Category: Music

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The Saddest Pop Song Ever

“San Francisco” by Scott Mckenzie.

Why? Precisely because it is one of the most hauntingly beautiful of those idealistic songs of the late 60’s (see sidebar) that evoked a blissful world of peace and love and expanded minds and harmony and spiritual connectedness… just waiting for a new generation to reach out and embrace it.

San Francisco became a magnet for those idealists, young girls and boys running away from home, hitch-hiking West. They gravitated to Haight-Ashbury. And for a short time, it did seem magical, at least from the inside. I expect most people today would readily expect the crash, the invasion of drug dealers and pimps, the poverty, the waste, and the sadness. Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair…

There should be a “Fair and Tender Ladies” for San Francisco, for Haight- Ashbury. “They’re like a star on a cloudy morning / first they’ll appear, and then they’re gone”.

Or, more poignantly: “You made me believe… that the sun rose in the west.” Wear your flowers in your hair.

I wish they hadn’t faded the song out quickly at the end of the recording. This lush, enveloping vibe just suddenly pulls away, leaving you chilled and disappointed. Yes, just as the hopes of a utopian world of peace, joy, and understanding was abruptly shattered by Kent State, Nixon, and Viet Nam.

Can you take the ’60’s? I lived through it– a child, really– and, in retrospect, I ask myself how we were able to absorb such a wild swing of expectations, from the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy, Chicago and the Democratic Convention, Nixon….

The Highest Hopes:

All You Need is Love (Beatles)
Good Vibrations (Beach Boys)
San Francisco (Scott MacKenzie)
Woodstock (Joni Mitchell)
What the World Needs Now (
Get Together (

Okay, the real saddest song ever written:  Kilkelly Ireland.

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“Heaven is a Place Where Nothing Ever Happens”

When I was a child I thought that heaven would be a land of free ice cream and pop and salt & vinegar chips and I would be able to fly and no one would ever, ever have sex.

When I was in high school, I was taught that there would be no wars or conflict in heaven and that, in fact, heaven would be a lot like earth, except perfect. But still no sex.

In college, some of my professors admitted they had no reasonable idea of what heaven would be like. Others sustained my denomination’s embrace of the idea that heaven was really something like a new earth, wherein the lion would lie down with the lamb. Lions do not kill animals and eat them in heaven. Do birds still kill worms?

It’s about 30 years later… I still have no idea of what heaven will be like. I’m pretty sure it won’t be a separate place. It’s going to be here. It might even be a lot like life here and now, except that we would have God with us. We’d know he was here, with us. Maybe we would just think everything’s fine.

Maybe the Talking Heads are right.

 

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Almost Lucy

I’ve been listening to Al Stewart’s “Almost Lucy” for about 30 years now. I just looked it up on Google and gave out a short, desperate gasp: I had no idea it was 30 years since Stewart’s album “Time Passages” was released. I’m a little stunned.

[I can’t find a good live version of it: too much talking and bad audio.]

“Almost Lucy” has a wonderful lead acoustic part in the bridge– exquisitely symmetrical and tidy– I like it in spite of it’s prettiness. I like the whole song but that’s the part I listen for.

Lucy is an aspiring singer whose “heart was never in it”. She stays around “just long enough to get paid”. She doesn’t dream of becoming famous, and doesn’t believe she is going to become famous– she almost seems to just be putting in her time, her dues. That’s a bit odd– it’s sober. This is not a fiery song about illusions crashing down– they were never up– t’s about a sober reassessment of one’s position in life.

The chorus:

Hey, hey, hey, I think you almost
feel the pain coming on inside
Hey, hey, hey, I think you almost
feel it now and you don’t know why.
You don’t know why

Lucy never bought entirely into the false hopes, so she buries her grief inside, gives up, moves to California. She even, ruefully, insists that her aborted musical career was not a “waste”. That’s an insightful little comment– that’s something real people do all the time: rationalize away what they now see as a foolhardy investment of time and passion.

