorded it. "Up on Cripple Creek" is a cold classic -- I can't find words to describe it, exactly. You just have to hear it for yourself.
In the context of the LP, "Cripple Creek" made sense, and I learned to love it. Getting a song like that on the charts at all was a landmark accomplishment, even then. But The Band failed to repeat the enormous success of its first major LP.
Oddly, I read an article regarding the 30th anniversary of the LP in one of those home-recording magazines that claimed the members of The Band pretty much recorded The Band on their own. They, as I recall reading, did not like the treatment the got at the studio at which they recorded "Big Pink," and just did the next one on their own.
The follow up to The Band was a record called Stage Fright. Full of catchy tunes (part of the title song is playing in my head now, as referenced by this post's title, and I gave away the LP ages ago!), none of the songs caught on publicly, and I was the only kid in school who even knew about it. In retrospect, it sounded like a major-label record. So probably did the third record in the major-label series. I don't even recall the title. All I remember is recommending The Band (the band) to a friend. He bought that third LP with the name I've since forgotten, and he basically never spoke to me again. Apparently that LP was really bad. Maybe not. No one else I ever spoke with about music ever mentioned that third major-label LP. I do recall reading that the label spent some money on it, though.
As I mentioned re: U2, that band's third major-label LP was the mega-hit cultural bombshell War. It has the same iconic status as the LP The Band, but the people who laid it to tape it pretty much inverted U2's recording history, at least as I recall it now.
What's really odd is that The Band as a group created a sound that really no one I can think of has ever successfully imitated, while I can think of many bands that have borrowed ideas from U2. Not being a musician, my view on it is probably off-base. But I just have never heard anything like The Band since.
Why am I mentioning this now, after Monday's rather intense post? There's a song that (to me) offers healing on The Band that I can recommend. It's called "Whispering Pines."
Yes, it's an iTunes Plus offering. I checked. ;)
P.S.: I'm posting this post script he day after I posted the above. I had an opportunity to re-hear The Band since, and it occurred to me that some kinder, gentler among you readers might be offended by some of the songs (Joan Baez covered "The Night They Drove ... " so feminists of her era were not offended, apparently). The context I referred to was lyrical: The Band crafted most of the songs with words from their (and my) grandparents' or even great-grandparents' generations. I think that's partly what made The Band seem so funny, and so touching, when I first heard it.
1/9/09
Further Notes on a Legend
Yes, I -do- realize a legendary record producer also worked on The Band's "The Band."
That's not all. The song that delivered the real impact for me as a teen was "Unfaithful Servant." It, like the song I have referred to on Pet Sounds that hit me hard, did so while I was -- it seems in retrospect -- unbelievably young. I bought the album in the winter of 1970, when I would have just turned 15. BTW, if you listen to the "crying" vocal chorus on "Unfaithful Servant" you may hear familiar harmonies from that other iconic recording.
I am probably speaking out of turn here, but it occurred to me many years ago that some of Robbie Robertson's songs from that era have well-defined characters, even with names: Fanny from "The Weight" (on Music from Big Pink) Molly from "Across the Great Divide" and Bessie from "Up on Cripple Creek." I've often wondered if these songs may form part of a story or stories. Hmmm ... .
1/12/09
"Whoa, I thought that one was ...!:
This is a repost of one I've referred to in the past, thinking it was still on my LJ. It's about the blues. It was originally posted Jan. 5, 2007.
It turns out I pulled a lot more down than I thought I did. :\
Much cooler, cloudy early, then clearer.
On a tip from a friend, I started buying records at the Western Auto store. Now defunct (I think), Western Auto went from being an auto parts store to general hardware to home appliances, which eventually included TVs and stereos. So, if you're selling stereos, you're selling records too! I'd never realized this, but once I started walking to work (my dad's department store), I used to hit the local newsstand/book/record store first. The record buyer was the owner's wife, who let her tastes (country, bluegrass) dominate the store's small collection. Rock and soul were added just to make some extra money. So, much of the really good records, I learned from the friend, were actually at the Western Auto store. Plus, they were eager to make special orders -- something the other place (as I recall) refused to do, except for bluegrass records.
So, that's where I got the "rap" of the 60s. I don't mean the late James Brown's inventive forays into his genre, but the type of music that white teenage boys bought at that time to secretly rebel against the authority of their elders. Chess Records (the late 60s/early 70s incarnation) hopped on this trend by packaging "greatest hits" of their biggest acts of yore. They were sometimes known as the "aka" series, after the police abbreviation for aliases -- it stood for "also known as." There was "McKinley Morganfield -- aka Muddy Waters" and "Chester Burnett -- aka Howlin' Wolf" among others. But there was one that didn't have an "aka" in the title. It was simply "John Lee Hooker."
While most of the other Chicago bluesmen fronted bands, John Lee Hooker played solo. The only accompaniment he had, besides guitar, was a warped board he stomped on. He played electric guitar so loud it just about tore the needle off the track, and he would roar rather than wail the blues. Or sometimes just mutter.
The records were always in double sets, with a fold-out full of commentary and history about the blues artist. The guy who wrote John Lee Hooker's liner notes went to great lengths to explain why he was a solo artist: but it basically was that nobody either wanted to play with him or could. I remember trying to figure out what the liner note writer meant by John Lee's "modal" blues. What it meant in fact was that a bluesman like John Lee was a kind of house entertainer, and he had to keep things interesting. He would play something, then change it, and then play something else, and then change that, and then maybe "rap" some, and then go back to what he was doing before, but different -- or just suddenly stop. On a chord you don't normally expect anyone to stop on. Kind of like me ending a sentence with ... .
Hooker did have some accompaniment on some cuts -- but it sounded like they were playing on tip-toe, waiting for John Lee to just up and change something without any cue or warning whatsoever. John Lee was all about the "folk blues" -- stuff so ragged and raw that most kids wouldn't listen to it. I couldn't get enough of "Boogie Chillun" or "Don't Turn Me From Your Door." One cut, his version of the traditional "Sugar Mama" was reportedly recorded in a bathroom to get an echo effect. With John Lee's guitar turned all the way up, it sounded like he was singing (more like yelling) from the gates of Hell. The effect was hypnotic and chilling (or maybe "chillin'").
The refined "club" blues of today makes its artists more money, I'm sure. But they simply don't compare to the raw power of Delta folk blues with the guitar plugged in. I didn't buy the retrospective album of John Lee's recorded near the end of his life, but I heard a few cuts. Respectful and sincere, but not the intensity of John Lee from that Chess compilation.
1/29/09
The Sacred Dead Are Here To Help The Living (Always)
When we feel we are alone, we are not. We are with those who left us too soon, whatever time that was.
