Random Musings

When was the last time an album slapped you across the face the first you heard it, making it ask yourself, "where have you been all my life?"? You just know that, from beginning to end, the first time, this piece of music has just helped you define a part of yourself that, until you listened to it, you knew existed but could not express it until listening to that piece of music? It happens occasionally and when it does, it's majestic. It happened tonight. The 1965 release of Herbie Hancock's Maiden Voyage, with George Coleman on ts, Tony Williams, Ron Carter and Freddie Hubbard. Hot damn, I was bopping in Borders, grading crappy tests and getting my groove on. What a phenomenal album. I can't wait to play it on a great sound system to be moved like I was tonight. If the rest of my jazz collection disappeared (God forbid!!!), Maiden Voyage would more than help ease the pain.

Other "where have you been all my life?" cds that changed my reality (in no particular order - and Steve, feel free to add yours):

Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs - Derek and the Dominos (this one is actually THE whybaml album)

Born To Run - no, really

Live at the Fillmore East - the Allman boys, especially the opening bottleneck slide to Statesboro Blues. A close second is the first song on the boys' first album. Heart stopper.

What's Going On - Marvin Gaye. Damnit, I haven't found another soul album close to this. Recommendations?

just about everything from Van Morrison's first ten years, but I can tell you the scent of dinner when I heard the first second and a half of Moondance. And It Stoned Me? I get lost every time.

I think I'm going to continue this thread tomorrow, along with a short blurb about that long lost member of the Gram Parsons - Rolling Stones lineup.

National Disaster

Finally taking the advice of several of my students and one of my best friends, I rented National Treasure, the Nicholas Cage action film from last winter. What a total waste of time. I demanded my students to pay me back. I've had better bowel movements than this film. I know, I know, people are going to tell me that the whole purpose of films is to escape, suspend one's disbelief and enjoy a story of adventure, love or intrigue. NT, from the very beginning, is evidence of formulaic tripe that has gone to ruin Hollywood. I call it the Supermodel Syndrome - looks great, amazing special effects, looks hot from a distance and yet empty and void where it counts. Sexist, bigoted analogy and I'll take all the rap for that one. Did I already mention that the film is a total waste of time? Here's what you should watch if you're interested in a great film:

Girl In the Cafe - a short ninety minute HBO film from last June, this film pits two dysfunctional British people with divergent interests, pasts and politics who come together, travel to Rejkyavik, Iceland for a G8 summit and realize that the cause of purging the world of hunger and politics is not an abstract, statistical goal but one of utmost humanity. A beautiful film that presses the issue of how armchair liberals and humanitarians should truly put their money where their mouths are. Go and check out www.one.org, Habitat For Humanity, UNICEF or any other world hunger organization. How we can sit back and be moved to tears and yet do nothing to help those that need our help is dispicable. For those of us who see a religious or spiritual duty to helping those with less need to get off our lazy western kiesters and take action.

A Very Long Engagement - film with the most vague and possibly lame title and yet the greatest film of the last three years at least. French film from the director of Amalie that stars Audrey Toutou as a young fiancee of a WWI soldier condemned to die on the front of the Somme who refuses to believe the party line that her beau has been killed in No Man's Land. A story of pain and true love with an amazing storyline, character inter-relations and special effects, this film is to take most seriously.

Honorable mention - Melinda and Melinda. I caught this last night. Not quite sure where I place this in the Woody Allen canon. I enjoyed the film, its double storyline and great Allen dialogue. However, this didn't grip me like Allen's best films, though, I agree with what most critics say that even a poor Woody Allen film is better than most films out there. Will Ferrell stars as Woody Allen, whose comic lines should have been delivered by the writer/director, and each of the other characters speak as if they had Woody's hand up their backs moving their mouths and controlling their brains. I just wish that Woody's next film won't have such unidimensional dialogue, character depth and plotline. I would watch this film again and thoroughly enjoy myself and give this, overall, a thumb up, but wouldn't place this as an unforgettable Woody Allen film. Want that? Go rent Purple Rose of Cairo or Radio Days.