I like the fact that Stewart presents us with a portrait of a relatively sensible, down-to-earth woman with a fairly realistic grasp of things. In general, the public prefers the melodrama, the flaming ambition followed by success, the drugs, the revelation of the childhood trauma, the catastrophic failure, despair, and then the cosmetic surgery, the comeback, and Brad Pitt.

A star is born. Not Lucy, though.

Why?

Because then it doesn’t go to our hearts. It doesn’t affect us, really. It creates rivers of phony tears to show everyone that we have feeling, but not a single real emotion. “Almost Lucy” is heart-breaking because it reveals a larger truth… one that most of us would rather not believe.

Almost Susan

The popular illusion that we audiences judge performers and entertainers on talent rather than looks is getting a glorious go round because of the Susan Boyle story. Don’t we all feel better about ourselves?

“Almost Lucy” is a corrective– even Lucy doesn’t quite expect audiences to really respect her. “They kick you ’round so much when you’re not a star”.

She just hopes, for that night, the contract won’t be broken.

“Leroy got a better job so we moved”… is Michelle Shocked’s “Anchorage” a sly prescient portrait of Sarah Palin?

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Hard Boyled

Over 30 million people have now been duped into watching the video of the frumpy middle-aged woman who can sing. Everyone is astonished. Who would have thought a frumpy middle-aged woman could sing?!

Who would have thought anyone would be surprised that a frumpy middle-aged woman can sing?

Either the average person is far more dull-witted than ever previously imagined, or we are all fooling ourselves. You’re at a talent show. You watch various attractive young people march across the stage, with varying levels of talent. Then you see a frumpy middle-aged woman. You think– obviously she has no talent.  Right.

In fact, any reasonably astute person would have likely thought, she’s certainly not here for her looks. Obviously, she must be able to sing.

Now, this is a program which introduces emerging talents and then processes them like hamburgers through the obscene rituals of fashion makeovers, stylists, image consultants, deportment experts, etc., with the goal of rendering them into mental frumps– celebrities. Why the real frumpy woman? To convince the viewers that they are not like those shallow, crass people who only appreciate art if it is packaged in sexy, youthful flesh. No no no– I don’t judge people by their appearance– only by their abilities.

And after Susan Boyle has had her meaningless moment on the stage, these same people will go back to choosing the singer with the biggest bosom, and only watching movies that star sexy young Hollywood starlets. Except for Meryl Streep movies– because she is the Susan Boyle of Hollywood films: the exception that proves we are decent, intelligent people after all. We like serious actors. My enjoyment of their films is a badge of culture and good taste. I’m glad you know that. Besides, Meryl Streep may be flat-chested but she is sort of pretty. She’s prettier than Mrs. Doubtfire.

Now, it has occurred to me that my enjoyment of obscure films by Japanese directors like Ozu might be taken for the same thing. I’ve had that reaction before: you can’t seriously like “Late Spring”– it’s excruciatingly slow moving and, it’s black and white. Or, more likely, “I watched that film you were so hot about– I couldn’t believe how boring it was!”

It’s probably true. Though I must admit, it’s not that much fun at work to casually mention, at lunch, that I watched an obscure Japanese film last night.

You just do that to make us think you’re smarter than we are.

Yeah, that’s what you get.

What I liked about my college experience is that it was one of the few times in my life when most of the people I hung out with respected elite artistry, drama, and music.

Nowadays, the elite is there to be mocked, even by the elite.

The Inevitable “Make-Over”

The latest: Susan Boyle has undergone a modest “make-over”, using a local hair stylist instead of a fancy one from the big city. The idea is to make it more digestible for the average viewer to maintain the illusion that they appreciate her for her voice and don’t care at all about the fact that she looks like a real person.

The Un-Boyle

Diana Krall seems like a perfectly fine lady. She looks very nice. She gets a lot of airplay on the CBC.

