Two By Steve Lacy (a review/appreciation)

It’s creeping up on twenty years since I first heard the late Steve Lacy. I’d read about him in the context of the free jazz scene of the 1960s, learning that he was an early associate of Cecil Taylor, that he’d recorded an album on ESP Disk, that he’d moved to Paris in the late 60s and had continued to explore and grow musically, and that at that point (just after the dawn of the 1990s) he was still working and releasing records. By chance while record shopping, I found a then recent LP copy of The Door, released on RCA Novus, quickly bought it and wasn’t disappointed.
This was the beginning of my seduction by jazz, which coincided with a rekindling of interest by both record companies and a portion of the general public in less traditional modes of improvisation. Both Taylor and Sun Ra had new records out on A & M, Elektra was releasing the music of John Zorn and other New York Downtown artists on the Nonesuch imprint, Columbia had Tim Berne, a steady flow of indies (some with major label distribution) were releasing new jazz of an unabashed post-free stripe into the marketplace, and the availability of classic recordings on Impulse!, Atlantic, Blue Note, and Columbia made it possible to get frequent audible instruction into the huge and often uncompromising history of the music And Lacy threads through the post-50s portion of that history like a friendly but demanding snake.

Before the internet, the most reliable way to learn about the movements, personalities, and recordings in jazz’s long and varied landscape was by reading books. Martin Williams, Nat Hentoff, and Gary Giddins became familiar, reliable names. It quickly became easy to distinguish the large number of conservative books and opinions from those that were more attuned to the sounds of freedom. The cornerstones of my jazz infatuation at that point consisted of two genres and two artists: Free jazz, Bop, John Coltrane, and Charles Mingus. I had no time for revamped moldy-fig bullshit or upscale cocktail self-congratulation: groundbreaking and demanding music was what I was after, and the texts that accepted or celebrated the more controversial aspects of jazz in its slow commercial decline were my guide in buying the documents that served as the building blocks in my jazz education.
The curious thing about Steve Lacy is that he was given an unusually high level of respect from the more stodgy historians and critics when they actually deigned to write about him. The less forgiving or antagonistic treatment leveled at names like Albert Ayler, Anthony Braxton, Sun Ra, and Archie Shepp was mostly absent from the writing on Lacy. A big reason for this is his unique background, playing progressive Dixieland before hooking up with Taylor on the pianist’s early recordings, joining arranger Gil Evans in the late 50s and playing with Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk, and serving as the inspiration for Coltrane to pick up the soprano sax. Lacy was an inside/outside cat, and while he gravitated more to the outside as the 60s progressed, he never really became a flat-out wailing wildman on his instrument. He did participate in some rather intense large group improv sessions (The Jazz Composers Orchestra and Globe Unity Orchestra spring to mind) but in the parts of the man’s massive discography that are completely (solo sax records) or largely (extensive duos, trios and quartets) his Lacy exudes a contemplative nature that stands in contrast to the modes of full-blown anger/protest or ecstatic abstract joy. His choice of instrument certainly plays a big part in this, as does his extensive examination of the music of Monk. To call him an avant-garde traditionalist might seem like a contradiction, but after hearing a wide variety of his work it sort of makes good sense.


The second Steve Lacy record I bought was Soprano Sax. This was his debut as a leader, and I ordered it on a whim, knowing little about its contents. I did know that it came after he joined Taylor’s group, but since finding early Taylor records was a struggle at that point, I only had the idea of what those early Cecil groups sounded like as a possible indicator of what might come from Lacy’s first album. Upon taking Soprano Sax home, quickly disposing of the plastic (this was a CD reissue) and digging in, it just as quickly became obvious that any hypothetical notions I’d formed about the music were off the mark: it was a completely inside record. The firmly traditional approach to the music was handled with an appealing amount of depth, and I found myself returning to the album quite frequently, it's contents helping to play a large part in expanding my horizons to the more classic sounds that weave back to the music’s origins.
The sound of the soprano sax is an odd one. Even when it’s being used to examine standards by Duke Ellington or Cole Porter, the shrill, nasally, occasionally harsh tone sits in stark distinction to the warmer, deeper sounds found in the more regularly employed altos, tenors, and baritones. There was a reason that the soprano was almost completely abandoned in the bop era, relegated to the purgatory of Dixieland’s collective boisterousness: it’s simply a harsh mistress (Lacy once described it as a hysterical woman) that’s less forgiving and more demanding than most people are comfortable with. So while Soprano Sax makes no overt gestures to being avant-garde or out-of-step with the times of its creation, the unique sound of the titular instrument helps it to achieve an immediate magnetism, which is only increased by the fluidity and daring of a player like Lacy.
Having a great band plays a big part in being able to reach such heights. Wynton Kelly on piano is a heavyweight addition, a nimble player that contributed to landmark recordings by Miles and Coltrane and also sounded great in his own trio (who happen to be the accompanying group on Wes Montgomery’s ludicrously wonderful Smokin’ at the Half Note). Kelly had a lot of worthwhile contemporaries, but in my opinion few of them could have contributed as strongly to this album as he does, shifting from the roles of support to soloist with easy grace and attractive assurance. Bassist Buell Neidlinger is probably an unknown name outside of serious jazz-heads, but that doesn’t mean he’s a footnote: he played an integral part of Lacy’s and Taylor’s music during this period, culminating in important sessions for the Candid label, one of which was originally released under his name as New York City R & B (with Lacy, Taylor, Shepp, Billy Higgins, Clark Terry and others). He’s worked with classical groups and been an LA session musician, and he was a vital component of the period where the free-jazz dial was set to simmer, not yet turned up to full boil. I think he was a great player. I feel the same way about Denis Charles, the drummer in this group, another lesser-known but worthy figure, who in addition to the Lacy/Taylor connections (he appears on the Candid sessions as well) also recorded with Sonny Rollins, violinist Billy Bang and free-bassist extraordinaire William Parker. He was a native of the Virgin Islands, and the playing I’ve heard from him is quite vibrant, particularly his cymbal work, where he genuinely expresses rhythm creatively instead of just falling back on standard clichés. Charles’ career featured some lengthy drop-outs and periods of little activity, which is unfortunate, for like Higgins and Ed Blackwell, he was versatile and expressive, capable of contributing in a variety of styles. More recordings of his prowess would certainly have helped to tip the scales of notoriety in his favor. But what we got is all we have, and this recording is one part of that total.
Soprano Sax starts with a reading of Ellington’s Day Dream, with Lacy’s tone cutting and sometimes soaring while retaining a lightness of delivery that’s quite pleasing. He becomes more forceful in his solo without becoming showy or blustery. On this track he’s above all else about restraint while keeping tabs on the inherent beauty of the tune, managing to express something of himself in the process. Kelly gets a turn to solo, and sounds fantastic. The next song, Alone Together is a standard, and it finds Lacy’s blowing ranging from knotty to searching, with an especially well done solo in between great showings by Neidlinger and Kelly. Charles hangs back, giving the tune much more than just a pulse. Monk’s Work is tackled next, and shows Lacy to be adept at maintaining momentum while playing imaginatively. Another fine Kelly solo gives way to a brief and energetic (to say nothing of unusual) one by Charles, and then Lacy returns for more expressive forward motion. It is at this point that the record really kicks into high gear. Ellington’s Rockin’ in Rhythm is given a work-out, with superb ascents and declines by the horn, thrilling contributions by Charles, who really knows how to adapt to and accentuate the songs form (fucking fantastic cymbals), and more solo space for bass and drums (Kelly really making the most of his spot). A calypso titled Little Girl Your Daddy is Calling You is next, and Lacy is for the most part absent, only playing on the opening and closing of the tune, laying back so his band mates can shine: Kelly tears it up, roaming over his keyboard with a delicious dexterity, at times pushing at the tune’s tempo and at other moments falling back, flurries of sound flirting around with melody then returning to runs of notes, before concluding and giving way to the drums, which rattle around in some weirdly compelling almost marching band territory (with some cool attention to the hi-hat) before the song’s sweetly abrupt end. The last track, Cole Porter’s Easy to Love, serves as both a stretching out and as a winding down. Lacy gets extended solo space that he utilizes quite well, never running out of interesting places to go. For me, the best part of the song is Neidlinger’s strong walking rhythmic line and his seamless transition into a fine solo spot. But the overall strength of the whole record is the ease of communication between all the players. Lacy, Neidlinger and Charles all knew each other from working with Taylor. I’m going to take a leap and say that Kelly and Lacy were familiars from the circles of Evans and Davis. This level of group knowledge obviously encourages the individual players to take subtle chances while recording, bolstering the confidence and helping the finished work to rise far above just another solid recording date. For Lacy’s Soprano Sax is so much more than a collection of fine players who happened to end up in a recording studio for pay. It is both a lasting document of the reintegration of a neglected instrument into the fabric of jazz, and the beginning of a startling career, one that never displayed signs of coasting or apathy. Whenever another Lacy recording enters my eardrums, I almost always end up pulling out this disc, partly for the sheer joy of it, but also to see how far the man traveled over the course of his life. And Soprano Sax never sounds dated or bland. It is a record of its time, certainly, but its approachable, trad quality doesn’t for a second feel like coasting or compromise. These four guys were working things out the way they wanted to, coming to terms with the history of this music not just as listeners (a big enough task), but as players. This is something that Lacy never stopped doing, no matter how abstract his later work became.


