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February 14, 2009 - Saturday
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Current mood:  awake
Category: Music
This was sent to me over on Facebook -- Michael Bennett provided this preamble as part of his intro for this list - I kinda altered/changed this a bit, adding a LOT of my life into the mix, but let's use Mike's intro to start with -- take it away, Mike:
Think of 15 albums, CDs, LPs (if you're over 40) that had such a profound effect on you they changed your life. Dug into your soul. Music that brought you to life when you heard it. (You want 15 life-changing albums from the Napster/Itunes generation? I'm not sure I have that many)...Royally affected you, kicked you in the wazoo, literally socked you in the gut, is what I mean. Then when you finish, tag 15 others, including moi. Make sure you copy and paste this part so they know the drill. Get the idea now? Good. Tag, you're it!
So, that was the assignment.
Okay, first let me say I realize it's nearly impossible to narrow your life down to just 15 albums, and I admit that up front, but even so, here's my list. It starts off chronologically and really only focuses on the decades 1970-2000 (cheating a little bit to add a few extra titles here and there).
Again, I apologize in advance for the length:
1. The Beatles - Hey Jude (1970)
 I do sorta remember when this album of non-US album singles and b-sides was released in the U.S., but it's a little hazy -- I was about 8 years old when I started paying attention to the Beatles and I didn't really know what compilation albums were or what the heck Capitol Records was doing with the Beatles EMI catalog (I learned that later); all I knew is that I loved the Beatles and this was a new album and I had to have my own copy. But my parents -- particularly my dad -- wouldn't buy it for me, based I think on the way they looked with their long hair and beards on the cover photo.
I also remember I watched that "Hey Jude" promo film with my parents in our rec room, so it must have aired on US TV in the early seventies, maybe on "The Ed Sullivan Show" or "The Smothers Brothers Show." The song accompanying the film was "Hey Jude." I can still remember hearing my dad complaining about how they looked like freaks, but I thought they looked pretty fucking cool, strolling around and posing in Hyde Park, as I recall. I also remember my dad was pretty annoyed when we went on a family vacation in '68 or '69, back to visit relatives in the midwest, where my cousin Vicki played me her '45' of "Lady Madonna" upstairs in her bedroom. For some reason it irritated my dad, hearing their music -- but I think this might be the actual moment I started coming alive, listening to that '45' playing over and over, and music became, very, very important to me. I was nine years old.
2. T-Rex - Electric Warrior (1971)  This first one is actually cheatin' just a bit, as it's more about my very first '45' purchase (and my experience first learning about sex and girls), although I did eventually buy this great T-Rex album not too many years after first owning the single. In 1971, T-Rex's "Get It On" was one helluva sexy '45', the perfect soundtrack for pre-teen petting. The song went straight to the groin, by design.
For me, the best singles from the great late 60's/early 70's era -- my favorites, anyway -- began with sexy, punched-up guitar or bass riffs whose first few seconds still bring those feverish images back from my youth, like just waking from a hazy, sexy dream. Some were fast, some were slow: Tommy James & The Shondells' "Crimson & Clover" (1969), The Zombies' "Time Of The Season" (1969), Sugarloaf's "Green Eyed Lady" (1970), Free's "All Right Now" (1970), Isaac Hayes' "Theme from SHAFT" (1971), and the Raspberries "Go All The Way" (1972) were some of my favorite songs as a kid.
Marc Bolan's first and only U.S. hit was a strutting glitter-boogie, all pink and fuzzy, played at a Prozac-ian half-speed, not exactly fast but not too slow. He sounded like a sleepy-eyed tiger, growling surreal lyrics full of meaning and meaningless at once: "Well you're built like a car, you've got a hubcap diamond star halo... You're dirty sweet and you're my girl." Flo & Eddie's backing ooohs sounded like a chorus of naughty angels, enticing all the boys and girls to sin.
At the first boy/girl party I ever hosted, I whispered/cooed/mimed along with Bolan's voice to my "date" Liz Berberian, an adorable doe-eyed 6th grade classmate, while we fumbled slow-dancing and slow-kissing in a dark corner of the rec room. I remember dropping the needle repeatedly on "Get It On" that night (I'm sure the party ended pretty early, like 9pm or something like that; after all, I was only in the 6th grade and I'm sure other kids had their curfews). Thinking back, the idea of "getting it on" and "banging a gong" with Liz now seems such a bold or even ridiculous suggestion for a 10 year old to contemplate. "And meanwhile, I'm still thinking."
(Liz, I learned late last year, recently died of breast cancer -- she was the first girl I ever crushed on. R.I.P. deal girl.)
3. The Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers (1971)  This was one of the very first albums I bought with my own allowance money, purchased at the nearby Wherehouse store ("Where? At the Wherehouse!"), back when they had orange & purple plastic bags and long-haired hippies running the cash registers and pawing/molesting the teenage girl customers while they flipped through the LP bins (this actually happened once when Liz came with me to the store to buy '45's after school).
I remember bringing this album to a party where a bunch of Christian kids from the church I attended at the time simply sneered at it, and some of them (and the parents of the girl hosting the party, Teri Pace) objected pretty vehemenly to the crotch photo on the inside gatefold, and the zipper on the Warhol-designed LP cover... this was right around the time I realized that I was probably goin' a different direction than other kids from the stupid baptist church I was going to. I think I soon realized that I was always going to be crazy about music, and I wasn't going to let some anyone kind of ridiculous Christian religion or stupid church tell me what or wasn't "sinful," and what's more, I didn't really care.
More importantly, I realized that I probably wasn't going to be like all those other kids at the party, drinking fruit punch and munching cookies with their teeth still in braces. I started pulling away from the popular kids and sought out others over on the margins, the weirdos, the music-obsessives, the geeks, and the brainiac straight-A students too. And, I still listen to this album on a regular basis (it's one of my absolute favorites).
4. Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin IV ("Runes") (1971)  It's not my favorite Zeppelin album (that'd be their 1969 debut album), but this was another massive album that impacted heavily in my young teenage life. I'll tell you a story, and this takes place at the church I was mentioning above (Magnolia Baptist in Anaheim). I was actually working at my first paycheck-receiving job as a janitor, and I'd gotten to know the people who worked in the office, and the staff, and the pastors and elders. Just because I was curious, I took the Zeppelin IV LP into work one night (I was fifteen or sixteen, and cleaning the church offices each night). I loaned it to the Ass't Pastor, a man named Tom Givens, and I asked him to read the lyrics to "Stairway To Heaven" on the sleeve, and listen to the song, and give me his interpretation of it.
Of course, I wasn't too shocked when, a few days later, he invited me into his office and told me it was a very awful experience for him -- he told me it was about a woman buying her way into heaven, taking the short-cuts that people take when they sin, not following the Jesus path, etc. etc. blah blah blah -- he felt the song was very sinful and, based on what (little) he knew of rock music, the band were probably satanic and devil worshippers -- I remember Givens then pointed to the runic symbols on the LP and tried to explain to me that Satan used symbols to communicate with his followers here on earth. I stopped going to that stupid church when I was sixteen years old and never looked back. My mind was starting to open to alternative ideas around this time...I was starting to grow up....
I never got to see Led Zeppelin, back in the day: if you know the band's history, you know that Led Zeppelin was finally back in the States and touring, coming west to L.A. (probably the Forum) in the Spring of 1977 before tragedy struck (a couple of months into the tour, Plant's six-year-old son Karac died of a stomach infection). The tour was immediately and Plant spent the latter half of 1977 and the better part of 1978 in seclusion. I never got to see them live.
5. Various Artists - Superstars Of The 70s (1973)The track listing is listed at the link below, but one thing is for certain, I was exposed to a LOT of my favorite bands with this one, in one fell swoop. I played this one all the time -- the sheer variety (even though they were all Warner. Bros./WMG bands -- which is somewhat connected to what I'm doing now, since I work at Rhino, WMG's reissue division) was great, the songs were classic (the very stuff of "classic rock.") and I think this collection may have pushed me over the edge, music-wise. It was my foundation, my rock, my life. And today I can probably point to this one group of artists and pick out many of my favorites. http://www.discogs.com/release/512289
6. The Who - Quadrophenia (1973)  Let me digress back to earlier in my teens again. This collection was very first box set LP sets I ever owned -- and it came out in '73, when I was twelve years old, and it was already titled "Superstars of the 70s"!! even before the decade was even half-over (but they were right, you know, goddamn Warner Special Products! My old buddy Mark Leviton could have even been responsible for this one, who knows?). I bought it with my own allowance money, earned from mowing lawns for neighbors or whatever. I think my parents may have even pushed this box set on me when we were shopping as a family as The Treasury (which was sort of a Penney's outlet store as I recall, in Buena Park) since it was a Warner Bros. "loss-leader" and it was only $2.99 for 4 LPs!! What a deal! Can you believe it?
 I loved this rich double album so much, and much more than their rock opera Tommy. I listened to it often and fully absorbed everything about it as a young teen (I was 14 or 15 years old when I got my hands on my first copy). I thought frequently about the themes ("I'm not schizophrenic! I'm bleeding quadrophenic!") and embraced the storyline as if I were Jimmy and this album was about me, just another mixed-up kid trying to deal with his parents, with taking drugs and drinking, with bullies at school, with the future, with getting a job, getting a girl, and living my life, all of it wrapped up in confusion and teenage drama. I even tried writing my own rock opera after listening to this album, called "Trials." Wish I still had those lyrics somewhere.
I was very, very upset when the remastered CD version (as well as other Who titles that have come out in the last decade) was remixed and really changed around, but I suppose we have Pete Townshend to thank for that. Quadrophenia was part of my childhood, part of the very marrow in my bones, and it should never have been trifled with.
7. Aerosmith - Get Your Wings (1974)  Aerosmith came into my life in the mid-70s and quickly became my first favorite band. I loved Steven Tyler's lyrics and the variety of songs on every album, up through Draw The Line anyway. I got into them not because of the songs I'd heard on the radio (I was probably listening to KMET-FM by this point), but due to the fact that a new friend made me a bunch of tapes of his favorite albums. His name was Andy Hoffman, and he was the cool long-haired younger brother of my boss Richard Hoffman at the church janitor service job -- he only came to the church on Saturday afternoons every 3 or 4 weeks or so. I think Andy was probably only about five years older than me, if that, but since I didn't have an older brother (I'm the oldest of 3 sons), he was sort of my ipso-facto "older brother," briefly. I've sorta always been the "big brother" in not just my family, but a lot of times amongst my friendships.
I don't know if Andy ever knew how important he was in exposing me to ALBUMS and not just "songs" (he never made me mix tapes, just full albums), and in the process he exposed me to a lot of music that I loved almost instantly: in addition to Aerosmith, there were bands like the Faces, Rod Stewart Queen, David Bowie, Mott The Hoople, not to mention about 30 others, and lots of glam and glitter and rawk n' rowl. I started going to concerts (even working at them, selling cokes and other refreshments at Anaheim Stadium shows -- I saw Lynyrd Skynyrd right before the plane crash, with Ted Nugent; I saw Cheap Trick and Aerosmith and Peter Frampton... I could go on and on) and was soon obsessed with music. Everything in my life had a soundtrack, every aspect of my life became enriched only thru the fact that I could escape into something that was far more interesting to me than just about anything.
