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March 27, 2007

Swamptrash: An Homage to Harry Horse

Among the names buried (sorry) in ND's capsule obits last issue was that of a fellow by the name of Richard Horne, who, I found out only while assembling that section, drew political cartoons and children's books under the name Harry Horse. But I knew him, it turns out, as the banjo player in a Scottish bluegrass band called Swamptrash, and the only album of theirs I've ever seen is just now spinning on my turntable.

These appear to be the facts: He met his wife, Mandy, at one of Swamptrash's final shows, and they were unusually close thereafter. She spent the last two years of her life confined to a wheelchair by multiple sclerosis, and they both ended their days (and those of their pets) on January 10 in what was apparently a suicide pact. He was a year younger than I am.

That is what it is, and, while it saddens me, it's not why It Makes No Never Mind is on my turntable. The Swamptrash album came in a package of stuff from Rough Trade, back when they had a U.S. imprint and distribution arm (the album's on an unknown label called Fast Forward USA) and went broke putting out the Butthole Surfers and some other stuff, nearly taking independent rock with them. (A number of small labels went down that season; this happens every few years, one way or another.)

I've no idea why I played it the first time, maybe to hear the cover of "Ring Of Fire" or some such. But I've always really liked this record, always wondered about the band, always wished it would appear on CD so I could more easily access its pleasures. And, in a spare moment, his name having come into vision again — a hurried, stolen fraction of this afternoon — I went in the back room to dig it out and make sure memory served.

It's a bit of a relief, actually. Yes, indeed, they really were a ramshackle and thoroughly enjoyable faux-punk string/bluegrass band who attacked new and old tunes with the verve and self-evident pleasure others heard in the Pogues (and I never have; no disrespect meant). It's every bit as much fun as I remembered, despite the fact that my ears are now far more accustomed to these sounds and traditions than they were in the late 1980s. If you wished to draw a line from the 1920s string bands through to Old Crow Medicine Show and the Avetts and all the glorious rest, it could easily dart through this obscure little ensemble. Along with the Bad Livers and precious few others, this music connects that period of my life — the grunge years — to my present, and to my past.

Whilst in Austin I had occasion to interview Sally Timms in the glass booth on the convention floor — as close as I hope ever to come to a Planet of the Apes moment. We spoke for a time in the green room, both of us early (shocking behavior for a musician), and I asked if she'd heard of or seen Swamptrash. But, no. Alas.

I'd hoped mentioning Horne's passing in print might spur some response, but it hasn't. His career as an illustrator was clearly in the UK, though his children's books evidently did well over here, and since Maggie likes such things I'll try to track one down to read her.

Anyhow, I just found a copy of the record on sale for $38.51, and another on offer on eBay for $19.99, and a tiny newsgroup of Scottish fans who'd actually seen them, in which I learned of another EP. That appears to be it. That and another band he formed called Hexology, about which I know nothing. It's a pity. There's not enough joy in the world, and there's plenty in these grooves.

It would have changed nothing, but I wish I'd made time to search him out while he was still alive. Some things cannot be fixed.

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March 24, 2007

The basketball diaries (a greater heresy)

Let me be clear about this: I love basketball. I love sports. I started out, back in high school, as a sports writer. Though I have no discernible talent, am of absolutely average stature, and have never managed to wear a team jersey, I have given the game of basketball every finger on both hands (save my thumbs) at least once, broken or dislocated. This is a problem when one types for a living, but no matter. I quit after breaking (I think, doctors cost money) my right middle finger in Los Angeles, and then quit again after breaking my right little finger (I think, doctors cost money; and, anyway, who can tell what's broken and not until it's too late?) in an old man's game here in Morehead.

Not that I quit playing that day; I broke the finger 30 seconds into my first game back on wobbly legs, taped it up and went on. (Not macho; stubborn.) And came back the next week because I refused to go out having played THAT badly. Made a couple shots, felt better about myself. Really, I stopped playing because contact lenses no longer work for me and I don't have legitimate university ID to go back into the building and keep playing. And because I'm probably not so stupid as to wish to break yet another finger come deadline. Probably.

So I stayed up too late last night watching the North Carolina-USC game and mulling over Tubby Smith's wise decision to leave Kentucky for the University of Minnesota. (I thought, and said, midseason that something about his body language on the sidelines suggested he was ready to leave. Not to prove I was right, just to suggest that I understand a little bit of the wear and tear Kentucky fans put on their coaches. And, frankly, he was doomed here from the moment his son started at point guard. I'm sure Saul's a good kid and loyalty counts, but he wasn't quite good enough to start in the SEC.) And Randolph Morris's decision to leave Kentucky immediately for the New York Knicks, a quirk available to him since he announced for the draft a couple years back and went undrafted. $1.8 million free agent contact, who needs school?

