Self-care comes in many ways, and you generally learn, as you get older, or most of us do, how to psychically survive. Grief is part of life, and it'sSelf-care comes in many ways, and you generally learn, as you get older, or most of us do, how to psychically survive. Grief is part of life, and it's hard, but part of life, and you go through it. Reading and writing are for many of us a kind of balm, but maybe also forms of inspiration, a way to sort of right the ship in a storm. Important work, and not just escape. And we are in a storm now in the US, post-election; or maybe it is more accurate to think of it in terms of the new normal hurricane season, with the dangerous winds are just beginning to blow.
And blow they indeed will. In my lowest moments I fear the big bad wolf will blow all of the houses down. The aftermath of the 2016 election was a kind of chaos we had not heretofore seen, but it was for a time seen as a fluke. Surely this madness will be regretted! But this recent election--a landslide?!--is a deliberate embrace of chaos, and we now expect a dismantling of the government like we have never seen before. The end of any pretense to acknowledging climate change, the end to the Department of Education (I'm a teacher), the release of all the January 6 "heroes," the disappearance of any and all criminal charges, and the revenge tour.
I know what to do, though; I read, write, listen to music, run/walk, teach my heart out, help prepare a new generation of English teachers, huddle close to family an friends. I join others in coalitions to spread kindness and love in the world especially as greater hate is unleashed. I try to do good. And fight the powers of greed and lies and corruption and hate as I have always done. I do not give up, we do not give up, even if the light appears at times to be going out.
So last night in an effort to "right my ship" in these rocky seas, I went with my super-fan friend Jenn to see Patti Smith at the Chicago Humanities Festival upon the occasion of the release of her new book with photographer Lynn Goldsmith, Before Easter After, a book set up to reflect the present moment.
Okay, it's mostly photographs of Patti over the years by Lynn (the Smiths, Patti said last night), but the foundation of the book is survival, the early Patti, then her disastrous fall--her back and neck damaged, though not broken, not paralyzed--for many years, and recovery, reflected in her Easter work.
As art is supposed to work, I was inspired, somewhat rejuvenated, and came home and read it all through, the book including Patti lyrics, poetry, reflections. I was a folkie, not a punk fan, but I appreciated her poetry and early work on Horses. But I am in a later crowd who has become a huge fan of her memoir work in such books as Just Kids. And this is mainly a fan's book of photographs.
I might have included the captions on the pages rather than in the back pages, but I know, this way you get the full photos, uninterrupted. I get that, I'm a comics guy, preferring wordless stories, and these pics tell a number of stories. I might have asked for more Patti writing, but this is essentially Lynn's book about Patti.
The book opens with a poem written to Patti by Sam Shepherd, and ends with a poem/song Patti and the love of her life Fred Sonic Smith, which opens this way:
Where there were deserts I saw fountains
and ends
I commit my dream to you. That the people have the power To redeem the work of fools Upon the meek the graces shower It'sdecreed the people rule.
I know, this all may seem naive at the moment, and may seem almost cruel in the face of the slaughter of the innocents in Ukraine and the middle east, but this experience helped me to reorient myself to the future, to hope, to the important work we must continue to do....more
I recall seeing the Blues Brothers when it came out ALMOST FIFTY YEARS AGO (augh!?!) and saw this audible original was available, so listened to it. II recall seeing the Blues Brothers when it came out ALMOST FIFTY YEARS AGO (augh!?!) and saw this audible original was available, so listened to it. I know there has been a lot written about that movie, the franchise, with films, albums, tours, sequels, and so on. So roughly two hours seemed fine, as this was a fine fun flick for me, especially for me as a midwesterner, but I didn't recall it as one of the best movie ever.
But it was surprisingly good in that Elwood Blues (aka Dan Aykroyd) narrates this short history of the BB phenomenon, from an SNL sketch with John Belushi, which improbably led these white dudes to work with and celebrate the music of blues legends Aretha Franklin, James Brown, and Ray Charles. Various people are interviewed, including Jim Belushi, Paul Shaffer, Curtis Salgado, John Landis, Steve Jordan, and more. The main storyteller is Aykroyd, but one treat is a lot from the late Judy Belushi Pisano, and a previously unheard interview with John Belushi himself. And quite a bit from Landis.
And band members who defend the project as both comedic genius AND a serious tribute to the great blues artists, many of whose careers were revived (as with the Coen Brothers comedy that takes bluegrass music seriously, O Brother, Where Art Thou?) as a result. No complaints of cultural appropriation here, as blues clubs suddenly were packed, and for several years.
To stretch it out a bit we get into John's bro Jim getting into the mix, a second The Blues Brothers movie, the founding of House of Blues, the Blues Brothers 2000 sequel. Most importantly, I made a list of some songs I had not listened to in a long time, and made a commitment to 1) see the movie again with the fam, and 2) get back one more time to a classic Chicago blues club, preferably like one that I heard is being revived on the south side that I used to go to in the seventies (hearing Buddy and Phil Guy there, among many others). On a mission from God!...more
David Browne’s Fire and Rain: The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, James Taylor, CSNY, and the Lost Story A nostalgic trip, why not? And not on acid. . .