Actually, they are with us. And they will be with us forever. When we who are dead to the earthly living awaken to the life we have always known somewhere and somewhen, we will be solid as marble with those we have always loved, and will love forever.
We do not see here and now what we need to see to accomplish this miracle. It is not yet time and place to do that, and it cannot be done by us.
We must wait. And while we wait, we must watch. And while we watch, we must fight. And while we fight, we must pray. No one said this would be easy. If it was, it would not raise in us what must be raised, challenge in us what must be challenged, birth in us what must be born.
And what must be born is who we really are. Who we are meant to be.
From always.
Everywhere
At once
2/17/09
The Sacred Dead Can Help In More Ways Than One (Always)
You just have to let them.
I hope nobody I care about bought the baloney I've been putting in here lately. I'm not "chosen" (that I know of), I haven't been communing with the dead (that I'm aware of) and books haven't been talking to me (though I thought I explained that one).
It's been a few tough weeks for me, for a number of reasons. Part of the need I've had to blow off steam has been used in writing baloney in this particular post.
Some of what I've written may have been true, some of it possibly exaggerated, and some of it was certainly nonsense.
I wasn't having fun pulling anyone's leg, though. It was more my unconscious mind having fun pulling mine -- and if you feel it was done at your expense, please accept my apologies.
I really do feel the collective unconscious (a term "owned" by a Swiss psychiarist [or psychoanalyst, if you prefer] but conceptually known and written about for centuries prior to his time) holds resonance from many things -- people we've known and who will have known us when we're gone, events that have happened and that have not (yet, anyway) as well as the possibilities of people, places and things that will never find their way into The Real World (not the reality show, but the show of reality).
I guess my belief officially means I'm crazy. OK, if that's the case, I'll say "amen." But there are lots of crazy things I don't buy into -- reincarnation/past lives, Ouiji boards, palmistry, and all sorts of other stuff I think is nothing.
Lots of things get tossed into that vague category called "spirituality" that are pure bunk. Mainly, "spirituality" itself often is a term theologians use to describe religious experience they can't define (or even have in some cases, apparently).
But, on the other hand, the bunkum of "spirituality" doesn't mean that theology is the only valid religious science.
There's more to what people who are genuinely religious (without being sanctimonious -- no truly religious person I know is like that) genuinely feel than is commonly known, and which theology just doesn't describe.
I guess if there's been a point to all these "... (Always)" posts, that's been it.
And I still feel The Sacred Dead Can Help In More Ways Than One -- because they just did.
Whew! That took awhile!
2/25/09
"Flat as a ... ."
In Rio de Janiero and New Orleans, they have giant street fiestas for Fat Tuesday. In Episcopal churches hereabouts, they eat pancakes for supper.
No, I'm not kidding.
I switched to a one-man ice cream party years ago, after I found out the hard way about the pecking order of pancakes on Maple Syrup Tuesday. I kept wondering why I'd show up on time but get one dried-out burned-up left-over pancake with a near-empty bottle of syrup -- "sorry, we're all out!" -- till finally one night I left and snuck back in through a side door and peeked through another door left slightly ajar. As the piles of fresh flapjacks and bottles of syrup passed by, I thought, "OK ... " and left quietly the way I came.
When I returned to my solitary apartment later that night, I decided to transmute my frustration to creative dissatisfaction. So I walked in the bedroom door, took off my coat, booted my PC and the following monolog emerged -- by what means I leave up to you.
I think it's supposed to be in the dialect of a Piedmont or Midlands Carolina (which one depends on whether said Carolinian is North or South) street character who has somehow ended up in the pulpit for Ash Wednesday.
“It's all about dust, y' know? It's what we get stuck in our noses and makes us sneeze. It's what we try to get rid of, if we're good at keepin' house. It's what lays around and makes everythin' look like a mess, if we're not. It's what we pull off dryer filters and what gets kicked up in a fight. It's what we come from and what we're to become one day, probably before we're ready.
“But back there in the rear pews, where we normally sit -- y'all r'member, don'tcha? 'We' is me, myself and I -- we have us a theory. It goes somethin' like this: dust is good. The universe is made of it -- it's full of it, in fact. Suns, planets, moons and pretty much everythin' else started out as dust. What didn't get made into balls of fire or mud is still out there. We call it 'interstellar dust'. It attracts and repels magnetic forces, begins to create heat and give off radiation, starts t' gravitate, and then gets hotter and hotter and hotter until - WHAM!
“This is not why we figure that dust is good, though. 'Cause it's still just dust. What we think is this: dust is good, because dust is God. Now that sounds pretty heretical, if not downright tactless. 'Cause God is supposed to be light, love and all that, not somethin' you want to wipe off, suck up or sweep out. Well, we don't disagree with that feelin', really. But the idea kinda clings, if you think about it some more.
“You see, dust is real. There's no denyin' that dust is dust. There's no escapin' it, either. There's no ignorin' it, without consequences, and there's no makin' light of it. It's dust, and it's common -- but that's because it's everywhere! Dust is the stuff of the universe, because that's what God became to make the universe be.
"Without dust, there would be no light. Without dust, there would be no darkness. Without dust, there would be no form. Without dust, there would be no formlessness. In fact, without dust, there would be no bein' at all. God needed to become dust, because dust has no qualities other than dustiness. It's tiny, but it can form galaxies. It seems to come from nowhere in no time (just try to keep some furniture dusted, if you don't believe me), but it's there in time and space just the same.
“Dust is God revealed in space and time. Dust is Truth revealin' itself. Dust is Love becomin' reality by makin' reality real. Dust is the Other emanated into the continuum, yet dust is us. Dust links the Creator and the created, and by comin' from it and returnin' to it, we rejoin the Creator.
“There's no life without dust. There's no love without dust. There is nothing at all, without dust. Though without dust, there would still be God. That statement is impossible to imagine, based on what we've just told you, which is why, in this case, it's true.
“Jus' somethin' for ya'll to think about while you're standin' in line, waitin' to get some dust rubbed on your foreheads.”
2/27/09
Ground Control
In my fuzzy memory, the song is really a part of the 1970s, though I understand it was released in 1969.
And it's come around again, this time in a car advertisement.
In the ad, a portion of "Space Oddity" is sung by Cat Power with an otherwordly delivery and an arrangement that really nails the "lift-off" start, after the countdown intro.
I understand that Cat Power recorded only the part of the song that's in the commercial. I guess you can decide for yourself if she should record the rest.
If so, it may be a challenge for the former Riot Grrl (though I think she's fully capable), because (to me) "Space Oddity" remains The Song That Can't Be Covered. Its apparent straightforward simplicity disguises a subtle masterpiece from Ziggy Stardust.
I say "Ziggy" because David Bowie's persona may actually be the narrator of the story in the song. I won't spoil things for those of you unfamilar with "Space Oddity" but I can assure you it's worth your while listening to it, even now.
