Category: Music

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Ruby’s Lips and Tinted Hair

“You painted up your lips and rolled and curled your tinted hair”

Ruby, are you contemplating going out somewhere? If you know Kenny Rogers from his pathetic later career as a panderer of faux earnest country cliché– the kind of middling pap that has always given country music a bad name– you might be surprised by a song from his early repertoire, “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town”. The song was written around 1967 by country singer Mel Tillis who had a serious stutter when he spoke but not when he sang. It was covered by– do you believe this?– Leonard Nimoy, among others, but not successfully until Kenny Rogers and the First Edition took a shot at it in 1969.

I always admire economy in writing– that first line is a marvel. In one stroke, he has set the scene and imputed her motives and honesty– her “tinted” hair. Ruby never speaks in the entire song, never answers the narrator, never even seems to respond to him. Ah the poignant “but it won’t be long, I’ve heard them say, until I’m not around”. Don’t go cheat on me now– wait ’til I’m dead. It will be soon.

But the real marvel of the song is how unselfconscious it is. The narrator is crippled and paralyzed from “that crazy Asian war”. But he is proud to have done his “patriotic” chore. Boy, there is one born every minute, isn’t there? He is no longer “the man I used to be” and acknowledges Ruby’s needs as a woman. Then he says:

And if I could move,
I’d get my gun and put her in the ground

which is about as economical as you can get when describing how you’d like to murder your faithless wife, even if it’s not her fault that you are incapable of giving her love.

In the video I found on Youtube, Kenny Rogers appears to be posturing, making a fetish of restraint there, but the girl with the tambourines is fun to watch. And yes, this is an honest-to-god live performance.

Rogers actually put out a couple of interesting songs late in the 60’s, including the weird “I Just Dropped in to See What Condition my Condition was in”, but he was bit too old for psychedelia, and his instincts were not with rock’n’roll. He shortly split from “The First Edition” and went country. He discovered it was more profitable to produce inane, predictable ballads like “You Picked a Fine Time to Leave me Lucille” and “The Gambler”.

The question about Kenny Rogers moves from, “why did he go bad” to “why was he ever any good?” The answer: he was more influenced by the counter-culture in his early career. And he had a cool chick with tambourines in the band.

What does that last line mean? “For God’s sake, turn around.” A last desperate plea for Ruby to come back. Or does it really mean, “don’t look at me”?

Kenny Rogers is the evil twin of Kris Kristofferson.

Music

Wikipedia on This Song

When Kenny Rogers performed the song in the 1990’s and later, audiences joined in, clapping and laughing, and wailing along-“Rubeeeeeee….. don’t take your love to town!” and you knew that the women in their bulging pastel pant suits were all thinking of waiting for their broken hubbies to go to bed so they see if there was any action in the lounge… Are we all killers? This is a song about a man who was paralyzed in a war wanting to kill his unfaithful wife. A little jarring then, isn’t it, to learn that Tillis was inspired to write this song by a real-life couple known to his family back in the 1950’s, a paralyzed World War II vet, whose wife did indeed take her love to town.

And he did indeed get his gun and “put her in the ground”. Hilarious.

Kenny Rogers can also be glimpsed at the beginning of the Poppy Family’s “Where Evil Grows”, on Youtube. He briefly hosted a syndicated TV variety show in the early 1970’s. It’s a weird video. Watch Susan Jacks’ face– it looks a lot to me like the dancing bit was someone else’s idea. She seems to periodically remember to move her hips. And that is quite an outfit. More on Susan Jacks.

In 1986, the combined readership of USA Today and People magazine– get this– picked Kenny Rogers as the favorite singer of all time. I repeat: the favorite singer of all time. And that poll, my friends, should go down in history as the greatest collective act of aesthetic absurdity of all time.

Does this surprise you: his fifth wife gave birth to twins when he was 65.

In 1994, Rogers couldn’t resist the temptation to insult every jazz singer in the country by trying to pass himself off as one with an album of jazz standards called “Timepiece”.  God help us.

