I'm Immortal When I'm With You

For this month's Band of the Month, we are back in the 90s and 00s, this time for one of the acts that brought me back into contemporary music in the late 90s: PJ Harvey.

I don't remember exactly when this happened - late 90s, 96, 97 - after her career was established, anyway. I remember seeing her on MTV back in the early 90s, but I didn't care, I was listening to jazz then - I picked up on her later. I remember a couple things: listening to Rid of Me and To Bring You My Love somewhat obsessively for a while; then seeing her on TV, singing songs from To Bring You My Love and Is This Desire. A TV show - must have been Sessions at West 54th Street (having consulted the googles, I see it was; I saw a few episodes of that show - Cibo Matto say...) - that was 98 or 99. The records came first, but that really sealed it - seeing her sing made those songs all the better. (Big fish little fish swimmin' inna water, come back here man gimme my daughter...) Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea just deepened it - those big jangly guitars, right in my wheelhouse. But really, she's been there since I started listening to her - Bring You My Love fit in nicely with what I listened to in the 90s - Pere Ubu and Built to Spill, to Sleater Knney and Captain Beefheart - and she led me to other things. Listening to PJ Harvey probably got me to check out Sleater Kinney - I am quite sure that Nick Cave's association with Harvey was the reason I picked up his records. I think I bought Murder Ballads first because of the duet with her. In this series, I've put her at the end of a 90s and 00s artists - but the truth is, she was the source of my interest in a lot of them.

Looking back across her career now, she is even more impressive. How much range she has! From punk (or post-punk - a musical offspring of Patti Smith and Nick Cave) to electronica/blues to jangly guitar pop to weird piano ballds (starting to sound like Kate Bush) to weird folk, sometimes all at once! She is a chameleon - changing styles; changing her voice, up and down in pitch, whispers, screams, shouts, croons, belting them out, thin and pretty sometimes, rich and powerful other times, capable of anything; changing her look. Looking through videos across her career - she covers pretty much every imaginable look, from punk to trashy to glamorous, to those weird white and black dresses she's featured in recent years. The look changes, her style changes - but she's there, a calm center - commanding every stage she's on. That volatility has always been her trademark, I think - the dynamic of her songs, the soft/hard dynamic on the early records; the mix of pretty melodies and seductive rhythms with edgy themes in the later ones - the shifts in tone, texture of songs, the sudden splashes of sound. She keeps you on your toes.

And finally, as a songwriter - she's among the elites. She's among my favorites - Cave; David Thomas; Mick and Keef; Richard Thompson, Lou Reed. Like Cave (and often Thomas, Thompson, Reed) she's more story teller than lyricist - she writes as a narrator - very striking on the early records, where the voice was often a man's, and on Let England Shake, where the stories were topical - and does it with great control, telling the story, and getting you into the narrator's emotional state. She creates characters that you come to know in 3 minutes - it's a gift. And she can turn a phrase with the best of them:
Seen and Done Things I Want to Forget
I don't want to make a fuss, I want to make my own fuckups
Until the light shines on me, I damn to hell every second you breath
I've lain with the devil, cursed god above, forsaken heaven, to bring you my love
Does it have to be a life full of dread, want to chase you round a table, want to touch your head...

Yes. So - on to the list, a top 10:

1. To Bring You My Love
2. Down By The Water
3. The Words That Maketh Murder
4. The Whores Hustle and the Hustlers Whore
5. Rid of Me
6. Big Exit
7. Man-Size
8. Catherine
9. Dress
10. My Beautiful Leah

And video: Start here, a 1991 full concert. Right at the beginning - she had such a big voice, big sound, that she could go anywhere, and has gone most places. These early clips, she is so confident and powerful - there's nothing missing, she's a neo-punk act as good as anyone else at the time, and better in ways, her song writing voice - her perspective - and her voice, which is just shocking, even then:



Here she is in 1993, playing Rid of Me on Leno - Leno; electric; solo (which I didn't really notice til the long shots came - she and a guitar can fill the world):



Down by the Water, 95 - Jools Holland:



This is the TV show I saw back in the 90s - Sessions at West 54th Street - this is I Think I'm a Mother and Is This Desire, plus an interview with David Byrne:



To Bring You My Love - playing guitar, 2003:



Speak to me of your inner charm, how you'll keep me, safe from harm - I don't think so...



Words That Maketh Murder, live:



And end with another complete concert, from 2011:

Happy Bastille Day!

The Tour de France is starting back up today, moving into the mountains - always fun. This year's race looks likely to come down to an Englishman (from Kenya) vs. a Columbian, with an American, Spaniard and Italian in serious contention - well - it's an international sport. So here, to celebrate it, is a group of Germans:



And to wish our French friends a happy Bastille Day, here are some nice Canadian boys:



And finally, a very French performance of the Marsiellaise:

Halftime Film Report

I know I have become an awfully lazy blogger - lucky to get a list of autogenerated songs up every week, and that one long essay a month... Maybe an anniversary will wake me up, but those have faded, what with the Civil War over... Sad sad.

I haven't had a movie post up in forever - without external stimulation, I don't know if I'd have gotten one out this year. Of course that might help suggest why I have been such a slug here - I took a class in the spring, which as it happened did involve a pretty substantial Eisenstein paper. The Russians did rather finish me off for a while - at least that's what I hope happened. There's a decent post version of that Eisenstein paper somewhere - it might surface eventually...

For now though, I just want to get a hand in. I used to do this more often - knock off a Best So Far list about halfway through the year. Been a while since I have done that - three years in fact. Sad. But as a way of getting a hand back in, it'l do. So without too much ado - here are the 10 best films I have seen, in something like a real release this year:

1. Winter Sleep
2. Adieu au Langage
3. About Elly
4. Clouds of Sils Maria
5. The Wolfpack
6. Juaja
7. What we Do in the Shadows
8. The King and the Mockingbird
9. Amy
10. Results

And a much smaller list - best films I have seen dated 2015 - it's too early to do much of this: most of the films that I see in theazters the first half of any year are older, catching up on all last year's international films. (Thgough this year has been a bit ridiculous in that - The King and the Mockingbird? even About Elly is 6 years old. And if I wanted to really cheat, I could include Rebels of the Neon God, which is getting what I think is its first American theatrical run. I've seen it already, though, some years back at the MFA, so that's a bit too much for me. But I might as well post something from this year - since I have only seen 12 films dated 2015 (I think) - well - might as well rank them all. Very heavy on the documentaries...

1. The Wolfpack
2. Amy
3. Results
4. Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles
5. Iris
6. While We're Young
7. I'll see You in My Dreams
8. I am Big Bird
9. When Marnie Was There
10. Slow West
11. Mad Max Fury Road
12. Danny Collins

Actually - nothing bad - I enjoyed those all the way down (with occasional reservations). So not bad really.

I may even try to get some reviews up in the coming weeks - always a hope.

Musical Interlude

I am back. This is by rights my band of the month week, but that will have to wait. The holiday last week, and childhood film series entry this week, have me well behind. A weak excuse, but I have become so lazy.... It's all right. It's coming.

For now, then, just songs, randomized and all that.

1. Big Black - L Dopa
2. Ton Waits - Rainbirds
3. Dinosaur Jr. - Tarpit
4. Replacements - Within Your Reach
5. Tom Waits - Oily Night
6. Jay Farrar - Old LA
7. Scott Walker - Winter Night
8. Missy Elliot - Pump it Up
9. The Postal Service - Natural Anthem
10. Meat Puppets - The Touchdown King

Video - obviously Tom Waits this week. This is a neat piece of work, a student film set to Oily Night:



And - let's do - Big Black, live:



And maybe a preview for next week....

Let the Right One In

Published as part of the Childhood Films countdown at Wonders in the Dark.



Adolescence can be a terrible time. It can be very painful. It is a time when you lose yourself, lose what you have been, and become a new person in spite of yourself. For most of us, this happens surrounded by others going through the same thing at the same time - is it any wonder how horribly 12 and 13 year olds can treat one another? Let the Right One In is a vampire movie, and a bit of a social satire (if that’s the word) - but mostly, it is about that time when you stop being a child and start to become something else (not quite an adult - but not a child). It is about loss - the loss of childhood, of identity, though also other losses (losing connections with other people, through death or changes in you and them) - but also about what you become. Change is loss, but also gain - you lose who you were, you become someone new. It is about the effects of these changes on groups of kids - about their cruelty, their pain, about how they cope, and perhaps escape.

