Dave McGowan's "Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon": Book Review

This genial set of ruminations reminds me of what were once called "bull sessions." You'd stay up late with a pal who'd regale you with off-beat speculations and ingenious theories that sounded plausible in the wee hours, at least. Dave McGowan compiled such on the Net, and one gathering resulted in this series of connections arguing, loosely, that the CIA and the military were behind the sudden influx of musical activity (I hesitate to label it all as creativity) in late 1960s Laurel Canyon.

As a native Angeleno, my memories remain those of the hazy youngster. Our 44th president, five weeks younger than me, has been relegated to "late middle age" by a journalist I recently perused, so I suppose even those of us on the cusp of fading Boomers and actually more akin to suspicious Gen X rather than the idealism of the previous generation need to be reckoned with. We after all grew up with Watergate, the return of the POWs from Vietnam, and OPEC's embargo as formative memories in junior high, a time when one's conceptions of the systems that entangle us begins to take shape.

I say this to situate myself. The hippies smacked to me of class privilege even then, while the ordinary folks I lived with and watched appeared to have to make a living and pay the bills and go to jobs they did not particularly care for often. My dad: "99% of the work done is by people who don't feel that great"; so his reply when I felt lazy and I tried to get out of weeding, cleaning kennel runs, or whatever required me to leave my bookish niche and venture out under the smoggy sun to get grimy.

Anyhow, as McGowan digresses frequently, so do I. The contents document the counterculture, but also predecessors, however dimly or briefly tied to Lookout Mountain (once the proverbial top secret place of experimentation), the "defense industry," spies, and other furtive efforts, emanating out of the Beltway with eerie regularity, once one connects the dots and fills in the family trees of a myriad.

With little talent more than to be coincidence or happenstance, many of the pampered scions found themselves rock stars, or at least hangers on and movers and shakers and hustlers and victims of such. McGowan delineates with obsessive good humor and wry asides how so many came West. His anecdotes may be familiar to those following the times, but it's entertaining to find him debunk hoary tales such as how Neil Young's hearse in Sunset Strip traffic somehow met aspiring members-to-be of Buffalo Springfield. The doleful tones of The Doors with earnest Jim Morrison (check out his lineage) get their comeuppance. And once more we contemplate the roles drugs played, to bring down such deserving outfits as Love, who could have bettered what the Doors cashed in on instead.

McGowan crams in or appends Houdini, as a coda from his other research, and like this book's trajectory, it's a wandering way into the canyon. Where houses burn with astonishing frequency, runaways get hoisted into fame, and the air of privilege for some never fades despite their hollow claims to liberal slogans. David Crosby (check out his lineage) earns deserved mockery in particular.

This lacks editing. It's all over the place, And how did the Mamas and the Papas manage to record two "fourth albums"? McGowan's affection for this intrigue proves at odds with its need for revision.

It's an enjoyable ramble, even if McGowan must admit he's stymied by the inherent secrecy within the set-ups he tries to trace. This makes for the type of "but it could all be true if we only knew the truth" sort of escape hatch that enables such suppositions their place in pop culture's fringe regions. But for any who like myself wonder why the radical protests and edgy subversion of the dangerous counterculture faded so soon into reveries and moonbeams, this provides a suggestive scenario why.
(Amazon US 5-16-17 except paragraphs 2+3)

Ag an Babhla na Choillte Chulleain aríst.

 

Ar feadh an tseachtaine seo caite, thóg amach Léna agus mé leis Niall agus a chailín Áine. Chuaigh muid ag an Babhla na Choillte Chulleain aríst. Chuala muid ceithre saothair ceile.

Bhí siad téama na Fraince ann. Bhí maith liom an príomh-piosa is mó ann. Bhí sé an shionsacht daicheadú le Mozart. Tá sé ainmithe "an bParas,"ar ndóigh.

Ach, bhí sé an-ghearr ann. Ansin, bhí sé an dara piosa le Saint-Saens. Bhí se reasunta mór, ach go gearr, tháinig dordveidhle óg agus rinne sé go-hiontach.

Bhí sós ann. D'ith ceapaire cáis leis arán maith. D'ól leann Indiach geal "Loser" le Elysium i tSeattle agus leann dubh "Black Rhino" ó Grualann Adelbert i hAustin.

Sheineamh siad piosaí le Ibert agus Haydn. Bhí an priomh-piosa chomh ceol im "Bugs Bunny"; ní fheadfaidh go chuimne liomsa le Haydn is mó ach oiread! Mar sin féin, bhain sult as againnsa suas na rialtaí mar i gcónaí.

At the Hollywood Bowl again.

During the past week, Layne and I took Niall and his girlfriend Ann out. We went to the Hollywood Bowl again. We heard four musical works.

They had a French theme. I liked the first piece most. It was the fortieth symphony by Mozart. It is named "The Paris," of course.

But it was very short. Then there was the second piece by Saint-Saens. It was all right, but suddenly a young cellist came and made it wonderful.

There was a break. I ate a cheese sandwich with good bread. I drank an IPA "Loser" from Elysium in Seattle and a dark ale "Black Rhino" from Adelbert Brewery in Austin.

They played pieces by Ibert and Haydn. The first piece was like music in "Bugs Bunny": I cannot recall the Haydn much either! Nevertheless, we enjoyed ourselves under the stars as always.

(Ghriangraf/Photo.)

Chris Grosso's "Indie Spiritualist": Book Review

Subtitled as a "no bullshit exploration of spirituality," this unsurprisingly addresses those who have felt disappointed by mainstream denominations and New Age inventions. Chris Grosso, an indie rock musician and a former addict, speaks to those who may share his restless quest. It has led him down a loosely Hindu path, one that mixes Eastern and Buddhist concepts with an eclectic embrace of similar seekers and peacemakers. Noah Levine, a kindred spirit who ministers to the marginalized and those often turning to sobriety, introduces Mr. Grosso's depiction of the Buddha as an "indie spiritualist," one who "walked away from the spiritual and religious circles of his time and found his own path."

Coming of age in 1980s Connecticut, Mr. Grosso's "deeply ingrained question everything punk-rock mind-set" spurs him to question lifestyles and doctrines. He sustains respect for those teachers and methods which fail to resonate with him, while he encourages dissatisfied searchers to consider his difficult past and his fulfilling present as he has weathered drugs and drink to find a family and a calling. He gathers on his website interviews with musicians and clergy, and this book may have adapted his personal essays, organized chronologically as a memoir as well as a journal of his quest.

He defines an indie spiritualist as "someone who honors the spiritual truth within themselves" no matter what others may think. Although spiritual, Mr. Grosso eschews the "exceedingly positive love-and-light movement or the dogmatic tenets of spiritual and religious traditions." Instead, he finds in a rougher, edgier, and often much louder milieu his intellectual and musical satisfaction. "So much of this so-called spirituality is presented as pretty and cosmetic, and basically is to spirituality what Jersey Shore is to reality." He credits a Van Halen concert, with a twenty-minute guitar solo, as one amplified gateway into elation. This engagement with the mosh pit and the mass energy of rock, as well as the gentler flow of the Hindu kirtan musical ceremony he favors now, offers a refreshing contrast and a necessary outreach to similarly minded people who love music, loud or soft, as one avenue into the mystic, and into the thunder, where Mr. Grosso reminds us the spirit can also roam.

As one may expect from the subtitle and the audience for this book, Mr. Grosso makes no apologies for his vocabulary. He tries to discard the cant and smug piety of spiritual rhetoric. Despite in this collection a tendency (which he may well agree with) to ramble and belabor the point of an often familiar story of hard times followed by a passage through pain and fear into devotion and renewal, his genial, heartfelt, but blunt tone may shake up those long wearied by gentler inspirational tales.

Recounting his years of being trapped in a failing body and a trapped mind clouded by poisons, Mr. Grosso tries to throw off what he clings to. Yet he still insists on staring down the ugly. He promotes both "beautiful and the disgusting" qualities of a life accepted without boundaries or denials. He confesses: "I say 'us' because I'm tired of writing as if I actually believe in the illusion of you and I."

He challenges his readers to "embrace all the beauty, terror, and weirdness exactly as it is." Mr. Grosso appends, as a reader who finishes this account will expect, a wide-ranging (if for this rock fan a bit too recent in its tilt, but that may be his indie rock vs. this reviewer's) set of musical and literary recommendations. These for curious readers and listeners may lead inquirers further down Mr. Grosso's direction, where the esoteric empowerment of the New Age sidles into rowdier and more confrontational skate-punk and hip-hop scenes.  (Notwithstanding Mr. Grosso's aspersions earlier in the text, the publisher's imprint and the bent of much of these "alternative" contents intersect the tattooed and the pierced with name-brand gurus and counter-cultural texts familiar to earlier seekers.)

Like many in recovery, Chris Grosso struggles to learn love, and to bond with others who suffer. He tries to enter a state of acceptance of the frailties all creatures share, while he attempts to leave behind self-recrimination and endlessly condemning himself for past failures. He champions a "capacity for emotional sobriety." This pattern, repeated for centuries in the stories of those who have turned their lives around to find a spiritual path leading them to a hard-won inner peace, places Indie Spiritualist (apart from its cutting-edge inclusion of QR links to YouTube videos and Mr. Grosso's music) within a venerable rhetorical pattern St. Augustine might have recognized from his hallowed Confessions. (2-27-14 to New York Journal of Books)

John McMillian's "Beatles vs. Stones": Book Review

The conventional wisdom claims both bands loved each other; any rivalry was only hype. Historian John McMillian marshals evidence, gleaned from chronicles, biographies, interviews, and his own expertise as a scholar of the underground press, that suggests the contrary. While carefully allowing for mutual respect and admiration between the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, he reveals that the competition between the perennial "toppermost of the poppermost" and their scruffier, sleazier runners-up motivated the Stones to match the success of pop's lads from Liverpool, who were then driven to keep ahead of those equally calculating London blues-rockers, during much of the 1960s. McMillian examines the creation of the marketing images for both groups, and he demonstrates how they were both, despite denials by members, complicit in their Fab Four models and thug five poses.