Thelonious Sphere Monk was a big part of this constant process. Lacy’s next record as a leader consisted entirely of Monk compositions. It was the first album to solely feature the pianist’s work in interpretation. Reflections: Steve Lacy Plays Thelonious Monk is a landmark record for so many more reasons than just that: it is the end-product of a stellar band of Lacy, Neidlinger, pianist Mal Waldron, and drummer Elvin Jones, it is a sincere and successful investigation into the work of one of the greatest musicians of the 20th century recorded at a time when the artist was still a contentious figure, not yet the canonical influence who has inspired far too many tributes (some of which reek of opportunism, others being wounded by an agape idolization), and it serves as evidence to just how diligent Lacy (and pianist Waldron, but more on him in a minute) was, so early in his career, at utilizing the substantial depths of Monk’s work (he did the same to a lesser extent with Ellington, Mingus, and pianist Herbie Nichols) as a basis for his own groundbreaking music. This is likely why he was treated so well in those jazz books: again, the hooks of the past are explicitly in Lacy’s oeuvre, even when he’s at his most out. But the focus is always on new possibilities. It’s a bit like watching somebody make an awesome sculpture out of old car parts. The end result is this unique and tangible thing comprised of elements that are unavoidably familiar (we’ve all taken a car apart before, right?). In comparison, the slavish tribute albums (not ALL of them are bad, but that’s another blog entry) feel like eating an attempted facsimile of a really good meal where the chef abstained from using spices and substituted sub-par produce for fresh, organic ingredients. Lacy's work is alive and bursting where the tribs are flaccid and lacking. Another striking thing about Reflections is how it avoided Monk standards in an era when there weren’t any. That means no Round Midnight or Straight No Chaser, but not in the deliberate way that the omission of those tunes can’t avoid today. Four in One jumps out of the gate with stirring group interplay, the tune’s title lending commentary to the collective artistry on display. The first striking difference between this group and the one on Soprano Sax is Waldron: Kelly is a more direct player, with an energetic style that made him well suited for the steady flow of post-bop recording that didn’t really abate until the later half of the ‘60s. Waldron is a more contemplative pianist, directly influenced by Monk, less melodic in his soloing, and finally someone who was inclined toward the more progressive developments in jazz. His imprint is on the Eric Dolphy-Booker Little Quartet’s Live at the Five Spot recordings, which is reason enough to enshrine him in the halls of jazz glory, but in addition to that he continued to be a thought provoking player up to the end of his life, often collaborating further with Lacy in a variety of contexts. In many ways he’s shares Lacy’s mode of continually moving forward by deeply looking backward, but Waldron’s less appropriately tagged as an avant-garde player. The avant influence, at least from his music that I’ve spent time with, is more implicitly felt than explicitly stated, but this internal openness gives his later work (again, what I’m familiar with. The man was quite prolific) a vitality that many other pianists with more rigid, codified styles simply lack in their own late works. Like Lacy, he was another European expat, and perhaps the respect and relative freedom of that locale helped him to retain the spark.