The main story is about Oskar, a 12 year old living in a particularly horrifying suburb of Stockholm in 1981 (a period promising transition itself - Brezhnev was on his last legs; Reagan was rattling sabers across the sea - the Cold War itself was starting to change, but it wasn't sure what it was going to change into, and Sweden was right there between the two of them). Oskar lives with his mother, who is seldom home; his father lives in the country and is something of a refuge for the boy (except when he's drinking). He goes to school, where he is too clever for his own good, with an excessive interest in police matters; his classmates torment him mercilessly, and he goes home and imagines bloody vengeance on them. There don't seem to be any other kids in his apartment complex; then one moves in - Eli, a strange girl about his age who doesn't seem to dress appropriately for the cold, who seems about as lonely and suspicious as Oskar. It doesn't take them long to become friends - they bond over a Rubik's cube, and they are soon very close.



But Eli has secrets of her own. The film doesn't waste a lot of time letting us in on them - she lives with a Hakan, an odd, quiet, older man, who murders and guts people in the woods to bring her blood. Or tries - when he is interrupted, she has to go out herself and find prey, for she is a vampire. She kills a middle aged drunk, touching off a sub plot involving a number of aging alcoholics, who may have seen her. Meanwhile, things escalate at the school - the kids bullying Oskar get worse, and when he fights back (at Eli's urging), he hurts one of them badly enough to cause further repercussions. The assorted plots build - rising trouble among the kids; the developing friendship and intimacy between Oskar and Eli; and the complications coming out of the killings. Hakan is caught in the act of trying to kill another kid, and leaves Eli alone; one of the friends of the man she killed finds her and tries to kill her while she sleeps, but Oskar warns her and she kills the man; then the boys at school try to get their ultimate vengeance on Oskar, but Eli saves him in a spectacularly gruesome fashion, and they leave together.



It delivers as a horror film, but it is much more concerned with the relationships. The film concentrates on Oskar and Eli - the novel it is based on develops a number of relationships in addition to theirs. It delves into the lives of the kids who torment Oskar; it details Eli and Hakan's relationship; it spends more time with the old drinkers; more time with Oskar and his family. But the broader scope of the book mainly expands and deepens the themes that are at the heart of Oskar and Eli's relationship - the sense of loss, loneliness, change, and their powerlessness against that change. In the book, we learn that the bullies are more like Oskar than not - they lose parents, families, they are going through the same changes he is - they take their troubles out on him, creating a chain of misery. The film retains hints of this - Oskar's main tormenter has an older brother, who is introduced in the film bullying the little brother (who will pass it on to Oskar); the film also retains the subplot with Ginia and Lacke, an older couple who are in the process of losing one another (and in the end, lose everything.) This is a world of pain; everyone is alone, everyone is isolated - and Eli is the epitome of all of their pain.

Most of the characters are kids, most of them on the edge of puberty, about to change forever - and Eli is trapped forever at that very moment. Eli was made a vampire at age 12 - taken from his family, castrated, tortured to death, though not to actual death, then trapped forever at that point of transition and pain. Eli is locked forever in pre-pubescence, trapped between childhood and adulthood, between boy and girl, life and death, ageless and 12 years old, always in the middle. The film is extraordinary at capturing her strange condition - it shows her childishness, her sense of discovery of the world, of things like the Rubik's cube, her loneliness, her desire for contact, a connection, her willingness to try things - while never losing the sense that she is hundreds of years old, has been through this before, has suffered everything and more. And that she is a vampire, and must live on blood, is subject to a host of rules and conditions - she will catch fire in the sun; she cannot enter a place without being invited, without consequences, and so on. She is immensely powerful, but she can't get along without the help of others. We see it in her relationship with Oskar - she genuinely likes him, she longs for friendship, for communication - but she also sees that she can use him, that he can replace Hakan. She uses him - his anger and fear, his loneliness - while at the same time responding to him directly, as one lonely child to another. The film handles this with great care, we can see both; it is a superb balancing act.



And it is a superb film throughout. I've written before about its look, the cold spare spaces of Blackeberg, all square buildings and empty courtyards, a fair version of hell, but that excellence is everywhere in the film. It's beautiful, and it uses its look and feel to advance the themes. It is a film about the end of childhood, about transition - and plays that out, all the shots of doorways and windows and gates we see. The themes come from the book - the importance of those liminal spaces, the central metaphor of the vampire's inability to go in uninvited, with Eli as the ultimate liminal character, forever caught <i>between</i> - and the film finds the imagery to give them weight and power.



So we come back to adolescence, to the traumatic transition from a childhood to maturity, to the loss of oneself, and the discovery of a new self - and the importance of that part of the change. Oskar, at the end of the film, has lost everything - abandoned his family, his life, left a trail of devastation in his wake - he is moving into a very uncertain future, very possibly headed for a life of slavery to a vampire who needs him to kill for her, and certainly obliged to drag her around with him wherever he goes.... But he is on his way somewhere - moving, alive, sane, not locked in a trunk until sunset. He has put off the childish things, and become someone else, something no one else, not even Eli, can do.

Politics, Music and so On

Happy Friday. It has been Another One of Those Weeks, so this will not be the most interesting of posts... On the other hand, it has been a very interesting, and rather heartening, week in the real world, so....

The big news is that the Moops did not invade Spain - I mean, that it is possible to recognize errors in a text. I mean - that Obamacare is legal as stands, and that a phrase that seems to contradict the clear meaning of the rest of the law, cannot be used to invalidate the law. So says John Roberts, communist. This is a very good thing. Millions of people who have health insurance because of the ACA will continue to have health insurance; the law itself will be embedded into the fabric of the country (isn't that what Obama said somewhere? ah, the hazards of skimming through Twitter for my news...) - thus very difficult to get rid of. It also will probably serve to seal Obama's place among the great presidents - his legacy is going to be hard to parse out, I suppose, but it is going to be a very good on, overall.

And, referring back to last week's news, somewhat surprisingly, the move to get rid of Confederate flags in public places has gained a lot of traction - South Carolina, even, went first (or Nikki Haley went first - the legislature has to approve. This being SC, god knows what they will do.) They were followed by a number of states - by Walmart and NASCAR - and many more. Sometimes, it has to be said, to the point of fucking stupidity - Apple, apparently, decided this meant they should remove Civil War themed games from the App Store. (And from a quote in that article, only games with the Battle Flag are considered offensive - so you can use some other Confederate flag... Good god, that's dumb.) Mostly, though, the responses have been sensible enough - government endorsement of the flag of treason in defense of slavery (any of the flags of that villainous crew, ideally) has to stop. This is hardly the end of the problem, but admitting that it is a problem is certainly a helpful first step.

All right. Two political posts in a row? I am running out of time - I can't be doing this all morning. So I will switch to the usual Friday fare - music - random - etc.

1. Brian Jonestown Massacre - Whoever You Are
2. Richard Thompson - Sally B
3. The Carter Family - Heaven's Radio
4. Pere Ubu - Heartbreak Garage
5. Big Boi - Knowing
6. John Lee Hooker - Black Cat Blues
7. Green River - This Town
8. Picturebooks - Golden Tongues
9. The Melvins Lite - Mr. Ripoff
10. The Saints - New Center of the Universe

And video? Should have put this up last week, but I found it after I posted - Juneteenth Jamboree, by Gladys Bentley.

Juneteenth

Today is the 150th anniversary of Juneteenth - June 19, 1865, the day Union troops arrived in Galveston Texas with news that the war was over and the slaves had been freed. General Gordon Granger read a general order announcing their freedom:

The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages.

And there was, indeed, very great rejoicing. Over the years it became an annual celebration - though one that perhaps grew bittersweet over the years. The United States won the Civil War, but the Confederate states won the Reconstruction - removing many rights from the freed blacks, imposing an apartheid regime in the south, that only started to be undone in the 1950s and 1960s. In recent years, Juneteenth has again become an important celebration in some places - a state holiday in Texas even - and we would not go wrong as a country to make it a national holiday. It is an excellent place to mark the end of the Civil War, and the good that came out of the Civil War - a subject that deserves more celebration.

Right now in particular. The shooting at the AME church in Charleston, SC, is a reminder, if we need one, that the Civil War has not really gone away. A white man, an open racist, goes into a Black church and murders 9 people, spouting off as he did it - “I have to do it. You’re raping our women and taking over the country. You have to go.” He seems to have been an over-determined piece of work - racist, drug addled thug, a time bomb waiting to go off - but when he went off, he went off in a Black church pastored by a state senator - whatever he might have been as an individual, his act was political terrorism. Which is nothing new: the south has practiced political terrorism from the day the Civil War ended (of course before that, they practiced terrorism against Blacks for some centuries, though it was all more or less legal), to restore and maintain white supremacy.