David Browne’s Fire and Rain: The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, James Taylor, CSNY, and the Lost Story of 1970 (2011) is a kind of musical and cultural and political history of a single year, 1970, the year I was 17 and in high school. The focus of the book is on music. He makes a case that it was maybe even more interesting than 1968 as a year of tumult and change. In truth, it of course has to talk about things in the works in 1969 and bleeding into 1971, but it is admittedly an amazing year. he focuses on
The primary groups and their albums that year Browne focuses on (in part because he, like me, had this music as central in his life, but also because they represented besides both amazing music and tumult, a shift from the hops of the sixties flower power to the darker seventies of protest): Sweet Baby James, James Taylor Bridge Over Troubled Waters, Simon & Garfunkel Deja Vu, CSNY Let It Be, The Beatles
Also this year, some people in the conversation with the above (not disrespecting albums by The Who, Black Sabbath, and so on): All Things Must Pass, George Harrison Ladies of the Canyon, Joni Mitchell Working Man’s Dead, The Grateful Dead Moondance, Van Morrison Blood on the Tracks, Dylan London Calling, Clash Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd Songs in the Key of Life, Stevie Wonder Led Zeppelin IV Rumours, Fleetwood Mac Exile on Main Street, Rolling Stones Band of Gypsys, Jimmi Hendrix
“Breakups, makeups, you know it had to be that way”--Mamas and the Papas
Browne focuses on the amazing work to produce what we have in the key albums, above, but then takes us behind the scenes to the divisions, the petty fighting, the principled fighting, the romances, the massive drug use (especially heroin) that killed Jimi and Janis and so many others in their late twenties but also the groups he focused on were damaged by drug use. James and Simon & Garfunkel did mellow, mostly spiritual, inner-focused lyrics, and The Beatles and CSNY turned just a little more political in response to the growing anger about the Vietnam War, Kent State and the war on dissident students, such as in Young’s “Ohio,” but it was not yet a time of angry political music, after the killing of three civil rights activists--JFK, RFK, MLK--and the bombing of Cambodia. Volatile times. Weather Underground, Apollo 13 disaster, Greenpeace and Earth Day. I went to a lot of concerts that year. I attended a lot of protests and rallies. The times they were a’changin. Great trip down memory lane. ...more
My third book in the Against the Odds picture book series about girls/women around the world doing things against the odds." So some girls in rural InMy third book in the Against the Odds picture book series about girls/women around the world doing things against the odds." So some girls in rural Indonesia are studying Quran, wearing hijab, and they discover Metallica through their teacher, who also used to play in a metal band. The teacher supports them, even as they may face "radical Islamist" criticism.
As with the Wrestling Cholitas of Brazil and the Mermaids (synchronized swimmers) of Jamaica, I like knowing these folks exist, doing what they do. There's a kind of exoticizing in all of it that troubles me a bit, written for American audiences in mind, and as with the other stories, we don't get to really know any of the principal actors in these stories. It again feels somewhat abstract. Some of it is political, because there is resistance to what they do, and they are in danger, but still, I'd like to hear their actual voices. The author went to Indonesia, but couldn't actually get back to the area where they lived, so she relied on talking to the teacher and other musicians there. Still, Metallica in Hijab in Indonesia, why not? Cool. ...more
A sweet Audible Original Art+Music performance by Patti Smith that includes her son and daughter playing in the band with her as she reflects (brieflyA sweet Audible Original Art+Music performance by Patti Smith that includes her son and daughter playing in the band with her as she reflects (briefly, less than ninety minutes) on a few key events, focusing especially on the two most important men in her life, Robert Mapplethorpe and Fred "Sonic" Smith. They alternate stripped-down versions of her best-known songs with her brief account of her life, drawing on already published anecdotes (and actual prose) from her published writing, principally M Train.
That probably sounds like faint praise, but as she gets older, I have grown fonder and fonder of the artist, writer, and person Patti Smith, who liberally quotes other writers (and they play a song with a Rilke poem as lyrics) in all her works, urging me to reread them. So, as a memory trip, given it tells me little new, it maybe merits a three-star rating, but as an experience it bumps up for me to four stars. I liked it a lot....more
J. M. Coetzee’s The Pole is a short novel about Wittold Walccyzkiecz, a Polish pianist, known for his interpretations of Chopin, who becomes infatuateJ. M. Coetzee’s The Pole is a short novel about Wittold Walccyzkiecz, a Polish pianist, known for his interpretations of Chopin, who becomes infatuated with Beatriz, who helps organize his Barcelona concert. Beatriz is not exactly happily married, but she is not particularly attracted to The Pole, physically, emotionally, or artistically--she doesn’t even like his somewhat clinical interpretations of the music.
Then there is the language; she doesn’t speak Polish; they have to depend on a third language to communicate. Translation is, Coetzee, suggests, a key challenge in human relationships, including romantic ones. We never truly understand each other. One thing Coetzee is getting at here is the world wide problem of understanding each other across barriers.
Beatriz is in her forties; Witold is 72, so there’s that possible barrier.