Between 1974-1977, I listened to mostly what the rest of the kids in my high school were listening to (Magnolia, 1978 graduating class, Anaheim< CA). If you'd really like to see what I was listening to, go out and rent the great DVD documentary Dogtown & Z-Boys. Here's a list of the songs that accompany those kids skateboarding and enjoying the Southern California sun, just like I was doing, and I suppose you have to see the movie and get the music all synched up to see what the experience of coming of age in Southern California in the late 70s was all about: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0275309/soundtrackI used to listen to Get Your Wings on these huge bulky Radio Shack headphones while laying on my parents couch (I'd also zone out to albums by Ted Nugent, Kansas, Rush, Cheap Trick, etc.). The very first band I ever interviewed, for my high school newspaper (I was a music editor way back then), as many of my friends know, was Angel, another band I sorta liked, but only the first album and part of the 2nd. One album I really loved was Boston's self-titled first album, which came out in 1976. It floored me. Tom Scholz's production was so layered and dense and ... well, you know how popular it became.
But I think that Aerosmith album Get Your Wings might have actually affected the way I actively listened to music, and I loved paying attention to the lyrical leaps and bounds, the clever wordplay. Sometimes I'd flirt with girls (sometimes when we were getting high together, skinny dipping or whatever) and sing the words to Aerosmith songs ("Lord of the Thighs," "Big Ten Inch," etc.). If I had any kind of voice at all, and could pull chicks with my stunning rock stars looks, I would have tried to have been just like a Steven Tyler, trust me. Didn't work out that way, though, although more than one girl from my past can tell you I sang Aerosmith lyrics to her and made a fool of myself. I had a distinct memory of doing this, in fact -- it's probably the one night I'd like to replay over and over in my head like a tapeloop (if you've seen the great movie After Life, you might recall how the recently passed have a few days to decide what the single happiest or most significant memory from their life is, and then for the rest of the week the workers make short movies to recreate each person's chosen memory. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/After_Life_(film)
By he way, it wasn't too many years later that I realized I didn't really like that Boston album at all. It was too slick, too Corporate Rock, to "Arena Rock." I was, by the late seventies, 1977 or 1978 at least, embracing punk and new wave music, eclectic stuff, art rock, and my taste in rock music overall was changing rapidly. But I'm sorta getting ahead of myself again.
8. Neil Young - Decade (1977)
 At some point, when I was about 16, I bought my first copy of the Neil Young Decade collection and probably discovered my favorite artist in the process, second to the Beatles, of course, but I now love so much music -- trust me, even a "classic rock" heavy list like this isn't easy for me to do. But Neil was more than just an icon, a musician whose music I loved. He also pointed the way back to his own heroes, to Bob Dylan, to Willie Nelson, to Waylon Jennings, to...everyone. The acoustic guitar, in particular, always sounded so perfect in his hands, but I also loved his electric playing as well. "Down By The River" is probably my favorite song by Neil, although I love the first 4 NY albums like they're a part of my family or my closest friends. I love the Buffalo Springfield, and quite a lot of all the C,S,N (sometimes Y- just like vowels), but I also love most of the precursors, the copiers, the followers, the generations to come. Neil Young became my "godfather," so to speak -- I never actually had a godfather, and my last living grandparent died when I was just about 11 or 12, so I look up to people like musicians like they're heroic figures. Neil also exposed me to his love of the landscape, to the California canyon life he lived, to the loneliness you hear in those great songs. I identified with it, you know? More to come about this.
9. Brian Eno - Before And After Science (1977)  In Nov. '77, I got my first job in a record store. I had just turned 17. I was a senior in high school, and it was just before Christmas and I was hired as Christmas help at -- no, not the Wherehouse -- the Licorice Pizza store in Anaheim. They moved locations shortly after I began working at the store, and I soon began making friends at the store. Eventually they just kept me on and I practically never left (still have dreams about this store, it's that important to me). I worked there from '77 to August '84 (actually, '81 to '84 was at a different location). My music tastes also began to change as I was exposed to SO MUCH MUSIC -- now, in addition to classic FM rock (and stations like KLOS and KMET), I listened to whatever I was being turned on to at that store. My friend Danny McGough -- he's still a friend, also here on MySpace -- probably turned me on to more music than any other person in my life. I listened to Beethoven late quartets, Coltrane jazz albums, Miles Davis fusion albums, experiental albums, classic old hillbilly stuff. I'd still be sitting here an hour later if I tried to list everything we listened to.
But this one album really made an impression on me, for some reason. Danny played it a lot, and so did his future wife Sonia, who also worked at that store. Side One featured a lot of great songs unlike anything I'd heard before, like "King's Lead Hat" (it's an anagram for a band Eno produced, Talking Heads, doncha know) and "Kurt's Rejoinder." Side Two was more experimental and languid and very cool. I suppose this album showed me their were whole countries full of music I'd never been exposed to before -- they weren't playing "King's Lead Hat" on KMET, you know? It was time to move on, time to really go further out, with whatever people do and take and snort and whatever to go further out. My mind, age 17/18, was officially blown.
10. The Jam - All Mod Cons (1978)  And then, it hit me -- punk, new wave, all the stuff in between. Rock bands that weren't even punk or new wave but had a lot of attitude -- like Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, who I'm pretty sure I saw at the Santa Monica Civic with the Buzzcocks -- became my favorite bands. I was a deejay at lunch-time at my high school, and the music editor of the newspaper and boy, did a lot of the kids at that school complain about the music I was bringin' from work, to school, to play. I was really big on making mix cassette tapes (making my own artful covers for them), and every girl I ever liked probably got at least one. Hopefully some of those girls still have 'em.
The Jam -- who I saw at the Starwood and at Royce Hall, at UCLA -- were one of my favorite bands. I was almost obsessed with them, buying every single (I'd actually buy them from Zed's Records in Long Beach, and then order them for our Licorice Pizza store). I loved "Going Underground" and "Eton Rifles" and a bunch of their songs, but I truly was enamored with this album, the Jam's All Mod Cons. Regarding the title, Wikipedia sez it better than I feel like saying it: "The phrase ';all mod cons', short for 'all modern conveniences', is a British idiom one might find in housing advertisements. The title is a play on the word mod, in reference to the band being part of the mod revival.
I owned an import LP of this and it was an important artifact in my life. Soon enough, by the time I was in my mid-20s, I had over 10 Licorice Pizza crates of albums, probably about six thousand albums or more, not counting the hundreds of singles. I was fully obsessed with music before I was 20 years old, driving up to L.A. to see bands, all of it.
11. David Sylvian - Secrets Of The Beehive (1987)  I have to just move ahead in the story here -- it was pretty much the same story over and over, working at the store, going to college, living my life -- but at some point things shifted in my musical tastes and I started focusing on writing about music, and other types of writing. Okay, picture this if you can: I was your basic struggling depressed writer-type (I know, hard to believe, huh?). I spent most of the first-half of the 80s working full-time for the crappy hourly wages they pay you for working in record stores and bookstores (worked in a lot of those too). I also sat around semi-bored in a lot of philosophy and creative writing classes (in addition to all those other semi-boring classes you end up taking in college). I wore a lot of black clothing, and I usually slept 'til noon, with all the shades drawn in my bedroom, mostly because I had a lot of hangovers after spending my evenings at the local bars and pubs, usually trying to chat up foxy drunk girls 'til the wee early hours.
When that wasn't working out (which was most of the time), I was usually sitting around whatever cheap shitty-ass apartment I was living in at the time, dropping the needle on a lot of classical and jazz LPs (just the good stuff), or drowning my sorrows with a lot of moody post-punk UK bands, like Joy Division, New Order, the Cure, Echo and the Bunnymen, or the entire 4AD label, especially the early Cocteau Twins and Dead Can Dance albums. I was writing a lot back then too, mostly awful sad-sack poetry and pathetic little Kafka-esque short stories that mostly made my friends feel a little uncomfortable. Some of my closest friends and family members were a little concerned about me, I could tell, because they'd read a few stories and pointed out that the main characters in always ended up killing themselves (come to think of it, they still do). I was also reading pretty voraciously back then, anything I could get my hands on really. Books, books and more books.
And this album, although I could have literally picked hundreds, had a big influence on me, partly because I was clearly able to pick out a lot of Sylvian's influences, people I admired, like Salvador Dali and Jean Cocteau, in particular, since I was also reading his books and watching Cocteau movies). References to Cocteau's work can be heard in "Blood of a Poet (The Ink in the Well)"; "Difficulty of Being (Red Guitar)"; "Orpheus" and Cocteau's own voice on the soundtrack of Steel Cathedrals...this album folded into my interests in surrealism, absurd philosophy, bad poetry and other parts of my life, for many, many years.
12. Nick Drake - Five Leaves Left (1969)  This one's a bit of a backtrack too, but I didn't discover Nick Drake until the late 80s, possibly even the early nineties. In fact, if you know me, you know I'm liable to say about the decade of my twenties: "The 80s was when I discovered the 60s." It's true.
I'd read in Pulse! Magazine -- the Tower Records publication, and I know Jackson is going to be reading this (hopefully), so let me just say thank you for this great little freebie, sir! -- an article about another of my MySpace friends, Mark Eitzel (hi Mark!) who was asked what his "Desert Island Discs" were, and I believe he listed, among many other favorites -- which included very interesting choices like The Blue Nile's Hats, David Bowie's Heroes and Joy Division's Closer -- was Nick Drake's Pink Moon. I'd never heard Drake but I think I probably drove straight to the record store to find out for myself what he was all about. And the Hannibal box set had recently come out and I bought it without hearing a note of it. I was 29 or 30 years old, or thereabouts.
My favorite of the Drake albums turned out to be this one, the only Drake album which features no solo Nick Drake performances, curiously. Instead, his memorable songs -- like "River Man" and "Day Is Done" and "Cello Song" -- are fleshed out, arranged and situated by the great producer Joe Boyd (read his White Bicycles book if you really want to treat yourself!) and accompanied by string players and members of the British folk-rock group Fairport Convention. This one crept into my soul and never let go. I play it all the time, and not just when I'm feelin' all lonesome either. I think this album is really rich, beautiful, artful. Full of mystery and wonder. It's like nature itself.
13. My Bloody Valentine - Loveless (1991)  This album was given to me first on a cassette by a girl I was madly in love with, though she didn't know it at the time. She taped me two of her favorite albums as a kind of test (I passed!). On one side was the Smashing Pumpkins' Gish album, which I still like, even though I'm not a huge fan of the band's other albums anymore, as much as I used to love them.
On the other was MBV's Loveless. This album was so wholly unreal I soaked it in and I played it as loud as our stereo (the one I shared with a couple of housemates in '89-'93) could handle it, usually when no one else was home, so loud that I actually had to go to a doctor due to a temporary hearing loss (true story). If you wanna read about this one, please let me recommend Mike McGonigal's book Loveless, published in 2007 by the The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc as part of their celebrated 33 1/3 series. I can't recommend that book highly enough if you want to truly understand and appreciate everything -- and I mean, everything -- about this one.
14. Outrageous Cherry - Out There In The Dark (1999)  I eventually moved to L.A. and eventually (after a few sputtering years in more record stores and bookstores) put my Creative Writing B.A. degree to good work (ha!) by finally ending up working at record labels. I only wish that had happened to me earlier in life, instead of my early 30s, but that's part of the story. And another part of the story was that I finally got the chance to work with bands, to make decisions on albums and to have a say in turning people on to music that I felt they should hear.
Through a strange circuitous route, a tape of a song for a proposed Bobby Fuller Four tribute album made it's way to me at my desk at Del-Fi Records. It was addressed to my attention by Matthew Smith, who had been told I was looking for bands to record BF4 songs, and he was in a rootsier band called the Volebeats (he still is!), but we struck up a friendship and then Matt also mailed me some previously issued CDs by his main band, called Outrageous Cherry (they already released a couple of great psych/pop albums on labels such as Bar None, but I think they were still somewhat unknown). Matt had also produced albums for the Go, and was also playing with artists like Epic Soundtracks, Andre Williams and dozens more. Lead guitarist in OC, Larry Ray, was a member of cult bands from Detroit (the Ivories, and he played with Ted Lucas of the Spike Drivers/Misty Wizards). The band was filled out with drummer Deb Agoli and a adorable new bass player, Aran Ruth, who is still a friend of mine here on MySpace and hopefully in real life, though I haven't seen her in years now!
