Leap In The Dark

In the 1990s, when Yugoslavia descended into the depths of ethnic cleansing and war, it was the final act in a drama whose curtain had risen in the nineteenth century. In the mid to late 1800s, the countries under the control of the Austro Hungarian Empire in Eastern Europe and the Balkans began to agitate for independence.

Nationalist fervour and pride received an outlet in the arts across the region. Today we might not think of Opera or orchestral music as revolutionary, but in the highly charged atmosphere of those times, anything with the whiff of nationalism was seen as provocative. Opera's written in the language of the people with lead characters who were barbers for goodness sake, (Barber Of Seville), or whose plots centred around the nefarious activities of the nobility (The Marriage Of Figarro), were considered nigh on treasonous by the ruling class.

However, it was orchestral music where the nationalist flag was waved the most vigorously. Composers looked to the folk songs and dances of their people for their inspiration. Bela Bartok was probably the most famous for this creating pieces with names like Romanian Folk Dances. The only problem with their choices of music was that in some cases it was actually the work of their age's version of the non-resident aliens, gypsies, or The Roma, not ethnic Hungarians or Romanians.

Ranking below Lepers in social acceptance doesn't seem to have affected the popularity of Roma music. Bartok wasn't the only Eastern European composer who appropriated their music as a symbol of his country. Lesser known names to the West like Aram Khachaturian, Manuel de Falla and Isaac Albeniz all made use of various elements to emphasis their association with the "homeland".

Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later I suppose, but it has fallen to the Romanian Roma band, Taraf de Haidouks, to get a little of their own back. Their latest recording on the Crammed Discs label Maskarada (Masquerade) sees them putting their own indelible stamp to some of those "folk" compositions with breathtaking results.

Those of you who have heard Taraf previously will know they are justifiably famous for being a band that's guaranteed to play with total abandonment. That doesn't mean they play at full speed all of the time, although on occasion it can seem that way. What it does mean is they always surrender them selves to the music completely. There's no way you think that they can wring another iota of passion out of their instruments if they tried.

However, Maskarada sees them transcend all previous performances that I've heard and obtain levels of excellence in music and passion I didn't think possible. On the liner notes, what they've done is referred to as "re-gyspyfied" the music. While that might be technically correct, I think also does Taraf de Haidouks a disservice. This is a reclamation project on par with what's being done by indigenous peoples all over the world in reclaiming what has been stolen from them over the years.

When Taraf De Haidouks plays Bela Bartok's Romanian Folk Dances the wonder is how anybody missed out on not seeing them as the music of the Roma in the first place. (Romania and Roma have nothing in common by the way, as the words come from two separate language groups: Romanian is a Romance language derived from Latin, while it is believed the Roma language is derived from Hindi or Sanskrit. That the Roma ended up in Romania is just one of those weird jokes that the world plays on us periodically.) Of course, that's the point, these pieces weren't played like this before, – they were kept proper and civilized to appeal intellectually to its audience. In other words diametrically apposed to the way they should be played.

When Taraf De Haidouks gets their hands on them they reinvent them as they should have sounded all along. Instead of pretty folk dances that you'd see at some multicultural festival where everyone is clean and in bright costumes, they are played by people who have until recently lived a hand to mouth existence.

They know about real pain and real joy. When they dance, it is to elevate their spirits and leave their cares behind. Underneath the exuberance, there is the breath of sorrow that is their constant companion, but they are going to do their best to escape it, even if it is only for the moment. Let the music slow, just temporarily, and you can hear pain echoing in the sound of the clarinet or the loneliness of a violin.

On one of their songs on the disc, "Suita Maskarada", "Masquerade Suite", the mournful tin whistle that plays through the opening is perhaps the most revealing instrument of the whole recording. It's hard not to hear it and not think of the trials that the Roma people have undergone in the last century alone.

So, if there is a little swagger to the sound of the violins when they attack the Romanian Dance half of Bartok's "Ostinato & Romanian Dance" on the opening track of the disc, can you blame them? After more then a hundred years the masquerade is finally over and they are getting to pull the off the masks that have been disguising their music.

Some of the music will sound different from what you've come to expect from a Taraf De Haidouks recording. That's not surprising as it was written in a style different from what they normally play. But that doesn't stop them from making these songs sound as much their own as the music they have written themselves. Maskarada is a wild, tempestuous, musical ride that will leave you breathless by the end; pretty much normal for Taraf De Haidouks.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 09:20 PM | Permalink

According to the good people at Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary the definition of the word rant is as follows: "a noun meaning to speak in loud, violent, or extravagant language; rave". Seeing as rave is part of the definition, in an effort to be thorough I checked it out as well: "To speak wildly or incoherently."

According to that definition that means when we talk of somebody ranting, we're implying they are frothing at the mouth like a rabid dog, and spewing out massive amounts of insensible verbiage. It would seem to me that our current usage of the word is slightly more tolerant than that formal definition. In fact, I feel confident in suggesting that most people would agree that a rant is an impassioned statement about any subject a speaker or writer has strong feelings about.

Rants aren't even dangerous; usually they're just a really good way for a person to let off steam about something that's ticked them off in the moment. Unfortunately, some people live up to the dictionary definition, frothing at the mouth with hatred and ending up leaving a sour taste in most people's mouths. It doesn't have anything to do with political affiliations; hatred knows no party lines and left or right can be equally to blame.

The best types of rants are those done by intelligent people with great senses of humour. They are those people who won't be tied down by political affiliations or dogma, and have no problem with taking on idiocy no matter who the source is. The only people who need fear them are the self-righteous, the pompous, and folk who take themselves and their opinions far too seriously.

A few years back Canadians were introduced to the comic genius of Rick Mercer when the satirical news/current events show This Hour Has Twenty-Two Minutes started being televised on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). More recently they have welcomed him into their homes as host of the Rick Mercer Report. Now thanks to Random House Canada and their imprint Doubleday Canada, we will now know him as an author. September 25th sees the publication of Rick Mercer Report: The Book, a compendium of interviews and editorials (rants) from four years of the show, and selected articles from his blog.

Rick is originally from the youngest province in Canada, and the one primarily known around the world for it's "barbaric" seal hunt; Newfoundland. Being from Newfoundland is an important part of Rick's makeup as a comic. Newfoundland didn't become part of Canada until 1949 and has been the poorest province since. When the Cod fish stocks failed and the seal hunt became unpopular, villages that had been first settled in the 1700's began turning into ghost towns.

Hardship like that can make you bitter, and sour your outlook on life. However, in the case of Mercer and the people he worked with on This Hour (who were either all from Newfoundland or the East Coast) it honed their bullshit detectors and gave them a healthy sense of scepticism when it came to the promises of politicians. Rick's opinions were made abundantly clear in his weekly "editorial" (rant) concerning something particularly inane that had happened in the world.

On the Rick Mercer Report, the editorials continued, but he also would do segments involving Canadian politicians, counting on their desire to be seen as "regular folk" with senses of humour. He arranged to sleep over at Prime Minister Harper's house, went skinny dippy with a leadership contender (Bob Rae) for the Liberal party, and took the leader of The Green Party out logging.

But I don't think the politicians would have done any of these stunts with Rick, no matter how popular his show is (and it is one of the most watched Canadian shows in Canada) if they didn't think there was more to him then caustic comments. Of course, it doesn't hurt that he treats everybody the same. If you insist on putting your foot in your mouth Rick has suggestions on how much further you can shove it down your throat no matter what political party you are with.

But there's more to it then that; underneath the silliness and the satire you get the feeling he does what he's doing out of a genuine concern and love for Canada and her people. Perhaps it's not something you'd pick up on watching an episode or two of his show, but when the material is gathered together in one place as it has been for the book, it becomes a lot more obvious.

As you read through the various editorials and interviews, (the segment with environmentalist David Suzuki is worth the price of the book alone: middle of the winter and two men about to jump in a freezing cold lake – you take it from there), you can see that his indignity comes from politicians putting themselves ahead of the people and the country they are supposed to be representing. The only times you feel he is genuinely angry, not just teasing or sarcastic, are those when either people are being insulted or the country is being taken for granted.

When Prime Minister Harper showed himself willing to make deals with the political party bent on ensuring Quebec's separation from Canada (Bloc Quebecois) in an attempt to ensure he could stay in power, after promising never to do that in the election campaign, Mercer was more angry about the potential threat this posed to the country then the broken promise. When it was decided not to lower the flags on parliament hill when a soldier was killed in Afghanistan, in what appeared to be an attempt to hide information about casualties from the public, he was genuinely angry on behalf of the soldiers and the lack of respect he thought it showed for them and their families.

Whatever it is, and however he does it, and I don't think I can give concrete examples, reading Rick Mercer Report: The Book made me remember what used to make me proud of being Canadian. It's what has been missing from our leadership for a good long while now, compassion for those less fortunate.

Whether at home or abroad it was always what marked us and made us a distinctive country. If people were in trouble, we were there with help no questions asked. If people needed a safe haven from a dictator, we opened our borders to them – we have nothing if not room after all. Our armed forces were respected all over the world for being there to help settle disputes or bring vital supplies to people hit by a calamity beyond their control.

Reading this book it sounds to me that Rick Mercer wants to be proud of Canada again for those reasons. When he is critical of people for being selfish and self-serving, it is because they are doing it either at the expense of others or the future of the country. Rick Mercer Report: The Book is not just a series of political attacks for the sake of a few cheap laughs. It is a wake up call to all Canadians to remember what it was that made our country special.

If it can make an iconoclast like me think seriously about why I love my country, think what it can do for you. For those of you who aren't Canadian and wondered what makes us different from either the Americans or the British, reading this book will go a long way to offering an explanation.

Canadians wishing to buy the book can do so through Random House Canada or an online retailer like Amazon.ca.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 08:01 PM | Permalink

The early 1960's were a time of change in the Jazz world. People like Miles Davis were beginning to investigate and incorporate other musical styles and formats and broadening the definition of what constituted Jazz. There were the experiments with the music of other cultures and their integration into compositions, and this was followed by fusing Jazz with elements of pop music, specifically Funk.

Soloists were starting to lean toward more and more complex improvisations in their performances as they looked for newer and different ways to express the themes of a piece of music. Taking their cue from the postwar generation of players, like Charlie Parker, and the rest of the Be-bop players, their playing became increasingly elaborate as the years went on.

At one point Jazz was the preserve of orchestras that would sometimes approach symphony orchestras in size and make-up. But in the post World War two era more and more often you'd find smaller combinations of instruments ("combos"). These smaller groups were ideally suited for improvisation and solo work as fewer people meant easier communication between members while playing.

It's interesting to note that the groups today who are still experimenting with improvisation and solos are those with the smaller number of players. The Chicago Underground Trio, El' Zabar Kahil's Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, and his Ritual Trio continue to break new ground in improvisation techniques with specific focuses on rhythm and the use of electronics.

You can't talk about Jazz and improvisation without talking about the influence of John Coltrane. Arguably, he was one of the most inspired and inspiring saxophone players in Jazz if not ever than at least during his lifetime. His recording career lasted only twelve years, and when he died in 1967, he was still at the peak of his skill level.

For some reason very little film of John Coltrane exists, although I'd say part of the reason would have been his unwillingness to tailor a performance to the needs of a television show. How many North American variety shows are going to have as guests a Jazz band whose average song length was in the fifteen-minute range? Thankfully European television didn't seem to have the same hesitation and it's to recordings in Germany and Belgium that the Jazz Icons
Series produced by Reelin' In The Years have turned for their wonderful DVD John Coltrane Live In '60, '61 & '65

In 1960, John was still part of the Miles Davis Band, and was part of their European tour that Norman Granz had arranged with two other combos, The Stan Getz Quartet and the Oscar Peterson Trio. Part of the tour was to have been three broadcasts for a Dusseldorf television station, with each band recording a session. When Miles Davis, for whatever reason, refused to perform, John Coltrane stepped into the breach to lead his band. Granz also persuaded both Stan Getz and Oscar Peterson to play with Coltrane on a couple of numbers.

This early performance in his career shows Coletrane's potential as both a soloist and an improviser. What's especially revealing are his duets with fellow tenor saxophone player Stan Getz on two numbers, "Moonlight In Vermont" and "Hackensack". While Getz is a gifted Be-bop player and shows it in his solos, Coletrane is already starting to move beyond that style.

In his solos, he has more layers and textures of sound then you hear in Getz's work. He's not deliberately trying to show Getz up, and what he does isn't jarring or out of place with the other performer. There's just more to his solos then what Getz plays. Note after note piles up in a cascading waterfall of sound that will soon become his trademark.

In the following year when Coltrane returned to Europe, it was as the leader of his own band. Most notably this early version of his band included the incomparable Eric Dolphy contributing on flute and complimentary saxophone. Elvin Jones on Drums and McCoy Tyner of piano would end up being members of his permanent band for years to come and in a couple of year down the line when Jimmy Garrison joined them on bass they would become one of the best and most popular bands during their time together.

But to get back to the '61 concert for a moment with Eric Dolphy; since his previous visit to Europe, Coltrane had developed his own repertoire of songs including his magnificent reworking of "My Favourite Things". For this song he switches to playing the soprano saxophone, one of the most temperamental reed instruments this side of an oboe. However, Coltrane made that instrument sing and plays it with the same confidence that he brought to all his endeavours.

With Dolphy taking the second lead on "My Favourite Things" on flute the song is given an added dimension that doesn't exist on another recording. Seeing and hearing that performance is worth the price of the DVD on its own. However, it doesn't end with that, in fact one could almost say that's only the beginning, because the final recording from 1965 is Coltrane backed up by the band mentioned above where we see him at the peak of his playing prowess.

John Coltrane Live In '60, '61 & '65 is an amazing record of not only an incredible musician, but it also shows us some the development and changes he went through as a performer in the space of five years. With sound and visual quality that's amazing for the time, you are able to hear all the nuances and subtleties that Coltrane includes in his solos and appreciate their evolution.

The booklet that accompanies the DVD provides a great analysis of all three concerts and provides pertinent details about the professional career of John Coltrane. It was very refreshing to only read about his music and learn more about this man who still remains something of an enigma for most of us. The combination of the booklet and the DVD make for a great presentation that is a fitting tribute to one of the greatest Jazz saxophone players that ever lived.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 11:05 PM | Permalink

Have you ever noticed how those guys willing to teach you how to sell real estate so you too can be rich like them always have a "Secret To Their Success", or that weight loss groups promise you the "Secret To Losing Forty Pounds In Six Months". Everybody's got a secret these days, from their own "Secret Sauce" guaranteeing great barbecue to the secret of "Being The Best Possible You".

Most of these folk seem to live either on the home shopping network or on infomercials late at night or first thing Sunday morning, the time slots most affiliate stations never seem to be able to sell. Some of these folk with secrets have also written books about how they became such success. If you're really lucky you'll be able to buy their collected speeches for just $14.99, including a full colour booklet explaining how you can best use these tapes to help you emulate their achievements and learn their "Secrets"

But the folk who are the hands down winners, and make these television pitch guys look like rank amateurs in the "Secret" business, are the New Age proselytisers. The Secrets they know! From ancient Egypt to the court of Arthur and all points in between, beyond, under, and so far out I don't think they'll ever come home again. They sell methods of telling your future based on their Secret knowledge of Lord Of The Rings which inspired them to create a Tarot Deck based on fictional characters.

Some of them have even channelled the secrets of the Angels and have written out their conversations with them so you can find out what Michael and Gabriel think are your chances of getting laid this weekend. Or, if you're into something a little more down to earth, there are plenty of womyn ready to reveal the Secrets of the Earth-Mother/Goddess/Bunny Rabbit.

But now we are all so very lucky, there will no longer be any room for doubt, because someone has finally written a book called The Secret which I assume will make all those lesser secrets obsolete. In between the covers of that book you must be able to learn how to do everything from selling real estate with no money down, have buns of steel in just twenty days, and learn just what Michael and Gabriel are thinking about.

Proving once again that the majority of North American's are looking for a quick fix and somebody else to do everything for them, this book has become an immediate best seller. If it wasn't so sad that so many people think the answer to all their problems could be found in a book it would be funny. Thankfully comic and author Jim Gerard has come to our rescue to poke fun at the whole phenomenon of The Secret with his book Who Moved My Secret. Published by Nation Books an imprint of Avalon Publishing Group and distributed in Canada by Publishers Group Canada. Who Moved My Secret exposes the real "Secret" behind all these books, makes fun of the idea that a secret exists to make life easy, and generally pokes fun of New Age sillyness.
Of course the real secret behind these books is greed and gullibility. Everybody wants to be able to have "abundance" in their lives and of course interprets that to mean material wealth. Authors of books like The Secret use that as their hook, and rely on those same people to be gullible enough to believe that their book will either tell them something new or tell them anything at all.

As Jim Gerard points out the real "secret" for the author's success lies in being able to sell as many of these books as possible. Yes, you too can make massive amounts of money if you can figure out how to pray on other people's frailties. It's quite amazing how the more somebody promises you something wonderful, the more they end up taking from you.

What I really enjoyed about Mr. Gerard's book is how he's managed to nail so many of the worst characteristics of the New Age movement and expose them for the idiocy they are. So much of New Age centres on the theory of manifestation. You can call forth anything you want just with the power of your mind and positive thinking. Which is all very nice and good, but there's a flip side to that.

Anytime anything goes wrong it's your own fault. You get sick with cancer, well it's because you're far too negative and so you're only getting what you deserve. You stay poor all your life only because you keep having nasty poor thoughts – if you can't think positive rich thoughts well you don't deserve to be rich.

New Age teachings talk continually about energy; giving off positive and negative energy and how it affects your life. In Who Moved My Secret we learn that all thoughts actually have energy and vibrations. "Every time we have a thought it vibrates at a certain frequency. Some thoughts only dogs can hear. God has thoughts that only George W. Bush can hear."

According to Mr. Gerard's theory this is how we can manifest anything we want. If we think about it hard enough we can achieve anything from obtaining fabulous wealth to causing somebody's head to blow up. Of course, if we have negative thoughts and vibrate to a negative pitch, bad things could happen to us and they'd be our own damn fault for having bad thoughts.

For those of you like me, who have grown tired of the inane promises made by everybody from television sales dudes to New Age Snake Oil salespeople, than you will appreciate Who Moved My Secret. Not only does it poke fun at the recent best seller The Secret it takes a swipe at the whole New Age movement with intelligence and humour.

I'm sure you'll be able to find Who Moved My Secret in most bookstores, well maybe not New Age ones, and I can predict, without even having to consult my oracle, that it will definitely put a smile on your face.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 09:58 PM | Permalink

Is there a musical instrument that you just can't get your head around to appreciate? No matter how good someone is supposed to be, no matter how amazing a piece of music, it doesn't matter because the instrument being played just doesn't appeal to, or even worse, make any sense, to you. Well for me that instrument has always been the piano.

Yes that's right the piano, from the time I was a kid it's done almost nothing for me. I look at those eighty-eight keys and I can't even begin to comprehend anything about it. Everybody else I know, even those who've never played piano in their lives, can sit down at a keyboard and soon be picking out something that sounds like music; I don't even know where to start.

Part of that comes from the fact that the only musical instrument I ever received any formal training on was the cello, and the other part is that I'm hopeless when it comes to recreating a sound that I hear. A musical scale means absolutely nothing to me and to randomly arrange notes into a pattern that constitutes something musical, like it appears people do on a piano, is a skill so beyond my comprehension you might as well ask me to build a rocket ship.

