Lick the Presses! Friday, November 14, 2003

My cats are famous! From today's WSJ:

PRODUCT: Kitty Tease; $10; www.kittytease.com
PITCH: "Trims the fat from your overweight cat," says maker.
COMMENTS: Our New York testers waved this exerciser -- it's like a lure dangling from a pole -- for 10 days in front of 15 1/2- pound Peggy. She hardly moved, but their three other cats jumped all over her to get at it.

@ 10:04:00 AM, ,

The Flute Player of Beppu Thursday, November 13, 2003

Regarding my post late last night...I think it was a little on the muddled side. I was in that kinda mood. Basically, my point was, as an artist if you're intellectually incoherent in your private life eventually it shows up in your work. I sort of made that point backwards, I think (starting with "God Loves Everyone," then heading into the Elliott Smith stuff). But then again, that's the magic of blogs: No editing! Not even when the blogger's an editor.

@ 8:27:00 AM, ,

Don't Take Your Guns to Zabar's

In response, once again, to my buddy Dave's post about Johnny Cash (and his citing "Johnny Yuma" as one of his favorite Cash songs): This is one of my favorite "Seinfeld" routines (courtesy of a fine site). It probably won't translate in print, but...


KRAMER: I'll tell you what to do, I'll tell you what to do. You go to Tor Eckman. Tor, Tor, he'll fix you right up. He's a herbalist, a healer, George. He's not just gonna fix the tonsils and the adenoids, he is gonna change the whole way you function -- body and mind.

JERRY: Eckman? I thought he was doing time?

KRAMER: No, no, he's out. He got out. See, the medical establishment, see, they tried to frame him. It's all politics. But he's a rebel.

JERRY: A rebel? No. Johnny Yuma was a rebel. Eckman is a nut.

@ 8:24:00 AM, ,

Do Not Foresake Me Oh My Darling Wednesday, November 12, 2003

I am about to do something called "burying the lede," which means the real argument here starts about halfway down (and, now that I read it over, winds the hell all over the place). But bear with me.

Ron Sexsmith is one of the best singer-songwriters around. His lyrics, in particular, are astonishingly good--simple and homely, without any of the flashes of Elvis Costello or Bob Dylan, but with an emotional wallop wordier writers lack. Mrs. WTJ and I chose one of Ron's songs for the first dance at our wedding:

FALLEN
The leaves have lost hold of the branches as always
Which leaves us with gold- and wine-colored pathways
In the same way I've, the same way I've fallen for you

You opened your arms like a school door to summer days
And opened my heart to the rumors of a higher place
Now where was I, baby I've fallen for you

Love is always on the go
It never stays in one place
Day by day it changes and it grows
But you always recognize its face

Day by day it changes and it grows
But you always recognize its face

The leaves have lost hold of the branches as always
Whcih leaves us with gold and wine colored pathways
In the same way I've, the same way I've fallen for you

Like the star in the night, baby I've fallen for you

On top of that, Ron has a tremendous religious sense. Many of his songs are, subtly, about faith and God and all that fun stuff, and even in the ones that aren't, you can hear the footsteps in the garden, if you catch my drift. When I first started going back to church, I wanted to get across to Mrs. WTJ why I was doing it, what it meant to me. So I put together a couple CDs of songs as a sort of "shadow gospel"--songs that weren't explicitly religious but corresponded, in lyrics or just mood, with certain bible passages. Ron was all over the place, and without forcing the issue. This tune, which I used for "then he gave up the ghost," is one of the finest bits of modern lyric-writing I've ever heard:

SEEM TO RECALL
Well a bad day is when I'm up in the air
A better day is when I'm in repair
Like this it's always been
Oh but then again
I seem to recall a time when

The day ahead was an open book
For every page I read, a second look
What I knew then somehow
Can't put my finger on it now
But I seem to recall doing without

I seem to recall when a daydream
Seemed to be all I'd take with me
My wherewithal
I seemed to recall

Now we're bumming round feeling awkwardly at home
Amidst the dumbing down and the talk shows
With nothing much to say
It wasn't always this way
I seem to recall a brighter day

I seem to recall when your light
Seemed to be all all I'd go by
After nightfall
I seem to recall

What I knew then somehow
I've put my finger on it now
I seem to recall that there was no doubt

I seem to recall when your love
Seemed to be all I was so sure of
It could break my fall
I seem to recall

My wherewithal
I seem to recall

Listen to the tune sometime, if you can; listen to what he does with it. You'd never imagine the word "wherewithal" would break your heart.