At the time, OC had at the time just contributed a version of "Keep Everything Under Your Hat" for that year's Skip Spence tribute, More Oar which came out through the efforts of two of my friend's, Bill Bentley and David Katznelson, for Katznelson's Birdman label (it featured covers of the original record's tracks by Robert Plant, Robyn Hitchcock, Tom Waits, Greg Dulli, Mark Lanegan and more).
I was blown away by the new recordings Matt was working on, and thought they would be perfect for Del-Fi's new music imprint, DF2K. And it was a great fit, for me, for Matt, for Del-Fi's "indie" new music label. 1999's Out There in the Dark was one of those experiences I shall always treasure since it was probably a peak point for me, and really felt like I was contributing (without, uh, writing, recording or playing the music!) to the very stuff that my life was all about. It's a feeling I'm sad to say I haven't been able to return to -- a dream I've let go, I guess. But for a short time in the late nineties and early 00s, I was very happy promoting this album (it has subsequently been reissued on Poptones and Rainbow Quartz, and Matt and the band continue to make great albums).
15. Beachwood Sparks - Beachwood Sparks (1999) 
I really wanted to work with another band when we still had DF2K up and running (alas, the label only put out two releases total), but Beachwood Sparks had already -- by the time I ever started talking to them, I think -- demoed and recorded for Greg Shaw at Bomp and they were taking meetings with a few majors and larger indies and just about to sign to SubPop Records, so I was too late, even though I doubt there's much I could have done that would have helped them out, because they were already quite big in L.A., I think. One of the very first things I ever owned by them was a SubPop single -- "Midsummer Daydream"/"Windows 65" -- issued in April 1999, but the band were already changing around their sound and by the time this debut came out, I was completely sold.
So, I wrote about them (guess I still am writing about them), cover stories for fanzines, articles for music-biz mags and larger fanzines, online websites. I described their music as a lilting, loping folk-psych soundscape of mournfully sweet guitar-driven tunes, flush with warm but frail lead vocals, close harmonies (think Smile-era Beach Boys/The Byrds/maybe even a little Workingman’s Dead, tottering Olivia Tremor Control-meets-"Interstellar Overdrive" organ riffs and the occasional whine of an old lap-steel and steel guitar, all of it sounding something like what a cryogenically-frozen Buffalo Springfield circa 1967 might sound like if they were thawed out today, or maybe even Neil Young’s first solo outing, minus the Nitzsche strings and female ooh-ahs."
Yes, typically wordy of me, I know.
This album meant a lot to me -- I used to see Beachwood Sparks play all the time in L.A., and even traveled to London at the same time they were going in order to see them play there, or perhaps that was just my luck. Either way, this band helped to point me towards the music I enjoy the most today, back 'round to Neil Young and the Buffalo Springfield, forward to the current L.A. country-rock music scene, a path bordered by iconic images from my path, from the clothing I wear, to the lifestyle, to the places I like to visit, like Joshua Tree.
For some reason I felt I had to choose this album in order to set things right in this little journey I've elected to take, in order to help me find that path back to my past and then back again. It's been a long journey, I know -- and I only really mentioned the years between 10 and 40, but I suppose that's the main point anyway.
So, what's been some of your key soundtrack LPs?
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February 12, 2009 - Thursday
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Current mood:  nostalgic
Category: Music
It's nearly been a week now, but I keep thinkin' about the great show I witnessed last Saturday night when Charlie Louvin performed at Spaceland, in Silverlake.
Now, first, if you don't recognize the name Louvin, well... let me post Wikipedia's entry for him:
Charlie Louvin (born Charles Elzer Loudermilk, July 7, 1927 in Henagar, Alabama) is an American country music singer and songwriter. He is best known as one of the Louvin Brothers. He is a cousin of John D. Loudermilk.
Louvin began singing professionally with his brother Ira as a teenager on local radio programs in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The boys sang traditional and gospel music in the harmony style they had learned while performing in their church's choir.
After Charlie left the act briefly in 1945 to serve in World War II, the brothers moved first to Knoxville and later to Memphis, working as postal clerks by day while making appearances in the evening. Another brief disbandment due to Charlie's service in the Korean War led to the brothers' relocation to Birmingham, Alabama.
Primarily known as gospel artists, the Louvins were convinced by a sponsor that "you can't sell tobacco with gospel music," and began adding secular music to their repertoire. They began making appearances on the famed Grand Ole Opry during the 1950s, becoming official members in 1955. The Louvin Brothers released numerous singles, such as "Little Reasons", with over 20 recordings reaching the country music charts. Their rich harmonies served as an influence to later artists such as Emmylou Harris, Gram Parsons, and The Byrds.
By the 1960s Charlie and Ira's popularity had waned due to the rise of rock 'n roll, and the brothers split up in 1964. The following year, tragedy struck as Ira was killed in a car accident. Charlie continued to perform solo, making numerous appearances on the Grand Ole Opry and in later years acting as an elder statesman for country music.
In 2001, the Louvin Brothers were inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
In recent years, Charlie Louvin has sporadically released albums on his own. He released a disc mainly of Louvins songs with one new song, a tribute to Ira, in February 2007 on Tompkins Square Records of New York City. The songs mainly pair Louvin with other singers, such as George Jones, Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, Alex McManus of Bright Eyes, Elvis Costello, and Derwin Hinson.
Louvin currently lives in Manchester, Tennessee.
His official website is at CharlieLouvinBros.com Charlie recently closed his museum in Nashville, Tennessee and is looking to open another one on Mont Eagle near Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Okay, now let me tell you that it's a real treat to see someone like Charlie Louvin perform -- last year I saw him at the Mint, right around this same time of year (Grammy time -- check out this pic from this year's Grammy party where he posed with Robert Plant and Allison Krauss):
Anyway, this year, I was really looking forward to seeing him at Spaceland. Well, it turned out to be very memorable. You see, in the middle of his set, Spaceland lost all of its electricity power, the lights, sound... everything. The power went out in that part of Silverlake in fact, and when it came back online, it was at half-strength, and so Louvin and his backing band (Mike Stinson, Dave Gleason, Rob Douglas and a drummer -- I'm sorry I can't recall his name, help me out someone) continued to perform, in the dark, with just a few flashlights and cell phone lights, etc.
Everyone played really quietly and the audience stayed respectful and hushed down to practically whisper-level silence. We could all hear Louvin tell his stories, his unfunny jokes and sing his songs. It was a very Kum Ba Yah moment, standing in the dark with my friends, and I will never forget it.
One of the real highlights was watching my friend Krissie singing "Wreck On the Highway" with Charlie Louvin -- I'm sure she'll never forget that moment either.
Krissie actually sent me this YouTube clip (part 1 of 3, but you can find parts 2 and 3 pretty easily) where Louvin is being interviewed by Paul Edward Joyce on "Traditional Country: Sounds of Yesteryear" on 90.5 FM WPEA. He talks about a few the songs which featured guest singers last Saturday night at Spaceland, including "Wreck On The Highway."
Lots of bloggers have been writing about this historic and memoral show -- here's something about the show that I saw over on Kevin Bronson's Buzz Bands LA blog:
http://buzzbands.la/2009/02/08/louvin-the-night-the-lights-went-out-at-spaceland/comment-page-1/
This was written by a friend of Kevin's named Doug Kresse. I've added photos by my pal Kent Geib here:
Not even a power outage a half-hour into his set could sap the energy and heart from 81-year-old country music legend Charlie Louvin on Saturday night at Spaceland. With a backing cast of local musicians and guest turns from the likes of Lucinda Williams, Louvin carried on in the dimness of emergency lights and delivered a heartfelt set rich in the art of storytelling.
After sets by Frank Fairfield and local treasure Mike Stinson and his band (who would become Louvin’s backup band), Louvin took the stage in front of a packed house about 11:15 p.m. Plenty of fellow musicians populated the crowd, including Chris Isaak. With occasional turns from guest vocalists, Louvin sang a lot of his great gospel hits, and classics like “I Don’t Love You Anymore.”
Then, around 11:45, the lights flickered and everything went black inside the club. Emergency backup lights kicked on, and the Spaceland crew scrambled to keep the show on the road (somehow the sound system was not affected). Working with little light, Charlie and the band shifted to working without the reliance of the sheet music. At one point, bassist Rob Douglas attempted to scan the sheet music, trying to get the chords down, but Louvin just told Douglas not to worry. He helped the bassist and Stinson along, and the set went on in conditions that may have rattled many musicians — but not these.
Later, Louvin welcomed Lucinda Williams on the stage to sing with him. But one of the things I’ll remember most were the stories Charlie told between songs. He connected with the audience, recounting a life of great memories. One was the time — long ago — that he and a band had just finished a long set, were packing up to go home, then saw some miners, just getting off their shift, who suggested it’d be wise to play some more. Louvin honored their request. He also told of the times when club patrons who talked during a set and disrupted it (not an uncommon occurrence in Eastside environs) were “carried out.” His anecdotes spanned several decades.
It’s clear Charlie Louvin has created a rich history of music — and added to it with Saturday’s show. In the midst of what to him was a minor inconvenience, he showed true class.  And here's another account of the show, by my wonderful friend Jody, who has a really great blog called When You Awake (Photos below are by India Brookover). http://whenyouawake.com/2009/02/10/in-living-color-charlie-louvin-lucinda-williams-and-benji-hughes/ Excerpt: India, my daddy-o, and I went over to Spaceland on Saturday night to check out the Grammy-nominated musician’s performance. The night began pretty much as expected. Frank Fairfield and Mike Stinson performed solid opening sets to a packed house, and when Louvin came out, the 81 year old could still command the stage and carry a tune like only those who were born and bred on country music can. He worked his way through a handful of Louvin Brothers classics and mixed in a couple of his favorite songs written by Kris Kristofferson, Dallas Frazier and others. He sounded great. The band sounded great. And then, the night took a turn for the surreal (or as my friend Richard put it “I feel like I’m on mind altering drugs.”). 
Half of the lights in Spaceland went out due to the rain outside and an eerie, blue emergency light came on and flooded the room. After about 10 minutes of confusion, the band decided to play on (their PA system still functioned—though at about half power). They started off with a rousing version of the Louvin Brother’s tune, “Atomic Power,” which seemed quite appropriate given the venue’s current state. Then, they decided to take a stab at “Knoxville Girl”, during which a random audience member hopped onstage to join him on the harmonies (without asking of course). This is all good and sweet, except that the girl could barely sing. At the end, he made a comment along the lines of “I don’t know what’s more painful, the girl in the song getting murdered or this girl singing onstage.” I couldn’t help but agree.
Side note: I don’t know what it is about these classic country figures that make people feel like they can just jump on stage with them. That happened at the Roni Stoneman concert too (though that boy could actually play bass). I mean…please! If you decide to invade the stage, at least practice beforehand (or lay off the whiskey sours until AFTER your little “performance.”)
The music began to unravel a bit after that, getting looser and looser as the charts that they had been following were no longer visible due to the darkness. It seemed like everything began to move in a hazy, slow motion sort of way. This was accented by the fact that a rather liquored up (or so it seemed) Lucinda Williams made a surprise appearance and joined Charlie on stage. After some shuffling of musicians and instruments, Lucinda led Louvin and band in a stomping, unhinged version of her song “Get Right With God.” They pulled it back a bit for a duet on the Louvin Brothers’”When I Stop Dreaming” that gave me some serious goosebumps.