Therefore, it takes somebody of quite extraordinary talent playing the piano for me to be able to appreciate what is being performed. Up to this point only classical pianist Glen Gould has managed to break through the fog that surrounds my brain when it comes to performances on the keyboard. Finally, after many fruitless years of listening, I can add a second player to the list: Jazz pianist Dave Brubeck.

Dave Brubeck Live In '64 & '65 is part of a series of concert discs called Jazz Icons that's been put together by Reelin' In The Years featuring live performances from some of the greatest names in Jazz. I hoped that because this disc featured Brubeck in concert with the Dave Brubeck Quartet, that I'd have a better chance of appreciating his piano work as part of the group then if he was playing solo.

I can tell you this, for the first time that I can remember since seeing a tape of Gould playing, I was blown away by a piano player. Not only because of one or two hot licks like Jerry Lee Lewis can astound you with, but because of the over all performance. At first the Quartet sounded like it wasn't doing anything that memorable, playing what I would consider fairly mainstream Jazz, yet the more I listened the more there was to hear.

What is so amazing about both of the concerts on this discs; the 1964 one from Belgium in a television studio, and the one two years later before a live audience in Germany, is how deceptively simple the music appeared to be. It was only when I started to pay attention to the interplay between Paul Desmond on Alto Saxophone and Dave on the piano that I realized how intricate the music was.

Now I'm not musically literate enough to give you the proper terminology for what they were doing, but periodically, without any warning, the tempo of a piece would alter ever so slightly. I would think the lead on this came from Brubeck on piano, but it was always so subtle that there was no way you could tell for sure who started it.

One moment a song would be progressing along almost casually, like they were out for a stroll, and the next moment, the number of notes being played would increase. The pace didn't actually speed up, it would only appear to because they were playing that many more notes in the same amount of time. It would be the equivalent of a song jumping from a waltz tempo, three notes per bar, to something faster, like playing five or six notes per bar.

Not only did this give the impression of the songs speed increasing, it added another layer of texture to the music. As a means of creating variations on themes, this is brilliant, while easy for a listener to keep up with. You probably aren't able to accomplish something like this with the ease the Quartet does without years of playing together behind you or without a rhythm section you can trust implicitly.

These four men had been playing together for a number of years already, doing around one hundred gigs a year, so familiarity wasn't a problem. But neither was complacency, as every night they would try to play each song differently enough to make it a challenge. Drummer Joe Morello and bassist Eugene Wright, charged with keeping the train on the tracks, don't seem to be phased the least during these performances. In fact, whenever the camera catches them they seem to be exchanging secret little smiles behind the backs of the two leads, as if saying, "nice try guys, but you can't fool us".

Aside from the fact that the footage and the sound quality on this DVD are both quite wonderful, what's great about Live In '64 & '65 is the wonderful booklet that's included. Not only does it give you the history behind the two concerts themselves, it also goes into detail about the history of the band, it's musical styles, and influences.

Each song is given a careful analysis so you have a good idea of what to listen for while watching, and that makes it twice as pleasurable. In fact, it was probably the major reason why I was able to appreciate the piano playing of Dave Bruebeck as much as I did. When you understand what it is you are listening to, it is far easier to enjoy it.

If Dave Brubeck Live In '64 & '65 is an indication of the quality of the Jazz Icons series than it's probably worth owning the discs that feature your favourite players. Or, perhaps even more importantly, the discs that feature the guys who you may not have figured out yet; if it helped me appreciate piano playing – think what it can do for you.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 05:07 AM | Permalink

It's pretty hard to believe that it's been a little over thirty years since the Sex Pistols released Never Mind The Bollocks their first and last studio album. In spite of their being bands like the Ramones, The New York Dolls, and others playing a similar type of high energy rock and roll, it was the Pistols who garnered all the publicity and became the face of Punk Rock for the media and everybody else.

England of the mid to late 1970's was in a horrible state with unemployment running rampant among the young. Facing the prospect of a life of poverty and a series of dead end jobs until death, is it any wonder that they were more then a little bit angry and very nihilistic. When Johnny Rotten was singing "no future" the majority of the audience related to the statement personally.

If you went to see the Pistols live, you didn't expect to hear many of the lyrics, but the music was another story. It was loud, abrasive, aggressive, and best of all angry, which not only summed up how the audience was feeling but gave them the means to express it as well by pogoing with wild abandon. (Pogoing was dancing by jumping up and down and flinging yourself around at the same time.)

In Canada, the punk movement started around the same time that it did in England. As early as 1977 bands like The Viletones, The Diodes, and others played on a regular basis in a number of small clubs that opened in Toronto Ontario. Out on the West Coast in Vancouver there was a similar out break with bands playing in any number of small venues.

Unlike in England where bands were actually being signed to record contracts, in Canada there was very little money around to sustain a band for any length of time, and by 1980 most of the bands were no more. In fact, The Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto, home to punk music for a few years, was host to an event called "The Last Pogo" in 1980 to officially mark the end of Punk as they saw it.

There is one band though that has managed to hang together all these years, and that is the Vancouver outfit D.O.A. From the early years back in the seventies until today, they are still out there railing against the system. With their own label, Sudden Death Records, they are able to regularly produce CDs as well a provide a home for another bands who are too alternative for other companies.

In an effort to let people today know what the band was all about back in their earlier days they have compiled footage of the band performing at various locations along the West Coast. The final result, Smash The State: The Raw Original D.O.A. 1978-81 has been put out in conjuncture with MVD Visual on a new DVD.

The DVD contains excerpts from five separate gigs, a T.V. shoot, and some Bonus Shit. Of the live gigs, the first one recorded in 1980 at On Broadway in San Francisco and The Anarchist Anti-Canada Day concert in Stanley Park Vancouver in 1978 have the best sound and video quality. Of the other three, neither the sound nor the video quality are good enough to be anything more then annoying. In one case, the vocals are lost completely, in another, the sound is like mud and you can't distinguish the individual instruments, and in the third, you can barely discern the band the video quality is so bad.

The two live gigs that are good, and the two songs shot in studios (one being the video for the song "World War 3" included in the Bonus Shit) give an indication of what the band is capable of. What's interesting is the Anarchist Picnic is from early in the Band's career – in fact it marked their first appearance as a four-piece band – and the contrast between that gig and the one in 1980 at On Broadway shows you how quickly they developed into a polished and effective band.

In 1978 they were a high energy punk rock band but they lacked the cohesion to be completely effective. Joe Shithead's vocals were mainly just shouted out and he wasn't able to do much more in terms of modulating his voice. You could see the potential they had to be a really good punk band if they were to stick together and keep working at it.

Two years later, the results are obvious – they are tight musically and although Joe's vocals are still less then comprehensible, here it is more of a deliberate effect. His voice becomes like a fourth instrument that adds to the barrage of sound the band is making in an effort to express their disillusionment with the current state of world affairs.

It's only on the T.V. studio outtakes that we hear crystal clear sound and perfect video quality. However, because of a lack of live audience there seems to be something a little off in their performance. High-energy music like punk needs an audience to bounce off or it sounds like it's being played in a vacuum. Technically everything is fine with these performances, but they are missing the extra edge the music gets when played for an audience.

D.O.A. was one of the original punk bands in Canada, and the fact that they are still around speaks volumes to their durability and quality as a band. Unfortunately Smash The State: The Raw Original D.O.A. 1978-81 doesn't give that complete a picture of their capabilities as there are too many problems with sound and video quality.

On the other hand it sure was nice to see them again, pounding away on some old favourites. This is a disc that will best be appreciated by people who already know the band, not someone hearing them for the first time. They'd be better off buying one of the band's CDs and getting to know the material first. Better yet, head out to Vancouver and catch them live – then you would get the real D.O.A. experience.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 06:34 PM | Permalink

I remember the first time I became aware that there might be more to music than just the popular music of my generation. It wasn't that I didn't know that other stuff existed, I had heard plenty of classical music and seen far too many musicals on television to not know about them, I had just never bothered listening to it. Then one day my brother brought home a double album of Billie Holiday music, God Bless The Child, and I happened to hear him playing it one evening.

I was fascinated, and the first chance I had I sat down and listened to the whole album. It must have been a greatest hits package because not only did it have the title track, but it also had, "Strange Fruit", "All Of Me", and a bunch of other songs that I've long since come to associate with Billie. Something about her voice appealed to me like no other female vocalists I had heard before then.

Instead of a sort of wispy sound like so many of the folk singers I was accustomed to she had an earthiness that gave her strength. She also sang about subjects with a sincerity that was absent from most singers I knew, whether male or female, that made even a potentially corny song believable. To say I was hooked right from the start is an understatement.

Since that time I've listened to many different collections of her music, from the poorest quality live recordings to some expertly re mastered studio tracks. I've also watched some very poor video of her performing that had been transferred onto to DVD without improving the quality very much.

Of course I've also learned the details of her life, from what little is known of her early days, until her final surrender to her addictions on July 17th 1957. Anyone who has listened to her later recordings, especially some live ones, can hear a thinness in her voice that wasn't present on earlier recordings. I've always found it difficult to listen to them because it makes the sadness and regret at her death that much stronger. You have to wonder at those people who produced those later albums, especially the ones that were released after her death, and their complete lack of respect for Billie as a performer releasing these sub par performances in the hopes of making a quick buck off her name.

I've spent a lot of fruitless efforts over the years looking to replace that original God Bless The Child double album with something with better sound quality and having as a good as selection of music that was featured on those albums. Well I don't think I'll have to look any further than the forthcoming Columbia/Legacy four CD set Lady Day: The Master Takes And Singles. As the title suggests these four discs contain all of Billie's best recordings of some her best loved songs.

But it's not just the old familiar stuff repackaged again in a different format, there are some recordings of hers on this that I've never heard before. Heck, I didn't even know she had recorded a version of the old Marlene Dietrich hit "Falling In Love Again". (Come to think of it I don't think I've ever heard it sung without a German accent let alone by Billie) Billie puts her own indelible stamp on the song, and I barely recognised it as the same song.

Perhaps the underlying sorrow I heard in Billie's version was only due to my awareness of how unlucky she was in her choice of partners, going from one abusive hustler to the next. Is it any wonder she would sing that song with a trace of self-mockery and regret? Perhaps on some of the poorer recordings from late in her career she might have mailed in a performance or two, there's none of that on this disc, so it's not to wonder at the depth of feeling heard on "Falling In Love Again"

Even songs that I thought I knew well like "Them There Eyes" and "Billie's Blues" have a lot more to them than I had remembered. Maybe in part that's because the sound quality has been improved so much from the recordings I first heard, or perhaps the versions on these discs are simply better ones to begin with. Whatever the reason in a lot of cases it was like hearing some songs for the first time.

So many more nuances of her voice are distinguishable that I was able to pick up on more of what she was trying to do with her phrasing in each song. She always insisted she was a Jazz singer, not a Blues singer, and on these CDs, the distinction is very clear. Instead of belting out songs like was the style for Blues singers of the day; she was the mistress of subtlety. A word here and a vocal inflection there spoke meanings, and finally being able to hear them clearly is a real gift.

Although these tracks were all recorded from 1936 – 1942, and could be considered her early years, the truth of the matter is that they were also probably some of her best years. Her voice hadn't started to succumb to the ravages of drug and alcohol abuse, and she was still experimenting with what she could do. Sometimes listening to a brilliant artist take risks at an early point in their career is far more rewarding than listening to the same person latter in life when they have settled into a rut.

What really sets this compilation a further head and shoulders above others is that Lady Day: The Master Takes And Singles includes wonderful liner notes. First is a really good and non-exploitative history of her professional and personal life written by Gary Giddins. But, even better as far as I'm concerned are the details provided about each track on the recording.

Even though only three orchestras are listed as accompanying her on these recordings, the membership in those bands was as fluid as the music they played. This meant that over the course of the seven-year period covered she played with what was the cream of the crop of Jazz players for that time. Each time the players change on the recording the track listings make sure to annotate who exactly is playing what instrument. Some names stick out more then others, like Benny Goodman on clarinet, while some are session men whose names and careers have vanished in the mists of time.

Billie Holiday's career was much shorter then people like Ella Fitzgerald, but in the twenty-five years she recorded, and especially in the first fifteen or so when she was still at her peak, she was the best female vocalist in the Jazz world. She remains to this day, fifty years after her death, still one of the most distinctive voices in Jazz music.

The four disc set and booklet Lady Day: The Master Takes And Singles is one of the best tributes to Billie Holiday that I've heard and seen yet. When it goes on sale September 25th snatch up a copy fast, no matter what the price, it will be worth every penny.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 06:04 AM | Permalink

In the past couple years of reviewing music for various blogs one of the nicest personal discoveries I've made is the amazing diversity to be found within specific genres. That's turned out to be especially true about the Blues; its such a highly individual mode of expression that it almost changes from performer to performer.

Maybe it's because of the inherent simplicity of the form, a twelve bar chord progression that can be repeated repeatedly to a particular rhythm is everyone's starting place, but where they go from there is what makes the music so incredible. All you have to remember is that everything from the heaviest of heavy metal to the frothiest of disco hits originated with those twelve chords and it will give you some idea of how truly versatile the sound can be.

Of course you don't even have to leave the Blues to get an earful of diversity; there's Texas Blues, Delta Blues, Chicago Blues, West Coast Blues, and the St. Louis Blues to name just a few. Within each of those categories, there are all sorts of subdivisions that are too numerous to itemize here. Sufficient to say that you could travel around the world, stop into a Blues bar, and tell the provenance of a band's style just by a quick listen.

That is if you have the ear to do so. On a good day, I'm able to tell the difference, between urban and rural Blues, and the more modern version as played by Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughn as opposed to the traditional music of folk like Muddy Waters and B B King. But after that the lines get real blurry. You can't even go by a person's age to tell what he or she is going to be playing. John Hammond Jr. plays like he would have been right at home jamming with Robert Johnson, while Albert Collins played his guitar with his teeth and burnt down the house like Jimi Hendrix.

Now I'm a bit of an old fashioned guy so I've always been drawn to the more traditional rural music, but I've also developed quite a taste for Chicago style Blues with its up tempo, harmonica driven, beat a la the late Carey Bell. Well I've finally found the perfect marriage of the two in Delmark Records' re-mastering of the Sleepy John Estes 1968 recording Electric Sleep on CD and with the new name of Sleepy John Estes On The Chicago Blues Scene

Now according to the liner notes that accompany this CD the new title is in reference to the two distinct era's of Blues that are being married together for this recording. Sleepy John hailed originally from the Deep South where his father was a sharecropper who picked cotton. He also played a little guitar and he passed that on to his son. When John lost an eye to an accident at a young age his usefulness as a farm hand was reduced, so he began to learn guitar and by nineteen he was playing professionally throughout the South.

The majority of John's recordings were made before and during the early years of World War Two for the Decca label. John was an integral piece in the development of the Memphis sound around that time, with folk like BB King, Howlin' Wolf, and Bobby Bland, which played a big role in the development of the what became the Chicago Sound. But, John himself never made it up to Chicago in any serious way until the 1960's.

Like so many other older Blues players, he was given a second career through the folk revival in the States and the huge interest in traditional Blues music in Europe. In 1964, he was part of American Folk Blues Festival that toured Europe annually in the early sixties and began jamming with some of the more modern musicians for the first time. Delmark Records producer Robert Koester caught one of those jams and promised John a recording session to make an album of that type of music.

The band assembled for that recording was some of the best of the best at the time in Chicago. Carey Bell on harmonica (and bass for two tracks), Sunnyland Slim on piano, the Jimmy Dawkins on lead guitar, veteran Chess session man Odie Payne Jr. on drums, and Earl Hooker and Joe Harper splitting the rest of the bass duties. With John's old style, singing voice added to that mixture of hot players, the contrasting styles made for powerfully emotional music.

If nothing else this disc shows there is no problem when the old meets new when everybody wants the same thing, to make great music. On The Chicago Blues Scene is nearly an hour of some of the best Blues music I've heard in a long time. First of all you have people like Carey Bell in his prime playing harmonica, and secondly you have a vocalist in John Estes who, in spite of age and weakening strength, is able to cut through the music without ever sounding like he's straining. Finally, the strength of the music's rural roots gives the urban sound of the band a solidity that you hardly ever find in modern electric Blues.

Listen to a song like "Dvin' Duck Blues" with its infamous lines of "If the river were whiskey and I were duck/I'd swim to the bottom and never come up", and you'll swear you've never heard it sung before. Instead of the line being a throwaway joke like you hear it now; you can hear the depths of sorrow a person would have to feel to actually believe that sentiment.

It's hearing John sing that reminds you forcibly that he is only one generation removed from slavery and the music has a sub-context that would have been forgotten by the players he was recording with. The catch in his throat, the well spring of emotion that can be heard behind each lyric, are not feigned but born out of a life where existence is tenuous and fear and mistrust are constant companions when dealing with the world.

Sleepy John Estes On The Chicago Blues Scene is a collection of great songs that brings together two generations of Blues musicians to create a disc that contains the best elements of the rural and urban sound. You can buy this disc for its historical significance if you want, but the best reason for getting a copy is that it's great music.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 06:03 PM | Permalink

I know that I'm not being very original when I say that the current administration in Washington D.C. disgusts me. I know there is plenty of people the world over who hold the same, if not harsher, opinion as I do. The thing is that like so many others I find the way they have reacted to the horror of September 2001 by unleashing further horror on the world repellent, I believe that is only a symptom of the deeper damage they have done to the American character.

From the late nineteenth and through a good chunk of the twentieth century, America could realistically be called the champion of the individual. While on occasion that might have brought the country into conflict with the need for some universal and collective measures, for the most part it was an atmosphere that encouraged and fostered greatness.

I don't mean greatness of the country as a whole, although if a country is to be measured by the people it produces then it can lay claim to some of that greatness, but the people who through sheer force of their brilliance thrust themselves into prominence on the world stage. Where else but in America could people like the Beats have sprung forth, or earlier poets like e.e. cummings; the expatriate communities in Paris and Tangier that included Paul Bowls, Ernest Hemingway, William S, Burroughs, and F. Scott Fitzgerald?

That's only a small sampling of people from one field of endeavour, and barely even scratches the surface of the men and women whom I believe could only have been nurtured in a society that encouraged individualism in its inhabitants from an early age. It was the feature of American society that distinguished it most from the other Western democracies.

But, with individualism comes great responsibility, something that has been conveniently forgotten in recent times. Being selfish is not the same thing as being an individual and neither is doing what you want without considering the implications of your actions and how they will affect others. But even that has become almost an irrelevant concern in the America of George Bush and Dick Chenny. Almost every act that this administration has take, every bill they have passed, and every power they have invoked, has had the result of quashing the individual in the name of what's good for the State.

It really makes me wonder what would have become of one of America's truest individuals of the late twentieth century, Edward Abbey, if he had survived until today. (Although the suicide of Hunter S. Thompson tells you more then you need to know of how well individuals fare in this time) Ed Abbey was best known as the writer of the novel The Monkey Wrench Gang which advocated direct action in fighting the exploitation of the West by the very people who have voted George Bush into power. Long before it was fashionable to be seen fighting for the preservation of the wild against development and so-called progress he was trying to teach people how to become the monkey wrench in the plans to further the rape of the South West.

