* I wrote another blog before this one. It used the same Lyndon Johnson quote twice, with only two sentences separating them. I thought it was cool when I wrote it. Maybe I'll put it up one day.
Also: the Badassness Graph, as shown, did not have enough room to note "Carpet tacks" at .3, "Paul Tagliabue" at 19, or "McDonald's iced tea" at 23.
I hate to sound old-man-ish here (picture me with a cane and old, weathered hat, iced tea in hand, sitting in a rocking chair on a Florida wrap-around porch if you must), but I remember the day I went into Mojo's (near University Mall) and was browsing through the records and, finding mounds of LPs that I wanted but were way out of my price range, resigned myself to looking through their dollar books. A couple looked interesting, but one volume stood out. (Again, with the old man-ish mannerisms). No really, what stood out to me was the bleakness of the dust jacket, and how terrifically old it looked.
I flipped through the pages quickly. Kennedy assassination? Sold! For one dollar, I figured it would be neat to have, even if the book wasn't good.
What awaited me inside its pages, though, was mesmerizing. With this book, William Manchester presented a factually-accurate recounting of five straight days - November 20th to the 25th, 1963. What could have been compacted into a chapter was, instead, filled out to six hundred and forty-seven pages - not counting the appendices. This book doesn't tell the Kennedy assassination in the usual, worn-out way - that's what makes it a useful, and ultimately great, book. Usually, you get this: "President Kennedy lands at Love Field." (Insert stock footage of JFK and Jackie at Love Field). "The motorcade makes its way to downtown Dallas, and makes a sharp turn from Main Street to Elm Street. Continuing down Elm Street, President Kennedy is shot in the head. That Secret Service guy runs and jumps onto the back of the Lincoln. Mrs. Kennedy tries to collect shards of her husband's skull. They drive away. Isn't that fucked up?" No, there's more story to it than that. People always forget the funeral, the magnificent national funeral that was held on the coming Monday. Why do they forget it? Because it's not bloody enough - or rather, people can't carve out conspiracy theories about a dead President's funeral. But I'll talk about that a little later.
The first time I read The Death of a President, I was so drawn into it. I think you would get it if you read it, as well. The part where the President is assassinated is the first in many climaxes in the text, and Manchester stops and, in italics, writes a truly heart-breaking account of that exact moment: Governor Connally screaming in agony, "gobs" of blood flying all over the car, bits of bone suspended in the air, the oppressive heat, and Jackie, springing to the back of the car, shouting to the sidewalk that her husband has been killed, collapses on the trunk of the car in defeat. I read that part while I was at King Corona and I was in tears. My body was shaking as I, a student of the Kennedy assassination for a number of years, finally realized how momentous the assassination really was.
Share with me, for a moment, the assassination itself. What makes me sick are people who find it proper to scheme about the assassination of President Kennedy. I fucking hate the term "Grassy Knoll", I can't stand when people talk about the movie JFK like it's the gospel, and whenever someone has the gall to say that Oswald was a "patsy" because he stated so, it makes my skin crawl. I've never seen JFK (and probably never will), but if I hear the term "back..... and to the left" one more time, I'm going to flip. Sure, I've never seen JFK, but here's another film that people love to pick apart, too.
If you've seen this, you don't have to see it again - you can rely on your memory. If you haven't, I reccommend that you watch it. It's gory. It's disturbing. We get to see a President killed in it. Most of all, though, it will make you realize one very important thing:
A man died out there.
Forget all that talk of second shooters, the Dal-Tex building, overpasses, and grassy knolls. Think about that sentence.
A man died out there.
A man with hopes, a man with aspirations. He had a family and a wife. He ran our country. He was elected to be our President. And he lived - he breathed. He had a temper and frustrations like the rest of us.
But wait.... did driver Bill Greer have a gun in his hand? I saw puffs of smoke above the fence on the Grassy Knoll. "Back, and to the left." There HAD to be a second shooter! Roof of the Dal-Tex building, maybe? Oswald was a hired hand. Jack Ruby was injected with cancer cells to make him die.
