Month: August 2023

In a Retro-Futuristic Tawdry Sort of Way

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You know how some literates, English majors and their ilk, just for the sake of argument joust about whether we’re living in Huxley’s Brave New World or Orwell’s 1984?  

Well, this afternoon Chico Feo is giving off some heavy Huxley vibes. Workers off-the-clock loll in full self-expression, tattoos mapping their life histories in hieroglyphic fashion. A 21st Century version of a Pre-Raphaelite model, wan with auburn ringlets, sits across the bar from me hitting on her vape every now and then, vacant eyed but sort of beautiful in a retro-futuristic tawdry sort of way. I think she is what Aldous had in mind. Across the street at Berts you can buy blunts stuffed with Delta 8 and toke on them in public.

Oh, brave new world, indeed.

Meanwhile, a few billionaires (like the Fords) command a ridiculously disproportionate portion of global wealth, but few of them cotton to giving up not even a sliver of it, especially through taxation. These powerful people – the opposite of folk – possess the means to “dope [us] with religion and sex and [the internet”], to update John Lennon’s “Working Class Hero.”  TGIF is the rallying cry of drudges content to go with the status quo. It’s so ingrained that even though I’m retired, I still look forward to Fridays.

Huxley prophesized pleasure, drugs, sex, and swing music, which morphed into rock-n-roll, disco, hip-hop, and all the jazz. All of it literally at my fingertips as I key “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” into Spotify.

But that’s in the USA.

Iran, Russia are North Korea are bigtime Orwellian. Not many dropping Soma In Pyongyang. skinny dipping in Tehran, or thumbing their noses at Big Brother in St. Petersburg.

But let’s face it, the US is also Orwellian, but in more subtle ways. It’s not so much Big Brother is spying on us, but that we’re spying on ourselves, paying AT&T, Verizon, and Apple to track our every move, tallying the number steps we’re taking as surveillance cameras video us from storefronts. Computer-equipped automobiles clock our speed as we bounce down dirt roads up to no good. Alex Murdaugh can attest to that.

The good news – and it’s very good news – is that we have freedom of speech. I can burn a Chinese made American flag and not be dragged off to a Gulag while wearing a vulgar tee shirt mocking the President, the Pope, and/or the Dalai Lama. I might get punched in the face or shot by a fellow citizen, but the government will not be coming after me.

So cheers!

Andrew Hickey Explains Swing, Boogie Woogie, Backbeats, and All That Jazz

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From left to right Aretha Franklin, John Hammond, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Rusty Moore, Kip Vino, Erich Huber, Billie Holiday

Thanks to my pal Erich Hubner, the guitarist of the killer cover band Pleasure Chest, I’m getting schooled by the ridiculously erudite musicologist Andrew Hickey, whose podcast The History of Rock Music in 500 Songs traces the evolution of rock-n-roll from its earliest influences up until 1990. 

Sometimes the best things in life are free, if you have access to a computer, that is.

Recently, Erich and Pleasure Chest’s front man Kip Veno and I-and-I wandered uptown to Leon’s to slurp down some oysters, and Erich asked me if I were familiar with the Hickey’s podcast, and since I’ve only listened to one podcast ever, the answer was, um, no. Erich convinced me that I’d find it interesting, and man oh man was he ever right.

BTW, if you wanna see Pleasure Chest in action, click HERE.

I’m only two episodes in, but already I’ve learned so so much. I thought I was hip when it came to John Hammond minutia.  John Hammond, a scion of the Vanderbilt clan, went rogue, became a 20th century champion of civil rights and the most influential record producer in history.[1] He’s also the father of John Hammond, Jr, a bluesman whose cover album of Tom Waits tunes is to my mind a classic. Waits actually plays on the album. 

Oh where was I?  Oh yeah, here’s one thing I didn’t know about Hammond: he introduced Fletcher Henderson to Benny Goodman, Hammond’s brother-in-law, and Henderson integrated Goodman’s band, along with the great vibraphonist Lionel Hampton, who wittily observed that you needed both black and white keys to play a piano. The Goodman band was the first band to feature both black and white musicians, and Hammond was the catalyst. 

Count Basie and John Hammond

Henderson went on to lead his own big band that featured the likes of Louis Armstrong, Red Allen, and Coleman Hawkins. Excuse me for all this tangentification.[2]

Anyway, Andrew Hickey is not only encyclopedic in his knowledge of popular music, but he’s also a trained musician who can demonstrate sonically the differences among the big band’s swing beat, boogie woogie, and rock-n-roll’s backbeat. He does this with vocalizations along with clips from recordings.

He begins “Episode 1” by exploring early influences on rock, starting with Benny Goodman’s sextet that featured Charlie Christian, an early electric guitarist who way back in the 30s was playing proto rock-a-billy riffs, which Hinckley illustrates in the featured song of the episode “Flying Home.” Anyway, I’m nerding out on y’all, zigzagging all over the place. My main purpose here is to have you check out the podcast and Hickey.  If you’re into popular American music, it’s more than worth your while.

Here’s a link to his website: https://500songs.com

Andrew Hickey

[1] Here’s a partial catalogue of musicians he discovered and recorded: Bennie Goodman, Count Basie, Billie Holiday, Bessie Smith Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen, and Stevie Ray Vaughan.