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Nick Cave’s Towering Tower of Song

Unfortunately, I can’t trace the origin of this story, but here it is: Nick Cave was asked to do a cut for the 1991 Cohen Tribute album “I’m Your Fan”. But he didn’t want to. But he loved Leonard Cohen, so he had to.

This is not the same as the more mainstream tribute 1995 album “Tower of Song”, which featured some regrettable and embarrassing choices (Don Henley singing “Everybody Knows”, Elton John butchering “I’m Your Man”, Billy Joel singing “Light as a Breeze”. Now that I mention it– how can any album with a Don Henley cut on it be a tribute to anything?)

Where was I? Oh yes– Nick Cave did not like tribute albums. He thought they were tacky and tasteless and, you know, Don Henleyesque. But he loved Leonard Cohen. So he showed up at the studio and then took his band to a bar across the street and got everybody totally smashed and then came back into the studio and worked up “Tower of Song”. Apparently, he did several versions and the engineers later patched them altogether.

I was not impressed, the first time I heard it. Or the second or third. It was there in the middle of an album that I enjoyed very much, otherwise. And then a funny thing happened. The first I remember of it was this: I began listening for the belch. Yes, about 2/3’s of the way through Nick Cave’s cover of “Tower Song”, he lets go one very loud, ornery, rude belch. Then I began to listen more carefully to this whacked out pastiche of bizarre interpretations– one minute he’s Elvis, the next he’s Hank Williams, then Heavy Metal, then Lou Reed…

It’s really quite charming. It’s simultaneously off-putting and embracing, passionate and excoriating. It’s a throw-back to Cohen himself, in his old “Dress Rehearsal Rag” days. It’s a paean to pure unbridled passion and spirit and despair, and a great party song.

“I’m Your Fan” also features the definitive cover of “Hallelujah”, for my money, but if you liked Rufus Wainwright’s or K.D. Lang’s versions, you might not like this one.

It’s a quiet, humble little performance by John Cale accompanying himself on the piano. Why oh why oh why do so many so-called artists approach this song with the attitude of, “well, let’s see how many people I can blow away with my soaring rendition of this esteemed song!”

It’s not that kind of song. It’s a song that is demeaned and embarrassed by a soaring, virtuoso performance. “It’s not a cry you can hear at night/ it’s not somebody who’s seen the light/ it’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah”.

Please, have some respect for the integrity of the song and stuff your fucking ego into the toilet.

Nick Cave and his band “The Bad Seeds” appeared in “Wings of Desire”, an exquisitely beautiful German film by Wim Wenders.

Nick Cave also created and performed one of the most revved up and demented– and hilarious– criminal mind songs ever called “The Curse of Millhaven”, about a young girl that goes on a murder spree, which features these fabulous lines:

Now I got shrinks that will not rest
with their endless Rorschach tests
I keep telling them
I think they’re out to get me
They ask me if I feel remorse
and I answer, “Why of course!
There is so much more
I could have done
if they’d let me!”
So it’s Rorschach and Prozac
and everything is groovy

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Leonard Cohen Live in Kitchener

I remember fondly an era in which I was the only person I knew who was a fan of Leonard Cohen. When I was in college, I personally introduced many of my friends to the dark, brooding pleasures of “Suzanne”, “The Stranger Song”, “Famous Blue Raincoat”, and “Take This Longing”.

Most, quite sensibly, rejected him: “music to slit your wrists by”.

On June 2, 2008, I joined more than 2000 people paying over $100 a seat in Centre in the Square in Kitchener to see “the grocer of despair” on his latest (and last, perhaps) tour. With the exception of “Suzanne”, he didn’t do any of my six or seven favorite songs, which are, without exception, products of his early career, before he became the bard of rueful despair, rather than the bard of exquisite, flaming rage and desire… and despair.