That sentiment also makes The Death of a President a great book. It largely concentrates on the people that the assassination affected, not the man who caused it. Oswald is given a few pages of background and, after that, mentioned only when he needs to be mentioned. This isn't a book that makes a huge deal about who, beyond a shadow of a doubt, killed President Kennedy. Manchester openly states that Oswald did it, and then moves on with the book. In this kind of narrative, it doesn't matter who killed the President. In this book, however, you feel the grief and razor sadness of every person that admired Kennedy (and I mean everyone - there's so many names in here, you lose track eventually) and often in great detail. Some might call it depressing. I don't think so. Their stories are rarely heard, and it's a good thing that they were collected in one place, and woven into an all-encompassing narrative, before the memories were lost and all we heard, for the rest of time, was the click-click-click-buzzzzzzz of conspiracy theorists.
One more note: Cecil Stoughton died only a few weeks ago. As official White House photographer, he went on the Dallas trip and ended up taking the famous pictures of LBJ being sworn in on Air Force One.
He was JFK's official photographer and was also the official photographer for half of Johnson's term. A huge collection of Kennedy photos, mostly taken by him, can be found here:
Well yes, I have started a new job - I pack things into boxes for a living now, and I punch numbers into a computer, which tells you what you've bought and, when I hit the enter key, how much money you should pay me for the items that I just rang you up for. It's on the little screen, on top of the pole, to your left... like in the big stores.
Lenny and Vinny's didn't have that price pole thing. I was kind of convinced that you were some awesome stuff if you had a customer price pole, if that's even what you call it - no, you have a price pole thing and you hook it into a computer. And then you have a price pole. Easy, huh?
Either way, and all the way, I've been forced to put up with a gross change in my daily musical programming. Back at L+V's, I had a selection of music that was fine-picked - at least, to Jeremy's taste. He ran the kitchen, after all. But... it was nearly constantly something that I dug the hell out of. I mean, REALLY dug - let's see, the Zombies, that Florida funk compilation, the Beatles, My Morning Jacket, etc. etc. etc. etc. (i.e., 98% of Jeremy's Ipod, give or take a Belle and Sebastian or Yo La Tengo album track or two. Love you, Jer).
But now, even though I generally like packing things into boxes and hitting buttons that translate into numbers that tell me what you've bought and how much you should pay for it (Hey! Look at that price pole, kid!), I am now generally forced to listen to Mix 100.7 all day, every day that I work in that place. Am I upset? I was, the first couple days. But.... now.... I actually kind of like it.
........ (that's the silence that you're giving me - what, you don't understand? Now I've got to explain? Ah well - here we go:)
They deign it totally right to play this girl's two singles constantly - "Bubbly" and "Realize". I'm thinking that this girl has some kind of subliminal message buried in all her soft, soulful delivery, because her music is actually incredibly hypnotizing. I can't explain it. Her songs feel like Velveeta shells with bacon, on a breezy summer day.
Am I going crazy?
(I just spent the last ten minutes trying to find a screen grab of Charlie's "Pepe Silvia" monologue on the new It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I was unsuccessful, which is sad, considering that it would illustrate this point great.)
Jesus Christ.
........................ (Jim Rome pause)
"Realize" plays constantly. Like, five times a day. "Bubbly" is the more interesting, with its slightly amusing rhyme scheme, but they're pushing "Realize" like it was candy on Halloween, and Halloween was done fifty-four minutes ago. So I'm listening to "Bubbly" as I type this. I feel like packing boxes with objects wrapped in bubble wrap.
Yep!