The song was released right around the time Stanley Kubrick's movie "2001: A Space Odyssey" and was obviously meant as a kind of commentary on some of the concepts within the film.
I remember seeing the movie as a 13-year-old in what we would now describe as a wide-screen theater (the only kind, back then). The movie was fabulous, but kind of shocking: "You mean a computer would actually kill a spaceman?"
Now, thanks to "The Terminator" and the Cylons of "Battlestar Galactica" that idea is part of our common parlance. Then, (to me) it was unsettling.
Bowie's song doesn't deal with that particular theme. He has his own take on man vs. machine, and his personal stamp makes "A Space Oddity" work.
It might be worth noting that men back then had loyalty to a given brand of dress shirt -- Creighton, Hathaway, Arrow, etc. That refers to a line in the song that may be a little dated in phrasing, but one that effectively makes the point that Ground Control is already after Major Tom for a product endorsement before he's even completed the mission.
The ever-so slightly off-beat handclaps to Mick Ronson's acoustic guitar chops, the elegant synth motifs, Bowie's almost operatic touches as the voice of Ground Control and many other little details -- all part of the impact of the Bowie original.
I'd very much like to hear Cat Power drive the tune the rest of the way, her way.
3/2/09
" ... Sitting in my tin can/High above the moon ... "
It turns out there is good reason for the memory fuzz.
I will refer you to the "Space Oddity" entry at Wikipedia.org for the full and convoluted story of the Bowie song's recording history.
To sum up, the song was a part of the 1970s cultural iconography -- in the US.
And it's true, apparently, that the song was not some take-off (no pun consciously intended) on the Kubrick movie, but instead with the Apollo 11 moon mission.
What's doubly interesting to me is that the UK version of the song is part of Bowie's career as a singer-songwriter, long hair and acoustic guitar and all. US music fans for the most part (my age, anyway) know of Bowie mainly from his career in "space rock" or "glitter rock" or what have you.
The 60's folkie and the 70's stadium rocker are from very different parts of this genius's career. Maybe Bowie's range is part of the reason his more knowledgeable fans in the UK have such high regard for his musicianship.
Most of my previous entry is wrong, but in a kind of understandable way. (Ziggy Stardust wasn't created until years after "Space Oddity" was first recorded, and Mick Ronson was not part of Bowie's band in 1969, either. But Ziggy and the US release of "Space Oddity" landed Stateside at roughly the same time.)
If my earlier post has any value, it may be for the impact Bowie had on someone in the US whose ear was fastened to the radio, searching for signals from beyond his little world.
At any rate, that impact was positive, as far as I'm concerned. Thanks, David.
The truth is, when I first heard the Cat Power version, I thought "Coheed and Cambria!" Just shows what I know. (*groans and shakes head at own ignorance*)
3/3/09
AKA Writers Block
My username {mercurius_21} comes from my reading years ago of "Memories, Dreams, Reflections" by that well-known Gnostic, Carl Jung.
Mercurius is just the Latin form of the name of the god Mercury. Jung used the name to refer to the unconscious mind's ability to rapidly pass from one memory, dream or reflection to another, granting the person having those mental sensations some insights into his or her true personality.
The number 21 is meant to refer to my LJ's theme of returning to the memories, dreams and reflections of a particular chronological age as a locus for those "mercurial" insights.
In my culture, a boy is said to become fully a man at 21. So that's the time I focused on when I started the LJ.
BTW, my personal beliefs are closer to those of someone like C.S. Lewis. But that doesn't mean I automatically agree or disagree with either author. I have read them both for what they have to say to me, and I have benefited from both.
3/6/09
The Love of My Life
I haven't written much about this subject, especially lately. But I think it's time to address it.
"It" is all about my greatest love affair ever.
I don't think of myself as a "bibliophile." One who spends all his time in libraries or used bookstores (I like both, but there are limits), won't think of ever giving one away, has millions at home, etc.
I only own a couple hundred or so. I've given away or donated about that many more. Some keepsakes and otherwise hard-to-find books from college are my only regrets there.
I've been attracted to the idea of owning only a handful of really useful books -- but there are limits to that notion, too.
For instance, your needs vary as you age. Some books lose their usefulness as you grow older (or better, in certain respects). Also, some of the books you thought you'd never need again (the ones that didn't make some collegiate "desert island" booklist) proved to be the ones you ended up missing years after they went to the church booksale.
What has happened in recent years (the last 15 or so) is that my reading has taken on a life of its own. In other words, I can trace a certain line of reading interest from Memories, Dreams, Reflections (for instance) to what I read the year after that, and after that and all the way to now.
Few books I've taken up fit neatly into some compartment or category. But the threads are there, nonetheless.
In regard to the particular thread I mentioned, it actually began when I took up Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet -- a book that's not really about poetry at all. At the time, for me, it was more about self-therapy.
The Jung book was next, then a desire to get a book on archetypes. I ran across The Tarot of the Bohemians by an author who died in WW I (forget his name -- he used a pen name for that book, anyway.)
The citations in that book to the ideas of a 19th Century Kabbalist named Eliaphas Levi (going strictly from memory here) led me to learn that his books were practically unobtainable to ordinary folks living many miles from academic libraries (this was many years before Amazon). So I bought books by a modern author on the subject, a man who uses the English name Warren Kenton.
That led me to books by ... (OK, that's another post or two or three).
But I wouldn't have read Rilke with any depth had I not loved the epistolary fiction I'd read as a student. This love goes all the way back to the short story "Flowers for Algernon" I'd read as a teen.
I guess the love really is not for books, after all. It's for reading itself. A love of reading is an absolute requirement for writing well. There's not much of a way around it.
So it's with pleasure I read (on the internet) about the updated Kindle -- a device I kind of predicted in "My Dream Machine" post back in 2007. I realize that many professional writers may look on such a thing with horror, but I suspect that things eventually may be worked out for copyrighted material.
To me, the Kindle just means another way to read. And that's what I love.
I really like books. But I love reading.
How do I know this is my greatest love affair ever? (In this world, anyway. *smiles*)
I know because I started reading when I was only three years old.
3/21/09
The Sacred Dead Are The Gold In Our Veins (Always)
We belong to those that have come before us. We owe ourselves to those that come after. It is lonely out here on this desert floor of hate, but we are not alone.
All the value we possess is our trust. We are its trustees, its keepers for our time to the Trusted One. And we who are living need each other always.
Our communion is the silver chain that holds us, one to another. And the sacred dead are forever the gold in our veins.
We cannot blame ourselves for what others have done, though we must accept our insufficiency alone. We may not forget our private need to be who we are, but who we are apart means nothing. We hold meaning when we hold each other together, and only then.