There's no escaping it. And this attack is depressingly continuous with all the violence against African Americans - it is continuous with the police murders that have been in the news (Michael Brown and Eric Garvin and Walter Scott and Freddie Gray). It is continuous with the state it occurred in - which still flies the Confederate flag. You can't get around that fact: South Carolina continues to celebrate its role in killing 650,000 plus Americans in defense of slavery and white supremacy - it is a bit disingenuous to lament some free-lancer adding 9 more to the toll, when you do that. Ta-Nehisi Coates sums it up, as he usually does: "The flag that Roof embraced, which many South Carolinians embrace, does not stand in opposition to this act—it endorses it." At some point, even the parts of the United States unhappy with the results of the Civil War will need to accept its outcome.

In the meantime, we can celebrate its outcome. Forget the bad news for a while, and have a happy Juneteenth.

I'll Give you Anything Everything if You Want Thing

This month on band of the month, it is time for some Pink Floyd. The Floyd is an interesting case. For a time, in high school, right about the time The Wall came out - and again for a while in college, right when I started, they were right there among my absolute favorites. Looking back, it makes enough sense - the first bout was driven by The Wall, which is a very high school kind of record. (Look at Walt, in The Squid and the Whale - the fact that no one seems to recognize Hey You - that everyone takes for granted that he wrote it - well - it sounds like adolescent angst; the whole record does.) The college bout was centered on Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You were Here and Animals (someone had a tape we used to listen to - people tend to forget Animals, sometimes) - arty, sophisticated, but fairly conventional collections of songs (maybe not Animals so much) - music made for clever boys wanting music that would make them feel smarter than they were - it does that.

It faded, of course. You discover more music, and start thinking Pink Floyd is not that challenging, not really cleverer than their peers, etc. There are harder bands - more virtuosic bands - more sophisticated bands - lots of more melodic bands, rhythmic bands, rawer bands - sooner or later, maybe you discover jazz or more complicated prog (Soft Machine or Can or Van der Graf Generator or King Crimson - to name some of the bands I came to prefer). Or maybe you just discover Syd Barrett Floyd and find all the later stuff bland and overblown. Me - I came to prefer more contemporary music (U2 and REM and so on) on one side, and rawer AOR (Zep, The Who, etc.) on the other and let the Floyd fade. And then started listening to punk, and older, more underground bands (Velvets, Stooges, etc,), and poor Pink and the boys were lost.... Until I got Piper at the Gates of Dawn, which brought me part of the way back.

More than that really - I was completely convinced by that record - by Barrett. No hesitations. Post-Barrett, they're okay - good songs and all - but nothing I would seek out. But Piper really is a fantastic piece of work. They cover everything there - rock out more than they ever did afterwards, the songs are better, the experimentation more experimental - Syd is a way rawer and inventive musician than the rest of them, a more interesting and expressive singer, writer of smart, funny, cool lyrics - what's not to love? The experimental stuff, the jams, are jarring, ragged weird stuff that sticks with you (Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk, say - the end of Bike...) It made the rest of their career seem a lot blander - nice stuff, but still kind of AOR filler - hearing Have a Cigar, after 10 years, it sounds like glorified Supertramp... right?

I suspect readers by now have figured out how these essays go: if I loved someone in high school, abandoned them in college or afterwards, but have decided to write about them - I must have rediscovered them somewhere along the line. Well - correct you are! hypothetical reader mine. I did. I am writing about them now because they fit in the context of the groups I've been writing about the last few months. Radiohead, Mercury Rev - and bands like Tool, Can, Soft Machine, Van Der Graf Generator, Acid Mothers Temple, At the Drive In/Mars Volta, Captain Beefheart - got me listening to prog, and things like prog, and made me hear it with different ears. I heard Pink Floyd with different ears. Though that's only part of it - it's also true that I started listening to different Floyd, in the early 2000s. My first bout of loving the Floyd was rooted in The Wall, and the second one in the mid-70s records - my first rediscovery of them came from the Syd Barrett stuff - and the second rediscovery came from listening to the early 70s records: Ummagumma, Saucerful of Secrets, Meddle - the apologetically artsy stuff. Careful With that Ax Eugene, Set Your Controls for the Heart of the Sun, One of these Days, Echoes, Let There Be More Light - big epic stuff I didn't listen to in 1980, 82, or 88. Again, though, showing something - music sounds different in different contexts - what you listen to conditions how you hear things. Listening to Tool and Radiohead and Mercury Rev made me hear different things in Pink Floyd, just as listening to REM and the Feelies and the Velvet Underground shaped how I heard the Syd Barrett stuff in the 80s.

So there we are. They are a strange case - I have gone through long stretches of near disdain for them (the Syd stuff excepted) - but other periods where I have nearly worshipped them. For all the fluctuations in my taste, I have been listening to them for 35 years, sometimes obsessively - and keep coming back to them. And can't deny that they have helped form me - maybe I like other prog bands more - but I learned to like that kind of music mostly from Pink Floyd. A lot of bands I love have a lot of Pink Floyd's DNA in them... And I can't deny either that they really do sound magnificent when they get going. I have come to respect their musicianship a great deal - there are few more tastefully beautiful guitarists than David Gilmour, and Nick Mason has grown on me as a great drummer. Barrett really was the star of the band - maybe not as good as Gilmour, but a genuinely inventive player - imaginative, surprising, challenging - the real deal. But really - the rest of them hold their own. I can't pretend there isn't a lot of filler on some of those records, but at their best they are really really wonderful.

And here, then, are their best, as I see it:

1. Bike
2. Comfortably Numb
3. Set The Controls for the Heart of the Sun
4. Lucifer Sam
5. Time
6. Interstellar Overdrive
7. Another Brick in the Wall Part 2
8. Flaming
9. Wish You Were Here
10. Fearless

And on to video. Missing, in a way, from this discussion, are the singles - so here is one, See Emily Play - a lovely, cool song, with a very odd promotional film, some of the more awkward forced whimsy you are likely to see...



And a long filmed performance of Interstellar Overdrive - showing the importance of film and light and so on to their act at the beginning. (All through their career really.) With some excellent representative guitar work from Syd:



Moving ahead - Dave Gilmour joins - here's Let there be more Light, live on French TV:



Setting their controls for the Heart of the Sun (with some great stuff from Mason):



And since it's harder than I thought to find live performances from the mid to late 70s on YouTube, hop ahead to the 80s: here's the video for Another Brick in the Wall, with sinister schoolchildren, Gerald Scarfe designed balloons and cartoons, and lots of bricks and hammers:



And Comfortably Numb, live in 1980:

Friday Random Music (Real World Edition)

Good morning - another simple Friday post, to mark time... It has been One Of Those Weeks - but I will not go into that. Work, you know. My eye-rolling muscles are getting a workout. And my liver. But anyway: here are some songs to contemplate this Friday morning.

1. Pere Ubu - Real world (live)
2. Public enemy - Invisible Man
3. Sleater-Kinney - I wanna be your Joey Ramone
4. Led Zeppelin - When the Levee Breaks
5. Keiji Haino/Yoshida Tatsuya - Avenue D
6. The Raconteurs - Level
7. Luna - Anesthesia
8. Miles Davis - Helen Butte/Mr. Freedom X
9. Richard & Linda Thompson - Shame of Doing Wrong
10. Sugarcubes - Lucky Night

I suppose this is particularly necessary this morning - out in the real world, in real time:



Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie:



And Luna - I could use some anesthesia....

Music for the End of May

Good morning, again. These years when Memorial Day comes early always throw me for a loop - here it is, the last Friday of May, but not a long weekend! Something seems off.

Anyway - May is almost done; it has been very warm this week - normal weather for this time of year, I guess. That is something to be grateful for - normal weather is not very normal anymore. Someone always seems to be getting what Texas is getting - the worst X in Y years... For those inclined to think about the coming apocalypse - 2015 is shaping up to be the warmest year on record - after 2014 was the warmest year on record last year. Ah, plenty to worry about!

All right - I'm not going to solve global warming here. So - music it is!

