May 29, 2024

Music and Other Stuff (mostly music and probably boring, sorry):

Today's listening included Khan's classic "Space Shanty" from 1972. In case you don't know, Khan rose out of the ashes of Egg and Uriel, and the Steve Hillage/Dave Stewart connection that began in 1966 at the London School for Boys. With schoolmates Mont Campbell on bass and vocals and Clive Brooks on drums, they started Uriel in 1968 and recorded the album "Arzachel" in '69. It sounds like a Cream spinoff, but they were quite good, especially for a band of 19 year olds. Hillage's parents wanted him to finish college, so the other three carried on as Egg, who were like a Canterbury version of The Nice (I actually like Egg better). They were amazing, but their combination of incredible keyboard-based prog and witty humor (a Canterbury staple) didn't sell, and they broke up. By 1972, Steve Hillage had finished college and went back to doing what he does best, playing the daylights out of the guitar and composing music, and with his old pal Dave Stewart, he formed Khan, who recorded "Space Shanty". I vaguely remember seeing the album cover on the College Records wall racks. None of the clerks played it. Heck, they barely played Caravan, but Pat Forducci became a Hillage fan when his album "L" (produced by Todd Rundgren) caught on in progressive circles, enough so to get Steve an opening slot for Yes on their arena tour in 1977. He played The Forum on that tour. "L" was known for Steve's cover version of "Hurdy Gurdy Man", and it's a great album, but an even better one is his debut solo album "Fish Rising", which is an all-timer, and the same goes for "Green". Both are Prime Hillage. He also has the distinction of being mentioned on "The Young Ones" by Neil the Hippie. I am reminded of Sean, who introduced me and Dave Small to that show.

Like Uriel, Khan made one album and broke up, and the music for their second album became part of Steve Hillage's "Fish Rising". Dave Stewart went back to Egg for a reunion album ("Civil Surface"), then ended up in Hatfield and the North, one of Pat's favorite bands. We've been taking about the Kings of Progressive Rock, and of course the giants like Wakeman and Lake hold sway. But what about guys like Dave Stewart, who was in Egg, Khan, Hatfield and the North, and National Health? Or Phil Miller, who was in Matching Mole, Hatfield and Health? They are giants, too. Listen to the National Health catalog and tell me there's a more advanced prog band not named ELP. And even then...

Well anyhow, check out "Space Shanty", and if you like it, order the CD. Youtube sound is watered down, big time. 

What else have we got?

Well, we should say R.I.P to Bill Walton, a hero to me as a twelve-year-old UCLA basketball fanatic. I started listening to Bruins games back in the Lew Alcindor era when I was eight, then through Steve Patterson's time at center before Walton took over the position in 1972. Under Coach Wooden, Walton's Bruins won 88 consecutive games over three seasons, still a record. He won two national championships with UCLA and was named college player of the year for three years in a row. I never missed a game during his time with the team, and followed him to the pros, even though he was on the dreaded Portland Trail Blazers, with whom he won an NBA championship. His pro career was plagued by foot injuries, but he still made the NBA Hall of Fame. To me, however, he will always be a UCLA Bruin. I think he was the greatest college basketball player of all time. 

We must also pay tribute to Disney legend Richard Sherman, who died last week at 93. Along with his brother Robert, he wrote all the classic songs for "Mary Poppins", and also "It's a Small World", which my sister and I sing along to every time we ride that ride at Disneyland. To me, Disneyland is life, and Mary Poppins was a formative experience for every child in 1965, so we salute Richard Sherman and thank him for the music.

A few nights ago I found a Montgomery Clift movie we'd never seen, and only recently heard of, called "Lonelyhearts"(1958), in which he plays "Adam White", an aspiring newsman assigned to the advice column beat. The first thing we should mention is the cast. Monty always seems to be among all-stars and this film is no exception: Robert Ryan, Myrna Loy, Uncle Fester, and Maureen Stapleton in her film debut. I kept thinking she was Edith Bunker from "All in the Family" but found out that was Jean Stapleton. Anyhow, despite those heavy hitters and Monty himself, the most interesting cast member is perhaps Dolores Hart, who plays "Justy", Adam's girlfriend. In addition to this movie, Hart starred in two films with Elvis Presley: "Loving You"(1957) and "King Creole"(1958), and the teen classic "Where the Boys Are"(1960), and then in 1963, at the age of 25, she gave up acting to become a Benedictine nun at the Abbey of Regina Laudis monastery in Connecticut, where she still resides today at age 85. In 2001, she was named Prioress, and on top of that, she still maintains her membership in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. But the coolest thing of all is that she is a graduate of Corvallis High School. There's an Oscar-nominated documentary about her life called "God is Bigger than Elvis". What an amazing woman, and she is great in this film.

As it opens, Monty needs a job and meets Myrna Loy in a lounge. She's the wife of Robert Ryan, the editor of the local Chronicle. The lounge is just down the block from the paper's headquarters, and Monty's been hanging out there in the hopes that Ryan will stop in for a drink. Instead he meets Loy and becomes temporarily embroiled in their tempestuous marriage. Ryan is a cynic's cynic (the perfect Robert Ryan role) who cannot forgive Myrna for cheating on him ten years ago, and because she has recommended Monty for a job at the paper, he thinks Monty is sleeping with her.

Monty dissuades him of this notion with his Boy Scout ideals, so Ryan hires him and gives him the job of writing the Lonelyhearts column, which he dreads but Uncle Fester covets. Ryan's aim is to shove real life down Monty's throat. He hates what he sees as Monty's naivete into human nature.

Monty reads the Lonelyhearts letters aloud to Fester and fellow scribe Mike Kellin, who mock the authors' problems. Monty thinks this is wrong: "You shouldn't laugh at people," he tells them. Robert Ryan steps in and tells him all the letter writers are frauds. He suggests Monty contact one and find out for himself, so he does, and gets sucked into a cheap affair with Maureen Stapleton, who is married to a "crippled" husband. Meanwhile, Monty has been ignoring his beautiful young girlfriend (Hart) to stay late at work, in order to make a good impression on editor Ryan. But he also has a huge secret he's been keeping from her, having to do with his family. This is revealed to us at the halfway point, but not to Hart until the end of the film, which is about the need for communication in relationships, and also about forgiveness. It's top notch Montgomery Clift. I thought it was as good as anything he's done, and I wonder why it's never mentioned in his body of work? I give it a 10. But the relationships in this picture are brutal, and shocking for 1958.