I love college basketball, and pro football. Those are aesthetic preferences, not value judgments.

But in order to love college basketball -- college sports -- it is necessary to put aside serious misgivings.

What, for example, do highly competitive Division 1 college sports -- that is, football and basketball, in the main -- have to do with university life? How many students take those athletic scholarships with any desire to acquire an education? And what possible connection exists -- beyond alumni fundraising -- between these multi-million dollar sporting enterprises and academia? Particularly when the best players need only to stay academically eligible for one year before the NBA beckons?

My father, a retired college professor, sent me an AP clipping the Seattle Times headlined "Study shows 10 percent of Buckeyes got degrees." I quote: "Using the yardstick Graduation Success Rates -- which accounts for players who transfer to other schools and receive degrees, players entering from junior colleges and those who receive degrees more than six years after enrollment -- 50 percent of Oregon players, 19 percent of Eastern Kentucky players and 9 percent of Florida A&M players were graduated...Gonzaga players had a 22 percent FGR...Other programs with rather low FGRs were Tennessee (8 percent); UNLV (10 percent); Maryland (13 percent); Virginia Tech (17 percent); Louisville (22 percent); Georgia Tech, Kentucky and Oral Roberts (23 percent each); and Memphis and North Texas and Texas A&M-Corpus Christi (25 percent each)."

Those are all tournament qualifiers this year, which is how their numbers end up in the article. Most of the kids who aren't graduating aren't playing pro ball somewhere, and, without college degrees, they're probably not coaching. So what has been accomplished, and at what cost?

Why, moving on, are tax dollars spent building stadiums for pro sports? Because they draw business to the neighborhoods adjacent to the stadiums? Maybe, but that seems to have been largely disproved. Even if that were the case, is that the best set of economic incentives we can devise? Besides, nobody ever went broke selling an NFL or NBA franchise, not in a long time. Why are we in the business of subsidizing millionaires?

And given the amounts of money involved in high profile college football and basketball programs, and the restrictions played on the athletes who participate (that is, no summer jobs, etc.), by what possible ethical standard are they not paid? How many kids burn up knees, shoulders, and backs in high school or college chasing a dream? How many of them are permanently slowed or disabled without any kind of compensation? I don't know, and I'm not suggesting they are due some kind of hand-out. I'm just saying it's a high price to pay for chasing a dream.

Look at the money spent, at the graduation rates, at what happens to kids after they leave major university programs. And I know that no small number of them enter the coaching fraternity, or are absorbed into alumni business networks. But...this is college we're talking about. These are kids. And we are using them.

And I still love the game, and I still think Florida wins it all.

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March 22, 2007

The sum of all influences

On the occasion of the suicide of Boston lead singer Brad Delp, I’ve been e-mailing back and forth with a friend about the records which really changed our lives (as opposed to those which appear on the critically acclaimed lists). I’m not much on lists -- nor on Delp's voice; my tastes would run more toward Paul Rodgers -- but, on the other hand, to repeat one of my favorite and oft-repeated song quotes, “singles remind me of kisses, albums remind me of plans.”*

The beginnings of this particular list began forming in my head this morning, and won’t stop. I find that the music I remember most clearly is inescapably linked to people, though most of them have long drifted from the edge of my life and, I from theirs. I shall attempt to keep it somewhat chronological within my experience of things, that is, and am prepared to let it run as long (or short) as it wants to.