So, back to the point of this blog, to which I alluded to in the title - see, the other reason I find myself liking Mix 100.7, other than hypnotizing new pop music from blond girls who play guitars, is the fact that they play songs from my youth - well, my relative youth. I'm only twenty-three, and that's not too old, I think. But still, I got into music at a pretty young age, and once I noticed Nirvana, I started noticing every piece of music around me. This lead to liking weird things like Fastball. It also lead to gaining a kind of sentimentality for the music of that era. You know what I'm talking about - 1996 to 2001, buddy.
Look at the price pole!
Stuff like this:
Remember when this song was awesome? This was all over the radio - it was the "Realize" of its day. Warm 94.9 had a fucking field day with it, complete with a tug-of-war and lemonade stand. However, a lot of the people who dug this song moved on. I never did. It still makes me feel all pensive. And Mix 100.7 plays it all the damn time. So, I listen. And I appreciate, not only because it's a finely-written pop song, but also because it reminds me of 5th grade. And of when MTV was good - remember that? (grabs walker)
But, I'll admit, it's pretty sad when I look forward to this, for the same reasons:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLqOwiZ8n5I
That's right... the Wallflowers. I didn't even like this song when it came out. But now, I look forward to it. Why? Because it reminds me of being twelve. And I'd rather think about being twelve than have to consider that Santana with Chad Kroeger single. I hate it.
And they've never even played this one. I thought they would have, by now, but alas:
For a good pop single, this is hard to beat. 1998 represent.
And, to sum up, Mix 100.7 makes me feel ashamed for liking Hootie and the Blowfish ("Let Her Cry"? Totally look forward to that one too, when they play it every day), purely because (a.) most of the music surrounding it is sub-par, and (b.) it makes me feel incredibly ancient, because most of your hip kids these days don't care who Sixpence None the Richer is, or could give a fuck that Tom DuMont is an awesome guitarist, even though No Doubt, as a band, was just alright.
I've listened to this like twenty times in a row. Literally.
Two great pop songs from a little-known British Invasion group, with a girl drummer to boot. This was in Pop Gear and I was entranced back when I first saw it, as well as right now.
With today being the first day of my first real two-day weekend in a matter of months, I was anxious to work on some kind of project. James and I have been recording a complete cover album of Waylon Jennings' Honky Tonk Heroes, and we're currently laying down tracks for "Omaha". I thought I might work on that, but Ryan and I were talking about cameras while getting lunch, so I decided to try and solve a question I've been thinking about for a while: will my trusty Canon Canonet co-operate with a battery and have a working meter?
(The Canon Canonet QL17, as photographed hung on a dusty door and with my finger covering the flash on the Kodak.)
My Canonet is quite precious to me, as I've explained before. If the top shutter speed ran to 1/1000 (and not just 1/500) and the body had interchangeable lenses, I would probably consider it perfect. As it were, though, it comes very close to perfect just as it is. Small, comfy, solid, reliable - these are all words that you want attached to a camera. The Canonet is all of these. But alas, my Canonet has never been exactly perfect. The 1/4 shutter speed generally sticks open, the vertical part of the rangefinder was mis-aligned, a 25-year-old battery was in the battery compartment when I bought it (and had oozed battery acid all in the battery cavity), and the viewfinder was cloudy. If I had spent serious money on the camera, I might have been ticked off, but since I got a great deal on it, I was willing to put a little work into it to make it great again. Of course the light seals were done for - I replaced those right after I got it, which wasn't a hard job at all. But, I let sleeping dogs lie and used the camera as it was for a very long time. The horizontal calibration of the rangefinder was fine, and the shutter speeds were very much on time, so why let it sit?
(Brush Street, at Kennedy Boulevard, downtown Tampa - something like f/11 at 1/500)
Another good thing about the Canonet is that, even though it has a built-in meter and an aperture-priority mode, it is also gives you the option of going completely manual. My Canonet was in no shape to take a battery when I got it, so to take advantage of the sharp lens and smooth action, I was stuck with setting the shutter speed and aperture myself. That's right, the light meter was me. And I didn't really care. In fact, I still don't.