I've also been listening to Mercyful Fate, their first two albums, "Melissa"(1983) and "Don't Break the Oath"(1984), both of which I just bought on CD direct from Metal Blade Records. I'm late to the Fate, and again it was Sean who introduced me and Mr. D to them in the Summer of 1986, when he also turned us on to Venom and Celtic Frost. The latter two bands stuck (and Frost became an all-time fave), but Mercyful did not, in fact I never checked them out past the first listen, on cassette, in Sean's garage. I don't know why they didn't grab me back then; you'd think they were tailor-made: the frenetic riffing, the shredding twin solos, the dog-whistle vocals, and (maybe most of all) the image: King Diamond's facepaint, the Satanic themes, and the lyrics. All of that was huge for me in '86. "Melissa" is about a witch who happens to be the protagonist's girlfriend. Man, you'd think Mercyful Fate would've been right up my alley. Sean loved these guys, and he especially loved King Diamond, who'd gone solo by that time and had his own album out called "Abigail" that Sean also played for us. King Diamond was his #1 guy, but I think he got left behind in my case, because - as extreme as his music was and still is - it had the structure of conventional heavy metal and could've fit on the shelf next to Judas Priest, whereas the other Sean bands (Frost and Venom) were so far out of left field that they captured my attention more quickly, and King got lost in the shuffle. My loss.

But - for whatever reason (maybe because I was thinking of Sean and our times together) - I also thought of King Diamond, first of "Abagail" because he raved about that record, and I found it on Youtube, listened, and thought "holy moly, why did it take me 38 years to get the hang of this guy?" To be honest, I think Sean was nudging me from the Other Side ("hey man, remember King Diamond?"), so after I listened to that record, I went straight to the other two I remembered him playing for us, the aforementioned pair of Mercyful Fate albums I just bought. And it was the same deal: awesome, extreme metal (as they call it) with progressive elements. And it's King's voice and lyrics that hook you, because every song is a story, a Halloween story, and as a tenor singer myself (choir), I can really appreciate what it takes to sing like that, in a near-falsetto, at the very top of the tenor range. Because it's not falsetto. Falsetto is when you switch from the lungs to singing from the throat because you can't get up that high with the lungs and diaphram. But King is doing it that way, singing full-bodied, as high as a male singer can go. Of course, Rob Halford did it first (or you could say Ian Gillan, but Halford was a far better singer), and Rob saved his ultra-high register for "icing on the cake" whereas King sings whole songs that way. But that's why it's extreme metal, and within the Mercyful formula, it works. Their albums still sell 40 years later, because it's good stuff. I've been on an MF binge this week, so thanks Sean! That's three classic bands you introduced me to.

I'm also listening to The Bobby Fuller Four, a CD called "Never to Be Forgotten: The Mustang Years" and what strikes me is the pristine production, super clean. The band is so tight, the background vocals reminiscent of Van Halen in their brightness. Of course, it's the other way around, because the BF4 was ten years before VH. Bobby also plays his Strat clean, in a way that would challenge the best of today's players to get a sound that "Stratty" but with no distortion. He was the Buddy Holly of the '60s, with a ton of great songs, just like Buddy, written and recorded in just a few years. Both died tragically, Buddy in a plane crash, Bobby was murdered. But yeah, to make records that stand up 60 to 70 years later is something special, and also to play guitar that well. Bobby's brother Randy, the bass player for their band, passed away last week and I am thinking of The Bobby Fuller Four and playing their music. 

What the Lord has taught me, more than anything , is patience beyond my wildest dreams.

Now, we recently mentioned people with "no there there", which is of course an appropriation of Gertrude Stein's famous quote about Oakland, and in her case, though I've never read the context in which she said it, I've always assumed she meant that Oakland had no cultural pizzazz, that it was a dull city. In our usage, however, we don't mean that the person in question is dull, boring, pizzazz-less or stupid. We don't mean he or she is an airhead. The concept is a little more difficult to describe.

Let's take the word "authentic" or "authenticity", when it is used as an exhortation, say, to urge someone to "be your authentic self" or to strive for "authenticity in expression". Striving to "be authentic" is quite popular now, but I see the term in a more literal way, because I believe there are actual inauthentic people walking around. Not folks who aren't human in the sense of having dna and all the markers, but folks who quite literally do not possess a soul or spirit. I think we are in uncertain, perhaps even evil times, and I think there are inauthentic human beings walking around, and that is what I mean when I say that someone has "no there there". I believe in "the bad seed" theory, made famous in the legendary movie with that title starring Patty McCormack, which proposes that some people come out of the womb straight from hell or some other netherworld, and that their bad behavior cannot be chalked up to nurture (influence of parents and society) but entirely to their own hellborn nature. We know there are people who do not possess a conscience, who see others as objects, and who do not feel bad about victimizing others and feel no remorse after doing so. That is a sociopath, and sociopaths may have "no there there". But what I am talking about is even more removed from humanity because a person who has "no there there" not only has no conscience (and no remorse or sense of guilt) but also has no apparent awareness of the evil deeds they've committed. These are folks who look like you and me, and they aren't drooling at the mouth - if you didn't know the violence they are capable of, and the depravity, you'd think they were perfectly normal in the very wide variety of what a normal human being is. But when you've been the victim of such a person, and you see with a heavy heart that the person not only has never suffered a single consequence for their actions, but has blithely gone about their life in the aftermath, for several decades, with no apparent fear of prosecution - but more than that - no apparent "weight" on their psyche (not only no burden of guilt but no awareness of who they are), then you are dealing with someone who has No There There, and that is a spooky thing.

Someone who has No There There comes from a different place than you and I. Because of the experience I've had, I know of things like this. 

By the end of this week, sometime around June 1, I will have finished formatting my book. The next phase will be to transfer it from Google Docs to Microsoft Word, which I don't have on Chromebook and have never used. In all the time I've used computers, I've only ever been an Internet Person. I've never learned how to operate any of the systems many folks are familiar with. But at least I now know Google Docs. Everything should be as simple. And maybe Word won't be too difficult, but anyway, once I transfer the book from Google Docs to Word (which I will acquire for my Chromebook through Microsoft's offer of a month's free trial), then I will double-check the manuscript one last time, to make triple-sure that it has uploaded exactly the way I have formatted it, and to make a final check for typos. And if everything looks good on Word, then it will be time to upload the book to Lulu. I chose Lulu over Amazon because they (supposedly) make nice hardcover books, with dust jackets. It is of paramount importance to me that this is a bookstore-quality book. I'm talking about in the physical sense (and hopefully in the literary sense, too!) I want it to be a high-quality presentation, and if it isn't (after I check my print copy) then I won't release it until I find a publisher who can make it bookstore quality. I've put a lot of effort into writing it; it's not just something I knocked off, so I want the finished product to reflect that effort.

