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Utopian Turtletop. Monsieur Croche's Bête Noire. Contact: turtletop [at] hotmail [dot] com
Thursday, July 09, 2009
I was in Michigan visiting my mom and not reading the paper or anything online, when Michael Jackson died. My brother put some MJ and Jacksons on a CD and we listened in memoriam. Was blown away more than ever by the rhythm tracks. The productions by Quincy Jones especially: Deep Brazilian/disco percussion, disco strings, Earth Wind & Fire horns -- and unstoppably catchy songs. My friend Jay was visiting his folks too, and he chimed in with two observations. First, he’d read that Quincy Jones, when asked what distinguished Michael from the competition, what was the secret of his success, answered, “the ass factor.” Meaning, when recording, he showed up at 8 in the morning and sat his ass down all day and worked. Unlike most musicians -- very much unlike most musicians. Reminded me of Fred Astaire, who showed up first for rehearsals and left last. Second, Jay noted how Jackson tasked himself with writing Number One hits -- and then did it. Phenomenal songwriter. I listened to those rhythm tracks and thought -- he was the Elvis of the ‘80s -- simply the best, a cut above. Only crazy fans and a handful of aficionados believe this about Presley any more, but it’s true -- he outsang everybody within distance. Jackson’s records have more going on in them than anybody else’s of his time, comparable to any great music of any style or era. Terrific singer too, of course.
RIP.
* * *
Wonderful trip. Wrote 4 songs for my son and his cousins and friends while I was there; fabulous jam session with Jay and his cousin Tanner in a bizarre room full of dozens of hunting trophies; hung out with my 3rd cousin Mark for the first time since we were kids and got to know him a little bit, and he’s a great guy; his kids are great too; my son running around with his cousins, and Jay’s kids, and a raft of friends from the lane, all about the same age, running and running and running; a moving and lovely 50th anniversary party for Jay’s parents; Jay’s brother and his family there too and always great to see them; met more of Jay’s relatives, lovely people; found lost treasures from my childhood in a box in the crawlspace below Mom’s house; got my mom canoe-ing for the first time in years; saw my 89-year-old aunt and uncle for the first time in a couple of years (they’ve been married 67 years!); hung out with other distant cousins and lifelong neighbors of many generations, and my sister and brother and brother-in-law, and other aunts and uncles and cousins; communed with the auras of dead beloved ancestors in the ancestral home; went swimming and swimming and swimming; and on the way back caught up with some old friends in Chicago.
Happy Summer.
* * *
-- Photo by Jeff Shaw.
Friday, April 03, 2009
NEWS FLASH
. . . they're gonna put me in the movies . . .
. . . they're gonna put me in the movies . . .
A band I was in during college, CFG, or Civilian Fun Group, will have one or two songs playing in the background of a party scene of Adventureland, which opens today. The movie is set in 1987 -- two years after we left school and broke up. Twelve years ago the writer and director, Greg Mottola, wrote and directed The Daytrippers, which I liked a lot. He’s done other stuff too, but I haven’t seen it.
Dave, CFG’s drummer, is married to the film’s editor, Anne McCabe -- that’s how our mid-’80s college-band music got into this movie set in the mid-’80s, about people just out of college.
I’m looking forward to seeing the movie -- it should be a kick!
Speaking of the mid-’80s, my old friend John de Roo has digitized and released his 1986 masterpiece Holy Cow. He and I had been in a band starting in 9th grade and through freshman year of college -- roughly 1978 through 1982, and then again in the summer of ‘85, and then we made an acoustic duo cassette-only album together in ‘88. This one came in between, and it’s a dandy.
We don’t see each other too often now -- he lives more than a thousand miles away -- but whenever we do we play music. He sang at my wedding. Please do check out his music.
(That's his grandma on the cover of the CD, in 1916 with her favorite cow.)