1. Billy Faier, Travelin’ Man (Riverside, 1959). Honest to god this isn’t the critic being willfully obscure. Billy Faier was mostly a banjo player who happened to be active in the Bay Area when my parents were in college (mother was pregnant with me the one time she saw him play), where he was best-known for a cowboy morality poem set to music called “The Hell Bound Train.” The imagery of the song, and the force with which he sang it, were sufficient to keep me far from drink and other pleasures until shortly after I turned 18. At which point I began to contemplate the potency of that imagery from another perspective. Beyond that, Faier plays – he’s still alive, recovering from heart surgery in deepest Texas – the banjo with long, nimble fingers as if it were a guitar, extracting from that brittle, rhythmic instrument an air of relentless sophistication. Sometimes.
2. The Beatles, “I Want To Hold Your Hand” (Capitol, 1963) and Herman’s Hermits “Mrs. Brown, You’ve Got A Lovely Daughter” (MGM, 1965). I could have picked several Herman’s Hermits songs, but, no matter. This is the first pop music I remember, and I have a clear memory of arguing in the Brookside Elementary School lunchroom that Herman’s Hermits were the better band. My mother-in-law’s maiden name is Brown, and she does have a lovely daughter.
3. Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, Absolutely Free (Verve, 1967). My older brother used to play this record when our parents were gone and he was in charge. I used to sing [sic] “Call Any Vegetable” while riding my one-speed.
4. Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac (Blue Horizon, 1968). My brother played the guitar, and I suspect he spent a long time trying to master the repeated figure in “Oh, Well.” Somehow, while still in high school, I figured out that Then Play On was the end of an era; Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac is one of a very small number of albums I ever ordered from a store, and I was thrilled when it came in. A beautiful, glossy import, and the gal behind the counter knew me slightly and couldn’t figure out why I was buying such a thing. I had not quite discovered that I loved blues yet.
5. Jonathan Edwards, self-titled (Atco, 1971) and Bob Dylan, Blood On The Tracks (Columbia, 1975). High school newspaper production with Mark Leopold. I am not a Dylan fan, and I think my inability to decode this particular album has much to do with it, though I do like the sound of his voice here. Jonathan Edwards…this is such an effortless, fun record. “Sunshine” was the ideal companion to the Five Man Electrical Band’s “Signs.” Somewhere in here I picked up a two-LP Phil Ochs compilation, so let’s toss “Small Circle of Friends” into the mix. Oh, and in fairness to Mark (and me), Jackson Browne’s Running On Empty.
6. The Beatles, Rubber Soul (Capitol, 1965). The UK pressing, which has different songs is sequenced differently. And import vinyl used to sound a heck of a lot better. Played repeatedly and at excruciating volume in Scott Stoffen’s tiny room at the Sigma Chi frat house (we were just visiting, I hasten to add). I knew Sgt. Pepper was a technical masterpiece, of course; this is the album which convinced me The Beatles were a great band. I have a soft spot for Ted Nugent’s “Cat Scratch Fever,” too, and probably some hearing damage.
7. George Thorogood and the Destroyers, Move It On Over (Rounder, 1978). I’ve a hunch that Thorogood’s unexpected success paid for much of what Rounder was subsequently able to do. For me, this is the quintessential gateway drug. Courtesy my friend Judy Werle, who was then the Seattle-area Rounder retail person and had extra records to give away, I went backwards through these lovingly ham-fisted covers to discover Johnny Cash, Elmore James, and Hank Williams. I remain deeply grateful. Elmore James is the Thomas Hardy of blues.
8. Styx, Equinox (A&M, 1975). No apologies. Ritch Kuyper and Wayde Rose and I spent two summers in Wayde’s basement playing pool and foosball and listening to a half-dozen albums we could agree upon. I can’t stand Boston or Foreigner, and Who’s Next is altogether ruined. But I still love (in small doses) this album.
9. Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Live Rust (Reprise, 1979). I borrowed Scott North’s Honda to drive across Washington state and report a story on a ski resort planned for the Methow Valley (and, I believe, never built). He was a fan of Crosby, Still, Nash, and Young. On 8-track. He even had Stills’ 1978 disco debacle, Thoroughfare Gap. I played Live Rust over and over and over again. It was my birthday. I was alone. It was glorious, and free.
10. Talking Heads, Fear Of Music (Sire, 1979). Playing through huge speakers at Matthew Stadler’s house (we had been high school debate partners, were now college students running amok in very different ways). It’s still a magnificent, ambitious, transitional album. It plays brilliantly when driving alone (as does the Byrne-Eno collaboration, My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts).
11. The Eurythmics, Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This) (RCA, 1983). Cocaine music, I guess. For a time I couldn’t write if I hadn’t played the first side of this album and consumed a pot of strong coffee. What a magnificent voice, coiled, tense and nervous and unable to relax.
12. Jonathan Edwards & The Seldom Scene, Blue Ridge (Sugar Hill, 1988). New Grass Revival were more fun to read about than to listen to. Here was a congregation of superb singers and pickers updating bluegrass in a way that made sense to me. It goes nicely with (I think they were once on opposite sides of a TDK-SA 90) the Whites’ Old Familiar Feeling (Warner Bros., 1983). Which, alas, appears to be out of print and forgotten.
13. Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, Black Jack (Music Is Medicine, 1975) and Sweet Honey In The Rock, We All, Every One Of Us (Flying Fish, 1989? I think that’s a reissue date). Two more gifts from Judy Werle. The first people of color in this little list, and only the second women. I shoulda put Joni Mitchell on here, but I gave Court & Spark to a very pretty girl in junior high whose father looked a lot like Richard Nixon's little brother, and it was some years before I got my own copy. Gatemouth Brown, David Byrne, and Neil Young have never failed to fascinate and challenge me. Sweet Honey In The Rock are a national treasure. I have wanted to make a short film to go with their recording of “Sweet Bird Of Youth” since I first heard it, though I’ve no hope of ever doing so.
14. Randy Travis, “Diggin’ Up Bones” (Warner Bros., 1986). I never bought the album, but I’ve always loved this song. Toss in the O’Kanes and the Judds here (I actually bought the O’Kanes debut, and everything else they made).
15. Mudhoney, “Touch Me, I’m Sick” (Sub Pop, 1989). I wouldn’t have a writing career without Mudhoney. Seattle and grunge wouldn’t have happened without them. They were (and remain) an astonishingly powerful live band, and masters of irony.
15. Robbie Fulks, “She Too A Lot Of Pills (And Died)” (heard first on Bloodshot’s Insurgent Country, Vol. 2, 1996). The reason, along with the long-forgotten Carpetbaggers, that the idea for this little magazine took root. Everything after that is more or less on display within the pages of our little magazine, and so I’ll stop.