And yet Beatriz--the reference is to Beatrice, the love object of Dante’s Divine Comedy, in love but never to truly be together, unrequited love-- succumbs to the intriguing and flattering seduction, a cascade of letters, invitations. I was reminded of Joyce’s “The Dead,” with its lyrical, haunting melancholy.
The language, the experience of, music, is also central to the tale. As is poetry, as Witold writes poetry to his love.
This short tale is experienced mainly through the perspective of Beatriz, wondering about the nature of love and the mystery of E. M. Forster’s injunction to “only connect.”
A master class in writing, a novella that asks you to reflect and question as much as it tells a complicated story, ...more
A lovely picture book about a girl who visits her grandfather who introduces her to street musicians, including homeless (unhoused?) Mr. Blue, who livA lovely picture book about a girl who visits her grandfather who introduces her to street musicians, including homeless (unhoused?) Mr. Blue, who lives in the neighborhood. Sure, Grandpa is great, and warm and loving, but how is Mr. Blue? Where does he sleep? Is he hungry? He's a member of their community, too.
Love thy neighbor is an old-fashioned concept apparently out of fashion in these times, pressed by an increasing (and it will be never-ending) refugee influx. The author raises the issue through the eyes of a child who sees (as she knows many choose not to see) and asks hard questions about what constitutes a community and what responsibility it should have for the neediest members of that community.
The star of this picture book is the lovely watercolor art but I also like Peoples's afterword: Who is your Mister Blue?...more
i picked up several just released-picture books, noting the degree to which they seem to speak to the "current moment's" trauma and trickle-down effeci picked up several just released-picture books, noting the degree to which they seem to speak to the "current moment's" trauma and trickle-down effects on kids. Depression/anxiety. This one is all right, noting that everyone has good and bad days. The boy tries his own way out of no-way through art and reading, but it is grandma that takes him for a walk where he is finally lifted up by a street musician.
I like the title and that colorful collage cover a lot (those are the reasons I took it home), a lot better than the simple digital art within, but it's useful for kids and parents to talk through similar issues....more
I just read Suze Rotolo’s memoir about the early sixties with Dylan in Greenwich Village, so it made sense to read this book, which in part focuses onI just read Suze Rotolo’s memoir about the early sixties with Dylan in Greenwich Village, so it made sense to read this book, which in part focuses on Dylan and the woman that “replaced” Rotolo, Joan Baez. Rotolo is not much mentioned in this book except as Dylan’s first real girlfriend--a child of American Communists--and as with Baez, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger--a major influence on his early political song-writing.
This is a really good book by a Columbia University Journalism Professor David Hajdu, who can really write, as opposed to a lot of hack writers on music and musicians. And he has no axe to grind. In general he writes about four young, creative, ambitious people whose lives intersected for a time and had an impact on a generation.
I have read other biographies of Dylan, so it is interesting to read Hajdu’s take on his early years and three close friends for a time who were also key to the Greenwich Village folk scene in the early sixties, also "blowing up" (we wouldn't have used that phrase in the anti-nuke sixties) to national prominence: Joan Baez, who was for a time the Queen of Folk, with her formal, somewhat reserved, classical style and that clear-as-a-bell voice, who became a political activist; Dylan, the scruffy poet with the unconventionally scruffy voice who emerged as the most brilliant musician and writer of the four (though maybe not the best person) and of his generation; Mimi (Baez) Farina, Joan's younger sister, a fine singer in her own right, and good guitar player who at seventeen married Richard Farina, a writer and sometime folkie.
So young, creative, competitive, jealous; Bob really liked Mimi, Richard really liked Joan. . . Bob was jealous of Richard's writing and so wrote Tarantula; Dick was jealous of Dylan's musical success, so picked up a dulcimer and worked up music with young wife Mimi.
Fun facts: *Farina's novel, Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me, was published April 28, 1966, the 21st birthday of his wife Mimi and also the day he died in a motorcycle accident.
*Like Dylan, Richard Farina was seen as a “fabulist,” as distinct from a liar, which implies ill-intent, maybe. Farina and Dylan made up all sorts of stories about themselves. The four of them were raised in comfortable middle-class homes, in suburbia, but Dylan and Farina pretended to be be Beat, hoboes. They were wild to hang with, but both could be mean.
*Joan Baez and her sister Mimi (who eventually took the last name of Richard Farina, were both musicians, Mimi younger, less famous but still well known in the scene. They all dabble in politics and literature without reading all that deeply; hey, they’re young! It was the sixties! And did so many drugs it is hard to believe anything got done at all.
*Richard's best man in his marriage was Thomas Pynchon! He was Farina’s Cornell University friend, who also wrote the introduction to Farina’s novel.
*Joan is not seen as particularly generous with others; more competitive. Her first Vanguard album sort of exploded, a best seller, a first in the folk scene. She was a sort of traditional folk singer of English ballads at first, not a singer songwriter such as Joni Mitchell. Well, all of them were competitive with each other and others; the boys especially wanted fame and fortune, and Dylan and Baez certainly got it.