So, where were you when the lights went out last Saturday night? I know where I was -- I'm not going to forget any time soon either.
 | Currently listening:
Satan Is Real
By The Louvin Brothers
Release date: 1996-07-23 |
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February 8, 2009 - Sunday
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Current mood:  high
Category: Life
Here's #4 in an occasional series listing just a few of the Lonesome L.A. Cowboy's current faves -- think of this as a list of miscelleanous items (albums, books, movies, etc.) and people and things that I happen to be diggin' right now (and always), things coming back up in my memory. Feel free to add a list of your own faves down below in the Comments section, or comment on my picks if you like.
Movie: One Eyed Jacks (1961)
Short excerpt:
Pat Garrett, ideal assassin. Public figure, the mind of a doctor, his hands hairy, scarred, burned by rope, on his wrist there was a purple stain there all his life. Ideal assassin for his mind was unwarped. Had the ability to kill someone on the street walk back and finish a joke....At the age of 15 he taught himself French and never told anyone about it and never spoke to anyone in French for the next 40 years. He didn't even read French books.
The book uses various devices to portray the notorious outlaw: a series of sketches of the characters who surrounded him, newspaper interviews (that may be real or made up), the occasional picture and the thoughts ascribed to him by a dime novelist who is the putative narrator of the novel.
The phrase "Collected Works" suggests a volume of poetry, but this book is a collage of poetry, prose and image, incorporating quotation from, and pastiche of, both historical and pop-culture sources. is quite poetic, and a detailed portrait of a man whose mythological stature overshadows the few known facts of his life. Ondaatje himself has referred to the text of this novel as a poem, so I think it's okay to proceed as if you're reading something that has a poetic feel. The subtitling of the poems as “Left Handed” both suggests the subversive nature of Ondaatje’s text and reinforces the double meaning of “Works” as acts of violence: Ondaatje has Sheriff Pat Garrett, famous in his own right as Billy’s killer, say that Billy “never used his left hand for anything except of course to shoot. He wouldn’t even pick up a mug of coffee” (pg. 43). On a number of occasions, Ondaatje depicts Billy performing other, more mundane tasks with his left hand, such as "catching flies" (pg. 58).
Here's the real Billy:
Album: Miles Davis's Bitches Brew LP (1970)
3 cups hot water
8 ounces Celery
8 ounces of broccoli tops or asparagus tips
2 ounces fresh onions
2 ounces butter or margarine
1 tablespoon flour
1 pint heavy cream
2 ounces fresh buds
Use fresh veggies only!!!
Boil three cups of water with celery, broccoli (or asparagus) for five minutes. Meanwhile carefully sautee the onions and buds in a separate pan for two to three minutes. Do not burn !!! Turn down the flame to simmer, then add butter bud onion mixture. Add flour stir then add the cream and simmer (Not boil) for five minutes or until thickens. Serve Hot serves 6-8. The best soup you will ever have!!!
I was reminded of this great 1961 movie recently when an old co-worker friend of mine had the poster of it in his Facebook profile. I left a message about it, quoting one of the movie's great lines:
Get up! Get up, you scum suckin' pig!
 This is what David McLees wrote back: "Great movie. Allegory for natural tension in a father & son relationship... underrated....nuanced in a way that movies are not made like anymore. Outstanding character developement and first rate acting by everyone involved. You are right Kubrick was orginally hired to direct it but did you know that Rod Serling wrote the first draft of the script? Later Sam Pekinpah was hired to finish it but fired before Brando was fiinshed with this first and last movie he directed. Eastwood's "Unforgiven" basically "borrowed" its town square whipping scene from this movie. Brando's original cut of the movie was five hours long before the studio took it away from him. I personally would love to see that version!"
The title refers, by the way, to one-eyed jacks in a deck of playing cards showing only one eye: the Jack of Hearts and the Jack of Spades. At one point in the movie, Brando's Rio calls Malden's character "a one-eyed jack," a reference to seeing only one side of a person's personality or life. Brando is referring to Malden's reputation with the town's people as a straight laced, no nonsense Sheriff. A view Brando does not share: "To these people you're a one-eyed jack, but I've seen the other side of the card."
As luck would have it -- or maybe it's because we share a lot of the same interests? -- my very cool and uber-adorable friend Kim Morgan has just written about this movie in her Sunset Gun blog (do check it out @ http://sunsetgun.typepad.com/sunsetgun/):
Famous (and infamous) for being Marlon Brando's lone stab at directing, One-Eyed Jacks has remained underrated, underseen and misunderstood since its messy release. Coming in an era when the creative actor (and sometimes genius) would find difficulties in many of his roles, it's not surprising that when problems arose he simply decided to direct himself in this creative Western -- and replace Stanley Kubrick no less. The picture began with a rocky start -- first with Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling's initial rejected treatment; second with Sam Peckinpah's nixed screenplay (Kubrick didn't like it, so Brando fired Peckinpah); and third with new scripter Calder Willingham, who, with Kubrick, was also eventually canned. That left Brando to hire himself as director, resulting in a four-hour cut that was extensively trimmed by Paramount to 141 minutes. The story finds bank-robbing Brando facing off with his ex-partner and betrayer (Karl Malden) -- a man who became a "respectable" sheriff while Brando served five years in a Mexican prison. After Brando escapes and learns what Malden's been up to, he seeks revenge, resulting in an affair with Malden's adopted daughter (played by Pina Pellicer), a situation with the imitable Timothy Carey, and a final showdown with Malden. Though many critics find the film aimless and overly long, the picture, even with its messy backstory and clipped final product, remains an interesting, moody, richly realized Western that is, not surprisingly, beautifully acted by Brando and Malden.
 From that point, Brando spends five years in a "steenkin' Sonorra prison," which allows him to concentrate some powerful thought on his abandonment issues. When Brando reunites with his former partner in crime, Malden has become the Sheriff of Monterey, California. A bothered Malden finally gets the chance to "explain" why he left his friend back in Mexico but tries again to deceive Brando by lying about why he never returned. Brando was made aware of the real reason for Malden's betrayal and that reason is gold.
Brando plans a bank robbery in Monterey but his plans are somewhat sidetracked when he falls inlove with Malden's stepdaughter. In case you miss the Freudian implications, the name for the Karl character is "Dad" and Brando is "Kid."
Brando's character struggles throughout the film with his conflicting desires to marry the stepdaughter and kill her stepfather for revenge. At the point he decides to forget about revenge and leave with his new found love, he is falsely accused of bank robbery. He finds himself at the mercy of Malden who desperately wants to kill Rio in an attempt to absolve his own guilt over the earlier betrayal.
The Oedipal myth is altered slightly by Rio, the Kid, on locating Dad, taking up with the stepdaughter rather than the wife, but the classic pattern is still there.
Trivia and bits of effluvia From IMDB:
After buying the rights to the novel, producer Frank P. Rosenberg worked on the first draft of the script together with Rod Serling. Sam Peckinpah was then hired to rewrite it. A complex deal was then made where money earlier spent attempting to develop Louis L'Amour's novel To Tame a Land into a film was allocated for accounting purposes to this film, and Stanley Kubrick was hired as director. Kubrick fired Peckinpah and brought in Calder Willingham for more rewriting, but later Rosenberg fired him and hired Guy Trosper instead.
The character of Rio originally was based on Billy the Kid, as recounted in Charles Neider's novel The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones. Sam Peckinpah, who wrote an early version of the script and who later went on to direct Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973), said in a 1973 Playboy magazine interview that Marlon Brando would not play a villain, and Billy the Kid most definitely was a villain. Peckinpah's 1973 film shares some narrative elements with this film and it also featured "Jacks" co-stars Slim Pickens and Katy Jurado.
Stanley Kubrick, who originally was slated to direct the film, wanted Spencer Tracy to play Sheriff Dad Longworth. Marlon Brando, whose production company already had Karl Malden on salary, refused to replace him with Tracy.
Marlon Brando would sit near the ocean for hours waiting for the waves to become more dramatic for his perfect shots.
Documentary: Grass (2006)
  Michael Ondaatje was born in Sri Lanka, and came to Canada in 1962. He lives in Toronto, as far as I know. What I do know is that he's the author of many internationally celebrated novels. This fantastic book -- the full title is The Collected Works of Billy the Kid: Left Handed Poems -- is a particular favorite of mine, with it's historical in its approach to the stories, partly truth/partly fiction, behind the late nineteenth century American outlaw William H. Bonney, better known as Billy the Kid. This visionary novel traces the legendary outlaw’s passage across the blasted landscape of 1880 New Mexico and the collective unconscious of his country.
Ondaatje is a virtuoso synthesis of storytelling, history, and myth by a writer who brings us back to our familiar legends with a renewed sense of wonder. The best way to describe it, perhaps, is as a work of historiographic metafiction, viewing the past, and the past’s textual remains in the present, through a highly self-conscious, self-reflexive and fragmented literary filter. Its approach is every bit as fictive as biographical, if not more so. It draws on contemporary accounts, period photographs, dime novels, and his own prodigious fund of empathy and imagination.
“The Collected Works of Billy the Kid strains one’s powers of description.... Ondaatje’s eye for detail is wonderful and he uses it poetically, with superb restraint.” — Larry McMurtry, The Washington Post Book World
 Michael Ondaatje
Longer excerpt:
I send you a picture of Billy made with the Perry shutter as quick as it can be worked–Pyro and soda developer. I am making daily experiments now and find I am able to take passing horses at a lively trot square across the line of fire–bits of snow in the air–spokes well defined–some blur on top of wheel but sharp in the main–men walking are no trick–I will send you proofs sometime. I shall show you what can be done from the saddle without ground glass or tripod–please notice when you get the specimens that they were made with the lens wide open and many of the best exposed when my horse was in motion
*
These are the killed.
(By me)–
Morton, Baker, early friends of mine.
Joe Bernstein. 3 Indians.
A blacksmith when I was twelve, with a knife.
5 Indians in self defence (behind a very safe rock).
One man who bit me during a robbery.
Brady, Hindman, Beckwith, Joe Clark,
Deputy Jim Carlyle, Deputy Sheriff J.W. Bell.
And Bob Ollinger. A rabid cat,
birds during practice,
These are the killed.
(By them)–
Charlie, Tom O’Folliard
Angela D’s split arm,
and Pat Garrett
sliced off my head.
Blood a necklace on me all my life.
*
Christmas at Fort Sumner, 1880. There were five of us together then. Wilson, Dave Rudabaugh, Charlie Bowdre, Tom O’Folliard, and me. In November we celebrated my 21st birthday, mixing red dirt and alcohol–a public breathing throughout the night. The next day we were told that Pat Garrett had been made sheriff and had accepted it. We were bad for progress in New Mexico and cattle politicianslike Chisum wanted the bad name out. They made Garrett sheriff and he sent me a letter saying move out or I will get you Billy. The government sent a Mr. Azariah F. Wild to help him out. Between November and December I killed Jim Carlyle over some mixup, he being a friend.
Tom O’Folliard decided to go east then, said he would meet up with us in Sumner for Christmas. Goodbye goodbye. A few days before Christmas we were told that Garrett was in Sumner waiting for us all. Christmas night. Garrett, Mason, Wild, with four or five others. Tom O’Folliard rides into town, leaning his rifle between the horse’s ears. He would shoot from the waist now which, with a rifle, was pretty good, and he was always accurate.