He begins with the clichés. They merit qualifications but endure as plausible. The dichotomies emerge. The Beatles as Apollonian, the Stones as Dionysian; one pop, the other, rock; erudite vs. visceral; utopian as opposed to realistic. Sean O'Mahony, publisher of both bands' official fan magazines starting respectively in 1963 and 1964, crafted and softened their public images. He opines: "The Beatles were thugs who were put across as nice blokes, and the Rolling Stones were gentlemen who were made into thugs by Andrew [Loog Oldham, their manager]." McMillian accepts this as closer to the truth than the bands or their fans might admit during the next half a decade.

It took the Beatles years in seedy dockside Hamburg to hone their craft and sharpen their edge in well-known, less wholesome manner than their revamped mop-top makeover for Beatlemania and playing for royalty. McMillian contrasts the rapid rise, within half a year, of the Stones from R&B idolatry and obscurity to a more accessible delivery of a style with limited appeal, the electric blues. What eased the Stones' ascent was a rush to find the next lucrative regional scene, the next Beatles.

The Stones debuted on national British television affably, dressed up in matching houndstooth suits. Yet, the five soon reverted to a more hangdog look on stage. Resenting The Ed Sullivan Show and the Beatles' American breakthrough paralleling their British acclaim for what seemed soppy females from seven to seventy, Oldham began selling the Stones as "the band your parents loved to hate". Not only age but gender mattered. Dick Rowe (whose oft-told sob story--as the Decca executive who turned down that foursome from the Northern hinterlands only to rush down from Liverpool soon after in May of 1963 to see and sign the Stones at the Crawdaddy Club in London on George Harrison's recommendation--gets necessary correction in McMillian's analysis) marveled at the Stones. Not so much for their music, but their marketability. Rarely a girl to be seen in their crowd, yet boys all slavered over the band, and their androgynous singer only added to the Stones' mystique.

The press leaped onto another bandwagon. Future John Lennon biographer Ray Coleman pushed the "Would You Let Your Sister Go With a Rolling Stone?" headline for Melody Maker. Future rock encyclopedist Lilian Roxon peddled the received wisdom: "The Beatles' songs had been rinsed and hung out to dry. The Stones' had never seen soap and water. And where the adorable little wind-up Beatle mop-tops wanted nothing more than to hold a hand, the hateful rasping Stones were bent on rape, pillage, and plunder." Some youths began to drift into a more dangerous, salacious group than one for princesses and schoolgirls to swoon over. The Stones defied any ready-made boy band look.

Stereotypes worked for or against the Stones. Featured on Dean Martin's variety show, the band aired in America on their often disastrous first tour. Dino chortled to his audience: "You're under the impression they have long hair. Nah! Not true at all. It's an optical illusion. They just have low foreheads and high eyebrows." In San Antonio, playing at a rodeo, their supporting act was "a bunch of performing monkeys". It looked as if the British front-runners feared no surprise from behind.

However, Lennon bristled. The instrumental variety and lyrical sophistication of Rubber Soul quickly found a deft response in Aftermath. He brooded: "Everything we do, the Stones do four months later." McMillian champions the underdog, affirming that the Stones often put their diverse instrumentation to "better and more innovative than the Beatles normally did". A statement sure to sustain debates today, but with the flailing Brian Jones still able to show moments of genius on record, and with Jack Nitzsche taking on studio production that began to match that by George Martin, the two bands by 1966 seemed more evenly matched than any would have predicted two years earlier.

Proud and cocky, Lennon and Paul McCartney felt they bettered the five blues fanatics at the polished as well as psychedelic pop game. Spurred on by Sgt. Pepper two months before, the Stones, stoned and mocking, failed to finish "We Love You". Then, John and Paul walked in, quickly restructured the song around their own high backing vocals, and showed the upstarts (as they had when John and Paul tossed their new song, "I Wanna Be Your Man", at a floundering Keith Richard and Mick Jagger two and a half years before to record) how in Oldham's witness "vision became reality. We'd just have another major lesson from the guv'nors as to what this recording thing was all about."

As the Summer of Love faded amid Mick's own drug bust and legal dealings, and as the Vietnam War and social unrest flared the year after, both bands were called to task by young people urging solidarity from their counterculture role models. McMillian handles the controversy around Lennon's "Revolution", as underground papers added to the mainstream media a sharper round of accusations against the Beatles, if usually patience to let the Stones to speak out for the New Left. More than one radical, based on Jagger's Cockneyisms and the band's swagger, believed them proletarian lads. "Street Fighting Man" true to Jagger's equivocal nature played his audience off to his gain. After some Chicago radio stations had boycotted his band, Jagger commented: "They must think a song can make a revolution. I wish it could." His pose at the barricades proved another adroit but fleeting stance. While the immense corporate sponsorships of the Stones on future tours might not have been conceivable for the hippies who loved them, their U.S. tour in 1969 already hinted at compromise.

As for the Beatles in their later phase, their own mismanaged and hapless Apple enterprise seemed to be regarded by its target audience less as a sellout to commerce and more charity towards freaks and schemers. Certainly, intended partly as a "tax-avoidance scheme" and partly as fun, it succeeded in diverting profits away from the band's deep coffers. The failures of Epstein's death, the Maharishi, and Magical Mystery Tour may have made the reclusive Beatles post-touring more visible again for their fans. Joshua Newton's letter to a Detroit paper spoke for many of his generation: "The Beatles' politics are terrible, but they're on our side." McMillian astutely if too briefly sums up the telling transition from an underground press eager to argue, as Newton might, with its idols, versus the alternative papers full of fawning coverage of the bands whose ads filled their pages soon afterwards.

Much of Beatles vs. Stones will be familiar to any fan who follows each band closely. It relies on secondary sources, well-documented and in-depth, and by now, everyone associated with either band has been hunted down and interrogated so often that scholars such as McMillian can sift through massive archives. Augmenting these, he relies on periodicals on microfilm from the underground press, which reveal that the likes of Brian Epstein, O'Mahony, or Oldham cannot manage the reactions of restive, antiwar or revolutionary fans. Without supplication but with veneration, for the Stones and the Beatles are both elevated to deities, radicalized youth fight the Man and yell back at four or five men.

Financial dealings consumed both bands by the end of the 1960s. Fighting not against each other but for their royalties and copyrights, this signals a move from the utopian idealism of flower power into a harder, street-smart attitude to cushion, or boost, their bottom line. In fact, after Epstein died, Jagger and McCartney mooted joining the two bands' business interests. Allen Klein killed off this proposal.

Within Jonathan Gould's and Bob Spitz' respective biographies of the Beatles' cultural impacts (both among the many resources cited here), as they reached Allen Klein and the ensuing managerial bickering that entangled both bands, dissonance clanged out. Any historian must survey this period, but it sobers the fan who favors earlier if never carefree times for each band. With Brian Jones self-destructing and Lennon self-indulging, the energy darkens. Yoko's entry must be acknowledged. Lennon let go of his fraying Beatles bond, as McCartney tugged for control of the weary band against John in favor of the financial direction pushed by Paul's new father-in-law, Lee Eastman. Mick Jagger had introduced Klein to the Beatles to assist Apple. As for the Stones, Klein finagled better deals for them, and for him. While his tenure was brief, Klein kept all profits (the band had signed over its copyrights from 1963-70) on their best-selling LP to date, the double-disc compilation Hot Rocks.

The tracks ending that anthology signaled, in McMillian's estimation, that a zenith had been reached by the Stones. Let it Be was no Let it Bleed. Beggars Banquet arguably bettered a lot of Abbey Road. Post-Beatles, Mick and John continued to spar in interviews. In 1970, Lennon lashed out again. Lennon claimed the lag between "what we did" and what they did was down to "two months after, on every fuckin' album and on every fuckin' thing we did, Mick does exactly the same. He imitates us."

"At least the Beatles didn't break up because they started to suck." So opens McMillian's coda. Forty-three years after the breakup of their friendly rivals, fans continue (for the most part) to cheer on the Stones, if less so for their albums after a vague point in a future now past that Lennon never predicted: when middle-aged men ruled as rock stars. The Stones shone on Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street, confirming in that past decade's competition who came in first by the start of the next. I agree with McMillian: after 1972, the Stones' "imperial phase" gave way to at best a few good songs per album from then on, and one good album in 1978. He tallies up the scorecard after one contender remains standing. Touring, the Stones deliver the hits as fans once heard them in a bedroom or dorm on 8-track, cassette, or vinyl. The band lands deals, they sell songs (two dozen compilations after Hot Rocks), and they--if by now even Jagger looks older despite his daily dancing with the devil--still brand that lascivious logo. Starting up on tour in 2012, 50 & Counting, averaged $600 per ticket.

The Beatles never have to worry about reuniting. McMillian does not calculate their accrued earnings, or contrast McCartney's lucrative deals with Jagger's own, but his point sticks. The Beatles, after refusing to come together, linger nostalgically for baby boomers, winners against death itself.
(PopMatters 9-23-13; 11-14-13 as shortened and censored to Amazon US)

Altan: "Gleann Nimhe/ The Poison Glen": Music Review

This venerable band from Donegal presents its newest recording. Shifting somewhat away from its Narada-label leanings of a decade back into New Age-inflected stylings, this Compass Records release offers a more traditional delivery of tunes, reliable in their familiar conjuring of their Northwestern Irish heritage. At its best, this recalls their standout albums originally released in America on the Green Linnet label.