In a new book edited by David Peterson, various letters and missives from Edward Abbey have been gathered together in an attempt to give people of a new generation an understanding of just who this complicated, and seemingly contradictory man was. Postcards From Ed, published by Milkweed Editions and distributed by the Publishers Group Canada contains letters he wrote to various people in his personal and professional life, and a multitude of broadsides directed at publications throughout the United States. (Funny, I just happened to flip open the book to a page containing a letter written in 1974 to Rolling Stone magazine complimenting them for running an interview with Glenn Gould, and pleading with them to publish more of the work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson)

Abbey was a walking contradiction according to most people's lights and probably had as many enemies on the left as he did on the right because of his strongly held opinions. Well on one hand having no problem in saying Nixon and Kissinger's bombing of North Viet Nam after the 1972 elections sank the government to the moral level of Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia, he was also a charter member of the National Rifleman's Association. He advocated each household in America be supplied with a weapon by the government who could then form a civilian militia to replace the volunteer/draft army.

I'm sure he knew very well that was exactly the situation during the revolutionary war, when the British tried to break the militia by making it illegal for civilians to bear arms. (Hence a certain clause in the constitution of the United States guaranteeing the right to bear arms) He didn't think it would do anything for the crime rate, but with 150 million people "we've got plenty to spare". Anyway, he was more worried about the army and the police invading his home then any criminal.

What he wrote about in his novel The Monkey Wrench Gang he tried to live as much as possible. Finding whatever means he had at his disposal of being the monkey wrench thrown into the works to disrupt projects that he saw as damaging pristine wilderness. He was very much the preserve it as is type of person. He argued against projects that would allow more people to have access to various natural wonders.

His theory was if they hadn't wanted to make an effort to see a place than they didn't want to go there badly enough to begin with. What was the point of going to somewhere like "Rainbow Bridge" if you didn't experience the six mile walk to appreciate it's wonder as part of it's natural environment? Nature shouldn't be a stop on someone's tourist agenda, where you spend ten minutes posing for photos and then moving on to the next stop. It turns the natural world into a commodity like everything else in the world and depreciates its intrinsic value.

While that attitude would have set many a corporate man's teeth on edge, the fact that Ed had nothing against hunting and agreed that hunters had a role to play in conservation, and in fact might even be better situated then most to do so, would have the vegans at PETA getting their knickers in a twist. What they wouldn't understand is that people who hunt for their food, and take responsibility for what they eat, aren't going to want to see stocks depleted.

A good hunter also knows the importance of the natural food chain and the role that large predators other than men play in it. They wouldn't allow for the wholesale slaughter of wolves, coyotes, or big cats to ensure a plentiful supply of deer. But a lot of these so-called environmentalist groups are just as ignorant of the way nature works as the people in their opposing camp are.

For those people who don't know who Ed Abbey is, or who confuse him with an American playwright of a similar name, Postcards From Ed will offer an intriguing glimpse into the mind of one of America's last individuals. His death in 1989 was the next to last death rattle of the spirit of individualism that supposedly makes the United States great. Perhaps people will be encouraged to search out some of his books after reading these cards and letters from the edge of so called civilization that have been compiled in this book.

While some of the battles Ed waged are being won, the Hopi of Black Mesa have finally been able to stop The Peabody Coal Company from draining the water table for use in their slurry line and closed The Black Mesa Mine down, more often then not these days we are losing our wild lands.

According to Ed Abbey, the monkey wrench is not a symbol of destruction, but a symbol of the potential in all of us to restore the world with our abilities. We have a choice, we can either set about restoring in an effort to try and save what we can, or we can sit back idly while it all comes tumbling down around us.

I think I know what Ed would have done; do you know what you're going to do?

Posted by Richard Marcus at 07:14 PM | Permalink

One of the wonderful things about reading books is that occasionally you get to read about something from a whole different perspective then the one you are exposed to normally. Our media report on the world from the perspective of our society, which only makes sense, as they have to represent the philosophies that buy their publications.

But, that still leaves us with only one perception on events, only half a conversation, or one side of the story. When we work up the nerve to leave our insulated shores and read something a point of view other than the one that appears nightly on our television or continually in our mass media it can be both a shock to our systems and an eye opening experience.

For those who follow international events, i.e. the world outside the sphere of American interest, one of the bigger stories has been the application of Turkey to join the European Union(EU). There's a lot of history between the two, dating back to the days of the Crusades. That's when the Europeans first tried to reclaim what they called the Holy Land and the Turks called home. Open warfare between the two only ended with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War One and the capture of Jerusalem by the British.

Although, among the nominally Muslim known states Turkey has always taken pride in being secular with complete separation of church and state, the mistrust of the West towards the East still exists. In part, this is caused by what seems to be a state of continual political unrest in Turkey (the most recent coup having taken place in the 1980's) and the recent strong showing of non-secular parties in various elections.

Therefore, the stories we do get in the news about the proposed entry of Turkey into the EU all express European concerns. Now there is no denying that the concerns about human rights and religious tolerance are ones that can't be ignored, but what about opinions from the other side? Do we even know the people of Turkey, or anything about their country, their society, and how they go about their days? What image do we have of them, if any at all?

This is where literature can help fill the gaps in our awareness, especially if the writer in question is a recent Nobel Prize laureate whose political independence is unquestioned. Orhan Pamuk newest release Other Colours published by Random House Canada through it's imprint Knoff Canada may not be the definitive book on the opinions and views of the Turkish people, but it still represents a perspective that we rarely see.

I have the impression that this might have been Mr. Pamuk's intention with this publication, due to the sections he's divided the book into. He starts the book off with short essays under the title "Living and Worrying", which detail his day-to-day existence with family and friends. Predominate in this section are descriptions of adventures he has with his daughter, and the earthquake of 1999 that shattered Turkey.

We also get his ideas about writing, descriptions of living in his home city of Istanbul, and the usual, overwhelming, impression that permeates all his work of a melancholy of the soul pervasive to the city's inhabitants. It's a city steeped in history and haunted by its past, troubled by its future, and worried about the present. Like Los Angeles they sit and wait for the "big one" which will obliterate them while playing the speculative game of "if it falls, will it land on us?"

While there are also a couple of other chapters that deal with his relationship to other people's writing and his own, the chapter that will interest those wanting a different perspective on the potential union of Turkey and Europe is "Politics, Europe, And Other Problems Of Being Oneself".

The picture that appears of Turkey from these pages is of a character full of contradictions and in some ways cynical enough to believe that in the end none of what they do or say will really have any bearing on their acceptance into the European Union. Why else would they prosecute a writer of Orhan Pamuk's reputation for speaking a truth that is universally accepted, but not allowed to be spoken in Turkey? In an interview with a European newspaper, Pamuk talked about the genocide of Armenians and Kurds by the Turks, and estimated that Turkey had killed around one million Armenians and fifty thousand Kurds.

For speaking that simple truth, a fact written down in history books all over the world, he was charged under Article 301, "publicly denigrating Turkish identity". Pamuk writes about the period in a very matter of fact manner; talking about how the ultra nationalists newspapers called for his "silencing", and that his books were burnt. Compared to some of his contemporaries the charges against him were slim, and he fully expected to win his case. The last thing he wanted or thought would happen was that he would become a cause celebre and a poster child for the rights of authors.

He recounts how a fellow author and friend had congratulated him on hearing the news of his being charged, of finally becoming a real Turkish author. In fact, he says he wasn't at all surprised to find himself eventually on trial, because it seems the only way an author will be honoured in Turkey is if he has spent time in jail. But, he also places his arrest in the context of world affairs in a way that shows the extent of how differently the East's view of the world is from that of the West.

He says there is a dichotomy being faced by the people in countries like India, Russia, China, and Japan who have suddenly become members of the global economy. In order to compensate for their espousal of Western economic goals that contrast so much with traditional learning, and to prevent being overly criticized for their new found wealth, they resort to rabid nationalism. He doesn't spare the West though, because he says how could he sell their brand of freedom and democracy to his people when the war in Iraq and revelations of secret CIA prisons have so damaged its credibility?

It seems like the problem for people of conscience, like Orhan Pamuk and others, in countries that lie on the cusp of what is known as a democratic system of government, is what example do they have to hold up to their people of how life should be? That is what we never see on our news, or in our newspapers. No political leader, no matter what their stripe would ever dare get up in public and say what needs to be said.

In spite of what you've been told to the contrary, nobody beyond the borders of this country believes the United States or Britain (and I would add Canada to that list too considering our current government) to be a shining example of freedom or democracy. The light cast by our governments' endeavours no longer serves as a beacon guiding anybody to anything except hostility and resistance.

If Pamuk thought his words made him unpopular in his homeland for speaking the truth, these ideas he postulates aren't going to go down a treat anywhere in the world. Either in the United States, Britain, or Canada where the beacons have sputtered out, or in India, China, Japan, Russia and Turkey where they are embracing Western economic ideals and becoming less tolerant of diversity and truth.

Other Colours is about more than the world's politics, its about life in one of the world's oldest cities as seen through the eyes of a keen and passionate observer. But the world has intruded upon Istanbul – or Istanbul wants to step out into the world again with results that look similar to what is happening elsewhere. How else do you explain a secular country's sudden swing to religious political parties if not through fear of change and a compensation for embracing Western values that are alien to the society?

For whatever reason, Turkey is experiencing some profound changes, and reactions there are as good as indication as any, for gauging the moderate East's opinion of the West. I can't think of any man more capable or sensitive to document these events than Orhan Parmuk, and if you care about the world beyond your borders, it would be remiss not to read every word of this book carefully.

Somewhere within it lies the secret by which we might all survive the next decade or so while the balance of power in the world shifts. He might not come right out and say the answer, but he asks the right questions to put us on the road to discovering it.

Readers in Canada can purchase Other Colours directly from Random House Canada or through Amazon.ca

Posted by Richard Marcus at 05:18 AM | Permalink

Few who have ever seen Janis Joplin perform on television or film (or those lucky enough to have seen her sing in person) will have a easy time forgetting her. She sang a mix bag of originals and old Blues numbers, some of them like "Summer Time" by the Gershwin brothers, dating as far back as the 1920s.

But perhaps one of the songs that she was most famous for was Big Mama Thornton's "Ball And Chain". I'm not sure if the footage I remember was from her performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1968 or another concert, but what I can be sure of was how simply incredible she was. Sometimes it was almost painful to watch Janis Joplin singing in that you felt like you were intruding on someone's personal grief.

As I remember, this concert was one of those occasions, and with each passing song it felt like she was revealing a little more of her soul to the audience. When she sang "Piece Of My Heart", it felt like she was pleading with someone, anyone, to love her enough to take care of her, no matter what else the song might mean. By the time she got to "Ball And Chain" the plea and cry for help and loving was so raw that she could have been singing the phone book and you would have wept in empathy for her.

Janis never learned how to protect herself from her audience. So great was her need for affection and approval, that she let them swallow her whole. Perhaps in a kinder world she would have some sort of chance of success without the accompanying viciousness, but here she didn't have a hope of surviving.

There are a lot of reasons why Big Mama Thornton would do something like dedicate a performance of her own song "Ball And Chain" to Janis Joplin. I'd like to think that it was in recognition of her struggle with her demons, and for gracing the world with her interpretations of Big Mama's songs.

Hearing Big Mama's dedicating a performance of "Ball And Chain" to Janis on the disc Big Mama Thornton put out as part of the Vanguard Visionaries series of discs on Vanguard records you can tell how much Thornton appreciated Janis' version of her song. Thornton, of course, was an amazing singer in her own right, just as fiery, and passionate as Joplin. If ever there were, any one woman down through the years who could understand what Janis had experienced it was Big Mama.

A Black woman singing the Blues in clubs long before the days of rights for either women or Black people, she would have probably been subjected to all sorts of indignities in order to even get up on stage. It would have been on the stage singing that she probably felt most alive and free; no matter what happened on the other side of the lights she was in complete control of her life when she was singing.

Born Willie Mae Thronton in the late 1920's, like so many Blues performers of her generation she came to music via the church. She was one of a Baptist minister's seven children in Montgomery Alabama, but had left home for good by the time she was fourteen. After singing and touring with a band for a while she decided to settle in Texas and take advantage of the club scene there to work permanently without having to go on the road.

It was in Texas that she was given the nickname "Big Mama" due to the fact she was over six feet tall and weighing in at over 200 lbs. But when you listen to her sing you could easily believe that was given that name because of the strength of her voice. Listen to her growl out her version of Lieber & Stoller's "Hound Dog" and compare it to the version Elvis sings.

Thornton's is rough with emotion and she's practically growling at the end, typical of the hard-nosed blues she preferred. Elvis on the other hand has had his version polished so it will be more palatable for mass consumption on the airwaves. Remember Elvis's image was carefully created for him by the Colonel as young and clean cut and the music had to fit.

Big Mama had no such restrictions placed on her and was free to do as she wished musically. Of the ten songs on the Vanguard Visionaries series disc featuring her she has written seven of the ten songs and offers her own arrangement of the traditional "Rock Me Baby" On every song you can here how she uses her voice to create atmosphere and evoke an emotional response from the listener.

You can hear in her voice the characteristics that have gone on to influence singers in future generations. Almost every female singer of popular music who performs rock and roll owes a debt of gratitude to Big Mama Thornton for being the bridge between them and singers like Bessie Smith from an earlier generation. She kept alive the awareness that a female singer doesn't have to sound "pretty" to be effective and they too can have power house voices that can blow the roof off a joint.

Being born in Texas, there is a really good chance that Janis Joplin had the opportunity to see Big Mama perform and heard some of her music while growing up. But even those who may never have heard her until they were adults owe Big Mama a debt of gratitude.

All you have to do is listen to Big Mama Thornton from the Vanguard Visionaries series and you'll see why. Big Mama was a singer, songwriter, and performer par excellence and without her, the sound of modern music would far different from what it is today.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 06:52 AM | Permalink

Whenever I read or hear the words "Folk Revival" I have to chortle; what exactly was it supposed to have been reviving from? Folk music has been around as long as there have been folk to sing it. From the first bards and minstrels singing the stories of the heroes of the great sagas of the Norse, Irish, and others long before we were writing our stories on the page.

How else were the original stories told if not to music? Look at examples of folk music throughout history and you will find that the songs are always about something. Whether it's a sad love story like "Barbara Allen" or a song commemorating a battle won or lost, folk musicians have a long history of being the raconteurs of both current and past events.

The only revival that folk music might have gone through in the twentieth century was when the people who performed it were allowed to get on with their lives after spending most of the 1950's being black listed from performing. The House Committee on Un American Activities under that champion of freedom and justice Jo McCarthy had stolen their right to sing because they had the nerve to sing the truth in their music.

Of course there has been a long history of the establishment doing it's best to silence the voices who set the people's stories to song and music. Joe Hill is not just the name of a song; he was a singer and a songwriter in the early years of the twentieth century who wrote about conditions in the mines and lumber camps of the west. For his troubles he was shot and killed by the Salt Lake police force on a trumped up murder charge.

Telling the truth has always been a dangerous profession in our democratic society, especially if your truth differs from the official line that's offered in the textbooks and government records. According to those histories the people who fought and died so that your children aren't forced to work in mine shafts for 18 hours a day and so you don't have to work 80 hour a week never existed or at best were agitators who the heroic Pinkerton employees had to put down in order to preserve democracy.

Thankfully, there were some brave people who kept the oral tradition alive and sang the songs that told the true history of the people of North America not just the businessmen and their generals. Even when they were blacklisted, they found ways around being silenced by not performing under their own names, or by becoming members of a larger orchestra.

Listen to some early recordings of the wonderful group The Weavers and you might be puzzled as to why the songs are being played with lush strings and sound like they should be sung in a Las Vegas nightclub. It's a variation on the there is safety in numbers routine and through it they were able to accomplish a couple of things; get recording contracts and stay off the blacklists.

For a while it became fashionable to make disparaging comments about The Weavers, dismissing them as old liberals who weren't radical enough. The people who made those comments were as blind and ignorant as those who tried to silence the Weavers. It also showed they had no understanding of what folk music really is. Why don't they sing more "political music", instead of these songs about "Irene" and from other countries?

Well because The Weavers weren't blinkered by political expediency, and the only agenda they followed was a commitment to the music they played. If you haven't listened to them in a while and have forgotten just how incredible they were you're in luck. As part of their Vanguard Visionaries series Vanguard records has released The Weavers, a ten song compilation that makes a great attempt at sampling each aspect of the group's character.

Long before anyway had even come up the term "World Music" The Weavers were singing the songs of folk from all different parts of the world. "Winoweh" from South Africa, "Guantanamera" from Cuba, and "Tzena Tzena" from Israel were all staples elements of any Weavers performance. Those three were just their most popular international folk songs; they played many more then that.

People today can say what they want about diversity, but the Weavers were preaching cultural diversity in the days when America was still racially segregated and even singing in a foreign language made you politically suspect. They didn't make a big deal out of it either or do it to look important – they were folk musicians so they played the music of the folk – and it didn't matter where those folk came from.

Their biggest source for music remained America, but here again they didn't take the easy route out. Songs about unions might have been dated and too dangerous to play in the fifties and early sixties, but what they chose to play instead was nearly as dangerous. Three of the ten tracks on this recording all came from the pen or guitar of Black singer songwriter Huddie Ledbetter (better known as Ledbelly) including "Goodnight Irene", "Midnight Special", and "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine".

A fourth song included on this disc, "House Of The Rising Sun" is another song that originated with Black musicians. That might not mean much to us these days, but when people were being chased off stage or condemned for playing rock and roll because it was Black music (and they wouldn't have used the word Black believe me) playing music originally written by Black songwriters was seen as a provocative act.

But to The Weavers it was no different then playing Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land", Lee Hayes and Pete Seeger's "If I Had A Hammer", or any of the other songs they were identified with. When it came to music they were genuinely, colour blind. Their criteria for a song making their set list appears to have been based on it being somebody's story; the music of folk from anywhere in the world.

If it wasn't for the bravery of Pete Seeger, Ronnie Gilbert, Fred Hellerman, and Lee Hayes, better known to the world as The Weavers, being willing to open doors that fear and suspicion had kept walled up for years, who knows if the careers of people like Joan Baez and Bob Dylan would have even been possible. Listening to The Weavers on Vanguard Records is a small reminder of who and what this group stood for. It's a timely reminder of the importance of being brave enough to speak and sing unpopular truths in times when those voices are hard to find.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 09:42 PM | Permalink

I know everybody hates pop quizzes, but here's one for you anyway. Who is the only Naive American/Canadian to win an Academy Award? Give up, I'll give you some clues (if the title of the review hasn't given it away yet), she's a Cree Indian from Saskatchewan Canada originally who had a very successful career as a folk/country artist in the sixties and early seventies.

She was an Indian before it became fashionable to be one and sang about Native issues when nobody else was. She also wrote and performed songs about the state of the world, and people's emotions. She's also never recorded her award winning song, "Up Where We Belong", leaving that to Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warrens.

Buffy Saint-Marie has been singing her songs of peace and respect for years now, although her lyrics and her voice have never been the type that would send her up the pop charts. The fact that she sounds like she's always on the verge of picking up a gun and heading off on the war-path to exact some revenge for all the indignities visited upon her people never made her the flavour of the mouth among record executives either.