She is the opposite of Susan Boyle. Diana Krall looks absolutely ravishing– if your taste runs to big-boned blonde Visigoths– but, truthfully, is a rather average singer.

Norah Jones is in the same category: really, a mediocre singer with a pleasant voice, and, most importantly, a pretty body.

Just think– if you could combine Susan Boyle’s voice with Diana Krall’s looks, you would have the perfect entertainer. Right? Wrong. Nobody really cares about the voice part. Diana Krall has the only advantage that matters already in hand.

And actually, Susan Boyle’s singing talents really are quite over-rated as well.

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Lost and Lost: Marianne Faithful

Has any performer ever looked as uncomfortable and confused on stage as Marianne Faithful in 1965? Here she is awkwardly lip-synching on some television show or another. “What am I doing here?”

What you are doing is helping Mick and Keith promote a song (they wrote “As Tears Go By”).

There’s a hell of a movie in her life, much of it not pretty. Partly descended from Austro-Hungarian nobility, her parents divorced when she was six and she spent time in a convent school. She was “discovered” at 18 by Andrew Loog Oldham– what a great name!– and propelled to stardom. By “propelled” I mean, it was all arranged. I mean, she was hot looking, and connected, so it all could be arranged. You will be on TV. You will be on the cover of magazines. You will learn to sing.

She married, had a baby, left her husband to live with one of the Rolling Stones– she tried three before settling on Mick– was arrested wearing only a fur rug at a scandalous party at Keith Richard’s house, lost custody of her son, declined into cocaine addiction, broke up with Mick…. Some time during those lost years, her mother attempted suicide, and Marianne Faithful disappeared off the radar screen, except for one eerie appearance with David Bowie, singing, of all things, “I got You Babe”.

But it is that first video I’m mainly interested in. This was an era in which powerful men who controlled the music industry made and broke stars. Marianne Faithful was never a particularly good singer, but she was strikingly beautiful. In the first video, you can see that she doesn’t have much of a stage presence either. It feels painful just to watch her sitting there, looking like she was petrified of losing her timing. The audience was not expected to notice or care that she wasn’t actually singing or performing– she was lip-synching.

Brian Epstein mismanaged the Beatles around the same time. He steered them into signing horribly disadvantageous contracts, but wasn’t shy about paying himself extremely generously. It was part of the music industry culture of the time. The artists had one thing in common. They were young and they knew nothing about how the music industry worked.

The music companies lavished cash and luxury on them– the cost of doing business, which was the business of ripping off the talent– and the law did not protect their interests then and it doesn’t protect them today.

In fact, it’s far worse.

Sometimes, as in the movie “The Wrestler”, real personal history and artistic expression intersect in surprising and intriguing ways.

Marianne Faithful started out her career with a breathy little alto, singing delicate little folky love songs and mournful ballads. Then came the years of drug use, the scandals, and the disappearance. Ten years later she reappears… and sounds like Tom Waits:

Could have come
through anytime,
Cold lonely, puritan
What are you fighting for ?
Its not my security.

Broken English is an amazing enema of an album, a purging of all the demons of the 1960’s and 70’s, and a profound statement that this woman was no longer the doe-eyed naïf of those painful appearances on Hullabaloo– it features the most caustic and bitter break-up song ever: “Why D’ya Do What Ya Did”.

One of the better album titles of the last fifty years: Marianne Faithful’s “Broken English”, 1979.

Songs allegedly written about or influenced by Marianne Faithful:

Wild Horses, You Can’t Always Get What You Want (Rolling Stones)

[2020-05-09]

Just for fun:  In the Year 2525

The video is great, of course: it’s from the movie “Metropolis”.  It’s genuinely horrifying.