(This was taken f/8 at 1/250. How do I know that? 'Cause I set it there!)
Once you learn the sunny f/16 rule, and learn the extremely rudimentary rules for exposure compensation, it's a simple matter of multiplying or dividing to get the right exposure. Yet, I read about a lot of photographers who don't know how to expose manually, or don't even want to know. Ah well - when my batteries go out, I'll still be taking pictures.
Anyway, back to the main subject. I was simply curious to see if my Canonet's meter would even work. I don't even use it, so it wasn't going to be a matter of heartbreak if it didn't. Since you can make cheap hearing-aid batteries work in the Canonet, I thought it'd be neat to see it come to life. However, the leaky battery that had a nice home in the battery compartment for years had rusted out the battery contact. I set to work with the Q-Tips and alcohol, and when that scrubbing didn't work, popped off the bottom plate. Sadly, I didn't get a picture of that - you might have seen my face lit up in amazement, as I've never broken into a camera before. The Canonet's guts are a work of art - chock-full of little springs and levers. It was great to ogle at for a second.
Either way, I took out the battery compartment and still had no luck getting the battery contact clean. I might have tried to use lighter fluid as a cleaning solution on the contact, but I didn't feel like it. I don't need a working meter. Why trouble myself too much to get it to work?Even after putting the bottom plate back on, I wasn't satisfied in my exploration. I decided to go ahead and fix some of the problems that had annoyed me - the cloudy viewfinder, and the out-of-whack rangefinder. And to do this, I had to go where I had never gone before - the final frontier - under the top plate.
(Canonet with top plate off, and protection plate pried off the top of the rangefinder housing - three different views)
The top plate was very simple to take off - it's only held on by three screws, the rewind knob, and the film advance lever. The latter two screw out very easily... just don't close the back door with the rewind knob off the of the camera. You'll have no way of opening it, save getting a paperclip and digging around in there to release the catch. Luckily, I didn't have to do that.
Cleaning the viewfinder does so much for the camera. What you thought was a pretty good finder is turned into a FUCKING GREAT finder when you clean it. I didn't touch the inner glass at all, just scrubbed the pieces of glass attached to the top plate, inside and out, with Windex dripped onto the end of a Q-Tip. The most dirt is on the outside of the rear viewfinder window, from years and years of skin cells and facial oils getting rubbed on it. You never knew that your viewfinder wasn't stained brown from the factory. It's a thing of beauty, people.
(I didn't get a "before" picture, but this is what your Canonet's viewfinder should look like, in theory. If not, you're cheating yourself.)
So, after that, I adjusted the rangefinder, both horizontally and vertically. The vertical was a cinch, but I found out that even the horizontal was out of alignment. So, I adjusted it to infinity. And, when I get my test roll developed, hopefully my adjustments will have been right. Hmm.
Otherwise, el Canonet is still running smoothly. The 1/4 shutter speed still sticks open about half the time, but I never use it, so it's a low-priority worry. Can't wait to go out and shoot a good roll in it - test roll first, though.
Life on Mars is a pretty good TV show. It's only on its second episode and I'm quite interested to see how it turns out. I mean, there's faults in it (television is rarely perfect), but on the whole, it's entertaining.
The synopsis, for anyone who hasn't seen it, goes something like this: a New York detective is hit by a car and, when he wakes up, finds himself thirty-five years in the past - in 1973, of all years. Harvey Keitel plays his "new" police chief, and Michael Imperioli also makes the scene as a fellow detective. Good casting.
Sometimes, I wish I could go back to 1973. You can't help but love 2008, but 1973 would also be great. Why? Because you could counterfeit money and probably not get caught; fly on planes without a hassle; and get good photo finishing in any drugstore!
There were also record stores! You could walk into a music store and it was filled with racks and racks of sealed vinyl - a weird idea. My friends and I salivate over buying used, ratty vinyl - I can't imagine walking into a record store back then and buying those same records brand-new and sealed, waiting for you to open and play them for the very first time. That'd be very close to heaven, I imagine.