I have two possible covers I created on Canva. It's hard to choose between them, but I like them both so I can't go wrong. And if I can get all the Lulu uploading stuff right (and I continue to pray to The Book Gods), then I might have my print copy in hand as early as July 1. If so, and if the print copy looks good, it will be on sale shortly after that. Fingers crossed. Man, I've put my heart on the line here. I promise you won't be disappointed.

May 23, 2024

I found a great Mongomery Clift interview on The Hy Gardner show from January 1963. It's about fifty minutes long, cut into 5 ten minute segments by the Youtube poster, so you can watch some or all of it at your leisure. It was the only TV interview he ever did, and among other things, he talks about his car accident, and also about acting techniques, Hollywood gossip, all kinds of stuff. Since we've been featuring Monty I thought you might want to see it. I watched "Judgement at Nuremberg" a few nights ago, truly one of the greatest films ever made. Monty only has twelve minutes, but they are in one continuous, stunning scene, and as always, he is brilliant. Overall, it's Spencer Tracy's picture (he holds it together), with tremendous performances by Maximilian Schell, Burt Lancaster, and Marlene Dietrich. Colonel Klink is great as a loyal Nazi judge. I mean, you can run down the list, everyone in the film is incredible. It's directed by the great Stanley Kramer, whose camera prowls the courtroom. Judy Garland is very good in a small but pivotal role. "Judgement" gets right down to business with the trial beginning almost immediately, so even though it's over three hours long, it never drags, and it was filmed on location so you can see what Nuremberg looked like; even 16 years after the war it was still in ruins.

On the listening front, I branched out today and listened to not one but three Genesis solo albums, starting with "Smallcreep's Day" by Mike Rutherford. I remembered that Pat liked it at the time it came out in 1980. It's not an earthshaking release, and sounds in places like commercial prog, but has great musicianship including founding Genesis member Anthony Phillips on keyboards instead of his trademark guitar. I am a big Ant fan (as he is known for short) and I guess Rutherford, who went on to mainstream solo success with Mike and The Mechanics, wanted to play all the guitars on his album, so he gave the keyboards to Ant Phillips, who fills the landscape nicely. Simon Phillips (no relation) is on drums. He had previously played on "Sin After Sin" by Judas Priest and is up there with Bill Bruford in ability. For some reason, the producer pushed him way down in the mix, otherwise "Smallcreep's" would be a great album. As it is, I give it a 7. A Steven Wilson remix could make it an 8.5. It closes with a 24 minute piece based on the album's title, which is taken from a book.

I also listened to Tony Banks' first solo album from 1979, entitled "A Curious Feeling", very symphonic, almost entirely keyboards based and quite good. My third Genesis solo album was Steve Hackett's "Spectral Mornings" from May 1979, his third offering. It was the best of the bunch, featuring several tracks I remembered from that time, and in retrospect, I wonder why this didn't become a favorite of mine. A couple songs are lifetime achievements for any progressive musician. I guess I was too much into hard rock at the time, but music was also changing, year by year (not like now, when we're stuck for 30 years with the same un-creative thing), and between 1976 and 1980, punk rock was coming and going. New Wave was it's replacement. Progressive rock, glam rock and art rock, all of which I was weaned on at College Records, was out. "Love Beach" was the death knell for progressive music. But hard rock was still in, so I had Rush, Van Halen and Rainbow. Those were my bands from about 1977 to 1981. There were others, like Judas Priest, UFO and Scorpions, and then once the '80s got rolling I branched out to more metal. But I wasn't listening to much progressive rock after about 1978, and not to Genesis at all after "Wind and Wuthering" (1977) because, to me, they completely sold out when Phil Collins took over. Anyhow, that was my Listening Party for today, those three solo albums by members of Genesis, inspired by the "Supper's Ready" video I think I recently mentioned. Speaking of Anthony Phillips, he made two fantastic solo albums: "The Geese and the Ghost"(1977) and its follow-up "Wise After the Event"(1978).

 I know it's sacrilege to say this, but I am not a huge fan of Peter Gabriel's solo material. I liked his first album, with the raindrops on the car window, and "Solsbury Hill" is a nice song, but after that? He doesn't do it for me. Songs like "Red Rain" and the politically-charged "Biko" have anthemic power in the way they build; their structures are dynamic, but it's all one single melody all the way through, and "Sledgehammer" and "Shock the Monkey" are kind of lightweight MTV stuff. I know people worship the guy, and I feel bad not liking him, but as great a vocalist and frontman/theatrical performer as he was for Genesis, I don't feel he was a main creative force in that band. Witness "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway", which was his concept of a punk rock subway rebel in New York. To me, it took the Englishness out of Genesis, which was their trademark. He cut his hair and sang much of the album in a rock-rasp, abandoning his his inner Lewis Carroll. "Lamb" was a good album, and would've been very good if it was a single disc, but much of the best material belonged to Tony Banks. I'm not knocking Peter Gabriel - it's a fact that Genesis turned into soft-rock pap without him, under Phil Collins leadership (or dictatorship), but I think he was more of a coagulator and interpreter of the other guys' ideas. He put the fantasy into Genesis, and sometimes the lyrics (which were also written by Rutherford) but not much of the music, and I think the results show on his solo albums, which I feel have dynamism in places, but are otherwise monochromatic. You can go ahead and shoot me now.

But at least he isn't Phil Collins, who was one of the greatest drummers in progressive rock before he decided to, um...decided to...er...do whatever it was he did. Did you know he was the third-biggest-selling artist of the 1980s, behind only Madonna and Michael Jackson? It's true, but boy, only Don Henley rivaled him for Depressing Rock. "The End of the Innocence" or "In the Air Tonight"? Take your pick, and make sure to add Foreigner's "I Want To Know What Love Is, and pass the sleeping pills and vodka.

Anyhow, make sure and watch the Monty Clift interview.