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The Inauguration and the Fake String Quartet

I just read that the lovely little quartet that performed “Air and Simple Gifts” at Barack Obama’s inauguration faked it. You watched the lovely musicians, elegant, focused, rising to the occasion– you thought. But the music you heard came from a recording that had been made a few days earlier. They finger-synched. They had ear-pieces so they could hear the recording, and then they put on a performance, but the performance was not musical: it was acting.

I am always amazed at the rationales given for cheating. The Chinese said that the little singer was not pretty enough to dance and the Olympics were too important to allow ugliness into the stadium. The people in charge of the inauguration said it was too cold to play, and too important an event to take a chance something going wrong, and allow any musical ugliness’s into the mall.

Even Pavarotti, at a performance in Italy a few years ago, cheated because he had a cold and didn’t want to disappoint his fans. Never mind the people who were disappointed to find out that even Pavarotti is a fake.

I hope most people immediately see through these lies. When we watch a brilliant musician perform, we are impressed precisely because it is difficult to do, and because of the dynamic connection between performer and audience responding to each other in the moment. So someone who successfully performs, live, deserves our respect. Others only want you to believe that they performed live. They want the same applause and respect. They bow and bow and bow– what’s the matter with you? What do you mean “cheating”? I just didn’t want to disappoint my fans.  I say, fuck you.

If it wasn’t fakery of the highest order, why were they trying to make it look like they were performing live? Why not just stand there and bow?

And why on earth, if they were so concerned about the cold, didn’t they just perform live in the White House — in the Oval Office– and then broadcast it to the huge screens on the mall? At a moment of crisis and change, demanding the highest level of inspiration for the American people, Obama’s people cheated. They pretended they could do something they didn’t believe they could really do.

They put on a show loaded with symbolism meaning nothing.

Well, I refuse to give in to this bullshit that someone it is reasonable and good and fair to cheat in public performances.  It is absolutely possible to perform live or to simply do something else if you don’t want to be honest.

[2022-05-09: they did for music what Obama did for progressive politics — faked it.]

The faked musical performance music wasn’t the only thing about the inauguration I didn’t like. The rows of guards dressed in grey overcoats lining the streets called to mind nothing so much as a police state. Rick Warren was boring. Obama’s speech was disappointing– merely “very good” instead of great. The poet played it entirely, decisively, antiseptically safe.

Diane Feinstein was good. She looked like she was having fun up there. I have never liked patriotic hymns of any sort, so Aretha Franklin’s song didn’t move me. The only other part of the inauguration I really liked was the benediction by Rev. Joseph Lawry, who at least put on a little funk and passion and sounded cheerfully unceremonious.

More Fakes: 2011-04

Did you like the tap-dancing in “Riverdance”? The sound was faked. The producers triumphantly chortled: nobody cares.

Turns out that Greg Mortenson (Three Cups of Tea) is also a fake, according to “60 Minutes”. The stories he tells in his books and repeats in person, about getting lost on K2, and being kidnapped by the Taliban. False.

Bitter Dobsonites

If you check the James Dobson website, you’ll find that there are at least a few patriotic bible-believing Americans who are so bitter and self-serving that they are unwilling to acknowledge, even on inauguration day, the historic importance of America’s first black president.

Dobson’s proxies, instead, attacked Obama for employing several Clinton-era appointees.

Why on earth choose John Williams, most famous for the theme of “Star Wars”, to compose a piece for this historic inauguration? In his favor, he is American, living, and successful. But were the best parts of the composition the pieces he lifted from Aaron Copland? I would have preferred Tom Waits myself, but that’s just me.

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$250 a Seat: Neil Young at the Air Canada Centre, December 2008

What’s with Neil Young charging $250 for the best seats at his concert at the ACC in December? And for this, you get to see his wife sing back-up.

Now it is quite possible that his wife, Pegi, can actually sing. It is also quite possible that she has no particularly remarkable skill in this area, but she is married to the boss. It is possible that it doesn’t really matter to anyone except me.