*The portrait of Dylan here is not very warm. Early on he broke into the folk scene and then became an anti-war and civil rights singer, until he shape-shifted, as he has done his whole career. Dylan said, "I don't have to B.S. anybody like those guys up on Broadway that're always writin' about 'I'm hot for you and you're hot for me--ooka dooka dicka dee.' There's other things in the world besides love and sex that're important, too. People shouldn't turn their backs on 'em just because they ain't pretty to look at. How is the world ever gonna get any better if we're afraid to look at these things.”
But then he decided not to look at those things quite as much, perhaps overwhelmed and resentful as a young man by all the pressure he felt to be a social justice icon, to be the protest singer spokesman for a generation, so he turned to poetry and electric as Joan got more politically active. And according to Hadju, he got for a time out of control with fame, and got mean and crazy. He was asked why he worked his way into folk and social justice music, and he said, "Because I had to start somewhere, and because it sold." Ouch. His main model was Woody Guthrie, whose hobo style and even biography he copied, to some extent early on.
Dylan left Joan for Sara Lownds, who became his wife, 1965-77. After a 1966 motorcycle accident (6 months after Farina’s fatal crash, though it is disputed to ever have happened, as he never was hospitalized) when his baby Jesse was 5 months old, Dylan “got out of the rat race” for eight years in Woodstock with his new family, four children in roughly five years and adopting Sara’s first child.
*Dylan was especially mean to Baez in the break-up, but he never lost touch with her, or maybe it is she that never quite gave up on him, seeing him as troubled but brilliant. In Reynaldo & Clara, a film Dylan made, Sara played Clara, and Baez played “a woman in white.” Early on she heard “Masters of War, and said, "I never thought anything so powerful could come out of that little toad.” Dylan was to live with Baez again for several weeks after his breakup with Sara, and toured with him again in the late seventies Rolling Thunder tour, and again in the eighties. {In 2024 Dylan said he regretted his tretament of Baez during that time when fame at such a young age took over his mind). . The lyrics to Dylan’s angry song, “Positively Fourth Street," assumed to be his diatribe against the Greenwich Village folk crowd whom he felt had criticized his shift to electric and his abandonment of political commitments:
A good soci0-cultural history of a period of joy and turmoil, I liked it a lot. It basically ends with that crazy day of Farina's death, one kind of ending punctuation to a time, like the Stones at Altamont....more
I was skeptical that Malcolm Gladwell (The Tipping Point, Blink), a man with no musical background, could pull this off, but I eventually settled in tI was skeptical that Malcolm Gladwell (The Tipping Point, Blink), a man with no musical background, could pull this off, but I eventually settled in to enjoy it. I am old enough to have experienced all his music basically as it came out, and have been a fan of his work and his duo work with Art Garfunkel, so I liked it when Simon took a close, passionate and technical look back at the construction of some of his music across the years.
Audible has a number of short memoir/musical events from a range of musicians, and I like there how the musicians tell their own stories, playing music as they talk. Intimate, personal. Gladwell is a fan of Simon, and essentially does what he does in his books; he develops a theory and supports it with the help of Simon's own testimony, which is not exactly like Simon telling it in his way, but over time I came to appreciate Gladwell's analysis. And he's not a critic, he thinks Simon is a genius--see the title Miracle and Wonder--and never takes him to task for anything he has ever done, even Capetown, his disastrous Broadway musical (give him credit for bravery, for not repeating himself, and so on).
Gladwell sees Simon essentially as an experimental songwriter, who likes to try new things--South African music, Western African music, Jazz, Jamaican music, spirituals. He thinks a lot of the music is in conversation with Simon's father, who was himself a musician. Gladwell doesn't claim this is a biography, but he does take us through his whole career in roughly five hours, so we are not taking a deep dive, except when Simon himself lovingly recalls sources of his songs. I liked best Simon talking and playing, of course. I would have liked more Simon and less Gladwell, for sure. He doesn't know anything about music, so can't truly engage with him on the subject at hand, though he has a fan's enthusiasm for the project; we can relate, as fans.
We get one whole song to end it, "American Tune," which was originally done by Simon when he was a young man, a kind of reflection on the late sixties, Vietnam, Nixon, but he sings it now with renewed relevance (and in great voice!) to the current American scene. I like Simon's taking us through how songs such as "Bridge Over Troubled Waters" came about. One of the great songwriters ever. And I had not heard some of his later work, which I am encouraged to check out.
Here's the lyrics and a link to the whole songs from The Seven Psalms, not pop music, but a kind o meditation on life and death and The Present Moment. Intimate and poetic:
"I am not a good character. I am quite simply not a good person."
I have this feeling I might have liked this curmudgeon of a book moreThe Misanthrope
"I am not a good character. I am quite simply not a good person."
I have this feeling I might have liked this curmudgeon of a book more had I read 2-3 more of his other novels first. Yes, this is my first Thomas Bernhard book (I think!). It's a kind of rant against many things he hates, and a kind of homage to his friend, Paul Wittgenstein's nephew. That was the hook for me, as I love Wittgenstein as philosopher (especially the zen-koan-like Philosophical Investigations) and I am intrigued by his personal life--the wealth, the mental health issues, the brilliance, the madness. But I thought it was less about Paul than Thomas.