This is also the first of their many albums since they began around thirty years ago to feature an Irish-language title. It's taken from a place near vocalist-fiddler Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh's home. She explains it as a mistranslation of "heavenly" glen, in fact, but that so many legends have sprung up to account for its more devilish connotation that it's been kept in its darker emanation. The band is photographed by Edain O'Donnell, or Photoshopped, among the technicolor of that glen, in a nod to the imagination which improves upon nature. This sly nod to enchantment and misdirection in the singer's native tongue represents a clever turn for this ensemble back to the roots music it plays best.

As the first studio album in seven years (I reviewed their collaboration with the RTÉ orchestra celebrating the band's twenty-fifth anniversary for PopMatters two years ago), this features skilled players. Ciaran Tourish supports on fiddle and whistle, Dermot Byrne on accordion, Mark Kelly on guitar and bouzouki, Ciarán Curran on bouzouki and mandolin, and Dáithí Sproule on guitar and vocals. Jim Higgins guests with percussion that shakes up the rhythm now and then, as on the ballad "The Lily of the West". The line-up may obscure the fact that Donegal's known for fiddlers. Tourish and Ní Mhaonaigh compliment each other with the sprightly, fluid sound of their home turf. Stringed instruments back up the fiddling with propulsive energy and shifting melodies that emerge handsomely in this production.

Reels and jigs alternate, as on all their albums and performances, with songs. Ní Mhaonaigh's confident, yet gentle voice commands attention. "An Ghealóg" laments the death of a bunting on a winter's night; I believe (given all I have is a downloaded file) that Harry Bradley's flute is featured here to deepen the sad mood. The massed backing vocals hint back to fellow Donegal natives Clannad and Enya's approach, but these touches enter sensitively and sparingly.

The next song "Caitlín Triall" narrates an all-too-often tale of unrequited love; while again the vocal arrangement recalls their top-charting Donegal neighbors, Altan prefers to base its material upon simpler studio settings. Instrumental tracks do this efficiently, as on "Eddie Curran's Monaghan Twig" or "The Lancer's Jig" imitating their concert medleys which allow the band to show off its balance of lushness with drive.

The last five tracks, whether instrumentals or songs, slow down the pace markedly. The concentration of a more burnished, less frenetic set into the final third of the album may indicate the band's wish to return to the composed, dignified feel of its Narada-label recordings, but I prefer the entries which move the band into overdrive in playing, as well as those vocal opportunities allowing Ní Mhaonaigh to display her sensitive lyrical delivery within the deftly arranged tunes that show off Altan at its finest as Ireland's leading interpreters of its musical tradition. (Amazon US 3-5-12; PopMatters 4-23-12)

"Rough Guide to Ireland": Music Review

This features both big names and newcomers. From Waterford to Belfast, Kerry to Donegal, despite the recession which has closed down many pubs and forced many young people to emigrate, Irish music persists. As a symbol of defiance, celebration, and endurance, this compilation from Compass Records artists along with other releases introduces listeners to current styles.

Opening with a jaw harp and autoharp, Sligo trio The Unwanted hint at Appalachian roots, with a sly, slippery mood for “The Duke of Leinster/Gardiner’s/John Stenson’s #2”. Solas, a familiar New York City ensemble, offers a sauntering, relaxed (if still briskly sung by Máiréad Phelan) take on the traditional “A Sailor’s Life”, popularized by Judy Collins, Martin Carthy, and Fairport Convention.

The veteran Donegal band Altan reliably delivers “Tommy Potts’ Slip Jig” which complements Solas’ style. Former Solas members vocalist Karan Casey and guitarist John Doyle join for “Bay of Biscay” by the late County Clare singer Nora Cleary. It’s a poignant tale of a ghostly swain visiting his separated lover, and the spare form Casey and Doyle adapt recalls Pentangle’s somber fusion of space and tone.

From County Antrim, flute player Brendan Mulholland’s three jigs “The King of the Pipers/Behind the Haystack/The Maid on the Green” follow to lighten the mood. Jack Talty and Cormac Begley join Clare with Kerry, two lilting traditions blending for the concertina slides “Paddy Cronin’s/If I Had a Wife”.

Andy Irvine, from Sweeney’s Men and Planxty, for nearly fifty years has championed this music, more recently with Patrick Street and Mozaik. He sings a merry tale of a close encounter, “The Close Shave” by New Zealander Bob Bickerton; Irvine’s confident, cocky delivery accompanies his trademark bouzouki.

Athlone accordionist Paul Brock and Sligo fiddler Manus McGuire combine with American country musicians in their eponymous band. Their reel “Moving Cloud” steps along in lively form, with banjo too. Another type of fusion arrives from Iarla Ó Lionáird (Afro-Celt Sound System) who updates with atmospheric production and world music innovations his native Irish-language sean-nós (old style) unaccompanied vocal tradition. His “The Heart of the World” sustains this elegant, dignified blend.

Another popular collaborator, Sharon Shannon (The Waterboys) on “Neckbelly” demonstrates her button accordion skills. These slickly mingle with a hipper, MOR-type of mass appeal backbeat, not to all tastes admittedly, but like Ó Lionáird, this direction indicates the contemporary influences which—as Irvine’s bouzouki illustrates—enter into the Irish repertoire and attest to its continuing relevance.

Fidil, logically the Gaelic name for fiddle, pluck and tap their instrument. This Donegal trio (with a nephew of Altan’s singer-fiddler) features a local style of “bassing” a fiddle at a lower octave than another. This echoes the uilleann pipes of one of that region’s talented players, Joe Doherty. “Kiss the Maid Behind the Byre/Tá Do Mhargadh Déanta” show off this home-turf choice well.

Gráinne Holland, from the urban Gaeltacht of West Belfast, on “Dónal Na Gréine” pulls off a tongue-twisting tale of fittingly a feckless drunk in sean-nós (with the percussive drum, the bodhrán) impressively. It’s back to Altan’s Dermot Byrne on fiddle who with Parisian harper Floriane Blancke join for “Sore Point” which despite its name from a Chris Newman composition flows nimbly.

As well as Donegal, Clare continues to appear in the pedigree of many musicians; Hugh Healy’s concertina (a feature of that county) and uilleann piper Michael “Blackie” O’Connell offer a welcome listen to the latter instrument in the sprightly “The Hut on Staten Island”—-originally for banjo—-and “The De’il Among the Tailors” from Packie Russell, one of Clare’s Doolin trio of famous musical brothers.

Brian Finnegan’s flute and tin-whistle may be familiar from Flook; here he calls three songs after Belfast: “Back to Belfast/Anne Lacey/Eroticon VI”. Given the latter title’s hint of sexiness, they all sound jittery, excited, and impatient. Like Ó Lionáird’s approach, Flanagan’s integrates world music textures into a more accessible version of Irish music which may dismay purists but which probably broadens appeal.

Belfast continues its representation with John McSherry on pipes and whistles, Dónal O’Connor on fiddle, and Francis McIlduff on percussion, pipes, whistles. (McSherry, O’Connor, and slide guitarist Bob Brozman feature on a similarly eclectic, worthwhile bonus disc, Six Days in Down.) A trio titled At First Light, they pair their new “The Pipers of Roguery” with a tune appearing in print first in 1756, “The Hag at the Spinning Wheel”. These both mix the more traditional sounds, given the pipes, with an expanded ensemble’s guitars, for a pleasing depth. It recalls the efforts of The Bothy Band from the 1970s in this layered, sequentially structured mode.

What would a compilation be without a supergroup? Donegal’s vocalist Moya Brennan (Clannad), Altan’s fiddler-singer Máiréad Ní Mhaonaigh, and multi-talented sisters Tríona (The Bothy Band, Touchstone, Relativity, Nightnoise) and Maighread Ní Dhomhnaill (Skara Brae) combine with Manus Lunny for “Wedding Dress”. Recorded by Pentangle in 1971, this concludes this album with a chorus of voices in gentle but firm style, as listeners to Clannad and the bands in this paragraph will recognize.

Recommended for its fair nods to the various types of Irish music now in vogue, this might please experienced listeners who may (as did I) find fresh entries. Despite the promotional material touting the session and live atmosphere of such inclusions, I aver this displays better the sheen that warm production and studio time can give to gloss these tunes. It's not as rough as its title in this series lets on. So, it’s a good buy for beginners who want to explore less raw, more fluid deliveries via the Irish styles found in many releases on the Compass and related labels, which continue to provide distribution for this enjoyable music throughout the world. (PopMatters 5-9-13 + Amazon US)

Ag smaoineamh faoi Prág

Bím ag léamh an h-úrscéal nua Ceardlann le Diabhail le Jáchym Topol le deánaí (mo leirmheas anseo). Is scríbhneoir na Seice é. Bhí maith liom a bhun-úrscéal ach go raibh an-deacair: Cathair Deirfiúr Airgead (mo leirmheas anseo).

Ar ndóigh, is cuimhne liom faoi ag dul go Prág i 2003 agus 2005. Chuaigh mo teaghlach ár chéile an chéad uair ansin. Fuair muid árasán deas ar thuas na Cearnach Sean-Baile ar an tstráid stairiúl ach callánach Husova ag trasna na teach tabhairne ársa U Zlateho Tygra (An Tíogair Órga).

An dara huair, d'fhán mé in óstan simplí ag thuas ar lár. Shíl mé go caitheamh sé a bheith ar an tstráid Dlouha. Is é mo chuimhne is fearr leat ag breathnú mír na clár leis cartún níos álainn (sa tSeicis nádúrtha) ar an teilifís sa stocaireacht nuair ag fanacht ar an seomra bricfeasta a oscailte.