1. Bill Frisell - Reflections from the Moon
2. Sun Ra - Rocket Number Nine
3. Kinks - (Wish I could Fly Like) Superman
4. The Melvins - Goin' Blind
5. Neil Young - Pocahontas
6. Serge Gainsbourg - Je T'aime... Moi Non Plus
7. Bruce Springsteen - Incident on 57th Street
8. Gomez - These 3 Sins
9. Chic - Everybody Dance
10. The Beatles - Something

Video: if the weather gets too bad - we could go to Venus, maybe - here's the current version of the Sun Ra Arkestra, last year at Glastonbury:



I want to fly but I can't even swim:



I suppose there is another option:

Decoration Day

Happy Memorial Day!

As I am wont to do, I am inclined to think about the origins of holidays on holidays. This one began in the wake of the Civil War - officialy in the north in 1868; less officially, and at various times and places in the south in 1866 or so. And one of the first instances came in Charleston, South Carolina, where a large number of freed slaves (mainly) gathered to pay tribute to the Union soldiers who had died at the Hampton Park Race Course, which had been used as a prison camp during the war. The dead had been buried there - the freedmen cleaned and landscaped the grounds and gathered for a ceremony on May 1, 1865, to honor the Martyrs of the Race Course. There may or may not have been any direct connection between that and the commemorations to come, but it set the patterns - parades, memorialization of the war dead - and I suppose an attempt to claim the holiday for a political purpose. In this case a good purpose - the end of slavery and preservation of the union. But in coming years, the south would try to claim it as a celebration of the "lost cause".

Over the years, the original significance of the day has been replaced by a more general day of remembrance for the war dead - we do have more wars to remember now. That is a good thing to remember - but it is good, too, to go back to the origins. I admit too that I feel this more strongly on Decoration Day (and Armistice Day) than most holidays - the Civil War is, really, the foundational moment of the United States. We existed for 87 odd years before that, but the Civil War is what defined us (or at least, defined us as something worth being.) We live with its effects more than we live with the effects of any other event in our history, even now. Which links it to Armistice Day - since WWI had this impact on the rest of the world. everything since - bigger or smaller - flows from the Great War, as it flows from the Civil War in this country. And so - keep in mind where this came from, and maybe, the cause behind it.



Here, then, is Orson Welles, explaining and reciting The Battle Hymn of the Republic:

The Music of a Long Weekend

Friday! a long weekend! a long weekend that's already starting for most of the people I work with, but not for me! bit of poor planning there. All right - I want to get some real material up here - make some use here of all the Ivan the Terrible stuff I did for class; answer Dennis Cozzalio's latest quiz (which is a - holy Crap! - a month overdue already!) - write about history (started reading about Andrew Johnson, America's worst ever president - who was, at the same time, a very fascinating character) - etc. Some of that will come! it isn't just talk! But today it is talk...

So music:

1. Karen Dalton - How did the Feeling Feel to You
2. Smokey Robinson & the Miracles - I You Can Wait
3. Fleetwood Mac - The Sun is Shining
4. Nick Cave & Bad Seeds - Deanna
5. Arcade Fire - Flashbulb Eyes
6. Devandra Banhart - The Spirit is Near
7. The Kills - Damned if She Do
8. AC/DC - Shake a Leg
9. Beatles - Her Majesty
10. The Low Anthem - To Ohio

And some Video - let's start with Karen Dalton - different song (It Hurts me Too), but something. The Karen Dalton track is from one of those Mojo compilations - something I didn't know existed until now. But now that I do - this is some good stuff.



I wonder if Devandra Banhart is a fan? (This is also a different song than iTunes tossed up, but you take what you can get.)



And finally - I think Peter Green tends to get the attention (with good reason, as Peter Green is one of the Great guitar players of rock), but Jeremy Spencer is no slouch, and nice to see him still playing (2009 or so):

I'm A Reasonable Man Get Off My Case

A week late, but here's May's Band of the Month - sticking with the late 90s early 00s theme for the moment. Sooner or later in this series, we're going to get to bands that don't have much biographical significance to me - and that's probably the case this month. I like Radiohead, obviously - that's why they're here - but I just like them. It took a while - I remember Creep coming out, remember thinking they sounded like 85 other generic 90s bands, though they could turn a phrase... Then forgot they existed for a few years, then discovered, to my shock, that they were extremely popular and widely loved by people who loved music. It was an amazing fact, I thought - though I was almost completely innocent of ever having heard them (other than Creep.) People I knew would have long earnest and intense discussions (ie, arguments) about them, whether Kid A was brilliant or some kind of terrible betrayal - and it felt like they were talking a foreign language. And then, for reasons I can't begin to remember, I got one of their records - Amnesiac it was - and discovered that they were quite good. So I got others, liked them, and accepted the fact that I was a Radiohead fan.

It still feels a bit alien to me somehow - listening to them makes me feel like a college kid in the 90s. I wasn't a college kid in the 90s, but I feel very confident that I would have loved them if I had been. This is particularly true of OK Computer and the Bends - I like their sources (I hear U2 and the Smiths in there, very strongly, and the lingering ghost of David Bowie and Pink Floyd), but it still feels very far from me. But - if I were 10 or 15 years younger - I know this would have filled me with exaltation and wonder. But I'm not - and maybe more odd than anything, the records of theirs I really love are the electronic ones - Kid A and Amnesiac - maybe because they have moved far enough from their sources to just sound like themselves - maybe because Thom Yorke has stopped trying to emote, and sounds less whiny - maybe just because I love the rhythm tracks on those records. I don't know, and I guess it doesn't matter. They are great, hypnotic records, full of great compelling songs.

Not that there aren't great songs on their other records - before and after really - and everything they do sounds fantastic. The early records have more guitar, and sometimes quite magnificent guitar (what Jonny Greenwood can make come out of a guitar is sometimes a thing of wonder) - all of them are exquisitely constructed tracks. And though Yorke's lyrics don't always convince me, when he's on - "when I am king you will first against the wall, with your opinion which is of no consequence at all" - "laugh until my head comes off, swallow til I burst" - "I wish I was special, you're so fucking special" - he nails it, can't deny it. So it goes, and I keep getting the new records and listening to the old ones, and though I can't help wondering what I would have thought if I had been 17 when OK Computer came out.

And here are 10 songs:

1. Idioteque
2. Subterranean Homesick Alien
3. Packt Like Sardines in a Crushed Tin Box
4. Paranoid Android
5. National Anthem
6. Creep
7. A Punch up at a wedding
8. Bones
9. I Might be Wrong
10. Optimistic

And here are some videos - we'll start with Creep, live in 94 - a song that holds up pretty well, over the years.



Idioteque, 2012:



Subterrainean Homesick Alien:



And Electioneering, to let Jonny show off a bit:



Paranoid Android (which I imagine is obligatory) - from Austin City Limits:



Finally - here's a cover of Packt like sardines (etc.) by a band I might be getting to eventually (Punch Brothers) - which does illustrate jjst how good these songs are:

Film Preservation Blogathon

Just want to drop a quick link in here for the Film Preservation Blogathon running this year at Ferdy on Films, This Island Rod and Wonders in the Dark. I am coming out of my Ivan the Terrible induced isolation, so don't have a lot to say just now - but you can find plenty to read, and can donate to a good cause - the National Film Preservation Foundation. Enjoy!

The theme of this year's blogathon is Science Fiction film - Ivan the Terrible is NOT a science fiction film, though shots like this might give you that impression...

Friday Random Ten

Tjis week should be Band of the Month week, but I am behind on things, and so will have to wait a week. It's coming, but not until Ivan is done.



Anyway - songs, before heading out into another excellent spring Day, VE day, 70 years along... Random 10:

1. Jack White - Entitlement
2. Neutral Milk Hotel - Oh Comely
3. Frank Zappa - Let's Make the Water Turn Black
4. Chicago - Beginnings (live)
5. Stooges - Slide (Slidin' the Blues)
6. Flying Burrito Brothers - Wheels
7. Six Organs of Admittance - Anesthesia
8. Wilco - Art of Almost
9. John McLaughlin - don't Let the Dragon Et Your Mother
10. Deerhoof - I did Crimes for You

Video? little Jack White maybe to start:



And Neutral Milk Hotel:



And end with Wilco, with Nels off the leash:

Lusitania

Today is another aniversary from 100 years ago - the Sinking of the Lusitania. The Lusitania was a British passenger liner running between New York and Liverpool, still making runs in 1915, despite the increased danger from German submarines. The Germans wee. at this point in the war, beginning to carry out unlimited submarine warfare - that is, they were beginning to attack British ships on sight, from under water, with torpedoes - rather than surfacing and attempting to evacuate the ships first. They made no secret of this - before the Lusitania left New York, they circulated a warning, pointing out that England was a war zone, and they had the right to attack ships near England, and would - that passengers traveled at their own risks. But passengers traveled, including a lot of Americans - and when the Germans sank it, 218 Americans died, of the 1198 total casualties. It caused a sensation - the British condemned the attack roundly; the Americans too, and edged toward war - and certainly turned against the Germans. The Germans, for their part, while defending their actions, abandoned unlimited submarine warfare for two years - they only resumed in in 1917, when the war was starting to go against them. It didn't help - in 1917, the Americans were having none of it, and came into the war not long after. The sinking of the Lusitania, then, did finally lose the war for Germany (the US's involvement went far toward breaking the stalemate) - though it took a few years to come to pass.