Are we sinners? Individually, we are. Are we saints? Together, we may be.
Our errors are our stain. Our love for one another is our shrift. Our sacred dead are our succor. And our salvation lives by One who forges the gold within His holy ring of fire.
Let us enter that fire, if only in remembrance. Let us forget our fear of burning, if only to honor those we have lost whom we love. Let us remember our trust, so we may permit the flame to inspire us through His holy Breath.
Enflamed, we will know.
We will know our knowledge is our love.
And our love is together.
Let us remember never to forget.
It is our choice. And our choice is the seed this desert needs to flower our hope forever.
Forever -- when and where the sacred dead are the gold in our veins.
3/23/09
" ... two riders were approaching ... "
SPOILERS BEGIN
I'm going to stick my neck out and comment on a recently ended television series, without having seen all the eps.
CAUTION: THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THOSE WHO HAVE NOT SEEN THE LAST EPISODE OF "BATTLESTAR GALACTICA"!!!!I was really impressed with the overall quality of BSG, having seen the last two seasons (minus an ep or two) live and the first season on disc.
The eps I missed may have been pivotal, but I pretty much followed the story track OK without them. And I have to say it's all good, even though my built-in Gnostic Detector sounded off now and then.
The final show left a few threads hanging, but they are ones that may never be resolved. Like the final ep of "The Prisoner" back in the 1960s, those threads are probably best left to the viewer to have fun figuring out themselves. (The one I liked best was the flashback on Admiral Adama in civvies being interviewed for some political post. EJO did a great job of making his character try to hide looking nervous at being asked whether or not he was a Cylon.)
Gnostics (self-named for the Greek word for "knowledge") believe(d) that an evil archangel killed God shortly after creation and took His place, but that some good archangels survived and went underground after that, who continue to appear on Earth in hybrid human-angel form to help humanity from time to time. Called "aeons" they are usually known (only by Gnostics -- get it?) for their ability to vanish when they feel their job on Earth is done.
I don't buy any of the Gnostic "mythos" -- but I have to admit their stuff is sometimes fun to read (hence my remarks re: Jung a few posts back, and Philip Pullman about a year ago).
My Gnostic detector went off nice and loud when Starbuck vanished after Lee Adama sounded like he was going to be OK: "I just want to explore!"
It also buzzed when the Platinum Blond Cylon in the Red Dress (she went through so many transformations and names that I got very lost on that) told Baltar that "you know he doesn't like that name" when B. refers to his supreme one as "God."
There are lots of ways to interpret that, and it's fun thinking about the implications (at least to me). However, I recall reading that some Gnostics believed in various names for this evil archangel ("Satan" wasn't one of them, though, AFAIK), and that some kind of male/female dual spirit often was involved in doing his bidding.
I also liked the scene with the humanoid (!) beings already present on Earth (ours? theirs?) -- they were seen only from a distance and looked pretty Hunter-Gatherer Human to me. The shots of Primitive Earth (Two?) were just stunning, and it added a lot to the sense of "end-of-journey" finality to the story.
I could be wrong about all these observations. I leave it to the true BSG scholars to correct me, or refute me, as they feel necessary. However, this was my honest reaction to the ending.
Good stories are fun. Sometimes they can tell us lots about ourselves and others. They can comfort us, disturb us or make us question long-held assumptions and thereby teach us. I think BSG did a good job with its message of Nature vs. The Machine, especially re: the real meaning behind robotics and artificial intelligence. (Remember, Galactica survived the initial Cylon attack because Adama refused to network its onboard computers.)
But there's a limit to what stories can do. And we need to keep that in mind when we start to sound like Jung or Joseph Campbell (whose work I respect).
I love good stories, and I always have. But ever since I got teased (I think I was, like, 11 or maybe 12) by a peer for taking the mythos in Marvel's "Thor" comic a bit too seriously, I've tried to stay pretty solid on the difference between fact and fancy.
What my peer-friend was teasing me about at the time was my attempt to reconcile Thor in the comic with Christianity as I knew it then. He said (in pre-adolescent language) that I was basically over-thinking the whole thing. ("Shuddup, you idiot!" was what I recall him saying.)
I've always respected him for that.
What's really funny is, of course, I'm still doing it.
And the laughter is the best part.
BTW -- I do not think for a minute that anyone involved with BSG is some kind of closet Gnostic seeking to secretly undermine anyone else's beliefs. There were many references in the show to all kinds of religions and "belief systems," including atheism, and I'm sure that religion as such was a big part of the backdrop to this dark, but wonderful, sci-fi thriller.
I can't wait for the sequels (or "pre-quels," or ... .)
3/26/09
"You're a Special Case, For my Secret Place"
It's time I posted on My Hidden Treasure Trove of Secret Lore.
You would think with two active LJs and another blog elsewhere (currently on hiatus, but soon to resume, if plans hold) I wouldn't have any Hidden Secret Treasure Trove of anything.
Well, you'd be wrong. Yes, I put my best into these little messages, and I always have. The evidence is there for all to see. I even tell you in some posts how I write, revealing my innermost processes.
But what is the outline? What is the plan? Who am I, really?
"You mean there's an outline -- a plan -- a true identity? Impossible!"
And you'd be wrong. I don't always know myself in advance what I'll say when I open the Rich text editor, much less days, weeks, or months ahead.
But patterns emerge, designs flow, and formats engage like gears on a hidden machine.
"How can this be?"
Ah, my friends, it wouldn't be my Hidden Trove of Treasured Secrets for long if I told you that, now would it?
Moo-hoo-ha-ha ... .
4/6/09
The Song Remains the Same
The year was ... well, it was more than one. Mid-to-late 1990s. The situation is described in my post "A poor soul on Pompeii" from last fall.
The scene was a textile manufacturing village as its economy was dying. The little town stradded railroad tracks, and I literally didhear "that lonesome whistle howl" night after night, as the apartment walls rattled.
The tiny radio station I worked for played country-and-western music all day and all night, between news breaks mornings, noontime and evenings. Most of the music I really could not stand at first, then I could tolerate, and later I found I did actually like some of the tracks.
What follows (following some memory-jogging research) is what resonated with me most from that period:
"Sweet Little Adriana" by Vince Gill
"Tear-Stained Letter" by Patty Loveless
"Strawberry Wine" by Deana Carter
"Burn One Down" by Clint Black
"What Mattered Most" by Ty Herndon
"Don't Call Me Names" by Joe Diffie
"Blue" by Lee Ann Rimes
"Believe Me (I Lied)" by Trisha Yearwood
"In This Life" by Collin Raye
"That's Another Song" by Brian White
You could substitute "High Lonesome Sound" by Gill and "Lonely Too Long" by Ms. Loveless to get an even "bluer" feel, or you could add "Be Good At It" by Neal McCoy and "Old Enough to Know Better" by Wade Hayes for some laughs.