Ní raibh mé ar ais go dtí Husova nó an ceantar thuas ar feadh mo chuairt chugainn. Theastaigh uaim ag feiceáil áiteannaí difriúlaí. Chuaigh mé go dtí músaeim go leor. D'ith mé dinnear Mháraco fós.

Ar mo aréir ina n-aonar, chuala mé Don Giovanni ina ionad céann áit a raibh sé don chéad uair i 1787. Shiúil mé ar ais go dti an t-óstan go tapa mar fearthainne a rith sé ar mo clár as an céoldrama. Ní raibh mé a fháil beagnách caillte mar a mo chéad chuirt ar an stráideannaí dorcha foiceannaí méanoiseannaí in aice láimhe chomh an grianghraf seo suas, mar sin féin.

Thinking about Prague

I've been reading a novel The Devil's Workshop (my review here) by Jáchym Topol lately. He's a Czech writer. I liked his first novel but it was very difficult: City Sister Silver (my review here).

Of course, there came to mind going to Prague in 2003 and 2005. My family together went the first time there. We got a nice flat south of the Old Town Square on historic but noisy Husova street across from the ancient U Zlateho Tygra (The Golden Tiger) pub. 

The second time, I stayed in a simple hotel north of the center. I think that it must have been on Dlouha Street. My favorite memory is watching a bit of a very lovely cartoon (in Czech naturally) on the lobby t.v. while waiting for the breakfast room to open. 

I did not want to go back to Husova or the district southwards during my next visit. I wanted to see different places. I went to many museums. I ate Moroccan food too.


On my last night alone, I heard, Don Giovanni in the same place where it was first performed in 1787. I walked back to the hotel rapidly as it rained on my program from the opera. I did not get a little lost as on my first visit on the dark winding medieval streets nearby as in this photograph above, all the same.

(Grianghraf le/Photo ina Sean-Baile in aice leis Eaglais Tyn/in Old Town near Tyn Church, by Kakna's Prague.)

David Ensmiger's "Left of the Dial": Book Review

Over twenty veterans of the punk scene, over three decades on, tell David Ensminger about their formative years and their chosen values. Fragmented identities, made up on the spot, might define their adolescent musicians for years and bands to come. Some wandered beyond what became the limits of punk and hardcore; others sustain punk's eclectic, ornery energy. These accounts compile the intellectual and personal transformations attempted by punks from the late 1970s and early 1980s, freed of the promotional message "via ratty fanzines" or the dutifully chronological approach of "box store biographies." As the interviewer sums up his anthology: "These are the words of punk participants centered on the legacy of punk's sometimes fuzzy political ideology, rupture of cultural norms, media ecology, networking and outreach aims, sexual identity and race relations, and musical nuances."  

Ensminger calls his contributors icons. None matched Joey Ramone's or Johnny Rotten's fame, but  these clever, driven strategists detoured from the dreary dead end of a decade overwhelmed by Pink Floyd, Yes, and Led Zeppelin, when few up-and-coming bands played their own songs rather than covers by FM-radio monoliths who filled stadiums. Few indie bands, according to some interviewed, even existed (at least on the other side of the garage door); this may smack of hyperbole, but depending on the dismal conditions attested to by many here, it's the impetus for this "secret history." 

Peter Case, with proto-punks the Nerves, vowed to break out: "We were going to do what the Beatles did, but our strip bar was across the street" in 1974 San Francisco. Ensminger's focus often settles on California, but given the anglophile emphasis by Jon Savage in his influential account England's Dreaming, first-person verification from the other side of the world proves necessary. As The Damned's guitarist Captain Sensible favors, bursting out from the working classes, the band-driven impetus for musical and social change deserves a hearing lately dismissed by elitist trendsetters. 

This tilt balances the supposition that American punk rock stayed suburban, middle-class, and white. Chip Kinman of the Dils and later Rank and File brought, as a young bassist, a Communist lyrical stance. He figured this would rouse Golden State audiences to confront their fears better than cliched swastikas. Similar to Case, Kinman insists on a rootsier, vernacular, populist strain within punk that aligns it to folk, country, and blues music. He argues articulately for the first wave of American punk, arguably predating if not The Ramones than certainly Rotten, as already established by the mid-1970s in San Francisco and Los Angeles. This oddball, offbeat phase, as L.A.'s El Vez "the Mexican Elvis" or the denizens of San Francisco's Deaf Club typify, comprises part one of Left of the Dial. 

What soon replaced it in tract-home Orange County and the tonier beach cities of the South Bay, hardcore, sounds to Kinman like "machine bands" fixed on an unrelenting discipline and a forceful rigor, exemplified by Black Flag's SST label in its Henry Rollins phase. As for punk, Kinman labels it the "last white popular music" as he laments its "overdocumented" archival status, and rock's "self-referential" trap which stymies innovation. No wonder those from the early stages of punk remain true to punk's unpredictable spirit--by refusing to mimic their own youthful musical molds or models.

Part two, and two-thirds of the book, shoves its way into a mosh pit of "sound and fury." Mike Palm of O.C.'s Agent Orange sprinkled surf instrumentals into punk anthems. Suburban surfers elbowed into hardcore's mosh pits, to push aside the misfits they would have despised a few years earlier in the glitter-glam era when Hollywood and San Francisco punk staggered and flirted amidst gay bars, squatters, and the fringes of the art world such as the Deaf Club.

But subversive or gender-bending punk faded. A uniform of spiked hair, leather jackets, and big boots hobbled purported non-conformists. Representing the transition to the more violent, tribal hardcore O.C. mood of the early '80s, Palm praises Rodney Bingenheimer, the KROQ-FM Sunday night d.j. who championed the otherwise impossible to find import vinyl straight out of London, which preceded and then propelled the local L.A. punk scene. (This reviewer also attests to the kindness and generosity which "Rodney on the ROQ" unfailingly showed to his fans--at first very few of us in '76. His show was our only local lifeline to fresh, startling sounds from abroad or from the late-'70s underground, before the mass marketing of "alt-rock" by KROQ and imitators.) 

The Minutemen's stalwart bassist Mike Watt entertains with tales of how he and bandmate D. Boon traveled up from San Pedro, forty-five minutes south, to Hollywood's raucous concerts. With a shared love for Creedence Clearwater Revival and Blue Oyster Cult, their terse punk-jazz-folk compressed the idealism of populist punk as it embraced the two teens. Watt affirms: "I'm trying to live up to the personal utopia I felt in my life where I could play anything I want and D. Boon could help me. We don't have to live up to anything." Distanced from punk's bohemian ambiance, but lured in, Watt and Boon settled in to a place (on SST) where CCR and BOC covers coexist with a frenetic, experimental band admiring their peers such as Wire or Richard Hell. 

This genial tolerance, as with the plaid shirt sported by Watt in homage to CCR's John Fogerty, supports Case and Kinman's confidence (reiterated in typically reliable fashion here by Ian MacKaye of Minor Threat, Fugazi, Dischord Records) that punk's progressive ethos extends its instigators'  principled, D.I.Y. and anarchic aims. Participants agree that punk unity emerges from its diversity, its ambitions, and its open-mindedness. Watt sums it up: "Back in those days, if you considered yourself punk, you didn't say 'I'm punk.' Now, people say, how are you punk rock? You look like my dad."  

Speaking of punk's contrasts between participants and stereotypes, part of the fun of this presentation is playing its players off each other. Kinman reserves choice words for Jello Biafra; Biafra lashes out at his former bandmates in the Dead Kennedys. Ensminger holds Shawn Stern (Youth Brigade) to a couple of inconsistencies in his interview, while Kira Roessler (Black Flag) reminds readers of that band's calculated non-conformity, reacting to the rigid expectations of its own hardcore audience. 

Jack Grisham (TSOL) distinguishes the "attitude" of early punk vs. the "music" and the "look" of its later versions, which usually fail to innovate. Embodying the presence of such an innovator, Ensminger introduces Keith Morris (Circle Jerks, Off) via his "extended monologues" during concerts, as "he struts the stage like a well-meaning counselor and history teacher." As a Texas college instructor and cultural scholar himself (and Pop Matters columnist), drummer-editor David Ensminger suitably examines the impact of less-heralded figures who continue to strive for experimentation and agitation within the spirit if not always the template of punk. 

Apropos, Morris speaks of his affection for his former roommate, the Gun Club's Jeffrey Lee Pierce. Pierce heaped doses of "aggro" to pepper the Americana musical stew with earthier spices. This pungent blend seeps into an lengthy conversation with Really Red's U-Ron Bondage. Ensminger as a "digital archivist" may let this meticulous contribution go on much longer than his other entries, but the long career of activist U-Ron, from the mid-1960s Texas acid-psychedelic era through the Reagan years into Clear Channel and Vans Shoes' commodification of skate-punk, justifies its inclusion. 

Political, sexual, and racial ramifications feature within later chapters. Beefeater's Fred "Freak" Smith from the D.C. hardcore-funk scene and Article of Faith's Vic Bondi challenge hardcore dogmatism. Straightedge and indulgent factions contend; Ensminger strives for fairness in hearing out the conflict, if leaning far to the left. He pushes a few interlocutors to clarify or defend their claims. He favors the upstarts (after all, this is published by the anarchist-friendly PM Press) to foment small-scale, non-corporate action to spark wider change. Dave Dictor (MDC) surveys the takeover of the alternative movement by the big labels, and he may champion Obama, but he also hopes that the Greens will--eventually after the Democrats fail--replace the powers that be. 