Sort of. Other records that should be on here somewhere: Mahavishnu Orchestra’s Visions Of The Emerald Beyond (Columbia, 1974); Pere Ubu’s Dub Housing (Rough Trade, 1979); The B-52s, self-titled (Warner Bros., 1979); David Qualey’s Soliloquy (Windham Hill, 1979); Soundgarden, Louder Than Love (A&M, 1990); Lucinda Williams, self-titled (Rough Trade, 1988); Cowboy Junkies, Trinity Sessions (RCA, 1988). And Stevie Winwood’s Spencer Davis catalogue, all of it. To say nothing of Back Door and Julie London, for both of which I should thank Chris Mitchell. And the Dueling Banjos soundtrack (curious to read that Joe Byrd produced it, and casually), which led me to a futile year of banjo lessons. Apparently you have to have rhythm to play music, and, apparently, I don't.

Oh, yeah. Not to forget (as I did) John Cale's Live Sabotage and Slade! Alive!, both of which I used to listen to at high volume while washing dishes. Actually, I saw Cale's record release stand at CBGBs during my first trip to New York, which coincided with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. It was a crackling night, though, in fairness, I'd thought I was going to see J.J. Cale!

One final caveat: I am painfully aware that there’s not much ethnic diversity on this list. Nor many female vocalists. I’m a white kid from the suburbs of Seattle; this is the music which shaped my listening. It’s not what I’m listening to right now, nor, even the bulk of what I choose to hear in my off hours. But it is what it was. A different kind of list would feature Sleepy John Estes, Blind Willie Johnson, Charlie Rich, the Louvin Brothers, the Fairfield Four, the Swan Silvertones, Ted Hawkins, Kurdt Cobain, the Del McCoury Band and/or Steve Earle, Mavis Staples, all kinds of music that those first twenty-odd years led me to.

*After hurriedly posting this, I realized I'd neglected to footnote Squeeze's wonderful Argybargy, one of the first albums I ever reviewed in print, from which I've regularly swiped this couplet.

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March 19, 2007

The news from Austin

It's not all bad, the news. But nobody knows. No small number of enterprises are prepared to toss buckets of money at the future, but nobody has more then two clues suggesting what shape the music industry will take next. I'm pretty sure that allowing labels to participate in touring revenues is a bad idea. I suspect David Byrne is correct that, in a few years, digital sales will eclipse physical CDs, and that most listeners don't mind the lower fidelity of MP3s. But I doubt that signals an end to retail sales, nor to the physical package itself.

On thing is sure: I need to pay more attention to my physical conditioning before attending another convention. And chairs...chairs in venues would be a nice addition to the Austin milieu.

Austin itself is much changed, and begins to resemble Seattle: A smart, affluent, hideously congested recreation of bohemia, in which actual bohemians struggling to hang on at the edges, or choose to move elsewhere. But where's the elsewhere going to be? We seem to be creating these green zones all around the country -- Austin, Denver, Seattle, Portland, Manhattan, Hollywood, Boston? I dunno -- surrounded by miles of less desirable countryside to be occupied by the unlucky majority of regular folks.

