I'll Take "Movies That Opened This Week That Start With 'W'" For $200

A movie-centered couple of days on which I saw both "Wall-e" and "Wanted". The winner of the DJStan award for best movie that opened Wide this Weekend? "Wanted".

Those who've read the blog through or are friends, know that I love animation, particularly the classic cartoons of the late 20's through early 50's. I also like good animated features and was looking forward to "Wall-e". Frankly - and given the hype, sadly - I was disappointed.

"Wall-e" has a great first 30 minutes or so - and I mean really outstanding: story, design, and execution all work together in a segment as good as anything the Pixar stable has produced, and that's high praise. After that, it goes downhill into a very predictable story line with a distinct lack of interesting characters. I give it a B-. The new Pixar short cartoon ("Presto") that preceded the feature, though, was a fine, very funny neoclassical string of gags involving a hungry rabbit, his magician boss, and a pair of magically attached hats. The warm-up gets an A. Incidentally, the "Jay Ward" credited as Associate Producer of "Presto" is not the same guy who created Rocky & Bullwinkle, Crusader Rabbit, Cap'n Crunch, etc. That particular niche genius died in 1989.

Then I saw "Wanted". It's got Angelina Jolie acting incredibly cool and looking impossibly hot, Morgan Freeman as the leader of an assassins guild (good casting against type), nice Chicago location shooting, and enough adrenalin-infused action (sometimes literally) to satisfy the hardest-core ultra-vi fan. The logic is weak, but who cares! Call it a guilty pleasure, call it a sign of societal decadence, but I totally enjoyed this movie. Not great, but just right for the season, and definitely more entertaining overall than "Wall-e". Don't bring the kids, though. Oh, and did I mention Angelina Jolie? A definite A for over-the-top drippingly gory style and action, B for plot and post-movie after-thoughts, and a solid A+ for - did I mention...

Bo (and Buddy)

A while ago, I put together a playlist I called “Buddy and Bo”. It’s a personal tribute to two rock icons of the early days, and includes both originals, covers, and additional songs influenced by messrs Holly and Diddley (or, per the NYT stylebook, “Mr. Diddley”; my favorite examples of the Times stylebook go back to the Sex Pistols, when the music writers would scribe about Mr. Vicious and Mr. Rotten).

There’s more Buddy than Bo – he clearly had a wider range (Bo was not known for his ballads). But Bo’s instantly identifiable beat, and his pre-rap braggadocio – he walked 47 miles of barbed wire, wore a cobra-snake for a necktie – grabbed us early boomers by the nads, and never let go. So RIP Bo, and if there’s a rock ‘n roll heaven, you know they’re jamming this month to a Bo Diddley beat, pounded out on a square guitar.

Here’s the annotated playlist. Oh - one more thing - on the Pod, there's no limit on the length of a playlist; this one, though, was created to be burned to a CD, so it's constrained by that medium's size limitation. Think of it as a self-imposed aesthetic rule, like writing a haiku or an Elizabethan sonnet (yes, the playlist as artform).

Not Fade Away - Buddy Holly: I opened the set with this one because of its crossover nature - Buddy does the Bo Diddley beat, and gets it completely.

Bo Diddley - Bo Diddley: Bo does a vamp on a classic folk/blues theme that goes back to “Hush little baby, don’t say a word, daddy’s gonna buy you a mockingbird”.

Mona - Bo Diddley: Bo’s in love, and the beat keeps rockin’.

Oh Boy! - Buddy Holly: Buddy’s straight ahead rocker – “stars appear and the shadow’s a’fallin’”. Love that reedy twangy tenor.

That'll Be The Day - Linda Ronstadt: A solid cover from Linda’s early years.

Bo Diddley - Bob Seger: Growly Seger vocal makes it work, although the beat gets a little too transmuted for my taste.

Everyday - Buddy Holly: One of my favorite Buddy ballads.

Cynical Girl - Marshall Crenshaw: The best Buddy Holly song that Buddy never wrote, by one of our – sadly – most undervalued musicians. Crenshaw is the true heir to Buddy as singer and songwriter, and if you don’t know him, you should. The Rhino anthology “This Is Easy” is a great place to start.

Who Do You Love - Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters: Bo and Muddy do a sweet home Chicago blues band version of another Bo classic; love to see that house made of rattlesnake hide with the human skull chimney – maybe the new Hard Rock theme park will put one up (restroom? Food kiosk?).

Willie and the Hand Jive - Eric Clapton: Slowhand does a cool cover of a Bo-beat song.

Rave On - Buddy Holly: Another Buddy rocker that doesn’t let go.

Heartbeat - The Hollies: Gorgeous cover of a Buddy ballad. Only Buddy could make “piddly pat” sound cool.

Hey! Bo Diddley! - Bo Diddley: Who else could answer that call, and with the weirdest references to "Old MacDonald" and "Froggy Went A Courtin'" imaginable? Only Bo.

Maybe Baby - Buddy Holly: another rock classic from Buddy.

Rave On - John Cougar Mellancamp: A good cover by a good rocker; not on my top ten, but he's OK.

Maybe Baby - Paul McCartney: Paul loves classic American rock, and his affection shows through without affectation (Paul's personal curse).

Who Do You Love - George Thorogood: Yes, he knows how to play Bo with heart.

She's The One - Bruce Springsteen: The Boss does the Bo beat to good effect.

Crying, Waiting, Hoping - Steve Earle, Marty Stuart: Steve Earle, one of my personal favorites, can – like Buddy – go from rock to ballad without hesitation; this cover of one of Buddy’s loveliest songs does it justice.

Bo Diddley's A Gunslinger - Warren Zevon: Must be heard. One of Bo’s lesser known hits done by a man untimely lost to us who loved to sing about guns. I love this track.

Peggy Sue - Buddy Holly: Buddy’s in love again and it sounds unrequited - but it's got a machine gun shuffle beat that doesn’t quit.

Sheila - Tommy Roe: Peggy Sue’s cousin.

Peggy Sue Got Married - Buddy Holly: Yes, she did, and Buddy sang about it.

Mona (live) - Bo Diddley With Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers

Not Fade Away - The Rolling Stones: A hit cover of a hit song by one of the best bar bands ever.

Bo Didddley, Bo Diddley - U.S. Marine Corps Cadence: I learned to like cadence counts in my brief time in the military (liked the bugle calls, too). Seems there are albums of them, and this particular cadence fades out the set.

Moondog Memories

So I'm doing a lazy-but-cultured Sunday afternoon thing: sipping a glass of better than decent Zinfandel (Seghesio Sonoma County 2006), reading Marjorie Garber on Romeo and Juliet (following a recent R&J on DVD binge, climaxed by attending a live performance by the Theatre Breaking Through Barriers), and listening to Early Music - Lachrymae Antiquae, a recently acquired Kronos Quartet CD. I'm a fan of Kronos; besides their excellent chops, the wide variety of projects they undertake is always intriguing, and although I don't love everything they do, their success ratio with me is very high.

The set is a fascinating one - a mixture of authentic "early music" by composers like Dowland, de Machau, and Purcell combined with modern academic/outsider music influenced by or derived from these composers by people like John Cage and Harry Partch. It's all fairly melancholic in tone - hence the subtitle - but I'm very fond of modal harmonies, and the tone suits my mood.

So, I'm half listening to this set (for the first time) and half enjoying the wine and the essay when a particular track catches my attention. You know how that is - you're casually listening while you're doing other things or driving along with the Pod on random or the radio humming away when you suddenly become aware that the music you're hearing is something you want to hear again. The beauty of the Pod is that you can do that immediately, and repeat it until you're satisfied. I rise from my seat on the cozy couch and amble over to the Ipod player (one of those Bose units, which is actually pretty good) to see what it was and to play it again. To my surprise, it's called Synchrony for String Quartet (6 other arrangements) No. 2, and it's by Moondog, a/k/a Louise Hardin. It's a short but absolutely lovely piece of music - a lyrical round for string quartet and what sounds like a tom-tom beating once per measure; the emotional content is sweetly melancholic. It's also in the minimalist vein (the one post-war academic genre I enjoy) while the melody has a Coplandesque openess to it. I played it two more times (a short piece, luckily), and have played it several times since then; it's something I'll go back to.