Nothing in this concert suggested the searing heat and mystical vulgarity of his brilliant novel “Beautiful Losers” or the searing heat and mystical vulgarity of “Songs of Love and Hate”.

I have a couple of favorites from his later albums– “First We Take Manhattan” and “Hallelujah” of course. His backup singers, the Webb Sisters, performed a marvelous version of “If it be Your Will”. The band was smoking on “Who By Fire”, the best performance of the night. “I’m Your Man” was fine. But I longed to hear the Cohen I first came to love, and his explorations of the dark links between sensuality and mysticism and despair and grace.

Well, what kind of a sick person “enjoys” listening to this:

There is no comfort in the covens of the witch
Some very clever doctor went and sterilized the bitch
And the only man of energy, yes the revolution’s pride
He trained a hundred women just to kill an unborn child

(Leonard Cohen, “Diamonds in the Mine” from “Songs of Love and Hate”)

Or

And when we fell together all our flesh was like a veil
that I had to draw aside to see
the serpent eat its tail.

And the answer is:  me.

(Leonard Cohen, “Last Year’s Man” from “Songs of Love and Hate”)

Would Mr. Cohen be embarrassed to sing those lines today?

He now sings “give crack and careless sex” instead of “give me crack and anal sex”, so, yes, I think he is.  And to sing them with passion?

It is more embarrassing to hear him wail, unconvincingly, “there is a crack in everything/ that’s how the light gets in”.

Songs I wish he had skipped:

  • Democracy
  • I Tried to Leave You (the joke, of performing this as an encore, is worn out)
  • Anthem (Cohen’s Hallmark Card song; yes, there is a crack in everything, but sometimes there is a light in everything and a crack gets in.)
  • A Thousand Kisses Deep
  • Bird on the Wire (I know this is a fan favorite but even Joe Cocker can’t make it interesting musically).

Songs I wish he had performed

Famous Blue Raincoat
Take This Longing
Chelsea Hotel
Last Year’s Man
Stranger Song
Memories

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Sanitized Johnny Cash

We all know that the cleverest biopics don’t blatantly whitewash their subjects. They offer us a patina of honesty, showing only the sins that their subjects or their families or promoters want us to see. We see only the faults that are already well-known, and which are carefully excused for us on film– there is always some childhood trauma or deprivation that drove them to drug addiction or alcohol or violence. But when they finally confronted their demons, all of these stars were able to translate their sufferings into great art, for which we, as generous patrons of worthy art, pat ourselves on the back.

Johnny Cash said about his father: “I don’t ever remember a really cross, unkind word from my father. He was a good, strong man who provided for his family. That was his sole purpose in life when I was growing up.” Now, someone is going to tell me that he was merely being polite, and the movie decided to tell everyone the real truth (as opposed to the fake truth). You can believe that, especially if you believe that the movie would rather tell the truth than let a good, juicy exaggeration help move the story along dramatically.

More importantly, you could believe that the Cash people would miss an opportunity to offer the public a very attractive explanation for all those years of substance abuse and violent rages. And then, you might notice that the movie moved the tragic death of Johnny’s brother, Jack, from the high school wood shop to an isolated shed so it could appear that Johnny should have been there helping him when the accident happened instead of off at the olde fishing hole, just to be more dramatic. (In real life, Cash was indeed fishing, but he was not supposed to be helping his brother at the time. His daughter claims that Cash’s father always blamed him in some way for his brother’s death. I’m guessing that the writers took liberties with a passing reference Cash might have voiced about a general feeling of guilt about his brother’s accident.)

How accurate was the film’s portrait of Cash’s first wife, Vivian Liberto? Well, keep in mind that the producer of this film is Johnny Cash’s son by June Carter, the woman he left Vivian for. One of the children of the first marriage, Kathy, stormed out of the screening for the family.

But hey, he’s an artist.

We all want to feel good about Cash hooking up with Carter, so it would be unseemly to dramatize too authentically the hurt suffered by his first wife.