But.

Ron is a sentimentalist. Last year he put out a record with a really disappointing song called "God Loves Everyone"--the title being, in many ways, the smartest thing about it.

God loves everyone
Like a mother loves her son
No strings at all
Unconditional
Never one to judge
Would never hold a grudge
'Bout what's been done
God loves everyone

There are no gates in heaven
Everyone gets in
Queer or straight
Souls of every faith
Hell is in our minds
Hell is in this life
But when it's gone
God takes everyon

Its love is like a womb
It's like the air from room to room
It surrounds us all
The living and the dead
May we never lose the thread
That bound us all

The killer in his cell
The atheist as well
The pure of heart
And the wild at heart
Are all worthy of its grace
It's written in the face
Of everyone
God loves everyone

There's no need to be saved
No need to be afraid
Cause when it's done
God takes everyone

God loves everyone

He had the best intentions, I'm sure, but the song comes off as "Jesus wants everybody for a moonbeam," and as such wincingly bad. Still, a bad song is forgivable, and the rest of the album is sweet and swellegant.

Then came this, recently, on his Web site:

It's been a tough year thinking back on all the great artists we've lost. But I think Elliott Smith's passing, in some way, is the saddest because I believe he had so much more great music in him. I had the pleasure of meeting him on a few occasions... once in LA in the lobby of the Roosevelt Hotel..and once in London at the Royal Albert Hall and both times I was struck by his shyness and kindness. It was encouraging for me as a semi-struggling songwriter to see him breakthrough and it always made me try that much harder. I was lucky enough to see him perform once in New York as well, which I remember as being a bit frustrating because he sat on a stool and I couldn't see him at all from the back of the room. Anyway, I wish he could have stuck around a bit longer but I guess the soul wants what the soul wants. The world will miss him very much.


Let me repeat that:

Anyway, I wish he could have stuck around a bit longer but I guess the soul wants what the soul wants.

"The soul wants what the soul wants"? I'm sorry, but that's carrying sentimentalism to the point of moral lunacy. How can you possibly reduce suicide to "what the soul wants"--as if Elliott Smith fell in love with a kitchen knife and his parents didn't approve?

Stuff like that, which is par for the course on artist Web sites, just wears me out. I love the immediacy of the Web, I love the idea of blogs and online journals, but there comes a point where I just don't want to know what people are thinking. A former friend of mine, whom I've gotten a lot of mileage out of on this blog, asked me before he broke things off: "Just about every artist and writer you like disagrees with you" on certain strongly held points. How could I just write off that body of opinion?

Easily. I expect a lot from artists I admire, but intellectual cogency isn't one of them. The ability to write songs, or paint pictures, or tell stories, is not a guarantee of clear vision or common sense--if anything, these days, it's the opposite. I use Ron Sexsmith as an example here precisely because I respect and admire him: Even this guy, sensitive and spiritual and all the rest, is absolutely out of his mind on some issues.

There's a longer post in this, but I don't have it in me right now. But I wish artists would give their opinions some more thought. By letting their opinions get mushy, eventually their art will suffer--as with "God Loves Everyone."

In short, by ignoring their heads, they're stabbing themselves in the heart. Just like Mr. Smith. Who should rest in peace.

@ 10:08:00 PM, ,

God's Comic

Today, Art Carney and King Crimson.

First, the band. I've been talking with a friend and fellow fan about their last record, which as I noted earlier, I've warmed up to. They're an odd band, for those of you who don't know them. Over the past 30-odd years, they've gone through any number of lineup changes, with only guitarist Robert Fripp sticking around as anchor, in all senses of the word. Most people know them as a bizarro art-rock outfit, but they've also gone through an intriguing CBGB phase (my personal favorite) and are currently a sort of...I dunno. Part electronica, part clang-metal. Guitar god Gary Lucas made a comment to the effect that this is the sort of music they'd play in a police state, and there are times I can't help but agree. The closest comparison I can come up with is the chase-scene music in "Aliens." It's like a listening to a factory trying to carry a tune.

What I like about the current record is that it has moments of lightness. Fripp and Belew, the guitarists, chase each other around like butterflies--lots of racing up and down frets, lines of melody darting in and out, very fugue-y, very mathematical. What I don't like is that the lovely fugue-y things aren't really in the service of great melodies or lyrics. The butterflies start whirling, and my ears come to attention, but at the end of the song, I wonder: What was I just listening to?