The book is called a novel, but it is widely described as autobiography/memoir or some combination of the two. The opening is a focus on Thomas, in a sanitarium for tumors (he died at 58 at a life time of lung illnesses), and Paul, in a psychiatric wing nearby (though they rarely see each other, as Thomas does not want to see his friend in decline, it's too depressing for him). I am somewhat influenced by having read an article about a book by Bernhard's brother, who referred to him as a lifelong "demon" in his life. Thomas said the center of their friendship was great talks about music, and castigating everything from psychiatry, the literary life, literary awards, the German press, to "ignorant" Viennese people, and so on. They hate walking, nature, the country.
I'm told Bernhard was at his best energetic and entertaining and at his worst nasty, but in this book there are only reported conversations, zero dialogue at all. I am interested in the meditations Bernhard writes about the world of health vs. the sick, something that both he and Paul suffered with their whole lives. Both were mad and ill, in different ways. Both were sort of capricious snobs with very low views of human nature. I did like the award story where the presenter knew nothing about him; that was funny. In spite of what I say here I read it straight through--100 pages, all without paragraphing. I sometimes like to read about misanthropes, as in Moliere, or Celine, but he abandoned his friend near the end because he had become "grotesque," an ironic description to make for a man who was himself ravaged from disease all his life, also in and out of hospitals.
So, Ilse and other Bernhard fans, what's your favorite Bernhard?...more
Well, I dunno. I’m a big Dylan fan, from Highway 61 Revisited through Rough and Rowdy Ways, seen him in most of the decades of my life, so I was of coWell, I dunno. I’m a big Dylan fan, from Highway 61 Revisited through Rough and Rowdy Ways, seen him in most of the decades of my life, so I was of course given this book, The Philosophy of Modern Song, for the holidays. One of the great songwriters and performers ever. Oh, there’s a lot of crap in this book, of course, but you can expect that from a Jokerman, a con man (in the most playful sense), a master of disguise.
As soon as I had known of the title of this book, before I had even seen it, I knew he was goofin’ on us. He’s not a philosopher, he’s a shapeshifter. But if you ever doubted his deep respect for and knowledge of music history, you have only to see the songs he dj’ed on his XM Satellite Radio show, or listen to the musical tributes he makes to popular and obscure twentieth century music, and you will know he may be a joker, but not when it comes to playing music.
Dylan’s book, a 334-page work of creative nonfiction.The Philosophy of Modern Song, is itself a joke as there is ery little philosophy of music in it. In a 1997 interview, Dylan said that “I find religiosity and philosophy in music. I don't find it anywhere else.'' You can see his fanciful take on a lot of popular music. You get some wonderful(and unattributed) photographs (argh), you get a lot of rambling, some of it a little mean or just strange, 62 of the 66 songs were sung by men. If that weren’t already a problem, he sometimes makes snide? mock-snide? Comments about women in his notes--like liner-notes).
Most of the songs he chooses are from the fifties, the era he grew up. There’s a Stephen Foster sing covered in 2004; otherwise no twenty-first century music. None of his chief musical influences seem to be here, such as Woody Guthrie and Robert Johnson. So there doesn’t seem to be much of a move to coherence. Maybe diversity is the point. We expect quirky from him and we get it. I expect tongue-in-cheek from time to time, too. Here’s the list, all of which you can find on YouTube, which I recommend doing as you read:
“Detroit City”--(Bobby Bare); “Pump It Up”--(Elvis Costello & the Attractions); “Without a Song”--(Frank Sinatra);“Take Me From This Garden of Evil”--(Jimmy Wages); “There Stands the Glass”--(Webb Pierce); “Willy the Wandering Gypsy and Me”--(Billy Joe Shaver); “Tutti Frutti”--(Little Richard); “Money Honey”--(Elvis Presley); “My Generation”--(The Who); “Jesse James”--(Harry McClintock); “Poor Little Fool”--(Ricky Nelson); “Pancho and Lefty”--(Townes Van Zandt); “The Pretender”--(Jackson Browne); “Mack the Knife”--(Bobby Darin); “The Whiffenpoof Song”--(Rudy Vallee); “You Don’t Know Me”--(Ray Charles); “Ball of Confusion”--(The Temptations); “Poison Love”--(Johnnie & Jack); “Beyond the Sea”--(Bobby Darin); “On the Road Again”--(Willie Nelson); “If You Don’t Know Me by Now”--(Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes); “The Little White Cloud That Cried”--(Johnnie Ray); “El Paso”--(Marty Robbins);“Nelly Was a Lady”--(Stephen Foster); “Cheaper to Keep Her”--(Johnnie Taylor); “I Got a Woman”--(Ray Charles); “CIA Man”--(The Fugs); “On The Street Where You Live”--(From “My Fair Lady”); “Truckin'”--(The Grateful Dead); “Ruby, Are You Mad?”