It's people like her that make you give thanks for a label like Vanguard Records. Back in the sixties and seventies they were the only ones who would release music by performers who sang the overtly politically music that wouldn't be touched with a ten foot pole by the more conservative labels. Now some forty years after some of these original recordings were made they've put together a series of compilations for a lot of those same performers under the name of "Vanguard Visionaries"

If you've forgotten about Buffy and don't really recall what could make her entitled to be called a visionary then that makes this disc all the more important. Not only is it a wonderful greatest hits package of the music she did while she was with Vanguard records – it serves to remind us all of her unique voice and unwavering strength of character.

But it's not just vocally and lyrically that she was so distinctive. Think about other single female folk acts that you know of from that era and what comes to mind? Simple melodies plucked out on a guitar and basic arrangements about as threatening as the flowers they wore in their hair. At the same time, Buffy was using electronics and overdubs to stretch and distort her voice in the harmonies on songs like "God Is Alive, Magic Is Afoot", and "The Vampire".

Still, what she was then and remains today, was a fierce advocate for the rights of Native Americans. She was the lone public voice singing about the centuries of mistreatment incurred by the first peoples of North America and probably the first person to use the "G" word, genocide, publicly regarding government policies towards the American and Canadian Indian populations.

Most people's first knowledge about the horrors of Residential schools, and blankets infested with small pox, all part of the war that continues to this day against Indians across the continent, came from her songs. (A war that is world wide: Brazil, Guatemala, Peru, Bolivia, Columbia, Indonesia, Viet-Nam, Japan, Siberia, and anywhere else where there is an indigenous population the story is simply a variation of what happened here) Instead of on the battle field, the war today is conducted by people behind desks in the offices of multinational corporations and government bureaucracies.

Songs like "Now That The Buffalo's Gone" and "My Country 'Tis Of Thy People You're Dying" spelled out in detail for those willing to listen the atrocities committed in the name of civilization and progress. She even gives answer to those who would say, "Well they lost the war, what do they expect" by asking why Germany and Japan were left with their land and dignity intact when the Indians of North America weren't when they were defeated?

She didn't just talk about what was wrong in her songs, she also made sure to sing about being proud to be who she was, and for others to take pride in their heritage. "Native North American Child" is a great example of that with it's tongue in cheek chorus of "Sing about your Ebony African Queen, Sing about your lily white Lili Marlene. Beauty by the bushel, but the girl of the hour is a Native North American Child".

In the days when nobody was saying anything positive about Indians, and the only images people had of them originated in either Hollywood or Madison Avenue, positive reinforcement in a song was just as important as protesting wrongs. While folk like James Brown, Isaac Hayes, and others were extolling the virtues of Black Power, the only voice at all singing about Indians was Buffy Sainte-Marie.

Of course she didn't only sing about Indians, she sang other music as well, and included on this new Vanguard Visionaries disc is her cover of Neil Young's classic "Helpless". It must be something about the song, but it really only sounds right when sung by a person with a voice up in the near falsetto range. Her version is every bit as evocative and chilling as Mr. Young's original.

You might not know very much about Buffy Saint-Marie anymore, she semi retired from music a while back to start work on an arts program for young Native Americans across North America. I think her last studio album was back in the early nineties, and it was just as powerful and potent as ever. Listening to this disc will make you wonder how you ever missed hearing such a distinctive and passionate voice.

Some music when you listen to it thirty years after it was originally released loses its impact and power. That's not the case here with the music of Buffy Sainte-Marie; it's just as potent and powerful as it was when first released. If you missed it then, make sure you don't miss this second opportunity to experience one of the most original female pop vocalists of the past forty years.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 06:42 AM | Permalink

A while back, I was watching one of those " the making of an album" documentary discs. This one was about the year The Band made their self titled album The Band. I thought it was a hoot to hear all these music critic types talking about how this album represented the beginnings of a rebirth of interest in "Americana" music.

Here's a group of musicians, four-fifths of whom hadn't been further south then Ontario Canada until they started playing professional music and they're being credited with being the focal point for the rebirth of interest in American folk music. It's not as if their early professional career had much to do with it either. They started off playing behind "Rompin" Ronnie Hawkins ("The Hawk") who was pure Rock & Roll.

Heck, he was so un-American that he left Arkansas and moved to Canada where's he lived since the sixties. He was the undisputed King of the scene in Toronto, and anybody who was anybody stayed with him out in his suburban home in Mississauga on the outskirts of Toronto. In 1969 when John Lennon showed up, he stayed out there, as did Janis Joplin and other luminaries of the era.

Since the old time music influence didn't come from that Good Ole Boy it must have come from the fifth member in the band who just happened to hail from Ronnie's home state of Arkansas, Levon Helm. After all it was Levon who wrote "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" and his was the only voice that sounded like it should be singing "The Weight". With all due respect to Rick Danko, but an Ontario accent just doesn't cut it for something that sounds like Southern Gospel music.

As I tend to be out of touch when it comes to news about people's personal life, it was only upon watching that same video that I found out Levon was in recovery from throat cancer. He had never been the biggest of men, and now he looked almost cadaverous. His voice, not the most dulcet of instruments in the first place, could only have sustained God knows what damage from chemotherapy, surgery, and cancer. I never thought I'd hear him sing again.

Then last year I reviewed a Holmes Brother album, and lo and behold, there was Levon and Amy Helm singing vocals on one song. The voice might have sounded a bit thin, and even rougher around the edges than ever before – but it still had the same character and emotional depth that I remembered from his days in The Band and his sporadic solo career. It was great to hear him again, but I still didn't think there would be an album forthcoming anytime soon.

Never have I been so glad to be wrong; Vanguard Records has just released Dirt Farmer Levon's first disc since his diagnosis and treatment for his throat cancer in 1998. In honour, and probably with a whole bunch of gratitude, of being allowed to come back again to health and a career, he chose to make this disc in homage to the people who first got him interested in music – his parents.

Dirt Farmer is a mix of traditional songs that he learnt from them given new arrangements by Mr. Helm, and original songs that are written by various friends which fit into the overall sound and feel of the disc. If there was ever any doubt about where The Band's Americana roots came from, a listen to this disc will dispel them. The roots of this disc run deeper into the soil of rural America then any old oak in the Appalachians.

A year ago when I heard Levon Helm sing, his voice was still a far cry from what it used to be when it was the power behind some of The Band's most potent songs. Truthfully, that hasn't changed any, but power isn't the only test of a singer's quality. Sometimes what matters most is an ability to communicate with the listener in as honest a manner as possible. Given the nature of the music that's being played on Dirt Farmer that ability is by far a greater asset than being able to break the sound barrier.

Levon Helm has always had an incredibly expressive voice, and on Dirt Farmer that comes to forefront. Maybe it's in compensation for his lack of volume, but I think it was always there and he's now trusting in its ability to carry a song. However you want to look at it, the result is the same – wonderfully sung renditions of emotionally powerful songs by one of the most distinctive voices in popular music.

There is an inherent honesty to his voice that ensures songs that in another's person hands, the title track "Dirt Farmer" for instance, could have become sentimental pap. But when Levon sings about the trials and tribulations of the sharecropper whose nowhere even close to getting by, he sounds like he's actually lived that life.

Of course there's more then just Levon Helm on this disc, and it would be criminal not to mention the incredible vocal harmonies that his daughter Amy and Teresa Williams provide. Not only do they smooth out some of the rougher edges to Levon's lead vocals, they also compliment them. Instead of making whatever lack of refinement his voice might have these days stand out, they work with him to bring out the best in the material.

The best thing about Dirt Farmer is that its not a good album for a guy coming back from throat cancer; its a good album period. It might be the first solo disc that Levon Helm has put out since he started going through treatment for his illness, but what I heard was a recording made by a man with a great deal of integrity, and a love for the music that he sings.

That makes it a heck of lot better then most discs being released in this day and age.

Although the disc isn't officially on sale until the end of October, Levon is selling it through his web site for those who can't wait.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 05:25 AM | Permalink

No matter how hard I try I can't understand how any society that claims to cherish freedom, justice, and democracy as much as the United States of America does would allow a creature like Jesse Helms to have power in shaping the policy of the country. What's even more disgusting is the fact that he is treated with respect and dignity when he deserves to be shunned, if not tried for crimes against humanity.

In the 1960's, he fought against the racial integration of schools in North Carolina. Since his election to the senate in 1972, he has done his best to deny rights and liberties to any group he sees as not fitting into his narrow definition of the world order. Whether its been women seeking equality under the law, Hispanics and African Americans asking for assistance to redress the years of inequality in quality of education and job availability, and for the last twenty years anything allowing homosexuals even the appearance of equality in the eyes of the law, his has been the voice raised loudest in opposition.

His apologists say things like, well one thing you can say for Jesse is that you know where he stands on things, which isn't something you can say about lots of politicians. Well you can say the same thing about Hitler and Stalin but that didn't change the fact they were despotic monsters. Anyway what difference does it make that he's honest about being a bigoted hate monger or not, it doesn't change the fact that he is one.

At first glance, you wouldn't think you could find someone more diametrically opposed to Jesse Helms then Tim Kirkman if you tried. He's gay, works in the arts as a film director and scriptwriter, and lives in the epitome of the liberal north, New York City. What could these two men have in common?

Actually, quite a lot; they were both born in the same small town in North Carolina, attended the same high school, spent a year at the same college, worked in radio and for newspapers while in school, and both obsess over gay men. For all those reasons, and maybe the last one in particular, Tim returned to his hometown with camera and crew in an attempt to understand Jesse Helms, and the state that has elected him to the Senate since 1972 that they both call home.

The resulting documentary film Dear Jesse has now been released on DVD by Sovereign Distributors and goes on sale this October. Tim criss-crosses North Carolina speaking to people from as many walks of life as possible, both supporters of Jesse and those who oppose him, creating a picture of the man who represents them in the eyes of the world that's not very flattering.

I don't know if it was his intention when he started out on this journey, but along the way it also becomes an examination of his own life and his relationship with his family and friends that still live in North Carolina. Through interviews, news clips, and voiceovers Tim tells the story of two of the state's native sons. He does his best to be an objective observer, and let other people and the historical record paint the picture of Jesse Helms, and to a large degree, he is successful. The majority of the analysis he indulges in centres around his own life, and the choices he's made along the way.

It's there where we can make our own suppositions of course. How much were those choices a product of the environment he grew up in; the environment fostered and created by Jesse Helms. Would he have been more open about his relationship with another man to his parents if Helms hadn't so poisoned the atmosphere of North Carolina with his riling against same sex relationships?

Even during the filming of the movie, he is still too unsure of how his parents would be able to cope with him talking about how upset he was because a man he had loved had just committed suicide. Can you imagine not being able to turn to your parent's for comfort when someone you love dies? Can you imagine how lonely and isolated that would make you feel?

That's what made Dear Jesse such a powerful movie is the fact that it was able to show the subtle and insidious ways that prejudice can affect the lives of people. It's not just the overt hate mongering that causes so much damage, it's the atmosphere of fear, and suspicion that it generates that can cause as much grief. Is it any wonder that a disproportionate numbers of teenage suicides are gay?

To the person who is already insecure, like most teenagers, add the fear of being rejected by ones own family to the lack of support in the community at large and you can feel like the loneliest person on the planet. The interviews that Tim conducts with individuals who have been affected by the poisoned air of North Carolina that is the legacy of Jesse Helms show just how insidious it can be.

The mother of a boy whose son died of AIDS, who had received a personal letter of condolence from Senator Helms when her husband died of cancer, reads from a letter that Helms wrote her in response to her plea for more research into the AIDS virus. In it, the Senator tells her it was her son's own damn fault that he died and that he got what was coming to him. What kind of human being would write a letter like that, rubbing salt into the wounds of a person's grief?

In Jesse Helms' North Carolina in 1996 the Klu Klux Klan were still marching in the streets without people rising up in protest against their presence let alone the fact they existed at all. Any place that hate mongers feel confident enough to stage public marches with out the worry of harassment is not going to be one where minorities are going to feel welcome no matter how long their families have lived there or how deep their roots run.

In Dear Jesse Tim has created a documentary that condemns its subject the harshest by showing how normal North Carolina looks. Yet since 1972 they have elected an openly racist, misogynistic, and homophobic man as their senator. That's the scariest thing about this movie, and I don't even know if Mr. Kirkman was aware that result was showing up on the screen.

A few years ago, a young man by the name of Matthew Sheppard was pistol whipped and left tied to a fence in the Montana where he died. The only reason he was killed was because he happened to be gay. Hate crimes like these are only possible because the people who commit them have been told by people like Jesse Helms that Matthew Sheppard was less then human and didn't deserve to be treated like a person.

At one point during the filming of Dear Jesse Tim goes to a small college in North Carolina where Jesse Helms was to have given a speech. They ended up missing the speech, so he did interviews instead with people outside the building. Ironically, one of the people he interviewed was Matthew Sheppard and his boyfriend. It is the only known film clip of Matthew.

Dear Jesse made me shed tears of sadness and rage when I heard how life under Jesse Helms had affected the lives of so many people through his hate mongering. Hopefully now that he no longer is in the Senate things might begin to change, but I wonder how long it will take for his awful legacy to be obliterated. One thing is for sure, there is no need to build him a memorial, – there are plenty of tombstones across the country of people who died of AIDS that will serve quite well.

Who knows how many of the bodies buried under them might still be alive if it hadn't been for his obstructionist policy against funding research into treating AIDS. I really wonder how he sleeps at night.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 07:17 PM | Permalink

The United States has been at war with people living within its borders since the day the country was founded. Systematically the government has stripped them of their land, denied them of basic human rights, and tried to steal the very language they have spoken for thousands of years from their tongues. When they or allies have had the nerve to protest they are declared enemies of the state and treated as such.

If you thought acts committed under auspices of Homeland Security were new, its only because the majority of the population of the United States has not been subject to them before. Welcome to a small taste of what it's like to be an Indian in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.

Only a small taste however, the government isn't quite stupid enough to think that the majority of people would tolerate being treated like they still treat Indians today. Heck they never even treated the Blacks this bad – but of course they were an essential ingredient in keeping the economy going, slave labour to pick the cotton and minimum-wage slave labour to keep the service industry turning over.

But what damn good is an Indian, they don't make good slaves 'cause they just die, which why we had to import the Africans in the first place, and you can't teach him to be civilized either – look at how long we tried with residential schools. Not them, nope they'd rather keep speaking their own heathen languages no matter how much we beat, raped, or generally abused them. Well if the stubborn bastards don't want anything do with our way of life than screw 'em is what I say, and let them rot on their reservations.

That might not be written down anywhere as official government policy, but it's certainly been the way the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have conducted themselves when it comes to their treatment of American Indians and their supporters. The Unquiet Grave: The FBI And The Struggle For The Soul Of India Country by Steve Hendricks is the latest book to try and waken the American public to the criminal behaviour of their government toward it's own citizens.

Published by Thunder Mouth's Press an imprint of Avalon books and distributed by Publishers Group Canada and Publishers Group West. It joins Dee Brown's Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee and Peter Matthiessen's In The Spirit Of Crazy Horse as attempts to counter the lies and bullshit that have been propagated as the truth about events of the last thirty years and beyond.

For organizations who claim to have nothing to hide concerning their dealings with American Indians, and in particular people who were involved with the American Indian Movement (AIM) in the 1970s, both the FBI and the BIA were and are, very reluctant to release documents to Hendricks under the Freedom Of Information Act as required by Congress. In fact in an effort to research this book, he has had to sue both agencies (with some cases still in the courts) on a number of occasions to gain access to the files he requested.

For his investigation into the recent history of the American Indian, he starts with the biggest mystery that still surrounds events that took place thirty years ago on Pine Ridge Lakota Reserve in South Dakota – the death of Anna Mae Aquash. Anna Mae was a member of AIM who was found dead on a back road in South Dakota. Right from the discovery of her body, the FBI did their best to distort the facts. They even refused to come clean on how many agents showed up at the scene after the crime was reported.

Hendricks recounts the story again in all its sordid detail: how her hands were cut offand sent to Washington for fingerprinting, because nobody supposedly recognised her. How the first autopsy said she died of exposure even though there was bullet wound in the back of her neck leaking blood and the bullet could be clearly seen as a protuberance through her face. Thirty years later rumours and accusations are still flying on all sides about who killed her and why.

She wasn't the only AIM member or supporter to be killed or die under mysterious circumstances and whose real killers may never be found out. They may find the person who pulled the trigger, but those who labelled her an informer and sealed her death will never be known. That standard operating procedure for the FBI was to seed dissent among groups like AIM by spreading rumours via agency informants is well known. Therefore, it remains a very real possibility that they pulled the strings that resulted in the death of Anna Mae Aquash by convincing AIM she was as an informer.

Anna Mae isn't the only scab the Steve Hendricks picks at, some won't sit well with supporters of AIM, but their hands got dirty, and the less they attempt to cover it up the better it will be for them in the long run. Suspicion and paranoia seemed to be the normal state of affairs for the leadership of AIM. Not without justification as there were continual threats on the lives of Dennis Banks, Russell Means, and others. Still that doesn't excuse what were tantamount to summary executions of people suspected to be informers.

People may say, if Hendricks was so interested in helping Indians, why did he have to go and say things that throw the leadership of AIM in a negative light. In my mind that establishes the credibility of all the other information he unearths in his book. We've already enough history books that are written that cover up inconvenient truths, do we really want more of the same no matter whose side they favour?

According to the United States Army the virtual execution of over three hundred men, women, and children at Wounded Knee Creek on December 28th 1890 by Hotchkiss gun was and is a glorious victory for the Seventh Calvary. Any attempt to pay even the least amount of compensation to the victim's families has been fought tooth and nail by the United States Army in their continued denial of an almost universally accepted truth. Supporters of the American Indian cannot reasonably condemn the American government for propagating a recidivist version of history if they are willing to do the same.

In the long run no matter how bad the leadership of AIM might come across at times, it will always pale in comparison to the activities of the FBI, the BIA, and various American administrations, up to and including the current one, in regards their treatment of American Indians. Books like Unquiet Grave and men like Steven Hendricks are necessary if we are ever going to find out the truth of what happened and what continues to happen in the war the government of the United States is waging against the American Indians.

You might not like everything he has to say, but unlike the official versions of these events, he has told the truth as much as he is able to based on what people have been willing and able to tell him. The story continues to unfold at his web site as he wins access to more and more information. Even since the book was published in 2006 he has added more to the story via that address.

For anybody doubting the veracity of his claims pages 383 to 474 of Unquiet Grave cites his sources for all his information, including excerpts from documents prised away from the FBI under the Freedom Of Information Act. It's all there, from their falsification of information in order to ensure Leonard Peltier's extradition from Canada for his alleged role in the killing of FBI agents, to the contradictory statements about Aquash's death.

Unquiet Grave: The FBI And The Struggle For The Soul Of Indian Country by Steven Hendricks should cause outrage and shock because of its revelations about the FBI and the BIA, but it will be lucky to attract any attention at all. We continue to wash our hands of any responsibility for the "Indian problem" or claim it doesn't exist. Hendricks answers those who would argue that it's not our responsibility what happened hundreds of year ago with these words about the land stolen from the Lakota..."If we know of the theft, as we do, yet do not right it, we are as guilty as our forbearers".

The same can be said about the FBI and the BIA; if, as according to this book they are, they are aware of the guilt of previous agents and agency heads, and do nothing to rectify it, they are just as guilty as those who committed those acts. It's high time that those two bureaus were held accountable for their crimes against the American people, and Steven Hendricks has provided sufficient evidence to justify just such an investigation.