Lacy and Waldron in performance circa 1980

Another quickly apparent difference in the band is Elvin Jones. Most of his posthumous fame comes from his membership in Coltrane’s groundbreaking later bands, but equally important to a full understanding of his abilities is his sheer adaptability to whatever style he was involved in playing. The list of musicians he connected with is rather astounding: Davis, Lee Konitz, Art Pepper, Roland Kirk, Andrew Hill, Rollins, Wayne Shorter, Grant Green, Larry Young, Bill Frisell, etc. Jones could function admirably in numerous contexts while always bringing the necessary ingredient of individuality that marks the great jazz drummers. His playing is the first thing heard on Four in One, but it’s what he does during Lacy’s excellent solo that really stands out. While he is never out of the support role, there is a disciplined raucousness to his playing, which downshifts noticeably when Waldron takes the solo spot, Jones focusing instead on expressive cymbals, letting the piano dominate the moment. The subsequent back and forth between Neidlinger and Jones is loose and surprising, lacking the triteness that 50s rhythm sections could often fall into. Something I’ve noticed in Jones’ early work is how bursting with expression it is, tilting to the explosions that would come later with Coltrane, but also how he never overtakes the other players, overstepping into showiness. This record, along with Rollins’ Live at the Village Vanguard albums, prove just how developed an artist Jones was before joining Coltrane.
The third noticeable difference between this record and Soprano Sax lies in Lacy’s playing. The challenge of seven Monk tunes possibly inspired him to a heightened level, for he sounds richer and displays more dexterity than on his debut, but the period of time between recording dates, nearly a year, is likely to have also played a part. Practice, performance, listening, and thinking (reacting) are all vital to a musician (you don’t have to be one to know this), and on Reflections Lacy is in exemplary form. On one hand, the playing seems more relaxed. But on the other, this relaxation also seems to bring more intensity to his sound through increased chance taking and the natural upper register timbers that his instrument possesses. What results is a beautiful glimpse of individual artistry. Lacy knew something fifty years ago that many don’t know or ignore today: that the true way to interact with the music of a master is to bring the idiosyncrasies of your own personality into the fray, and to have a discussion of sorts, instead of a monologue, an imitation.

The high points on this album are the opener discussed above, the infectious angularity of Bye-Ah, and the onslaught of thick communication and tense improv that is Skippy, the closing track. But that leaves four others that aren’t far behind. The whole thing is like a diamond tough testament to the greatness of Lacy, and it lumps together with Soprano Sax to shed lasting light on part of the early movements of one of music’s great improvisers.
Of all the players on both discs, only Neidlinger is still making music. All of the others have died, though the creative part of who they were continues to live through their recordings, and every time someone hears their music, either consciously or by chance, the opportunity for pleasure, for inspiration, for fulfillment (if only for a moment) is there. If the only real point to being alive is to live a life not wasted, then all these guys not only succeeded many times over, but they grabbed thousands of people by the ear canals and brought them along for the ride. How gracious.

The Auteur Files #2- David Fincher's Zodiac (2007)

I haven’t watched Se7en in over a decade, but remember it as a damn good movie, so good that I went to the theatre to see Fincher’s follow up, The Game, and found myself being a little let down. I don’t recall thinking that it was a bad film (I’d like to see it again), and I certainly didn’t place Fincher my personal purgatory of directors, but I must confess that I’ve not seen either Fight Club or Panic Room. I will eventually, sure. Fight Club quickly gathered a coterie of rather annoying male fans that gave me an aversion to the whole thing, and Panic Room just happened to slip by me.
The fact that I hadn’t been keeping up with Fincher made my recent viewing of Zodiac all the more surprising. It’s an ambitious movie that beautifully integrates a startling amount of elements into its long running time, never falling into heavy-handedness or self-indulgence. Marketed as a serial killer flick, it’s really something much more than that, instead a deft interweaving of police procedural and newspaper drama that chooses a true story that never came to any satisfying (i.e. predictably cinematic) conclusion. The film works superbly on so many levels that I’m not a bit hesitant to declare that I prefer it to 2007’s other critically acclaimed movie about modern violence, that being The Coen Brothers’ No Country For Old Men.
Zodiac scores big points for not following the standard path of most serial killer stories. The general trend since Silence of the Lambs has been to subtly turn the pathological into something sexy, with the killers taking on variations of dysfunctional superhero, fucked-up moral crusader (Se7en fits this description), or charismatic nutcase. By now the trend has become rather entrenched, and it’s gotten tiresome.
It seems that Fincher has made some serious strides as a filmmaker since Se7en, choosing to tackle the weird phenomenon of California’s Zodiac killer without any identification or romanticizing of the person responsible. The fact that nobody was ever caught might seem to play a big part in this at first, but the thorny complexity of the case and the killer’s bizarre self-promotion through the media really cry out for the kind of cinematic idealization that’s become the norm. Fincher simply eschews the temptation: the murders are filmed with ample violent intensity, but are not presented to the viewer as a series of trophy shots that ultimately serve as celebration of the acts, and while it would be false to describe the movie as humanist, it also lacks the contempt for humanity that many serial killer films (or films that feature killing in general) display, instead choosing a detached sensibility that is sympathetic to the characters without developing favorites. Zodiac isn’t about the killer at all, but uses his actions as a vehicle for a film that intensely examines information overload and human obsession. The violence is frontloaded in the movie, the flow of events always moving forward (no flashbacks).The importance of the murders isn’t the tension and release of the acts, but instead the lasting impact they have on other people. When a likely suspect emerges into the narrative, his presence isn’t at all engaging. Instead he’s a mostly bland (a little creepy) character with a pedophiliac past. Then he promptly disappears from the story (to return later, in one of the movie’s best scenes) as the focus centers on the march of time and how the lack of resolution affects the lives of the characters that make up the bulk of the film.
Fincher shot digitally, only apparently using film-stock in a few instances, but you wouldn’t know that from the structure of the film, which harkens back to a more classical style, using an economy of shots that are often quite beautiful in their construction. The visual texture is rich, with a great use of color, but it is also somewhat low-key, lacking grandstanding or hyperbole, which matches the acting. Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Edwards, Robert Downey Jr., and especially Jake Gyllenhaal all give outstanding, mature performances, and when the film’s judicious depiction of period is taken into consideration, it becomes clear that any shortcomings Zodiac has will only be revealed, if at all, by further more attentive viewing. Sure, some will be frustrated by its preoccupation with systems, procedures, and puzzles, and the almost three hours required to watch it might bug others, but I happen to find these elements actually work in the movie’s favor. The way the story deeply delves into how the characters do their jobs and struggle to come up with answers never feels mundane. It seems less about realism and more about the steady build up of information and momentum, which certainly requires time, and while I certainly noticed the film’s length it really added to the effectiveness of the whole thing (and to the points that were quietly made), starting in the late 1960s and ending in the early 1990s.
As far as similarities with other films, Zodiac’s attention to the detail of systems and procedures reminds me of Fritz Lang minus that director’s often caustic view of human behavior. It is also somewhat reminiscent of the ‘70s work of Alan Pakula (All the President’s Men) and the police centered films of Sidney Lumet. There is no homage in this movie though; instead it seems to exist as a standalone work that consciously resists the temptation to fall back on any specific earlier stylistic tropes (its general tendency to classical film style isn’t self-conscious or inclined to any particular filmmaker’s signature). To expand, the bulk of the film is set in the 1970s, and while Don Siegel’s Dirty Harry (a film also inspired by the string of Zodiac murders) becomes a brief part of the story, the film never reaches for the (anti)-conventions that are a large part of that decade’s most revered movies. This is particularly notable during the ending, which while leaning toward one suspect as the killer, still lacks the sense of closure that most Hollywood films feature. One recurring aspect of ‘70s cinema was how many pictures ended in one big question mark, sometimes successfully, other times with a ham-fisted attempt at profundity that would miss its mark by a wide margin (My, aren’t we deep?). Maybe the studio denied Fincher and Co the opportunity to end on this type of lingering ambiguousness, but my gut reaction is to credit the creators with the denouement’s mixture of no emotional closure and the attempt through written text on black screen to arrive at an ending that didn’t leave audiences with a shoulder-shrugging That’s it?. I really want to see the longer cut of this, because my suspicion is that the ending will be the same. It deals with its lack of a tidy emotional conclusion in a contemporary way, fitting quite well with the rest of the film. Zodiac mixes genres but isn’t a genre movie. It’s influenced by the past but not beholden to or infatuated with it. One of the strongest compliments I can give it is to describe it as being a film completely of its period. It’s not avant-garde (that is to say, ahead of its time) or cultish, though it uses state of the art tech to increase its effectiveness, its efficiency. Its maturity and knowledge of the past never for an instant leans toward stodginess or self-importance; instead it moves with a smart, smooth pace that is plugged into the specific complexities of right now.
Zodiac dumps a shit-load of information on us and then deftly pulls us along to a point where we are asked to swallow the lack of finality. Its characters spend the entire running time either refusing or finally finding ways to let go of the past, and when it’s clear that all the principals in the film have come to that crossroads, the credits are rolling, and then we have to make that choice as well. The choice that the film makes is clear, for like any truly contemporary artwork (lit, film, painting, music, etc) its direction is soundly delineated: Forward.