Moondog was a blind street musician/poet and NYC character. He knew both classical and jazz figures of the 50's and 60's, and was a respected eccentric, an "outsider" musician and composer. One of the pleasures of attending High School in Manhattan, which I was fortunate enough to do in the early 60's (commuting from the wilds of eastern Queens), was that when you got out of school, you were in the city and free to explore it. I often ended up in mid-town, catching a movie on 42nd street (which was lined with movie theatres at the time, each dedicated to a particular genre: westerns, crime, war, thrillers, non-porno passion) or heading up to a giant arcade (pre-video days, of course), located around Broadway and 49th and called, as far I can recall "The Broadway Sports Palace" or "Sportland" - you get the idea.

On my way home from there, if the weather was nice, I'd walk across to Lex and then down to Grand Central for the subway home - and sometimes, on 6th in the low 50's, I'd come across Moondog. He was quite tall, and usually dressed in some shamanistic/viking outfit (that's his picture above); he sold poetry and sheet music, and occasionally played on some strange instrument (apparently of his own design). I bought some poems from him once or twice (cheap enough - but which I sadly don't have any more), and passed an idle word or two, but never knew much about him. I've actually learned more since hearing that piece on the Pod than I ever knew before, including the fact that he died in Germany in 1999 at the age of 83.

There are CD's of his work in print, and I expect to listen to a couple of them to see if I have the same kind of positive response as I did to Synchrony #2. But like them or not, the memories brought into play by this one track have been - like the piece itself - sweet and melancholy, as memories of youthful experiences often are, and I'm grateful to Kronos for unknowingly triggering them for me.

Why I Love The New Yorker

Because in his review of "Atonement" (which Mrs. DJStan and I saw yesterday, and which is set in the period 1935-1940), Anthony Lane takes the time to point out that a recording of "La Boheme", which the male lead plays at one point, was made by Thomas Beecham in 1956 and would not have existed at the time.

They seek him here, they seek him there...

Saw the new Dylan biopic, "I'm Not There" in which assorted actors (and one actress) play archetypal figures meant to represent some of the personas Dylan has put on over the years. They range from a young (11ish) black child on the Hobo Highway who calls himself "Woody Guthrie" (and carries a guitar in a case that has "This Machine Kills Fascists" on it) to the sunglassed snarky Dylan-does-London (the "Don't Look Back" guy) to an aged outlaw on the run living in a town called "Riddle" (birthplace of the black kid) where the residents look like outtakes from the cover shots for "Basement Tapes" (and some have names from the tunes on that album, like Henry and Homer).

It's an overloaded messy romp of a film, including a soundtrack that includes Dylan singing his own songs, other people singing Dylan songs (and they're never as good as he is), and lots of instrumental snippets of songs (sometimes with corresponding visuals). There are references within references; a Dylanologist (anyone remember A.J. Weberman?) will love puzzling them all out when this hits DVD.

High points? Cate Blanchett (yep, that's her in the photo), who plays the highly drugged and amazingly productive Dylan of the mid-60's ("Bringing It All Back Home", "Highway 61 Revisited", "Blonde On Blonde"), is dead-on, and gets the character down pat. The way she talks, the way she moves, the way she does (and does not) react - a perfect invocation of that memory-Dylan. If she doesn't get a supporting Oscar nod, I'll be very surprised. The scenes with the black kid are also pretty good, and evocative of Dylan's gifts for self-invention.

Other parts don't work as well. Combining Suze Rotolo and Sarah Lowndes into one love object is one of those misplays; the weak covers on the soundtrack is another - not enough inventiveness to cover up the blandness of the non-Dylan vocals. There are good Dylan covers (Manfred Mann's "Mighty Quinn", the Band's "When I Paint My Masterpiece", Leon Russell's "Hollis Brown", even Joan Baez' "I Shall Be Released" among plenty of others), but this movie doesn't provide any new ones worth picking up.

Who should see it? Dylan fans, of course, and fans of directors who try to stretch the medium and provide moviegoers with a unique experience. It's an interesting approach to a film bio of a very complex character, and even where it fails, it's not for lack of nerve. Definitely worth a viewing.

Arlo and Strings

We saw Arlo Guthrie Saturday night, doing the Pete Seeger Memorial (I know, he’s alive) Thanksgiving concert at Carnegie Hall. This reminded me that once, when I was working at a bookstore in Penn Station, someone actually asked me how to get to Carnegie Hall. After grinning madly and telling him that I had been waiting years for someone to ask me that question, I finally got to say: “Practice, practice, practice!”. Anyhow, Arlo – whom we last saw a few years ago at Purchase, performing a terrific set with his daughter and son – was accompanied this time by the University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra (bet you didn’t even know there was one). This third or fourth tier orchestra was not bad (which is a measure of the depth of musical talent around); they opened by performing Bernstein’s Overture from “Candide” and Copland’s “Appalachian Spring”, and didn’t embarrass themselves. although their performance was notably lacking in crispness and displayed occasional mistimings (no serious squibs, though).

The problem was that although they may be mixed better on the CD (yes, there is one – pictured above), the full orchestra overwhelmed Arlo’s amplified singing, guitar, and piano-playing. You could hear him, but there was just too much sound going on all around him. Another singer and songwriter, Randy Newman, writes orchestral scores – he knows how to work with various ensembles and it shows when he engages with a full ensemble on the album, “Sail Away”. Arlo doesn’t do this kind of work, and while his musicality is unchallengeable, I think this current interest of his would work better with a chamber orchestra, say, a more stripped-down sound – and more interesting arrangements. I mentioned Newman in part because there was a definite Newmanesque ragtime sound to several of the pieces (although Arlo’s interest in rag is also long-standing), and overall the sound was slickly soundtracky, and not particularly distinctive in and of itself.

Putting folksongs or folk-style songs (Arlo has an appropriately broad view - IMHO - of what "folk" means) to new and interesting arrangements is certainly do-able. Bruce’s “We Shall Overcome – the Seeger Sessions” is an outstanding example of how to do it right, Dixieland brass and all. Arlo’s attempt wasn’t an outright failure, but it didn’t work well for me over all. I much preferred the Purchase performance, where the focus was solely on his playing, singing, and story-telling (at which he excels). Incidentally, one of the numbers he did in both shows is a story about playing with Pete Seeger at a show in Germany which concludes with Arlo leading the audience in singing the Elvis hit, “Fools Rush In”. This number, like all his others, works just fine as a solo – all the orchestra added was an unnecessary sweetening.

Back From the Future

Yes, it's DJStan, back again after a long hiatus. I've missed blogging - there's been a lot of music between posts, and other things, too. I've decided that as part of the revival of Struts and Frets, I'll be posting about other topics as well as music. The focus will still be primarily music, but the other arts will also be discussed, particularly theatre (we see many shows), movies, literature, art, and television. I may even discuss a political question or two, although that is not the focus here.

I hope to be posting at least two or three times a week, as circumstances warrant. Meanwhile, if anyone has comments or suggestions about the general subject matter, feel free to pass them along.

A few quick notes: Steve Earle's new release, "Washington Square Serenade", is a fine set of songs. Steve is in love with both his new woman, singer Allison Moorer, and his new home - my own beloved New York City. The set leads off with a farewell to Nashville, echoing his hit, "Guitar Town", and includes songs about Pale Male, the hawk who lives on 5th Avenue, and the "City of Immigrants" in which he now lives. There are also songs about Oxycontin, a vision of the long walk down "Jericho Road", a sweet song about his new love, "Sparkle and Shine", and a neo-folk song tribute to the folksingers of Washington Square, "Steve's Hammer (for Pete)". All in all, an excellent addition to one of my favorite musicians' body of work. Highly recommended.