Garrett had been waiting for us, playing poker with the others, guns on the floor beside them. Told that Tom was riding in alone, he went straight to the window and shot O’Folliard’s horse dead. Tom collapsed with the horse still holding the gun and blew out Garrett’s window. Garrett already halfway downstairs. Mr. Wild shot at Tom from the other side of the street, rather unnecessarily shooting the horse again. If Tom had used stirrups and didnt swing his legs so much he would probably have been locked under the animal. O’Folliard moved soon. When Garrett had got to ground level, only the horse was there in the open street, good and dead. He couldnt shout to ask Wild where O’Folliard was or he would’ve got busted. Wild started to yell to tell Garrett though and Tom killed him at once. Garrett fired at O’Folliard’s flash and took his shoulder off. Tom O’Folliard screaming out onto the quiet Fort Sumner street, Christmas night, walking over to Garrett, no shoulder left, his jaws tilting up and down like mad bladders going. Too mad to even aim at Garrett. Son of a bitch son of a bitch, as Garrett took clear aim and blew him out.
Garrett picked him up, the head broken in two, took him back upstairs into the hotel room. Mason stretched out a blanket neat in the corner. Garrett placed Tom O’Folliard down, broke open Tom’s rifle, took the remaining shells and placed them by him. They had to wait till morning now. They continued their poker game till six a.m. Then remembered they hadnt done anything about Wild. So the four of them went out, brought Wild into the room. At eight in the morning Garrett buried Tom O’Folliard. He had known him quite well. Then he went to the train station, put Azariah F. Wild on ice and sent him back to Washington.
 Recently, while driving to work in the rain, once again -- seems like that's what I was doing the last time I was putting together one of these blogs -- I was listening to "Miles Runs The Voodoo Down" off of Bitches Brew, and it all came back to me, when I first heard this album.
When I was a kid, the summer of 1972, I think, which would have made me about 11 years old, I went to a co-ed camp in Running Springs, CA, the Hollywood Boys Camp, I believe that's what the name of it was. There were cabins with several rooms connecting up to a larger room in the middle, and each room had five or six boys per room, as I recall, each under the sometimes watchful eye of a camp counselor.
I think these guys were all about 25 years old, or maybe even younger, and I don't remember the name of any of the counselors, or whatever they were actually called, but there was this one guy, I think he was named Joe, who was one of the very first Jewish people I ever met. Now, you have to remember, I grew up in Orange County and led a kind of sheltered existence -- I wasn't exposed to a lot of different cultures in my wonderbread white-boy world, and this guy Joe was pretty fuckin' cool.
Joe had a huge white-boy 'fro, as I recall, and a big nose and a great laugh, as I recall. But the reason I remember him was that he had taken a few days off after we'd arrived (his days off were in the middle of the week) and he'd gone "down the mountain," and relaxed, then returned in the middle of our week at camp with all kinds of stuff, including a bag of bagels (had the very first bagel of my life in the mountains of Running Springs) and he'd also purchased a bunch of albums.
One of them was Bitches Brew, the double studio jazz album, released in June of 1970. I mean, just look at the cover and you can tell how my mind was blown by this experience. I remember listening to that entire album that day, munching on bagels and enjoying the experience of other music, other worlds, other people. Joe helped me along in that process, whether he knew it or not.
And driving in the rain the other day, listening to "Miles Runs The Voodoo Down," I had my mind blow all over again. What a motherfucker of an album this is. Go out and buy it if you're bold.
Here's what a reviewer named John F. Szwed said over on Amazon.com : The revolution was recorded: in 1969 Bitches Brew sent a shiver through a country already quaking. It was a recording whose very sound, production methods, album-cover art, and two-LP length all signaled that jazz could never be the same. Over three days anger, confusion, and exhilaration had reigned in the studio, and the sonic themes, scraps, grooves, and sheer will and emotion that resulted were percolated and edited into an astonishingly organic work. This Miles Davis wasn't merely presenting a simple hybrid like jazz-rock, but a new way of thinking about improvisation and the studio.
Song: "Madman Across The Water" from Madman Across The Water (1971)
Today I was listening to Elton John's "Madman Across the Water", and thought I'd put something about it in this blog. The heavily-orchestrated released version was recorded on August 14, 1971, and originally it was to be included on the album Tumbleweed Connection, but Elton set the song aside and would eventually serve as the title track for his next album. There was apparently an alternate 9-minute version of the song was recorded with guitarists Mick Ronson and Michael Chapman as well -- this version didn't get released until 1992 Rare Masters. There's also the original version, which appears on the deluxe reissue of Tumbleweed Connection. It's my favorite of the versions I've heard. The lyrics by Bernie Taupin are pretty stark and complex -- not exactly typical radio pabulum in 1971. Love this line: "But is in your conscience that you're after/Another glimpse of the madman across the water?" And this one: "You better get your coat, dear, It looks like rain," particularly the way he emphasizes "dear."
I have to tell you one story and I have a friend on Facebook (Kai Stearns -- she's not on MySpace, I don't think), who can corroborate this. Kai had a friend at one time, one of two IDENTICAL twins, sweet but very quiet girl, practically mute, with model-beauty, named Kelly (her sister was Kerry) and I started going out with her when we were both working at South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa circa 1993 or so. It was right before I moved to L.A. (I ended up falling head over heels for Kai, which sorta ended anything I might have started with Kelly anyway, and actually it did -- plus, I moved to L.A.).
Anyway, Kelly (Kerry too) was obsessed -- repeat: OBSESSED -- with Elton John. In fact, she owned NOTHING but Elton John albums -- and possibly CDs by him -- and nothing else by any other artist. It freaked me out, to tell you the truth. I really couldn't wrap my mind around that. Kai remembers it too, so I didn't dream it. Seems like something I might have dreamed though, doesn't it? A beautiful mute model girl who only wanted to listen to Elton John.
Poem: The Poet for J.K. (1949)
His genius is sired of misery or magic;
he dwells between disaster & the dream.
He might have been sedate; but only tragic
ecstasy is musical to him.
In every chaos he will wish a cure;
in life, a higher mystery of sorrow;
in death, the last existence that is pure.
Curiosity betrays him to tomorrow.
Necromantic passion, final terror
is his bequest: The wound was all he had
to multiply. Balancing the rope of error,
he shall fall to doom. He shall be mad,
sadly, deceived, he shall live, and he shall die
a master of all mummery.
~ Allen Ginsberg
This poem was published in the The New Yorker, September 4, 2006, p. 84; It was apparently written by Ginsberg in 1949 for Jack Kerouac. One question: what does it mean to "die a master of all mummery"?
Word: Peccadillo
I love the word "peccadillo," which the American Heritage dictionary defines as a trivial misdeed or sin, but I particularly love when you see the word associated with naughtiness, as in "sexual peccadillo." It comes from the Spanish word pecadillo, a diminutive of pecado, meaning sin, and Italian peccadiglio, a diminutive of peccato -- both from Latin pecctum, from neuter of pecctus, past participle of peccre, as in "to sin" (hey, I read all that stuff, don't blame me if it's wrong).
Food: Kind Soup (Cream of Sensimila)
Drink: Yoohoo!
I've always loved the taste of the chocolate drink Yoohoo. Usually I write about alcoholic drinks here (beers, mostly) but today I was thinkin' about how much I loved YooHoo.
Here's info from the YooHoo company's own website about how this tasty drink came into being:
The story starts in the beginning of the 20th century, when the Olivieri family of New Jersey ran a small business producing Tru-Fruit flavors by squeezing fresh fruit. Mr. Natale Olivieri believed that a chocolate flavor, which could be marketed without fear of spoilage, would be a very successful addition to his Tru-Fruit business.
In keeping with his policy of natural ingredients, Mr. Olivieri did not want to introduce a chocolate drink unless he could eliminate spoilage problems without the addition of any chemicals or preservatives.
One day Mr. Olivieri was assisting his wife in the kitchen while she was preparing to preserve her homemade tomato sauce. The idea struck him that heat might be a method of preserving chocolate as well. That day he prepared six bottles of chocolate drink and had his wife put them through the same process that she used on her tomato sauce. After a period of time, three out of the six spoiled. After further experimentation, Mr. Olivieri realized that while time and temperature were the two main factors in this new process, agitation was also necessary in order to achieve uniform heating of his product. This led him to the purchase of a rotating pressure retort with which he processed his first commercial batch of chocolate drink.
http://www.yoo-hoo.com/about/default.aspxTo be honest, I've never mixed it with alcohol, though I did find out that Kahlua, vodka and Yoo-Hoo chocolate drink mixed together are referred to as a YooHoo Yee-Haw, which sounds like something that might appeal to a Lonesome L.A. Cowboy ("A white Russian meets white trash"), though I'm not so sure that I'd want to mix up my Caucasians (thanks, Dude!) with my YooHoo. Keep it straight and unfiltered, that's what I suggest.
Clothing: The buffalo nickel outback hat
I recently got myself a couple of Australian outback hats, a buffalo nickel hat and another one that I think is just called a "fold up" hat, although it's made of sturdy brown leather and I don't think it would fold up all that easily. The buffalo nickel hat (see photo) is pretty cool, and the one I got is made by a company called Minnetonka, and they come in different colors, but mine is a kind of ruddy brown/tan suede job with the buffalo nickels on a band that runs around the crown of the hat, I think that's what it's called. I was hoping to find a really cool pic of some Australian actor dude wearing one, but I guess I might have to settle for this pic that my friend Sissy Jean took of Julie R. and I hangin' out at the Salton Sea a couple of weekends ago. Actually, in this one I'm wearing my dark brown fold up hat, not the buffalo nickel -- don't have a pic of me in that one yet.
 Historical Figure: Gaucho Gil  I've had a little bit of interest in Gaucho Gil, after hearing the name for perhaps the first time in late December (a local musician used the name as a band name for a Sweethearts Of The Rodeo show). Here's more:
http://www.gauchogil.com/legend.htm Here's an excerpt from a piece on NPR's "Weekend Edition Sunday" -- October 10, 2004:
The Legend of Argentina's Gaucho Gil
by Martin Kaste
In Argentina, it's increasingly common for people to direct their prayers to the spirit of a 19th century "gaucho." Little is known about Antonio Gil, except that the cowboy was an outlaw who was probably executed by provincial authorities. But where history leaves off, religious devotion has taken over. NPR's Martin Kaste reports.
Legend has it that Gaucho Gil was a good-hearted outlaw who stole from the rich and gave to the poor. Before his hanging, Gil is said to have pledged to become a miracle worker. Now more than 100,000 people come to visit a shrine at the spot of his death, where they leave offerings and seek miracles of their own -- from help passing a grade in school to cures for illnesses.
"There's no historical record of Gaucho Gil -- it's not even sure he ever existed," Kaste says. "But that doesn't stop these Argentines from entrusting him with their most fervent hopes -- and fears."
Childhood Crush: Jan Smithers
Another early teenage crush of mine was the lovely Jan Smithers, who played a character named Bailey on "WKRP In Cincinnatti" -- you might remember her if you're old enough. I always thought she was way hotter than Loni Anderson. My dad thought Loni Anderson was hot -- I remember that. I always thought she was a little overblown, all that big hair and boobage and such. Bailey appealed more to me, particularly when she was wearing glasses. Damn she was adorable!!