Eddy Current Suppression Ring's Primary Colours CD (Goner Records)- a review

While garage rock seems like a simple enough impulse, as the decades stack up on top of ground zero for Nuggets/Pebbles/Back from the Grave style rumpus, it gets to be a trickier proposition to pull off without falling victim to generics. The records that often result from this state of affairs can inspire smiles and head shaking at the sheer joie de vivre involved in their making, but repeated listens ultimately prove that the substantive stuff of the whole enterprise is essentially formulaic. A little bit of this plus a touch of that and throw in some other stuff ends up equaling an experience that sounds just ginchy while it plays but frankly lacks the inspirational residue that marks the truly worthwhile records, those that inexplicably land in the mind whist doing the most mundane things (waiting in line, walking the dog, raking the yard) and don’t leave until actively experiencing said song(s) provide(s) sweet release. You know, air guitar windmills in the living room, jumping on the couch (hey, it’s a sturdy old thing, more than able to withstand the weight and force), and dance moves that would look just FANTASTIC in public if I (or you, possibly) could only remember them when the opportunity presents itself. That’s what great records can inspire, and when a batch of tunes in the 21st century that are undeniably connected to the admirably blunt teenage gush of '60s garage-isms prove to be not only worthwhile but at times even borderline transcendent, well that’s just cause for some celebratory word-spew on my part.
Eddy Current Suppression Ring hail from Melbourne, Australia. They play a loud and quite sly brand of hip-shake that lands them in the fine company of numerous other Australian bands from over the last thirty or so years, many of whom zeroed in on ‘60s Detroit as their main source of inspiration. ECSR follow suit on Primary Colours’ opening track Memory Lane, which sounds like a no-big deal Stooges knock-off that was honed through intensive practice into a sharp instrument of tightly wound melodic urgency. This is great for starters, but it’s also true that the unabashed worship of Iggy and Co is one subset of the whole primal 1960s shebang that’s really obstinate in it’s application as an influence/template. Mine the territory for too long and everything ends up feeling like the stale motions of a tribute act. ECSR were/are obviously wise to this fact, because the subsequent nine songs on this record bounce around in all kinds of surprising areas: Sunday’s Coming is a bums-rush of precise guitar mania and rhythmic flailing with a nastily pulsing bass line thundering underneath, Wrapped Up is a tug of war between poppy, almost pretty guitar strumming/chiming and an aggressive all-levels maxed-out delivery, Colour Television seems to mine content from the tossed-off inspiration of thousands of early-‘80s Anglo post-punk groups but weds it with a sharp workmanlike style that’s really attractive, Which Way To Go has a kind of ragged construction that feels like a lost late-‘80s 45 which should have been on Homestead Records (minus the Aussie accent), We’ll Be Turned On displays some fine keyboard gusto that’s a bit reminiscent of the initial efforts of New Zealand’s The Clean, but the song never really expands on this in any kind of overt way, instead settling into a groove that rips like the ultimate set-closer for some forgotten band playing in a McCrory’s parking lot circa 1966. Naturally, it’s not the last track on the record. That would be too easy. ESCR seem like a collective bunch of music heads, the kind of guys who try to impress the girls at a party by playing The Troggs, and this kind of sensibility appears to have embedded itself into the band’s sound and additionally into their standards, which are quite high for the no-pretense style they engage in.
Sometimes records like this can hinge on one song. Without that one sustained passage infecting the totality the overall impact is lessened dramatically, missing the heights of the exceptional and instead hovering in an area that’s maybe on the cusp of greatness but seems to lack the one defining moment that pulls everything else together, sharpening the focus, elevating the whole. On this record that song would be That’s Inside Me, an instrumental landing not quite smack dab in the middle. It’s a freaking monster, absorbing the riff-happy sweetness of Crazy Rhythms-era Feelies and pushing it into repeato-delirium. And while that would be enough, this baby goes one step further, throwing in a little taste of expansive guitar soloing that’s like a hazy fragment from the stage of the Avalon Ballroom, the kind of precipice-of-discovery that Moby Grape, Big Brother, and early Quicksilver Messenger Service were dicking around with, the sort of sound that always felt (to me) more amphetamine fueled than pot influenced, and the kind of muddy sonic waters that are often erroneously described as being at odds with the uh, purity of direct and dirty and primal rock ‘n’ roll oomph, the kind of us vs. them crappiness that’s more invested in image and attitude instead of the admirable pursuit of good sounds, the kind of mindset that’s just plain hooey. ECSR prove it by jumping right over the bullshit line in the sand and grappling briefly with the loose, trailblazing aesthetic that the early Cali-psyche bands shared (along with those from Texas) before most ended up either losing the plot or shifting into other areas as the ‘60s closed. In 2008 this kind of gesture is less defiant and more just plain smart. That’s Inside Me benefits from a succession of diverse angles that never feel like a pastiche; the song has other unique elements that I haven’t even described, and its status as the defining track on Primary Colours is therefore sealed up tight.