Bruce Springsteen's new release, "Magic", isn't. It's not bad, but it's no better than a 3 out of 5, which is about as not great as Bruce gets. Patti Sciafla's new one, "Play It As It Lays", is better - if I were to recommend one of these two, it would be hers (and I do recommend it). More on this anon.

Finally, there are now 13,997 songs on the DJStan Ipod. I'll break 14,000 this weekend (and will soon be in the market for an 80 GB pod). Incidentally, I've started buying songs from Amazon - they've got a decent selection to date (though not nearly as large as ITunes), they're slightly cheaper as a rule (89 cents for a typical track), they come down as high quality unrestricted MP3's, and the free Amazon client maps them right into your Itunes library. These days, if I'm looking to download music (fogey that I am, I still buy CD's, too), I check Amazon first. In the interests of competition and unrestricted downloads, others should do likewise - there's no downside that I can see.

More to come - watch this space!

A Fistful of Selections

Here’s another sampling from the DJStan Selections playlist – some will be familiar, some – I hope – will not.

1. Liebeslied - Itzhak Perlman
The ultimate Viennese café composer, Fritz Kreisler’s music was always destined to be played by Itzhak Perlman, inheritor of the great schmaltz virtuouso slot that use to be Isaac Stern’s. This light, elegant bit of sweetness transports me; it’s a musical dobosche torte, and doesn’t spare the schlag.

2. People Are Strange - The Doors
I 've always been partial to the cover photo on “Strange Days”; it’s one of those weird circus sideshow references (like the thematic concept that just sank Twyla Tharpe’s mis-take on Dylan which closed shortly after opening). There’s a strongman and a dwarf and a juggling mime – you know the drill. But in this case, it really serves as a good background setting for “People Are Strange”. The song has a Brecht-Weill Cabaret of Lost Souls sound that resonates with me and which few artists can really pull off without sounding pretentious or phony; Morrison could (as can Tom Waits and Marianne Faithfull, and Lou Reed). Then there’s that 60’s thing (being “strange” was not an uncommon event). Add it all up and you get one of my favorite Doors’ songs.

3. Feels Like Rain - Maria Muldaur
A beautiful song (and if you don’t know the songs of John Hiatt, you need to get out more) and a perfect, warm and flowing rendition by Maria Muldaur, whose last few albums have been gems. She’s got one of those rich, honey-toned but lived-in voices that can do any kind of blues you can imagine. I think I saw her perform once as Maria D’Amato, back in the early 60’s in the Village. It was a coffeehouse called – as I recall – The Four Winds, located on MacDougal Street, right next door to the Kettle of Fish, a bar over the Gaslight. She played fiddle and was teamed with another girl on guitar; the one song I remember was an old mountain piece called “Run Mountain”. I can’t prove it was her, but not too long after, a fiddle-playing Italian folkie from the Village moved up to Boston and joined Jim Kweskin’s Jug Band (where she also met and married Geoff Muldaur – about whom there is much to say, too). So, even if it was some other performer I saw that night, I prefer to recall that it was Maria Muldaur (and let me repeat, her recent albums like “Richland Woman Blues”, “Sweet Lovin’ Old Soul”, “A Woman Alone With The Blues”, and “Heart of Mine” have been outstanding).

4. Cry Baby - Janis Joplin
I picked this one out of the Janis songbook partly because of the semi-spoken section, but mainly because for me this song embodies the power and painful rawness of her singing. If an open wound could sing, it would sound like this. She’s a Texas woman blues shouter, and while she was never Bessie Smith or Ma Rainey (who could be?), she left her mark on a million hearts, mine included. This song takes off at the opening, and locks you in its embrace until the end. Just like Janis.

5. Old Blind Barnabas - Blind Boys of Alabama
I’ve got a few tracks from the “original” Blind Boys of Alabama, but this current incarnation hit the ground running with the gospel/pop crossover “Spirit of the Century” CD (everyone should own this one), and has been going strong since then. This track, a traditional gospel song, is grounded in the late George Scott’s lead (he died just as the album was being released). The song starts with a solid, moving bottom line and then Scott slides in with his rich baritone voice, backed by the other members of the group. The groove keeps rolling, and the song is hypnotic – the kind of number that gets in your head and won’t let go. Just hearing what Scott can do with the word “well” is worth the listen.

6. Knoxville Girl - The Louvin Brothers
Regular readers may recall my talking about the Charlie and Ira Louvin and what Greil Marcus called “the old weird America”. Here’s a fine example of both the Louvins and the weirdness. It’s a murder ballad in which the singer is explaining how he killed the Knoxville girl; we’re never quite sure why, and although my guess is infidelity (there’s a reference to “roving eyes”), the singer may just be a psychopath. The combination of the dire lyrics and the flawless mountain harmonies of the Louvin Brothers is what puts this song on my list. If you’re interested, check out the lyrics.

7. Road To Nowhere - Talking Heads
There are plenty of Talking Heads songs I like, and I’ll certainly rotate this selection with them, but this particular track has a jauntiness to it that appeals to me. Byrne has his chipper side, and the band sounds like they’re having fun with this one. “We know where we’re going, but we don’t know we’re we’ve been”. I like that. I also like the classic New Wave sound of the arrangement (not “New Age” – totally different head…totally).

8. Living For The City - Stevie Wonder
I listened to Stevie a lot in his prime years, primarily from “Music of My Mind” to “Songs In The Key of Life”. From the album “Innervisions”, this song fuses R&B and politics in a potent mix that never loses sight of the music. It’s haunting, and it’s got great hooks. Stevie at his best.

9. Dancing in the Dark - Charlie Parker
Bird once remarked that “Charlie Parker with Strings” (from which this song is taken) was his favorite album of all his recordings. This despite the fact that bop purists hated its mixture of standard songs with orchestrated arrangements. Me? I love it. One of the hallmarks of Bird’s immense talent was his lyricism, the strong romantic element in his playing. The “Strings” sets let him hang it all out, and he has a great time swooping over and around the more formal arrangement – kind of like a kid who's a born gymnast playing on a jungle gym (which I understand children are no longer allowed to do, more’s the pity). This is a representative track – almost any one will do – and is guaranteed to lift your spirits any time, any place.

10. Love in Vain - Rolling Stones
For me, the best blues-centric rock band of all time. On this track they cover Robert Johnson, always a gutsy choice, and do him proud. Keith Richards slides up and down his guitar, Jagger feels the lyrics and puts them across, Charlie Watts anchors with his usual understated efficiency. It’s the only non-original song on “Let It Bleed”, a peak album and my second favorite of theirs next to “Exile On Main Street”, and it’s a keeper.

11. Johnny’s Gone to Hilo - Kate & Anna McGarrigle – A traditional sea chantey (and Hilo apparently refers to the Peruvian port city of Ilo, not to Hawaii) sung by another fine duet, the McGarrigle sisters. The track is taken from “The McGarrigle Hour”, a charming eclectic recording featuring the McGarrigle-Wainwright clan (Kate, Anna, Loudon, Rufus, Martha) and friends, The sisters sing lead on this one, with the rest of the gathering backing on the choral response. Chanteys are work songs, usually structured to provide a rhythmic base for some task, but this take on one shows off the melody and lyric in a way which is wistful, soft, soothing, and altogether lovely, like a sailor's lullabye.

A DJStan Selection Selection

As promised not so long ago – time flies, eh? – here are a few songs from the DJStan Selections playlist.

1. How Far Am I From Canaan - The Soul Stirrers
I’m semi-surprised at how much gospel is on this list. Given that I’m more than a tad skeptical when it comes to things spiritual, I myself don’t know what to make of my attraction to this genre – but there it is. Maybe it’s just another uncanny “taste”, like my love for medieval ivory carvings or the art of Joseph Cornell or cheese popcorn (best in the country is made by Candyland of St. Paul on Wabasha St., BTW). That aside, this song features Sam Cooke soloing, backed by the rhythmic harmonies of the Soul Stirrers, about whom there is not much to say below the superlative.