More music: I am looking forward to the release, next week, of the long-awaited box set of Black Sabbath albums from the Tony Martin era, entitled "Anno Domini". It's a four album set, and I know, I know...it shouldn't be called Black Sabbath without Ozzy. But I think Tony Iommi took a page from Sir Richard Blackmore's book and figured "I can replace whoever I want to. As long as I'm in the group it's Black Sabbath". Also, the record company probably insisted and told him it wouldn't sell under another name, so Black Sabbath it is. The important thing is that the Tony Martin albums are terrific, sounding similar, riff-wise, to Dio-era Sabbath, but with an even bigger sound, courtesy of Cozy Powell, and Martin's powerful, elastic voice. He is the second longest-tenured singer in Black Sabbath, with five albums to his credit. I was skeptical at first (because I never gave Black Sabbath the time of day after the first two Dio albums), but one afternoon in 2022, I was browsing Youtube and on a whim, I checked out "Tyr" featuring Martin on vocals, and thought it was awesome. I ended up listening to all of the Martin albums (and one with Glenn Hughes), and I thought, "wow, this is like Tony Iommi's Rainbow". You know how, when Ritchie quit Purple, he did his own thing but retained that signature sound? That's what Iommi did with Sabbath, and he even used a lot of Ritchie's former band members. If you go on Youtube, many fans list Martin as their favorite Sabbs singer. Mine is of course Oswald Osbourne, but this is a whole different band and sound with Tony Martin. Check 'em out.

Many records need to be revisited, and in that respect I've also been listening to Rick Wakeman's "The Myths and Legends of King Arthur"(1975), which sometimes gets lost in the shuffle of his other solo masterpieces: "Six Wives of Henry VIII" (one of the 25 greatest albums ever made) and "Journey to the Center of the Earth". Those two were so legendary that Wakeman fans (myself included) sometimes forget how great "King Arthur" was, featuring some of Rick's greatest Mini Moog work and orchestration. Go back and give it a listen. I've often thought Rick Wakeman might be The King of Progressive Rock, because not only was he in Yes, he was also in The Strawbs, and he was a solo artist with three classic albums to his name and several other very good ones, including "The Red Planet" from 2022. Of course, it's hard to dispute Greg Lake's claim to being King, as he was a founding member of both King Crimson and ELP, and he was also the greatest rock singer of all time, but the nod may have to go to Rick because of his solo career and his appearance on many legendary singles, such as Cat Stevens' "Morning Has Broken" and Bowie's "Space Oddity". Man, I could talk about progressive rock all day, and I feel the need to take the mantle because Pat is not physically present anymore and can't head the discussion himself. However, he may have given over the reins anyway because I would go on and on during our phone calls, detailing the fine points of Peter Hammill's solo career or the saving grace good songs on Gentle Giant's commercial albums. Long live progressive rock and the creative spirit. 

Dear Lord, there are many bad people in the world, and I pray they'll not get away with what they've done.

The country I live in, Dear Lord, is "all about" letting bad people get away with their deeds.

I live in a bad country that was once the best country on Earth. But it went very bad, and is going to ruin.

And all because bad people hold sway, and protect other bad people below them.

I could tell You stories, Dear Lord, but You already know them.

The bad people don't believe in You, or don't have the capacity to believe. Many have no "there there".

Karen is asking for a blanket, but not because she's cold.

May 18, 2024

Last night I watched another Montgomery Clift classic, "Red River"(1948), one of the greatest Westerns ever made. John Wayne stars as "Thomas Dunson", a veteran cowhand who, as the movie opens, quits a cattle drive to work for himself, seeing a need for beef in the open land of Texas. Sidekick Walter Brennan goes with him as his cook. Wayne leaves behind a beautiful woman, Colleen Gray, feeling she can't withstand the conditions of frontier life, including Indians, bandits, and general hardship, but no sooner does he leave the drive than the wagon train is attacked by Comanches. Wayne sees the smoke in the distance and immediately regrets his decision, knowing that by refusing Grey's request to accompany him, he has condemned her to death. This is confirmed when he kills an Indian wearing her bracelet. He moves on regardless, determined to start his cattle ranch, which he vows will be the biggest in Texas. After the Comanche battle, he and Brennan are approached by a boy named Matthew, the lone survivor of the wagon train massacre. He has nowhere to go, so Wayne takes him on and over time he becomes Wayne's surrogate son. 

Cut to fourteen years later (about 30 minutes in). Wayne now has the largest cattle ranch in Texas, yet his dream is not realized because his steers are undernourished. The crushing defeat suffered by the South in the Civil War has left Texas low on water and cow feed, and no one can afford beef anyway, so he decides to move the whole operation to Missouri. His son, now grown up, is played by Monty Clift. Monty has been away during the war and has returned as a deadly fast gun. Wayne signs up the men who are willing to see the move to its end. If they agree, he tells them they can't quit along the way. This will prove problematic as the drive to Mizzou turns out to be even more difficult than Wayne predicted. Before they leave, they meet and take on the gunslinger "Cherry Valance" (John Ireland), who develops a rivalry with Monty that turns into mutual respect. John Ireland was a great actor who held his own with the best, and there are scenes in the first hour with the foursome of Wayne, Clift, Brennan and Ireland where you realize: this is as good as it gets. If anyone thinks John Wayne was not a great actor (in the context of his range) they are wrong. He could emote in subtle ways and was the biggest Movie Star of all time. Name a bigger one.

The huge herd of cattle should've had their own billing. A massive stampede is a turning point, and you wonder how they filmed some of these scenes without anyone getting hurt or  killed. "Red River" is sometimes a river of cows, and much of the middle of the movie depicts the marathon effort it takes to get them from Texas to Missouri. A written history (shown as book pages) provides narration. The threat of Indians is always in the background, but up front is the threat from Wayne, who is slowly losing his cool as the going gets rough. Men try to desert, forgoing their sworn signed agreements to see the drive through to its end. Wayne has Cherry chase them down, then he summarily executes them. He becomes a Captain Bligh until Monty, seeing the state the men are in, and seeing that Wayne, sleepless and drinking, is incapable of leading, takes the drive away from him. Monty takes control and the men agree to follow him to Abilene, Kansas, where there's supposed to be a railroad. John Wayne is left behind and swears to kill Monty if it takes him the rest of his life.

In the last hour, sidekick Noah Beery Jr. discovers another wagon train with food, facilities and best of all, girls. Monty agrees to let the men have R & R for a few days, and he meets and falls in love with Joanne Dru, after an Indian shootout. The rest of the movie is romance and revenge. Dru wants Monty to marry her and can't understand his need to face down John Wayne, his father.

It doesn't get any more epic than this. "Red River" was Montgomery Clift's first screen role, and it actually looks like he's having fun at times, playing a laconic badass. I mention that because you rarely see Monty let down his Method guard and smile a carefree smile. An interesting detail is that the men get sick of eating beef, and when their other supplies run out, that's all they have, and a fennel substitute for coffee. Wayne tells them to like it or lump it. This is not a movie for vegans, but the truth is that beef fed a growing nation of pioneers in an unfamiliar and gigantic land. It's a subtle movie, with landscape, paucity of nature, and the cattle herd teaming up against man. Indians aren't prominent, except against defenseless wagon trains. They apparently didn't mess much with cattle ranchers. This one of my favorite Monty roles because he's new and at ease playing off Wayne in the lead, and Walter Brennan provides wizened comic relief throughout. It's a must see if you've never seen it. 