I recall watching the Neil Young video “Heart of Gold”, shot by Jonathan Demme in 2006. Young had his wife Pegi singing backup alongside Emmy Lou Harris, one of the finest backup singers ever, and a terrific solo artist. Was it just me, or did Emmy Lou seem a bit put out? I think that if I had been Emmy Lou Harris, I would have politely reminded Neil that I had paid more than a few dues in my career and, oh, is that my phone? Oh darn, I guess I can’t make the tour after all.

But then again, Young– who I think is an absolutely terrific song-writer, by the way– has been known to tour and record (in his barn!) with probably the worst back-up band of any front-line rock star of the era: Crazy Horse. I’m sorry– they were just awful.  They really were.  Listen to their recordings: they sound like a below-average bar band.

Sometimes I listen to Bob Dylan’s “John Wesley Harding” and wonder what Neil Young would have sounded like with crack accompaniment. Well, all right– we have “Deja Vu” and “Harvest” and “Comes a Time”. There you go: fabulous.

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“Smothered” on PBS

PBS recently showed a documentary (“Smothered”) on the struggle between Tommy Smothers and CBS brass over content of the “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” shown on CBS from  1967 to 1969.

You might have expected a fairly ideological blast at the network heavies for crassly suppressing the free-spirited higher consciousness of the rebellious 60’s but the film is actually fairly nuanced and even-handed. For example, it shows us that CBS actually permitted Pete Seeger– who had been blacklisted during the McCarthy era– to appear on the show. And then it excised “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy” for it’s allusion to Johnson in Viet Nam: “and the old fool said ‘to push on'”. And then, after the Smothers Brothers protested to the print media, allowed them to show it after all. Clearly, CBS brass was concerned about getting flack from someone– the White House, most likely– about a song that slyly and cleverly attacked the Viet Nam War and Lyndon Johnson himself. Yet, in the end, they let it go on.

The contract Tommy Smothers signed with CBS gave him “creative control” over the show, so CBS was clearly not within the spirit of the agreement to continue, through the life of the show, demanding cuts and excisions based on it’s own programming and practices code. On balance, however, the documentary is not shy about pointing out Tommy Smothers’ own ornery contrariness over the issue. Certainly, he wanted cutting edge writers and comedians, and he wanted the show to be daring and relevant. But he also seemed to actively court controversy and at times he was clearly arrogant about his own perceived power– “The Smothers Brothers” shockingly ousted long-time champion “Bonanza” from the No.1 spot in the television ratings.

You come away with the impression that CBS wasn’t all that bad. They allowed Joan Baez to appear, but cut out her comments about her draft-dodger husband. They nitpicked a lot. Maybe they expected Smothers to eventually just give in and self-censor: “oh, they’ll never let us do that anyway, so let’s take it out”, which is what most television people did. Tommy Smothers astutely observed at one point that America liked to have some dissidents on TV to show that they were a broad-minded, tolerant country… but not in prime-time.

“The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” never used canned laughter or applause, and treated their guests with respect. Tommy Smothers recruited some the best young comedic talent in the business, including Rob Reiner, Mason Williams, and Steve Martin, and clearly influenced the development of Saturday Night Live a few years later.

And it was one of those young talents– David Steinberg– that finally drove CBS over the edge, with a “sermon” on Jonah and the Whale. Knowing that CBS would never allow the sketch (after a torrent of angry letters about an earlier, similar sketch about Moses), Tommy Smothers refused to turn in the tape of the show early enough to allow CBS censors and the affiliates to preview it. CBS used the technicality to cancel the show. The Smothers Brothers sued CBS for breach of contract and eventually won.

By the way, the documentary left out the funniest line of the Moses sketch. Moses stands before the burning bush and God asks him to remove his sandals. But the ground was hot and burned Moses’ feet. And for the first time in the Bible the words “Jesus Christ” were uttered.

How about that– more than 30 years later, I still remember that line.