Lately, I've been on a huge U2 and Beatles kick. Recently I've acquired two U2 shows which happen to be shows that I saw. One of them is my very first concert I saw back in 1987. Fascinating comparing my memories to the raw tape, though even if I remembered the show as the raw, ragged performance as the tape shows, I'd still love the band and concerts as much as I do today.
The Beatles; where to start? All I'm focussing on is the twenty-fifth anniversary of John Lennon's death in 1980. I have strong memories of that evening, even though I was only seven. The Beatles were introduced to me at a young age by my mom and to think that someone would be killed solely for being famous and popular seemed unreal to me. I'm saving this one for December 9, but I do know that I'll be terribly tearful and broken that day. Lennon's lyrical content of Rubber Soul, his rock and roll of the white album and his reflections and introspection of life from his last album and its out-takes alone make him a beautiful and greatly missed artist.

You Can Get Anything You Want

At Alice's Restauraunt! Happy Thanksgiving. What an incredible year, with much be thankful for. My wife's new business; our amazing son; my job; our home; my friends; my health; my life; trivial things like my love for music and shows; peace in my state; the failed initiative drive; Rove's undoing... now, there I go, getting political. Every day is a time to wake up, take a deep breath, and be truly amazed that I exist and live to see another day. A bit zen, I know, but the fact that the atoms that make up my body happen to exist at this time in this place in this fashion make me truly amazed and blessed that I've been created and have life. Live it while you can, right?
Off to the mountains. My folks bought a little place and we're heading back tomorrow.

Another Lefty Meme (Comedy This Time)

Goodness knows where he got this list, but I've seen the &'d ones:

Airplane!*&
All About Eve
Amelie&
Annie Hall&
The Apartment&
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery*&
Blazing Saddles&
Bringing Up Baby
Broadcast News&
Caddyshack&
Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb*&
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story*
Duck Soup
Ferris Bueller's Day Off*&
Four Weddings and a Funeral&
The General
Ghostbusters*&
The Gold Rush
Good Morning Vietnam&
The Graduate&
Groundhog Day&
A Hard Day's Night
His Girl Friday
Kind Hearts and Coronets
The Lady Killers&
Local Hero&
Manhattan&
M*A*S*H&
Monty Python's Life of Brian
National Lampoon's Animal House&
The Odd Couple
The Producers
Raising Arizona&
Roxanne
Rushmore
Shaun of the Dead*
A Shot in the Dark
Some Like it Hot&
Strictly Ballroom
Sullivan's Travels
There's Something About Mary&
This is Spinal Tap*&
To Be or Not to Be
Tootsie&
Toy Story&
Les vacances de M. Hulot
When Harry Met Sally...*&

Boogie With Stu

Using the the Zeppelin reference, I want to dedicate my post to my dad and his best friend, who happened to pass away twenty years ago today. The details and memories are mine. The experience of having close friends is something, however, as I truly know, that makes life worth living. No sermon here, though the idea that people live well past their years, being a metaphysical and esoteric concept, is what can truly bring about immortality. While someone moved on in what seems really a lifetime ago, he still lives on in a different sense, through memory and emotion. In that sense, he's still here. An African proverb says that there are only two kinds of people; those that are talked about and those that are not. Human beings, either present in living form or deceased, as long as their memories are remembered, as long as they are reflected upon and talked about, still live. Their spirits live on within the living, to be passed on to younger generations in order to keep them alive. Only when one is no longer talked about or remembered does one truly die. My profession, therefore, is one that sees the necessity of keeping people alive. I am the esoteric life support system, so to speak, and though that idea may sound ridiculous, here I am now, looking back at that day in 1985 and remembering the loss, the pain and the finiteness of humanity and yet remembering how much Stu meant to my family and me. And I was only twelve.