 The weird thing is, I really didn't know a thing about her life -- oh, besides the fact that she'd appeared on a famous cover of Newsweek magazine in the mid-60s, the one heralding the youthquake, called "The Teenagers" -- check out the pic below, that's Jan on the back of a Honda or some such type of bike -- so I went to Wikipedia.... and boy, it seems as though she's had a bunch of weird shit happen to her sicne she was on that TV show: Karin Jan Smithers (born July 3, 1949) is an American television and film actress. Smithers grew up in Woodland Hills, California. She attended William Howard Taft High School in Woodland Hills. She played the character Bailey Quarters on the popular television series WKRP in Cincinnati. She first reached the public eye as a teenager, when she was featured on the March 21, 1966, cover of Newsweek, seated on a motorcycle. As a result of that exposure, she landed some commercial modeling work while pursuing studies at the California Institute of the Arts. As a teen, Smithers was victim of a car accident that left a permanent scar on her chin. To avoid another car that had run a stop sign, Smithers swerved and hit a telephone pole. The impact smashed her face into the steering wheel, causing the injury. The scar cost her some roles and, according to her, made her feel insecure about her looks.
 In 2001 Smithers appeared on "Entertainment Tonight" specifically to quash the rumor that Barbra Streisand had stolen actor James Brolin away from her. She said she and Brolin had broken up years before Brolin met Streisand. As reported by World Entertainment News Network, in 2007, she was involved in a bizarre traffic accident. While driving naked, her car broke down, and she was struck and injured when she exited her vehicle for assistance. Ironically, police called to the accident scene found nothing wrong with her car and were puzzled as to why the actress stopped for help. At the time, Smithers couldn't remember anything about the accident or why she was driving naked in the middle of the night. She was married to Kipp Whitman (1 December 1971 - 1972) (divorced). From 1987-95, she was married to actor James Brolin. They had one daughter together. Although she had been living in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and had retired from show business, she now lives in Ojai, California, and is reported to be considering a return to acting. Place I'd Like To See Before I Die: Graham Nash & Joni Mitchell's Laurel Canyon House
I always wanted to check out -- maybe even stay in -- the house Joni Mitchell lived in and shared with Graham Nash, which I believe is actually located at 8217 Laurel Canyon Boulevard, but most references say that it was on Lookout Mountain Road. This was the house that apparently Graham Nash wrote “Our House." They were living there in late 1968 (by the way, I don't believe this is Joni Mitchell's home in this photo, but I couldn't find one online).
Here's a long excerpt I found which mentions the house, written by Gavin Edwards:
http://rulefortytwo.com/secret-rock-knowledge/chapter-10/csn-our-house/It was the house Graham Nash shared with Joni Mitchell in Los Angeles. The most famous facts about that house: (1) it was a very, very fine house (2) with two cats in the yard. But “Our House,” the Crosby, Stills & Nash song that recorded those details, left out some salient information: (3) the house was on Lookout Mountain Road, in the Laurel Canyon neighborhood of the Hollywood hills, epicenter of California’s laid-back late-60s folk-rock scene. (4) The living room was the location where Nash sang for the very first time with David Crosby and Stephen Stills.
Van Dykes Parks, songwriter and Beach Boys associate, called Laurel Canyon “the seat of the beat.” In the summer of 1968, that beat was mellow, tuneful, and full of songs about relationships. The Laurel Canyon population included Carole King, who had relocated after her divorce from Gerry Goffin. Cass Elliott, of the Mamas and the Papas, was hosting Judy Collins, who was rehearsing her band by the pool. Peter Tork had quit the Monkees and was hosting a party that stopped only when his money ran out. And visitor Eric Clapton was carrying around an advance copy of the Band’s Music From Big Pink, making everyone he met listen to it.
Joni Mitchell, who would perfect the poetry of acoustic heartbreak on albums like Blue, and then later bend it into strange new jazzy shapes, was recording her first album. Graham Nash, who had not quite yet left the Hollies, was staying at her house on Lookout Mountain Road. David Crosby, an ex-boyfriend of Mitchell’s who had recently been thrown out of the Byrds, was working on some songs with Stephen Stills, of the recently disbanded Buffalo Springfield. (Neil Young, at loose ends after the Springfield’s demise, would join Crosby, Stills, and Nash for their second record.)
Nash told me, “Me and David’s contention and memory, which obviously was affected by various substances which shall remain nameless, marijuana, was that the first time we sang was in Joni’s and my living room. Stephen’s got a whole different story – he thinks it was Mama Cass’s kitchen.”
Following the majority, then: the living room had a wooden floor, slightly polished, and a brick fireplace. In front of one large window, there was an array of small shelves, which held pieces of colored glass, creating a stained-glass effect.
~~
That's it for this time.
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February 7, 2009 - Saturday
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Current mood:  excited
Category: Music
My friend Chris Morris' show "Hillbilly Deluxe" is on the Web airwaves!
Here's what he posted in a blog yesterday, Friday Feb. 6, 2009:
It's on, people! My new Web show "Hillbilly Deluxe" is up on Scion Radio 17's Web site. Here's the link:
http://www.scion.com/broadband
[remember to put the spaces back in -- thanks, MySpace]
More Morris: "It's a three-hour show, and it streams continuously, so drop in and take a listen. There'll be a new show every month. Give it a listen -- if you dug "Watusi Rodeo" on Indie, chances are you'll dig our new mix of country and rockabilly. Lemme know what you think.
While you're at it, check out some of the other solid-sending programming on Scion Radio 17. I personally would like to recommend Garth Trinidad's "Chocolate City" and Waxpoetic's show (an offshoot of the tremendous R&B/soul/jazz mag)"
Lemme just say that if you like outlaw country and southern R&B and rockin' bones rockabilly and -- well, I can't simply list all of the stuff that Chris is liable to play on his new show, if "Watusi Rodeo" is anything to go by -- but you will definitely dig "Hillbilly Deluxe" if any of this type of roots music keeps your canoe in the water. Right on, Chris. Welcome back to the airwaves!!
Oh, here's what the Scion.com site says about "Hillbilly Deluxe" by the way (sounds like Chris might have written this, actually):
Hillbilly Deluxe presents the best in hardcore, no-nonsense alternative country, rockabilly and roots -- old time hillbilly music, honky-tonk, outlaw country and cosmic cowboys, and classic country-rock. It's almost impossible to hear this sort of music on the terrestrial airwaves these days, but we're digging deep and laying out only the finest for country and rockabilly fans who don't mind a little off-road driving. Whether it's coming out tomorrow or hails from waaaay back in the day, you'll hear it on Hillbilly Deluxe.
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February 3, 2009 - Tuesday
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Current mood:  numb
Category: Life
Some of you may already know that I used to work at Del-Fi Records, which re-launched in the mid-90s as a reissue label.
The original Del-Fi label was an Hollywood-based independent companies (home to several record imprints, actually) which put out a lot of great artists in the late 50's thru the mid-60s, including the Bobby Fuller Four and, of course, future Rock 'N' Roll Hall of Famer Ritchie Valens.
Valens -- as I'm sure you know if you have ever heard his name -- died in the plane crash that also claimed the lives of rock 'n' roll musicians Buddy Holly and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson -- but another man died in that plane crash as well, an event which has come to be known as "The Day the Music Died."
His name was Roger Peterson.
And even though I've worked for years on various Ritchie Valens projects and releases, writing liner notes and doing various other types of editorial content about this day, I always felt that the young pilot who died in that crash should also be mentioned whenever anyone wants to discuss the tragic event.
And so, let's also remember this young man today on this, the 50th Anniversary of the crash which also ended his life.  First, a little background. Concert tours were profitable ways for musicians to make money, obviously, and Buddy Holly needed the money. He was recently married with a child on the way. He had broken up with his group, the Crickets, and had left his record company. With him on the tour was former Cricket Tommy Allsup, a friend from his hometown of Lubbock, Texas, Waylon Jennings, and Dion and the Belmonts. The tour was called "The Winter Dance Party." In the midst of the winter touring dates, on the afternoon of February 1st, Buddy Holly and his band, Ritchie Valens and others traveled by train to Green Bay for an evening show at the Riverside Ballroom. Carl "Goose" Bunch, Holly’s drummer, had suffered frostbite on a bus that simply wasn't heating up enough to keep everyone inside warm -- it was their sixth tour bus in as many days, actually -- and he had to remain in the hospital a few days. He was replaced for the remaining dates by the Belmonts’ drummer, except for a couple of nights when 19 year old Ritchie valens sat in on drums, believe it or not.
 Their next gig was the ill-fated Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa. They were ferried there in a converted school bus, and it too broke down, this time with engine trouble. They didn’t pull into the parking lot of the Surf Ballroom until 6pm, just a few hours before the doors opened, with not much time to eat and rest up before a show that typically had lasted four hours.
About that time, Buddy Holly realized he could possibly lose any more members of his band because of the lousy conditions on the tour. It had been six days since they had stayed in hotel rooms and he knew that his band wouldn’t last much longer the way things were going.
Holly decided to charter a plane for himself and two of his band members, Waylon Jennings and Tommy Allsup, for the one-hour flight of four hundred miles above frozen wasteland to Fargo, North Dakota, the closest airport to the next show in Moorhead, Minnesota. In Fargo, they would be able to get some clothes laundered, and get a real night’s sleep in a warm hotel room, while the rest of the band froze their asses off in yet another broken down tour bus.
Holly called the Dwyer’s Flying Service, a local company, but the owner, Jerry Dwyer, wasn’t available to make the flight that night.
Instead, a young assistant, Roger Peterson, agreed to fly the group in a single-engine 1947 Beechcraft Bonanza (registration number N3794N). Roger Arthur Peterson (born May 24, 1937) was raised in Alta, Iowa, the eldest of four children born to Arthur and Pearl Peterson. At the time of the crash, Peterson was newly married; on September 14, 1958, he had wed his longtime girlfriend Deanne Lenz, who he'd been dating since their junior year of high school. The couple resided in Clear Lake, Iowa, just a short drive to Mason City where both of them worked.
According to the the Civil Aeronautics Board's accident report, by 1959, Peterson had been flying for over four years, receiving his private pilot's certificate in October 1954 and commercial pilot's certificate in April 1958; a short time later he was hired as a pilot for Dwyer Flying Service in Mason City, Iowa.
The month before -- January 1959 -- Peterson received certification as a limited Flight Instructor, though he was still working on his flight instruments training, having accumulated only 52 hours as such and he was not rated for night-time flying. Peterson's total flying time was listed in said report as 711 hours' experience; 128 hours were in the type which claimed his life, accumulated while performing similar local charter flights.
 Roger Peterson The Surf Ballroom show was a hit and it was packed to the limit. Over one thousand kids showed up in the frigid temperatures to see Ritchie and the other rock stars. Some came from as far away as the neighboring states of Illinois and Minnesota. As it turned out, two other members of Buddy Holly's group could travel with him by plane, but the cost -- $36 per person -- was apparently too high. Dion balked at paying the tab as well. Waylon Jennings wanted to fly with Buddy, but exchanged his seat with J.P. Richardson because Richardson had a cold. Tommy Alsup was included in the group, but Ritchie Valens offered to flip him for the seat since he was ill. The local host of the "Winter Dance Party," Bob Hale, flipped the coin. Ritchie called "Heads." and won the toss. (Years later, Tommy Alsup would open a dance club named "The Head’s Up Saloon" to commemorate this life-saving coin toss). Before leaving to drive to the airport in Mason City, Iowa, Buddy Holly teased his friend from Texas, Waylon Jennings, because he wasn't joining him in the plane. Buddy said, "Well, you're not going on that plane with me tonight?" Jennings replied, "No." Buddy's reply was, "Well, I hope your old bus freezes up again." Jennings snapped back, "Well, hell, I hope your old plane crashes." About midnight, Buddy Holly, J.P. Richardson, and Ritchie Valens were driven to the airport. The Beechcraft Bonanza took off in light snow from Mason City Airport around 1 o'clock in the morning, early February 3, 1959. The plane banked 180 degrees to the left and aimed north, achieving an altitude of 2000 feet MSL, cleared the airport, turned towards the northwest and faded from view. Minutes later the plane crashed in Albert Juhl’s cornfield, about fifteen miles northwest of Mason City in Cerro Gordo County, Iowa cornfield, eight miles northwest of the airfield. It is believed that bad weather conditions -- there were strong winds and light snow which reduced visibility -- and the pilot's inexperience with using the instrumentation to fly, is what caused the crash. One wing hit the ground, and the plane corkscrewed over and over many times, throwing all but the pilot from the plane. Roger Peterson, age 21, and his three passengers were killed. When Jerry Dwyer did not receive news of the safe landing of the plane in Fargo, North Dakota, he became concerned and decided to mount a search. The next morning was foggy. This prevented him from flying until about 9:00 am. He finally took off along the same flight path and found the wreckage within five minutes. It had gone unnoticed for eight hours along a fence in that snow-covered field, about a quarter mile from the nearest country road.