Don’t forget– Bill Maher’s show “Politically Incorrect” was cancelled when he said something that really was politically incorrect (that the hi-jackers of the planes on 9/11 were, whatever else you say about them, courageous). And in spite of the fact that conservatives would love you to believe that it is the liberals, the feminists, and so on, who promote political correctness, it is almost always, in fact, the conservatives who ban and censor and harass those who disagree with them. (After all, one of the liberal values that conservatives dislike is the attitude of tolerance of diversity.)

Do you think James Dobson would ever have Naomi Klein on his show? Would Liberty University ever invite Hillary Clinton to speak?  Would John Hagee offer a spokesman for the Palestinians to discuss his views on Israel?

Anne Coulter might like you to believe that the liberals in control at some universities won’t invite her to speak because she is so, so… controversial. No, it’s because you’re a feather.

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The Real Sally Bowles

Someone named Hilary Baily– I’ve never heard of her– has written a novel about a search for the “real” Sally Bowles. It sounds like a rather thin premise for a book.

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During the production, Scott Roose and I wandered around the backstage area with a video camera interviewing various participants. Mike Broad, I believe, also shot some of this video. I have edited some of the interviews together with clips from the production and posted it to Youtube. [added November 26, 2008]

posted it to Youtube.  [added November 26, 2008]

I had heard once– I can’t remember where– that the “real” Sally Bowles died in a concentration camp. Very poignant. I remember being puzzled by that at first– she wasn’t Jewish– but, in the account I read somewhere, she got into trouble for speaking out against the Nazis.

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The truth is that “Sally Bowles” subsequently left Germany and moved back to England where she died in 1973, of natural causes. Her real name was Jean Ross. And she really was a lousy singer and actress. Apparently Ross was not very pleased with the transformation into Sally Bowles. And why would she be? It’s not a flattering portrait. At the same time, a certain constituency seems to regard her as a passionate, mischievous, spirited lass, whose only fault was that she loved too well, and often. By most accounts, Jean Ross’ life after Berlin was not very eventful.

 

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Meryl Streep Can’t Sing

There have been shameful moments in Hollywood history this past decade– events and appearances and speeches that made a rational person cringe with revulsion and consider changing the channel to a preacher of faith healer or Fox News or anything… Hugh Grant. Halle Berry’s Oscar speech. Michael Moore chasing an elderly Charlton Heston down the walkway of his home. Chris Rock’s mockery of Jude Law…

And my nomination for the lowest of the low: Meryl Streep “singing” “Winner Takes it All” in Mama Mia. Performed in one take, according to the bedazzled talents behind the camera. And in interview after interview, the actors in the film admit that they never respected Abba back in the 70’s but now that they have been paid, they can see that they really were musical giants– and did you see Meryl nail it in one take? Suddenly, Bjorn Ulvaeus is the Swedish Bob Dylan.

This self-aggrandizing, cloying, critics-be-damned attitude is supposed to be lovable on some deeper level than I can ever imagine, like Sarah Palin’s leadership qualities or the expressions on the faces of Secret Service agents. But what if it is just as it appears to be: a massive, slobbering wet kiss of desperation: no, I don’t have any real talent, but because I am a celebrity, you may stand back astounded at my generosity of spirit, that I would be so silly on purpose. Because it’s just fun.

No it’s not. Real fun is the Beatles’ “Help”, “The Pink Panther”, and Abbie Hoffman threatening to surround the Pentagon with meditating hippies and levitate it (the generals announced that they would stop him). Abbie, not ABBA.

As Dr. Seuss once observed: this “fun” proclaimed by Meryl Streep is the wrong kind of fun. She has confused her own singing with the careful talent that Richard Lester applied to his films, and Peter Sellers to his, … when it is actually the kind of fun you do in your bedroom with your girlfriends during a sleepover.

The first lesson is the hardest: it’s not nearly as amusing for those watching as you think it is.

Abba Babble