These guys have other stuff that precedes this album in their discography, but I’ve yet to hear any of it. It would be nice to see the singles and the album packed up and available for stateside consumption. The overall quality of this record (not a bum track in the bunch) leads me to believe I’d enjoy listening to where ECSR were before they ended up here. It also gives me hope that they can come up with a few more unlikely successes in the not too distant future. Explosions of air guitar and furniture gymnastics are never a bad thing, and I need all the dance moves I can get.

The Auteur Files # 1- Brian De Palma's Hi, Mom (1970) + a little warning about spoilers.

This is the first of hopefully many posts about films I have recently watched. If you are averse to spoilers, it's maybe a good idea to wait until you've seen the film to read these posts, since I often detail parts of the story as I flesh out my ideas in written form. I write primarily for my own personal satisfaction, and while I sincerely hope others dig it, I don't enjoy dancing around a film's elements while making my points. I don't think it's what a film's about that makes it great or good or average or bad, it's how the film is about it that matters. If that makes me a snob, well okay. Maybe I'll try drinking my tea with a pinky finger pointing straight up into the air. I've heard that really enhances the experience.

The relationship between the 1970s and auteurist criticism is quite interesting. Up to that point, the canon of great directors was rather secure, with room to move for individual preferences. The emergence of the film school generation coincided with the death of old Hollywood to bring a problematic relationship between director-focused readings of film and then contemporaneous work: Allen, Altman, Ashby, Bogdanovich, Boorman, Coppola, Forman, Friedkin, Hellman, Lucas, Penn, Polanski, Rafelson, Scorsese, Spielberg and many others divided opinions in a startling way. Critical tolerance for cynicism, homage, the audacity of youth, and for large cinematic gestures meant that any consensus on North American film from that period was pretty much impossible, especially from the perspective of auteurism. In the present, some of the above names have developed strong advocacy from auteur critics, while others are more fringe tastes, being championed by one or a few writers to the surprise or disdain of many.
Brain De Palma fits in this second group like a foot in a tailor-made sock. My own opinion is that he’s wildly uneven, sometimes obvious, often gaudy, frequently pretentious, and rarely boring. I prefer his 70s work to that of the subsequent decade, and certainly to the 90s, where he seemed to lose many of the qualities that made his films fascinating, of not rewarding to me personally.
Hi, Mom is one of his earliest efforts, made before he slowly integrated into the Hollywood system and became a directorial presence to the general movie going public. Before Sisters, De Palma was basically an underground filmmaker with an attitude to match. Hi, Mom is drenched with satirical intent, some of which succeeds while other parts fall flat, largely due to the radical shifts in tone, a deliberate state of affairs that seems designed to keep the audience from establishing any sort of comfort with the film.
For many, the main attraction here will be a young Robert De Niro. He’s great in a role that seems to be the prototype for Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, but here he is working in far more jagged territory, his character essentially a prop in De Palma’s scheme, much of which would continue to appear in later films. The preoccupation with Hitchcock is evident at this stage, referencing Rear Window, as is the broad social commentary which in this case feels like a filmmaker trying to have his cake while eating it: the movie as a whole is one big middle finger to authority and good taste while simultaneously lampooning ideas like activism, radical activities like experimental street theatre and liberal bastions such as educational television. Playing both sides of the fence in this fashion says a lot about the frame of mind De Palma was in at the time, but it doesn’t leave a whole lot to chew on other than a general sense of his distaste for other people (Fuck the man, man and look at all those stupid saps who think they can actually change things). This attitude is deepened by the film’s constant mockery of its characters; when De Niro speaks the line “tragedy is a funny thing” the intent as commentary on the film as a whole is blunted by the fact that the character is clueless to the joke, the dialogue functioning as a gag played at his expense. This wouldn’t be such a big deal in a film containing roles that were fully drawn and held the possibility for sympathy or identification, but Hi, Mom is barren in this department. Everybody in this movie is set up for derision. I don’t necessarily consider this a shortcoming, for some of my favorite films employ this same tactic, but in this case it’s quite raw and shrill. It was possibly much more effective at the time of release, directly commenting on its surroundings, but nearly forty years later it feels a bit hollow and condescending.
In addition to Hitch, the influence of Godard is all over this thing. The film possesses so many conflicting elements that it’s hard to compare it to anything other than movies like Pierrot Le Fou and Weekend: a stridently anti-Hollywood opening scene, jump cuts, a title song (quite bad, foreshadowing later musical miscues by De Palma), inter-titles, abrupt detours into black and white pseudo-cinema vérité that anticipates later developments in the Cinema of Discomfort (Haneke, Noe, etc), improvisational scenes, and a sharpening sense of sarcasm that concludes in an blunt anti-ending. If it sounds like a mess, it sort of is, though it’s a rather deliberately designed one. In regard to Hitchcock, I’ve come to the conclusion that De Palma cheapens what he steals, but the Godard influence is more successfully applied, possibly because it was contemporary to his development as a director. It gives Hi, Mom a sort of time-capsule appeal, detailing a certain fractured mindset as the 60s petered out in all its dysfunctional glory.
This time-capsule aspect is heightened by the harsh judgment given to the bourgeoisie (more Godard), the examination of class warfare (more more Godard), the light-hearted romanticizing of De Niro blowing up an apartment building with dynamite (more more more Godard), and the overt commentary on Vietnam (ditto ditto ditto ditto). As a representation of a certain specific historical quagmire (the feel-good, hopeful 60s transmogrifying into the shit-hole 70s where Nixon wins the ‘72 election in a landslide), Hi, Mom can be quite riveting. But it could have been so much more; the blackness of its satire is lessened by the director’s withering view of human beings and what results doesn’t register as protest (which is what the best satire really is) but far more as a contemptuous screed. It’s tempting to call it nihilist, but then the problem arises over what De Palma’s getting so worked up about. Maybe it’s a nihilist recruitment film. If so, I’m not sold.
To elaborate, here is a moment that inspired groans from my couch: in a vérité segment, a group of radicals are arguing with some vaguely middle class denizens by a newspaper stand. The argument gets heated. Another altercation develops next to them between a man with a gun and the paper seller. The seller is shot. The rest of the group is so ensconced in argument that they don’t even notice, and the shooter slinks off camera. The documentation of seemingly random violence is straight out of Masculin-Feminin or Weekend, but the effect is less that of catharsis from the depths of disgust and more that of snide finger pointing toward the baseness and self-absorption of humanity.