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The Scariest Song Ever Recorded

Which is it? “Monster Mash”? Theme from “The Exorcist” (Tubular Bells)? “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”? “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap”? “Sympathy for the Devil”?

Nah. The scariest lyrics I have ever heard are those in the sidebar to the right: “You Don’t Own Me”. And you can draw a line from that song through the 60’s and 70’s to Lindsay Buckingham’s “I’m So Afraid”, or, more indirectly, “The Chain”, and you would have the darkest, fiercest, most frightening lyrics imaginable. And unique. Can you think of another song like it?

And please, please, please, in the name of all that is decent and respectful and witty, don’t cite “I am Woman”. (Helen Reddy claimed that she wrote the lyrics while Ray Burton wrote the music; his recollection is that she gave him some scraps of ideas but he is the one who turned it into a set of lyrics and a song. Reddy performed the song at– get this!– the 1981 Miss World competition. Reddy used the money she earned from the song– while repeatedly claiming she “wrote” it– to buy mansions, speedboats, limousines, and jewelry. She squandered almost all of the money and went through an acrimonious divorce in 1982.)

But if you said “I’ve Never Been to Me” is it’s evil twin– it’s polar opposite– damn right!

Now– you may have noticed that this proto-feminist lyric was written by… yes, two men. Turns out that one of them, John Madara, is also associated with the ridiculous “Dawn of Correction”, a song that testifies to the absurdity of it’s own message. Look it up sometime– it’s an answer to “Eve of Destruction”. But don’t mistake it for a right-wing response like Barry Sadler’s “Ballad of the Green Berets”. “Dawn of Correction” points out that things aren’t so bad– we have the Peace Corps, and the United Nations!

So, unsurprisingly, the writer of the most feminist lyric of the 60’s is a liberal.

So what’s so scary about “You Don’t Know Me”? It’s the affront to the most fundamental of all human needs. We often think of it as the need to love. But in it’s naked form, isn’t it really a lot more like the desire to be loved, to be needed, to be indispensable to someone we badly want to be indispensable to?

There is the shock of “don’t say I can’t go out with other boys”– an attack on one of the most fundamental assumptions we hold about love relationships: it’s exclusivity. I don’t need you– so our relationship depends on whether or not I want you. And if I want someone else, I’m not going to allow anything in our existing relationship– the poor boy– to be an impediment to my pursuit of those other relationships.

It gets worse! “Don’t try to change me in any way”. Yes, yes, we all claim that we love our beloved just as they are, and almost none of us mean it. In fact, the ability to manipulate someone goes right to the essence of our relationships, as much as we all passionately deny it. And once again– if you won’t change because I want you to change, doesn’t that really mean that my power over you– because you love me so much– is really limited? That my fantasy of you suffering because you have lost my affection and approval is deflated and empty?

But the pinnacle of horror isn’t even expressed until we get to “I don’t tell you what to say/Oh [I] don’t tell you what to do”. To some people, that sounds a lot like “I don’t care what you do”, and that is the last, fatal statement on a relationship that has entered the terminal phase. But doesn’t it really mean that I accept you as you are, and that I love the qualities you have, not the ones I imagine you have after I have fixed you up? I think so. But that’s not where most of us are at. It’s not what — if we were honest– most of us really want from a relationship.

The sitcom “Cheers” had one thing right– Diane and Sam like each other but both recoil in horror at the prospect of admitting that either of them needs the other. When Diane succeeds in teasing even a modest admission from Sam, that he does kind of like her, she immediately mocks and humiliates him. It’s all very high schoolish– craving the power to refuse. To be “old enough to repay/ but young enough to sell” as Neil Young put it.

You Don’t Own Me
by John Madara and Dave White Tricker.