2. Down To The River To Pray - Alison Krauss (Jimmie Rodgers/Traditional)
Harmonies also do it for me in many ways. This white gospel track from the “O Brother” soundtrack has the rich group harmonizing of a Baptist Choir behind Alison Krauss’ ethereal vocal. I like to sing along with the baritones. Note that Jimmie Rodgers is associated with this song – I’ll have more to say about him in the future.

3. Postcards from Downtown - Dayna Kurtz
An unusual voice that goes from cigarette rasping to rich legato, and quirky personal songs that have some Reed, some Waits, some torchy Dietrich, and something that’s purely Dayna Katz. “I’m going out now; I’ll send you some postcards from downtown”.

4. Please Say You Want Me - The Schoolboys
From my doo-wop youth, this is gospel call and harmonic response adopted for teenage romance. Good for backing a make out session down in the basement on a beat-up old couch behind the ping-pong table with the sagging net in a girlfriend’s knotty pine family room.

5. The Fat Angel - Donovan
I was never a big Donovan fan, but this is one of the best songs from his best album, "Sunshine Superman". The folkie goes big-time psychedelic: “He will bring you happiness in a pipe”. Gets a nice drony sound going, too - did I mention that I like drones? Even bagpipes?

6. The Pan Piper - Miles Davis ("Sketches Of Spain")
Miles is an indisputable giant of jazz, and his work with Gil Evans blends cool trumpet with modal harmonies and romantic orchestral arrangements. These Davis/Evans sets, and Charlie Parker’s string arrangements, are the best of their kind – and this song, with its off-beat rhythm and charming woodwinds, is haunting.

7. In Christ There Is No East Or West - John Fahey
No words, just the fine, stripped down fingerpicking of the late John Fahey. Another original who helped create the kind of musical blending of blues, mountain music, and modal harmonies that generated the “Americana” school - kind of the Aaron Copland of the acoustic guitar. This one moves from classical structure to an Elizabeth Cotten kind of thing and back again. A long-time favorite.

8. The Old Ship of Zion - Roberta Martin Singers
Gospel again. This one, a traditional song, gets me with the powerful resonant voice of baritone Norsalus McKissick. When I sang (College glee club, coffe-house stuff), I had a second Tenor range, which bridges the upper end of baritone with the lower end of tenor, but all voice ranges appeal to me, and sometimes I think I like the low baritone/basso voice the best. This one is a good example.

9. Cloudburst – Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross
Jon Hendricks and King Pleasure invented “vocalese”, where appropriate words are put to jazz arrangements (both chorus and solo parts) - as opposed to "scat", where nonsense syllables are used to cover vocal lines. LH&R were the best exponents of this style, and this arrangement is pure fun.

10. New Orleans Wins The War – Randy Newman
Randy Newman wrote two songs for his “Dixie Flyer” album, which together tell the story of his brief childhood in New Orleans, a stay which I believe forever marked his music as bred in the Ragtime Parish of the delta. This song and the title track form a succinct evocation of a child’s memory and a fine example of how – in the best songs – words and music combine to display a shard of the artist’s soul for our contemplation.

Two Musicians

This week’s Sunday NY Times featured articles on two favorite artists of mine, both ground-breakers in the 60’s folk scene who produced a small but brilliant output and then dropped out of view. Both have since died. They were Fred Neil, a singer possessed of a rich, deep baritone voice who also wrote, and wrote well (the article is primarily about “Everybody’s Talkin’”, used as the theme for “Midnight Cowboy”, which is undoubtedly his best known song, particularly the Harry Nilsson rendition). The other, Sandy Bull, was one of the first popular artists to go deep into fusion in long, raga-like sets. He was a string instrument master, particularly on guitar (although his banjo version of Orff’s “Carmina Burana” is brilliant); his albums are purely instrumental. The paper gets some things slightly wrong, as always, but it’s nice to see guys like Fred Neil and Sandy Bull get some press. Best sets to pick up are “The Many Faces of Fred Neil”, a two-disc collection of his Capitol output (which also includes his own ragaesque piece), and “Re-Inventions”, a good “best” set of Sandy Bull’s work.

Both, as you might guess, have tracks in the DJStan's Selections playlist (did I mention that my personal rules limit artists to one track per album at any given time?). Fred Neil is represented by a song that is both soothing and deeply yearning at the same time, a combination of feelings he conveys so well; the song is a variation on the traditional, "Fare Thee Well" and is called "Faretheewell (Fred's Song)". The Sandy Bull cut is also a variation on a traditional melody; Sandy takes a gospel tune (which is probably more familiar as Ray Charles' "I Got A Woman"), sets it to a heavily reverbed electric guitar playing mostly in the lower registers, and rings changes on it for about 10 minutes; sometimes I wish this piece were longer.

You know, on reflection, the Fred Neil cut is also heavy on reverb, as are a lot of Fred's (and Sandy's) arrangements in general; I wonder if they listened to each other. Wouldn't surprise me at all.

Single Again

No, nothing to do with me and the ever-lovely Mrs. DJStan. Actually, the heading should be "Singles Again".

When I was a kid in Junior High School, the age at which I began buying my own music (as opposed to the Little Golden records and the Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra on a set of 78's that my parents had purchased), it was a singles world. There were still 78's, and my very first purchase was Buddy Knox's "Party Doll" on a 78 (10 cents at John's Bargain Store), but the medium of choice among my set was the 45. It had a targeted-to-hit song on one side (the "A" side) and something else on the other (the "B" side). Occasionally, the "B" side outran the "A" side, and sometimes - rarely - there were hits on both sides (Richie Valens' classic 45 release had "Donna" and "La Bamba" on one record). Oh, the LP had come out, but that was primarily for the grown-ups – classical, broadway shows, jazz, etc. For teens, it was all about the stack of singles. There were special little boxes just sized for 45 collections, and of course, the ubiquitous jukebox, with its push-button menu of singles. Bands didn't save up their tracks until they had an album – they went from single to single.

Eventually, as we all know, the album came to dominate the music world. This had both good points (great for long tracks or a series of related tracks) and bad (you have to buy the entire album, even if you don't really care for half the tracks). And now, plugged into our IPods™, it's back to the world o' singles. I've bought a few things on ITunes™ so far, and except for one album (Willie Nelson & Leon Russell – "One For The Road" – which replaces a set I only have on vinyl and which ITunes sold in a 3 pack (with two other Willie sets that I only had on vinyl) for $9.99; that's 55 songs at about 18 cents per, a fair deal. Everything else has been a single – generally something I heard on the radio and liked, or a track from my mental backlist. Buying them was a very 50's experience (except for the lack of a "B" side). Here's the list so far:

Devil's Lullaby - Slaid Cleaves
Four Chambered Heart - Tom Russell
Wheel Inside The Wheel - Mary Gautier
Oh Mary - Neil Diamond (new Neil Diamond!)
Girl In the War - Josh Ritter
Tainted Love - Soft Cell (I actually have this on 45)
God's Gonna Cut You Down - Johnny Cash
Papa Dukie And The Mud People - The Subdudes
Poison Apples(Hallelujah) - Joan Osborne

And that's just part of it. The other part is how I'm now listening to music at work (and at home – I got one of those $6 "Y" connectors at Radio Shack that allows me to easily hook up my IPod to any receiver, etc. that has an "AUX" input): I'm listening to tracks, as a rule, and not albums. This is a radical change; my former habit had been to bring two CD's to work each day, and go through them once or twice – since I spend a good part of my day working at a PC, this was not difficult. But now, with about 8,000 songs loaded so far (500+ albums), I find myself much more interested in assembling playlists with random selections from various genres, comments, artists, etc. I've set up random selections for favorite artists, like Dylan and Tom Waits; created a Playlist for jazz tracks with a duration of under 8 minutes; another of 100 totally random songs – but with song length limited to 10 minutes; a "Cabaret" playlist of nightclub/lounge/vaudeville acts, and more. Sometimes I just put the whole caboodle on Shuffle, and let the hits fall where they may.