--(The Osborne Brothers); “Old Violin”--(Johnny Paycheck); “Volare”--(Domenico Modugno); “London Calling”--(The Clash); “Your Cheatin’ Heart”--(Hank Williams); “Blue Bayou”--(Roy Orbison); “Midnight Rider”--(The Allman Brothers Band); “Blue Suede Shoes”--(Carl Perkins); “My Prayer”--(The Platters); “Dirty Life and Times”--(Warren Zevon); “Doesn’t Hurt Anymore”--(Regina Belle); “Key to the Highway”--(Little Walter); “Everybody Cryin’ Mercy”--(Mose Allison); “War”--(Edwin Starr); “Big River”--(Johnny Cash); “Feel So Good”--(Shirley & Lee); “Blue Moon”--(Elvis Presley); “Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves”--(Cher); “Keep My Skillet Good and Greasy”--(Uncle Dave Macon); “It’s All in the Game”--(Tommy Edwards); “A Certain Girl”--(Ernie K-Doe); “I’ve Always Been Crazy”--(Waylon Jennings); “Witchy Woman”--(Eagles); “Big Boss Man”--(Jimmy Reed); “Long Tall Sally”--(Little Richard); “Old and Only in the Way”--(Charlie Poole); “Black Magic Woman”--(Santana); “By the Time I Get to Phoenix”--(Glen Campbell); “Come On-a My House”--(Rosemary Clooney); “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town”--(Johnny Cash); “Come Rain or Come Shine”--(Ray Charles); “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood”--(Nina Simone); “Strangers in the Night”--(Frank Sinatra); “Viva Las Vegas”--(Elvis Presley); “Saturday Night at the Movies”--(The Drifters); “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy”--(Pete Seeger); “Where or When”--(Dion and the Belmonts).
Here’s just a taste of the prose:
There’s humor, as you might expect:
“No matter how many chairs you have, you only have one ass.” About Mose Allison, kind of responding to the play in Allison’s “Everybody’s Crying Mercy.”:“You’re the spoofer, the playactor, the two-faced fraud—the stool pigeon, the scandal-mongerer—the prowler and the rat—the human trafficker and the car jacker,” he writes, riffing on Mose Allison’s “Everybody’s Crying Mercy.”
On "Keep My Skillet Good and Greasy" by Uncle Dave Macon: "It's like Walt Whitman if he was a musician. The song contains multitudes. It's also played with a resonator on the banjo. It rings and twangs like an electric guitar. The guy is a thief. He steals meat, he steals chickens and he gets his women good and drunk. People say about entertainers that they may sing and play okay, but they are not good people. This song tells you why.”
Oh, there’s a touch of insight on many pages:
“In many cases the artistry is in what is unsaid.” He cautions against “the trap of easy rhymes.”
“Sometimes when songwriters write from their own lives, the results can be so specific, other people can’t connect to them. Putting melodies to diaries doesn’t guarantee a heartfelt song.”
“The more you study music, the less you understand it.”
“. . . an inexplicable thing happens when words are set to music. The miracle is in their union. . . People keep trying to turn music into a science, but in science one and one will always be two. Music, like all art, including the art of romance, tells us time and time again that one plus one, in the best of circumstances, equals three.”
“Music is built in time as surely as a sculptor or welder works in physical space,” Dylan writes....more
I think if you are a Tenacious D fanatic this is five star-must listen, an audible original performance of story and music by Jack Black and Kyle GassI think if you are a Tenacious D fanatic this is five star-must listen, an audible original performance of story and music by Jack Black and Kyle Gass. Pretty funny. They make fun of the very idea of making a music memoir of "the greatest band in the history of the world," that they named Tenacious D. They both tell the truth and make up shit about the history of the band which, I learned, was the beginning of fame and the entree into the world of Hollywood for Black--I never knew! Of course these guys are pretty good musicians, too.
So this audio event of just under two hours puts in in the conversation with mockumentaries such as This is Spinal Tap and Like a Might Wind, but this rides the edge of fact--how the band got started and what it did and did well and what failed spectacularly--and a little bit of fiction--we slept with every single cool girl in the ENTIRE WORLD you ever heard of, definitely, and if you can think of a drug you would never ever try, yeah, we did all that, absolutely. Black--big surprise--does most of the talking with Gass regularly responding "mm-hmm" and snickering throughout, sometimes sharing a few bits. Black is of course super profane and totally likable here. ...more
"Can music change the world? Of course it can, it does every day. Music sure as hell changed me." - Tom Morello
I'll admit I did not know that much abo"Can music change the world? Of course it can, it does every day. Music sure as hell changed me." - Tom Morello
I'll admit I did not know that much about Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello, but I had known of the range of his work, from metal to folk, and the wide range of his collaborations. He was also in Audioslave, and as social justice warrior-see his title--he has toured with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. As with other Audible Originals, this is a mix of memoir and music, where Morello takes us from growing up black (mixed race) in Libertyville, Illinois (I write this in Chicago today), facing racism, into sports, a comic book and Star Wars nerd, then Harvard grad with now several albums across the spectrum.