By 11:15, the coroner, Dr. Ralph E. Smiley, had arrived. As did the press, and inevitable spectators.
 The main part of the plane lay against the barbed wire fence at the north end of the stubble fields in which it came to earth. It had skidded and/or rolled approximately 570 feet from point of impact directed northwesterly. The shape of the mass of wreckage approximated a ball with one wing sticking up diagonally from one side.
The body of Roger Peterson was enclosed by wreckage with only the legs visible sticking upwards. His body was removed after permission was granted by the inspector for the Civil Aeronautics Board and Federal Aviation Agency. Deputy Sheriffs Wm. McGill and Lowell Sandquist used metal cutting tools to open a space in the wreckage.
The Civil Aeronautics Board later concluded the primary cause of the crash was pilot error, citing Peterson's inability to interpret the newly-installed Sperry attitude gyro he was forced to read due to the weather conditions with a secondary factor being that the pilot had not been informed of adverse flash weather forecasts.
A memorial service for Roger Peterson was held at Redeemer Lutheran Church, Ventura, Iowa on February 5. A funeral was held the next day at St. Paul Lutheran Church in his hometown of Alta; Peterson was buried in Buena Vista Memorial Cemetery in nearby Storm Lake.
 Peterson's parents would later receive condolence letters from the families of Holly and Valens. His widow, Deanne, remarried ten years after his death. In June 1988, a 6 foot-tall granite memorial bearing Peterson and the three entertainers' names was dedicated outside the Surf Ballroom with Peterson's widow, parents and sister in attendance; the event marked the first time that the families of Holly, Richardson, Valens, and Peterson had gathered together. And so, on this, the 50th Anniversary of the crash that took the lives of the musicians, let's also remember that a 21-year old inexperienced pilot also lost his life. His name deserves to be remembered as well as the others who died that day -- like Ritchie Valens, he was still so young, and his life was taken away from him before he had the chance to really live it.
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January 29, 2009 - Thursday
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Current mood:  blustery
Category: Music
Today on NPR's Morning Edition, I heard a really nice piece on one of the greatest jazz albums of all time -- Miles Davis' Kind Of Blue. The album was released 50 years ago this year -- here's the piece: These days, an official request to review the reel-to-reel tapes from a typical Columbia Records recording session in the late '50s — say Johnny Mathis, Duke Ellington or Doris Day — brings up boxes upon boxes of reels. But Miles Davis' Kind of Blue sessions hardly dented the tape budget. Three reels of Scotch 190, at the time a workhorse product of the recording industry, hold all that was recorded at those two historic dates in 1959.  It's not much, but it reveals a lot. This year marks the 50th anniversary of Kind of Blue, and Sony Legacy (which owns the Columbia catalog) has issued a 2-CD/1-DVD box set that includes the music, an ornate book, a vinyl copy of the original LP release and, for the first time, snippets of studio chatter. For listeners, it's the closest we can come to witnessing the making of a melodic masterpiece. For Davis and saxophonists John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley, pianists Bill Evans and Wynton Kelly, bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Jimmy Cobb, Kind of Blue was simply another day at work.  More at the link above. Here's what Wikipedia had to say about it - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kind_of_Blue
Though precise figures have been disputed, Kind of Blue has been cited by many music writers as Davis' best-selling album, as well as the best-selling jazz record of all time.
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January 23, 2009 - Friday
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Current mood:  creative
Category: News and Politics
In 1980, when Obama was a freshman at Occidental College in Los Angeles, he was approached by an aspiring photographer named Lisa Jack, who asked him if he would be willing to pose for some black and white photographs that she could use in her portfolio. Of her first meeting (in a campus eatery) with Obama, Jack remembers only that "He was really cute. But what else does a 20-year-old girl remember?" 
In the photos, Jack says, "You can see he is just posing, initially, but as the shoot goes on, he starts to come out. He was very charismatic even then."
Jack never realized her dream of becoming a photographer and is now a psychologist.
Jack and Obama would see each other only a few more times while students. But in 2005, while on a tour, she spotted Obama on Capitol Hill and yelled hello. "He knew exactly who I was after all this time," Jack says. "I was amazed."
On a dare from a skeptical friend, Jack decided to track down her negatives from the shoot.
Initially, before she dug the film out from her basement, Jack never thought her pictures would have much life beyond her own darkroom
When she found them, the images of Obama "blew me away," she says. "I had no idea I'd taken a whole roll of film."
 For a while, Jack put the negatives in a safety-deposit box, so that they could not be used until after the election, when there would be no chance they could be used for a political purpose. Today, Jack says, she hopes the photos reveal a "spirit of fun and thoughtfulness."
"I'm not political," Jack says, "(But) these are historic photos and they should be shared."
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January 22, 2009 - Thursday
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Current mood: imaginative
Category: Life
This was a little post-thing over on Facebook -- thought I'd share it here. Don't feel you have to leave 25 comments of your own, though! Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things,
facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to
tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about
you.
(To do this, go to "notes" under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in
the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right hand corner
of the app) then click publish.)
1. I was born in Marion, Kansas, way back in Oct. 1960 (current population: 2000) -- and
I've never been to that town, not since my mom, dad & I moved away when I was a baby.
2. I've lived in Southern California the rest of my life (33 years in Orange County, the
last 15 in Los Angeles) and probably always will live in SoCal, though I think I may move
to the desert one of these days.
3. My parents were going to name me Christopher at first but my dad thought kids might
tease me, calling me "Christine." I would have preferred the name Chris actually.
4. My middle name is my dad's first name - Duayne - spelled with a "y" because that's the
way my dad spelled his name. I don't really like to tell people what my middle name is.
5. I had really bad asthma as a kid (ages 5-15 or so), even ended up in the hospital a few
times -- actually, I think my asthma/breathing problems might be coming back.
6. When I was a kid I used to be a fan of both the Miami Dolphins and the Oakland A's and
rarely rooted for any local SoCal football/baseball team (not really into sports nowadays)
7. I lost my virginity during the hot summer of 1978, when I was 17, to a girl who was
just 14 years old at the time (hey, it was her idea!)
8. I haven't really been to the beach and spent any time in the sun/sand or the ocean for
about 10 years now.
9. The last time I was in a different country was March 2001 -- I went to London for 10
days. I would love to travel abroad again but don't see it happening in the near future...
10. This one is weird: from childhood, without exception, I have said the words "Rin Tin
Tin" aloud practically every time I've seen the numbers 10:10 on a clock --- I
know...weird!!
11. All my life, I've had incredibly vivid movie-like dreams, almost every night/morning,
with plots/sub-plots, action sequences, explosions, etc. - it's mentally exhausting
sometimes!
12. I still have dreams that I'm still working at the Licorice Pizza record store -- where
I worked between 1977 and 1981 (when I was 17-21 years old)
13. Since I was 17, I've mostly worked in retail bookstores & record stores, and record
labels/publishing companies -- I've had very little other experience, job-wise.
14. I've either been fired or laid off from nearly every job I've ever had -- it's true!
And I expect it will probably happen again too....
15. I haven't had a serious girlfriend/relationship that has lasted any longer than a year
and half -- and that was a long, long time ago.
16. The Eagles (yes, I know, the fucking Eagles) actually played an important role in my
deciding that I was not a Christian and didn't believe in "God" or any of that stuff....
17. I used to have a pretty serious shoplifting habit (mostly at grocery stores), but
thankfully that seems to have passed -- can't remember the last time I stole something
actually.
18. I've never been arrested (I've been detained a few times, even had handcuffs slapped
on me a few times, but never been taken away to jail)
19. I played pool with John Densmore of the Doors at Al's Bar once
20. I got rid of most of my vinyl collection back in the mid-90s and yes, of course, I
regret it, but I don't want to start "collecting" LPs again -- I'm kinda over collecting
things, actually.
21. I love a LOT of bands that you guys all love too, but one band I've never really been
a fan of is the Ramones -- but I did see them once, at the Rendezvous in Garden Grove, in
1979!
22. I won a writing award back in junior college for a poem I wrote and never cashed the
check I received as one of the award prizes ($100.00).
23. I've written liner notes for 50 or 60 CDs over the past 13 years (but none in the
past year or two, even though I've been asked!).
24. When I was a kid I imagined myself as a novelist, living alone in a cabin in the
mountains -- I never imagined myself married, with kids, etc. in the future.
25. Between work and home, I probably get (and read) about 500 to 600 emails on a daily
basis.
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January 17, 2009 - Saturday
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Current mood:  happy
Category: News and Politics
W.'s Greatest Hits
The top 25 Bushisms of all time
By Jacob Weisberg
SLATE
1. "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." ~ Washington, D.C., Aug. 5, 2004
2. "I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family." ~ Greater Nashua, N.H., Chamber of Commerce, Jan. 27, 2000
3. "Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?" ~ Florence, S.C., Jan. 11, 2000
4. "Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB/GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across the country." ~ Poplar Bluff, Mo., Sept. 6, 2004
5. "Neither in French nor in English nor in Mexican." ~ declining to answer reporters' questions at the Summit of the Americas, Quebec City, Canada, April 21, 2001
6. "You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test.'' ~ Townsend, Tenn., Feb. 21, 2001
7. "I'm the decider, and I decide what is best. And what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense." ~ Washington, D.C., April 18, 2006
8. "See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda." ~ Greece, N.Y., May 24, 2005
9. "I've heard he's been called Bush's poodle. He's bigger than that." ~ discussing former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, as quoted by the Sun newspaper, June 27, 2007
10. "And so, General, I want to thank you for your service. And I appreciate the fact that you really snatched defeat out of the jaws of those who are trying to defeat us in Iraq." ~ meeting with Army Gen. Ray Odierno, Washington, D.C., March 3, 2008
11. "We ought to make the pie higher." ~ South Carolina Republican debate, Feb. 15, 2000
12. "There's an old saying in Tennessee-I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee-that says, fool me once, shame on-shame on you. Fool me-you can't get fooled again." ~ Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002
13. "And there is distrust in Washington. I am surprised, frankly, at the amount of distrust that exists in this town. And I'm sorry it's the case, and I'll work hard to try to elevate it." ~ speaking on National Public Radio, Jan. 29, 2007 
14. "We'll let our friends be the peacekeepers and the great country called America will be the pacemakers." ~ Houston, Sept. 6, 2000
15. "It's important for us to explain to our nation that life is important. It's not only life of babies, but it's life of children living in, you know, the dark dungeons of the Internet." ~ Arlington Heights, Ill., Oct. 24, 2000
16. "One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic pictures." ~ U.S. News & World Report, Jan. 3, 2000
17. "People say, 'How can I help on this war against terror? How can I fight evil?' You can do so by mentoring a child; by going into a shut-in's house and say I love you." ~ Washington, D.C., Sept. 19, 2002 
18. "Well, I think if you say you're going to do something and don't do it, that's trustworthiness." ~ CNN online chat, Aug. 30, 2000
19. "I'm looking forward to a good night's sleep on the soil of a friend." ~ on the prospect of visiting Denmark, Washington, D.C., June 29, 2005
20. "I think it's really important for this great state of baseball to reach out to people of all walks of life to make sure that the sport is inclusive. The best way to do it is to convince little kids how to-the beauty of playing baseball." ~ Washington, D.C., Feb. 13, 2006
21. "Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream." ~ LaCrosse, Wis., Oct. 18, 2000 
22. "You know, when I campaigned here in 2000, I said, I want to be a war president. No president wants to be a war president, but I am one." ~ Des Moines, Iowa, Oct. 26, 2006
23. "There's a huge trust. I see it all the time when people come up to me and say, 'I don't want you to let me down again.' " ~ Boston, Oct. 3, 2000
24. "They misunderestimated me." ~ Bentonville, Ark., Nov. 6, 2000
25. "I'll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office." ~ Washington, D.C., May 12, 2008
Text from this article: I started gathering Bush's verbal slip-ups while covering his first presidential campaign. From the first one we published in Slate in October 1999 -- "The important question is, how many hands have I shaked?" -- adding to the collection has been my main pleasure, perhaps my only pleasure, in watching the man.