Unquiet Grave is an unusual history book in that it attempts to tell the truth without favouring one side over another. It also lays out the story of the American Indian in language that anybody can understand without ever oversimplifying or assuming the reader already knows anything. This important book should be included on every high school's history curriculum in Canada and the United States as an example of what the truth looks like. It's not necessarily pretty, nor is it necessarily nice, but its reality and its about time eyes were opened to it. Only then can the long, overdue, process of redressing wrongs begin.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 09:10 PM | Permalink

From J. D. Salinger's Catcher In The Rye on down, the modern novel has been replete with coming of age stories about dysfunctional males. Some of them have been tedious in their, oh so serious, examination of normal behaviour that most people grow out of, but a minority have managed to capture the flavour and feeling of the times they are set in.

While some see Salinger's work as the litmus test for books of this genre, and it's true it was probably the first work of fiction that showed an adolescent pimples and all, it's also very period specific. While the character of Holden Caufield may have some archetypical reference points for youth, so much of a young person's angst is going to centred around the things that they can relate to as part of their everyday culture that era is almost as important as character.

Not fitting in is the biggest fear for the majority of people at that stage in their lives. Taking the first steps in building an identity that is more than son, daughter, sister, or brother is a very scary business and the most important thing needed is reassurance that who you are is acceptable, even if it's with those most find completely unacceptable.

It's what made books like Richard Farina's Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me and Douglas Coupland's Generation X so perfect for their respective eras. Farina's Gnossos was the ultimate in cool and free spirit – the epitome of what people dreamed of being in the sixties and Coupland's book spoke the language of those were stuck in the free fall, merry –go – round of going nowhere fast, with service industry jobs in the early days of the blank 1980's.

For those looking for the anti-hero of the "nought" generation, those coming of age in the zero years of the 21st century, they could do no worse then gravitate towards When Thinfingers, the protagonist of Jeff Parker's first novel Ovenman. Published by Tin House Books and distributed in Canada by Publishers Group Canada and Publishers Group West in the States it explodes off the page like a motorized board coming off the high wall.

This is not a ride for the faint of heart as the wheels barely ever stop spinning long enough for you to catch a breath. First thing you have to know about When is it and Thinfinger are his real names. His mom was sixteen when she gave birth to him and she was in labour so long that all she could say near the end was, when. She couldn't think of anything else to call him so it stuck. The Thinfinger came from his step dad, who formally adopted him when he was ten.

It was also his step dad that threw him out of home the day he showed up with both arms covered in tattoos from shoulder to wrist. It didn't matter that the guy doing the tattoos had exercised creative license while When was passed out. When may be a bad-ass skate boarder, who can bunny hop his mountain bike over curbs, rocks and other immovable objects, and be the lead screamer in a local punk outfit, but he has this un-cool streak a mile wide.

He passes out at the sight of blood and doesn't cope well with pain. Hanging with people who think nothing of branding themselves with red hot butter knives or covering themselves with multiple piercings, that makes him a little bit more of a loser than they are.

So it's a good thing that our boy When has another way of finding life satisfaction, his jobs for places on the lower end of the food service industry. Now we're not talking about the real low end, working for the franchises, but the small independents who specialize in mass production of ribs, pizza, and whatever else is hot or deep fried that can be stuffed down drunk and stoned college students and the service people that serve them.

When has work ethic, whether it's prepping salads, cleaning the grease pit, or holy of holies setting the pizza oven up for optimum loading and cooking of all sizes. Becoming the Ovenman at the coolest pizza joint in town makes him feel like things are coming together for him. So what if his live in girlfriend has nightmares about him murdering her, and sings in a top forty cover band? What does it matter that when his mountain bike gets stolen his best friend makes him buy it back from him? Does it really matter that he has to stick postit notes to his body so he can remember what happened the night before?

As Ovenman he gets to mop the floor last thing at night, and there's nothing he's prouder of than his ability to mop a floor spotless. He's even figured out how far he can push things when it comes to his theory of restaurant economics; how much is staff entitled to steal from ownership as a ratio of how much they are paid versus how much the establishment makes.

But, it all goes to shit when he's promoted to manager. Not that he can't do the job, and not that people aren't willing to work for him – but he's not allowed to do anything anymore but float and keep the customers satisfied. No more lining up pizzas in the oven, no more perfect way of cleaning out the grease tank, and worst of all no more final mop at the end of the night with the place to himself. Something's got to give and when it does, it's pretty spectacular.

Jeff Parker's Ovenman is about the kids you see covered with tattoos and piercings whose lives revolve around the scene and nothing else. The future isn't going to be any different from today, just more of the same jumping from dead end job to dead end job. Big dreams, like jumping a pit of rattle snakes on your skate board, come to naught because as dreams go they don't have much to do with anyone's version of reality.

Ovenman is funny, sad, and intelligent in all the right ways, with characters that are sometimes too real to be comfortable. In other words, they have a nasty way of making you think, or at least me think, there but for the grace of God go I. These aren't stupid kids, well not all of them anyway. They're just the ones who never had a chance from the moment of birth because they were born into a world that really didn't give a shit for what happened to them.

For every politician who makes a speech about the youth being our future and the need to invest in them, there are twenty When Thinfingers who are just trying to figure out the present. The future isn't a concept these kids think about except in terms of it being another day you have to get through.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 06:40 PM | Permalink

I guess it's not too surprising that no matter where you go on the planet, no matter what the cultural background of the people, the one thing we're all going to have in common is some means or other of being able to bang out a rhythm. It was probably something the species picked up on shortly after the discovery of fire on our climb up the evolutionary ladder.

You can picture it can't you? A bunch of our early kin sitting around the fire, and one of them, there's always somebody like it in every crowd, has a nervous twitch and with the bone he'd been just chewing on starts to tap on the hollow log beside him. He soon discovers he can change the sound he's making by how hard he hits the log, how many times he hits it in a row, and that he can also make patterns with the sound.

It was the Greeks who gave us the beginnings of the word we use today to describe the pattern made by sound, coming from their word meaning to flow: rhythmos. But I'm sure that the cultures that predated or co-existed with the founders of Western thought had their own words for the same idea. In the days when everything was done by hand, from lighting a fire by rubbing two sticks together or striking two rocks, the rhythm of life was ever present and obvious.

Even in the age of machines and industrialization a kind of rhythm could be heard via the clanging of machinery and the piecing together of bits and pieces on the assembly line. However, it was also the first stage in our separation from the rhythm of life, (the heartbeat), resulting in us eventually becoming deaf to all but the cacophony that surrounds us.

Thankfully, there are some who still strive to maintain the connection for us; those individuals who are sensitive to the effect rhythm can have on us physically, emotionally, and (dare I say this publicly in the West) spiritually. I'm not talking about some New Age high priest of whatever spiritual tradition is fashionable to co-opt this week; I'm not even talking about so-called legitimate religious people either. Nope I'm talking about some of the most profane and real people on the planet – musicians.

Any musician who has ever had even a modicum of success has had to learn how to keep a steady beat going. From a lead vocalist to the percussionist, without a feel for timing they wouldn't have even been able to play in the lowest of dives without being thrown off stage in a hail of beer bottles. But if you really want to make a connection back to yourself with music you need to search out percussionists who have made it their life's work, mission even, to seek out people of like mind from cultures around the world to work with.

Mickey Hart, formally of the Grateful Dead and various independent percussion projects, is one such gifted percussionist. Even during his days of drumming for the Dead he was busy with side projects all over the world. He would use his name and status to open doors for himself, and the musicians he worked with in other countries, to ensure that their non-commercial projects would not only be recorded, but even released and promoted.

One of his earliest collaborators was the amazing tabla player Zakir Hussain. The two men have known each other since the 1970's when they were key figures in the percussion project known as the Diga Rhythm Band. Aside from both being percussionists, they have a similar philosophy when it comes to their approach to music. Each of them describes the work they have done in the years since that last record appeared as steps on a journey.

While neither of them are very clear about where the journey is going to take them, they are clear about making sure that they are continually learning and experimenting with different means of expressing rhythm. Their new release, Global Drum Project
, due out Oct 2nd on the Shout Factory label, sees them hooking up with two other percussionists; Sikiru Adepoju on the African talking drum and Giovanni Hidalgo supplying a Latin groove.

The eight tracks on this disc represent a distillation of a great deal of the music they have absorbed and learned about in the years since the Diga Rhythm Band projects of the seventies. Aside from bringing together music from the Amazon Basin to Papua New Guinea and all stops in between, they've also embraced the potential that technology has to augment what can be done with the human body.

The result is absolutely spellbinding, in the almost literal sense of the world. From the opening track "Baba", featuring guest vocals from Babatunde Olatunji, through to the ethereal "I Can Tell You More" that closes the disc, you are taken on a trip not only around the physical world via various musical influences, but to the unlimited world that resides with each of us.

It doesn't matter whether a song is composed of tribal beats, complicated tabla patterns, or sounds turned into clouds by effect's boxes, the music pulls you out of the mundane world. To sit and listen to Global Drum Project is to obtain a level of awareness that you may not have thought you were capable of experiencing. The musical prowess of all those involved in this recording is so astounding there is no way you can listen to it without forgetting about the world beyond the disc for at least the duration of its playing time.

But unlike supposed transcendental music sold in New Age stores, they aren't making any effort to be "spiritual", or even pretending to be anything other than extremely gifted musicians. Which is exactly why it is so successful in being a record of such power and grace. Their only concern is to play some of the great and wonderful music they've come across during the past few years of their journey.

Music that is played with the passion and skill that these people possess doesn't need to try and be spiritual or uplifting in order to be just that. When music is able to achieve the purity and beauty required to free us sufficiently to be able to hear what's around and inside us for a change, it becomes one of the greatest gifts we can give to each other. How much more spiritual can you get then that?

The Global Drum Project is an amazing disc of percussion music as you've never heard percussion played before. If you've never really experienced what it feels like to leave the world behind, even temporarily, then you won't want to miss out on this recording. This is music at its purest and most direct, and it will speak to places inside of you that you didn't even know existed.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 08:25 PM | Permalink

I remember having a conversation with the mother of one of my acting students back in the early nineties about how easy it would be to become a terrorist. She worked with abused children in a custodial treatment centre, meaning these were children under the age of fourteen who had to be kept under lock and key because they were considered uncontrollable.

One eight year old boy had burnt down the house he lived in, and his mother had woken up to find him standing beside her with a knife, and had only just missed being fatally wounded. As it was she ended up in hospital with a punctured lung and her son had ended up at this facility. The boy had been sexually abused first by his father, and then by one of the mother's boy friends.

In it's wisdom the government of the province where I live decided that these children didn't need a separate facility and could be housed within a wing of an adult facility. It was all about cutting costs so they could give tax breaks to their wealthy buddies of course. Anyway, there was nothing wrong with these kids that a little taste of the belt wouldn't take care of - single moms was what the real problem was of course. They let their kids run wild while they get drunk, do drugs, cheat the welfare system, and screw anything in pants.

After another week of fighting that attitude while trying to save the facility, she said there were times she just felt like putting a bomb in a mail box.

"The only thing stopping me is the fact that somebody's kids are going to be walking by that mail box. I know how devastated I would be if my kids were killed, and I could never do that to another person."

There was a flatness in her eyes brought on by more then just physical exhaustion. It was as if everything she had believed in had been torn out from under her and the ground under her feet was no longer certain. Bombs might not have changed anything, but they sure would have provided her with a type of certainty. Thankfully, it wasn't the type she was looking for.

Unfortunately, the certainty of violence is a good fit for far too many people. Blowing somebody up is one way of making sure you get the last word in an argument. There's no need for messy ambiguities about who is in the right and who is in the wrong if the other person is lying dead on the floor with.

These days it seems that everybody who has a point to make does so by blowing things up. The problem is that instead of solving anything, each time it happens situations just get worse. From the suicide bomber blowing him or herself up in a crowded market place to an invading and occupying army fighting insurgency, nobody seems to be getting any closer to resolving any of the disputes that have been the supposed cause of the violence.

Of course it's pretty hard to listen to anyone when you're busy blowing things up. "Eh, sorry could you repeat that? I couldn't hear you over the sound of the tomahawk missile going off." Conversely, no one is going to be listening too closely when they're dodging the hundredweight of nails that have been sent firing across a market place either. Dispute resolution works a lot better if you at least attempt to hear the other person talking.

Terror is in the eye of the beholder of course; one man's freedom fighter has always been another man' terrorist, it simply depends where your vested interests lie. To the British the guys throwing the bales of tea into Boston harbour were terrorists of a kind, while to the colonists at the time they were brave heroes. But no matter who the bad guy is and who the good guy is, when you come right down to it violence is violence no matter who sanctions it.

To the people living in Baghdad when the bombs were falling the Americans were just as much terrorists as the people who flew the jets into the World Trade Centre were to the American public. People on the receiving of bombs and explosions don't really give a damn about politics or justifications. When your home is in ruins and members of your family have been killed and wounded everything else is irrelevant.

Violence is the first resort of the coward and the last resort of the brave. The problem is that most of our leaders are cowards and liars. If Osama Bin Laden put the energy and money he puts into terrorism into building schools and farms in Afghanistan he would be securing his people a much better future then the one he's paying for now with their lives.

If George Bush and his allies really wanted to wage war on terrorism they could start by not propping up governments around the around the world that treat people like dirt. They could also stop insisting that International Monetary Loans be conditional on practices guaranteed to keep countries in perpetual poverty, and they could spend a fraction of the money the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan is costing to do what's ever necessary to help eradicate the conditions that create willing followers for terrorist leaders.

Everybody is far too willing to see weapons and violence as the solutions to their problems, but every time one person picks up a gun, somebody else responds in kind. Until one person is brave enough to put down the weapons and hold out an empty hand, mothers will keep losing their children.

I fail to see how that is making the world a better place for anyone.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 10:07 PM | Permalink

Quick, what songs from the seventies do you think of first when I say Eric Clapton? I'd lay odds that at least one, if not two of them, would be either "After Midnight" or "Cocaine".

Back in the early 1970's there was a great trivia question you could ask, and very few people would know the answer. Who wrote the Eric Clapton hits "After Midnight" and "Cocaine"? Of course everybody knows the answer now, but back then hardly anybody had ever heard of a guy named J J Cale.

You could make a pretty convincing argument that Clapton's solo career wouldn't have taken off quite as quickly if it hadn't been for J J Cale. A casual fan of Clapton's music from that time period, like me, probably couldn't even tell you the name of another song that he had a hit with during that period. (Oh yeah, his cover of Bob Marley's "I Shot The Sheriff" got airplay around the same time) Nine times out of ten if they played an Eric Clapton song on the radio (FM radio, you'd never hear any of his stuff on the AM dial – far too risqué) it would be one of those three, but more often one of the former two.

I've never been a big fan of Clapton, but to give him credit where credit is due, he was always quick to mention this great guitar player from California who was good enough to let him play a couple of his songs. Gradually people began to get to know the name J J Cale until you'd hear his version of "After Midnight" and "Cocaine" on the radio about as often as you'd hear Clapton's.

Mainly because he couldn't be bothered to play the game, and he preferred to stay at home and play guitar over going out on the road, (the story goes that he said if I can't get home to my own bed after a gig I'm not interested) Cale has always remained on the edges of the limelight. He's known by those who care to seek out fine guitar playing and a rough hewn voice, but for the majority he's just a name on the credits of a couple of Eric Clapton songs.

J J Cale did a lot of recording on his own and released far more albums then most people probably realized. But a number of tracks he laid down just never got released. An album might have been full, or the song didn't fit with the rest of the material; whatever the reason fourteen tracks that had been recorded in the late seventies and early eighties have been laying dormant in the vaults for all this time.

Finally Time Life Music, who released the DVD To Tulsa And Back: On Tour With J J Cale last year, have managed to pry the tracks from the grasp of Cale's late producer's wife. Rewind: Unreleased Recordings will be hitting the streets on October 2nd/2007 and I think Cale fans everywhere will be delighted with what they hear.

One of the nice ironies of this recording is that the man whose music has been covered by so many other performers, hardly ever covered another person's song. Yet on Rewind he covers songs by Waylon Jennings, his buddy Leon Russel, Randy Newman, and... wait for it... Eric Clapton. It's funny to think of Cale recording a Clapton tune around the time, let's say, "Cocaine" was being recorded, and I wonder what would have happened had they both been released at the same time.

In the end, it doesn't really matter who wrote any of the fourteen songs on this record, because they all sound like vintage J J Cale. In fact, like any good vintage, they have aged nicely and are still as fresh as when they were recorded. Not only do you get Cale's melodious guitar work and distinctive vocals, you also get all the great musicians who were always clamouring to play with him showing up on these tracks.

People like Richard Thompson lays down guitar tracks, and Neil Young's bassist Tim Drummond teams up with Jim Keltner, who played drums for Dylan and Lennon, to form one hell of a rhythm section. But, you don't buy a J. J Cale album to listen to the other players, it would be like buying an opera to listen to the orchestra and not Pavarotti.

Listen to his voice on Randy Newman's "Rollin'", the sad irony he manages to imbue the lyrics with while singing about how the booze keeps him rolling along, serves as a contrast to the their light hearted content. Then there is his fine country picking on the Waylon Jennings tune "Wayemore's Blues" that sounds like it came from the heart of Hank Williams. None of this new country shit for either Waylon or J. J., but none of that truck-driver, women, and cowboy pain crap either.

Popular music in the 1970's worked really hard to smooth away the rough edges of rock and roll to create something slick and polished for easy mass consumption. Thankfully, some people remembered what the words heart and soul really meant. Listening to Rewind: Unreleased Recordings lets you know that J. J. Cale was one of those people.

If you were to compare the music on this recording to music he recorded before and since, the only differences you might be able to hear are how in recent years his voice has become somewhat rougher. Rewind: Unreleased Recordings is J. J. Cale playing and singing only as J. J. Cale can. It's not often you can refer to someone as a genuine original anymore, but like any masterpiece, J. J. Cale is as unique as they come. This recording serves as a reminder that he has been since day one.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 03:56 AM | Permalink

The bellows effect of a wind gust caught the small fire, flaring it briefly, sending a shower of sparks up in the air. The illumination it caused offered a brief silhouette view of a sharply featured face. Shadows that lived beneath his brow, in the lee of his nose, and in the hollows scooped out beneath his cheekbones were thrown into even sharper relief, until his face was a patchwork of light and dark.

There had been drought again this year and it was second nature to check and see if a spark had ignited any of the brown grass. Fires seeded as easily as weeds, taking root at the slightest provocation they quickly spread to the horizon. Fields of fire didn't sink deep roots, but reaped a deadly harvest all the same.

One moment you could be riding through what remained of the prairie grass, seeing what scant signs of life there were to see, and the next you were ankle deep in ash. Like before and after pictures of a smoker's lungs burnt and un burnt lay side by side. It had to be pure chance why one piece was spared while the adjacent burnt to a cinder. He had given up looking for clues in the surrounding geography, as there were never any clues on offer.

In spite of all attempts to kill her, the land would always hold on to her secrets,. Strip mining caused soil erosion; sulphuric acid used to clean pumice for people's stoned washed, acid jeans had taken care of the water table; at least what had been left of it after they had damned the river for their artificial lakes, fountains and hydro electric.

All that power and beauty diverted because humans were afraid of the dark and its accompanying quiet. What other reason could they have for spending so much money on destroying the beauty of night to make huge pockets of light and noise in the middle of the desert?