This is a sweet, sometimes loud, sometimes profane (what, you expected haiku?), funny, intelligent story. I was impressed and as a result interested in listening (or re-listening) to some more of his music. He does a powerful version here of Springsteen's "The Ghost of Tom Joad," among other things, even "This Land is Your Land," in addition to some of his folk and Rage music. I admire his commitments and appreciate how he just does not fit neatly into typical musical or any other kinds of identity boxes....more
My three star rating is not a reflection on T-Bone Burnett's views about white supremacy. I agree with his denunciation. I just wanted more personal nMy three star rating is not a reflection on T-Bone Burnett's views about white supremacy. I agree with his denunciation. I just wanted more personal narrative and less preaching (to the choir, me being a tenor in it). Self-proclaimed "hillbilly" rocker and music producer Burnett here basically endorses Howard Zinn's People's History of America, truths from which he didn't discover for many years, having grown up as a white guy with no contact with people of color for most of his young life. Now, as he sees it, white supremacy is the historical foundation of the US and the continuing basis for the hatred and fear killing the country now. Burnett's essay is like other Audible Original musician pieces, about ninety minutes of talk interspersed with mostly his own bluesy, Dylan-esque music, which I found better than the essay, making the same point only more lyrically, more invitingly. But if you have yet to hear an angry white southern man denounce racism, I suggest you give it a listen. I am sure it would be refreshing to a lot of people to hear him say it.
I am now listening to Tom Morello's (black) Rage Against the Machine version of this same point, told through his own personal narrative and his music with a surprisingly lighter touch of how he went from being the only black kid in town to develop a passion for what we now call Afro Punk. I like Morello's version better than Burnett's, but in general both white and black statements against white nationalism are necessary for the kind of social change the authors advocate, of course....more
This is one of my favorite Audible Original productions I have read so far. I am a little older than most who grew up with the Seattle grunge movementThis is one of my favorite Audible Original productions I have read so far. I am a little older than most who grew up with the Seattle grunge movement, though as a music lover I was aware of it, of course. I have gradually become aware of Eddie Vedder as someone distinct from Pearl Jam because of solo work, highlighting even more maybe his terrific baritone voice, and then I knew he was a Cubs fan, lived here for a time, came to Cubs games when they were in the World Series. I began to think: this guy is in a Superstar Band, and yet remains a kind of regular guy.
Then I heard his ukulele songs (we have ukes around the house in addition to multiple guitars, piano, and so on), saw that he did lots of covers of Dylan, the Beatles, all of which sort of softened him in my eyes/ears. But I knew nothing much of his life, as most of you Pearl Jam fans probably do. So I became a fan in roughly ninety minutes here, hearing his down-to-earth, soothing voice, convinced he was a stand-up guy. Concludes with talk about parenting, sweet. No major revelations here--he asserts he is a private guy--but it is still a nice taste of his story.
I was touched by his talk of his friendship with Kurt Cobain and others in Nirvana. And his close friendship and working relationship with his own bandmates. I like his early kid working in a gas station stories, and working stage set up before he got a band connection. He learned the trade and appreciates all the work that goes into these shows. He says he would not be where he is without Joe Strummer, and the drummer for The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jack Irons, who helped him get into a band. I listened to each song he plays here and looked at the lyrics, and am ready, in 2022 (!) to finally buy his stuff! I was quite moved by this modest collection of story and songs. Great artist, sure, but great guy even surer....more
Elvis Costello is a wildly imaginative, curious (in that he is interested in a range of things, and a wee bit strange) and talented musician who writeElvis Costello is a wildly imaginative, curious (in that he is interested in a range of things, and a wee bit strange) and talented musician who writes and reads and plays guitar in an Audible Original performance he says". . . isn't strictly speaking an instructional manual, but a work of comedic philosophy." Not much in the way of instruction, comedy or philosophy, but he does talk a bit about the formation of the usual three chord guitar sequence, and he does talk about "Y' one might try to play the guitar, play music, write songs, engage in the arts, in about 90 minutes.
My least favorite Audible Original performance so far, but Costello is goofy, smart, and loves music--especially rock, of course--in all its glorious history....more
I got an Audible subscription for my birthday against my own inclinations (you can get most audiobooks free; I have enough to read), but I have to sayI got an Audible subscription for my birthday against my own inclinations (you can get most audiobooks free; I have enough to read), but I have to say these short "Beyond the Lyrics" Audible Originals by musicians (exclusive to Audible, I think) may just be worth a subscription. I have been a long of Sting extending back to the time of The Police and beyond. I met him one time in Chicago back stage at a fundraiser. I had heard he was arrogant, I've heard some things about him that may be true that I don't like, but this is also the case for me and my much loved brother.
Gordon Sumner, nicknamed by some early bandmates as Sting, was a working-class kid who taught middle school, married early and had a kid, played clubs at night for little or no money for years, all of which he says actually undermined the kind of arrogance and wild self-destructive fame common to many famous artists. "Roxanne" was an early flop, but he and his mates played it for three people in a Poughkeepsie bar, two of the guys listening were radio producers, and this turned the tide. We learn a few origin stories for the songs ("Roxanne" was in part inspired by his love of Cyrano), we learn of his family work in shipbuilding he needed to escape through school and music.