Anxious Bruce

It's here, and you know you have an amazing wife when she calls to tell you to save that trip to the store because she's gone and picked it up: The 30th anniversay Born To Run box set. I've been waiting for this since March and now it's here. Ironically or fatefully enough, I broke my DVD player last night, God punished me by denying my ability to play the two videos. However, I had the privilege of listening to the remastered album and it was stunning. The greatest disappointment is the packaging; what the hell am I going to do with a giant box that won't fit in my cd shelf and is too tall or thick to fit with my DVD's? Shame on Columbia, the company did the same for the Simon and Garfunkel box set.

Born To Run is my favorite Bruce album. I have close seconds. He may have more powerful lyrical or musical statements on his other albums, but this one is by far the best. While I nearly clocked Chris "didn't Bruce Springsteen once act on General Hospital" Brown for his talking smack about the seventh song, he is right about the maturity and focus of Bruce's work beginning on Darkness On the Edge of Town. That is why I entitle my little treatise "Anxious Bruce"; I steal the title from a chapter in the greatest rock analysis and criticism book ever, Jim Curtis's "Rock Eras". He only wrote a single edition which never made it past 1984, but his chapter on The Beatles' White Album being and amalgamation of influences and a sign that the band was in a major transitional period make me think of BTR. What we hear is an artist, while entrenched in his personal past and musical statements, attempting to find himself in new modes. He may over-reach and out-do himself on the overall product, and when looking at Bruce's entire canon it appears that he's torn stylistically between Wild and Innocent and Darkness. Yet, what he produced in 1975 is a true masterpiece of emotion and powerhouse rock that made him "the future" even while reflecting the past of rock and roll. However, the songs:

THUNDER ROAD - sparse piano and rusty harmonica intro; clean vocal. When the band kicks in at the beginning of the second verse, you know you're on the wild ride of chance and adventure that the singer takes Mary on. There are guitar parts that I've never heard that were muffled or poorly blended on the original cd. Probably the most intricate guitar work of Bruce's career. Bruce calls the song an invitation; I think of it as two horsemen of the apocalypse getting the hell out of Dodge. Listen to Roy's piano run after "it's a town full of losers and we're pulling out of here to win" and argue otherwise.

TENTH AVENUE FREEZE-OUT - Probably Bruce's last song with a direct connection to his earlier work. The funky 9th chords and soul-filled horn section make this sound like an outtake from "Greetings From" or "Wild and Innocent" yet the subject this time, instead of one of the wharf rats that inhabited Bruce's first two albums, is himself. Maybe his most autobiographical song?

NIGHT - This rocker could probably pass for an outtake from Darkness, as his theme of the automobile as Hermes, the transporter of people to the otherworldly realm. Straight ahead power chords erase any memory of a backbeat in Bruce's music and this three minute statement ends in a flurry of sax screams that mimic the speeding of the cars along the strip. One of his best creations of why people still see this part of our day as the time of redemption and resurrection.

BACKSTREEETS - I've written aplenty about this song, but the new remaster brings so much into light. The B-3 organ part is more prominent in the mix, bringing much of the failures of the singer to church. Isn't church the place where lost souls find salvation? It's clear where the singer believed his redemption lie and yet the Judas kiss does not take hold as the singer's faith in the alleys is stronger even than his faith in others. One of his most impassioned vocals and lyrics "on the backstreets until the end."

BORN TO RUN - Now cliche and mocked, which is a clear sign of how something becomes entrenched in culture. Listen with headphones on this new album and you'll hear parts you've never heard: strings in the chorus, a wah pedal in the bridge and the clear echo-drenched delay of Bruce's Fender Esquire as he descends down the fretboard and yet another dreamer blasts his way down the boardwalk.

SHE'S THE ONE - Buddy Holly meets Mitch Ryder: here's the one about "her", that undefinable woman who's bamboozled your senses and yet keeps you wanting more. This song belongs in 1965, a major return from the previous cut which reminds the listener of songs they think it reminds them of but makes them hope for his next album. Musically one of his easiest songs to learn (until The River, where basically every song is in the I-IV-V fashion), the girls on the stoops, the boys in the chinos and the vrrooooom of the motorcycles make this a girl group song from Motown.