On nights like this one, when the moon hung full and ripe in the sky, why anyone would need any more light was beyond him. Even on the nights when she stayed under wraps, or hid herself in the earth's shadow, you didn't need extra light to sleep by. Those who needed to be out and about at night had the ability to either see in the dark or were guided by arcane means known only to themselves.

Even now the darkness began to grow deeper as the night lengthened and the moon eased through her apex. There were nights when he wouldn't leave the fire to climb into his bedroll; when he would feel compelled to bear witness to the darkness and give it the recognition he felt it deserved. Other nights just saw him sitting up keeping his thoughts company so they wouldn't complain the next day that he was ignoring them.

Neglected, they could easily turn vindictive and resentful and make stupid demands on his time during the course of the day. It was better to lose a little sleep now then to have to put up with the abuse that was the certain result of denying their existence. Tonight, though, he was pretty sure he wasn't going to be alone tonight if he sat up.

Sure enough, only a short while later, the flames picked out a pair of amber eyes glowing at him out of the dark. They had first shown up a few years back when the drought had started, and had been showing up on a regular basis ever since. The first time they appeared at his fire he wasn't sure what to make of it. He did know that being scared wasn't going to help, so he stayed as calm as possible and left it to his guest to decide about the proper etiquette for the visit. It wasn't everyday that a God showed up at his campfire after all and he figured that it was only polite to let him set the tone.

It hadn't been too difficult to figure out that his guest wasn't your ordinary coyote. There were a couple of reasons, not the least being that he talked. While bold creatures, the normal wild coyote wasn't just going to up and plunk itself down at a human's campfire. The closest they would usually come is to skirt around the edges of a camp site, seeing if there was any food let out for an easy steall.

Aside from that, the last coyote in the district had been killed off long ago. In fact, it wouldn't surprise him if he found out the last coyote had been killed off in the wild period. Man had never had much use for them for some reason, even though like the wolf their primary prey were the pests like mice and rats that when left unchecked could and did destroy crops. All farmers saw was the potential coyotes represented to their precious sheep and chickens.

Even though payment of an occasional chicken or sheep should have been a fair exchange for preserving grain supplies, farmers refused to see it that way and began a systematic campaign that ended with the eradication of both wolf and coyote and a huge upsurge in the varmint population. With mice and rats out of control, ranchers and farmers both had to resort to poison to take on the rodent populations. A funny thing happened though, the poison they used to try and get rid of the rats, and mice poisoned the feed for the livestock, any livestock that ate it, and the seed for next years crop. Sort of makes the occasional sheep and chicken look inexpensive after all.

Of course they didn't find our about the crop until the following year when they planted and nothing came up. Even going out and buying all brand new seed didn't help much. It turned out that planting the poisoned seed, burying the carcasses of the poisoned rodents, chickens, sheep, and cattle, on top of burying the spoiled grain, was the last straw for the land in this part of the world. Dropping a nuclear bomb wouldn't have done a better job of rendering it fallow for generations to come.

So on that first night when Coyote turned up, there was no one else it could have been. He didn't say anything, those first few times, just sat and stared into the fire. For a trickster god he was pretty morose, but all things considered you couldn't really be expecting him to be jumping for joy. If you believed, like some people do, that he had created the world, it's not surprising he'd be feeling a little down considering the shape things are in.

It was about the fourth time he'd dropped by that he said something. He'd been sitting with his head resting on his front paws staring into the fire like always, when all of a sudden he let out a deep sigh. It sounded like it started at the base of his tail and worked its way on up to the tip of his ears before finally slipping out of his mouth.

"I just don't get it", he said "Things were just fine for the longest time. Everybody understood what they needed to do for things to work smothly. If you were going to try and grow stuff, or raise critters, you made damn sure that you set some aside or sacrificed one in order to keep who ever needed to be, kept happy. All over the world, you human beings used to be quite content with that arrangement. Showing yourselves to be grateful for what you've been given, by giving some of it back. Is that so difficult a concept to get your head around?

When did you folk become so greedy? It's not just the farmers or the ranchers refusing to give away – it's everywhere. You take all the water and you don't even drink it. What do you do with it instead? You use it to power places of self-indulgence that stop you from being aware of how badly you've treated the world

What other species do you know that is so rude that they build an artificial boat safari through a delicate ecosystem like the Florida Everglades? Who else would damn one of the most beautiful rivers in the world in order to make an artificial city in the middle of a desert that uses more hydroelectric power then some countries do? How about creating a plant seed that is specially designed so that it can be safely poisoned without considering what the effects of the poison are going to be long term for themselves or other life forms?"

He stopped then and began scratching behind his ear with his hind leg and then continued his toilet by washing himself in a manner that left no doubt about his opinion of the human race. He raised his head again and looked across the fire, he went to say something more, then shook his head and left. He'd been back to the fire a number of times since, but hadn't had much more to say. When you think about what else is there to say?

So now, most of the time Coyote comes and sits by the fire and looks into it to see if he can find his memories of a better time. Once in a while he'll ask for a cup of tea, just for old times sake, but it sure don't look like his heart is really into it. Sometimes they'll sit there and let the fire burn out until the two of them are left in the dark with their thoughts and the stars shining down on them. They can almost pretend when the dark is at it's purest and most deep that maybe its the beginning and they're waiting for everything to be born.

But that thought doesn't stand up to the harsh light of day any more than any other illusion. Usually just before dawn has fully broken Coyote will pick up his tail and leave, although not before saying goodbye to his one true love as she sinks behind the horizon; another impossible dream that he won't give up on.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:01 AM | Permalink

If there's anything worse then having been a soldier in a war and seeing friends getting killed, it's being made to think nobody really gives a damn about them. Whether you agreed with it or not the British army fought in Ireland for years and years and suffered substantial casualties. The soldiers weren't necessarily there because they wanted to be, but there they were and they were killed regardless of their opinion.

What must have been so galling to them was that the people they were fighting were terrorists who had no qualms about blowing up women and children who were removed from the war zone but most people seemed to forget that bit. Especially in America where there were no end of people willing to drop some money in a bucket to send off to the boys in Ireland. Do those people ever wonder how many people the bombs they paid for killed in London?

So, these soldiers were fighting terrorists for years and years and nobody gave a rat's ass. But all of a sudden terrorists attack mainland United States and everybody, including the British government, is willing to spend millions of dollars, implement stringent anti-terrorist legislation, and invade not just one, but two countries half-way around the world, all in the name of "The War On Terror"

If you had been a British soldier who had fought the IRA in Northern Ireland wouldn't you be feeling just a little bitter. Maybe even a tad cynical. If you were still having flashbacks because of what you'd been through, and now television is full of images of much the same shit, might that just push you over the edge?

In Cracker: A New Terror, a specially filmed final episode of the great British crime series, that scenario comes to life. Being released on DVD at the end of September by Acorn Media Robbie Coltrane brings the irascible police psychologist, Dr. Edward "Fitz" Fitzgerald out of retirement to help the Manchester City Police solve a particularly nasty murder. Fitz and his wife are in town for the first time in ten years for their daughter's wedding when one of his former colleagues asks for an assist.

A young American comic had been brutally murdered in a nightclub's bathroom after his performance. There is the possibility of a witness, but unfortunately he's going to be reluctant to speak to the police as he had just stolen a wallet that night and is a junkie. The witness becomes even more important when the murder strikes again, this time a family friend of the young man.

Another reluctant witness, this time a woman having an affair with the second victim, is convinced by Fitz it would be in the best interests of her marriage to tell the police everything she knows. In other words, he threatens to phone her husband to tell him his wife was banging someone who was murdered while she was in the next room showering. It's surprising how quickly that jogs her memory.

Fitz is still the bull in a china shop that he was before he retired and moved to Australia when it comes to his family life and social situations. He gets drunk and embarrassing at his daughter's wedding, insulting the groom, and taking the piss of (jerking his chain) the groom's father. But it's his willingness to ignore his family while on vacation and do police work that especially compromises his relationship with his wife.

As the audience we know all along who the killer is and we see and understand what triggers him each time. He's one of the aforementioned veterans who served in Northern Ireland during the worst of the fighting. Everywhere we go with him, televisions are blaring out the latest news from Iraq. Reports of British soldiers being attacked, and sanctimonious quotes from George Bush and Tony Blair about the importance of fighting terrorism loop as an endless background litany reminding him of how he and his dead friends have been forgotten. Even the memorial garden honouring those British soldiers who died in Northern Ireland is to be closed because money can no longer be found for its upkeep.

It's enough to make you want to kill somebody. The script and the acting are so amazing that you really understand and sympathise with him. Quite frankly of the people he killed the comic may not have deserved to die, making fun of British soldiers who had served in Northern Ireland in his routine sealed his fate, but the friend of the family was such an unsympathetic asshole that you can't believe anyone would miss him.

He was the type of guy who pleads for mercy because of his wife and kids, right after he'd been caught screwing someone else's wife. Ranks right up there with begging a judge for clemency because you're an orphan after you've murdered your parents in terms of trying to earn sympathy points. The thing is, that still doesn't give anybody the right to murder him. Our ex-soldier can try and earn our sympathy all he wants, but that still doesn't change the fact he murdered people who had nothing to do with his problems.

He'd been a cop for a number of years already meaning his tour of duty in Northern Ireland was a number of years ago and he's known about the flashbacks all along but chosen not to do anything about them. His wife asks him to seek help and he refuses to believe that anyone can help him. Ultimately he makes the decision to be the person he is, a person who kills people if they piss him off.

When taken in that light his claim that he only did it because he was too much of a coward to kill himself is just an excuse to avoid taking responsibility for his actions. In the end, he's just as bad as any terrorist who uses "the cause" as an excuse for killing people who have nothing to do with the "war" they are fighting.

That's the beauty of this show, nothing is black and white, and the greys are even murkier. It makes for a wonderful contrast played out against the backdrop of certainty as proselytised by George Bush and Tony Blair through the media. Even our good guy, Robbie Coltrane's Fitzgerald, is a walking compendium of flaws. Aside from being an alcoholic, he's an egotist of the first order.

He knows his wife is against him getting involved with helping the Manchester Police while they are there on holiday, but he does so anyway. Even worse, he lets her and their youngest son fly back to Australia without him. Everything is about him and feeding his ego and his need to prove himself useful. Perhaps it's not surprising that before he agrees to help the police he suffers from and episode of erectile dysfunction. But as with all self-strokers who choose to pleasure themselves at the expense of another's happiness, he ends up alone.

There are no spoilers to give away in Cracker: A New Terror as far as the plot is concerned, we are in on it from the start. What there is to watch is a tautly written, and magnificently acted crime show with little gore, minimal violence, and a plot that's not about strange mysterious forces out to destroy our wonderful way of life. This is a very human drama, about a severely troubled individual who was damaged by an act of unspeakable inhumanity.

If you're looking for a message in Cracker: A New Terror I would say it was you don't heal from that type of damage by inflicting it upon others, it only makes it worse and increases the chances of other people reacting in the same way. That's a message we could all do with learning, don't you think?

The DVD includes the usual making of special feature, but this one is a little more detailed as it does give you a good history of the series right from the start. Interview subjects include Robbie Coltrane, the writer, and the director. It's a wide screen edition and comes with the option of 5.1 surround sound, which in this case helps because of the unusual amounts of background sound.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 08:39 PM | Permalink

Imagine what it would feel like if your body became a trap. Your mind and your spirit are still strong, and you haven't changed a bit inside your head. You have the same urges, desires, ambitions, and beliefs you've always had, but now you can do nothing to follow through on or fulfill them. Because you've always been a realist, you can't deny the evidence that in spite of your mental health, you are dying and there's nothing anyone can do about it.

Making matters worse is the fact that you are an extremely creative and intelligent person with a vivid imagination. Not only has your body finally failed you; it has also become a burden inflicting continual pain. Morphine and Demerol offer the relief of escape, but who know what tricks it may be playing on your brain when you surrender to the oblivion their embrace offers. As more and more medication is required to bring peace, the further you slip away from reality and the less your thoughts become your own.

As a child the great Mexican artist Frida Kahlo was struck with Polio, leaving her one leg withered and weak. When she was a teenager the trolley car she was riding in was involved in a collision that shattered her pelvis, broke her back, and left her impaled on a metal rod. After six months in hospital, she endured another year in a body cast while her spine mended until she was finally released.

It was during that year in bed that she first began to paint. As the only subject she had at hand was herself she began her life's work of documenting and depicting herself in relation to the rest of the world. On some level, she must have known that her time was limited and made the decision to live as full a life as was possible for her. So when she found herself at the end of her time, stuck in bed, dependant upon family and drugs for succour, none of us can have any idea as to what affect it might have had on her ability to separate reality from illusion.

It is said that the creative and imaginative mind of the artist, combined with the heightened emotional sensitivity that is the invariable companion, is already a few steps closer to the edge of sanity then others. What would have gone through the mind of Frida Kahlo during those final months of her life while she lay waiting for death to come and give her final release from the prison her body had become? While we may never know for sure Kate Braverman's novel The Incantation Of Frida K. is a fictionalized journey into those depths.

Published by Seven Stories Press and distributed in Canada by the Publishers Group Canada The Incantation Of Frida K. is a journey into the mind of a person who seems to no longer be able to distinguish reality from illusion. Why else would she describe her relationship with her husband Diego Rivera as one long foray in sexual perversion? The accident that maimed her when she was a teenager also, she is now convinced, stole her femininity and turned her into a man.

In her mind, she now sees her initial sexual experience with Diego as homosexual, with her being a boy named Pierre. Her opinion of herself has been so degraded by her current circumstances that she is unable to view her life as being anything more than a plaything or doll that Diego used for a prop to promote his own career as an artist. Through out her life Frida was known for her habit of wearing the traditional clothes of the Mayan and Inca people's who were Mexico's first inhabitants. In fact, she was so fascinated with pre-Columbian imagery her paintings drew heavily upon it in both style and content.

But in her distorted view of the world she now sees it as nothing more then another means of keeping her imprisoned and denying her an identity. While it's true that Diego Rivera was a lousy husband and had affairs continually during their marriage, Frida didn't just pine away at home. She had her share of affairs with both men and women, sometimes even with the same woman that Diego was sleeping with. Although she did divorce him at one time, they also remarried, and all biographies say that in spite of everything they loved each other deeply.

Braverman's Frida claims that Diego continuously disparaged her paintings and diminished her accomplishments as an artist. According to the recent movie Frida which was based on the well received biography of the same name by Hayden Herrera, Diego was in actual fact an ardent supporter of Frida's work, and continually encouraged her while praising its quality as being superior to his.

Braverman does not claim to have written a biography, or anything other than a fictionalized supposition of what Frida's state of mind might have been in her last days. Taken in that context, this is an amazing piece of writing that takes us on a journey through the avenues and byways of a mind teetering on the edge of sanity. On occasion Frida K. will have moments of lucidity where she admits to creating an imaginary daughter, and in the next instance she will refer to the daughter in conversation as if she were actual.

Braverman shows an incredible understanding of the potential for disaster that is a continual threat to the creative sensitive mind. Her language while graphic and realistic manages to transcend the morbidity of the subject matter to achieve a kind of poetic beauty. Maybe not beauty in the sense of oh isn't that nice, but the kind of absolute beauty that comes with recognizing something as a work of art.

Ultimately The Incantation Of Frida K. is an artistic interpretation of a state of mind utilizing the potential within Frida Kahlo's life for her to have descended to that level. Disease and trauma exerted a huge toll upon the woman the world knew as Frida Kahlo, leaving her imprisoned by her body for a good deal of her life. The majority of her artwork reflected the pain and disappointment she experienced because of that and there is no way of knowing how it affected her mental and emotional state.

On no account do I think this book should be taken as a factual representation of Frida Kahlo's last days on earth. However, as a work of fiction that depicts how the artistic mind under certain circumstances can turn a person into their own worst enemy, this is a work of brilliance. Read it keeping that in mind and you won't be disappointed.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 10:05 PM | Permalink

Most of us probably are aware of the close connection between mathematics, physics, and music, but for ninety-nine per cent of us knowing of the connection is as far as we take it. Perhaps those who have studied recording in a serious way have a better understanding of the math of music, and people who have taken advanced physics classes will know more then the rest of us about the science of how sound travels.

It would surprise me though if anyone, even those studying mathematics and physics, would have studied more then the rudimentary basics, and even that only as a small component of their over all course work. There are not a great many people out there with doctorates in physics who play, or even compose music, and I'm sure that the number gets even smaller when you move over to mathematics.

Which is not to say that those people don't or haven't existed; Iannis Xenakis was born in Romania to Greek parents in 1922. After the end of the World War Two, he moved to Greece where he began his studies in both mathematics and music. When he ran afoul of the dictatorship in Greece he was forced to flee for his life to Paris. In Paris he began to study as an architect and designed a couple of projects in the 1950's.

It was his musical compositions that he is best known for. Among twentieth century contemporary composers, he is recognised as being one of the great innovators and experimenters. He is most famous for attempting to rationalize music composition using computers and formulae to create sequences of sound detached from emotions. He reduced music down to the bare bones of, equations equalling tone, and a series of equations played by sequencers and computers equalling a composition.

Now, in an interesting twist, German contemporary composer Reinhold Friedl has created a composition for amplified acoustic orchestral instruments, Xenakis [A]Live! that draws upon Xenakis's computer generated work for its inspiration. In a new two disc CD/DVD release Friedl leads his chamber group zeitkratzer ensemble through an approximately fifty-five minute attempt to recreate what it would be like to listen to that type of music if it were played on acoustic instruments.

The DVD of the two disc set, released on Asphodel Records, has had a piece of video art created especially for the music by Lillevan a member of the Performance Art Troupe Rechenzentrum. As Xenakis' musical compositions are reduced to their base elements, so is Lillevan's video. He has taken still photos and film fragments of the ancient Iranian city of Persepolis and broken them down so far that they are no longer recognizable and then created a full length film from the pieces in an attempt to provide a visual representation of the music being played.

So, what does all this mean for you and me who are sitting down to listen and watch this on our DVD players or just listening to it on our CD players. The first thing you have to be prepared for is that you probably won't have any frame of reference for this type of music. In all honesty, I'm not even sure that I know how to describe what it was that I listened to.

What I had to do was continually remind myself that I was listening to an attempt to recreate the affect that pure mathematical music would have on an audience. Like an abstract work of visual art the tones, shapes, and colours couldn't be looked at literally. What was important was the overall impact that work had on me and how much I felt like I understood what it would be like to listen to a piece of work by Iannis Xenakis

Now it would be helpful if I had ever heard anything by Iannis, but I've a good idea of what his music would have sounded like, as I've listened to some music of a similar nature. Based on those experiences I'd have to say that I've never heard any acoustic musicians come as close to recreating the effect of electronic music as the zeitkratzer ensemble playing their conductor's composition Xenakis [A]live.

Reinhold Friedl accomplishes this by having the individual parts of the ensemble come together as a whole unit to create a sustained tone in much the same manner that a digitally created note would sound. It wasn't difficult at all to believe that they were recreating a digital composition.

I did find that I had an easier time listening to the music on the DVD when it was accompanied by the video. The two worked extremely well in tandem to help reduce the strangeness of the music and allow my brain to accept what I was listening to. Maybe it was because it was such an accurate visual representation of the concept (many parts going in to making a whole), that it was much easier to except the ambient nature of the music.