Monday, January 19, 2009
INAUGURAL POEM
Ms. Reeves of Motown, with a song by Misters Stevenson, Gaye, and Hunter, will lay the scene.
calling out around the world!
are you ready? are you ready? are you ready?
yes we’re ready!
are you ready?
yes we’re ready!
are you ready for a brand new,
a brand new,
a brand new day, a brand new pair of rollerskates, a brand new key, a brand new BEAT, a brand new boombox, a brand new sense of what can be brand new, a brand new door to unscrew from the jamb Mr. Whitman, a brand new wall to tear down Mr. Reagan, a brand new wall to blow down Mr. Big Bad Wolf, Mr. Joshua,
a brand new wall to blow down Mr. Joshua, a brand new wall to blow down,
a brand new sense of possibility that, yes we can, Mr. Hughes, let America be America again,
though America’s never been America, Mr. Hughes is right, America’s never been the America of its own ideal, its most perfect union, promoting the general welfare, insuring domestic tranquility, because today, today, today
let there be no domestic tranquility,
today let there be joy
because even though
America still won’t be the America of our ideal, it won’t be the most perfect union, when we have blown down the wall that has said, for 232 years, that the color of the house describes the color of its inhabitant in chief, when we have blown down the wall that says White white white white White House,
and made it the house of all the people, the people’s house, made for you and me,
when we the people have done this,
well, when we did this, when we cast the ballots, and the ballot counters counted, and we knew the results, there was dancing in the streets -- calling out around the world! -- dancing in Chicago, up in New York City, down in New Orleans, Philadelphia P. A., Baltimore and DC now, don’t forget the Motor City,
and today, today there are hundreds of thousands of people gathered in DC, to witness the inauguration of this brand new beat, this brand new day, this brand new rollerskate & key,
and yes, when we the people have done this,
our union IS more perfect than it had been before, and, Mr. Guthrie, all around us a voice is, yes it is, yes it is chanting, this land WAS made for you and me, and, Dr. King, from every mountainside, from the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts, above her fruited plain, from the wheatfields rolling, to the oceans white with foam, we WILL let freedom ring,
freedom is ringing and voices are chanting, a joyful noisy mystic chorus of freedom and possession, Let America Be America --
and oh, we know, we know, there’s a long way to go,
we still got a long way to go,
and it’s been a long strange trip, with miles to go and strangers yet to meet, miles and miles to go, a long way to go, and we’re going, we’re on our way, we’ll make mistakes, our Mr. Joshua in the White House of all the people House the people’s House, our Mr. Joshua will make mistakes, and you’ll disagree with this and I’ll disagree with that and they’ll disagree with the other, she’ll feel betrayed by this & he’ll feel sick about another, and the cacophony of competing interests and beliefs won’t go away, union does not mean unanimity, Letting America Be America doesn’t mean, it doesn’t mean that everybody agrees,
but Dr. King’s hearing the ringing of the freedom mountain bells,
and Mr. Guthrie’s hearing the chanting of the diamond desert,
this land was made for you and me -- freedom -- this land was made for you and me -- freedom --
for Dr. King and Mr. Guthrie and Mr. Hughes and for us all, America is not only a country, it’s ideally an idea that’s open to anybody yearning to breathe free, and we’re a long way from that, we’re a long way from allowing Lady Liberty to light the beacon for all of the poor, all of the tired, all of the homeless and huddled masses, even on our own shores, much less around the world, but that is our charge, so says Dr. King, so says Mr. Guthrie, so says Ms. Lazarus, so says Mr. Hughes, so says Lady Liberty, so says Mr. Whitman, so says Ms. Reeves and Misters Stevenson, Gaye, and Hunter, and today we ARE calling out around the world,
we’re calling out around the world,
and we are ready
Ms. Reeves of Motown, with a song by Misters Stevenson, Gaye, and Hunter, will lay the scene.
calling out around the world!
are you ready? are you ready? are you ready?
yes we’re ready!
are you ready?
yes we’re ready!