That is probably all for the best, but you have to feel some sympathy for them. They claimed at the time that the Lusitania was a legitimate target, carrying armaments - and it was. Which makes it not entirely untrue to say that the passengers were being used as human shields - the morality gets muddy there. The morality of naval warfare - blockades and submarine warfare - is pretty murky anyway. The British blockades the Germans for the whole war - and went a long way toward starving them out. Causing serious ongoing suffering in the civilian population. But the British did this with surface ships - they had a huge navy that could cut off trade with Germany without using submarines. The Germans lacked the surface fleet, but they had submarines, which were very effective against shipping - though the nature of submarine warfare makes it impossible to wage without killing people. Surface ships can turn back freighters - a large surface navy can stop shipping without always sinking it, can drive off any military escorts and so on - submarines can't do that. They can only sink ships. They can't surface to engage with ships - a few destroyers can rout a submarine. So waging a blockade with subs is a murderous affair - immediately murderous: killing people instantly and terrifyingly, rather than starving them slowly, the British way.

But it points to something else - that 20th century warfare was becoming total war - wars are always won and lost through logistics, but this is all the more obvious in the 20th century, with heavy industrialization, with larger populations, concentrated in cities that have to bring their food from somewhere else. And with the industrialization of warfare itself, creating an insatiable appetite for machines of killing. Commerce becomes all the more important - commerce and industry - and they become legitimate targets for attack, with all the civilian casualties that come with it. This would only grow more important as time passed, as air power became more important - it would justify the use of strategic bombing in WWII. That's a topic for another day - but in the end, it would end up killing millions (maybe) of civilians, without really making any dent in anyone's war making capabilities. Not in absolute terms, and not in comparison with what submarines (and conventional blockades) would accomplish.

Finally - here is Winsor McKay's animated film on the sinking of the Lusitania, a fine piece of wartime propaganda by a great filmmaker:

Walpurgisnacht & May Day

Happy May Day, ladies and gentlemen! It is a happy May day, this year - we have an actualy sort-of socialist to vote for! Bernie Sanders, senator from Vermont, is running for president, as a Democrat. Now - I don't have any illusions that he is going to win - though I don't know how much that matters. If he's there to keep bringing up economic matters, it can't hurt. And it's nice to have someone to vote for in the primaries that I can vote for without reservation. I am no fan of Hillary Clinton - she and Bill have always come off as trimmers, willing to give up anything for an inch of advantage for themselves - it's hard to imagine her holding the line on as much as Obama has been able to keep from the GOP. But in the end, that doesn't matter in the least - in the general election I will vote for a Democrat, the nominated Democrat, even if it's Martin O'Malley. Parties matter infinitely more than the candidate, especially in these days - with an extremely partisan political climate, and one party openly pursuing class and often race warfare. Not that I'm ever tempted to vote for Republicans, but now, it is imperative that people vote for Democrats, until the Republicans are broken, and change their positions.

That's a topic for another day, I suppose. Today - I'm just happy there's a candidate for president whose politics make sense to me. And is a Vermonter! Go Bernie!

Now - for music - my Russian culture class is into the 20th century, and this week talked about Mikhail Bulgakov and Master and Margarita, and thus I am thinking more of Walpurgisnacht than May Day proper. And so, in honor of professor Woland and co. (and the fact that the book managed to make it into the mainstream of international pop culture within a year of its eventual publication) - here is a top 10 songs about the devil:

1. Rolling Stones - Sympathy for the Devil
2. Beck - Devil's Haircut
3. Robert Johnson - Me and the Devil Blues
4. Van Halen - Running with the Devil
5. James Blood Ullmer - Devil's Got to Burn
6. Throwing Muses - Devil's Roof
7. Brian Jonestown Massacre - The Devil May Care (Mom & Dad Don't)
8. Nick Cave - Up Jumped the Devil
9. Grateful Dead - Friend of the Devil
10. Modest Mouse - This Devil's Workday

And video? well - here's footage of the Stones working it out. With a camera rolling around the studio maned by mad Frenchmen, I imagine.



And I suppose any Walpurgisnacht tribute needs the Sabs:



And finally - we need some witches for Witch Night, so here's some live Eagles for you. I'm sure there's a great clamor for live Eagles from my readers...

Gallipoli

100 years ago today, the landings on Gallipoli Peninsular took place. The campaign was the brainchild of Winston Churchill basically - the idea was for the allies to force their way up the Dardenelles and take Constantinople, giving them access to the Black Sea, and thus Russia. There's a lot of backstory to this battle. Start with the Ottoman Empire deciding to join the Germans and Austrians in the war. The Young Turks hwo rules the Ottoman empire were close to the Germans - the British tended to be more bullying, while the Germans offered help and support - the Turks chose Germany. That shut off the Dardenelles, and most significantly, cut off sea routes to Russia. The Russians in 1914 were desperately short of supplies - England and France had no way to get them material. So Churchill and company thought to force their way up the Dardenelles, take Constantinople, and open the shipping lanes to the Black Sea.

Churchill tried first to do it with naval power alone. Battleships were sent, they bombarded the Turkish defenses, then tried to steam up the straights - only to be devastated by mines, primarily. Several ships sank - the fleet retreated. After this, the army was sent in. The idea was to find and destroy the Ottoman artillery - the guns hadn't done much against the battleships, but they had driven off the minesweepers, leaving the battleships helpless against mines. And so - on April 25, 1915, troops were put ashore at several beaches on the Gallipoli peninsular.

The landings were a disaster. Amphibious landings under fire were still something of a novelty - getting men ashore was not easy. What's worse - the Allies did not really know what they were getting into. The ANZAC forces landed a mile off from where they were supposed to land - across the whole area, the Allies did not understand the lay of the land, the conditions on the beaches and so on. They didn't have any idea of the strength of the men waiting for them. They landed in the face of determined resistance, from men dug in on high ground, from positions that allowed crossing fire - they never had a chance. Casualties ran 60-70% in most of the battlegrounds - by the end of the first day, the British and ANZAC forces had managed to take a strip of land by the beaches, but no more. And they never went anywhere in the next 7 months. Because as bad as the landings went, once the Turks were able to bring in enough men to hold the ground, they had the allies completely at their mercy. They had the high ground - they had positions that let them rake the allied positions - the battle quickly turned into protracted trench warfare. It was probably worse than anything on the western front, too - the peninsular was dry and hot, and what fresh water there was was controlled by the Ottomans - water had to be brought in to the allied forces - every thing had to be brought ashore to the allies forces. And there was never enough - the trenches became hellish and stayed that way.

In the end, the allies left, losing 250,000 odd men. The Turks lost about the same, but they won, expelling the invaders. As far as the war went, it was just another of the many pointless and hopeless battles that accomplished nothing but very long casualty lists. Beyond the war, though, it has a great deal of importance. It was a great moment in Turkish nationalism - the victory had great importance to their morale, and provided a source of national pride. It also elevated Mustafa Kemal (later Attaturk) to prominence. It had a similar effect in Australia and New Zealand. The heroism and suffering of the ANZAC troops made Gallipoli the definitive campaign for those countries. And their use - the sense of being thrown into battle half prepared, and of beings used as distractions and covers for the British (an idea that is not really fair) - led to resentment in Australia and New Zealand against the British, and helped to form the idea of those countries as nations unto themselves. It strengthened their sense of independence - the emergence of their sense of national character. It has made today, April 25, a national holiday in both countries, and made it the most important military commemoration as well.

Friday Freeze (winter clings...)