MEETING ACROSS THE RIVER - the most unique song Bruce has ever written, as it's a vignette more than a pop tune. The singer's trying to be tough, trying to move up in the world of crime, trying to act the act and walk the line and yet he's still hard up for a set of wheels? Brilliant. Jazzy and sparse and not even an E Street song. Very noir-ish and yet a song that shows Bruce's desire to speak for people from all walks of life. Not just runnin' and funnin' but someone trying to make it however he can. The singer's insecurity reflects a maturity of songwriting and yet when Bruce would perform this song live (very rarely, even), he himself looks out of place, a little kid dressing up in his daddy's clothes. The character compromised his integrity long ago and yet his ego won't let him look foolish for his old lady. This song of this sort will never be repeated in Bruce's career as he becomes a more focussed song writer with an ability to be fun or real; however, he'll never be this literal.

JUNGLELAND - the perfect example of Bruce's anxiety. West Side Story meets rock opera. James Dean and Nathalie Wood, yet in the slums of Harlem where the punks don't look like they've stepped out of a Brill cream ad. This song, as Bruce said, nearly killed him, and it's apparent why. Crescendoing choruses, tempo changes, killer guitar solos and tembling sax solos; Bruce at his most theatrical. Clarence's sax playing only heightens the soulfullness and urban-ness of the song, taking the listener from a violent rumble to the deathly-silent after effects of the clean-up. Bruce will hint at "hugeness" in later songs such as Mary's Place, but Jungleland comes crashing down into what sounds like to me the introduction to television's "Hill Street Blues", a cop show that put the cops and the bad guys on both sides of the white line. Bruce's characters wind up wounded and not even dead, whereas his resilient previous cast and crew are still down running in the alleys, under the boardwalk, chasing skirts and riding the ferris wheel. Wounded but not dead will become the theme for Bruce's work throughout the rest of the 1970s and into much of the 1980s with songs like "Out On the Streets", "Atlantic City" reaching to his best example, "Born in the U.S.A." Only a near self-destruction of his own life, an art-imitating-life-limitating art act that nearly wrecked his musical career ended this era of song writing. And yet, Jungleland still rings of New York Serenade, an epic masterpiece from The Innocent that no one knows nor remembers. Both songs end each respective album in ten-minute songs, Bruce's wailing vocal trailing off into the night daring the listener to forget it and the stories he tells. In a way, I've always wondered what it would have sounded like if Bruce pulled off a sequel to Jungleland and conversely, I'm thankful that he left this song and this album untouched. He never would revisit this portion of his career; he moved on to new directions and finally discovered what he wanted to sing about. Thanfully he left this strewn trail of rough drafts and unfinished thoughts around for fans and critics to see this as truly one of the ironically greatest records of all time.

Indy Film Meme

I bummed this from Lefty. The flicks he's seen are asterisked, mine are &'d. Here goes:

1. Reservoir Dogs*&
2. Donnie Darko
3. The Terminator*&
4. Clerks
5. Monty Python's Life of Brian
6. Night of the Living Dead&
7. Sex, Lies, and Videotape
8. The Usual Suspects*&
9. Sideways*&
10. Mean Streets &
11. Bad Taste
12. Eraserhead
13. Memento&
14. Stranger Than Paradise
15. Blood Simple
16. She's Gotta Have It
17. City of God
18. Withnail and I
19. Lone Star&
20. Slacker
21. Roger and Me
22. Nosferatu&
23. The Evil Dead&
24. Happiness
25. Drugstore Cowboy
26. Lost in Translation*&
27. Dark Star
28. In the Company of Men
29. Bad Lieutenan.
30. Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song
31. Pink Flamingos
32. Two Lane Blacktop (unavailable on DVD)
33. Shallow Grave
34. The Blair Witch Project&
35. THX-1138
36. Buffalo '66
37. Being John Malkovich*&
38. Grosse Point Blank&
39. The Passion of the Christ&
40. The Descent
41. Dead Man's Shoes
42. Swingers
43. Shadows
44. Amores Perros
45. Mad Max&
46. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre&
47. Blood Feast
48. Cube
49. Run Lola Run*&
50. El Mariachi*

Nineteen. Not bad but nothing to write home about. Tag, you're it.