And somehow neither the barbeque nor the music was quite transcendent this year, though I tried plenty of both. (Swamp Dog...almost. Almost. Cheering, anyhow.)

That said, some changes are heartening. Registrants are a far more racially diverse lot than they were 14 years ago, as is the music. And the Woo Woo Girls -- a deplorable entry level industry tradition which obliged bright young women to attend all their label's showcases and stand near the stage and shout "Woo! Woo!" after every song -- seemed gloriously absent. Once their job were more secure they were emboldened to stand in the back of the room and trade business cards between songs, but they still shouted at every pause. It does seem like something approaching equality has been hashed out, but I wouldn't know, of course. Except that I find myself rather missing the enthusiasm, however manufactured. Too much cool detachment comes from both sides of the stage these days.

One other rumored change is perplexing, for apparently SXSW contemplates (which is far from saying the decision has been made) discontinuing sales of wristbands so as to ensure the conference (re)focus itself on being an industry event. On one hand, as an antisocial curmudgeon, the fewer people stumbling into my sore back, the better. On the other hand, those who come to SXSW as fans actually read magazines and buy music and attend shows. They generally don't find it necessary to talk during performances, and their enthusiasm for an act is a much better barometer of its prospects than is the cold chill of an industry room.

Once upon a time such a proposal would have been anathema to the Austin music community. I wonder, now, if that community cares...or matters, to the festival's organizers.

And I wonder if the genie isn't already well out of the bottle. We who mill about the streets and flail at occupied cabs (because we can't remember if the lights mean they're occupied or not and the tinted windows don't help) are offered a dizzying array of daytime parties and unsanctioned evening events. No small number of artists drift to Austin to play those shows -- and deals are certainly consummated in those unsanctioned environs -- and it is quite possible to have a fine time without a wristband, or a laminate.

Besides: What industry? Or, which industry?

I spent part of a day wondering the trade show floor, and was struck by the number of CD duplicating operations with booths. One fellow was kind enough to explain what should have been obvious to me: A great portion of their business is fueled by musicians who need to have product to sell from the stage. It's a great deal easier, as the sales literature reminds, to close a deal when somebody's got a drink in their hand and folding money in their pocket than it is to hope they'll go home, remember your name, wake up sober and late for work and still wanting to go to the trouble of downloading your songs. I don't see that changing real soon, but I still wonder if the recorded work isn't once again going to become a tool to drive live performance ticket sales, instead of a profit center all its own. Which is probably why some labels are interested in participating in touring revenues (and how that balances with their tour support -- or obliges them to step up their tour support -- I can't say).

One more thought: Rock 'n' roll cannot become like opera and symphonies and Shakespeare Festivals (and I like two of those things quite a bit), dependent on corporate sponsorship to underwrite its expenses. (Nor on trust funds.)

Finally, we are much obliged to the artists who played our particular Friday afternoon shindig: Tom Gillam, Johnny Bush, Peter Holsapple & Chris Stamey, Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter, Elvis Perkins, and Jim White. Even I had a good time. (There were a couple people I brushed past trying to get something else done and lost track of. I do apologize.)

My brackets, inevitably, are a mess. So is my office. At least Duke lost a round before Kentucky did.

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March 12, 2007

Does SXSW still matter? (A minor heresy)

In less than two days I will leave for Austin and what will be, I believe, my 14th consecutive year attending the music industry's annual spring break, SXSW. As always I will enjoy the food and look forward seeing old friends, though some have left the business and one or two have passed. The years have taught me which smiles to trust, which barbeque to avoid, and the necessity of balancing unknown music with favorites; the foolishness of trying to see everything; the firm necessity of at least six hours of sleep no matter what. The singular importance of water.

But I also go with a certain and increasing dread, for I have found myself increasing intolerant of crowds. No, that's a coward's phrase. I don't do well in large groups of people (that is, more than ten, past which conversation is pointless), never really have, and it's no good pretending. No matter how I try I have never mastered the skill of cocktail chatter. This is a failing. I remember faces and stories, but not names. If I talk loud enough to be heard at most events I will lose my voice, and thereby seem even more aloof and reclusive.

By way of preamble and blanket apology: I mean to be kind and polite; it just doesn't alway show.