I wake up this morning and find it cold again - cold! why is it so cold? Because I'm writing papers about Russia? Probably. That must be it. In any case, as we proceed - another simple weekly music post is in order. Expect something more substantial tomorrow for ANZAC day, but for now, let's just have some iTunes fun to mark the successful ends of another working week...

Songs:

1. of Montreal - Heimdalsgate Like a Pormethean Curse
2. Prince & The Revolution - When Doves Cry
3. Pavement - So Stark
4. Danielson - This Day is a Loaf
5. John Lee Hooker - Burning Hell
6. Grateful Dead - New Speedway Boogie
7. Fairport Convention - Doctor of Physick
8. Decembrists - of Angels and Angles
9. Minutemen - Bermuda
10. Built to Spill - ut of Sight

Video? dig if you will a picture...



Here's an acoustic version of the Of Montreal song:



And - we got John Lee Hooker on the list, so we gotta have John Lee Hooker - ain't no heaven, ain't no burning hell.

Gas! Gas!

The other big historical anniversary right now is the Great War. And what happened 100 years ago today needs to be mentioned. On April 22, 1915, the Second Battle of Ypres began - it was a very important battle, because it marked the first successful use of poison gas in WWI. The Germans opened the attack by releasing a great mass of chlorine gas - they had it in canisters that they opened by hand, and hoped the wind would carry it over the French lines. It did (though it also poisoned a good number of Germans) - it devastated the soldiers in the front lines, and caused a huge gap to open in the lines. But the Germans weren't prepared to exploit the opening - they didn't have reserves ready to attack, whether because they didn't think the gas would work that well, or because they were as afraid of it as the French, I don't know. In any case, the hole opened, but by the time the Germans attacked, the Allies were able to close the gap. And just like that, they were back to regular trench warfare, and the battle continued another month and another 100,000 or so casualties for both sides.

On a tactical level, it was WWI in miniature - a new method of attack that did, in fact, break the stalemate, but that couldn't be exploited, followed by endless repetitions of the same tactic, that couldn't work again. Almost from the start, certain Canadians realized they could protect themselves from the gas by pissing on cloth and breathing through it - it didn't take long for word to get around, and then for gas masks to be distributed. These defenses were never enough to prevent the horrors of gas warfare, but they were enough to negate it as an offensive tactic. It just became another horrible way to die. And everyone kept doing it - the Germans tried again on the 24th of April, with some success, but never enough to break through. After that, everyone started using gas, but it was never decisive again. Just another method of killing, that usually caused as much trouble for the attackers as the defenders (since the gas hangs around in trenches, and you have to advance through it). It is one of the many things that made this war one of the most horrifying things human beings have done to one another, made trench warfare a sustained hell on earth. And, after April 22, 1915, never really accomplishing anything of military importance.

Music to Rain By

Happy Friday! Coming up on a long weekend, in Boston anyway. Is spring here? it is warmer, though it's back to raining all the time. But that is spring. I am not very energetic this morning, so let us turn directly to iTunes for inspiration:

1. Mudhoney - In and Out of Grace
2. Deerhoof - News From a Bird
3. Arcade Fire - Joan of Arc
4. fIREHOSE - More Famous Quotes (play it George!)
5. Richard Thompson - Mr Rebound
6. Saint Etienne - Action
7. Interpol - Always Malaise (The Man I am)
8. Nirvana - In Bloom (live)
9. Loren Connors - Air No 13
10. Scott Walker - Epizootics

Video? Here's Mudhoney, of course:



here's another band from the Pacific Northwest, singing about pretty songs:

The Assassination of Lincoln

150 years ago today, John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln in the third act of The American Cousin at the Ford Theater... (I pick on the lede - but it's actually a pretty sharp piece of reporting - with the writer also turning over the assassin's gun to the authorities.) Coming 5 days after Lee's surrender, this was a horrible shock to the country - his funeral would be the occasion of intense mourning.

It was a terrible event - and in retrospect, it becomes even more appalling. The Vice President was Andrew Johnson, a Tennessee Democrat, who had been placed on the ticket as a symbol of unity with the south, and who was already something of a problem. He was given to intemperate remarks - he was considered more vindictive than Lincoln. He'd also made a fool of himself at his inauguration, getting good and plastered and giving a drunken blur of a speech - since then, he'd stayed out of sight and hoped everyone would forget about him. And now he was president. And as president, he set about trying to reconstruct the Union, in a way that brought the old southern slaveholders back to power, let them pass laws that virtually reinstated slavery under new names... The Republicans in congress were having none of this, and passed their own laws, and when he vetoed them, they overrode his vetoes, and when things went far enough, they impeached him.

It was a disaster, the United States government breaking down at a time when it needed to be very sharp, to deal with reintegrating an unrepentant south into the country without surrendering the freedom won by the war. The radicals in congress eventually were able to implement their policies - but only for a few years, and with much of the gains of the war undone at the end of Reconstructions. Could Lincoln have done better? His stated policy toward the south was probably closer to Johnson's than to the radical Republicans - but he was also a better politician, and had a better sense of doing what needed to be done. It seems likely he would have done far more to protect the rights of Blacks after the war - his policies had evolved steadily toward more radical positions toward slavery and race, and it's reasonable to expect that would have continued. But saying that - it is also possible that he would have been hung up on the same issues that destroyed Johnson. It wasn't just Johnson's policies that undid him - it was the villainy of the south, who did everything they could to undo the end of slavery. Johnson's problem, and Lincoln's if he lived, was not so much the radical Republicans as it was the former confederates - Johnson was willing to work with the confederates; would Lincoln have been? would he have been able to get them to accept free Blacks, Black voting, and so on? He might have - but it's no guarantee. And if they didn't cooperate, they were going to come into conflict with the congressional Republicans, the Thaddeus Stevens, Ben Wade, Charles Sumner types - they had won the war, and were not about to give in now. It is possible, in the end, that had Lincoln lived, the next couple years would have undone a lot of his legacy - maybe not likely, but possible.

But none of that happened. Lincoln died, and history went where it did (and where it went ended up being mostly bad - 100 years wasted, basically). And Lincoln's life itself remains as one of the greatest in this countries history. He did win the Civil War - more than any other president won any of our other wars. He was, fairly early in the war, the sharpest strategist - understanding the need to use the Union's advantages in number and material to crush the Confederacy, understanding the need for action and aggression. And as a politician, he kept a very fragile and contentious country together - kept it committed to a bloody and destructive war, until it won. And finally, he freed the slaves - he recognized the reasons for the war, and accepted them, and imagined, during the war, the opportunities it afforded, of making the United States worthy of its imagined view of itself. We were not, before 1863, or 1865, a very admirable country - we were not free, however much we wanted to say we were. Slavery poisoned us, almost incurably - and Lincoln saw that, and moved to change it, and to reinvent the country as what it should have been. That matters. Even if Reconstruction failed, the war, and Lincoln, remained as a reminder of what we were trying to become. We have a model of what the country should be, what it can be, something we can live up to. Abraham Lincoln works pretty well for that.

If I'm Not in the Band Doesn't Mean I'm Square

Band of the Month time - this month, I think, it's time for Mercury Rev. I name dropped them quite a bit last month - I'm not sure how much direct link there is between Mercury Rev and TV on the Radio, but I can see the continuity in my affection for the two bands. I discovered Mercury Rev about the turn of the millennium - maybe with All is Dream, maybe before, I don't know. I remember reading about them, probably in Mojo, back around the end of 2001 - about the time I was discovering Krautrock, Japanese Noise (Boredoms, Acid Mothers Temple), real prog (Van Der Graf Generator, Soft Machine) - they sounded intriguing, I got a couple records, and immediately became a fan. I imagine I got All is Dream and Yerself is Steam together - close to it anyway - those are very different records, but I adored both. I certainly listened to both records rather obsessively for a while... a fact to be reflected in our song list, I imagine... They were, in that period (first couple years of the millennium), just about my favorite band. They make a good token of what I was listening to - which is, admittedly, almost everything - the 00s I was listening to music regularly, and I had money, so I bought everything that struck my fancy - and listened to most of it! on CD! whole records! what a strange time! But they spanned a lot of styles - the noisy oddness of their early records to the lush song craft of their later ones - all of which I liked. Acid Mothers to classic Scott Walker to the Decembrists - Mercury Rev manages to touch most of it. That breadth, that mix of tunage and noise (with sense of humor), is what reminds me of them in TVOTR - that is the connection...