Highs and Lows and

I'm getting drunk tonight. I caught my Dublin boys on Tuesday night and the show rocked the house. Sure made up for the, to quote Bruce, wreck on the highway that was the April show. Lefty drove up (read his review tomorrow) and my dear, dear friends, Shelley and Neil (who I have a nearly fifteen-year history of catching the band with) sat next to me. The band was in rare form, plowing through a nearly-identical setlist as the first show but an energy level that was truly a third-leg-of-the-tour treat for us fans. I especially loved I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For and With Or Without You, two songs omitted from the first show. The Edge was on fire, smiling (!) to the crowd and showing us how in the mood he was. If I never see this band again (a band that introduced me to the intoxicating power of rock and roll through The Joshua Tree in April of 1987 and my first concert), I can say that I caught them four times and the last time was one for the record books.
Then there's Night Two, the night I missed:

City of Blinding Lights
Vertigo
Elevation
I Will Follow
Gloria
Still Haven’t Found
Beautiful Day
Miracle Drug
Sometimes You Can’t Make it On Your Own
Love and Peace or Else
Sunday Bloody Sunday
Bullet The Blue Sky
Miss Sarajevo

Pride in the Name of Love
Where the Streets have No Name
One

First Time
Stuck in a Moment
With or Without You

All Because of You
Fast Cars
Bad


and suddenly I realized that God hates me. No, not really, but Gloria, Stuck and BAD!!!????? What did I do wrong to not be able to hear Bad? The finale of the concert? I would have been in tears probably catching that indelible guitar of The Edge's. Does anyone have a copy of the show yet?

Let's talk politics, since I'm still smiling after watching Arnie get his derriere wiped by a vast majority of voters who showed that he stands for NOTHING we want (remember, ladies and gentlemen, that more often than naught, in off-year- and special elections, the majority of voters are conservative!). All eight power-grab initiatives failed, showing the Golden State that voters wish, if for nothing else, that Arnie stop this lone cowboy I'm a political novice but know what I'm doing hubris. Governator, stop and look East, watch Curious George and STOP TAKING NOTES, IT ISN'T HELPING. A nation-wide study will show us that (at least for this month), people are sick and tired of the crap delivered to us on silver platters by the GOP and conservatives who seek for this country to only favor them and no one else. Now, before I start playing my John Lennon records and lighting the incense, there were some major negative aspects of the election:

Voters in Kansas still believe what the majority of people did in the 16th century did, that God created the world in six days and let the devil use the fossil record to confuse people into believing evolution. Speaking of, check this out. Leave it to Pat Robertson, the guy who supported Jerry Falwell's claims that 9/11 was brought on the U.S. by "pornographers, feminists and homesexuals" among others who turned away from God. Now, considering I claim to be a follower of the same God this clod claims to believe, I'm truly embarrassed to be associated with him (we're both Americans, after all), and I hope that Heaven, if it exists, is truly as vast as the Bible claims, because I'd probably kick the guy right in his angelic nutsack if I ever crossed his path. Can a dead guy get booted from Heaven? Thankfully it's never been recorded in the Bible, and since the only way God communicates to people is through a series of stories that were written down hundreds of years after the peole who experienced them actually lived, I should be in good shape, unless Pat tells on me that I think he's an asswipe for thinking that a creation story is to be taken literally, though he probably still takes his aspirin when his head hurts and his other medication for his ailments instead of praying for the demons to be purged from his soul. Now, by Pat's line of thinking, because there is a such thing as universal truth (or, at least universal lines of logic and analogy), that God really hates the southeastern United States. Since Pat-logic (an oxymoron if I ever heard of one) works everywhere, here's what I'm thinking: God also hates southern Republicans and the Bush family. God kicked Jeb's ass with Hurricane Wilma and forced the governor to take responsiblity; God made Georgie look like the buffoon that he is (not that tough, though), make most GOP Congresspeople look stupid with their public quotes of indifference and ineptitude, and show just how much He hates the Saints. That said, God hates people of Indiana (another Red State), Pakistan, all of South Asia (remember the tidal wave?), the Bay Area (earthquakes), the inhabitants of Pompeii, wooly mamoths, dinosaurs, neandertals, the Dodo, spotted owls and members of Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers Band. Or, like rational people, we can see that sometimes natural and accidental events bring about results that we don't like. How can we understand or claim that anything is divinely inspired? If that's the case, then God hates Arnold Schwarzenegger and the GOP (at least until the spin angels take flight) and wants them to shut up.