Most to the point of this blog, I've set up a "DJStan's Selections" playlist, to which I add tracks that I particularly like for those days when I don't want to hear anything but. When I get tired of one, I just take it off. I keep it limited to 100 tracks, just to enforce discipline and encourage change. Anyway, I've decided that for the next few blog entries (or more, if I like how it's going), I'm going to talk about a single track from that particular list. I'll post about why I picked it, what I like about it (which is not always the same thing), and anything else that comes to mind. I'm hoping that my loyal reader(s) will find the selection interesting and the postings informative. As always, I welcome comments and music recommendations, related or not.

My Front Pages

In case you hadn’t heard, Bob Dylan is not only still alive, but has released yet another set of songs; this one is called “Modern Times”. Long story short, this is a fine collection. Masterpiece? Who knows; these questions are sometimes fun to discuss and sometimes annoying; at this moment, I don’t care. Fact is, IMO he’s had more than a few great albums in his long career (I’ve got 20 Dylan sets on my Ipod) and this might turn out to be one of them. Test of time and all that; I will say that his songs have become so personal as to be uncoverable, but that’s been true on and off for a long time (and doesn’t stop people from trying). It’s hard to imagine a Peter, Paul & Mary reincarnation covering something like “Spirit on the Water” (I do credit Joan Osborne for doing a nice job on “To Make You Feel My Love”).

However you want to categorize this CD, it’s solid work – well-crafted and intriguing songs and a crackerjack band (I love the word “crackerjack”) that can play anything from Chuck Berry’s country blues rock to cowboy waltz to John Lee Hooker/Slim Harpo boogie to early thirties crooner ballads with a Hawaiian tinge – all of which come out of Dylan’s encyclopedic knowledge of American popular music, particularly what Greil Marcus famously called “the old weird America”. I just loaded a Louvin Brothers disc onto the Ipod™ (“Tragic Songs of Life”), so I know just what he meant (BTW, anything by Ira & Charlie Louvin, a key influence on folks like the Everly Brothers and Emmylou Harris, is highly recommended).

OK – it’s a short while later, and I’ve been loading traditional country and folk, including an anthology of the New Lost City Ramblers (“Out Standing In Their Field”), and I thought “I bet they’ve got some weird stuff on there”. So I played “The Little Girl and the Dreadful Snake”. Bingo. You want to know what Marcus was talking about? Listen to a copy of this song (also performed by the Stanley Brothers and probably others as well). But I digress.

There’s an excellent article in this week’s New Yorker (“Yes, the New Yorker!”) in which Lewis Menand reviews a recent book containing the collected interviews of Bob Dylan. The book sounds reasonably interesting (although if you want to read anything about Dylan, read his “Chronicles” – which is genuinely fascinating and fun – and David Hajdu’s tale of Dylan, Richard Farina, and the Fabulous Baez Sisters, “Positively Fourth Street”), but what makes the review worth reading is late in the article when Menand talks about Dylan’s singing. It’s worth reading because he and I are in total agreement (ha): Dylan is a great singer; yep – you heard that right - not just decent or good or very good – great.

His command of timbre is awesome, as you can hear by playing an Ipod™ shuffled random Dylan playlist; some of it is age, but plenty of it is there almost from the get-go. More important, and here Menand and I are as one, is Dylan’s phrasing. He can swing, he can rock, he can do talking blues, country blues, delta blues, torch, crooning (and that didn’t start with “Love and Theft”; just listen to “Nashville Skyline”) and more. Each of these styles has a different way of phrasing and Dylan does them all.

It’s really what makes his songs work, after all. No one, no matter how mellifluous their timbre, can make a Dylan song work better than Bob. When you hear his lines in your head – and there are so many good ones – you hear them in his tonality and especially with his phrasing. I was listening to “Visions of Johanna” from “Blonde on Blonde” today, one of my all-time favorite songs of his, and when he came to the line “Mona Lisa must’a had the highway blues, you can tell by the way she smiles”, I was blown away by how powerfully he phrases that line – where he puts his stresses, which words he chops and which ones he chooses to stretch out, how he plays the words like a jazz soloist over and around the melody while the band comps. It’s not easy listening, but ultimately it’s the reason his rhetoric – even at its most surreal – sticks in your mind. He’s singer as orator, as persuader, as politician of the personal. When it comes to his songs, Dylan is one slick salesman. And I think I’m still digressing.

Bottom line, “Modern Times” is Dylan worth savoring. He sings about spirit and flesh, the creator and the created; sometimes he's Adam, sometimes he's Jesus, sometimes he's Yahweh, and sometimes he's Cain - but he's always our Bobby, just walkin' down the line.

And when you listen to it, and I hope you will, don’t just get carried away by the Bob the barker; give props to the solid band and pay more attention to the singer’s phrasing, less to the specific meaning of a given string of words. Remember - no one ever asked Louis Armstrong what the intro to “West End Blues” really meant. It’s what was in his head, heart, and soul - laid out for all who can to dig it. Dylan’s songs should be dug in the same way.

p.s. For next week’s assignment, I’d like 500 words on the meaning of “dig” in its hipster aspect. Extra credit for any appropriate quotes from Lord Buckley.

Pod Person

I gave in. After years of resisting the personal jukebox, I finally went and got myself a monstrous 60 Gig Ipod and a 4 GB Nano for Mrs. DJStan to take to the beach when we go “down the shore”, as those quaint folks in New Jersey say. Why resist? Who knows? I’m a techie by both nature and profession, and they’re very elegant little machines, with a pretty smart interface, decent management software, and easy access to an overpriced (a tale for another time) but seductive music store. OTOH, I have over 1000 CD’s (and let’s not talk about the leaning tower of vinyl) and, I suppose, a serious fetish thing going – I like the feel of the jewel box, the cover art, the liner notes (yes, I read them – did I mention I’m also a compulsive reader?). I like the way the shelves of CD’s look, and the way anyone who visits can get a good idea of at least part of my psyche just by browsing the shelves.

There’s something highly abstracted about a cigarette pack sized player that can hold most of my library in slightly lossy digital bits (and the sound quality is actually fine, compared to other portable music devices) that put me off. That and the Steve Jobs thing. I’ve never been a fan, although I recognize the guy’s talent (though Wozniak really invented the Apple box in the first place). The Apple world has always had a kind of smug, elitist attitude that I find repellant; that and the fact that their boxes were always sealed worlds, designed to isolate the user from the technology – I like hacking away at things.

But others have been persuasive. My son, who has inherited and expanded on my love of music, delights in his Ipod, and has often commended it to me. Then on our recent trip to Morocco and Algeria, my daughter and son-in-law brought their Nanos with them, and I did some serious playing around with the interface for the first time. I liked it. And there's my drummer work friend, who's has been on my case to get one for a long time (and note that his band, Mr. Neutron, has a new disc out – it’s name is “Red Triangle”, it’s surf/Bond/spaghetti western type instrumentals, it’s a gas, and you can check it out here) and so I did it. I feel slightly soiled, but it will pass. Meanwhile, no doubt about it: the Ipod is a cool thing (despite the ear buds, which I don’t use on the general principle that putting things in your ears is not a good thing; over the ear headphones are my definite preference).

Having it is one thing; loading it up is another. I've started putting my music on the Pod, and while it's a relatively simple process, it takes time. I'm trying to do a set per night – last night I loaded all my Miles Davis and Charlie Parker discs. I've already loaded Steve Earle, Bob Dylan, Randy Newman, a whole lot of 50's Doo-wop, Tom Waits, and all the CD's I loaded for Mrs. DJStan's Nano which she took to the beach (Annie Lennox, Dixie Chicks, k.d. Lang, Willie Nelson, Shirelles, Aretha, B.B. King, etc.). I've loaded 186 CD’s as I’m writing this and I’ve still got many shelves to go. I’m also doing this more haphazardly than I had expected. Suddenly I'll need to put Dave Carter & Tracy Grammer on, or I'll decide that the next thing I have to listen to at work is Los Lobos or David Lindley or Elizabeth Cotten.