I loved both sides of them from the beginning, and still do. I was addicted to All is Dream - a gorgeous record, pretty, sophisticated songs, clever words ("caught like a fleeting thought stuck inside of Leonard Cohen's mind"), and bracketed by two of the most glorious orchestral rock songs on record. But I was in awe of Yerself is Steam. Those early records, I have to admit, probably come closer to hitting my sweet spot that anything else around at the time - they play like a mashup of Pere Ubu and Pink Floyd, performed by Faust or Amon Duul - wanking guitars, horns and strings and noise, shifting tempos and styles, squawking roar chasing melodic passages chasing mumbled weirdness - what's not to love? The Pere Ubu influence is hard to miss - Dave Baker has a lot of David Thomas in him, and more than one of their songs proceeds like Sentimental Journey bumping into Syd Barrett's poppier numbers. Which isn't far from the way Baker's vocals clash with Jonathan Donahue's - their voices contrast the way the parts of the songs contrast - the way their appearances clash, in things like the Chasing a Bee film... They are all over the place in a way that is just thrilling.

Once Baker left, the pop/melodic/orchestral side took over - even the music hall/dixieland influences (Meth of a Rockette's Kick or Delta Sun Bottleneck Stomp) disappeared over time. (Was that a function of Suzanne Thorpe's departure? A lot of the off kilter complexity of their music came from her - the flute cutting against the squall, and so on...) Leaving them still fantastic, but maybe a bit more one dimensional. But they still make such good songs - what can I say against them? They have become craftsmen, and very fine ones - the production is superb, and songs are constructed with such richness, the instruments and sounds blended, interacting. Hercules stands as the perfection of this, I imagine, the way it builds, instruments slipping into the mix, accumulating, to the release of the guitar solo - and then quietly dissipating into the night - yes. That's the Pink Floyd influence, brought to perfection - probably no accident that I renewed my old love for the Floyd about the same time I started listening to Mercury Rev.

So that is that. And a top 10 Songs:

1. Hercules
2. Chasing a Bee
3. Delta Sun Bottleneck Stomp - utterly joyful piece of music, this is, horns and guitars and keyboards and flute chasing each other - great stuff...
4. The Dark is Rising
5. Empire State (Son House in Excelsis)
6. Meth of a Rockette's Kick
7. Syring Mouth
8. Secret for a Song
9. Car Wash Hair
10. Something for Joey

And Video? We have to start with Film - they started as a band to make music for films (like Can! speaking of Krautrock...) - and those films are as cool, strange, beautiful as the songs. Here is Chasing a Bee, as epic on film as on record:



Here they are live in their early, abrasive days - Syringe Mouth, Baker's anti-charisma on full display, and Donahue and Grasshopper making a dreadful noise:



And here's a reminder that even in the early days the pretty songs were there - here, doing Snowstorm and Carwash Hair with Dean and Britta.



And later - another video, this for Delta Sun Bottleneck Stomp, an altogether different kind of semi surrealism:



The Dark is Rising, live on Jools Holland:



And a Secret for a Song, also on Jools:

Appomattox Court House

150 years ago today, Robert E. Lee surrendered formally to the US Government at Appomattox Courthouse, and though the Civil War dragged on quite a while longer, this was where it ended. Lee's army was the Confederacy, really, especially after Nashville (maybe even Atlanta - once Hood left the city, his army was irrelevant, in terms of changing the ending) - and facing the facts and laying down arms put the rebellion to rest.

I have mostly written about the military aspects of the war in this series - I will have to turn to the politics as we go forward. (I hope to go forward: I need to read about Reconstruction, it's something I don't know enough about. I hope that is reflected on this blog - probably not tied to anniversaries so much, but I hope to continue to write about the period.) But for now, one more military post... There wasn't much left to the Confederacy in the spring of 1865. Sherman was marching where he would in the Carolinas; forces in the west were equally unfettered; only Lee offered much in the way of resistance. Dug in in Petersburg, he could still fight - though Grant was able to stretch his lines more and more until they were almost ready to break anyway. At the same time, they were almost cut off from supplies, not that there were many places left producing food in the South. They were beaten - but Lee kept trying. With spring, Grant renewed his pressure on Lee - mostly using Phil Sheridan to do the dirty work - they got around the Confederate lines, they got them out of the trenches and thrashed them when they did. That left the trenches too weak to be held - and on April 2, the Union broke through. Lee made one more try to extend the way, thinking he could make a dash to the Carolinas, to join Joe Johnston's army there and maybe be able to beat one of the Union armies. It was probably not very likely - either Grant or Sherman had more men than the combined rebel armies could muster - well equipped and well armed veteran forces unintimidated by the Rebels, led by generals who could count, knew they had all the cards, and were prepared to fight it out to the end. But it never came to that - never mind their fighting abilities, the days were long past when the Rebels were able to outrun Union troops, and Grant and Sheridan had no intention of letting them. They harried Lee with everything they had, and with Grant and Sheridan driving them, the Union army moved effectively - and ran Lee down with ease. There was some fighting - it didn't matter, Lee was out of options. So he stopped.

Grant, probably understanding Lincoln's desires to get the war finished and start the process of undoing its damage, gave generous terms. News spread, and other armies followed in surrender, usually also receiving good terms - and the war wound down. There was, maybe, for a moment, a chance that the aftermath of the war would be successful - the means of surrender went a long way toward making reconciliation possible between the two sides. But that was ruined quickly by John Wilkes Booth - and it's probably too much to hope to think the South, having just fought a suicidal war to preserve slavery, would accept any kind of decent settlement for Blacks after the war. Instead, they began fighting to suppress the freed slaves, while redefining the war to be about something other than treason in defense of slavery - a campaign that was a good deal more successful than the war itself had been. (And is still being fought today.) But that's all in the future, on April 9, 1865 - for that moment, for that week, maybe, there was peace and hope.

Take Me Out to the Ballgame! 2015 Predictions

Spring time has come - so they say. Cold miserable rain falling, almost sleet - still more February than April. But it doesn't matter anymore - baseball is here. It is time to make some predictions.

AL East:

Boston - Only a couple years ago the AL East was the beast of the major leagues - now? I am picking the Red Sox to win because they are my favorites - but also because, no matter how many faults I can find with them, I can find more with the other teams in the division. What Boston has is a reloaded offense - with a good deal of depth, which makes you think they should be able to survive injuries and washouts - someone is bound to come through. They could be extremely good, if they stay healthy and the kids deliver. What don't they have? pitching? they could be okay - they have a staff of #3 starters, who could stay healthy and pitch reasonably well for 200 innings - 3 or 4 of those guys could get you in the post-season. No further though, unless something changes. Based on yesterday's outing, they look like world beaters, though that was just the Phillies - but if you want a list of "ifs" to check off to see how far they go - if Pedroia is back, if Hanley stays healthy and hits, if Betts is the real deal, and if Buckholtz can be effective and healthy - yesterday ticked them off nicely.

Baltimore - they lost Nelson Cruz; they could revert a bit from last year. They do have some guys coming back from bad years - they won't be bad. I don't think they will fall far, but I think they will fall.

Toronto - they have added some players, and are more than respectable - though probably don't have the pitching to get very far. They could slug their way to quite a few wins, though, if everything works out. And I suppose they could have the pitching - Hutchison looked very good yesterday.

NY Yankees - I hope they finish last, but Tampa is getting very low on players - the Yankees are a dismal looking crew - combined age of their starting lineup must be pushing 1000 - but they might not be entirely awful. They have some interesting pitching options. They have Ellsbury. Um - yeah. If there's an over 50 league, they might do all right, but...

Tampa - they still have good arms, and a few decent position players, but it looks pretty grim down there. No more Joe Madden to nurse them along either. Dark days could be coming, and may be there awhile.

Central:

Tigers - no one else seems to be able to muster any kind of sustained threat to them. They should have this well in hand.

Cleveland - maybe this is optimistic, but they have a knack of getting the most from their teams, and they have some interesting talent. They were really good 2 years ago, and decent last year - they should contend again this year, I think.

Chicago - they don't look bad - they have some decent pitching; they have some emerging offensive talent - they should be solid, and could be better than that. But I don't quite trust them to contend. I could be wrong.

KC - they had that great run last year, and if they had hit all year, they might have had a genuinely good team. Now - they are not likely to sustain it. The starting pitching looks very soft - without Shields up front, I don't know if they can do enough. They should have a strong pen, though, and they have what could be an exciting lineup - they've been waiting for Hosmer and Moustakas all these years - why not? though even if they hit, the pitching is a problem.