are you ready for a brand new,
a brand new,
a brand new day, a brand new pair of rollerskates, a brand new key, a brand new BEAT, a brand new boombox, a brand new sense of what can be brand new, a brand new door to unscrew from the jamb Mr. Whitman, a brand new wall to tear down Mr. Reagan, a brand new wall to blow down Mr. Big Bad Wolf, Mr. Joshua,
a brand new wall to blow down Mr. Joshua, a brand new wall to blow down,
a brand new sense of possibility that, yes we can, Mr. Hughes, let America be America again,
though America’s never been America, Mr. Hughes is right, America’s never been the America of its own ideal, its most perfect union, promoting the general welfare, insuring domestic tranquility, because today, today, today
let there be no domestic tranquility,
today let there be joy
because even though
America still won’t be the America of our ideal, it won’t be the most perfect union, when we have blown down the wall that has said, for 232 years, that the color of the house describes the color of its inhabitant in chief, when we have blown down the wall that says White white white white White House,
and made it the house of all the people, the people’s house, made for you and me,
when we the people have done this,
well, when we did this, when we cast the ballots, and the ballot counters counted, and we knew the results, there was dancing in the streets -- calling out around the world! -- dancing in Chicago, up in New York City, down in New Orleans, Philadelphia P. A., Baltimore and DC now, don’t forget the Motor City,
and today, today there are hundreds of thousands of people gathered in DC, to witness the inauguration of this brand new beat, this brand new day, this brand new rollerskate & key,
and yes, when we the people have done this,
our union IS more perfect than it had been before, and, Mr. Guthrie, all around us a voice is, yes it is, yes it is chanting, this land WAS made for you and me, and, Dr. King, from every mountainside, from the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts, above her fruited plain, from the wheatfields rolling, to the oceans white with foam, we WILL let freedom ring,
freedom is ringing and voices are chanting, a joyful noisy mystic chorus of freedom and possession, Let America Be America --
and oh, we know, we know, there’s a long way to go,
we still got a long way to go,
and it’s been a long strange trip, with miles to go and strangers yet to meet, miles and miles to go, a long way to go, and we’re going, we’re on our way, we’ll make mistakes, our Mr. Joshua in the White House of all the people House the people’s House, our Mr. Joshua will make mistakes, and you’ll disagree with this and I’ll disagree with that and they’ll disagree with the other, she’ll feel betrayed by this & he’ll feel sick about another, and the cacophony of competing interests and beliefs won’t go away, union does not mean unanimity, Letting America Be America doesn’t mean, it doesn’t mean that everybody agrees,
but Dr. King’s hearing the ringing of the freedom mountain bells,
and Mr. Guthrie’s hearing the chanting of the diamond desert,
this land was made for you and me -- freedom -- this land was made for you and me -- freedom --
for Dr. King and Mr. Guthrie and Mr. Hughes and for us all, America is not only a country, it’s ideally an idea that’s open to anybody yearning to breathe free, and we’re a long way from that, we’re a long way from allowing Lady Liberty to light the beacon for all of the poor, all of the tired, all of the homeless and huddled masses, even on our own shores, much less around the world, but that is our charge, so says Dr. King, so says Mr. Guthrie, so says Ms. Lazarus, so says Mr. Hughes, so says Lady Liberty, so says Mr. Whitman, so says Ms. Reeves and Misters Stevenson, Gaye, and Hunter, and today we ARE calling out around the world,
we’re calling out around the world,
and we are ready
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
Wow.
I'd been expecting an Obama victory for several weeks now, but when NBC called it, it was a thrill and a rush and a relief. A thrill and a rush: our first African American president. A relief: the U.S. can rejoin the community of nations.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Sometime in the ‘80s, I read that the infant mortality rate on the South Side of Chicago rivaled that of 3rd World countries. With Reagan’s drive to cut spending promoting the social good, I quipped to my late, beloved Republican dad, “Reagan wants to turn America into a 3rd World country.”
In 1996, when Clinton was starting to build a budget surplus, and Dole was campaigning on the theme of cutting taxes, I said to my dad, “A fiscal conservative would vote for the Democrats.”
In 2000, when Bush was campaigning on tax cuts tax cuts tax cuts, and Nader was running around wooing progressives away from the centrist Gore, I went around raving, “Bush wants to trash the economy.” The Clinton budget surplus had made repairing the social safety net a plausible possibility, the idea of which clearly drove Republicans bananas; the Clinton-era prosperity had also seen an increase in real wages and union participation, both ideas also driving Republicans bananas.