None of which is the point of going, nor, generally, a barrier to having fun while working, which is the whole point of this whole thing, right? This year one of my chief goals it to try to evaluate the latest digital gold rush, to see how this peculiar monster is mutating. To understand a little better how the digital era is going to work, and why, and just exactly how much adaptation this technophobe is going to have to endure. But the real point of going is to see music. Not just as much of it as one can, but one or two things which really nurture the need. The magic. I need to hear the magic, to be in its proximity, to renew my belief in its existence, in its infinite possibilities.

But just for the moment I wonder if I'm looking for magic in all the wrong places. I have spent some few hours scrolling through this year's SXSW schedule. I already knew that many of the artists I would have been delighted to see have elected to play paying gigs elsewhere. Which leaves a list of largely unfamiliar names, and a challenge. Youth is certainly being served, and one of SXSW's several virtues is its willingness to showcase comparatively unknown acts. But I am struck by the relative absence of roots music this year, and by what seems to be the diminishing importance of Texas artists. I don't mean artists with Texas addresses, I mean to suggest that the unique regional flavor of even that music seems...reduced, if not obligatory.

Maybe the real festival happens at the day parties where fans flock with and without laminates. Maybe the real business really is done in the snakepit lobby of the Four Seasons. Perhaps, even, I have spent too much time listening to the obscure corners of the music world which most engage me these days, and not enough time sorting through the latest incarnations of independent rock music.

Or...do what seem to me (and doubtless not to others) to be diminished pickings reflect a different shift in the industry? Does it reflect the cold cash calculation that the travel expenses of attending SXSW are not defrayed by its benefits for any number of acts? Does it mean we mediators have become less relevant, as is often argued? Does it reflect the decay of the record label structure (since they have traditionally underwritten various conference expenses, including, once upon a time, some of mine)?

In the end, still I wonder: Is it just me, or does this all seems a little irrelevant, almost unnecessary? An indulgence. Joe Nick Patoski described it as a kind of high school reunion, and I wouldn't know about that but the metaphor makes sense. Is it still possible, in the era of myspace and all the rest, to stumble upon an unknown act at SXSW and feel renewed by the experience?

I sure hope so.

I don't travel with a laptop, and so these keys will stay silent for a week, at which point I will eat some of my words and tear up my brackets. In pencil, though, I have Florida, UCLA, Texas, and Tennessee in the finals, with Florida beating Texas. I have my adopted UK losing in the first round. I am, of course, wrong. But I'd rather be wrong about sports than about music. (Nah, really I'd like to be right all the time. Who am I kidding?)

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March 8, 2007

The unfairness of things, revived: Charlie Rich

Among the great number of debts owed Peter Guralnick is his rehabilitation of Charlie Rich in 1979's Lost Highway. But for that unusually open and deeply felt portrait, it's quite possible I'd never have gotten past Rich's 1973 breakthrough hit, "Behind Closed Doors," much less the follow-up smash "The Most Beautiful Girl."

Now, I was still 13 when "Behind Closed Doors" went to #1 on March 10, 1973, so there's absolutely no chance I had the slightest understanding of the song. But if I had to pick one country song, it would be "Life's Little Ups And Downs," written by his wife and surely the quintessential statement of enduring love. And one of the great, and most understated, vocal performances of all time. If I had to pick one "country" singer to listen to day in and out — much as I like Haggard and Jones and even Hank, and, yes, even Johnny Cash — it would be Charlie Rich.

(It should, in fairness, be noted that I have an ancient fondness for MOR. I spent a lot of first and second grade home sick with nothing particularly dire, nor interesting, but the upshot was that I listened to a lot of bad radio, from which I mostly remember Arthur Godfrey, "Little Green Apples," and an evangelist who was so effective he one day got me on my knees yielding my soul to Jesus. That lasted until I got out of bed, went to the kitchen for lunch, and proclaimed my salvation to my mother and brother. I regret that I don't remember their response, for it was not unkind, but it utterly washed away my salvation. Ah, well. Today I'm baffled that I didn't listen to Top-40, but the Beatles were my older brother's music and I had to find my own way. I guess. But I like Charlie Rich for the same reason I return again and again to Blind Willie Johnson.)

The newest two-disc Essential summation of his career has been sitting on my shelf for days now. No matter how carefully compiled, Legacy's Essential series is always a provocation, and I cannot yet pretend to be fully versed in the depth and breadth of Rich's career. Still, any career-spanning set which does not include his recording of Dallas Frazier's utterly forgotten song "She's A Yum Yum" misses a chance to demonstrate Rich's capacity for sheer, silly joy. (And I'm still waiting for somebody to have a hit covering this song...it'll probably be a real long wait, but...) And it is that variety which endears Rich to me. (That and six years on piano, which never took, alas. Which is also my excuse for liking EL&P.)