Left of the Dial reminds readers that before Green Day or Rancid, we had Fugazi, MDC, and DOA. The difficulty with this small-scale rebellion endures: how to sustain an audience and make a living from marginal music and radical stances. Many burn out or give in. The little labels themselves encounter difficulties, competing against the majors. Lisa Fancher, founder of Frontier Records who signed many early Southern California bands mentioned here, argues for her side in this complicated situation. Ensminger then appends three "notable persons" to give their testimony. Managers, rights, and royalties, as with any popular music study, play their part in who endures and who succumbs.

There lurk a few slips in transcription (John "Vox" rather than Foxx from Ultravox; "Beechwood" rather than Beachwood for the Hollywood avenue; "Red Cross" or "Kross" for the band who had to respell as "Redd Kross"). Nearly all chapters were previously published; beyond their original readership in fanzines and on Ensminger's eponymous LotD website, some entries needed editorial clarification of band members or fellow musicians casually mentioned only by first or last name by those interviewed. Minor faults aside, this compendium provides a fitting tribute to punk's intellectual and political energy, harnessed to a friendlier, if assaultive, approach that invites in all to play and listen. Better yet, it encourages audiences to become activists, to participate for principled change.

It boils down to protest. Thomas Barnett (Strike Anywhere) nods to the Wobblies and Leadbelly. He cites a Flipside fanzine interviewee himself, continuing the chain of credit lengthened in this collection of voices from those who those stand over but not apart from the crowd. "Punk rock is just urban folk music." (PopMatters 7-2-13; in censored and shorter form to Amazon US 6-9-13, after it rejected many uploads. Only when I eliminated Dead Kennedys, Dils, Circle Jerks was it accepted.)

(Visual Vitriol: Ensminger's digital archive at his Center for Punk Arts) 

"Read the Beatles": Book Review

Fifty articles, album reviews, interviews, reminiscences by the Four and their fans, book excerpts--and a poem or two, one by Allen Ginsberg--add up to a solid resource for Beatles enthusiasts. Astrid Kirchherr offers an affectionate but brief forward; editor June Skinner Sawyers introduces this collection, and puts each entry into a quick context. As one who has heard the band all my life (they broke up officially when I was in third grade but somehow I did not learn the news until I was in fifth, already so ubiquitous their enduring influence seemed), I admit their music itself does not lure me in, so familiar and constant in my background it's been, as much as studying their cultural impact.

On this subject, I've reviewed Jonathan Gould's "All You Need Is Love" and Bob Spitz' "The Beatles: The Biography," and I agree with them that the challenge for those who've grown up with or somewhat after the band is to avoid either easy dismissal or uncritical acceptance of every note played by the Beatles-- the dominant reactions in the media still seem trapped in the nostalgia of the older boomers who watched the band emerge. The tendency's strong from this cohort to depict the Liverpool, Hamburg, and Beatlemania phases in a romantic light, and this can be seen in "Read the Beatles" understandably. As on-the-spot, sharp, nuanced reporting, it's great to read Gloria Steinem's determined 1964 scoop for "Cosmopolitan." She finally grabbed a few words with John at 4 a.m. in a hotel: her last comment to him, "who looked worried: 'I hope you're as true as you seem.'" (68)

This reveals Lennon's unease, and fits into the rarer voices cautioning over the mob mentality and the shelf-life of teen idols. They also fear a consumer crowd that lacks discernment, treating every utterance or every song as perfection. This hesitation, rarer than the shouts, unfolds in critiques by the conservatives in the press, such as Paul Johnson during the initial British frenzy or Robert Goldstein's panning of much of "Sgt. Pepper." It's telling that Goldstein himself was in his mid-twenties when he wrote this, not an old fogy as outraged readers assumed.

In fact, as the editor wisely pairs Goldstein's astute if unpopular June 1967 review from the New York Times (which I admit I find a lot of agreement with, so I put myself in a minority already) with Robert Christgau's typically insightful rebuttal, Christgau tempers his response with respect for his fellow critic's take on the instant phenomenon. It's one of four pieces on the LP, which merits its place, but it does tilt the balance. This chronicle seems to leap from the early days to '67 abruptly, with too little given to the transitional period from "Help" through "Revolver"; it also rushes past the follies of filming "Magical Mystery Tour" and doesn't even glance at the chaotic Apple boutique. Such missteps, for me, would have enlivened and expanded the scope beyond the usual guided tour.

It's over too soon, yes. The Paul is Dead hoax in the article that started it all gains welcome inclusion, and the "Helter Skelter" episode unfortunately but accurately shows the downside of lyrical interpretation among a certain fan. Some sections here seem too beholden to youthful effusions by contributors and others feel extracted as textbook accounts or musical monographs by the tenured, but they would complement a course taught on pop music and the band's legacy. Two Liverpool maps display the neighborhoods mythologized, charted for tourism and the National Trust. The chronology prefacing this anthology's comprehensive, the bibliography's solid as of 2005, the discography's helpful. However, given that some LPs lack any real coverage, more annotation about each (the band's if not every solo effort!) might have helped. A few get a few sentences, others nothing.

After the split, Lennon gets the most press, as expected. David Sheff valiantly tries to hold his own against John and Yoko in a 1981 "Playboy" interview. Simon Frith in a few pages pins down Lennon's energy: private tension--song used to cope or celebrate-- vs. public duty to address his audience and his world in his music and his stances. McCartney appears in a 2004 interview with Jon Wilde as surprisingly fearful of his reputation by comparison with John. It's moving to read Paul's "Here Today" for his partner, a simple song that must have been difficult to compose. George Harrison's coverage in David Simons' 2003 article's excellent, reminding readers of his contributions made to many studio tracks in light of the proof on "Anthology" of John's difficulty with composing. Ringo Starr, alas, gets only two entries, both about the early years. 

It ends with recent reflections. My favorite's Greg Kot's "Toppermost of the Poppermost." Kot sets the success of "Anthology" or "1" in context for those listeners who appreciate the band but lack the total adoration of many of their 60s predecessors. As I fit into this slot, I found this sensibly argued!
(Amazon US12-1-12)

Alexander Theroux's "The Grammar of Rock": Book Review

Given his passion for "exactitude," Alexander Theroux's latest book rambles, rants, and roams past the subtitled realm of "Art and Artlessness in 20th Century Pop Lyrics" into his typically vast territory. An incorrigible expounder of amplified rhetoric, he appears never to have forgotten a song heard, a movie seen, a broadcast aired, or a book read. This total recall in his essay collections, the brief (by comparison with this 336-page closely printed text) "The Primary Colors" and "The Secondary Colors" generated exegeses of some of the same lyrics, scenes, and usages. But, tucked within the limits of the visible spectrum, their chapters were organized by hue and somewhat more cohesive in length and breadth.

As with his 2007 novel the nearly 900-page "Laura Warholic, or the Sexual Intellectual," or his 2011 foray into opinionated non-fiction not quite fact, "Estonia" (my PopMatters review), "The Grammar of Rock" bickers with its titular subject.  Theroux comes back to it, teasing, jostling, cuddling, kicking the object in question. Then drifting.

Without chapters, pauses, or preface, Theroux's scrutiny may overwhelm. Having read all of his fiction and essays, I recommend a thick skin and a wry smile. Theroux explains his stance: he listens to the silence when words are spoken. He quotes Harold Pinter, when "a torrent of language is being employed.  This speech is speaking of a language locked beneath it. That is its continual reference. The speech we hear is an indication of that which we don't hear." Theroux advocates Pinter's attention as a moral act: careful listening to both registers. Theroux apostrophizes: "So look for me, whether with approval or not, over there at the far table-- one chair-- scribbling with a pencil."

One chair leaves him scrutinizing alone, the better to hone in on his many likes and more dislikes. Two pages leap from George and Ira Gershwin to Gerard Manley Hopkins to the Van Gogh brothers. Another verso-recto pair connects St. John the Evangelist's eagle symbol with Henry David Thoreau's pantheism and Ilse Koch, "the Bitch of Buchenwald". Theroux soars into aesthetics and sinks into invective at whim. He hates arch whimsy, but he veers off into meticulous instances of soundalike celebrity voices in film rather than staying on task eviscerating sorry singers. He indulges mocking methods, and his mad takes on the traipsing of Neil Diamond, Barbra Streisand, and Barry Manilow glide alongside appreciation for the phrasing of Frank Sinatra, Slim Whitman, and Sam Cooke. 

His three novels, two essay collections, and travelogue feature, or lapse into, similarly fulsome praise of (or, more likely, fulmination against) what we find promoted as literary, musical, or cinematic standards. Disdaining talk radio and populist cant, grammatical inconsistency and "slanguage", Theroux exocoriates dumbing down, even if he revels in inspired silliness. What he cannot stand: linguistic inanities, sung howlers, spoken clunkers, and verbal tics. 

Was a cultural "slippage" in "signaling profundity without having to demonstrate it" always thus? He admits every decade since the 1930s had its faults; he gave up on music as he did movies around the age of disco, he claims. (But he listens still, as he examines Ghostface Killa, The Fall, Public Enemy's Chuck D., Morrissey, and Tim McGraw among his cast of thousands.) He alludes to a qualitative decline in our lyrics and scripts today, which may make the gaffes and fumbles of the past century appear as if composed by Cole Porter or Noel Coward. The constant distractions we plug into and pump up the volume for make it "nothing less than a miracle that a human being living in the United States nowadays can entertain a single consecutive thought worth anything." (Kurt Vonnegut's story "Harrison Bergeron" comes to my mind.) Any reader of Theroux will not endure him long if he or she lacks delight in satire, denigration, and "snobservation": that term appears in his first paragraph as fair warning.

Yet, as any critic worth consideration, if Theroux admires an artist, he can sum up his or her appeal smartly. Neil Young's "voice with its twang resembles the harmonica he often plays, full of quivering movements like a Canadian aspen"; Theroux hears "something in it like cherry and chocolate making a Black Forest cake." 