I guess one reason I'm posting this is that I watched parts of a country music awards show recently, and, in my brief viewings, I got more sizzle than steak. The above list may feed the soul hungry for some grassroots Southern working-folks music. Those songs certainly fed mine.
Maybe I'll post my 1980s country faves someday. The list would be shorter -- but maybe more interesting, for reasons I may explain. I could add some 70's country faves to it, but that really would be another song.
4/7/09
Dialing It In Some ...
I made some small, but significant edits to the "Song Remains the Same" post, to clarify both context and meaning. HTH.
The title I've given the icon for this post (and a few others before it) is "together again." That title alone may give the C&W-savvy reader a clue as to what my 70's country song faves might revolve around.
More, next time.
4/7/09
Backing It Up
This is about a little-known legend in country music. It's this: the backup singer is the most important person in the band.
Back a couple years ago, a certain pop singer decided to switch places with her backup singer who had country-and-western roots. They called their one-time band "The Wreckers." The music on it was pop- to alt-country. I personally think there was a reason behind that name: maybe they were "wrecking" the old concept that the backup singer was unimportant. But I really don't know why they used that name -- it's a theory, for sure.
Many pop singers make great use of their backup singers. But in country and western, they are an essential ingredient. From Buck Owens to Taylor Swift, the backup singer provides the all-important "high and lonesome" harmony in the choruses that make the listener's heart melt with empathy. After all, we've all had the blues.
The harmonies are definitely off-key as classical music goes (remember that Mercurius-21 is no musician, only an avid listener) but those sounds are part of history in the American South. Several hymnals from early days use "shape-note" singing ("Southern Harmony" and I think "Sacred Harp" are two examples), and some of the "blue" harmony notes in C&W music may have come from that sound.
Sometimes a former backup singer steps into the spotlight -- the result can be misery or magic. But if that singer can make the misery sound magical, they have a career for life.
Most backup singers are the same gender as the frontman or -woman. But there are exceptions.
It's my recollection (I could so easily be wrong) that Dolly Parton was Porter Wagoner's backup. Then, she became the late Wagoner's sidekick on his TV show. Then, she went solo, and then ... .
I know for a fact that Emmylou Harris was backup for Gram Parsons, and there is a classic live album to attest to the magic of that vocal combination.
After Parsons died (drugs, I think), Emmylou got her own album deal. I wasn't feeling the cuts on the first LP (1975's "Pieces of the Sky") but the second one called "Elite Hotel" -- pronounced ELL-ete HOE-tell if you're really "country" -- sent me to the moon.
Actually, I bought her third LP first -- called "Luxury Liner" -- and that's what put me in orbit. Then I bought "Elite Hotel" and it shot me into outer space.
You see, Emmylou's first LPs put some great alt-country (the term actually did not exist back then) next to some classic material I grew up listening to -- hard twang and all.
To hear someone like Emmylou rip your heart out with the same stuff you couldn't stand when you were a kid almost strained credulity: "Am I really hearing this?"
Then to have her nail the latest and greatest (truly) from Townes VanZandt or Rodney Crowell on the very next track ... . It was like gold poured in this hillbilly's ears.
As a former backup singer, Emmylou chose her own wisely. First, Ricky Skaggs (as I recall) was her backup singer and fiddle/mandolin sideman in the touring band, and later Fayssoux Starling turned in some dynamite studio harmonies. Ricky put the lonesome sound on the classic songs; Fayssoux got the sighs and tears going on the modern stuff (There's an exception mercurius-21 forgot about: 'Hello Stranger' with its "chanty" call-and-response structure.).
Nothing else in the LP racks at that time came close to having this effect on me. And all this came after I graduated from college and got started in a very uncertain world, complete with lousy economy and no real expectations.
These records were friends. They were the backup I needed to crack a Bud to after yet another weird day at work when I really wasn't all that used to weird days at work.
They were gold. Thanks, guys.
4/10/09
Locking It In (On the Greatest Folk Music Album Ever Made)
This is a purely personal choice.
It's not from Bob. It's not by Joni. And it's not The Weavers, either.
Worse yet, it's not even PP&M ...
When I was growing up a record-lovin' teen, folks out here in the sticks could not get their hands anywhere near an LP by the Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot.
The mags would make oblique references to him, as if he were a mysterious bardic spirit only the elite could hear. HIs early recordings were printed on pure Unobtainium vinyl, and the masses could just forget about hearing ol' Gordo till after Judgment Day.
If then ... .
But then, there was "If You Could Read My Mind" -- Lightfoot's major label debut, featuring the title track, which covered the radio airwaves like a soft woolen blanket on a wintry Alberta night.
The best thing about the LP was its production value -- not heavy with overdubs or hard-rock backing, it used a simple guitar and bass duo behind Lightfoot, with support from the-then little known Ry Cooder on key tracks.
The real selling point is that the major tracks also featured string ensemble arrangements -- an unheard-of thing for a folk-music mystery man on his first big record.
Arrangements by Nick DeCaro and other aces of the genre made the music soar into family living rooms then split between teenaged rock'n'roll fans and their Perry-Como-and-Lawrence-Welk-loving parents.
Still more unique was the LP's listing credits for arrangers like DeCaro in bold type and to session artists like Cooder at all.
I was I think 14 or so when I bought it for my late Dad for (I think) his birthday, who actually listened to it with me. Crazy, I know. But nice.
I realize hard-core folk aficianados may well quarrel with this choice over seminal LPs from those I mentioned before the LJ cut.
But Lightfoot's album was true to the name: a selection and ordering of songs all made for their total effect on the listener, with the album's money-making title track almost as a bonus. Not that other famous folk LPs didn't do that, but I wonder if any others brought this level of songwriting talent into so many homes with such quiet grace.
Yes, as far as I'm concerned, Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne" is the Greatest Folk Song Ever Recorded ("Judy and Suzanne" in my 05_07 archive), and Gordon Lightfoot's "If You Could Read My Mind" is the Greatest Folk-Music Album Ever Made, and that's that.
*crosses arms and awaits rebuttal*
4/17/09
Planted
There is a common thread in my recent posts about music. It's about roots.
The best country-and-western music has its roots in so-called "folk" music. I put the term in quotes, because all sorts of musical genres could be defined as being "of the folk or people."
But, to me, country is folk set to a certain group of dance-hall beats and certain chords in a certain progressions, though all those change with the musical fashion of the day.
All my 90s fave country hits have folk elements. At least one of them was even written by a folkie -- Fairport Convention alumnus Richard Thompson.
It's not that the country charts are all 'Cum Bah Yah' and 'If I Had a Hammer' in disguise. No, the subject is a lot more subtle and diverse than that, and those two cliches don't really apply here, AFAIAC. (The songs themselves are not cliche.)