You don’t own me,
I’m not just one of your many toys
You don’t own me,
don’t say I can’t go with other boys

And don’t tell me what to do
And don’t tell me what to say
And please, when I go out with you
Don’t put me on display, ’cause

You don’t own me,
don’t try to change me in any way
You don’t own me,
don’t tie me down ’cause I’d never stay

Oh, I don’t tell you what to say
I don’t tell you what to do
So just let me be myself
That’s all I ask of you

I’m young and I love to be young
I’m free and I love to be free
To live my life the way I want
To say and do whatever I please

A-a-a-nd don’t tell me what to do
Oh-h-h-h don’t tell me what to say
And please, when I go out with you
Don’t put me on display

I don’t tell you what to say
Oh-h-h-h don’t tell you what to do
So just let me be myself
That’s all I ask of you

I’m young and I love to be young
I’m free and I love to be free
To live my life the way I want

I’m pretty fed up with the Internet song lyric sites telling you that this is Leslie Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me”, or Elvis Presley’s “Suspicion”, or Madonna’s “Don’t Cry for me Argentina”.

The songs belong to the composers and writers, not the singers. The songs will return again and again as other artists cover them, and the constant tag should be the name of the composer.

By the way, in terms of female empowerment, “I Will Survive” is not only a crummy song, but it was also actually written by a man. So much for all that audacious self-satisfaction. But then again, as I said, truthfully, it’s a horrible song. [Added 2018-11]

Another horrifying extraordinary song of personal autonomy “That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard it Should be” (written by Carly Simon and… wait for it… yes. A man: Jacob Brackman, 1971):

You say we can keep our love alive
Babe – all I know is what I see –
The couples cling and claw
And drown in love’s debris.
You say we’ll soar like two birds through the clouds,
But soon you’ll cage me on your shelf –
I’ll never learn to be just me first
By myself.

You owe it to yourself to listen carefully to this song, with the lyrics before you: it’s one of the finest songs of the 1970’s, and one of the most powerful statements about the realities of women and men and romantic love, ever.

So why, oh why, oh why, are the lyrics by a man (Jacob Brackman, a friend of Simon’s from high school)? Why!? Can’t a woman eager to proclaim her need for independence and self-realization at least write her own lyrics about it? Jeez! The best I can hope for is that she told him how she felt and he put it into very, very elegant words. But it’s still disappointing.

And one more, from The Mamas and the Papas (John Philips)

You gotta go where you wanna go
Do what you wanna do
With whoever you want to do it with
…you don’t understand
that a girl like me can love
just one man…

There is something uncannily poignant in that — she’s young and naïve, and at that moment, he’s the only man she will ever truly love. And she may be right– she may find someone else, but it will never be the same. Written by…. a man.

And, okay, one more yet– from “The Chain” by Lindsey Buckingham

And if you don’t love me now
You will never love me again
I can still hear you saying
You would never break the chain.

I almost forgot. This one might be the scariest of all– Lindsey Buckingham, again, whipped into a despairing frenzy at the thought of being unable to express or receive love, thereby condemning himself to solitude. You have to hear this one to receive the full effect– like John Philips, Buckingham works a lot of his magic around the arrangements and performance, rather than the lyrics: (From “I’m So Afraid”)

I been alone
Always down
No one cared to stay around
I never change
I never will
I’m so afraid the way I feel

And yet one more– Lucinda Williams “Side of the Road”

If only for a minute or two
I wanna see what it feels like
to be without you
I wanna know the touch
of my own skin
Against the sun, against the wind

It must be said: at least Lucinda wrote her own lyrics.

But then again, isn’t she a lesbian?

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Cat Stevens

Of all the young, passionate, over-wrought idealists, who was more beautiful than Cat Stevens? Like Dylan, Stevens, in his youth, saw a world deeply troubled by hatred and war, and believed that if everyone came to a know a song about how evil racism and violence was, they would embrace peace and justice. And when the world didn’t change on demand, when everyone didn’t hop aboard the peace train, and when he began to realize that issues might be more complex than he had first imagined, and that, indeed, it was possible to “become my enemy/in the instant that I preach”, he retreated into a kind of melancholy introspection, and when that nearly drove him to suicide, to religion. Dylan embraced Judaism and Christianity. Cat Stevens embraced Islam.