Then there's the playlists, both smart and dumb. The dumb ones are the classic type – select a bunch of songs and the order in which you want to hear them, give the list a name, and done. The "smart" playlists let you set criteria for selecting songs – artist, composer, length, genre, etc. - and then does a dynamic selection that meets them (you can limit the number of matches). I've got a lot of Dylan, for example, so I've set up a playlist called "Random Bob" that pulls 30 cuts of songs where either the artist or the composer is "Bob Dylan" (this way I get some covers in there, which I also like). You have to do some editing to make everything work as you wish (for example, if the composer is "Dylan, Bob", it won't match), but for a compulsive analytic type like myself, that's fun!

And shuffle – a neat, but limited idea. It's cool getting a truly random selection of tracks from the entire library, but as I add more jazz and classical, it would be nice to be able to set some boundaries, especially on track length. Getting the 3^rd movement of Beethoven's 7^th symphony sandwiched right after a Motown track, followed by 18 minutes of Miles' "Shhh/Peaceful" from "In a Silent Way" doesn't quite work – not even for me. It would also be nice if Apple extended the Shuffle option so that you could apply it to an Album, an Artist, a Genre, etc. – rather than only having the option of applying it to ALL songs or ALL albums. Ah well – there are always creative playlist options, I suppose.

Meanwhile, I’ve accepted the fact that I caved and no longer have the strength of ten. Such is life – a series of trade-offs. I’ve got to go now, though. I’ve got CD’s to load and playlists to fiddle with …and in my head, I can hear the voices of the other Pod people chanting softly, “One of us, one of us….”.

In the words of Robert Palmer, it’s simply irresistible.

Like Webster's Dictionary....

We're just back from two weeks in North Africa. We went primarily to meet our extended family - my daughter's in-laws - who are Algerians residing in Algiers. Although our daughter has been married for 3 years (and has been to Algeria before) and we've met two aunts who live in the Bay Area, this was the first time that Mrs. DJStan and I got to meet our son-in-law's parents, sister, and other relatives. Let me just say that as expected, knowing him as we do, our son-in-law's family are wonderful people - warm, welcoming, generous to a fault, and lots of fun to be with (and his mother's a great cook, which didn't hurt!). We had a marvelous week with them, and despite the on-going Middle East hostilities and Algeria's fairly recent troubles (they simply call it "the terrorism"), we were treated with courtesy and friendliness by virtually every North African we met.

Since we were heading for North Africa, we also took the opportunity to spend some time in Morocco – mainly in Marrakech, a place I've wanted to visit since CSNY's "Marrakech Express" stroked my ears. It's a fascinating place, particularly the old Medina, a medieval walled city with labyrinthine souks selling everything under the sun, really good food (tagines, couscous, excellent gelato-like ice cream, dates like candy, addictive mint tea, etc.), and lots of ambient sounds. The main square in the Medina is the Djemaa al Fna. It's huge and sparsely populated during the day (although there's always a line-up of carts selling fresh orange juice); this makes sense, because daytime temperatures in Marrakech in July (the low season) run in the low 100's. But when night falls and the temperature drops a bit, it's filled with thousands of people eating at 50 or 60 different food stalls, strolling and chatting, and being entertained by snake charmers, monkey photo op guys, fortune tellers, henna artists decorating women's hands and feet, dancers, play-actors (in Moroccan Arabic only), and of course musicians.

Lots of drum circles, the sounds of reedy horns, ouds and occasionally guitars (and the chicken guy's banjo), chanting and singing all mingling with the noise of dozens of food vendors soliciting business and thousands of Marrakchis and tourists, many of them Moroccans from other parts of the country. I brought home a small horn (the bell IS horn, in fact) bought from an instrument maker/vendor in the souk who established his bona fides by showing me a picture of himself in a folkloric band and playing a little riff on the horn. It's not easy to play for an old string guy like myself. It's got an integral single reed, and I'm not particularly good at getting it to vibrate – but it looks cool, and maybe a reed guy can help me figure it out.

Other sounds of the trip? In Marrakech we stayed at a riad (an inn) in the Medina (Riad Dar Doukkala by name – a splendid small inn with spacious rooms done in art deco Moroccan style, great food, and a very necessary small swimming pool). The Inn is off a noisy street (they all are), but the walls of Medina buildings are very thick and the sound drops off the instant you walk inside. There's a central courtyard, open to the sky, that allows some sounds to come in. For example, there's a call to prayer 5 times a day for Moslems, and each mosque (and there are more than a few in the Medina) has its own caller, although they all chant/recite the same phrases. We could hear the voices from nearby mosques blending together in a range from near basso to pure tenor – and asynchronously, since there's no master clock. I got to look forward to it after a short while (then again, I'm the guy who really dug the bugle-driven day of my brief Army life, so take that into consideration!). Then there was the periodic crowing of a rooster from the live poultry stall a few doors down the block, and the opera piped into the courtyard in the afternoon. Sometimes you’d hear all three at one – muezzins and Mozart accompanied by a rooster; it would make a great loop.

More sounds we encountered included a drum and oud duo (hey - I just realized that "oud duo" is a palindrome!) playing in a Moroccan restaurant in Casablanca; an English pub-style piano bar in the same city where the somewhat raggedy pianist played light Billy Joel (yes, there is such a thing) and Euro-tinged hits from the 70's like "Windmills of Your Mind"; an Algerian wedding singer and band, playing loud and clear on a Thursday night somewhere within range of our hotel room terrace – this was largely great rai-style dance music, with the occasional woman kicking in with the soprano ululations that are characteristic of Berber music; a wedding procession where the flower-bestrewn car carrying the couple was followed by an open truck with a small band playing away as they honked their way through the narrow winding streets of Algiers; three street musicians who simply appeared on my son-in-law's block, banging away on drums and cymbals – you're supposed to toss down a coin or two from your apartment; the sounds of North African hip-hop in a small park with several restaurants and ice cream parlors – three teen-age boys were working on their break-dance moves. Along the same lines, my daughter and son-in-law had both brought their Ipod nanos and an Itrip appliance for playing them over an empty FM slot, so I had the pleasure of listening to Bob Marley and the Wailers ("Babylon by Bus") as we drove to and from the beautiful Mediterranean beaches of Algeria.

Finally, a note on globalization: the French colonial apartment buildings of Algiers have, in recent years, sprouted a forest of satellite dishes – they're everywhere. Thus I had the opportunity to sit in an Algerian living room drinking mint tea and eating dates from the Sahara while watching a Christina Aguilera video broadcast by a Polish music video channel ("Viva Polska!"). BTW, there are 6 McDonald’s in Casablanca; along with selling standard items as well as the McRoyale (per “Pulp Fiction”), they have a product called the “McArabia”, which is some kind of processed meat in a pita. No McCouscous yet, thankfully.

Car Groups

I was listening to the Cars today - a solid 2 disc anthology called, appropriately, You're Just What I Needed. I got to thinking about bands named after cars, and a few fifties groups roared into mind - the Cadillacs, the Impalas, the Continentals, the Imperials, and the Eldorados. There've been a couple of bands that called themselves the Stingrays, and then there's the Fabulous Thunderbirds and the Fairlanes, to name a few (The Beatles don't count).

I don't think that theme is still current, though. When The Cars took that name, it was kind of a post-modern take on the whole auto-infatuation thing (with intentional retro references, like the Vargas girl cover art). But there's no reason why there couldn't be a bouncy pop band called The Beamers, or a classic guitar rock quartet called The Four By Fours, or a sexy girl group called The Hummers or a doo-wop cover group called The Infinitis or a socially conscious neo-folk group called The Priuses...just a thought.