Naturally, the fun of "The Grammar of Rock" lies in its acerbic prose as well as its aesthetic insights. "Andy Williams loved schmaltz more than a fat kid loves a lazy dog." P. F. Sloan penned the lyrics for "Eve of Destruction" but the "words could have been written in five minutes on the back of a matchcover with a crayon!" 

He supports his shrill or sly claims with a hectoring, stentorian recital of gleeful evidence as demolishing proof. He wonders if he crushes butterflies under his wheel. For instance, cringing from a dubious display of warbled Yuletide cheer from Rosie O'Donnell and Roseanne Barr, he commemorates them "circling" as if "Mrs. Butterworth and Sara Lee Cheesecake on the Pancake Channel". You'll either laugh or you won't. I laughed.

"Who in Tinseltown did not sing?" Apparently nearly nobody, unless Marcel Marceau graced a marquee. Paul Lynde's lisp on a 1966 episode of "F Troop" or Telly Savalas' attempt to cover the Beatles collide with Alfred North Whitehead's apercu that it "requires a very unusual mind to undertake an analysis of the obvious": the "grammar of rock" signifies a syntax beyond that genre. Theroux's ability to explicate the "obvious" by expounding upon hundreds of blunders filmed, performed, and recorded impresses by its relentless energy. Yet its sheer overload proves its own exhaustive diversion, undoubtedly for less patient readers than me (who admires this encyclopedic style even as I admit its entropic spin) no less than those tiresome touts he skewers on vinyl and rips from celluloid. 

Theroux's knack for character demolition spurs a dizzy audience on: "psuedophilopatristic" flag-waving posers should be "deported on the the first leaking submarine". This potent caliber of wordy ammunition, for those plunked near Theroux's full-bore assault, might be easier to endure for a raw recruit than the high-capacity vocabulary bursts shredding his debut novel "Darconville's Cat" with rhetorical blow-back. It's easier to follow his roaring trajectory as he fires away at the detritus of popular culture. As with "Estonia," his concentration on real-world targets steadies his aim. 

It may be blasting away at two garish plastic fish in a carnival (or casino?) barrel, but who can resist a couple of pot shots? Celine "Dion's singing reminds me of Thomas Kinkade's cloying paintings, glowing, over-saturated, commercialized, with every last window lit to lurid effect as if the interior of the structure might be on fire." Or, "Cher with her gross unmusicality is so bad in virtually everything she sings [sic] validates the assertion that Al-Qaeda leader, the fanatical Puritan Osama bin Laden, makes when he darkly stated that music being played in a house is 'unethical'." 

For support from more congenial arbiters of taste, Theroux turns not only to Ike Turner for cogent sense, but to Voltaire: "Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung." Theroux credits Claude Levi-Strauss' observation. "Music unites the contrary elements of being both intelligible and untranslatable." Theroux never pauses to fully elucidate the meaning of his book's title, but true to its subtitle he heaps up evidence. Philip Larkin decries modernism, Ice Cube defies hip-hop consumerism, and NPR denies Christmas reverence, within a few paragraphs. Links between topics may lurk very subtly, but careful perusal reveals them. 

From an author so formidably memorious (to borrow from Borges' tale's title for Funes), Theroux betrays unease at any challenger to his pugilistic stance. He warns parenthetically: "(Don't doubt me. I know almost every song ever written, as Marlon Brando's mother supposedly did.)" He may betray his own joke in the qualifying adverb. 

He's not joking in his final peroration to take his book seriously. "Industry tampers with both nature and art--accepts anything--until one ends up, tragically, preferring prints to paintings, eating fast-food instead of home-cooked meals, choosing chop-logic to truth, and aimlessly wandering around department stores looking for something you want to need to buy rather than walking the Cape Cod dunes. If you think this is asking too much, so be it." Few of us live near him in Massachusetts or a shore for that matter, but we can admire his admonition, in the spirit of his beloved Thoreau, chiding against what "you want to need to buy."

He concludes, as his novels and essays reliably do, by returning from his digressions and irritations to a steady course set by a moral compass. "I am only asking for a workman's true art." Theologically, aesthetically, and argumentatively, Alexander Theroux urges us to contemplate the shoddy present "state of our creative souls".

Granted the state of Theroux's archives and his creative decades of compiling trivia in the pursuit of what his medieval forebears in scholastic erudition classified as the quadrivia, a couple of faults must be mentioned. Not nearly as egregious as the copy editing not done by his publisher Fantagraphics in "Laura Warholic," but roughly equivalent to the number in "Estonia," errors in a few factoids and typography persist. For example, the quote about Cher above includes the author's [sic], but another bracket might have been added by this reviewer, as Theroux's sentence lacks revision. For an author so finicky, one wonders if Theroux's editors are as intimidated by his onslaughts as his discriminating audience. Many proper nouns lack inclusion in the index which looks as if it meant to list them all.

One last nod to Robert Crumb's cover image. A schlubby nudnik slumped on the couch peruses the album titled "The Beatles"; any fan knows how many lines of copy Richard Hamilton's 1968 cover design compiles. A cleverly minimal play off of Theroux's maximal compilation of hundreds of pages of thousands of facts and tens of thousands of opinions? (PopMatters 3-22-13; in shorter form same day to Amazon US)

Jesse Jarnow's "Big Day Coming: Yo La Tengo + the Rise of Indie Rock": Book Review

It took guitarist Ira Kaplan and his wife, drummer Georgia Hubley, fifteen tries before they found the right bassist, James McNew. This happened over a decade into their career. It began, perhaps apocryphally, with a Village Voice ad: "Guitarist & bassist wanted for band that may or may not sound like the Soft Boys, Mission of Burma, and Love." They formed Yo La Tengo at the end of 1984, when he was twenty-eight and she was twenty-five. This proves their devotion to their craft, and to their endurance as one of America's most innovative rock bands, beloved by a devoted few.

As The Onion summed up their fan base: "37 Record-Store Clerks Feared Dead in Yo La Tengo Concert Disaster." This is one band where the audience mirrors the performers, for nearly thirty years. But, Yo La Tengo benefits by their maturity, growing up involved much more deeply responsible for the indie rock movement as they constructed its formation behind the scenes as well as on stage. Journalists, artists, managers, 'zine writers, sound engineers, roadies, label managers, DJs, promoters: this adds up to only a brief resumé. 

In 1964 at seven, Ira Kaplan fell in love with The Beatles and The Rolling Stones on the car radio. As Jesse Jarnow phrases it, all of the band "inhaled the spore" as this music consumed them. Kaplan barely graduated from Sarah Lawrence. He wrote for the New York Rocker in the days when CBGB and Patti Smith ruled, and championed local talent around the Hudson against musical Anglophilia, yet his favorite band arguably remains The Kinks. 

Still, along with many early-1980s rock musicians, Kaplan admired the punk movement, their alternative heirs, and their common idols, The Velvet Underground. Georgia Hubley, the daughter of avant-garde animators John and Faith Hubley, inherited their quirky, artistic sensibilities and fit with Kaplan's suburban, earnest, yet countercultural sensibility. They began their career, bidding farewell to maybe as many bassists as Spinal Tap had drummers, with a jangle which epitomized their adapted home in a pre-gentrified Hoboken across the river. They hung out at Maxwell's, near the coffee factory of the same name, and, jittery, learned to play better and worry less about nervousness. The modesty of their approach has never left them, and it attests to the quality of their music for so long.


Their chronicler devotes much space and extends earnestly an analogy of the Jersey trio to the roots of the Major Leagues in Hoboken as an alternative predecessor well over a century before. For a band who craves baseball, barbeque, and an intimate relationship with used record stores, roadhouses, and off-beat pop culture which fills their leisure time between gigs, this suits Jarnow's diligent tone. This book will please those already in the know, as with collector-driven pursuits. It crams pages with songs, bands, records, fanzines, comedians, brands, and all the detritus of the past fifty years which nourished the band and its audience. One wonders how David Lee Roth's riposte that all the critics loved Elvis Costello because he looked like them translates for these unassuming three musicians.

Certainly, Jarnow shares their immersion as a record-store habitue. His density of references accumulates; he turns his subject into a symbol of indie rock as it leaves the clubs, courts MTV, faces the demise of vinyl and the rise of Napster, peruses the fine print of lawyers and the connivance of big labels, deals with iTunes, and learns to buy in and not sell out. Yo La Tengo scores movies with original contributions, and you can hear a few seconds of them in a Coke ad for the 1992 Atlanta Olympics and an episode of The Gilmore Girls. Yet, the three manage to keep a low profile and in their rumpled hoodies, jeans, and Converse shoes, they look no different than their audiences, at least from my firsthand experience. This study will please those who seek a comprehensive account of the band, as well as a cultural representation of how Yo La Tengo stands for the very movement they helped form, in far more diverse and dedicated ways than most fans or musicians could ever sustain. 


Jarnow's biography blends a fan-oriented account of the band with a survey of how the trio established as individuals first and then as a band the template for indie-rock survival.  They emerged among the vanguard of what started out as "college rock" via the free-form New Jersey station WFMU in the aftermath of hardcore and post-punk. Husker Du, R.E.M., and The Replacements sought an international audience, along with hundreds of bands from, well, many college towns.

As Jarnow sums up their debut LP, Ride the Tiger (1986): they surprised with eclectic cover tunes in concert (they never repeated a set list) and on record they captured "the sound of good taste". Gradually, they incorporated noise and feedback over folk, and like the Velvets, veered from pop to assault, high-art to novelty, Tin Pan Alley to thrash, masterfully. The past decade, their albums have edged into be-bop, jazz, and sultrier, more sullen moods. Jarnow skims over the first half of their discography on labels smaller than Matador, and a reader who is not a listener may wonder why they stand out sturdily on record and slyly on stage as a nimble, witty trio, infatuated with their obsession.