Question: have you heard of Victor Davis Hanson? He's a classical scholar and historian, and also a professor of American history with many books to his credit. I became acquainted with him through a free publication from Hillsdale College called Imprimus, which I've mentioned once or twice. My Dad subscribed to Imprimus when we lived at Burton Street in the mid-90s. Dad's grandfather attended Hillsdale. Imprimus arrived monthly, and Dave Small and I would peruse it when Dad was done. We too liked its intellectual content and thoughtful approach to political issues. When I moved in with my Mom in 1997, I got my own subscription to Imprimus (you should, too; it's free) and I've been receiving it ever since. That is how I first read Victor Davis Hanson, whom I used to abhor, because I thought his op-eds were right wing. This was before I became The Rightest-Wing Man in America (a title I still retain), and lately I've been watching him on Youtube (he has his own channel), because I'm concerned about the future of our country, and I think you should watch him, too. Everything he says is well-thought out. My Dad once wrote a letter to Vice President Al Gore, comparing America in the 1990s to the fall of Roman civilization. He received a reply (ostensibly from Gore), and he was proud to have made his point as a concerned American. That was in the '90s. Things have sunk considerably since then.

The video I want you to watch is called "Final Warning: America's Last Chance Before Collapse". When you watch, don't immediately react according to the team you are loyal to. Listen to what Hanson says, which is fact based, and let it digest. Then subscribe to Imprimus, read it monthly, and start learning about what is happening in your country. You sure won't learn anything from the liberal corporate commentators. It may have once been possible to learn something from the Left, but I long ago gave up. It began with the decline of The Nation, which was my most admired political magazine in the '80s. One thing that turned me away from them was when I found out that one of my hero writers, Alexander Cockburn, was full of baloney. He was what I would call a Dilettante Commie who liked to provoke, but he believed the official 9/11 story and that Oswald killed JFK, both of which you either have to be a numbskull or a toady to accept. And when the Left started promoting guys like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, I strayed even further, feeling an anti-religious bias (and especially anti-Christian) creeping into the left wing which has now become full blown. Hitchens used to pick on Mother Theresa (of all people) and Dawkins has spent his career trying to disprove the existence of God. While I agree that violence in the name of religion is an ongoing  problem, it isn't fair to denounce, for instance, the whole Catholic Church as extremist, just because you disagree with some (or all) of their policies. But this is what the Left has become, anti-God, and I am completely turned off. But it began for me years ago, around the time Peter Jennings, a guy we all trusted, ran that notorious JFK special in the late 1990s in which he "debunked" skepticism of the lone gunman theory in order to reinforce the government position, i.e: the magic bullet theory. That was the beginning of the end for me. Soon, I was done. 

Now, believe me, I used to revile Victor Davis Hanson. But he hung in there, and became more and more reasonable, made more sense, and now, he's right on the money. Why? Because, like my Dad, he knows his classical history, and he delineates for you how America parallels Rome in very specific ways. Therefore, subscribe to Imprimus, watch the Victor Davis Hanson channel, and see if you don't agree with his viewpoints. I'm not saying you should vote for Trump, but it's clear that four more years of Joe Biden will sink us.

Or don't you think so? 

One thing Hanson says that I find especially pertinent, is the rapidity with which things decline. He talks about the fragility of what we take for granted as "civilization". But when cracks appear, and the floodgates then open, as has happened in the leaderless Biden administration, we are overrun, which is happening at our borders. Ask yourself this: would you open the doors of your house (or apartment) to all comers, or is it your private "border"? If the world should be borderless, as per the far left, shouldn't their houses and apartments be borderless, too? Listen to what Hanson has to say about caring for the homeless, then tell me who gives a hoot about the problem, him or Gavin Newsom? I must make an aside to say I do like Mayor Karen Bass, who seems to be doing a lot more about Tent City Los Angeles than "Mayor" Garcetti ever did. He created the problem and was the worst mayor we ever had, which is saying something because he followed Antonio Villaraigosa. But hooray for Mayor Bass (at least for now). 

I'm watching Mike Oldfield videos in honor of his recent birthday, and it must be noted that in addition to being a genius composer, he is also a tremendous guitarist with a distinctive sound. Oldfield is another one of those players where you can tell it's him within a few seconds. He came right out of the box, at age twenty, with an incredible three album run, starting with "Tubular Bells" (composed when he was 17), the album that made Richard Branson rich enough to turn Virgin Records into a corporate behemoth. Oldfield then followed it with two pastoral beauties: "Hergest Ridge"(1974) and "Ommadawn"('75). In the '80s, he streamlined his style, and wrote two of the best British pop singles of the era: the heartfelt but haunting "Moonlight Shadow", sung by Maggie Reilly, and "Man in the Rain" with singer Pepsi DeMarque. There's a live clip featuring her that you have to see. Just Youtube "Mike Oldfield + Man in the Rain + Pepsi". You can't take your eyes off her. I have many of Mike Oldfield's albums, he's one of my very favorite artists, and my favorite is "Songs of Distant Earth", which he says was inspired by Apollo 11. I was fortunate to see Mike live in concert at the John Anson Ford Theater on October 8, 1993. About two weeks later, my memory came back. My life can be measured as Before and After that time.

It says on Wiki that Oldfield is a supporter of Trump and Brexit, and I think it is important to take a closer look at what he means by that support. Do you think Oldfield worships Donald Trump, like a hardcore, ballcap-wearing MAGA supporter? I doubt it. More likely, he resents what has happened to the world we lived in not so long ago, before it was hijacked by bad people promoting negative agendas. Trump is not the right man to fix the situation, but I can see why many intelligent folks (and not just MAGA cult followers) are frustrated enough by this thing called The Left (which is by far, in it's current version, the biggest threat America has faced since the Civil War), to turn toward a gasbag like Trump because of his fearlessness in confronting the BS. Now, I suspect he is only a stage performer. Witness his quick agreement to debate Crooked Joe Biden, and besides that, do you really think The Men Behind The American Curtain would allow anyone to challenge their rule? Not hardly. Hence, Donald Trump is just part of The Ongoing Show, playing the villain or the hero depending on your perspective. Read the works of author Kent Bain for a more detailed look at how the powers-that-be operate. Because if you think Trump is one of the powers that be, boy do you need some schoolin'.