[2]  Fedora tip to Dr. John.

Take a Peek Through My Rose-Tinted Spectacles

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view from my bedroom window

As I’ve grown older – and I doubt if this is typical – my opinion of my fellow Americans has improved, which makes me somewhat optimistic about the long term prospects for our democracy. 

Of course, I could be wrong, as I often am. One MAGA juror could lynch each of the Trump trials.[1] Thanks to the Electoral College, the Petulant One could be reelected, and then, aided and abbeted by right wing SCOTUS justices, pardon himself and his cronies, transform the nation into a full-on Kleptocracy, a fascistic regime that bans public libraries and reconfigures them into massage parlors run under the auspices of the Kushner crime family.

But I really doubt Trump will be reelected. 

I suspect most Americans care about, rather than hate, each other. Most people believe in the credo live and let live. Most accept gays and biracial marriages and haven’t amassed an armory of assault weapons in preparation for a second civil war. Even my acquaintances who voted for Trump shy away from admitting they’d vote for him now. Of course, the voting booth is private and all that jazz, but why would a rational person cast a ballot for a venom-spitting narcissistic whiner who buries a former wife on his golf course to save money and then doesn’t bother to tend to her grave. 

His megalomania knows no bounds, whether he’s shilling trading cards that depict him as a superhero or idiotically claiming that Hawai’i’s wildfires would not have occurred if he – the Climate-Change-Denier-in-Chief – had been president. If he were in office, the Ukraine war would not have occurred, and if reelected, he’ll end it overnight. 

As they say in Queens, “yeah right.”

Although millions of people worship Trump, they make up approximately 30% of the population. The problem lies, of course, in the primary nominating system where fanatics of both parties have a greater say because harried citizens who don’t spend their evenings watching Fox News or MSNBC don’t vote in primaries. Many can’t take off work on a Tuesday, not to mention that fighting traffic after eight hours of labor to stand in line at an elementary school isn’t nearly as pleasant as dropping into a neighborhood bar and having a couple before heading home. 

Image on the right by Jenny Kroik of The New Yorker

The general election, on the other hand, is a different story.

For example, the Dodd decision has riled up women, young people, and those of us who disdain forced birth, especially for children impregnated via rape, victims of incest, mothers facing difficult choices with fetuses with severe birth defects, and women whose health could be harmed because of unusual medical situations. When free choice referenda have appeared on ballots, even in the reddest of states voters have opted for choice rather than forced birth. This is a problem up-and-down the ballot for Republicans outside the hinterlands.

Like I say, I could be wrong. Joe Biden isn’t popular, and we have RFK, Jr. and Cornel West siphoning votes, and perhaps a third party a la Nader and Jill Stine could gum up the works, but I suspect Nader voters who aided and abetted the election of W. Bush and those Stine voters who were sure that Hillary was a shoo-in regret their decisions.

At least I hope they do.

PS. Oh, I almost forgot to mention the insurrection, the illegal possession of top secret documents and his refusal to turn them over, and his paying hush money to a porn star. It’s downright exhausting. 

[1] If you feel you need to explain your jokes – lynch = hung, a hung jury ha-ha ­– perhaps the jokes suck. 

Afterbirth of a Nation: The Montgomery Boat Brawl

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Certainly, there must be some film maker somewhere who is gathering the various videos taken of what has become known as “The Montgomery Boat Brawl” to fashion them into a well-edited epic entitled Afterbirth of a Nation.

By now, you know the basics. White boaters take offense when a Black security man asks them to move their pontoon so a riverboat can dock. The White man is uncooperative, words are exchanged, pushing and shoving ensue, the Black man throws his cap into the air, and fists start flying.[1] The White man’s boatmates join in on the tussle, and several other Black men, presumedly dockworkers, come rumbling down a stairway like a horseless calvary to join in on the fray, not to mention the Black man who swims across the river to join in. What ensues is reminiscent of dugouts emptying after a beaning or a staged professional wrestling free-for-all. 

To echo Dylan, send out for some folding chairs and Haystack Calhoun.[2]

It’s gone beyond viral. The folding chair, which is used as a weapon, is all over the Internet, and many of the participants have been dubbed with various noms de guerre.  For example, the swimmer is now known as Ja’ Aquaman! and/or Scuba Gooding. 

Montgomery Brawl Shirt Alabama Chair Meme Shirt Montgomery Boat Brawl Shirt Have the Day You Deserve Shirt

Since Republicans tend to blame everything on Joe Biden, including Team USA’s loss in the recent World Cup, I’m going to wag my censorious finger at Donald Trump, whose blatant abuse of common decency and civilized decorum has uncorked a Pandora’s Box of combustible bile that provides people permission to act like assholes. 

On the other hand, the incident may provide an uptick in the US economy and has certainly provided TikTok entertainers and retired English teachers something to squawk and write about.

Here’s my favorite rendition by Detroit’s own GMACCASH.

[1] Several commentators contend that the hat toss was a signal for back-up.

[2] The actual line is “Then send out for some pillars and Cecile B. DeMille from “Tombstone Blues.