While critical acclaim slowly grew, as with many indie rockers, they could not cash in plaudits for a paycheck. Typically and for a long time, music brought in less than half Kaplan and Hubley's income, as they did the odd jobs in the music business and labored as part-time copy editors of often wretched pulp fiction. One song, "Mushroom Cloud of Hiss", typifies the way Kaplan's mind works under whatever circumstances it found inspiration from a series of "bawdy old Western tales". Kaplan's sleepy attempt to correct a mangled manuscript's phrase: "The mushroon cloud of hiss penis." A leading Spin critic sniffed of their first full-length that it was music to copy-edit by, an inside joke, I suppose, for a band whose sense of humor and comedic flair receives welcome attention here. 

All the same, despite the origin of their often misspelled and garbled name from a typically hapless Mets Spanish-speaking fielder's call for "I've got it," the mild-mannered, thoughtful, erudite, and wryly funny band's private life gains no sustained exposure. The three keep their distance from even their allies, among their audiences and the critics. Jarnow notes when Kaplan and Hubley were in their forties, finally making a living at music, they "built a public career on the notion of a priori love--an engine hidden from view, its only evidence every record they ever released".


One gains less sense over more than three-hundred pages of narrative how the band comes across in concert with their rotating wheel of fortune to pick songs--or how the loud-soft dynamics the band excels in engage their audiences as much as themselves in unpredictable shifts. Kaplan's ability, as with Lou Reed, to overlap lead and backing lines on guitar, Hubley's mingling of delicacy and bash, and McNew's harmonies and textures receive nods, but these skills merit applause and deeper analysis. Their confident forays into more hushed dynamics and retro-pop sensibilities, I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One (1997), And then nothing turned inside-out (2000), and I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass (another sports phrase, 2006) receive limited song-by-song notice, but overall, the emphasis on the culture Yo La Tengo thrives in rather than the contexts their own music contributes constitutes the main content. 

Fans will not need a reminder of why their music matters, but newcomers may supplement this with the albums themselves. They provide an understanding of why this band not only covered (at their debut Hanukkah charity concert series at Maxwell's in 2001, they played 123 songs over eight nights) "We're An American Band" but epitomizes it in typically good-natured yet encyclopedic fashion. This fits their status as between "tumble" and "logic" on stage and in whatever comprises the rest of their life, if there is one beyond soda pop, TV jingles, comedy reruns, the diamond, or platters of ribs. (Amazon 6-15-12; PopMatters 6-18-12)

Steve Taylor's "The A-to-X of Alternative Music": Book Review

Take the letter "K": Kenickie, Killing Joke, Kraftwerk, Ed Kuepper, Fela Kuti. That exemplifies the range of this thoughtful essay collection. (It goes up to "Z.") Steve Taylor's criteria for inclusion are three: "Working It"--not letting "self-conscious arty behaviour," commercialism or "cultural bandwagon hopping" get in the way of creative fidelity to one's muse; "It"= overcoming verbal and musical limits, either by sticking to a deft aesthetic that works for the artist (Sonic Youth) or upending expectations album by album (The Fall); Consistency-- it speaks to the original audience, yet it attracts new listeners over a career determined by the band or musician's control over image, presentation, and commodification.

I liked Taylor's set-up. An introductory paragraph or two sums up not the usual name-birthdate-hometown-discography of many reference works, but a context and background that goes a bit beyond, into why the musician or band emerged at that time. Taylor emphasizes the way a discography and a presence lifted each musician or band out of the era, while defining it to a discerning audience. He ends each entry with a "first team," the best lineup of the group, and then a "place-time-scene" pinpointing where and how they emerged. Finally, what to hear first and then after guides a reader who wants to become a listener.

Some sudden shifts in style and content in entries, and a few typos or usage slips, trip up Taylor's insistent, often rambling or snarky prose. Also a d.j., you can imagine him slipping in such comments on air after he plays a track by so-and-so. As first of all a thoughtful, passionate, but sensible and discerning fan, his perspective here favors an impressionistic survey of each artist rather than a comprehensive one. Many key albums or songs are barely mentioned, but instead you may learn a fresh factoid or get a snippet from an interview or press release by the artist as compensation. It makes the approach uneven, but certainly personal.

Taylor strives for a blunt, no-nonsense evaluation. He may lurch about as suddenly as the contents, but what unites them, he explains in his introduction, is "bucking the trend of the moment." As a record-store habitue, he notes with members of Ride or R.E.M. (Michael Stipe has a four-paragraph preface musing about "alternative" as "an attitude and approach to what was clearly at that point a business" when his band began) or Tindersticks to name a few how a vision and attitude coalesced in the formative years of those who'd craft a new sound, combining past influences while blending them with their own fresh flavor.

That innovation spans Portishead to Primal Scream to Prince to Public Enemy, and the range of these idiosyncratic, even awkward, but heartfelt and principled essays refreshes. They range from the beats-turned-hippies to the mash-up manipulators on dancefloors today. Taylor does not exclude major-label signings or successful figures, and any "purity" that brings its own lack of popularity brings its own warning. Instead, from Dylan to DJ Shadow, Taylor seeks out the milieu that makes these determined musicians matter. (Amazon US 12-28-11)

Jon Savage's "The England's Dreaming Tapes": Book Review

I admired "England's Dreaming," the essential study of punk's birth from music critic Jon Savage, who watched. For me, it's the best account of its rapid rise and, post-Grundy interview with the Sex Pistols, fall as the small vehicle of artists, intellectuals, students, toilers at dead-end jobs if they were "lucky," and I suppose even a few bonafide working class kids turned into a media-hyped bandwagon where many leaped on, eager to cash in on by what after that TV appearance by the Pistols and pals the end of '76 transformed into a cynical case study in capitalism harnessing an "alternative" subculture. Not that some who were there, alongside Savage, resisted the lure to sign with big labels and reach wider audiences, but this conflicted among purists with the art-school, hermetic, and countercultural (often reflexively anti-hippie, but many older punks had dodgy pedigrees in other bands, in the days of flared trousers: "sub-heavy metal played badly" in Pete Shelley's phrase shows up along a love for Iggy, Bowie, and Roxy) suspicion of selling out.

I write this review the day manufactured publicity rolls out for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, and I reflect on how little protest occurs compared to the punks the summer of the Silver one in '77. The final section of these conversations deals with the post-Jubilee Pistols, the major labels, the drugs, the tours, the fatigue, and it makes dispiriting if necessary reading after earlier idealism. Savage in this compendium provides perhaps a fans-only companion to his own narrative, but the tapes-- transcribed here from his interviews edited with those featured in the original "England's Dreaming"-- convey nuance and offer necessary testimony on what I find are three reiterated, key issues.

First, the Grundy interview: this marks a before-and-after moment for the fledgling punks. Marco Pirroni sums it up with Sham 69 as "an excuse to be stupid" (359); Steve Jones separates the music before the publicity with the media; Paul Cook charges Malcolm McLaren's manipulation of the band's tensions that sapped its musical energies. As many repeat, after Glen Matlock was sacked, the Pistols only wrote four songs in their Sid Vicious stage. Matlock himself explains how the earlier band emphasized a slower power, not a Ramones speed. The Who and Small Faces influences gave the trio of musicians a less strident, but forceful foundation for Johnny Rotten's sneering vocals.

Second, this leads into how well the Pistols could play, and why that mattered--or not. Jordan notes how Rotten developed the authority "to sing with conviction, those sorts of powerful words every night, words that were black and white, not clouds and rolling hills." (51) But, she thinks he lost that "need"; John Lydon regarded himself in Malcolm McLaren's hands as "Jack-in-the-Box" figure who could be wound up and taken out for an onlooker's shock or a staged surprise--unlike Cook and Jones, Lydon resented this pose. To be fair, Lydon acknowledges his own faults in furthering this pose, but he does not dismiss the culpability of many others in what became extended legal battles and personal betrayals of trust. He increasingly rebelled against his public image, limited.

McLaren's partner Vivienne Westwood questions the shock value of another symbol, the swastika. Many mention its presence in early punk iconography, and it's disturbing for me that some interviewed still take its presence in their own stance so lightly; Westwood notes the strain of supposedly devaluing the crooked cross to take out its rigor, aggression, and puritanical associations, and how the principles of punk were challenged by contradictions of feminism as well. Captain Sensible takes another view: punk meant neither a thing nor a sound, but an attitude. For some, this act could be constricting, and the compassion underneath the exaggerated despair or cartoonish anger might unsettle those next to them, as the desire to upend expectations took its emotional toll on punks. Those who could project their voices, talents, or music adapted, but others gave up and/or conserved their energies for what they yearned to find as more expansive approaches for fulfillment.

Siouxsie says the brandishing early on of such a potent symbol as the swastika might be one way to express this frustration with identity and meaning among a new generation. Those coming after the hippies sought a platform or a voice. Putting on an armband, for her, was getting back at the values unthinkingly clung to by an older, postwar generation. Poly Styrene counters that a "lack of vision" led punk into a dead-end, without a "positive solution" to the "hellish planet" it delighted in peddling. Steve Walsh agrees that punk's futility overshadowed idealism. Nils Stevenson has a last word on the Pistols and their role as the vanguard as their prowess proved anyone could not imitate them, and that the Pistols were not the same but better than the rest. (The Clash, The Damned, and The Jam by the way all come off the worse for wear among many interviewed from within the sympathetic Pistols contingent.) McLaren has his say, before sixty-one others, and none here might think that unearned!