In the 2004 campaign, Bush made his link to 3rd World oligarchic ideology explicit: He campaigned on the elimination of taxes on interest, capital gains, dividends, and inheritance; in other words, only work would be taxed, while income from ownership would not. As I said at the time, that’s neo-feudalism, baby. Fortunately, Bush didn’t get this part of his agenda enacted.
Bush’s new proposed no-strings, no-oversight, blank-check, $700,000,000,000 bail-out for failed investment and banking firms is another attempt at the continued neo-feudal 3rd-World-ization of the U.S. Let’s tax the 98% to bail out the 2%. Let’s let the 2% get off scot-free.
Of course, Katrina laid the 3rd-World conditions, which pertain to significant sectors of the U.S., bare already.
* * *
The Republican Party bought a $10 million dollar insurance policy for the St. Paul police, protecting them against brutality lawsuits resulting from their actions during the Republican Convention. They bought this policy shortly after New York City lost lawsuits brought be people who were brutalized by the police during the 2004 Republican Convention.
Suppressing dissent is illegal.
But the Republicans had to have it done.
And they were willing to pay for it.
I was in San Francisco during the Democratic Convention in 1984. A peace-activist group led tours of the financial district during the days of the convention. The tour consisted of a man or a woman leading a group of 2 or 3 dozen people, repeating this formula as they passed different offices:
“This is building A; corporation B has offices here; they build weapons system C; they give D amount of money to the Republican Party and E amount of money to the Democratic Party.”
As I recall, in every case they gave more money to the Republican Party, but lots to the Democrats too.
One day in a parking lot across from the convention, half a dozen punk bands gave a free concert. I don’t remember all of the bands, but MDC and the Dead Kennedys played two of the best sets I have ever seen in my life.
MDC’s singer was a cheerful man built like a football player with a mohawk. At one point a skinny mohawked teenager climbed onstage and grabbed the microphone in the middle of a song, taking over the lead vocals -- he had the lyrics down. The singer put his arm around the lad, and mouthed the words off-mike, acting the words out with his free hand, happy as could be. At another time a middle-aged drunk climbed onstage, grabbed the mike, and started bellowing blues. As the band kicked a groove behind him, the frontman led a bunch of skinny teenage lads onstage, and they paraded around in a circle, dancing around the impromptu singer. It was beautiful, memorable, inspiring.
The three white members of Dead Kennedys came out in Ku Klux Klan hoods, with smiley faces painted at the tops of the cones, with crosses for eyes. Sometime through the set lead singer Jello Biafra tour off his hood to reveal a stage-blood-streaked Reagan mask; and as he leapt around the stage like a man possessed, rage-spitting his lyrics, it was sight to behold. During one song stage divers pushed Biafra offstage -- perhaps inadvertently but probably not -- and Biafra disappeared from view, never missing a syllable as he continued his spew, until the crowd lifted him back onto the stage. When the song was over, Biafra was pissed. A great show.
Between sets, while bands were unplugging to make room for the next, a rabble rouser would try to rile up the crowd.
“The SFPD illegally arrested the peace tour of the Financial District today! After the Dead Kennedys” -- they were the headliners, playing last -- “After the Dead Kennedys, we’re all going to march to the Hall of Justice and demand that they be set free!”
And so that’s what happened -- but not exactly. A few thousand people marched after the Dead Kennedys, but instead of the 75 or so people who had been arrested being set free, another 260 or so people got arrested. Most of the new arrestees got sprung that night, but the original 75 didn’t get out until the next day.
As in St. Paul, no charges were brought.
When I got back home to Michigan a week later, I expected there to be a buzz about 335 people being arrested in one day for no reason. Nope. No buzz. Nobody had heard a thing about it. The news organizations had failed to report it. Suppressed themselves.
Because of the internet, this is no longer possible, so when Amy Goodman got arrested in St. Paul for no reason, people around the world heard about it that night.
The Republican Party put up the money for the St. Paul Police to clamp down.
In a real 3rd World country, I suppose, the brutalized and suppressed would have no recourse in the courts to their illegal arrests, and taking out insurance against the likelihood of police brutality would not be necessary.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Singer-songwriter John Shaw headlined Friday's lunch hour inColumbia City at one of 31 sites around the city where parking
spaces were converted to temporary, tiny parks.