What makes Steven’s story more interesting is that there was a phase before earnest protest singer-songwriter: budding pop star. Here’s a glimpse of the pop star Cat, before he realized just how shallow life as a pop star could be:

Stevens’ father is Cypriot and his mother Swedish. They divorced when he was about 10, though they continued to operate a restaurant near Piccadilly Circus together. At age 19, he contracted Tuberculosis and spent months recuperating, and it was this experience that led him to begin questioning the direction and meaning of his life. He emerged from the experience a changed man. He began to study religion, and became a vegetarian. He began to meditate.

In 1977, Cat Stevens converted to Islam and renounced his worldly career as folk singer and devoted his life to Islamic causes, including, it seems, supporting things like the fatwa against Salmon Rushdie. Of course, he didn’t quite renounce his previous career to the extent of repudiating all the profits from the continued sales of his recordings.

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Hallelujah

I learned that love was desperation and cunning, flagellation and mysticism, grunting and grasping and kissing and licking and scratching for the tiniest fragment of grace in a world of obscene emotional brutality.

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Canadian Songwriter Hall of Fame

I didn’t know this until recently, but there is a Canadian Songwriter’s Hall of Fame. It’s purpose is “to honour, celebrate, and educate Canadians about the outstanding accomplishments of Canadian popular music songwriters and those who have contributed significantly to their legacy.”

I’m not sure what the distinction is between “outstanding accomplishments” and those who made contributions to “their legacy”. How could you make a contribution to a “legacy” unless you were a great songwriter who would be worthy, therefore, of inclusion, for your “outstanding accomplishments”? More words=more important. More better.

Unless… don’t tell me they are going to honor promoters and agents and producers? Oh no… they probably are. That would be more than a shame: it would be ridiculous. There is already a music hall of fame for the hucksters and the promoters: leave the songwriters alone.

But then…

This year’s entries: “Sugar Sugar”, recorded by the Archies in 1969, and “Far Away Places” (recorded by the immortal Ray Conniff and his orchestra), and “Clap Your Hands”– all “outstanding accomplishments”?

Yes, these stunning lyrics are now immortalized in the Canadian Songwriter’s Hall of Fame:

Sugar Sugar
Honey Honey
You are my candy girl
And you got me wanting you.

I’m not making those words up. “You got me wanting you”. The raw authenticity of that unrestrained emotion must have impressed the judges or Board of Directors or whoever it is gets to stand in front of a group of solemn reporters and music executives and explain why “Sugar Sugar” deserves to be immortalized in this awesome way. My question is this: how did they manage to get into the Hall of Fame ahead of Gino Vanelli and Corey Hart?

Burton Cummings and Randy Bachman are in. So is Gordon Lightfoot, and Leonard Cohen. Does that mean all of their songs are in? I see “Sugar Sugar” listed but not “Suzanne”. “Four Strong Winds” and “Universal Soldier” but not “You Were on My Mind” or Buffy Sainte Marie. No Poppy Family yet even though Susan Jacks had the loveliest midriff of any singer-songwriter blonde singer chick ever, of that era.

Okay, so there is a list of the songs which, I presume, earned the song-writer entry into these hallowed corridors.

And now— Paul Anka. I think it is fair to say that the Canadian Songwriter Hall of Fame and Paul Anka were made for each other.

And I would like to start a movement. I would like to organize a petition drive to keep Neil Young out of the Canadian Songwriter’s Hall of Fame.

Furthermore, I think we need to form a musical commando squad to parachute into the Canadian Songwriter’s Hall of Fame and excise Leonard Cohen and Gordon Lightfoot before they find out that someone has decided that their life’s work is at least as good as “What a Friend we Have in Jesus” and “Aint Nobody Here but Us Chickens”.