Go back to the first really hit country music recording artist: Jimmie "The Singing Brakeman" Rodgers. From 'Mother, the Queen of My Heart' to 'Mule-Skinner Blues' (covered by no less than Dolly Parton) his songs are folk.
Singer-songwriter folk, like Guthrie and Dylan and Mitchell and Lightfoot (who was a hit country songwriter before his major label solo album landed on the charts).
Rodgers's chords and beats are more Dixieland than what we now associate with country music. Like I said, musical fashions change.
If you think I am way off base -- OK, fine. But first listen to Lee Ann Rimes's 'Blue' after listening to Rodgers's 'Blue Yodel No. 1' and you tell me.
4/24/09
"For Somebody Who Says He doesn't Like It, He ..."
Here's my country music fave list for this decade so far:
Born to Fly by Sara Evans
I'm a Survivor by Reba McEntire
I Hope You Dance by Lee Ann Womack (original version with Sons of the Desert)
A Great Day to be Alive by Travis Tritt
One More Day by Diamond Rio (original version)
We Danced by Brad Paisley
Bring on the Rain by Jo Dee Messina
Almost Home by Craig Morgan
Probably Wouldn't Be This Way by LeAnn Rimes
Take the Wheel by Carrie Underwood
Leave the Pieces by the Wreckers
Where Were You by Alan Jackson
albums for special mention: Mountain Soul by Patty Loveless
4/28/09
Return to the Future
The decision to redo my theme may have been a bit premature, but I had decided some time ago to change it, even though the previous theme for this LJ was my fave, by far.
The present theme is one I've used before, but it was a good two years ago now. It's called Flexible Squares. There are only two or three free LJ themes that permit (AFAIK) icons for each post, and this is one of them. It may not hold long. We'll see.
The new title has a deliberate pun. The "gas" in the subtitle refers to mercury, which obviously has a low boiling point for a metal. Mercury is one of the legendary ingredients for creating gold in the alchemist's laboratory, which stories say used intense heat in a special furnace.
5/5/09
Across the Great Divide
The year was 1985. I was working as a clerk in a record store -- yes, I am a dinosaur.
The young women -- one being the manager of the store and the other the one who knew Black Flag personally I've posted about before -- working with me that Saturday morning appeared to be hung over. They were certainly "bummed" at having to work Saturday morning. They wanted to hear "their" records on Saturday morning, as opposed to the "hair band" stuff required to be played on the store's stereo (remember, I am a dinosaur) during peak business hours.
Yet, we had to take turns going to the turntable to change the LP on the in-store system (I am a Brontosaur -- harmless), and my turn came. I was told by the previous manager to always survey the store's customers and put on an LP I thought they might like to buy. All three customers that morning were women in their mid-30s browsing the country music section. And they all had an "I don't like what I'm seeing here" look on their faces.
I strode to the turntable and put on a new LP I was sure they had not heard. We had stocked it only the day before, and I had previewed the pre-release demo earlier at home -- having brought the copy back to work with me that morning.
It was Reba McEntire's "Whoever's in New England." {Actually, it was Have I Got a Deal for You".} Within 20 minutes, we sold five copies. Yes, two of the women bought two each (LP and cassette -- yes, I am a Brontosaur watching a big meteor coming at me).
But two minutes into the LP, I thought my two coworkers were going to grab case cutters and kill me. Literally. Then and there. Fortunately, one of the customers by then had begun marching to the cash register (yes, the meteor is getting closer. it's really big), and that saved me.
Here is my list of my country faves of the 1980s.
'Somebody Should Leave' by Reba McEntire
'Seven Year Ache' by Roseanne Cash
'Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses' by Kathy Mattea
'Don't Close Your Eyes' by Keith Whitley
'Somewhere Tonight' by Highway 101
'Streets of Bakersfield' by Dwight Yoakum and Buck Owens
'Don't Toss Us Away' by Lone Justice (featuring Maria McKee)
'Arlene' by Marty Stewart
albums for special mention
"Sweethearts of the Rodeo" by Sweethearts of the Rodeo
"One Fair Summer Evening" by Nanci Griffith
"Diamonds and Dirt" by Rodney Crowell
The Reba McEntire song I'm listing is not on "Whoever's in New England." {see above correction} However, that album is also one I would propose for special mention. It was a lifesaver.
5/14/09
Use with Caution
I've been looking over my lists of country music favorites, partly wondering what prompted the whole thing. I'm still not sure, though the way the titles seem to fit together, in some cases, was completely unintentional and, in a way, kind of scary (*asks self timidly* "How did I do that?").
So let me advise any who may wish to visit their favorite music download site and listen to them all: be careful. Too heavy a dose of honest-to-country torch and twang will cut through your emotional defenses like a buzzsaw through longleaf pine. My fave playlists should not be heard in their entirety by young children, pregnant or nursing mothers, or the frail and elderly. You'll cry yourself a river, and that could be dangerous.
So remember: a little dab will do you.
Just sayin'.
;)
5/15/09
OK, there it is ...
What follows the LJ cut is a re-post of a post I made back on 11-03-06. It is the one I referred to a few posts ago about my record store days and the Girl Who Knew Black Flag Personally. I thought it was still in my LJ's archive, but (like so many others) I pulled it down for no apparent reason a year ago last fall.
I was early into LJ'ing when I wrote this one, and I don't think this post even had a title. (Plus, "the Ornette Coleman record" refers to another post I think I pulled down, which if so I'll repost someday.) Here we go ... .
One of my more modern music faves has apparently announced she is through with performing. I liked Fiona Apple's last CD, probably because I must like the sound of self-torture. Anyway, the producer of two of the tracks is someone else I like, and I liked his arrangements. Also, I bought the CD about two weeks before my broadcast news career came to its conclusion, and the songs just fit my mood to a "T". But it begs another question. What is a middle-aged character like me doing listening to someone like Fiona Apple? There's an answer.
It all goes back to the end of my daily print journalism career, back in 1984. I just walked out (after two weeks notice) with no job.
My upstairs neighbor ran a local record shop, part of a small regional chain -- the same chain I bought the Ornette Coleman record at, though in a different town. He hired me to work for him with no hesitation.
I soon learned that I was older than everybody there, except my neighbor. And there was another problem: I had focused on my news career to the extent that I bought very few records and mainly listened to my old college collection over and over again. Occasionally, while a newspaper hound, I'd get the odd movie to review when the regular reviewer had a conflict, so I'd see a free movie, hear a song I didn't know but liked, and buy the record, which I'd end up hating.
Other than that, I knew nothing about the music scene (local commercial radio was then pretty much like now -- very commercial -- and I did not live in a town with an "alternative" station or get an NPR affiliate that wasn't all classical). So, I got an education just walking in the door the first day.