So this morning I'm spinning the Essential discs as a reward — as a tonic — to yesterday's futile auditioning. I went through 30 or 40 new releases while working on this and that and ended up completely frustrated, my ears dead to the blandishments of the new. Barry Mazor's recent cover story on Old Crow Medicine Show argued that music was moving from cool to hot, and I don't doubt that's true throughout the new stringband movement. But virtually everything else I hear these days is relentlessly, dispassionately cool. Self-absorbed in its own perceived coolness. Smug. Pointless.

Quick digression: My chief criticism of contemporary graphic design is that it is purely decorative, that is operates without context, with neither knowledge nor interest in the past. That it is without substance, that it does nothing to join with the words to do its job and convey an idea.

Yesterday I heard nothing but decorative music — and I'm not going to call anybody out here, but some of the artists were familiar names — decorative music filled with sounds that probably sounded cool in the studio but meant nothing, accompanied by smug vocals that were content now and then to whine about the wrong done, but with such detachment that the listener was clear nothing much was at stake in the losing.

Damn it, if you don't care, why should I? Yes, it'll all sound good running behind the credits on some TV show, and so what?

Charlie Rich sometimes gets dissed as one of Billy Sherrill's countrypolitan confections. Well, sometimes, sure, but Mr. Sherrill was nobody's fool — and neither was Mr. Phillips — and some of that sweetness is undeniable. And Rich, even on those #1 hits that are still hard to...respect...could carry them off. Why? Because there is real, honest, human emotion in his voice, in his phrasing, in the songs he chose. And because he had a rare gift.

There is a glut of music right now, and most of it's just barely average. I worry often that the new digital world will inexactly archive our exploits, but way too little of what I am hearing just now needed to be recorded, much less sent out into the commercial world.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I need to be alone with "Life's Little Ups And Downs." And then I'll go back to the tottering stack of new music.

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March 7, 2007

The minority position (a series of digressions)

An oddly timed and curiously sourced Washington Post story circulating in today's newspaper reports that the traditional American family -- married with children at home -- is becoming an educated, elite minority of 25 percent of the population. "The culture is shifting, and marriage has almost become a luxury item, one that only the well-educated and well-paid are interested in," says Isabel V. Sawhill, an expert on marriage and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute. This appears in the same issue of the Lexington Herald reporting a bitter legislative contest seeking to outlaw state-funded domestic partnership benefits as part of the ongoing movement to protect marriage.

Now, I can't quite figure out what the news hook to the Post story is; surely this isn't another layer of data from the 2000 census coming to light, is it?. And my instinct is to be suspicious of the number, given the constant stream of reports commenting on (and seeking to profit from: "Inagodawfuldavita" as a financial planning soundtrack?) the graying of America's baby boom. And, of course, marriage is a legal matter, the absence of which hardly proves the absence of a committed long-term relationship.

(Speaking of which, I can't figure out why anybody would wish to deny love and happiness to another human being. Really, how are you harmed by gay marriage, by gay people raising children? And by what possible right in a free society do you seek to impose your religious views on those who do not share them? Or is our health care crisis so insolvable that we must invent reasons to keep people from seeing the doctor?)

(And don't tell me the children are harmed by gay marriage. That is a vile and baseless argument, no better than those laid against mixed-race marriages a generation or two back.)

Years of long experience and self-examination have inured me to the perils of holding minority positions in this society, but I must confess that it never occurred to me that being a married parent would mark me as a member of a minority, much less an elite minority.

We have a funny relationship to education in this country. Most people don't really enjoy the experience of being taught, one of my pet theories says, and that, in part, is why we are so reluctant to properly fund our public schools, no matter how often we complain that they don't measure up to programs in Europe and/or Japan. And clearly the current administration distrusts deep learning and nuance, or is so bent on hurtling us all toward an apocalpytic climax that it doesn't care.

Both sides seem so weary of the fight that they embrace scenarios leading to the collapse of civilization as we know it, whether it be through our moral failure or through the destruction of our planet's fragile ecology and the consumption of every last natural resource. I just ran onto a magazine called byFaith published by the Presbyterian Church in America (and I'm particularly ill-suited to parse the nuances of church affiliations, so I've no idea whether this is a mainstream organ or not) which summarized a membership survey, including a curious line: "most respondents think that the science of global warming is unsettled" and therefore, if I follow correctly, oppose their church taking a role in what is (hopefully) a growing movement called "creation stewardship."