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Simon Zealotes in Jesus Christ Superstar

There was an incomprehensible remake of “Jesus Christ Superstar” in 2000. I rather liked “King Herod’s Song” in the new version. I haven’t see much of the rest of it. I did see “Simon Zealotes” or George Bush in the desert in the new version and it sucked. Jesus acts like he just discovered that some people can be fanatical. Simon Zealotes sounds more like a killer than a fanatic. He lost all the charm of fanaticism.

I loved the original version of this song, in the 1972 movie. For many years it was, with some qualification, my favorite 3 or 4 minutes of film.

Simon and his followers appear from nowhere and surround Jesus, and Simon Zealotes, played magnificently by Larry Marshall, tells Jesus that he now has the opportunity to rally his followers and lead a military insurrection against the Romans. He tempts him with power and glory, and advises him to “keep them yelling their devotion, but add a touch of hate at Rome”. His people will win themselves a home, and Jesus will be remembered forever. Simon’s followers dance frenetically throughout this scene, and it is clear that Jewison staged the dance over and over and over again until the dancers were exhausted– in the last few cuts you can see them flailing about and sweating and losing equilibrium as they try to move faster and faster. Judas (Carl Anderson) watches from a distance, disturbed.

By the way, no, the music and singing was not recorded during filming. It was recorded in a studio in England. The singing that you hear is not coming from the dancers on the screen.

It’s a brilliant scene– all the more brilliant for Rice’s remarkable insights into Christ’s response: he tells Simon that he doesn’t understand power or glory, and that, to conquer death, you only have to die.

At the time the movie came out, I took Simon Zealotes to be a leftist revolutionary, promising political and social paradise to his deluded followers, ready, in chapter 2, to become a fat, corrupt King Herod. And he probably was meant to be a Che Guevara type. Today, you might just as well take him for George Bush: with a complete and utterly foolish belief in the power of force to bring lasting peace and justice. But in George Bush’s version, Jesus does grab a Kalashnikov and joins the gang.

I liked the original version much better than the TV movie version released in 2000. Not surprising, really: the original was made by Norman Jewison. And Larry Marshall (Simon Zealotes) is fabulous. Not everyone can take him. I’ve seen ridiculous comments on Youtube about how he looks like “an ape”. Would you have preferred Danny Bonaduce? Or Barry Gibb? Some people confuse art with tranquilizers.

I think he is absolutely hysterically beautiful.

Somewhere in the desert in Iraq, George Bush isn’t dancing anymore. He continues to wave his Kalashnikov. He still thinks he can stop the pagans with bullets and technology and Burger Kings and Walmarts. And the girl in the tight brown pants kicks her leg up so high you want to jump into the air with her and twirl and sweat and scream and keep yelling your devotion.

One of the things I loved about the original version: there is a girl in an orange skirt with short brown hair. As the camera pans over the group near the end of “Simon Zealotes”, she moves out from behind another dancer, without even looking up: here I am.  Obviously, the dancer, the fanatical follower of Simon Zealotes, is not supposed to be “aware” of a camera.  And that is exactly what I found quietly endearing about that moment: just a quick, discrete flash of the dancer’s ego, which she accomplished without even seeming to look up.

Another girl wearing low-cut slacks tugs on them several times, after executing a high leg kick. Why? Were they falling down? I can’t tell you why but I didn’t mind the girl in the orange dress. There was something charming about that moment of vanity. But I was annoyed with the other girl: a true zealot wouldn’t have cared if her butt-crack was showing or even if her pants had fallen down.

It hurt the illusion of the film because unlike the girl in the orange dress, it was gesture of concealment rather than exposure.

The actor playing Jesus, Ted Neely , married the girl in the brown tights.

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Old People

“She sits and stares at the backdoor screen…”
John Prine, “Hello in There”

We don’t know if Loretta is catatonic, tired, disappointed, or all of the above, but we know that no one comes calling anymore. Not Joey, who’s somewhere on the road, or John and Linda who live in Omaha, or Davy, who died in the Korea War.