Since then, I've collected-with help from Slate readers-more than 500 Bushisms. What follows is a list of my 25 favorites. There were many to choose from, but in my opinion, the greatest Bushism of all was delivered on Aug. 5, 2004, when the president declared: "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
People often assume that because I've spent the past nine years collecting Bushisms, I must despise George W. Bush. To the contrary, Bushisms fill me with affection for the man-and not just because of the income stream they've generated. I find the Bush who flails with words, unlike the Bush who flails with policy, to be an endearing character. Instead of a villain, he makes himself into an irresistible buffoon, like Mrs. Malaprop, Archie Bunker, or Homer Simpson. Bush treats words the way he treated recalcitrant European leaders: When they won't do what he wants them to, he tries to bully them into submission. Through his willful, improvisational, and incompetent use of language, he tempers (very slightly) his willful, improvisational, and incompetent use of government. You can't, in the end, despise someone who regrets that, because of the rising cost of malpractice insurance, "[t]oo many OB/GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across the country."
It helps his case that Bush, like Yogi Berra, is in on the joke. This was clear from the first White House correspondents' dinner, in March 2001, when the new president read from the first collection of Bushisms, which he described as like Mao's "little red book," only not in Chinese. "Now ladies and gentlemen," he said, "you have to admit that in my sentences I go where no man has gone before." Of course, he bumbled his speech, claiming that he'd invented the term misunderstanding. He meant to say "misunderestimated."
Being able to laugh at yourself is a rare quality in a leader. It's one thing George W. Bush can do that Bill Clinton couldn't. Unfortunately, as we bid farewell to Bushisms, we must conclude that the joke was mainly on us.
Jacob Weisberg is chairman and editor-in-chief of the Slate Group and author of The Bush Tragedy.
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January 15, 2009 - Thursday
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Current mood:  drunk
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities
I heard today that Patrick McGoohan -- aka "No. 6" in 1960's British cult-classic TV show, The Prisoner -- has passed away. What a great TV show!! I'm sure you can get it from NetFlix or wherever you get your DVD rentals. There are 17 one-hour episodes. While each makes sense when viewed alone, they also come together as a complete story. The series has a definite beginning and a definite end; the conflicts are resolved and the questions are answered (more or less).
Here's his obit from the LA Times:
Patrick McGoohan dies at 80; TV's 'Secret Agent' and 'Prisoner'
The actor often played villains on TV and in movies. But he gained his greatest fame as the TV spy John Drake. He also won two Emmys for 'Columbo.'
By Dennis McLellan
January 14, 2009
Patrick McGoohan, a two-time Emmy Award-winning actor who starred as a British spy in the 1960s TV series "Secret Agent" and gained cult status later in the decade as the star of the enigmatic series "The Prisoner," has died. He was 80.
McGoohan, whose career involved stage, screen and TV, died Tuesday at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica after a short illness, said Cleve Landsberg, McGoohan's son-in-law. The family did not provide further details.
It was the height of James Bond mania in 1965 when McGoohan showed up on American TV screens in "Secret Agent," a British-produced series in which he played John Drake, a special security agent working as a spy for the British government.
The hourlong series, which ran on CBS until 1966, was an expanded version of “Danger Man,” a short-lived, half-hour series on CBS in 1961 in which McGoohan played the same character.
But it was McGoohan's next British-produced series, “The Prisoner,” on CBS in 1968 and 1969, that became a cult classic that spawned fan clubs, conventions and college study.
Once described in The Times as an "espionage tale as crafted by Kafka," "The Prisoner" starred McGoohan as a presumed British agent who, after resigning his top-security job, is abducted in London and taken to a mysterious prison resort called the Village. .
Known only as No. 6, he is interrogated by a succession of officials who are known as No. 2. But he refuses all methods of breaking him down to reveal his past or why he resigned, and he repeatedly makes failed attempts to escape.
The seemingly idyllic village contains "seeing eyes" that monitor activities and signs such as "A Still Tongue Makes a Peaceful Life."
McGoohan co-created and executive-produced the series, which ran for only 17 episodes, as well as wrote and directed several episodes.
In a 1967 interview with The Times, he described the series as "Brave New World" stuff.
"Nobody has a name, everyone wears a number," he said. "It's a reflection of the pressure on all of us today to be numbered, to give up our individualism. This is a contemporary subject, not science fiction. I hope these things will be recognized by the audience. It's not meant to be subtle. It's meant to say: This little village is our world."
Of the enduring cult status of the series, McGoohan once said: "Mel [Gibson] will always be Mad Max, and me, I will always be a number."
McGoohan, who reportedly turned down an offer to be the big-screen's original James Bond, appeared in films such as "The Three Lives of Thomasina," "Mary, Queen of Scots," "Silver Streak," "Escape From Alcatraz," "Scanners," "Ice Station Zebra" and Gibson's "Braveheart," in which he played England's sadistic King Edward I.
In his review of "Braveheart" in The Times, critic Peter Rainer wrote: "Patrick McGoohan is in possession of perhaps the most villainous enunciation in the history of acting."
As a guest star on Peter Falk's TV detective-series "Columbo," McGoohan won Emmys in 1975 and 1990.
Falk once described McGoohan, who also occasionally worked as a director and writer on the "Columbo" mysteries, as being "mesmerizing" as an actor.
"There are many very, very talented people in this business, but there are only a handful of genuinely original people," Falk told the Hollywood Reporter in 2004. "I think Patrick McGoohan belongs in that small select group of truly original people."
There's more at the link:
http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-patrick-mcgoohan15-2009jan15,0,3951859.story
Here's a pretty good overview if you've never seen The Prisoner:
 The Prisoner , an existential British spy/science fiction series, was first aired in England in 1967. Actor Patrick McGoohan conceived of the idea for the series, wrote some of the scripts, and starred in the central role.
McGoohan had become bored with his previous series, The Secret Agent, and wanted something very different. The new series comprised 17 "adventures," each self-contained, but each also carrying the story forward to its remarkable, highly ambiguous conclusion.
The series has attained cult status because it is so complex, so filled with symbolism, with dialogue and action working at several levels of meaning, that the entire story remains open to multiple interpretations.
Pontmeirion
The Prisoner was shot in the Welsh village of Portmeirion, whose remarkable architecture contributes to the rich, mysterious atmosphere of the series. In many ways an allegory, the adventures within The Prisoner can be read as commentaries on contemporary British social and political institutions.
The hero of the series is an unnamed spy first shown resigning his position. He leaves the bureaucratic office building housing his agency, goes to his apartment, starts packing--and is gassed--presumably by those for whom he used to work.
He wakes up in "The Village," a resort-like community on what seems to be a remote island. "The Village," however, is actually a high-tech prison, and the spy is a prisoner, along with others, men and women who were, it is understood, spies. All have been sent to "The Village" to be removed from circulation in any circumstances where their secret knowledge might be discovered.
I really loved that creepy, giant ball thing that would bounce around and envelop people who tried to escape.
Every member of "The Village" is known only by a number. The McGoohan character becomes Number Six, and finds himself engaged in constant intellectual, emotional, and sometimes physical struggles with Number Two.
But each episode presents a different Number Two. With a few exceptions, each episode begins with a repetition of some of the opening sequences from the first episode--McGoohan resigns; his file is dropped by a mechanical device into a filing cabinet labeled "Resigned"; he is gassed; he wakes in "The Village" and confronts (the new) Number Two.
This beginning is followed by a set piece of dialogue:
Prisoner: Where am I?
Number Two: In The Village.
Prisoner: What do you want?
Number Two: Information.
Prisoner: Which side are you on?
Number Two: That would be telling. We want information, information, information...
Prisoner: You won't get it.
Number Two: By hook or by crook we will. Prisoner: Who are you?
Number Two: The new Number Two.
Prisoner: Who is Number One?
Number Two: You are Number Six.
Prisoner: I am not a number. I am a free man.
Number Two: Ha, ha, ha, ha....
Some fans of the series argue that there is a slight gap between the words "are" and the "Number Two" in this exchange ("You are. Number Six."), which would mean that Number Six is also Number One, a character who remains unseen until the final episode. Number Two pushes the inquiry. He wants to know why Six resigned. Six says he will not tell him, then vows to escape from "The Village" and destroy it.
Each episode in the series consists of an attempt by a new Number Two and his or her associates to find out why Six resigned and of measures taken by Six to counter these attempts.
Every possible method, from drugs to sex, from the invasion of his dreams to the use of supercomputers, is used to get Number Six to reveal why he resigned. In some episode Six shifts his focus from escape attempts to schemes for bringing down the administration of "The Village," though it is always understood that escape is his ultimate goal.
The concluding episode, written by McGoohan, was extremely chaotic, confusing, and very controversial. Number Six has defeated and killed Number Two in the previous episode, "Once Upon A Time." When Number six finally gets to see Number One, he turns out to be a grinning ape. But when Number Six strips off the ape mask, we see what appears to be a crazed version of Number Six, suggesting that Number One was, somehow, a perverted element of Number Six's personality.
Six, aided by several characters also deemed "revolutionaries" by the administration (including the Number Two of the previous episode, somehow brought back to life), does destroy "The Village."
He escapes with his associates in a truck driven by a midget, who may have been the servant of all previous Number Two figures. They blast through a tunnel just before "The Village" is destroyed and find themselves, surprisingly, on a highway near London.
The Prisoner is considered by some critics to be television's first masterpiece, the most brilliant television series ever produced. It is continually rebroadcast, usually presented as a science fiction program, though it is probably best described as a spy series filled with technological gadgetry.
Each program and every aspect of the series has been subjected to scrutiny by its fans. Dealing with topics ranging from the nature of individual identity to the power of individuals to confront totalitarian institutions, The Prisoner remains one of the most enigmatic and fascinating series ever produced for television.
-Arthur Asa Berger
ITC Entertainment
I've also just read that the AMC movie channel has just ended production on their remake of The Prisoner, which they announced will air in November (not sure if that means 2009, but that's what I'm guessing, since we're already into the new year).
This remake stars Sir Ian McKellen (The Lord of the Rings) as the devious Number 2 and Jim Caviezel (The Passion of the Christ) as the prisoner himself, Number 6.
Can't imagine them doing a better job than Patrick McGoohan though.
R.I.P. Mr. McGoohan! 
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