It's a function, I think, of how the songs were constructed: Lots of studio jamming, lots of live improv, which then got pieced together into five- to eight-minutes tunes. I think that leads to noodling. The only bits that I wish had been communally hashed out were the lyrics: Adrian Belew, the singer and word man, has written some lovely, affecting lyrics in his day, but he never lost the soft spot on his head. That's OK when he's writing about love or inner revolutions or whatever, but when he turns his guns on Big Issues, forget it. After two verses you want to nuke the whales.

I wish I had more to say about Art Carney. I used to love "The Honeymooners" unreservedly. I knew all those couple dozen episodes backward and forward, but watched them twice a night anyway. Somehow it didn't seem stale until they found all those hundreds of "lost" episodes. To grossly exaggerate, it was like somebody turning up fifty-five new Shakespeare plays, or twenty new Nick Drake records. In a sense, "The Honeymooners" was wonderful because we only had a handful of them. As soon as they stopped being scarce, they stopped being special.

Still, I get a twinge every time I walk out of the Port Authority and see the statue of Ralph Kramden. How many other professions would make an icon out of a fictional character? Would the Post Office put up a statue of Cliff Claven? If the sewer workers of New York have a headquarters, somebody should agitate for a statue of Ed Norton. Tell me that wouldn't be perfect.

But why? I think it's because those two were the last honest-to-God blue-collar heroes on TV. Every other show at the time was either variety (like Jackie Gleason's, for example) or something like "Make Room for Daddy," where a star entertainer played himself, living in a fabbo New York duplex. The supposed blue-collar shows that came after just don't convince. "Roseanne" was funny, but they were white trash, not salt of the earth. Plus Roseanne had her agendas, plus she got drunk on stardom. "Drew Carey" is funny, but it's a slapstick show, and doesn't have the texture of real life. Ralph and Ed were real guys. They were morons, they were bipolar, they lived on shoestrings--but ain't that America.

Anyhow, toodle-oo, Art. Like the man said, see ya later--I'm eatin' a patayta.

@ 8:52:00 AM, ,

God Save Fu Manchu, Moriarty and Dracula Tuesday, November 11, 2003

Back at work two days. Thoroughly unpleasant. If Skunk Baxter is listening, I could use some space-based assistance about now...

Not much to say. Wiped out. The Kinks are not as good as I imagined they'd be: Another band best approached by anthology. Meanwhile, a friend at the office argued that the Minutemen's "Double Nickels on the Dime" is the best album of the 1980s. I tried to argue for some faves ("Rain Dogs," "The Nightfly," "Discipline") but I think those records, varied as they are, all are sort of staid: They don't necessarily sound fresh and funky on repeated listening.

"Rain Dogs" is a Hopper painting come to life, lots of rich characters and weird, homely sounds...but when it gets too familiar it's like riding the subway and having a drunk keep nodding off on you. "Nightfly" is so sleek and shiny it should have fins...but listen to it enough and the songs all feel about twenty minutes long. "Discipline" is fun and spiky and funky, a bunch of clever guys stretching out of their usual fields. But there are those endless instrumentals, and the lyrics just don't stand up on the rest of the tunes.

So what's the best album of the 80s? Maybe something Elvis, maybe something Go-Betweens. Or Talking Heads? Marshall Crenshaw?

Too close to call. Send your suggestions.

@ 8:55:00 PM, ,

I Have Never Met Simonyi, But I Plan to Find the Time Sunday, November 09, 2003

It all comes together, in this item by an interesting blog, Power Line. Emphasis mine.

Yesterday evening Hungarian Ambassador to the United States Andras Simonyi spoke at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland to pay tribute to the force of rock music in bringing down Communism in Hungary. Like Ambassador Simonyi, I love the music. I don't necessarily buy his thesis, but his speech testified to the inspiration that the music provided him to oppose tyranny. (Below is a 1999 photo of Ambassador Simonyi jamming with his daughter.)

The AP account of the event hilariously notes that Ambassador Simonyi was introduced by "defense and anti-terrorism consultant Jeff Baxter, who once played guitar with The Doobie Brothers and Steely Dan." The account kindly omits Baxter's nickname, "Skunk." Baxter stated in his introductory remarks that "[t]here is a commonality to the music and freedom. To Andras, Western music was an open window of fresh air in a very repressive society." The AP account of the event is "Rock music brought down Communist house, official says."

@ 9:33:00 AM, ,