The Cars hold up really well, by the way (a tip of the hat to Ric Ocasek and Ben Orr) - but then I was always partial to New Wave (not "New Age" - totally different head, man, totally - as Johnny Slash would say). I liked the music that came out of bands like the Cars, Blondie, the Waitresses, Squeeze, the Pretenders, the Specials, the Talking Heads, and the Police - even Gary Numan. The Cars offer tight beats under well-crafted pop melodies, clever songs sung in a highly stylized timbre, and swooping synths all over the place. Songs like "My Best Friends Girl" and "You're All I've Got Tonight" and "You Might Think" can still get my happy feet tapping. New Wave was a loop out and back to the mainstream, and maybe ultimately a musical cul de sac (irony can just get you so far before it turns into ennui), but it was fun while it lasted, and it's a cool place to revisit.

Pop Tart

Hey there! Been a while since I posted anything, and it’s certainly not that I haven’t been listening to lots of different music. But this posting isn’t about Los Super Seven’s Heard It On The X (a great recollection of a Tex-Mex border AM station), and it’s not about the seminal 1920’s jazz sounds of Fletcher Henderson or Luis Russell, and it’s not about the V-Disc collection, Louis Prima: The War Years (even though “Felicia no Capecia” definitely deserves to be mentioned), and it’s not even about Paul Simon’s new release, Surprise, which is a pleasant but not earthshaking one. It’s about 70’s pop.

Today I spent my ear-time with Three Dog Night (“Best of”) and ABBA (“Gold”), two pop group masters of their era – and no scoffing. Sure, I know that pop is the perky cousin of slouchy rock; the bowl of sugary peanuts to rock’s beer and a shot; the smiley face to rock’s raised middle finger. But sometimes it’s just plain fun, and when good musicians do it, it’s better than that.

Yes, I said good musicians (and good producers). Three Dog Night was primarily a cover band, and their tastes are far beyond the Archies or the New Christy Minstrels. They covered people like Randy Newman (“Momma Told Me Not To Come”) and Laura Nyro (“Eli’s Comin’”) and Harry Nilsson (“One”) and Hoyt Axton (“Joy To The World” – although there was a time I would have happily sautéed Jeremiah’s legs in garlic and oil with a sprinkling of fresh parsley). These are not the common herd of writers, and the covers are excellent ones, catching the spirit of the songs in sparkly, harmonized pop settings. They work, and work well.

And then there’s ABBA, who was not a cover act. Their songs, primarily written by the two B’s (Bjorg and Benny), are great pop: terrific hooks, cleverly written lyrics (go ahead: challenge me) , solid harmonies – particularly the two A’s (Anni and Agnetha), and synthesizer-driven 70’s dance-style production. There’s not nearly as much discobeat as you might think, and songs like “Fernando” and “Waterloo” and “Take A Chance On Me” (jangling around my brain all afternoon) still catch you up and make you smile.

If you’re in the mood for indulging, the two sets mentioned above (Best of Three Dog Night (MCA, 1983) and ABBA Gold: Greatest Hits (Polygram, 1993) offer excellent overviews of the two groups. So go ahead – pour yourself a Harvey Wallbanger and just let the music happen.

Brucenanny!

Gather around the campfire, kids, put out whatever you're smoking, and clear your throats for action. Bruce, the new music counselor, is gonna lead us in a good old-fashioned sing-along. Just a guitar or two…and a banjo and a mandolin and a fiddle and an accordion and a brass section – don't forget the tuba! – and our own good spirits: that's all we need for some late 50's-style fun the Springsteen way.

And fun it is. Bruce's newest release is We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions. Think folkie hootenanny produced by Phil Spector, T-Bone Burnett, and Boozoo Chavis and you're on the right track. It's a genuine Americana Wall of Sound (should be in mono, though). It’s also a political album in the way that singing songs that are part of the “folk tradition” (and there’s a whole other discussion about what that is, but for the purposes of this post, you know what I’m talking about) is always political.

There are the Civil Rights stalwarts “We Shall Overcome” and “Keep Your Eye On The Prize” and the anti-war Irish ballad “Mrs. McGrath” and the depression song “My Oklahoma Home (It Blowed Away)”; there are work songs like “Erie Canal” and “John Henry”; there’s an outlaw ballad that casts “Jesse James” as Robin Hood – and all these songs are connected to a very American form of social democracy, a radical egalitarianism that goes back at least to Jefferson and Tom Paine, and which I certainly associate with Pete Seeger (my father was a fan – musically and politically - and we had several Weavers albums). In the abstract, this may seem like a far less outwardly political album than “Devils and Dust” or “Tom Joad’s Ghost”, and it’s clearly not as directly political – but it’s an echo and a calling forth of a broad-based, idealistic social spirit that has not been seen or heard in this country for far too long. This is a powerful iconic moment in which Bruce takes the torch – both musical and political - from the aging Pete Seeger, and runs with it. Or maybe I’m just being sentimental…

As you might guess from the tracks noted above, Bruce has focused on folksongs from the Seeger repertoire – emphatically not the songs of Pete Seeger or other writers' songs he made famous. There's no "Big Muddy" or "Little Houses" or "If I Had A Hammer" or "Turn! Turn! Turn!" or even “Wimoweh”. What there is is a good selection of the many kinds of traditional songs Pete sang and a hell of a job of production. The music styles range from old timey folk to bluegrass to 20’s jazz to straight-up gospel to Irish ballad to drag blues to Mardi Gras second line and more. Keys are switched from major to minor for some numbers (“Oh Mary” works particularly well in this mode and is the set’s most irresistible track), and the Boss is in good voice and high spirits, backed by an excellent set of musicians – all effectively captured live and unrehearsed. You'll hear a lot of New Orleans styles and sounds on this set, a kind of tribute within the tribute.

The disc is one of those dual jobs, with a CD side and a DVD side. I haven't hit the DVD yet, but apparently it's got a 30 minute documentary on the recording of the set and two numbers not included on the CD side (to which one asks "Why the hell not???").

Final side note: when Bob Dylan needed to woodshed, he put out two sets of folk-type songs (really good ones, too; highly recommended) – Good As I Been To You and World Gone Wrong. From those sets and Bruce's new one, there's one song that they both recorded….one song that appealed equally to these heirs of the folk tradition…one song that spoke both to the Bard of Minnesota and the Boss of New Jersey…one song that both not only chose to play, but positioned as the last track on the set...and what song, you eagerly inquire, could it possibly be? "Froggy Went A' Courtin'". For some reason, I get a real kick out of that. Actually, I’m thinking that Bruce intentionally did this as a tip of the hat to DJZimmy, now spinning the platters for you on his weekly satellite radio show – but why Dylan chose that particularly surreal song in the first place is beyond my imagination.

The Play's The Thing

As loyal readers will know by now, Mrs. DJStan and I are both big theatre fans. One of the benefits of living in NYC is the wealth of theatre available at any time. Sometimes it's not so hot (see my post on Ring of Feh, for example) but sometimes it's just great. Two recent outings were both in the second category, and both had something musical going on.

In the first case, it's obvious: we saw a Musical. It's now in previews, and it's called The Drowsy Chaperone. The basic premise is simple: a contemporary devotee of 1920's musical theatre - a somewhat effete divorced man, living in a decent but run-down studio apartment - breaks the fourth wall and tells us that he's going to play his favorite recording (emphasis on "record", which he cleans diligently before laying down the tonearm) for us: the original cast album of a typical 20's antique entitled - yes, that's right - The Drowsy Chaperone. The scratchy overture merges into a fuller sound as the pit band takes over, and the show begins. The characters emerge from the closets (and the refrigerator), sets and props appear, and the entire play takes place before your eyes, with the narrator wandering in and out of the action.