At the register stood a local politician's daughter (whom I did not know), hair in a four-color mohawk, tats on both shoulders, at least six piercings in each earlobe, and wearing a some kind of tore-up tee shirt under a leather vest. She didn't notice me, because she was busy slamming a customer's LP in a shopping bag with the words "Seizure, dude!"
She also looked like she was ready to rip somebody's head off. It turned out she had just been told for the millionth time she could not play Black Flag records in the store during operating hours.
At the back desk filling out special orders (all had to be done by hand, pressing down the pen as hard as you could to get all four carbon copies to print through) was another employee, slightly older than the girl at the register. He had his hair in what we called a "shag" cut, was a musician and hated the manager so passionately that he refused to speak to me (I, the manager's uncool neighbor hire) for about two weeks.
He was into ... I don't remember what music he was into, actually. I think he played synth in several local bands, apparently hating them all. I think he liked Howard Jones and stuff like that, but he didn't communicate with me.
Then there was the assistant manager -- a large, superfriendly guy who knew all music and liked mostly soul and light jazz. I hid my old jazz tastes from him and everybody else, because I was afraid they'd think I was a nut (Plus, I held so-called "light jazz" in utter contempt -- another thing I wanted to hide from the assistant manager).
The other employees were music hounds who were quitting in droves. They all hated the manager, who was fired shortly after that. Now I had no one on my side, and was held in such disdain by the remaining staff that all the records I played in-store (we had to take turns changing whatever was on the turntable) were promptly removed with a loud scratching sound. ("You want to play Juice Newton? What are you?")
The first CD's were about six months from being released -- it was all vinyl and cassettes then. The job was not boring to me, but Friday and Saturday nights were pure bedlam. Hordes of working-class youth poured into the only record store in town to buy the latest KISS ("Animalize"), Def Leppard, Dio, Ratt, and -- brace yourselves -- Hank Williams Jr. cassettes.
The Hardcore Punk Girl always brought her friends over during the last hour before closing -- all to sneer at the kids buying music they also liked, but wouldn't admit.
I was saved partly by a work ethic I learned in newspapers and retail (I come from a long line of retail managers), and because the new manager liked me (the assistant manager, having been passed over for promotion, had promptly quit.)
She was the best boss I ever had. She was sympathetic, fair-minded and friendly -- but also a music-retail pro. She was from Athens, Georgia, and knew REM and others in that scene personally. (The Hardcore Girl knew Black Flag -- she'd house them when they came to play The Milestone Club in nearby Bankertown).
The silent synth player also quit. His replacement was a true music snob, but one who knew his stuff. He played bass in an actually good local band. His favorite band was The Smiths. His band didn't sound like them, though. The New Manager loved alternative stuff, and played a lot of female singer songwriters who preceded Fiona Apple.
I'm writing this while listening to The Deftones' latest release on AOL Listening Party. I like most of it. Another I've heard I liked recently is "BeHeMe" by a group I'll think of later (something to do with gardening).
So that's what a guy in his early 50's is doing listening to music people half his age are listening to. He remembers when going to work was fun.
6/3/09
" ... in the dark."
I remember watching the Tony Awards one night in '82. I was astonished -- "That's the 'Eight is Enough' woman!" thought I, suddenly 14 years old.
Her name was (and is) Betty Buckley. In the late 1970s, she was a television actress as American as mom and apple pie who starred in a show to match.
But there she was in cat makeup and clad in skin-tight material I later found out was called Spandex -- with a fuzzy tail emerging from where tails normally emerge from.
I had no idea the "Eight is Enough" lady had a "bod" anything like what was evident that night on my little nine-inch black and white TV screen.
I also had no idea the "Eight is Enough" lady could sing like that -- wide open, no mic, real Broadway, pitch-perfect -- and that she could sing Mahler.
Huh?
To my untrained ear, Andrew Lloyd Webber owes ol' Gustav big time. (Too bad Gustav is not in a position to collect.)
What I mean by that is, Lloyd Webber wrote a lot of his Big Broadway songs (Cats, Phantom, Evita etc.) in keys no one else but Mahler would use. Strange, eerie minor keys rolling in and out of other strange, eerie minor keys -- and ending in what I understand is Lloyd Webber's favorite major key -- D flat major. Wiki says the flats outnumber the naturals in that one.
In other words, not your basic B flat songwriter. (Somewhere along the line, someone told me that B flat was the most popular key for songs. I think it was a college chum's roommate who played trumpet in the UNC band.)
I recall now the controversy over Ms. Buckley's costume for her role as Grizzelda in "Cats" -- the body-hugging number that told us a lot about Betty then was said to be a far cry from the frumpy costume for that character in the original UK production of the musical.
Now that we have YouTube, what the UK critics said then of the difference between the two productions is obvious. You can barely tell it's Elaine Page under all that wardrobe and makeup.
Why am I rolling on like this?
The folks who produce modern reality shows on either side of the pond have every reason to know how hard it is for amateurs to sing "Memory" from "Cats." Especially on live television.
You don't even have to be some hot-shot TV producer to know -- anyone would who listened to any one of the thousands of amateur and semi-pro (think piano bar) singers who made their stabs at "Memory" back when it was current. Those attempts collectively became a running joke (as I recall) on mid-80's Saturday Night Live and other comedy shows.
My point? I think someone somewhere should be ashamed of themselves.
I also wish Susan Boyle the best. She did quite well with the song. Any (perceived) mistakes were not her fault.
BTW, if you want to check out some Mahler, try Symphony No. 4 and Song of the Earth (Das Lied von der Erde). Frederica von Stade is a fave.
Note: As usual, I find out later that my memory is a little cracked, after I've posted. The Tony show I'm recalling was in 1983. Grizabella is the name of the role, not whatever my memory coughed up, and Ms. Buckley's costume was not quite as I described in recollection. Her "coat" section was loose-fitting, and only the leggings were skin-tight, though barely visible. I must have "morphed" the visual part of my recollection of her performance with that of the opening dance number from "Cats" also featured on the show that night, where the other performers, male and female, were in nothing but Spandex and cat makeup. Thanks to YouTube entries and IBDB for correct info.
6/4/09
Just a little bit more ...
In case anyone was wondering, I was attempting to give Andrew Lloyd Webber a compliment in the last post. It's the hint of strangeness in his music that I like.
An Ornette Coleman post is coming. (Not a re-post, either. The memory is fresh!)
6/8/09
Free
I was in high school -- taking my first and only music appreciation course. It was late spring. And the teacher began to talk about her trip to New York a few years before -- something previous students had told me she liked to talk about. She and other music teachers had gone to the big apple to take a bite out of the music scene.