Hi, Mom is certainly not a bad film, for it possesses an artistic ambitiousness that sometimes finds success, but it’s also far from satisfying. Some of this was obviously intentional, but at this late date, that fact doesn’t really count for a whole lot. It’s a bit like being cornered at a party by a strident and highly literate misanthrope. The guy’s dedication and communication skills are somewhat admirable, but it’s hard to understand why he didn’t just stay fucking home. I guess every get-together secretly cries out for a killjoy, and circa 1970, De Palma seems like a party-killing drag par excellence. Watching this movie will hopefully leave you with the impression that you’re not as bilious right now as he was back then. If not, then let me know, because I have some prospective shindigs that maybe you shouldn’t know about.

"No ideas but in things"- William Carlos Williams makes it plain.

so much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens.

XXII by William Carlos Williams, from Spring and All published in 1923.

The work of William Carlos Williams is simply some of the finest poetry I’ve ever read, but the writer holds a fascination to me for other reasons. First, he was a doctor, practicing pediatrics in Rutherford, NJ for around forty years. The guy delivered well over a thousand babies. The prevailing sort of attitude about artists is that they work and toil at their endeavors and their general gift or contribution to society is the end result of those labors, their art. Those who find themselves on the short end of the monetary stick are often faced with various jobs that hopefully insure that they’re not sleeping in the street with a piece of cardboard for a blanket (Hell, you’re reading one right now). If aesthetic rewards are to be found but the cash is left wanting, the artist is forced to either accept these harsh facts or quit. Or they can teach. Successful artists are usually just that, sometimes contributing to charities and giving time to a cause, but it’s a true anomaly to describe someone as an Artist/Physician, particularly when it’s one of the great poets of the 20th Century.
Williams was not only one of the greats, but he remained relevant for long after most of his Modernist contemporaries. Many of his cohorts died, others saw themselves losing inspiration or ability, and Ezra Pound went off the deep end, but Williams was still making contributions to the arts by not only writing poems (winning a posthumous Pulitzer for his collection Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems, published in 1963), but by also interacting with younger poets including Charles Olsen, Philip Whalen, and Allen Ginsberg (he wrote the intro to Howl and Other Poems). It may not seem like a big deal, but Williams’ first collection was published in 1909. He was born in 1883. By the time period of the Beats, the Black Mountain Poets, and the New York School, it would’ve been far more likely for Williams to have turned his back on the younger generations with the obscenity trials, the widespread debate over these then new movement’s literary merit (a debate which still continues, particularly in the case of the Beats), and the tendency for people, even great artists, to lose the ability to relate to new developments and breakthroughs, even if they happened to be an influence upon them. You hear about this sort of thing too often: the once great artist now grown old who does not much of anything but complain about how the young misunderstood or ignored all the lessons to be learned in their art, or if they are somewhat modest, in the art of their contemporaries.
Well, W. C. Williams was having none of that. He continued until the end of his life with a wise grace and constant curiosity that is pretty damned inspiring. And while it can be difficult to not be seduced by the life or image or legend of a great artist and to then overrate or venerate the work, thankfully in this case, that’s not a problem, for Williams’ writing can withstand the adoration. As an example, the often anthologized poem above is flawless.
For starters, the structure: the first and last stanzas share four-syllable first lines followed by a second line of only one two-syllable word. The second and third stanzas have first lines of three syllables and second lines of one two syllable word. Yet each stanza has the same number of total words. And the entire poem is just a sentence. I can almost imagine someone speaking it, but it’s ultimately a little too beautiful, or poetic, for normal aural discourse. It follows the sensible pattern of speech, though: as Michael Riffaterre has pointed out, the word the whole poem hinges on is glazed. It’s the one part of the poem that truly promotes imagery. The other descriptive words are plain (red, white), and what triggers them to life is the vision of rain water covering the surface of the wheel barrow, and then the imagination can move on to the chickens and other things that aren’t even in the work (green grass, is the sun out?, etc). Again, this follows general speech patterns. The sentence that the poem is before it’s been broken up so perfectly lacks anything flowery or verbose. The beauty or poetry that it possesses actually stems from its direct quality, while simultaneously containing so much to digest. That’s why it seems almost too poetic to be spoken.
To continue, the structure: the first stanza, taken in isolation, really lacks anything to grasp onto. It’s purely functional. The second presents an image in a very basic way, so the reader has something to grab, but the genius of the poem is in the next part, where the imagination springs to life, the rain water infusing both the previous and the next stanza with vitality. The white chickens are presented in as basic a way as the red wheel barrow, but that amazing third stanza, the rain water, brings them both together, breathing beauty into the image, and that certainly would be enough, but that’s not all by any means. This isn’t beauty for beauty’s sake. Because the poem’s shrewd brevity insures that the first stanza, the one that when separated is purely functional, has to be included in the overall absorption of the work. It can’t be escaped. The words aren’t three pages back to be forgotten after a complex trail of language. Reading the poem means looking at the whole thing, and dealing with it in its entirety. Without the specific structure of the first stanza, the poem is a nice still life. With it, it becomes an examination of survival. The purely functional becomes absolutely essential. I agree that great pictures can contain a thousand words, but here’s a case where sixteen words contain a PICTURE. The sheer economy of its success is almost maddening.

As stated before, this poem is often included in collections, and I first encountered it in a college Lit textbook. That’s not as cool as stumbling upon it in a dusty old edition plucked from the worthy shelf of a sly old bohemian, but I like to experience greatness any way I can. Williams isn’t about cool, anyway (not digging him is simply squaresville, but that’s my deal, not his). He was about writing, and he approached it the way a good doctor would, as just a contribution (not a donation, but a fair exchange) to the give and take of human progress. Maybe I’ll pull out a less canonical poem by him at a later date for some further dazzling and devastation. There are certainly plenty to choose from. He was as generous with his art as he was with his house calls.