Of course, that'd probably be the best reason to go back to 1973 - the music. The early '70s were a crazy time for good albums. Many of my favorite artists were at the top of their game in 1973. I mean, this came out:
Need I say more?
There was also this:
Listening to this makes you kind of a dork, though. I'm spinning it now, so that says a lot about your boy Shane.
My buddy Dallas had done one of his drawings, and when he was at my house, he pulled it out and asked Jeremy: "Dude, would you wear this on a shirt?" Jeremy says: "No dude, I wouldn't wear a shirt with poetry on it," and walked away. Jer was referring to the three lines of poetry on the bottom of the drawing. I can't remember what those lines were, but I have to admit, they probably weren't shirtable. So, this led to a conversation between me and Dallas a few days later, online. He said that he agreed - his three lines of poetry were not worth printing on a shirt. I brought up that ANY poetry would probably look horrible on a shirt. "I mean, my favorite poem would make a pretty tacky shirt," I said. "Which poem is that?" "This one:
And did those feet, in ancient time, walk apon England's mountains green? And was the holy Lamb of God on England's pleasant pastures seen? And did the countenance divine shine forth apon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here, among these dark Satanic Mills?
Bring me my bow of burning gold; Bring me my arrows of desire; Bring me my spear, O clouds unfold; Bring me my chariot of fire! I will not cease from mental fight, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, Till we have built Jerusalem In England's green and pleasant land.
I mean, you could put some wolves and trees on that shirt, and sell it at RenFest," I remarked. Dallas agreed with me - even my favorite poem, and one by William Blake, would look crappy on a shirt. And it's true - can you think of any serious poetry that would look absolutely badass printed on a T-shirt?
"That poem is kind of heavy-handed, but good." That was Dallas' opinion of it. The heaviness of it is what makes it work for me - the first stanza refers to the story that Jesus visited England as a young man, but oddly enough, doesn't affirm it. All four of the lines are simply questions - maybe he did visit England, and briefly create a heaven on earth here. Maybe he didn't, though - but does it matter? Shouldn't England, becoming quickly choked by the "Satanic Mills" of the beginnings of the Industrial Era, be as good as that anyway? Well, screw it - we'll work to make England as best as it can be, and not think of stopping until it is.
And, honestly, shouldn't one treat life like that? Religious beliefs aside, it's a good way to think about life. When everything is shitty and horrible in your life, only you can really start the chain of events to make it better - and not effing stop until life is what you want it to be. Cheesy? Definately. But it works for me.
Anyway, some smart guy decided to turn that poem into a hymn in 1916. I've never heard that version, but Keith Emerson, the keyboard genius of ELP, decided to persuade his two bandmates to cover it.
Would you trust this pretencious, two-keyboard-simeoultaneously-playing shaggy-haired English dude? Two other equally pretencious guys did, and henceforth created of my favorite songs of all time.
And "Jerusalem" opens this record, Brain Salad Surgery, which hit the shelves in November 1973. I can't speak about any kind of innovation the band might have made up to that point, having heard nothing else of theirs, save their very first album ("Barbarian", anyone?).
This album actually came into my house a full two or three years before I listened to it at all - my brother Ryan had bought the vinyl for a buck, purely because the cover was interesting. The sleeve is die-cut across the middle, and it opens to reveal an H.R. Giger painting, which must have amazed some serious prog nerds back then.
"Man, her skull is attached to some kind of robotic vise! How awesome!"
Anyway, a couple of years later found me spending most of my free time on a Pink Floyd message board, talking to people. Of course there were some serious prog guys hanging around, and one of them mentioned ELP to me. "Ever heard them?" Nope - "but I do have that one album with the cover that opens up." As soon as I said that, this certain guy wanted me to listen to it, immediately. "DUDE, IT'S AWESOME. BRAIN SALAD SURGERY." So, dredging up my "grab the thistle" mindset, I believe I ran to my room right then and stuck it on. I didn't really pay attention to it - I read a book while it played. But, my curiousity was perked enough, so I stuck it on a few more times over the next week or so. And... I got quite into it.