One of the stops was to The Blue Note or the Village Vanguard where a Texas man from way outside the jazz mainstream was playing a plastic saxophone.
His name was Ornette Coleman. I think he had a quintet by that time, because the teacher had said he also played some violin, and I think he began doing that when his quartet added another sax man -- Dewey Redman. Don Cherry, Charlie Haden and (I think) Paul Motian would have rounded out the combo.
The teacher was just talking about this as a way to touch on the subject of modern jazz toward the end of the course. She was gracious in my view to even do this for us, and as such the course was Class A in my book.
Even though I made a B. I always made a B -- unless it was Algebra. Then I made a C (I) or a D. (II) :(
Anyway, something about this just grabbed me. Somebody with the whatever it takes to just strike out and do his own thing -- even when that thing sounded like craziness to everyone else -- I just had to hear it.
And hear it I did. A trip to Tobacco Town and to the only record store of any worth in the area netted me Free Jazz. Of all the experimental works Coleman did, this was the experimental-est. (I know that's not a word. Then why did I use it? I felt like it.)
In brief, for this record Coleman set four members of his quintet in a recording studio on one side of a partition, and Redman and three other musicians (one of them was smooth jazzman Freddy Hubbard on trumpet) on the other.
He gave them a score that was a few bars long. The rest was just dots ... . In other words -- free jazz.
When he began playing in bars in Texas, Coleman was received less than graciously. In that, he may have lost more than some dignity and a few saxophones -- I don't know.
But he persisted. And he eventually got the ear of the recording industry and progressive classical musicians.
And he made the Big Apple -- where Ornette became a part of culture. Not as an icon. As an element.
He is the only jazzman (I think) to have received a Pulitzer Prize for a music recording.
He was more popular in Europe than in the US.
And he remains (AFAIK) active as a living legend.
"Free Jazz" is very hard to listen to. On the cover of the LP was a repro of a Jackson Pollack painting at his Pollacky wildest -- and that's what the music sounded like.
I bought that one with summer work income because it was the only one in the bin in front of his name. Repeat visits turned up nothing. I didn't see another Ornette disc (that I can recall) till the CD revolution hit the mega bookstore phenomenon 15 years ago.
But I did find some Keith Jarrett discs later in my high school career (the next year, basically) -- and one had his takes on some Coleman tunes (pre-Free) on it, plus homages by that great pianist to someone he considered a major influence.
The thing that grabbed listeners like me and musicians like Leonard Bernstein and Jarrett was that Ornette and his band were creating tonalities unknown in music -- sounds that the avant garde since Stravinsky and Shoenberg were searching for Coleman pulled out of a plastic sax by intuition.
Why am I rambling on this I have no idea. But it just occurred to me that what I like is not always what other people like, and I don't know why. Back in the record-store-clerk days, my taste was considered plebe, to say the least. After I left that job, I came back and bought one of the many close-out LPs available at the end of that era. It was a piece from Charlie Haden and one of Coleman's associates. The store manager's eyes almost popped straight out of her head.
BTW, in the last post I was not suggesting in the least that Andrew Lloyd Webber plagiarized Mahler (or anyone else). What I meant in my offhand way was that, to my untrained ears, some of his music owes a considerable debt of gratitude to a controversial giant of European classical music -- something that all composers and musicians do relative to their forebears. As I learned in my excellent music appreciation class, all music post-Bach was indebted to ol' Johann's innovative "tempering" of instruments so they could play in any key without having to be retuned first. Every symphonist depends on Haydn's having invented the form, etc. etc.
Oddly, Wiki says Andrew Lloyd Webber has been accused by some of plagiarizing Puccini. As I recall, so was Puccini in his day. I think both are pretty original, myself.
6/17/09
"Dis Not the Nox!"
Yes, Buffy fans -- I am one of Those People.
In Defense of Marti Noxon
By Me
She is my favorite writer on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," the one-time television series that is now living again as a comic book. However, I am not necessarily referring to the Buffy episodes that she is credited with writing. (Those without DVDs of the show might not know that writers are given prominent episode credits on the DVD set lists.)
No, I am referring to her work as a producer. I, as an avid viewer of the DVDs in season series, believe, rightly or wrongly, that I can discern the "fingerprint" of each of the famed writer/producers of the show.
This is much easier, I believe, now that many of those writer/producers have gone on to be successful doing the same for other shows. I could detail all that, I think, but let's instead focus on Ms. Noxon -- "The Secret Genius of Buffy the Vampire Slayer."
Marti is my fave. This is because I, for reasons known only to me, credit her with the "teenspeak" the show was so well known for. Joss was widely given credit for it (properly, because he did have final say), but I think Marti is the one with the original teenspeak touch.
I also believe Marti is largely responsible for the show's legendary tender moments. Joss is the genius, I believe, who deftly juxtaposed those softer scenes in Buffy with some of the most terrifying moments ever on network television. But I credit Marti with the tender touch, as well as the teenspeak touch. A touchy subject, to be sure.
It's that touchy-feely stuff many hardcore Buffy fans (either secretly or openly or both) detest about the show. And I myself loathe shows that wallow in it.
But in the right amount, in the right way and on the right show, it works. And I credit Marti with being the master of Buffy the Romantic, Buffy the Reflective and Buffy the Rejected. These combine to help make the suffering of the heroine and her loyal friends vital to this iconic melodrama's mix of murder, mayhem, mystery and magic.
And I believe that's mainly what makes the show's fans fall in love with its wonderful characters. It's what makes us fans. And it's what makes me a Marti fanantic.
I'm hoping one day she'll help produce another coming-of-age TV show, and I'm hoping also that she'll have a try at the comic someday (I'm also a fan of early "Love and Rockets" by Jaime Hernandez -- proof positive that teen romance and sci-fi/fantasy belong together in comics.).
But that's up to her. In any case, I wish her well.
And I hope the other Buffy fans don't come after me. Sorry, guys, just being honest.
;)
6/19/09
Gotcha
I hope everyone enjoyed my little satire of Buffy fans in the previous post, especially those (including me) who think they know who did what behind the scenes.
The truth of the matter, as far as I can tell in my less rabid moments, is that the legendary show was a shining example of what true collaboration can accomplish.
I don't think anyone -- even the great Joss himself -- is solely responsible for what made the show shine the way it did. I'm just glad that it did indeed shine, and that I was around to watch it.
My own fanfic is my tribute to that collaborative effort, which certainly includes the entire cast and crew. There, the story is entering a new phase. I hope you like it.
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BTW -- There is one person on my friends list who was instrumental in making that LJ (and this one) possible. My world is better because faithsin is in it, and I would not have met her without the Internet.
She encouraged me to start both LJs and has been keeping me honest and on task on both ever since. Props to my friend.