Photo by Paul Joseph Brown / Seattle P-I
It's not exactly fame, but I’m on the front page of the Seattle P-I today. An acquaintance was putting together an outdoor arts event 2 blocks from my office and asked me to play (she'd never heard me), so I went down there at lunch and shouted into the traffic for a half hour. Got a free lunch out of it too, because it was outside a hole-in-the-wall BBQ joint -- Roy’s Barbecue -- where I'm a regular, and I made up a jingle for the owner, who's a really nice guy, on the spot. (The jingle needs work.) Such a low-key, last-minute gig that I didn't even tell close friends and family members that I spoke with yesterday on the phone about it.
Random, silly; but what the heck.
Also note well: The rapt attention of my audience!
Friday, September 19, 2008
The Unbearable Lightness of Mike Love
Music can open up an abyss of longing. A hanging phrase can conjure any sweet moment you’ve experienced, and recall its absence, tantalize you with its seeming closeness and unbridgeable far-ness. And hearing that abyss open you up in the music doesn’t hurt -- it feels good. The abyss is usually -- some would say always; I’d say usually -- here with us, and the work of ignoring it is necessary for daily functioning, but tiring. When the music embraces us in our abysses, the labor of repression instantly eases. It feels good to feel bad -- far, far better than not feeling at all.
The Beach Boys at Safeco Field Tuesday night knew those abysses. One of the few moments where they departed significantly from the original records’ arrangements came near the close of their honeypot marriage fantasy, “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” that sweet teen song where the singer serenades his beloved about how being older will be nice because then they won’t have to wait so long --
Wouldn’t it be nice if we were older
Then we wouldn’t have to wait so long
And after having spent the day together
Hold each other close the whole night long
-- because, of course, this is 1960s pop culture teen representationalism, where spending the night together doesn’t happen until marriage.
They protracted the song’s close, slowing down the already-slow arrangement, and layering on even thicker Four Freshmen-style harmonies than on the original, singing slowly, thickly, syruply sweetly --
You know it seems the more we talk about it
It only makes it worse to live without it
But let’s talk about it
Wouldn’t it be nice?
Yes yes yes, my beloved, embrace that abyss of longing. It’s the human condition.
Mike Love has visibly aged since I last saw him two years ago, and his voice is weaker, but his jokes are funnier, and he’s just as mincing and ridiculous, making a constant mockery of his advanced age and of rock presentation style in general. The Beach Boys touring band -- only Mike and Bruce Johnston from the golden age are still in the band -- is fine, and people like it when the lead guitarist makes rockface minstrel faces during his guitar solos, but Love is always there, making a mockery.
Good for him.
Nobody can really pull off Brian Wilson’s lead vocals -- or Dennis or Carl’s, for that matter; and not even Mike does his young self justice any more -- but that band sings those lush harmonies beautifully.
The songs are old. One of the “latter” classic songs -- by which Beach Boys students generally mean any song after 1966 -- one that looks back nostalgically at the earlier, more golden period, is now 40 years old. And hearing the old men singing a nostalgic song about their early adulthood, written in their slightly later but still young adulthood, the poignance riveted me.
Well I’ve been thinking ‘bout
all the places
we’ve surfed and danced and
all the faces
we’ve missed so let’s get
back together and Do It Again!
Mike was an avatar of the nonchalant doo-wop style of lead singing, giving the impression of tossing off his vocal, too cool to care much about your reaction; the complexity and truth of the nonchalant persona with the passionate accompaniment and undercurrent, the accompaniment raging with desire and the persona feigning indifference -- its a staple of rock and roll and subsequent styles without much vocal precedence, though it has some instrumental precedence in jazz. Love’s lead vocals were a key ingredient on a huge percentage of their early-period classic numbers , and he wrote or co-wrote lyrics on lots of them too.