Minnesota - might not be entirely awful, I suppose. Maybe. Probably though.

West:

Seattle - this year's trendy pick, right? but they were decent last year - they have some of the best pitching in the game - they have Cano, Seager and Cruz, and other players who could be useful, prospects who might be ready finally - they are in a very good place.

Anaheim - A pretty good team that no one really thinks about, but one probably cruising for a fall. They are trying to screw Josh Hamilton (not that he's done them any favors) - still: be a shame if they were able to get a break on his contract. The rest - Mike Trout and maybe Kole Calhoun are promising players - the rest might perform, but... Albert Pujols - I mean, those contracts... they are going to suffer for it.

Oakland - they were dismantled again, but they still have some strong pitching, and decent players. But are probably on the outs for a while. They do a good job of reforming on the fly, so probably not for long.

Texas - they were destroyed by injuries last year - and off to a great start this year, with Yu Darvish gone. Still - they could get respectable if they could keep Fielder and Choo and such on the field. We'll see.

Houston - they have been bad, but they have young talent - things might move up. They certainly started the season right, winning a 1-0 squeaker against the defending Cy Young award winner. They are still probably a ways away - but might not be all that far.

Wildcards: Cleveland, Chicago. Champion: Seattle - teams have been reaching milestones they never saw before - time for the Mariners to make the series.

National League:

East:

Washington - this might be the easiest pick in the majors - right? along with Detroit. Loaded rotation, good pen, plenty of talent on the field - though a bunch of them are hurt early. Still - they have been most of the class of the game the past couple years; they need to get the next step along, which might be easier said than done - but still... it would be a good year for a couple teams that have come close but never gotten to the Big One - Mariners vs. Montreal/Washington? Not a bad pick.

Miami - they look pretty good actually - adding some pitching, some good talent, around Stanton - probably not enough to win much, but still decent. f Fernandez were healthy all year, they would be in a very good place.

New York - yeah? possible - their pitching is shaping up, and they have some ball players on the field. They are getting close to being back to respectability.

Atlanta - they still have some decent players, but how long will they be here? what is going on? They unloaded their good young outfielders over the winter, and their mediocre not-so-young anymore outfielders this week, along with their closer (the best int he game) - they seem to be shedding their team before they move to the suburbs. That's ridiculous enough - I used to be a Braves fan, but I don't think that's going to happen anymore.

Philadelphia - ugh. Though after yesterday's fun, maybe it means the price for Cole Hamels will start dropping.

Central:

St. Louis - the Cubs are the chic pick, but I'm not sure what's wrong with the Cards. They still have a solid rotation; they have respectable players at every position, and some very good ones at a few - they have depth - they are used to winning. The Cubs are the trendy pick, but the Cards are still a very good team.

Pittsburgh - another team that doesn't look any worse than last year, and could be better - so why are they being dismissed?

Chicago - all right, here they are. Lester is a great pickup; Bryant and Soler are bound to start pushing the team one of these years - but... they still look pretty thin, in a division with two really good teams. Everyone wants to love the Cubs, and the Cubs are going to be good pretty soon, yes, but there are more convincing teams out there.

Cincinnati - I don't know how to pick these two - I think I like Cincy more. Cueto and Hamilton and Chapman? This is a deep division. probably come to health in the end.

Milwaukee - they have all those old timers who never seem to stop getting peopel out - Lohse and company... I don't know. They aren't a bad team. A couple bad breaks and they could be - a couple good breaks and they could challenge for the otp of the division.

West:

Los Angeles - I don't like the Dodgers, but they are loaded.

San Diego - this is a bit brave - but they are one of the teams that seems to be Going For It this year. (The Cubs; the Marlins; the White Sox have all spent as well - but the Pads are really going for it.) It's a radically different team - both Uptons, Myers and Kemp, Shields, Kimbrel - they've added a bunch of talent, and most if it is good talent. Justin Upton and Kemp are both strong players - Kemp brings a horrible price tag, but had a lot of potential for a comeback. Shields is a fine anchor for a staff, and the park should shield him from any decline for a while. Myers is a good gamble a high end prospect who's scuffled a bit, so everyone is writing him off - don't ask me. Get him some batting gloves and he'l be fine.

San Francisco - they continue to play very close to the edge, never diving into the free agent market the way they could, given their resources. But whatever they are doing is working [one of the understatements of the decade], so - it does tend to create the oscillations they have been through. This looks likely to be a down year.

Arizona - I don't know if I have any reason to pick them ahead of Colorado - but I will.

Colorado - I don't know if I have any reason to pick them below the Diamondbacks, but I will. Neither team has much to care about.

Wild cards: Pittsburgh and San Diego; Champion - Washington! Expos and Mariners! Mariners win? King Felix is the guy I think I want on the hill when it all counts.

And - individuals? MVP is still Mike Trout's to lose, for the next 10 years. NL? Giancarlo Stanton is the default pick, I think, though he could have some competition: McCutcheon, Posey, Goldschmitt (if the team were any good, anyway), Rizzo if the Cubs do win, maybe some the Bryce Harper types, big prospects who have been merely solid for a couple years... Upton, Heyward even - lots of choices, probably more of them with a real chance than in the AL, though Stanton has to be the favorite.

Cy Young? Kind of the opposite - the AL is loaded with candidates - King Felix ought to be the favorite; Kluber is the real deal, Price a strong candidate, Sonny Gray, Chris Sale if he comes back quickly. The NL is probably Kershaw's to lose - though Scherzer and Strasbourg and Cueto and Bumgarner and maybe even Matt Harvey are right there too. But Kershaw is the favorite, by quite a margin.

Rookie of the Year: AL - in truth, I have no real idea. Id love to say Rusney Castillo - when Victorino gets hurt, he'll come up and - maybe not. Lot of other guys I don't know as much about - the NL has the monsters this year. NL - once Kris Bryant is protected from arbitration for the year, he'll be up - we'll see if he mashes. Odds are pretty good, I'd say.

And so? off we go - hope the game brings us some summer before long.

Manoel de Oliveira

I must pre-empt today's music post to note the passing of Manoel de Oliveira. Oliveira has been one of the more reliably interesting directors on the international art scene for some time now - in the past 25 years or so, he has maintained a fairly steady output of work, almost a film a year, all generally playful art films, though in a number of different styles and tones. Big melodramas, precise character studies and chamber pieces, bits of surrealism - long films, short films - it has been a remarkable run of films. Before that, in te 70s and 80s, he made a smaller number of films, but some of them are stunning masterpieces - Doomed Love or Francisca - long, challenging adaptations of 19th century literature, done in a strange, almost unique style: beautiful, artificial, sometimes static and abstract as Straub and Huillet, but with the sweeping emotions of the grand novels they adapt, and surreal traces throughout - they are beautiful, strange and subtly very funny, and they tend to make other adaptations of 19th century literature seem drab in comparison. I've been taking a class in Russian culture, seeing lots of adaptations of great Russian lit or biographies of great Russians - The Idiot; Onegin; Tchaikovsky - they tend to be a bit disappointing. They try to find the artistic power of the novels, along with their emotional weight - so work in lots of arty flourishes, dream sequences and dutch angles and symbolisms - but none of it quite comes off. More or less handsome ad more or less well performed, but more or less routine... I have thought, more than once, how much these films needed to be made by someone like Manoel de Oliveira. No - more than that. I have thought, more than once while watching these films, how much I wish Oliveira had made a big Dostoevsky or Tolstoy adaptation. Not that he needed to - his work was plenty rich as it is, and makes me want to read Portuguese literature - but Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and Pushkin could have used an Oliveira adaptation.

I will miss him; miss the anticipation of new films, the effort of finding them sometimes, and the pleasure of seeing them on the screen when they do get shown. And I will miss knowing he is alive. As great as he is as a filmmaker, his own life and career might be even more astonishing. To think that the bulk of his career happened after the 1960s - after he turned 60 - and that he put together a strong 45 year career after turning 60 - it is astonishing. He began as a filmmaker in 1931, almost ruined his career in the 40s after making the fantastic Aniki Bobo - he ran afoul of the dictator Salazar, and could not make films at all until the end of the 50s and 60s, and only really got going in the 70s... And then was able to build and sustain a 45-50 year career, the career he might have had in the 30s and 40s with some luck and justice - it is as happy an ending as I can think of.

I've mentioned before that he is 5 years younger than Ozu - to think that the bulk of his careen started after Ozu's death, and has gone on to now - is astonishing. I will miss him.