But anyhow, America has turned into a shell of it's former self, and anyone, left or right, who disputes that isn't worth including in the discussion. So the question must be asked, why is it now a shell? Here's where I turn you over to Victor Davis Hanson. I'd like to note that this evening I tried to Youtube "9/11 Truth Movement" because I wondered what ever happened to it, and to Pilots for 9/11 Truth, and there's nothing available, only videos of "debunkers" "debunking" the truth, which is that the government story is a lie. Boy, did they do an awesome job on that one. 9/11 and JFK, two lies so obvious, and with so much evidence against the official story in each case, that you have to be an American Stooge to believe either one of them.

Heck, I didn't believe 9/11 on the day it was happening, or maybe the weekend after, when Dick Cheney "divulged" that it was Al Qaeda, some group no one had ever heard of, headed by yet another "lone gunman" named Osama Bin Laden, a boogeyman if ever there was one. His team had not one but four pilots, all hopeless fliers according to their Florida-based trainers (and all trained on Cessnas), who were somehow suddenly capable of flying 747s, though never having been behind the wheel of one before, and three out of four hit their targets, including one at ground level. Yeah right.

So that is what has happened to America, but there's gotta be some light at the end of the tunnel and it starts with paying attention.

May 11, 2024

Man, this business of self-publishing is complicated. My book will be somewhere between 325 and 400 pages, depending on how many words-per-page are supported on the printing template. I've been studying two different paperbacks as examples: "The Orchard" by Charles L. Grant, which I've previously mentioned and which has a low word-per-page average of 250-300, which makes it extremely readable, and then there is "The Stand" by Stephen King, which has about 400-450 words per page (usually 450), which is a lot (the average paperback has 350), but with "The Stand", the wpp has to be high because the book is already 1200 pages; think how long it would be if the wpp was 350! It would be too thick to bind. So there are all these technical considerations. You have to know about something called a "gutter". That is the extra margin on the side of the page that meets the binding, and it needs to be spaced far enough away so that the words don't get crammed down into the binding. You can't open a thick book, such as The Stand, as wide as you can a thin book. This means your words need to be farther away from the binding on the inner margin. That's your "gutter", as they call it, and I am just learning all this stuff. My total word count will be somewhere between 140,000 and 150,000, and I am hoping they (whichever platform I use) will allow at least 400 words per page, otherwise I'll have a book that's over 400 pages long, which won't be cost-friendly.

My main concern at the moment is converting a Google Doc to a 6 x 9 PDF format, which is what is required for most self-publishing platforms. If I can do that, and not mess up in setting the margins and the gutter, etc., then I'll be in business. I've gotten good at formatting, which (as previously noted) is simply line spacing, paragraph spacing, and indenting, and - as also previously noted - it's kind of an art form because you can use different breaks, in sentences and paragraphs, to create tension, or comedy or a surprise. You don't wanna use them too often, but you don't have to have uniform spacing throughout. I've got the first 100 pages formatted, so I'm almost one-third of the way done. Then I'll hopefully be able to do all of this "conversion" stuff on my Chromebook. I don't have experience with things like "exporting" files, but I guess it can't be that difficult or Amazon KDP wouldn't have a million authors, though I have been reading "upload horror stories" in my Googling of how to do it.

The good news is that once I learn it I'll be off to the races, with the first book out and the second one needing one last revision. I'm also working on my cover for the first one. Canva is a pretty cool site. I've been experimenting with their templates and imagery. Basically, though, I've been praying to The Book Gods, because I've worked so hard on this thing and I really wanna get it out there. I've had an absolute blast writing it, and that of course is the fun part. Even editing is fun. But yeah, every day, it's : "Oh, Book Gods, help me convert to 6 x 9" or "Oh, Book Gods, help me align my title on the spine". There's so much doggone stuff to learn.

In music news, I''ve been watching Steve Vai videos and I can't believe what he can do with a guitar. He's like a magician. You can barely believe your eyes. Your ears are a different story. While his playing ability is beyond belief, it exists in the context of his music, which is not my thing, except for two pieces, both available on Youtube in videos you have to see: "For the Love of God", performed live with orchestra (on the SteveVaiHimself channel), and "Teeth of the Hydra", in which Vai astounds you by playing a three-headed guitar monstrosity, jumping between a trio of necks, one of which is a bass, and playing all three parts in one composition. In the realm of overall extreme technique, (not just fast alternate picking), I know of no one who can do what he does. However, for the ultimate combination of playing ability, the all-important musicality, and (the most crucial component) songwriting talent, give me Eric Johnson. He is truly off the charts, and so is his music.

I watched a Shawn Lane video that is so fast that the dexterity makes Yngwie look like Mark Farner. Lane was likely the fastest player ever, who used alternate picking and not tapping. I mean, watch the video. It's ridiculous, like hummingbird notes. Just go to Youtube and enter "Shawn Lane sick lick".

I actually saw Shawn Lane when he was just starting out. This is way back, on October 4, 1979 (according to Google). I went with Grimsley to The Starwood to see what was billed as Black Oak Arkansas but was really Jim Dandy and some hired guns, one of which was 16-year-old Shawn Lane. No one knew him at the time, including us, and he isn't well known even now. This was before the explosion of "shred guitar" which took off after the advent of EVH, when Mike Varney put out those Metal Massacre compilations in the early '80s. I saw the real Black Oak Arkansas at the California Jam, so this Starwood show didn't compare, but I always remembered the kid on guitar because he played incredibly fast. From my Googling, I learned that he'd only been playing for three years when we saw him, but he was a piano prodigy before that. Lane died in 2003 at the age of 40 from the effects of lung disease brought on by psoriasis, but no one ever played faster. The speedy Paul Gilbert called him "terrifying". Again, it's not my thing, but these videos are worth watching just to see what musicians are capable of in the technical sense. And speaking of Paul Gilbert, watch his video by going to Youtube and entering "Paul Gilbert Crazy Solo". It's more hummingbird guitar, almost comparable to the speed of Shawn Lane, but as with Lane, there isn't a song to go with it. Nor does the guitar tone impress, but holy smokes how can anyone play that fast?