And, no, I'm not working toward a conclusion here.

I am simply confused.

Global warming as a religious issue, tied up somehow in the theology of intelligent design and the morality of exclusion...I don't get it. Were we not given brains to use? If there is a god who...dabbles in human affairs, say...can any religious community look upon itself and its works and imagine that god would be pleased?

The election of Ronald Reagan in 1979 confused me, and I have spent a great deal of my adult life trying somehow to figure out how this country works, how it thinks, why it makes the choices it does. I am no closer now to understanding than I was then. Sometimes it seems as if music -- that belabored universal language, now segmented into discrete user groups -- offers a kind of key, a cross-cultural glimpse into another living room. But now it doesn't.

The phrase "educated elite" keeps resonating this morning. We don't trust education. We don't trust knowledge. The long tradition of the common man (and, at least post-World War II, of the common woman) seems somehow to repudiate the insights of education, though the founders of this country were so clearly an educated elite. Now the phrase is too often meant as a kind of slur. We are drawn to the kind of certainty which one can have only when matters are simple and uncluttered by conflicting facts and ideas.

And I am cluttered. Lord knows I'm cluttered. Time to put another CD on, and hope for the best.

Posted by Grant at 8:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

March 3, 2007

The new impermanence (slow return)

The March 5 edition of The New Yorker includes a correction that, while probably not unprecedented, is surely still new and troubling. One of the many issues which ended up unread and in recycling apparently housed a long piece on Wikipedia -- that perplexing, troubling, oddly gatekept online encyclopedia which is occasionally helpful -- which quoted a Wikipedia site administrator by the handle Essjay. Essjay was (self?) described in the piece as "a tenured professor of religion at a private university" with "a Ph.D. in theology and a degree in canon law."

Or not. The correction reveals Essjay to be a twenty-four-year-old named Ryan Jordan who holds no advanced degrees and does not teach, but was, regardless, recently hired by Wikipedia's for-profit cousin, Wikia, as a "community manager." The last line in this nearly column-line correction reads, in part, "...Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikia and of Wikipedia, said of Essjay's invented persona, 'I regard it as a pseudonym and I don't really have a problem with it.'"

One of my quiet rebellions as the adult child of an academic (a phrase I steal with permission from the photographer Alice Wheeler) has been to embrace the work of autodidacts: Henry Miller, Steve Earle, Howard Finster. They speak with a kind of clarity that the academy rubs away. Still, we are all, to some extent, self-taught, particularly those of us who seek to keep learning as the years wear on. One of the shortcomings of the self-taught, however, is that one learns only those pieces of things which come to hand, which one finds interesting, and, sometimes, which fit within closely held convictions.

So Mr. Jordan's resume is of comparatively limited concern, though I tend to wish matters of the law, of theology, and of medicine (in particular) to be adjudicated by the most educated party available. What is fascinating (beyond the peculiar reaction from Mr. Wales), however, is the need to adopt an online persona, and the willingness with which that mask has been embraced.

One of the useful lessons from Henry Miller, and from new journalism (that old thing), was the necessity of presenting the authorial voice as honestly as possible. If I understood the new journalism as something more than confessional self-adulation, it was as an attempt to counterbalance the inherent unfairness of impartiality, for we are all partial and select details in the telling of stories so as to tell the story we think needs telling. Which, in aggregate, if we're lucky, sometimes resembles the objective truth. If there is such a thing.

I am sometimes told that I write just the way I speak, and am always pleased by that. I want the reader to know who I am. Not to stop by for coffee, but to read those words which appear near to my byline with a sense of who I might be, what I believe, what my prejudices are, and what my framework for examination is. I struggle to be as clear about who I am as possible, in no small part because it forces me to be clear with myself about who I am. I do not wish to invent a public someone who is better than I am; I wish to be better.

That is, apparently, a very old paradigm. Reality is a marketing campaign. Who I am is not nearly so important as who I can pretend to be and my failure to grasp this reality is one of many reasons I fit so poorly in Los Angeles during my 16-month exile there in the mid-90s. And our new cultural dismissal of expertise does nothing so much as fuel the know-nothings presently running our government.

Shall we do better, or is the battle already lost and irrelevant?

Addendum: The New York Times is reporting this morning that Essjay is from Louisville, KY, has attended a variety of colleges around the Commonwealth, and has been obliged to resign his position with Wikia.

Posted by Grant at 6:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)