His voice is thinner now, and sometimes he doesn’t even try to hit his rhythms right, making like an artist, in a weird ambivalence of love and devotion to the music and the listeners blended with the constant undercutting of making mock. The band was better when I saw them two years ago, but nothing then touched me as much as the abyss of longing that opened up in me when the falsetto man sang Brian’s vocalise part after the first verse of “Do It Again” -- a tear came to my eye as I realized that I do want to do it all again, I want the past to eternally recur, I embrace it all, even my failures and wincing cowardices, I embrace it all, as does Mike Love, as did Nietzsche. The paradox of memory, the past clinging to us as time flows swiftly forward; the past, with its sweetness and pain, its time-obliterating loves and its terrible absences. How I wish we could get back together and do it again! (The last time I played bridge with my grandpa’s cousins, one of whom died suddenly a couple of months later, the other of whom died a couple years after that . . . )
Love introduced “Be True to Your School” as “one of the most patriotic songs ever written and recorded.” My own “school” loyalty buzzed me, as I mused that it’s the only Beach Boys song I’ve covered, and only once, when my high school band had a reunion 8 years ago, at my brother’s house, and my brother sang lead; that was a time, that was a time.
Love is 67 now and still singing the poignant song of transition and insecurity, “When I Grow Up To Be a Man.” I know many grown men and women who still feel in transition, who still hope to accomplish something “when they grow up.”
We didn’t stay for much of the show, because we went on last-minute free tickets, and my son fell asleep hard in my lap very early in the concert and then squirmed uncomfortably about the time we would have left to get him to bed on a school night anyway; when he cried out with a bad dream it was time to go. Glad to have been there. Hope to do it again some day, but if it doesn’t come to pass, the memory shall linger pleasantly, until, perhaps, it becomes its own abyss of longing.
-- Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, 1818
Thursday, September 04, 2008
UPDATED, FRIDAY NIGHT, with the mystery of the mansion-backdrop resolved, below.
[I cut the picture of the Oscar statue that originally headed this post and replaced it with a still from McCain's speech with the confusing backdrop.]
The first several minutes of McCain’s speech felt like an Oscar winner’s.
Probably because: This is his peak, his apex, his high watermark. He ain’t going any higher than this.
He had some stumbles over his line readings, but on the whole the speech worked, if you discount the misrepresentations, which you probably should, because, even if he gets called to account for them, the vast majority of listeners will never hear the corrections. It was brave of him to criticize his own party, but he is no outsider, and Palin is no reformer.
I missed part of the speech before the end, but his talk of his experiences as a POW was moving, and his call to service and to not give up was stirring. I missed Cindy McCain’s speech, but she’s attractive in the reaction shots, as are both of the Palins -- they all remind me of my relatives. I come from a Republican family; neither the Bidens nor the Obamas reminded me of my relatives, except, come to think of it, Barack’s sudden outbursts into a joyous grin when talking to or about his family, and of course his daughters were adorable Every Children.
The video backdrop for the opening of McCain’s speech puzzled me -- a vast green lawn in front of a mansion on a sunny day -- was it one of his mansions? I don’t know. Didn’t get it. Seemed like a bad idea. The cornfield later was better, and then the blue sky with an American flag flying was good too.
But the end, with the two couples pacing the stage waving to the crowd -- McCain looked old. He moves like an old man. He has undoubtedly shrunk, and his younger wife looks taller than him. That was interesting -- he isn’t nearly as tall as and doesn’t come of as nearly as vigorous as Reagan was at a similar age.
Congratulations on your Oscar, Senator McCain. I do not know for certain, but I think the majority of voters will prefer a newer direction than you can offer. I hope so.
* * *
UPDATE FRIDAY NIGHT
Talking Points Memo reports that the building projected on the video backdrop for the opening of McCain’s Thursday night speech was Walter Reed Middle School in North Hollywood, California. Apparently Team McCain considerably whitened the building for their show.
It seems that McCain’s team intended a backdrop of Walter Reed Army Medical Center but goofed on the Google.
(And by the way, that was footage, not a still shot, of the high school -- at one point the TV network I watched showed someone walking into the high school behind McCain.)
TPM followed up with a statement from Walter Reed Middle School principal Donna Tobin:
“It has been brought to the school's attention that a picture of the front of our school, Walter Reed Middle School, was used as a backdrop at the Republican National Convention. Permission to use the front of our school for the Republican National Convention was not given by our school nor is the use of our school's picture an endorsement of any political party or view.”