After only a minor amount of time had passed watching and listening to the DVD I discovered I began to enter a light trance that made it easier for me to obtain the state of mind required to appreciate the music. It was almost like looking at a painting and it's not until the component parts go slightly out of focus that you realize what you're looking at.

Listening to the CD alone it was a much more difficult exercise to be able to achieve that desired state. Maybe it was because I had just watched the DVD and I was suffering from slight information overload. I'm sure that the end result would be the same in the long run anyway, with the disparate sounds gradually merging and forming a whole.

Electronic compositions have always felt rather soulless, mainly because of the impersonal nature of the equipment used. To be able to take the music of an extremely gifted electronic composer like Iannis Xenakis and interpret what he did so that it can be appreciated on acoustic instruments like Reinhold Friedl has done with Xenakis [A]live is itself a great accomplishment.

The new CD/DVD package of the zeitkratzer ensemble performing this piece, and the accompanying video on the DVD by Video artist Lillevan, is a major step towards demystifying modern composition. It might never become everybody's cup of tea, but it just may become that much more accessible that more then just a few will be able to appreciate it. Now that would be a real achievement.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 08:25 PM | Permalink

Andy Warhol's Factory has gotten a lot of bad press for being a home to hedonistic excess and a wide variety of stupidities. While there was some truth to that, beyond the hanger's on and the voyeurs real artistic experimentation was ongoing. Andy Warhol was the first painter to capture on canvass the essence of a world captivated by materialistic values and commercial imagery and left behind a substantial body of work that still influences visual artists today.

The Factory was also involved in groundbreaking theatrical presentations and film experimentation. However, aside from Andy himself, the most enduring legacy of the Factory has been the music. Birthplace of the Velvet Underground, one of the few truly experimental musical groups to come out of the late sixties and early seventies, the Factory was also home to concerts and workshops by experimental composers like John Cage.

So the only surprising thing about Lou Reed's1975 double album Metal Machine Music was that people were so shocked that he made it. Perhaps I can say that with the advantage of hindsight and retrospection, but any evidence available today of Lou's interest in experimentation was equally on display in the 1970's. He was friends with Andy Warhol for goodness sake, did they really think he was going to be happy just writing pop music?

The way Mr. Reed describes the evolution of Metal Machine Music is it sprang from his love of the guitar, and especially feedback. He was living in a warehouse at the time and had all the recording equipment that he needed to fool around and record with if he so desired.

As an experiment, he set up a guitar in one tuning and leaned it against an amp to generate feedback. He took another guitar in a different tuning and laid it against another amplifier to generate more feedback. The two feed backs reacted with each other to create a third sound wave, which in turn then interacted with the originals to create another sound wave, and the process continued until layers and layers of sound were generated.

Obviously, nobody was ready for that in 1975, especially in the world of popular music. The album was taken off the market in three weeks after generating the highest number of returns (people wanting their money back) of any album put out. RCA; his company at the time, were so pissed off, he came close to never being allowed to record again. It is somewhat ironical that twenty-five years later, in 2000, it was RCA that approached him about releasing a special anniversary edition of Metal Machine Music.

In 2002 the German avant-garde chamber orchestra, the zeitratzer ensemble (small caps are deliberate), got in touch with Lou to ask his permission to play Metal Machine Music live in concert. He didn't believe it was possible until they told him they had transcribed it and sent him samples of what they planned on performing. Once he gave them permission they asked if he would be willing to play electric guitar in the third act for the concert.

The stage was set for the 2002 performance of Metal Machine Music at the Berlin Opera House that has now been released in a two disc CD/DVD package on Asphodel Records. For the first two and a half movements of the piece, zeitkratzer's piano, violin, viola, cello, bass, accordion, tuba, trumpet, saxophone, and percussion recreated acoustically what had been originally done on electric guitar.

The first thing you have to remember is that this is not something to sit down and listen to casually or as something light to put on after a hard day at the office. In order to listen to this piece of music you have to be prepared to withstand an aural assault at the beginning of each movement until you get your bearings. At first, it sounds like so much noise; a screeching, howling, and moaning discordance that has no relation to music.

Gradually, as you listen, you become absorbed by the sound and start to feel the ebb and flow of patterns. The sharp edges of the violin, viola, and cello, all being bowed at a frenetic pace at the highest possible pitch, stop cutting into you as you become able to experience the new sound they generate when blended with the sounds produced by the balance of the ensemble.

I'm sure that your memory plays a part in this somehow. Remember what Lou Reed had said about new sounds being formed as the result of the meeting of original sounds? After listening to intense sounds like those produced in this piece of music you can't help but retain an echo of something previously played that will blend with any new sounds to produce yet a third tone.

You can't listen to this like you would listen to other music, trying to hear what the individual instruments are saying. Instead, you want to hear the sound that is generated by all the instruments playing together. That will only happen with the passage of time and a willingness to listen. Otherwise, it will remain a cacophonic mystery.

Included with the DVD is an interview with Lou Reed where he talks about his process in creating the original Metal Machine Music back in 1975. Unfortunately, the interviewer isn't the greatest, but Lou Reed confirms the opinion that I've always had of him as being a highly intelligent, thoughtful, and creative man. The sound for both the CD and DVD are superlative, and the option exists for 5.1 surround sound.

Metal Machine Music was never intended to be popular music, in fact Lou Reed took it to the Classical music section of RCA when he first recorded it back in 1975. Like his more recent composition, Hudson River this is an experiment in composition with sound and tone. The performance that has been recorded on this CD/DVD set is an amazing reproduction of electronic music utilizing only acoustic instruments.

To paraphrase Lou Reed, nothing beats live instruments for the immediacy and excitement that's generated. Watching and listening to this live performance of Metal Machine Music really brings that home. It might not be for everyone, but for those who are believers in the potential and possibilities of what can be created completely live, without tapes or machines, this is certainly vindication. In all honesty, I can say that you've probably never seen or heard anything quite like this.

Leave aside your preconceptions of what you think music should be, and take a step into the new and dangerous by listening to Metal Machine Music as performed by the zeitkratzer ensemble and Lou Reed live at the Berlin Opera House. You might just be in for a surprise and find yourself appreciating something new and exciting.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 09:11 PM | Permalink

Over the years, producers and other management types in the music industry have developed bad reputations. They don't care about the music and they're only interested in getting as much money as possible out of the acts they represent sums up what a lot of people think of them. Sure there have been unscrupulous assholes who have robbed people blind, but there have also been men and women who loved the music they helped to produce.

One of the real greats among Jazz and Blues music producers was Norman Granz. He worked with almost every name in Jazz from the 1930's until the time of his death. He was responsible for bringing together some of the greatest players of their times to perform and record together.

The Montreux Jazz Festivals of 1977 featured two concerts of his; Count Basie with Benny Carter, Roy Eldridge, Vic Dicinson, Al Grey, Zoot Sims, Ray Brown, and Jimmie Smith were one line up. On another night he brought together Oscar Peterson with Dizzy Gillespie, Clark Terry, Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, Niels-Henning Oversted, and Bobby Durham. Each of these concerts were glorious opportunities for the men performing to improvise around the songs they had all been playing together for years.

That's what Granz did; he created situations where gifted musicians came together to feed off each other's talents and make magic. When Dizzy Gillespie listens to an Oscar Peterson piano run, his solos are going to reflect that influence, making them unique to that moment in time. Eagle Rock Entertainment has just released the two DVD set Norman Granz Presents Improvisation that gathers together a number of unique moments featuring some of the greatest players in the history of Jazz.

In the 1940's Norman Granz and photographer Gjon Mili collaborated on a short film called Jammin' The Blues. The movie featured the era's best Jazz musicians performing, and improvising. What made this film unique for the time was it wasn't filmed live, but shot like any other movie would have been on a soundstage. People were so taken with it, that it was nominated for best short feature at the 1944 Academy Awards.

Inspired by the success of this film Norman and Gjon hooked up again in1950 to make another movie focusing more on the newer sounds of bebop where improvisation flourished in the playing of people like Charlie Parker, Coleman Hawkins, and Buddy Rich. Unfortunately, they made the decision to film in Gjon Mili's photography studio in downtown New York City and pre-record all the music because it wasn't a sound proof environment.

With multiple takes and using more them one camera angel, the problem became synchronizing the sound and the visual in the final product. Warner Brothers weren't interested in putting out the kind of money that editing a project like that would have cost in the 1950's. It wasn't until a few years ago with the advances made in editing technology, the film finally had the audio and video synchronized. It's still not perfect, in places the sound and visual are slightly out of sync, but that does nothing to depreciate its value as a historical record.

Norman Granz Presents: Improvisation starts off the first disc with this 1950's film, and opens with the only known footage of Charlie Parker and Coleman Hawkins playing together. There are five excerpts in total from that movie, and they are each small gems. As far as I'm concerned, the only problem with them is they leave you wanting to see and hear more.

Watching Charlie Parker break into a huge grin at the antics of Buddy Rich on drums makes these excerpts worth watching. Being able to hear and watch him and Coleman Hawkins, followed by Lester Young and Ella Fitzgerald playing together, when they were all young and in their prime, is a treat no matter how small of a taste is offered.

The balance of the first disc is taken up with more concerts that Norman Granz filmed and organized where the musicians have been gathered together with the express purpose of improvising. The first of these wasn't filmed until the 1960's, and is a static shot of Duke Ellington playing in a trio and improvising a tune on the piano based on the sculpture of Spanish artist John Miro.

"Blues For John Miro" starts with the sculptor leading the piano player around an exhibit of his work. Neither man speaks each other's language, so they are playacting for the camera with their animated discussions in front of each piece, but it doesn't matter, for when Ellington sits down at his keyboard, you can tell he was affected by the wildness and shapes of the sculpture he had just seen.

The balance of disc one is taken up with footage from the 1977 Montreux Jazz Fest mentioned earlier. Interspersed are clips of Joe Pass improvising on his guitar around "Ain't Misbehavin'", and "Prelude To A Kiss" filmed in 1979, and two cuts of Ella Fitzgerald from the same year. She proves that almost thirty years after Gjon Mili's 1950 film, she's still the queen when it comes to vocal improvisations.

Disc two is primarily photo galleries, interviews, and the like dealing with the making of the Mili film in 1950. As an added bonus they've included the 1944 film Jammin' The Blues giving you an idea of what they were trying to accomplish with the second movie. Comparing the two projects you can see why they wanted to move off the soundstage to Mili's studio; the footage from the second movie has a relaxed intimacy that is missing from the formal shooting patterns of Jammin' The Blues.

Even in spite of the sound being pre-recorded in the second movie, it somehow manages to capture more of the free spirit of improvisation and Jazz than any of the other tracks on this recording. Although each of them has an impact and power of their of their own, these black and white images from the early 1950's are the ones that have stayed with me long after I've finished viewing it.

Norman Granz Presents Improvisation is a great collection of live Jazz concerts and filmed Jazz featuring some of the most renowned players in history. Watching these great players and singers improvise and perform is a treat. No fan of Jazz music will want to be without this documentation of some truly great moments in twentieth century Jazz.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 10:16 PM | Permalink

In recent years, it seems that every major publishing house in the West has "discovered" the near East in terms of authors. While the braver might be tempted to publish the occasional Arab or Muslim voice, the real flavour of the hour has become Indian authors. It would be a disservice to these fine men and women to call them tokens, as the majority of them are fine authors deserving of the recognition they receive, so I hope that no one thinks that's what I'm implying

But there is a troubling pattern emerging concerning the themes of the books that are being published for Western consumption. Almost without fail, stories revolve around the sectarian violence in the streets of the big cities. In some the religious hatred between Muslim and Hindu may only be the backdrop against which the characters play out their lives, but even that only serves to reinforce the picture of a society on the verge of a civil war along the lines of the tribal violence in Rwanda and Bosnia.

Prior to this most people when asked about India would have thought about poverty, probably known who Gandhi was, and maybe said something about sacred cows. In the sixties, there was minor interest among the drug addled in various forms of meditation as they looked for other ways to alter their senses of perception. This served to perpetuate the old mysterious East stereotype and made every Indian a guru.

How many books published in North America, or the English-speaking world beyond the borders of the Indian sub-continent, by Indian authors can you name that have dealt with topics unrelated to Indian's version of the "troubles"? How many have even brought it to our attention that India is one of the oldest living civilizations in the whole world? How many of these "Indian" novels mention that India has a tradition of epic literature that is as old if not older then Homer?

At first glance David Davidar's newest book The Solitude Of Emperors, published by McClelland & Stewart an imprint of Random House Canada, has all the appearances of being cut from the same cloth as other recently published books. While there is no denying that Hindu nationalism does feature prominently, there are elements about this book that distinguish it from the pack.

Vijay is a young man bored with life in his small provincial town in rural India. Quite by chance, the opportunity presents itself for him to escape when he's offered a job with a magazine dedicated to advocating plurality in India. It's when he moves to Mumbai (Bombay) to begin the job that he receives his own bitter lesson about the violence that plagues India. He is assaulted by Hindu thugs during the riots of 1992. It hadn't mattered that he was Hindu; they were exacting revenge on anyone or anything that was better off or different than they were.

After he recovers his employer figures it might be good for him to take a vacation away from the city and sends him to find out about the threat to a Christian shrine from Hindu fundamentalists in a small town. He also asks him if he would do him the favour of reading over a short manuscript that he has written about three figures in Indian history whose ideas and stories he wants people to remember.

He believes that the only chance India has is for another person like one of these historical figures to come along and set the example for the rest of the country to follow. His hope is that by describing these individuals' characteristics it will enable people to be able to recognize the next great "Emperor" who comes along to lead the people away from the path of mutual destruction.

It's from this manuscript that the title Solitude Of Emperors comes from. It is Rustom Sorabjee's (Vijay's boss) belief that Emperors are able to sit in solitude and face up to his or her own demons and learn about themselves sufficiently to develop a true path. He cites as his example three men of legendary status from the annals of India history who have all dedicated themselves to preserving her plurality.

Samraat Ashoka was known as the Emperor of Renunciation for giving up the ways of the sword and dedicating himself to the well being of his people and ruled circa 300BC. Shahenshah Akbar (1542-1605 AD) was known as the Emperor of Faith because although he was a Muslim, he encouraged people of all faiths to settle in India. He was famous for trying to create one faith for India comprising elements of all the religions. The final emperor was the Mahatma, Gandhi, who never ruled India, but was one of the catalysts behind Independence and dreamed of a pluralist nation

Although Vijay had gone to report on the situation dealing with the Christian shrine, it soon becomes for him a symbol of the fight against fundamentalism. With the assistance of a local eccentric, Noah, he tries to rally support against the planed occupation of the shrine by Hindu extremists. Unfortunately, the same apathy that grips most of India around doing anything about preventing violence is prevalent here and he can't rouse anyone into believing that anything serious will happen.

Vijay is no Emperor and in spite of all his efforts ends up only able to record the events of the attempted occupation and not be an active participant in its defence. In fact, like so many others of his generation, he flees the country for Canada to escape. Partly he is looking to escape himself, and partly the violence of his country. In the end, he realizes he can't escape either one.

Mr. Davidar has created a situation and characters that bring a different perspective to the violence that periodically surfaces in India. He does not shy away from the reality of the situation, and in fact manages to make it far more realistic then the majority of authors. His depiction of the leader of the fundamentalist Hindu group as a pillar of society whose arguments in support of his extremist views are ever so reasonable, make him far scarier than the usual wild eyed fanatic that we find in the pages of a novel.

At heart The Solitude of Emperors is still a novel about the religious conflicts that plague the India, but unlike some of its contemporaries, readers learn that there is more to her then that. Until recent times India was a pluralistic society the envy of any so called modern civilization, and that dream is still cherished by a great many people. That's a view we don't often hear expressed, and one we can all look to as inspiration.

I think the world could do with a few more people like Samraat Ashoka, Shahenshah Akbar, and Mahatma Gandhi. Don't you?

Canadian readers can purchase a copy of The Solitude Of Emperors either directly from Random House Canada or from an online retailer like Amazon.ca

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:51 AM | Permalink

"It's the economy stupid" was the phrase that supposedly kept Bill Clinton's campaign team focused on what they needed to do in order to win the 1992 election campaign. Pound away mercilessly on the woeful state of the economic union in post Regan America, and lay the blame for it at his former Vice President, and incumbent President, George Bush sr.

What that consisted of was simply pointing out to Americans what they already knew. A great many of them were unemployed, real wages sucked, the government was billions if not trillions of dollars in debt, and the policy of cutting taxes and increasing military spending was ruinous beyond belief. Clinton's election over a sitting President was a major rebuttal to the supposedly free market, small government, and cutting of social programs measures practiced by the neo-conservatives who surrounded Ronald Regan.

Compared to the majority of industrialized nations in the world the United States has, depending on your point of view, lagged far behind in terms of the social safety net or led the way in cutting back on government interference in the economy. While the United States has never fully committed to either completely free markets or a real social safety net, it is the country where the two major contrasting schools of economic thought have battled it out on a regular basis.

John Maynard Keynes proposed government intervention in the economy in order to protect the populace from the vagrancies of economic fluctuations like recessions, depressions, and inflation. He advocated government run insurance programs to offer protection to people in times of vulnerability; unemployment, old age, and illness. His ideas formed the basis of what is known as the welfare state – which was never meant to be a derogatory term by the way.

At the complete opposite end of the economic spectrum was Milton Friedman who advocated that the economy must be allowed to proceed without any government interference at all. Only then would it be able to operate at maximum efficiency and provide plenty for everybody. It's Mr. Friedman's philosophies and the manner in which they have been, and are being implemented that come under intense scrutiny in Naomi Klein's latest book published by Random House Canada through its Knoff Canada imprint, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise Of Disaster Capitalism

The title refers to Mr. Friedman's contention that for his theory to work the economy has to be shocked back to a state of zero, where their is no government ownership or involvement in the economy. It is Ms. Klein's contention in her book that not only is the philosophy being implemented whenever opportunities present themselves, but that American policy over the last eight years has been geared to ensuring it's implementation when and where ever possible.

From the outset, Ms. Klein makes it clear that she doesn't believe Capitalism is an inherently evil system. What she does do is systematically lay forth a damning and convincing case in support of her thesis. She has spent the last two years travelling the globe conducting interviews, and investigating situations and circumstances where the shock doctrine has been implemented.

In Sri Lanka and Indonesia after the tsunami, fishing villages that had been on the coasts for generations providing families with their livelihoods have seen their land sold out from under them to hotel, resort, and condominium developers, while they've been stuck in refugee camps. In New Orleans, the destruction of the Ninth Ward has been called an opportunity to start over again from a clean slate. Never mind the people who no longer have any place to live – think of the condominiums that can be built. Think of what can be privatized!

Of the 134 public schools that used to be under the control of the local board of education only four have not been turned into privately run institutions. Of course with no students why should the schools be kept open. The fact that students have no homes to live in and are still scattered across the country is conveniently forgotten.

It's when she examines the situation in Iraq, and the "security" arrangements implemented in the name of Homeland Security that Ms. Klein builds her case against the Bush administration. It is her contention that in order for the type of economic shock treatment required to make the clean slate, a government needs to have dictatorial power over its population to curtail opposition.

She sites as an example the first time this type of economic experiment was attempted in practice; following the American backed military coup in Chile. Pinochet's government had eliminated most avenues of dissent through the simple expedient of killing any opposition voices during the coup. When they implemented the economic policies of complete privatization and cutting spending across the board they simply continued the practice they had started of squelching opposition.