Lambchop's (OH) Ohio CD (Merge Records)- a review

Lambchop has been with us for a long time now, somewhere around a decade and a half, and the progressive alt-country of their classic debut has shifted and grown with varying degrees of subtlety over the course of a slew of releases that are really starting to feel like one of the great underappreciated discographies of the last twenty years. Part of what makes them such an interesting proposition is the rather porous reality of the band, adding and subtracting members and adjusting the nature of the sound in relation to who happens to be nearby at the time. When the group was chock full of players it would often explore a lush string-based deepness that would require time to fully flower, or they could jump with all their feet into a wild synthesis of country and soul music that sounded wonderfully organic, not suffering from stiltedness for even an instant. There have been other tangents along the way, like up-tempo horn-rich yet sweetly loose vamping for instance (Your Fucking Sunny Day is a gem of a song), but the one reliable and tangible constant of the Lambchop experience has been songwriter and vocalist Kurt Wagner. And the last couple of records have seen a shift to a slimmer unit that really magnifies Wagner’s presence and gives the music a less eclectic, more concise feel. I think this development really started in earnest (they’ve always shown flashes of it, either as moments within certain tunes or for the entirety of songs when it pleased them, however) when the band was still quite large in number, with the simultaneous release of Aw Come On and No You Come On, two CDs that found the group really bearing down and cohering as a unit and shedding much of the sometimes quirky offhandedness that the band’s collective aura could inspire. Earlier albums like What Another Man Spills would often leave me with a head-shaking admiration, wondering “How do they do it?” By the release of Damaged, that sense of incredulity had evaporated and was replaced by a different type of enjoyment, that of being witness to a brilliant band who were adept at bringing great depth and often startling beauty to Wagner’s songs. And (OH) Ohio is more where that came from. This turn of events really pays some serious dividends, for Wagner is an idiosyncratic vocalist to say the least, possessing an unpolished delivery that can move into a slippery near whisper that’s still strikingly heavy, like the microphone is hanging out somewhere near his tonsils. Stick some standard strumming and plucking schmoes behind him as a backing band, and the results would be far less satisfying, because Wagner’s unusual singing style benefits quite mightily from the give and take of worthy and non-rote accompaniment and interaction, as does his singular songwriting. Nothing illustrates this better than the disc’s opener, a pretty shuffle that’s embellished with some fine guitar playing, killer femme backing vocals, and late arriving horns blowing low key and sleepy. This leads directly into one of the best songs on the record, Slipped Dissolved and Loosed, the chiming optimism of the music perfectly matching the abstraction of the lyrics and the melancholy way they’re spoken-sung. This is a recurring motif on the album, but it’s only one. Another is the handful of tracks that feature the unique mixture of Wagner’s bruised and downtrodden sensibility and the gradual musical pacing that allows for all the elements to really breathe and build: this has pretty much always been Lambchop’s main sweet spot, but it’s strikingly amplified by the increasingly intuitive musicianship. To be fair, the band has always been loaded with great players, but the early albums in particular lacked the aroma of constant practice, though with so many people contributing, a major amount of practice would seem predetermined. Dare I say that the more players a band includes, the more practice would be required, and possibly that’s one reason why the size of the group has decreased since the Come On double-dip. The increased assurance (the word perfect springs to mind) in their modus operandi can only be arrived at through much toil, and the elevated punch of their sound and the increased focus on Wagner seems to benefit from a decrease in membership. All of this isn’t to imply that the music has settled on slipping into a few familiar grooves. No, there are a couple of reliable up-tempo songs to be found amongst the eleven on this disc. Sharing a Gibson with Martin Luther King Jr. and National Talk Like a Pirate Day both offer some very welcome rollicking (I was tempted to write rocking, but that might give the wrong impression) to the record’s landscape. It’s a bit early to consider which song is my personal favorite from this batch, but Pirate is a likely contender. Wagner’s lyrics are thrillingly non- linear, his vocals boom like a summer thunderclap, Tony Crow’s keyboards and the bevy of guitars provide a sterling foundation, and Scott Martin’s snare drum rolls hit like Rod Carew in the midst of a pennant race. It’s simply a fine thing to behold, as is the record in totality, a collection of songs as beautiful as the cover art on display above. Hell, I didn’t even mention their interpretation of Don Williams’ country hit I Believe in You. So I’ll go ahead and do just that. I just hope these guys make it somewhere close to DC when and if they decide to undertake a substantial North American tour. They’ve been a blast every time I’ve seen them, and another encounter would be simply grand.

Ode to nighttime (typed in the hard light of day)

There is something
About the
Night
A magnetic tug
Or
Seductive allure
That inspires a resistance to
Sleep
And pushes me into
Labyrinthine tangles
Of activity
Mostly mental
Aerobics of the mind
While muscles are neglected
Physicality pushed aside
In favor of
Insight
Searching for that one elusive
Turn of phrase
Digesting sound
Writing it down
Rewinding
Lights out
Jimmy Stewart in a suit
Looking superb in San Francisco
Or
Reading aloud to
Nobody
Words hanging in the
Air
Then disintegrating
Disappearing
Silence defeating them.
Or the ticking of a clock
The movement of my
Watch
Steadily and
Quietly
Reminding that the
Night
Is nearly
Over.
The daytime is fine
Great for
Walks
And
Picnics
But if push
Came
(Comes)
To shove
Well you can have it.
The nighttime
(To use an archaic but worthwhile turn of phrase)
IS WHERE IT’S AT
Like a heavy oversized
Coat
Tried on while still a
Child
Wrapping around
Covering and enveloping
Silently enticing
The body
(The mind)
To grow into it
Saying
You’ll get there one day
And when you do
We’ll take out the hem
Or add some more material
(There’s always more material)
And you can start
All
Over again.

The myth of objectivity

“Journalism without a moral position is impossible. Every journalist is a moralist. It’s absolutely unavoidable. A journalist is someone who looks at the world and the way it works, someone who takes a close look at things every day and reports what she sees, someone who represents the world, the event, for others. She cannot do her work without judging what she sees. It’s impossible. In other words, objective reporting is a complete fraud. A lie. There is no such thing as objective journalism or an objective journalist. I have rid myself of many prejudices, but surely the greatest of them was to have believed in the possibility of objectively reporting an event.” Marguerite Duras, from Outside- Selected Writings