He includes a tribute to his wife Trudy, and his mates from The Police (he acknowledges the conflicts, but honors them) and we get new versions of a few of his songs. It's short, like about 90 minutes, so nothing has any real depth to it, but you learn a few things, Sting has a great voice, is a great and knowledgeable musician, and the experience is both intimate and entertaining. Sure, it's his quick version of his life, but I'd recommend to fans and those who like his music that know little about him. Maybe it's really a three-star experience for most listeners, but I'm a fan, I liked it quite a bit. All of these audible performances are too short, but provide a worthwhile experience. ...more
I love Steve Earle--his voice, his music, his political activism, his sense of humor--and have heard him live a few times. This book is part of the AuI love Steve Earle--his voice, his music, his political activism, his sense of humor--and have heard him live a few times. This book is part of the Audible Original series with all these musicians writing autobiographical stuff and singing from time to time, very intimate. The book is really seductively but still mis-titled, as this is mainly a couple hours about Earle's life, so he doesn't really develop a coherent thesis about the intriguing point in the title, but I don't care, I just love to hear him talk and sing.
His yet to be developed theory/contention is that 1965 was the year rock 'n' roll became art, as Dylan wanted to be Lennon and Lennon wanted to be Dylan. Lennon and the Beatles were in love with fifties rock but after hearing Dylan's poetic lyrics, turned to folk, and Dylan, following Woody Guthrie, was a folkie in Greenwich Village before he turned electric that year. And Earle contends that Dylan, as with any musician, was listening to the Beatles and liking their popular early sixties rock. And Dylan was reading poetry that year. I can't say much more about that, but would love to be in a bar where Earle rambles about these ideas. I'll glad to spring for a round of whatever he's having.
Earle, as with Dylan and Lennon and any great musician, is an historian of music (and a lifelong reader oof literature), so he is never boring talking about all the musicians he knows and admires. He recommends books by Suze Rotelo and Dave Van Ronk (and Rimbaud, whom Dylan read before writing A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall, which Dylan tried out at an open mic night in the Village in 1965, after which Dave Ronk, who heard it live, took off on a walk, knowing the music had changed forever)....more
“And so we’ve had another night Of poetry and poses. And each man knows he’ll be alone. When the sacred ginmill closes” —Dave Van Ronk
I liked the lovi“And so we’ve had another night Of poetry and poses. And each man knows he’ll be alone. When the sacred ginmill closes” —Dave Van Ronk
I liked the loving introduction to this book by Van Ronk fan and mystery writer Lawrence Block, whose work I also love. I’ve always been aware of Dave Van Ronk as the very image of a folk singer at 6’5” and 250+ pounds (cf, Dylan, denying his folk roots or just kidding around, said, “”Folk music is just a bunch of fat people”), a consummate professional who also did jazz and blues. I admit I read this because Steve Earle urged me to read it in a recent essay I heard.
I also admit that my primary interest in the book, as a person soon facing his eighth (gulp!) decade on the planet, stems from my curiosity about folks whose music I like that might have spent time in Greenwich Village in the early sixties, so I had to wait more than three quarters of the book to get there. Maybe if I had been drinking like Van Ronk as I read it might have been more fun.
The book is really intended as a kind of history of the pre-folk music boom in the early sixties, and not an autobiography of Van Ronk, focusing on the late fifties, Greenwich Village Beat scene, and San Francisco. And Van Ronk never finished it or would have finished it without the help of Elijah Wald, who early on agreed to do most of the writing and editing, then had to finish it by working from a collection of taped conversations after Van Ronk died of cancer. Good on ya, Wald, to make this a pretty coherent cultural history.
While I am a fan of folk and the Beat period in the Village, I nevertheless knew maybe a quarter of Van Ronk’s references to singers during this early pre-sixties period. While I thank Van Ronk for his contribution to folk music history, political history in NYC and San Fran, much of the book is a rambling bar conversation. Joyfully drunk and stoned and broke for most of his life, Van Ronk was a well known player in the development of the folk scene (and no, I have yet to see the Coen Bros film based in part on his life, but will, I promise), never rising to the level of Dylan or Joni or even Tom Paxton.
Much of the book sounds like reading the “begats” in the Bible, or “bed to bed” stories by children reciting their days: And then we went to ths bar, then when we did a couple sets at this cafe, I sang with x and x and blah blah. Even with both of my elbows propped firmly on the bar, he would have drunk me under the table several nights in his tales of those days. I'll admit he’s often charming even in his rambling, with sharp/grumpy insights into the music and other musicians, occasionally revealing his infamous crankiness.
Van Ronk is best when he writes brief portraits of Rev. Gary Davis (“Cocaine Blues,” “Candy Man”), Dylan, Joni, Phil Ochs, but the portrait he paints of the period is in general increasingly interesting. A time of turmoil, conflict, whiskey, weed, and a great celebration of a range of folk music and musicians. I'll admit that, though I own no Van Ronk music, never have, that I enjoyed the music as I read.