Now, for music I do enjoy (and in keeping with our recent theme of progressive rock), I'm listening to the self-titled debut album from Hatfield and the North. The late Pat Forducchenburger was a big fan of these guys when this album came out in 1974, and he enthused even more over their second release, "The Rotter's Club" in 1975. At the time, I found Hatfield too jazzy for my taste. The same was true, later on, of National Health. Both bands featured many of the same players, including the great Dave Stewart, whom I'm embarrassed to say I'd never heard of until 2020, when I discovered Egg on my own initiative. All I knew about Hatfield was that Richard Sinclair of Caravan played bass. But now, because of Egg, I've become a huge Dave Stewart fan and I buy everything he's on. Ditto guitarist Phil Miller. 

Egg, Hatfield and National Health all have interchangeable musicians, with drummer Pip Pyle in many of the latter two lineups. I also learned about Alan Gowen in this way. He was another great keyboardist who founded the band Gilgamesh, but died young from leukemia.

Anyhow, Hatfield and the North is our progressive band for the day. I've also been listening to "Au-dela du delire" by the French group Ange, and though it's an acquired taste, I don't think any progressive collection is complete without it. And, as a bonus, the album title reminded me of the show "Dellaventura" starring the great Danny Aiello. Do you guys like him? His show premiered in the Fall of 1997, right after I moved in with my Mom, so it will always remind me of that time. "Dellaventura" only ran for half a season, it was cancelled after eleven episodes, but Mom and I loved it, especially Aiello's tag line at the end: "If you need me, I'll be around." Danny Aiello passed away a few years ago, but I imagine he's still around because we need him more than ever, and after I was reminded of his show by the Ange album, I Youtubed it and - lo and behold - found that someone had videotaped all eleven episodes of "Dellaventura" all those years ago, and had saved the tapes and uploaded the episodes to Youtube. So, I'm in the process of watching them. They take me back to 1997, an amazing time in my life. I like to think Mom is watching with me....

I also watched another movie, Hitchcock's "I Confess", starring Montgomery Clift and Anne Baxter. "A Place in the Sun" got me on a Monty kick and he's great here as a priest wrongly accused of murder. The actual killer confesses his crime to Monty as the movie opens, in a confession booth, and because of his vows, Monty can't (and won't) go to the cops. And because the killer wore a priest's cloak and was seen by two girls leaving the scene, Quebec detective Karl Malden thinks Monty did it. Malden finds out about a secret Monty's been hiding, of a past affair with Anne Baxter (a politician's wife). Malden thinks the affair is ongoing, but it isn't. It lasted only until the war. Monty wasn't a priest then, nor did he know she was married. Baxter still loves him in spite of her husband, but he's 100% committed to his vows. We are only shown this through his eyes. Monty never states his feelings about any of this, but he's such a tremendous actor that we get it. It's a perfect storm of circumstances that all comes together to get him charged with the murder of a man who's been blackmailing Anne Baxter.

I've owned this film on DVD for about fifteen years and have seen it perhaps five times. It's a perfect movie in which every scene counts, and there are no throwaway lines of dialogue. To me, Anne Baxter was as great as they come (All About Eve), and here, we revisit the eternal and obsessive pull of True Love once again. Her love for Monty at first causes him to be accused of murder, and he's willing to go to The Chair before he will implicate her in an affair which isn't what Malden thinks it is. Hitchcock shows them in "dreamy" flashbacks, before Monty became a priest, in gauzy, black and white slow-motion photography that reminded me of David Lynch, who I think was hugely influenced by 1950s melodrama. As we've noted, the theme of obsessive love is explored in many of his films, and we also saw it in "A Place in the Sun." The word obsession usually has a negative connotation, but in films such as this, a question is posed: when the obsession is True Love, must it necessarily be a bad thing, or is it caused by a pull known only to the spirit, the pull of an Unbreakable Bond as in Romeo and Juliet or Sleeping Beauty or any of the great love stories, a pull that cannot be denied? This is partially the theme here. The other part is dedication to vows and ideals. Monty knows who the killer is from the start, but as he tells Malden, "I can't say". As a priest, he literally cannot reveal the killer's name, nor that he knows anything about him. Speaking of Montgomery Clift, they need to release "Raintree County" on DVD. That was the movie during which he had his horrible car accident, and you can see the "before and after" on his face. It's also a great Southern saga, co-starring Elizabeth Taylor. I saw it once on TCM, and I've been looking for a copy ever since...

I don't have any 1989 news at the moment, though once this book is published (hopefully in August), we'll be full steam ahead on that subject. I'm concerned at the moment about a friend whom I haven't heard from in some time (more than six months), and whose phone number has changed or been discontinued and who hasn't been active on social media for over a year. I pray he is still with us...

May 4, 2024

 No, I'm not gonna say "May the Fourth be with you", so don't ask. We've been discussing progressive rock, and last night I happened upon a concert video, from 2023, of Jon Anderson backed by a group called The Band Geeks. At 78, Anderson sounds wonderful, his voice and range mostly intact. Onstage, you can see he's not a kid anymore, or even a middle aged man, but what's impressive is that he has maintained the songs' original tempos. Many bands from that era have slowed their tempos in concert, and my goodness, who could expect ELP, at their final show in 2010, to play "Karn Evil 9" at the lighting speed of the 1973 recorded version? Jon Anderson's former band Yes has slowed their tempos considerably; check out any of the available clips from their latest tour. But Jon and The Band Geeks, who can play Yes to knock your socks off, keep things moving fast and energetic. The guitarist does the impossible, recreating Steve Howe note-for-note. The only thing missing is the personal signatures of the original Yes members, but The Geeks do as good a job of approximating them as I suppose is possible.

I also watched a 21 minute clip of Jimi Hendrix playing Devonshire Downs on June 22, 1969 at the Newport '69 Festival (which preceded Woodstock), and what's interesting, before he gets cooking, is how raw the improvisation is at the beginning of the clip. Jimi's band featured Buddy Miles on drums and vocals, and if you didn't know who Jimi Hendrix was, you might've thought Buddy was the bandleader in the first ten minutes. During that blues jam, the bass player holds down the fort, while Jimi sounds like he's reaching...almost searching for the right notes and phrasing. Ritchie Blackmore has talked about this aspect of Jimi's live playing. While Buddy leads the jam, you hear Jimi doing his part in the blues call-and-response, but he's not quite there yet - he's searching, seeking, trying to make (or let) the guitar speak, and while he doesn't sound.....bad.....he isn't the Jimi you expect, maybe because the song is Buddy Miles' showcase. But as Ritchie said, Jimi was not afraid to reach for something, to strive for emotional conversation (real guitar talk) even if it meant hitting hesitant notes or phrases. He was spontaneous, never calculated. Ritchie himself would go on to exhibit the same unpredictability in concert. He strove for those elusive notes as they arrived in his head.