Duras was a world class French writer, film director and general thinker who died back in 1996 after writing a shit-ton of books and insuring her place in the pantheon of Euro-art cinema by not only collaborating as a screenwriter with the great Alain Resnais on Hiroshima, Mon Amour but by also directing her own obscure features, the most “famous” being probably India Song (nice piece of trivia: in John Waters’ outstanding film Polyester the triple feature at the Baltimore drive-in consists of three Duras films, which I think he actually screened back to back to back, a gesture that makes me smile and wonder how many cars were still there at the end of the final film). Her most famous (no quotes this time) novel is definitely The Lover, but my favorite of the ones I’ve read is The Malady of Death, a short, extremely powerful text that can be digested in an afternoon. Her early works were a staple in Barney Rosset’s Grove Press, and if she’s not exactly a household name, she remains an influential and vital artist.
The above quote is from the preface to a collection of Duras’ journalistic articles, and reading it really struck me due to the prevailing attitude in American culture that media should be “unbiased”. The conservative right loathes Public Broadcasting and often declares that CBS or NBC are guilty of a liberal perspective. Naturally my comrades on the left despise Fox News and Big Ugly Talk Radio. People on both sides of this issue basically feel that large numbers of their fellow citizens are being influenced or even indoctrinated by news that’s somehow contaminated by ideology.
By this point, my reaction to charges that certain parts of the broadcast and print media have a “liberal agenda” is to shrug my shoulders and say “So?” On one hand, the idea of an “agenda” is somewhat laughable, or at least a case of putting the cart before the horse. It supposes a premeditated intent that I simply don’t think is there. Yes, in the print media there are newspapers that are identified as liberal or conservative, but it’s been that way for a long time and basically makes sense for readers, who don’t want to wade through a bunch of editorials and financial coverage that doesn’t fit their perspective, and publishers and editors, who obviously value focus over a potluck of disparate opinions and ideas that often sit in direct opposition to each other. But it’s the broadcast media that has really inspired the charges of bias and agendas: 24-hour news channels, National Public Radio, the stream of syndicated call-in shows, etc. It’s a constant news cycle, and at some point roughly around a decade ago a bunch of conservatives started complaining about the left-leaning tendencies of the media while ignoring the existence of Fox News, Limbaugh, Hannity, The Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal, etc. It was a crock of shit of course, similar to a head coach working the refs in a sporting event: constantly calling for “fairness” or insinuating bias will cause people to start self-policing themselves to avoid the charges of being branded in sympathy with a certain way of thinking or looking at the world.
Being a liberal hasn’t been a popular thing for a while outside of New England, New York, assorted big cities and certain college towns that disrupt the often monochromatic image of the Heartland and other more rural and Southern states. To large numbers of people, being a liberal means hating guns, loving abortion, ridiculing religion, eating food with names that are difficult to pronounce, and espousing an elitist sensibility where the clued-in overeducated few know what’s best for everyone else. It’s all a combination of stereotyping, falsehoods and maliciousness promulgated by people who have much to gain from the divide between the masses and a media that should, at its best, reflect the complexities, difficulties and constant changes of the world.

Maybe I’m just a biased liberal jerk, but conservative ideologies aren’t big on complexity. When things get messy, the general tendency of conservatives is to pass judgment or blame (they didn’t pray enough, they didn’t save enough money, they shouldn’t have had sex and gotten knocked-up, how dare they get sick without health insurance) so the idea of a media populated by humans who are reporting on events that involve other humans and are very likely to end up impacted by the HUMANITY of the whole exercise, not so much taking sides as striving to present the true proportion of an issue or story, trying to relate the width and depth of the news they’re covering and maybe hoping to get a percentage of what they saw and felt in covering it across to the people who care to read, watch or listen to it, this idea will never be popular with conservatives. They’d never send a writer to look at the story of a single woman who had an abortion because she didn’t have heath insurance and couldn’t afford the medical bills that pregnancy incurs or the long term financial and mental strain that feeding and raising a child inspires. They’d much rather write an editorial lambasting her as a symptom of what’s wrong with America without ever trying to communicate with her, instead identifying her from the safe and often ugly confines of statistics, just one anonymous individual who’s killing an unborn baby out of sheer convenience. Maybe I’m painting with too wide a brush, acting like a biased liberal jerk again, but I’m not the one with the uh, agenda to take people’s rights away, or to punish people for being poor.
And rights in many ways are what it all comes down to. The right to a free press is an intrinsically liberal idea, liberal as in the freedom of the individual, the dictionary definition of what liberalism is, not lattes, funny cheeses, and Volvos, but instead the fundamental right to information about our world and our existence within it. Some people who become journalists do it for the money, but others (the good or great ones, anyway) do it because they have an aptitude for it, and a big part of that aptitude is the belief that the very idea of a free press is something to be involved in and to fight for. Occasionally there are surveys conducted that show how a majority of people who work in media identify themselves as liberals, the point being that people outside the media should be shocked or alarmed. My response is to simply say “no shit”, because it makes perfect sense. Conservatives for the most part don’t give a damn about the free press unless it’s validating their world view. The “awful liberal media” often does stories that sincerely depict the beliefs of those who are pro-death penalty, anti-abortion or gay marriage, or favor putting a freaking fence all the way across our southern border. After listening, I’m not swayed. But at least I recognize that it is human beings who hold these thoughts I disagree with and sometimes find abhorrent. They’re human beings who happen to be a big pain in the ass, but that’s the nature of the world.

So all this talk of objectivity, of being fair and balanced (I feel like an asshole just typing those last three words), of cold impartiality, it’s all just verbiage, a smokescreen. I’m glad that Marguerite Duras so eloquently jotted down a corrective to the fallacy that we can’t be impacted by what we see. And she did it all the way over in France! Viva the Jerry Lewis!!

Three haiku

She gives me the keys
Driving to the terminal
We change the subject

Stinking radio
The songs are always the same
No Capt. Beefheart

He meant Marc Bolan
But he said David Bowie
An honest mistake

Studs Turkel 1912-2008

"There are certain key moments in my life, rewards I get that are not monetary but are far far more important. A guy stopped me once—I did Working, and had all kinds of portraits, and one is the portrait of a waitress, Dolores Dante, she used to work at the Erie Cafe, when it was an expense-account joint. She was great. She talked about the day of a waitress. So one day this guy stops me on the street, and he corners me, on Michigan Boulevard Bridge—you know, people stop me now and then, not celebrity, just me, you know, they know me. He says listen, I want to tell ya—since I read about that woman Dolores in your book Working, I’ll never again talk to a waitress the way I have in the past. I’ll never again. Well that’s pretty good, that means I’ve touched him." Studs Turkel in conversation with Michael Lenehan



I always got a real charge out of hearing Studs Turkel speak, and especially SEEING him engage in conversation about the subjects that interested him. He possessed a passion and curiosity that was inspiring, and he also had this magnetic grittiness about him, a kind of old-school ground-level no-nonsense attitude that was always natural and sincere, never affected. He didn't begin writing until after he was blacklisted from broadcast television during the McCarthy era. He never learned to drive, relying instead on cabs and busses (reminding me of something Richard Meltzer said about Jack Kerouac, that "he never drove so he never drove alone"). He was a friend of Mahalia Jackson, he interviewed a young Bob Dylan on his radio show, and he was a passionate supporter of Barack Obama's campaign for President. In short, Studs Turkel was like a sure-fire antidote for cynicism. All you had to do was hear him talk. Or read his writing. Or watch him listening.