And this brings me to a question - why did prog bands always shoot themselves in the foot?
Let me explain. We all know that ELP are positively good musicians. Keith Emerson is the only guy I've heard who is a better Hammond organ player than Jimmy Smith; Carl Palmer is a tight-rolling drumming monster; and Greg Lake is probably the only bassist who could keep up with Keith Emerson, which says a lot about his style. But why, oh why do they have to know that they're good?!?!?!?! Them knowing that fact was terrribly dangerous to their group. In fact, it's still terribly dangerous to numerous bands today, all of whom are slowly drowning in good musicanship. The Mars Volta is one of them, and a lot of what I'm about to say also applies to them.
For instance - this record starts off amazingly. "Jerusalem" is as powerful as the poem is, and is quite a heavy experience when listened to loudly in a car - like I said, it's one of my favorite recordings of all time. They follow this with "Tocatta", which, as an adapted classical piece, might have the casual listener duck away from it. But no - it's entirely instrumental, and entirely badass, a musical hodgepodge that flies at you with reckless abandon.
But, like I said above, their musicanship begins to smother them here. They try for a Greg Lake ballad, "Still... You Turn Me On", which, following the previous selection's fast, almost military ending, is kind of like having your Coke turn into Vanilla Coke - too sweet, and sadly arranged. It also has some of the most trite lyrics ever written, I imagine. Still, you can swallow it, if only expecting more musically-challenging badassness to follow.
And then... "Benny the Bouncer"? They've turned your Vanilla Coke into rusty nail water, and any kind of respect that you might have gotten from your friends about liking ELP was just thrown out of a speeding car window, landing in a ditch, never to be seen again. Damn.
If you sat through that, you might be rewarded with the Hammondalicious intro to "Karn Evil 9" and the complexity of something they decided to call the "First Impression, Part One" of the same title. But, past this point, you're reminded of thirty-five years' worth of "Roll up, SEE THE SHOW!!!" imitations and treated to increasingly vague and appalling prog musical arrangements - over an entire side of vinyl, some twenty minutes. Eventually, in the "Third Impression", you're given computer voices to deal with: Keith Emerson, no doubt filtered through a MiniMoog, intoning futuristic verse:
"STRANGER! DANGER! LOAD YOUR PROGRAM. I AM YOURSELF." Does it matter at this point that the entire "Karn Evil 9" has a theme, which is about a society in the future that eventually gets so smothered in technology that computers take over mankind's existence? Does that make this entire thirty-minute song worthwhile? Or do you feel like me, when you collapse in a heap after trudging through this huge chunk of musical pretentiousness - overwhelmed and a little embarrassed?
And this is what I mean. ELP was, simply, too talented for their own good. They took those talents seriously - way too seriously - and basically ruined what could have been a thouroughly amazing album. Regrettably, they took it apon themselves to write serious music, which, to them, had to be filled with bleeping synths and confusing lyrics. It's no coincidence that my favorite ELP material - "Jerusalem" and "Tocatta" off of this album, and "The Barbarian" off of their first - are covers. They had the musicanship to turn a piece of serious music on its head, but didn't have the foresight to make their own material as timeless, which is frustrating, when you get down to it. They were amazing musicians.
And, in a nutshell, that is what prog does, both yesterday and today. This makes it one of the most challenging genres of music to listen to, and, consequently, one of the hardest to really like.
In this space, for the next few days, I'm going to review different albums from 1973. I'd do another, but I have to go to bed - peace.
I take photographs, drive around, listen to music, and do anything to make my life as pleasing as possible. This includes making bad jokes and talking to myself.