Thanks for reading my sermon. I just want to call Lefty out on the carpet (to see if he's still reading this damned post) by asking him just what makes him think he has any clue about popular music: Meeting Across the River is not a good song? Born To Run has clunkers? Don't you own Go-Go's music?

Here and There

Well, my son was Kermit the Frog for Halloween, no one egged my house, I didn't eat a lot of candy and the Raiders choked today as usual on the last play of the game. The Bush Administration is finally being seen by the majority of the nation and press as it has been, a straw man of lies, bravado and see-through ideology that has truly driven the capital "E" out of Empire for us. I really feel like England after the Second World War, realizing that the event, after thirty years of waking up to it, had occurred and the nation was truly no longer on top of the world. The United States will never, never have the reputation nor repect that it possessed or willed after World War II. The Bush Administration has finalized the process put into place thirty-some odd years ago with Nixon and Kissinger; that being the temperment of U.S. foreign policy and the deflation of our reputation and exceptionalism. Just this weekend President Bush clashed with a Senator of his own party not over tax cuts or the war but over the legality of torture. This week, news broke that the U.S. has been keeping secret torture chambers across Eastern Europe to extract information from al Qaeda operatives and goodness-knows-who-else. I bet John McCain ends up there next.
Sam Alito, the most-likely-next-Supreme Court-choice believes that a man truly rules a household, that machine guns are more important than the real interpretation of the 2nd Amendment and that the federal government should cowtow to solely the needs of the Executive Branch. Where in hell does someone with such arcane philosophy end up running an appeals court bench for fifteen years come from? I truly fear for the future of our country.
Mike Brown thought it was funny to make jokes about the lameness of his job when Katrina was decimating New Orleans. Republicans want to gut Alaska. Where have you gone, FDR? At least Bush's approval ratings keep plummeting. As we have marked the first anniversary of Bush's (re)election, maybe, just maybe, the majority of Americans will realize just how incredibly stupid they were for voting in a man that supports cronyism, stupidity, "intelligent design", torture, illegal wars, the burning of international goodwill towards our country and the idea that the government as well as Jesus both exist to serve all people, especially those who struggle to help themselves.
On Tuesday, I head off to see U2 again. This will be my fourth time overall and without the need of a baby sitter, so I ought to have a good time. The setlist and stage antics will probably be identical from last April, but the boys always put on one hell of a show this late in the game. Of the three times I've already seen them, two times have been in November and both times were epic concert-going memories before. I'm looking forward to some brilliant music. It will be my first time seing a Nobel nominee. It will also be undescribably sad to think of the fact that a rock musician leading a bunch of grown men performing a boy's job is the only person in our society who has the wherewithall and desire to try stamping out hunger, end the spread of AIDS, see to it that all of God's people go to bed without hitting a land mine and still wishing peace and goodwill toward all people be spread. Why isn't this the mission of a religious leader? Where's our president? Bono, I love you for your music, your impact on my personal life and your desire to truly be John the Baptist. I hope you wander the desert eating locusts and honey and just maybe one day people will see that you came to do good in the name of all that is good. Walk on...