Bottom line: it's a hoot, very funny, and very true to the form it parodies. There's a producer and his bimbo, a star who wants true love, a pair of comic gangsters, an aviatrix, and - of course - the drowsy chaperone herself, a jaded vamp who gets involved with a latin lover. The songs are pastiches of period music, including a hysterical number entitled "I Put A Monkey On A Pedestal" (yes, it makes sense in context) .

I ended up listening to a lot of 20's popular music the following week, including Classic Bing Crosby - 1927-34, Fascinating Rhythm: Gershwin on Broadway (original recordings), Dippermouth Blues (King Oliver), an RCA 20's collection from their archives (part of the Nipper's Greatest Hits series) and a Geoff Muldaur produced set of Bix Beiderbecke's music called Private Astronomy, orchestrated for what Muldaur calls a "chamber jazz orchestra". All great listening, and all patches in the brilliant crazy quilt that is American music.

The second play was The Lieutenant of Inishmore, a Tarantino-esque comedy of terrors with a brogue that had me laughing from start to finish. Set on a bleak Irish island in the early 90's, the play tells the story of two daft characters who get involved with a dead cat beloved of a psychotic member of a tiny IRA splinter group (the IRA itself wouldn't have him because he's too crazy), and the consequences. It's fiendishly funny if you're not put off by the sight of stage blood, and makes some sharp points (with axes and otherwise) about the nature of politics, terror, and how murder for lofty goals can easily become an addiction where lip service to the goals merely serves to shore up the dark joys of killing. It reminded me of Tom Waits' growling take on Brecht's lines - "Mankind can keep alive, thanks to its brilliance at keeping its humanity repressed; For once, you must not try to shirk the facts: Mankind is kept alive by bestial acts" - from the Weil collection, Lost In The Stars (an excellent album, unfortunately out of print).

Anyway, while the blackout pauses are punctuated by cannon-like percussion (heavy tympanies), there's also the occasional piece of an Irish song, particularly Dominic Behan's "The Patriot Game". Even if you don't know this song, the melody will probably be very familiar to you - Dylan took it, whole cloth, for "With God On Our Side" - and the lyrics are worth contemplating in light of the state of the world today (or almost any day, sadly enough). The opening verses go like this (sing along if you know the tune):

Come all you young rebels, and list while I sing,
For the love of one's country is a terrible thing.
It banishes fear with the speed of a flame,
And it makes us all part of the patriot game.

My name is O'Hanlon, and I'm just gone sixteen.
My home is in Monaghan, where I was weaned.
I learned all my life cruel England to blame,
And so I'm a part of the patriot game.

It's barely two years since I wandered away
With the local battalion of the bold IRA,
I'd read of our heroes, and I wanted the same
To play out my part in the patriot game.

As you might guess, the song doesn't end well for the singer.

Skyliner

I was listening to the Manhattan Transfer's Swing today. Aside from being a natural set of songs for them and one of their best albums - since they're very much in the model of swing vocal groups like the Hi-Lo's and the Modernaires - it contains my single favorite Man Trans cut: "Skyliner". This Charlie Barnet song, with vocalese lyrics and Ricky Skaggs playing some tasty guitar, is about someone flying home to a waiting loved one who gets totally caught up in the romance of flying.

"The romance of flying" - hard to say that nowadays without a thick coat of irony. I suppose I'm old enough to remember when flying had some shade of exoticness to it; when the Saarinen TWA building opened out at Idlewild (later Kennedy a/k/a JFK); when being a stewardess (not a "flight attendant") was considered a glamourous job; when airplane food was not a sad joke; when you could kick back with a cigarette and a cocktail and watch the clouds flow by....well, you get the idea.

The first flight I ever took was when I was in High School and flew up to Rochester for a college interview. My father took me out to LaGuardia airport where we encountered Mayor Robert Wagner; Dad, an inveterate amateur photographer always ready to take a snapshot, inveigled the Mayor to pose with me ("OK, your honor - big smile now!") and then it was time to walk out on the tarmac and up the portable stairs to the plane. That first lift-off was a moment of pure joy mixed with a little fear, which surprisingly sweetens the moment. There's a Taxi episode where Reiger goes sky-diving; as he free-falls he's screaming "I'm gonna die! I'm gonna die!" - then the chute pops open, he realizes he's not going to die, and he bursts into Sondheim's song "Being Alive". It was kind of like that, without the singing.

Anyway, this song brings it all back - a swinging kind of romantic optimism whose very sound - timbre and rhythm - is totally cool but in a happy, engaged kind of way - hip without the anomie. Sometimes I miss that exuberant vision of a streamlined future, even as false as it ultimately turned out to be. All technology eventually becomes banal, I suppose. The trouble with the future, as someone once said, is that it's always tomorrow, and never today; you can't live there.

More Angular Banjos

Donald Fagen’s new cd, Morph the Cat, is classic Steely Dan, which really tells you everything you need to know. Steely Dan’s work as a group, and Fagen’s as a solo artists, are of a piece. There are those devilishly simple grooves that you just can’t put down; the cool sixths and soft dissonances in the harmonies; the I’m-so-hip-I-just-can’t- bear-it lyrics; and always Fagen’s naturally ironic vocals, a voice utterly incapable of sincerity. Count me as a fan.

The new one is a good as the average old ones, and that’s good enough. Steely Dan hasn’t produced a great album in quite a while (Gaucho was the last; Pretzel Logic and Aja were the other two), and the output of their relatively recent reunion is middling SD at best. In fact, despite being a Fagen solo, this is probably the best Steely Dan-type recording in quite a while.

It’s only Fagen’s third album. The first – and best – was his homage to the early sixties’ sensibility, The Nightfly; Kamakiriad, which followed years later, is an interesting failure, with no really outstanding tracks. Morph the Cat is fine. It’s what you’d expect, and if you like that Steely Dan-ish thing, you’ll enjoy this one. In some recent interviews, Fagen has said that he views this as a mature set, dealing with Death and other serious metaphors (even conversing with the spirit of Ray Charles, who tells him that it’s not what’d I say; it’s what I do) – but Fagen was an old man long ago. A funky, sassy old man, but an old man notwithstanding.

Meanwhile, I can’t get the title track’s groove out of my head. Which is OK, ‘cause it’s so cool.

Town Without Pitney

Just to note the passing of another teen icon of my youth. Gene Pitney never had the kind of success he dreamed of in his own country. He did OK, but he was always a bigger star in Europe, and especially in Britain, where he recently died while on tour. I’ll remember him best as the author of “Hello, Mary Lou” (yes, I was a Rick Nelson fan and proud of it!), and for “Town Without Pity”, “Twenty-four Hours from Tulsa”, and “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”.

Swinging Texans and That Yellow Rose...

Back in the early sixties, one of the more weirdly popular shows was “Sing Along With Mitch”, featuring the soothing blandness of Mitch Miller’s arrangements of folk and light pop tunes, scored for the entire viewing audience. Mitch even had a hit or two, and the one I remember best was “The Yellow Rose of Texas”. I never much wondered about why the rose was yellow; I figured it was some kind of a Texas thing – maybe that was the color they came in down there.

So I recently acquired a 4 disc set of Western Swing music from the 30’s and 40’s (Doughboys, Playboys and Cowboys), and while listening to the likes of Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys, Spade Cooley, and the Tune Wranglers (fine swingers all, and Wills plays the fiddle like a soul inspired, wisecracking all the while – but that’s a subject for another time), I heard a version of “The Yellow Rose of Texas” performed by Milton Brown & His Musical Brownies – and the scales fell from my eyes. She’s “yellow” because she’s a light-skinned black woman, as the song’s original verses make clear – and which were not what I sang along with Mitch. The Rose is a song to a real woman, perhaps a heroine of the War for Texas Independence (remember the Alamo?), named Emily West Morgan. Gives the song a whole other feel, knowing that. I wonder if Mitch knew? Probably.

p.s. As usual, the Emily West legend is more aesthetically pleasing than the truth.