Ironically, the policy ended up being a complete failure. Pinochet was forced to start re-nationalizing industry in the 1980's, and many of the same social programs he had cut were re-introduced in order to stave off economic collapse.

In Iraq the American team charged with rebuilding the country, has been systematically selling all the country's industry and resources to American corporations. Contracts for everything from private armies to act as security forces to building swimming pools in public parks are awarded to American companies. Services like health care, electricity, policing are all being removed from the governments control and contracted out into private hands

When the Vice President of the United States has gone on public record as saying he advocates the use of torture against enemies of the state, and there is an army occupying your country that has no qualms about shooting and killing anyone it feels like – how loudly would you be inclined to complain? Looking at the American "slogan" for this invasion – "Shock And Awe" – the connection between it and Shock Doctrine economics becomes all too clear according to Ms. Klein.

The state control of personal freedoms in the United States itself may not be as obvious as troops in the street, but any person anywhere can be arrested without reason and denied access to a lawyer under provisions of the Homeland Security Act. The British perfected that one years ago with their anti-terrorist legislation allowing them to hold anybody without charges or access to a lawyer just by saying the magic word terrorism.

What constitutes a threat to security anyway? I'm sure a case could be made for disrupting the economy being construed as a threat to national security - don't you? Without a healthy economy, how can all those necessary security measures be paid for after all?

Naomi Klein has written a very lucid and convincing argument in support of her thesis that governments around the world are taking advantage of natural disasters to implement drastic changes in economic policy at the expense of their populations' well being. What's even more disturbing is the fact that she just as clearly outlines how governments are creating the circumstances enabling those situations to develop and taking steps to ensure that opposition to the changes is suppressed.

This is a book for people of all political stripes to read. Even if you disagree with Ms. Klein's politics, that won't matter. This is a book about "economics stupid", not about whether you are on the left or the right.

Canadian readers can purchase a copy of Shock Doctrine: The Rise Of Disaster Capitalism either directly from Random House Canada or from an online retailer like Amazon.ca

Posted by Richard Marcus at 03:04 AM | Permalink

Who wouldn't want to be a cop? Look at all the great fringe benefits; long hours, high stress, low pay, little or no public or political appreciation, danger, and brutal on the personal life. That's not to mention the chance to see the worst that society has to offer in the way of what people do to each other: murder, rape, assault, robbery, and any and all combinations of the above.

Who wouldn't want to be a woman cop? Not only do you get the same package deal of benefits that your male colleagues have to deal with you get some lovely added bonuses. There's everyone's preconception of women in uniform to deal with, and of course resentment from fellow officers if you get promoted before they do ("It's only because she's a woman"). Not to mention if you so much as dare to act human and react to a brutal crime scene you'll never hear the end of it, ("See, women – can't take it when the going gets rough"). But worst of all is knowing that no matter how good you are promotions will always be limited because of the glass ceiling that "doesn't exist".

When police forces across North America were forced to change minimum height requirements for officers that had effectively prevented women, and other visible minorities, from obtaining membership in the club, there was lots of speculation from certain areas about whether women could make effective cops. Instead of wondering how women could have a positive influence on policing, all anybody was concerned with was whether they would be tough enough to stand up to the rigours of the job.

Instead of being allowed to bring themselves to the job at hand, women were forced to try and be imitations of their male colleagues. It's as if gender held the secret for being a good cop, and if you didn't have your own set of testicles you'd better borrow some quick. Image then, how difficult it must have been for women when they first started having to give orders to men.

In the British television police drama Prime Suspect: The Final Act available on DVD from Acorn Media in early September 07, Detective Superintendent (DSI) Jane Tennison is on the verge of retirement after more then thirty years as a police officer in England. It's been one battle after another with the men who she has answered to and those she has supervised. Although she has at least played the game to a draw, it hasn't been without cost to her personally. Alienated from her family, an alcoholic, and single, she faces the prospect of a bleak retirement.

When a fourteen-year-old girl is reported missing, and her stabbed body is found on the heath, Tennison is determined to solve this last case before she retires. Complicating matters is the fact that her father is admitted to hospital and is discovered to have inoperable cancer and given little or no time to live.

As the case deepens and suspects are found and discarded Jane's drinking reaches the point where she is threatened with being removed from the case and pushed out the door early. It would be an ignoble ending to a distinguished career, and perhaps it's the thought of seeing it all go for nought that pushes her into attending Alcoholics Anonymous for the first time. Or perhaps it's the fact that she gets to see herself through the eyes of another for a change.

In the course of the investigation, she becomes friendly with the deceased girl's close friend April, and sees her reflection in the eyes of the younger woman. As the case winds itself down to its sordid and bitter conclusion Jane has begun the process of making peace with herself, and although retirement will be a long tough haul for her, she at least has something to work on, herself.

Long before she was famous for being a Calendar Girl or the Queen of England, Helen Mirren created the role of DSI Jane Tennison. Her performance throughout Prime Suspect has always been exemplary, but like all the best performers, she has held something back for the last hurrah.

There's a fine art to television acting involving subtlety and restraint. To be able to create a character as complex as DSI Jane Tennison, and then to bring her to life as completely as Mirren manages to do is an accomplishment that very few will ever be able to equal. In "The Final Act" we watch Mirren take Tennison to the very edge of the abyss of self destruction and draw herself back from the precipice before falling.

There are none of the histrionics that we would see from a lesser actor or production. No scenes of flying booze bottles or tearful confessions, instead we watch the character trying to act like nothing untoward is happening. However, that's not very easy to carry off when she suffers from a black out and forgets the call that notifies her about the girl going missing.

Everything about this show is brilliant though, not just Mirren's performance. The opening sequence of the girl's parents running through the streets to the house of their daughter's friend April, hopping to hear something positive, let's you know something horrible has happened. In some ways the image of two people pelting through the streets while all around proceeds normally reminded me of how people feel when someone dies and somehow the world acts like nothing horrible has happened.

That one scene captured those feelings of isolation and alienation far better than pages of dialogue could ever have described it. It's a perfect example of how to make use of the camera in television or film to communicate feelings and circumstance. For me that one shot sums up the standard of excellence that this production always strove to maintain.

Prime Suspect: The Final Act is the amazing conclusion to a spectacular television series, featuring superlative performances by all cast members, but especially Helen Mirren. The two-disc DVD set is a Widescreen edition with 5.1-surround, Dolby digital, sound. It also includes a fifty-minute, making of the series feature as a bonus. Don't worry if you've not seen any previous episodes, it won't matter. Brilliant television is brilliant television and you don't need to know more then that.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 09:08 PM | Permalink

One of the major reasons for the moribund nature of popular music these day is the fact that the major providers of content are primarily concerned with producing music that appeals to as broad a cross section of the population as possible. The result is a product that's as bland as it is lacking in personality.

Sometimes it seems that the majority of the acts are interchangeable; any of them could perform the songs being produced in their genre and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Gone are the days of the distinct voice or style that allowed people to distinguish between the different groups and individuals performing on the radio. If you want to get signed by one of the major labels you better not only sound like everybody else, but look like them as well.

Some genres are worse then others, and by far the worst offender is what passes for Dance music these days. Part of the problem is that the majority of the music is performed by machines and has little or no human emotions or spirit involved in the process. Watching people dance to this "music" is like watching a computer respond to the commands of a program, repeating the same actions endlessly. Occasional glitches in the software can cause confusion, but there is always something else standing by to replace it.

It used to be that Dance music was performed by live musicians, even in the Disco era no one would presume to use all electronics to create something that was supposed to inspire movement in people. In fact, before Disco, there wasn't even a separate category for dance music. Some music might have been more conducive to dancing because of it's rhythm, but that didn't stop you from also sitting and enjoying listening to it.

One of the most consistently strong performers of Funk, Rhythm & Blues, Blues, and Soul music from the early seventies onwards has been the great woman vocalist Chaka Khan. When she was younger, she was known for her small frame and huge Afros almost as much as her amazing voice. If you can remember back to the early 1970's, you'll remember songs like "Tell Me Something Good" which she performed as a member of the band Rufus.

Well the hair isn't quite as big anymore, and she looks a heck of a lot healthier with a few more pounds on her frame, but one thing that hasn't changed is her voice. In fact judging by her latest release, Funk This, on Burgundy Records in the ten years since she last made a studio album her voice has matured into an even more sophisticated instrument.

She used to get by on sheer power alone, attacking a song with growls, squeals, and trips up and down the scale. She could reach up into the sky and grab those notes you only usually see opera singers consider singing as easily as she growled out a blues number in a sultry alto. Now, not only is she still gifted with an extraordinarily powerful and agile voice, she has learned subtleties of phrasing allowing her to infuse her songs with even more character than before.

Funk This is a mixture of originals and covers of some of the best Rhythm and Blues, Funk, Blues, and Soul music from the past thirty to forty years. One of the songs to show off her delicacy of touch is her cover of the Jimi Hendrix's "Castles Made Of Sand". A song about the impermanence of dreams and the dangers of living in a fantasy world, Ms Khan utilizes her voice to help generate a mood appropriate to the song.

This song is also a good example of her ability to put the song ahead of her ego instead of it being about her and her talents. While younger, less mature singers, will look for any excuse to unload pyrotechnics and show off their abilities, Chaka is content to let the mood of the song dictate her performance. Listening to her duet with up and coming powerhouse singer Mary J. Blige on the song "Disrespectful" that difference is made perfectly clear.

The younger woman still feels the need to prove herself and is constantly unloading with both barrels and not leaving herself any room to manoeuvre. If you start out at full strength you have nothing to build up to, and you end up with a song whose only distinguishing feature is its loudness. Ms Khan is far more interesting as she modulates the power of her voice so that she builds to a finale.

Equally amazing is Chaka's versatility as a singer as demonstrated by the range of material that Funk You has to offer; from the full throttle Funk of the opening track "Back In The Day" to the ballad "Angel". She shows that slowing the pace down does nothing to detract from her sincerity as a singer. Too often people with strong voices become stentorian when faced with a ballad and equate emotion with loudness and straining for the upper regions of the scale.

Chaka Khan is not that type of singer, and makes certain that when she sings a ballad to avoid all the typical clichés that one normally hears in popular music a la Celine Dionne and the like. Ms. Khan expresses genuine emotions and keeps the music as real as possible. The only song that even comes close to falling into that trap is her duet with Michael McDonald on "You Belong To Me" and then it is the fault of the material and her co-performer more than anything else.

On September 25th 2007, Chaka Khan will be releasing her first solo studio project in ten years. After listening to Funk This you'll agree this is a CD long overdue. Just maybe it will help people remember that live musicians play music more danceable then anything a computer or sequencer can generate. It also has the plus that you can sit and listen to it if you don't feel like dancing – amazing huh?

Posted by Richard Marcus at 05:06 AM | Permalink

One of the ironies of music is how quickly it can change allegiances. Songs that are so blithely referred to as Americana were brought over by immigrants from the British Islands and have their origins in Irish, Scottish, and Anglo Saxon folk lore. Musical anthropologists as far back as the 19th century discovered the songs and folklore of the people in the Appalachians and Tennessee Valley areas were modified versions of traditions they had carried with them across the ocean.

"Pretty Saro", "Two Sisters", "Barbara Allan", and countless other similar songs had stayed lyrically intact even if their manner of presentation had changed. Adapted to the instruments and accents of the new world, their cadences might have changed but their meanings hadn't changed a whit.

In North America, these songs have never really become part of the mainstream, and even in the folk "revival" periods that we periodically go through these songs are largely ignored. Its only been in recent years, with movies like Songcatcher and Oh Brother Where Art Thou? that they have come to the general public's attention.

In Great Britain, it's been a different story, as those songs remained part of the cultural heritage throughout the islands. They may not have been part of the mainstream popular music scene, but neither did they vanish from view as completely as they did over here. In the great British folk revivals of the early 1960's and later, groups like Renaissance, Clannad, Steeleye Span, and Fairport Convention drew upon that history for both their material and their inspiration.

One of the groups who led the way from the early 1960's to the mid 1970's was Incredible String Band. Playing a mixture of adapted traditional music and original compositions they created a sound that became loosely referred to as psychedelic folk music. Dressing like troubadours and courtly ladies from days gone by, they had great success with their musical hybrid, routinely scoring high in the British musical charts.

Of course, all good things come to an end, and so did the Incredible String Band. But individuals from the band still played together on and off throughout the years, and for the Millennium celebrations in Edinburgh some of them joined together and gave a reunion concert. Because of that gig the band reformed and a few years further down the road the line up became a quartet with two of the founding members, Mike Heron and Clive Palmer being joined by Lawson Dando and Fluff.

It's this line up that's been recorded on the newly released Live At The Lowry DVD on the MVD Visual label. The concert was filmed in 2003 and features eighteen tracks representing the bands first five albums. It would seem like this disc represents a perfect opportunity for those fans looking for a filmed record of the band's greatest hits or those interested in checking them out for the first time.

Unfortunately, what's on display on this DVD won't serve either purpose as it bears little if any resemblance to what the band was in their heyday. It has nothing to do with the new members either, as they are both gifted instrumentalists, with Fluff in particular having a wonderful singing voice and a great stage presence. The trouble lies with the two original members of the band whose abilities on this night range from the barely competent to the abysmal.

While Heron still retains some presence on stage he is constantly straining to reach notes with his voice and when he sits at the keyboard he plays with the tentativeness of a hunt and peck typist. But even sadder is Clive Palmer who simply looks lost, confused, and barely able to play his banjo or sing in time. The occasional missed note is understandable, but it became embarrassing to watch his fingers stumble along the fret board as he hunts around for the right notes.

While the sound and picture quality of the disc were superb, and the efforts of Fluff and Lawson Dando were admirable, there was nothing for them to support. The two supposed leads in the group were uninspiring, and the performance was boring. Live At The Lowry is a performance by the Incredible String Band in name only. Former members of the band might have been playing songs they had performed thirty to forty years ago but that's the only thing that bore any resemblance to the original.

If you want to hear the Incredible String Band, I'd recommend you buy some re-mastered CDs of their original recordings and not waste your time with this DVD.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 09:55 AM | Permalink

When Punk Rock came around in the mid to late seventies it was a shot in the arm for a means of expression that had become moribund due to complacency and commercial considerations. With corporations in control, the bottom line became more important than anything else, and the music reflected the conservative attitude that this engendered.

Punk brought with it the ethos that anybody could make a record and produce it without the need for a record label's involvement. Records and tapes were sold at concerts and through word of mouth publicity, groups developed followings. Some of the bigger labels began to take chances on the new acts; EMI signed the Sex Pistols, with disastrous results. The Punk attitude and corporate music were not the best of matches, as their motivations for producing music didn't necessarily mesh.

However, Punk's biggest effect was on the role of women in rock and roll. Up to that point, with a few exceptions, women had been restricted to playing either secondary roles to men in bands as back up singers and eye candy, or strumming a guitar and singing folk music. With Punk coinciding with the burgeoning Women's rights movement of the seventies the timing was right for women to be able to redefine their place in Rock music.

They no longer felt compelled to make themselves the objects of men's fantasies by dressing in skimpy clothing or singing pretty passive songs that weren't in anyway threatening to male egos. Cindy Lauper, Patti Smith, Chrissie Hyde, Siouxsie of Siouxsie and the Banshees, Nina Hagan, and even Madonna all redefined what a woman could do on stage and what was expected from her.

One of the first of these groundbreakers was also one of the most exciting and innovative performers to grace stages around Europe and later North America since the heyday of pre World War Two German Cabaret. Pop music still hasn't recovered from the surprise of Lene Lovich bursting on to the music scene with her first signal "Lucky Number" in the late 1970's. Her vocals were like nothing anybody had ever heard before, and she dressed like... like... well lets just say with an originality that's difficult to define.

Opportunities to see Lene perform are few and far between, and up until now there have been no tapped performances available for sale. Thankfully that's all changed as MVD Visual has just released a DVD of a concert she gave in 1981. Live From New York At Studio 54 was one of the first live concerts at the former notorious disco in New York, and I can't think of anyone more appropriate alive than Lene Lovich for kicking off that series.

For those of you like me who had only ever heard her perform until now, you'll be amazed at what a difference it makes when you see her as well as listen to her. Songs you thought you might have had some sort of grasp on, take on more depth of meaning as she acts them out. She does more than just sing the songs, she enlivens them with full-scale performances a la musical theatre or opera, but with a damn site more theatricality then either of those media are usually capable of producing.

But unlike some of her contemporaries whose work verged towards performance art, Lene was most definitely a musical performer. She invests far too much energy into the musical side of her presentation to be considered anything else. While some might be diverted by her costume and her mannerisms on stage, her voice is what separates her from being just another punk performer.

The songs on Live From New York At Studio 54 are some of those that she was most known for at the time. "New Toy", "Angels", "Home", and of course "Lucky Number" are all included on the disc, plus seven more songs. On each song she shows off the vocal pyrotechnics that made her famous. You've all seen the commercials that claim a certain automobile can accelerate from 0 – 60 miles per hour in a matter of less then five seconds or something similar right?

Well Lene's voice can go from alto to E above High C in the blink of an eye or less. The awesome thing is that not once does she sound like she is straining or forcing her voice to perform these amazing hiccoughs in sound. There is something mesmerizing in watching her sing at those moments. She offers no clue physically that she is about to let her voice ascend the heavens, when all of a sudden she's opened her mouth the notes come pilling out.

The major theatrical element beyond her costume and makeup, her adornment on stage is more radical then her street wear, is her body language during the performance of each song. Whoever filmed this performance did a great job of capturing her on stage activity; from extreme close ups of her face to wide-angle shots of the stage in order to provide a glimpse of her manic energy at work.

During the song "Angels" she takes a shot at the than just burgeoning New Wave movement's obsession with "Guardian Angels" Her take on angels watching over her, is that they are spying on us and she wishes they would just leave her alone. During the final deranged minutes of the song, she points out into the audience warning her listeners of the angels among them.

It's a brilliant piece of satire, and the theatrical elements of the song are indicative of her performance style. Lene has no hesitation about putting everything into her performance, as you can tell by watching any of the cuts on this DVD. Her willingness to let go of all inhibitions when she gets on stage, in marked contrast to so many performers, male and female, had always been discernable listening to her music. But seeing her perform songs that I thought I had known make it clear that audio recordings only give you the smallest indication of just how incredible a performer she truly is.

For this performance Thomas Dolby joins her band as an additional keyboard player and augments the sound with washes of synthesiser sound that assist in developing the theatricality of the show. (For those who were wondering, one of his family members did develop Dolby sound) The rest of her band, while somewhat more restrained then Lene, still put their all into each song. They are incredibly tight and, as we find out from the one special feature film, take their rehearsal time very seriously. It's the attention to detail in practice that allows them to play with the abandon that we witness during the course of Live From New York At Studio 54

The sound has been re mastered to 5.1-surround sound (ironically I don't think it's Dolby sound) and considering it was filmed live in 1981 both the sound and the picture quality is wonderful. The filmmakers have even done some playing around with effects and apply some distortion to the images during each song, but always with enough restraint that it doesn't become a distraction.

If you've heard Lene Lovich in the past but never seen her perform, than this disc will be a real treat. If you've never heard of her, let alone seen her perform, this will be an eye-opener of the first degree. Live From New York At Studio 54 is an all around wonderful DVD of great music and astounding entertainment. You will not be disappointed.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 07:05 PM | Permalink