Third, the debate over art vs. commerce, finding a wider audience to play to and to sell to. As one who heard delayed this nearly "unheard music" 6000 miles away, from pricy import vinyl and scant airplay even in L.A., I had to glean what I found intriguing from hints in reviews in the mainstream press or the emerging fanzines I read at record shops before I risked my pocket money as a teenager on the "Punk-New Wave" section often found tucked away at the back of the store. So, unless bands found distributors able to place their product, and get stores to stock it, great music languished.

Certainly, the struggles, as Howard Devoto and Pete Shelley tell from their Mancunian predicament, left punks away from the London scene more at odds in how to make if not a living than a few pounds playing in places that were repulsed, confused, or ignorant of the new music trickling out from the capital northward. These regional differences, first in Manchester, spawned small indie scenes. It's intriguing to hear of Morrissey and Ian Curtis slowly joining in to find their own niche.

Journalist Jonh Ingram stresses the loss of the artistic and the easy indulgence as punk turned a fad. Buzzcocks manager Richard Boon agrees but acclaims as does Shelley the media's pioneering role (Ingram and Caroline Coon notably) in popularizing punk beyond its cult, as Linder and Devoto addressed in their "The Secret Public" art-pamphlet. Devoto in typically aphoristic form observes: "Pretentiousness is interesting. Your ambition has to outstrip your ability at some point." (525)

The ambitions often were fueling egos enticed by what, for once, the Americans had done first. While as the title promises, most of this book recounts the English leaders, their New York predecessors are also heard from. Politics, perhaps perversely or tellingly here, gains little attention and anarchism no index entry. John Holmstrom equates punk with an "old" sound, and Legs McNeil defines it as failure. He finds Manhattan's version filled with humor and satire vs. the British political anger. Mary Harron links her Warhol-era bohemianism to mid-70s boredom by a celebration of junk culture that ignited the proto-punks, eager to find an escape from American complacency even as they revelled in its consumerism and trashy 50s and 60s t.v. shows, comics, films, diversions, and marketed poses.

A few of the interviews flagged by comparison, but this is inevitable over more than 700 pages. It's a sign of how skillful Savage's editing and direction is that so few were less interesting. The regional tilt's telling, as the provinces get less attention, but they (as with Simon Reynolds' books on post-punk--he like Savage has a study "Rip It Up and Start Again: 1979-1984" and a later interview anthology, "Totally Wired" also reviewed by me) took time for the initial impact of New York and then London to echo northward and westward, the next few years, across Britain and then beyond.

A helpful appendix, similar to the discography that makes the original text so engrossing (yet here the photos are scarce and smallish), gives brief "where are they now?" wrap-ups and often links to websites (although I fear they may be outdated as some are MySpace--one sign of again how no media remain secure in this changing era....). Cheap speed appears to increase, while thrashing wears players out--see The Adverts as cautionary tale. Music mellows or simmers, as the years progress those interviewed make less music, or inevitably music that endures. Wire appear late on herein, exception to this rule: Graham Lewis locates the "desire to be in the future rather than in the place where people were" as punk's spirit. (621). A thorough index eases fact-checking and topic-hunting, and enhances the value of this as a "director's cut" of the shorter narrative history from nearly two decades ago that remains the standard source on punk.

(Amazon US 6-2-12; see also there from 7-22-12 my Punk Rock: An Oral History review of John Robb's interviews. Compare my longer PopMatters 7-3-12 review of Robb with a link to my take on Nick Rombes' intriguing collage A Cultural Dictionary of Punk:1974-1982)

"A Perfect Haze" (~Monterey Pop Festival): Book Review

What if rock and roll was taken as seriously as jazz? Paul McCartney, at Cass Elliot's house in 1967, discussed this with The Mamas and the Papas' John and Michelle Phillips, and their manager Lou Adler. A few nights later, this shifted into what became the first mass concert, over three June days in The Summer of Love, that raised funds for charity. This carefully documented, well-illustrated history, interspersed with reminiscences from musicians, participants, planners, and fans, brings this festival into the spotlight, where often it has been overshadowed by the far-more hyped and arguably less-successful Woodstock. Editors Harvey and Kenneth Kubernik note that Monterey Pop as a non-profit enterprise generates music scholarships, academic endowments, and healthcare for musicians over forty-four years and counting.

Guided by Beatles publicist Derek Taylor and Rolling Stones manager Andrew Oldham, and supervised by a "board of governors" listing McCartney, Adler, John Phillips, Mick Jagger, Terry Melcher, Johnny Rivers, Smokey Robinson, Paul Simon, Donovan, and Brian Wilson, their combined clout meant that they could invite the best in the business to perform--for no profit but guaranteed first-class expenses. Taylor wryly noted in the concert's program: "Entertainers who have starved and become rich are forever haunted by guilt."

This convinced many top-drawing touring acts. Given the reclusive Beatles were recording, and The Rolling Stones were recuperating from four years on the road, Lou Adler's harmonious quartet proved that era's most successful concert draw, so they would close the festival. Capped by Friday-night anchor Simon & Garfunkel and Saturday night's Otis Redding (after the Beach Boys retreated), a total of thirty performers filled the line-up.

The concert promoted hitmakers from Los Angeles, alongside folkies, Chicago bluesmen, and underground San Francisco bands. Janis Joplin earned so much attention that she and Big Brother played twice. It bloomed into an "international pop festival" by including Ravi Shankar, Hugh Masekela, Eric Burdon, The Who and then-Swinging London-emerging sensation Jimi Hendrix, all to a California central coastal audience. This narrative, and often orally transcribed, history follows the concert from planning to promotion to production, and reads as if the script of a generously funded documentary, moving efficiently while showing visual elements and musical summaries that invite one to seek out the first rock concert film, D.A. Pennebaker's "Monterey Pop" (1968), or the four-CD Rhino Records (1997) box set of the music, to accompany the pages and photos.

Pennebaker sums up Lou Adler's genius: "Get rid of the money." Once the musicians and promoters had discarded profit as the goal, egos and clashes appeared less of a difficulty, although a few interviewed here confess to witnessing or precipitating their own "trips"; Owsley Stanley, "Bear" to Deadheads, distributed a "Monterey purple" strain of LSD designed, he notes, not to induce a "purple haze" but perfect clarity. Many took advantage. David Crosby played his last show as a Byrd while ranting about the Kennedy assassination. He featured on his guitar a giant STP sticker in homage to another Owsley-concocted brand-name. He then ruined Buffalo Springfield's appearance in his debut, replacing Neil Young who had quit a week before in jitters.

Many attest to nervousness onstage. Pennebaker's efforts to capture the atmosphere cannot have been helped by lighting director Chip Monck's lysergic condition, for all he registered as a color, he testifies, was red. Pennebaker was told by Janis Joplin's then-manager to aim the camera at the ground when Big Brother stunned the crowd during their scheduled performance, Saturday afternoon. He tried, cowed by goons, but he caught enough to convince the singer and her band to come back and play the next night. They became stars.

The Who would trash their equipment, and Jimi, who won the coin toss with Pete Townshend, would follow with lighting his guitar on fire after seducing, or assaulting, it.  Ravi Shankar left after The Who: "My feelings were hurt deeply, as well as my respect for music and the instruments. We ran away from the festival." Roger Daltrey counters--after noting how Hendrix copied a lot of his Monterey stage act from Townshend, adding to it "genius" and not only musical but theatrical inspiration--how his band was hustled away. "We reminded them how the world was in a shit state, that it wasn't peace and love at all [laughs]."

Part of the appeal of this book is finding out about the less-heralded moments. Mike Bloomfield tells of his band The Electric Flag: "Probably the biggest gig we ever played. And we played rotten, man, I ain't jiving you. We really sounded lousy. And the people loved it. And I could see--oh my God, the hype, the image, the shuck, the jive."

Laura Nyro left in tears, in a black evening gown dress out of place among patchouli and paisley, thinking she'd been booed off stage. Near her death decades later, Adler and Pennebaker working on a DVD of the concert found out that she had not. Tape analysis verified what sounded like "boo" was "beautiful."   

Stoned, a young gatecrasher brought to Monterey by her pals with no preparation or foreknowledge looks for help. After a weekend of pot and acid and backstage passes, wandering around, Djinn Ruffner meets Buffalo Springfield's Dewey Martin. He finds a place for her to be safe, and he arranges for her a ride back down the coast with "Papa Denny and Mama Cass."

Coming down from the Bay Area, another girl, a high school junior, scores tickets for Ravi Shankar, whom she had never heard of. Barbara Versino knew about the sitar, thanks to the Beatles. Free of drugs, she heard the ragas enter her soul as Shankar and his musicians "transported" her. She recalls how that music, that day, expanded far beyond her expectations of what rock alone could do. "To this day I can remember what I wore: a green dress that I bought at Cost Plus, sandals from India import, a white knitted shawl, and a string of blue glass beads. I didn't bring a jacket with me. On the way home, we were all quiet and the car radio played the Beatles' 'A Day in the Life.'"

Monterey's local music store owner, Mike Marotta, had to supply the sound gear (amplifiers, keyboards, drums), and some musicians absconded with the backline, which was replaced after each act and nobody kept track. The leaders of this small city, a military-dominated and tony resort, were charmed by a polite delegation of A&R Hollywood types before the event. It raised money, nobody died, and the city council approved a show that was booked for the next summer. No follow-up occurred; by June 1968, a violent summer of a revolutionary year replaced the mellower ambiance beyond the peaceful county fairground site.

Still, as curator Marisa Mercado notes accurately, the notoriety of the counterculture left its municipal mark. A few stayed, as the Bay Area's vibrations reverberated and then faded. "Hippies became homeowners. In the end, Monterey solidified as that charming tourist town that people love to visit, but can't afford to live in." (Shorter, rewritten version to Amazon US 11-14-11; as above, featured on PopMatters 11-21-11)