In the final 11 minutes of the Hendrix clip, Jimi blazes through "Machine Gun". He's clearly warmed up now. His rhythm playing is incredible: chords or two-note inversions running up and down the neck while adding melodic lead notes. I think that was what blew people away live, when he was in his groove and playing the guitar as an extension of himself. In the studio (his true home) he could take his time and record meticulous guitar parts, like the acoustic guitars and the solo in "Watchtower", and all those 7ths and 9ths he played so cleanly on his albums. 

I also found a clip, from 1972, of Matching Mole featuring Robert Wyatt in a ski mask. Jimi famously toured with Soft Machine when Wyatt, a founding member, was their drummer. Now a paraplegic, Wyatt has spent the majority of his life in a wheelchair after falling out a fourth floor window at Gylli Smith's birthday party in 1973. He forged ahead with remarkable spirit, and his subsequent solo album "Rock Bottom" sold well in England and was lauded by the British music press. I bought every issue of Melody Maker for a couple years and saw a lot of things that way on the periphery. I learned about Robert Wyatt (and his injury) from Melody Maker. I didn't know who he was before his fall. Cockney Rebel was another band that was in my head at the time, though I didn't have their albums. Unheard of in America, they were huge in England at the same time Sparks was breaking big with "Kimono My House". The Maels got a lot of weekly press, but not as much as the late Steve Harley, who seemed to be on the MM cover every week in late '74. 

One thing to note: I will never pretend to have been a fan of something, retroactively, for the sake of being hip. I won't go: "Oh yeah, I listened to Steve Harley" because I did not. But I did know of him (and Robert Wyatt) because of Melody Maker, and I am a sponge for information and retain a lot. Having said that, I think Steve Harley was a talented guy. I've seen a couple of Cockney Rebel clips. Robert Wyatt is closer to "my thing" though he's a bit outre, a holdover from late '60s acidhead British jazz-rock experimentalism. But he's musically interesting, which to me is what counts. The same can be said of a band like Pink Fairies, who had far less playing ability than nearly all of the great bands of the era - they barely played above a punk rock level - but they were Britishly musical, and made the all time classic album "Never Never Land". You can't make an album that good if you aren't musical, which is infinitely more important than being technically flawless on your instrument, at least in rock and roll. 

Anyhow, check out those three clips: the 21-minute Jimi in Northridge, the 1972 "Matching Mole on Rockenstock", and the 2023 Jon Anderson with Band Geeks in Virginia. All good stuff. Also, in my list of great progressive rock albums from the last blog, I can't believe I neglected to add Egg. Sometimes, something is so clear that you don't see it, like when someone asks you to name your favorite movies and you leave out "Blazing Saddles" (not that that would ever happen, of course). But yeah, Egg has three albums: their self-titled debut, "The Polite Force" and "The Civil Surface". All are great, but if I'm choosing one for our list, it's "Polite".

And on a metal note, be sure to watch "Scorpions - Live in Tokyo at Super Rock 1984". The video and sound quality are excellent, and the whole concert reminds you of how great (and how energetic) hard rock music was in the 1980s. The Scorps were fantastic live, they had one great song after another, the band was fast and tight, and not only was Matthias Jabs hugely underrated as a lead guitarist, but Klaus Meine had one of the great voices in all of rock. We saw them at the US Festival in 1983 and they stole the show that day, even from the likes of Judas Priest, Ozzy, and Van Halen (who gave a notorious performance). Go Scorps!

I watched another movie: "Leave Her to Heaven" starring Gene Tierney as the possessive wife of author Cornel Wilde. They meet by chance on a train headed to a resort in Arizona. She lives there; he is looking for a getaway to finish his latest novel, and before Wilde knows it, he and Tierney are married. In fact, she proposes to him. Her obsession surfaces soon afterward. Wilde first observes it during the early morning ash-scattering ceremony of Tierney's late father. The movie is classified as a Noir (though it's in color), and as with most Noirs, there's a subtext. Here, it may be taboo. I did some Googling after the movie was over to see if this taboo was intended, and I thought it was but I'll let you decide for yourself. I own "Leave Her to Heaven" on DVD (Tierney is a favorite), and though I hadn't seen it in at least ten years, it never fails to knock me out. The color photography, which won the 1946 Oscar, is something to behold. There's a scene I'll call "the blue scene", where Tierney, dressed in blue (including blue stack heels) does something eventful that turns the plot. This happens in the house she shares with Wilde, against blue-pattered wallpaper, with great, Noirish lighting and camera angles that heighten the tension. In my Googling, I discovered that Martin Scorsese is a big fan of this movie. He called Gene Tierney an underrated actress, and I couldn't agree more. Her beauty may have played against her with the critics, but I think she was good and sometimes superb in everything she did. She excels in this role and some of the facial expressions she conjures are unnerving. She has a look in her eyes that may hint at the mental illness that eventually derailed her career and almost her life. She ended up on the ledge of a tall building.

When you watch, pay close attention to the camerawork in the rowboat scene (you'll know which scene I mean). Watch the masterful way the director (John M. Stahl) combines POV and camera angle with what Tierney is doing (behind sunglasses) in the boat. It's chilling. She was nominated for a best actress Oscar and should've won. Wilde should also have gotten a nod for best supporting. Remember to Google the subtext, which has to do with her father. The supporting cast is outstanding. Gene Tierney also starred in what many consider the ultimate Noir, "Laura" by Otto Preminger. She was a knockout, but didn't stand on her looks, and never played the classic femme fatale. She had an upper class east coast accent, suggesting breeding, which may be why JFK once asked her to marry him, before he met Jackie. But there is always something slightly disturbing there, an aloofness, even in her friendliest (i.e. most accessible) roles. Like many great beauties, hers was a tragic life, though she ultimately overcame her demons after retiring from showbiz. "Leave Her to Heaven" is one of those movies you can watch over and over. I found it way back when I still lived with my Mom (Mom got me into old movies). Some of my favorites actresses, in addition to Gene Tierney, are Jennifer Jones, Linda Darnell, Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Bennett, Bette Davis (of course), Jeanne Crain, Ann Sheridan, Judy Garland and Ann Shirley. 

A second movie, watched last night on impulse, was "A Place in the Sun", in which Mongomery Clift, as the poor nephew of a wealthy dress manufacturer, gets a job at his uncle's factory. While training, he is given an inflexible rule: under no circumstances are the male employees to date or otherwise associate with the females outside of work, and because the gals outnumber the guys 9 to 1, Monty finds this rule difficult to obey. Soon, he's hitting on shipping clerk Shelly Winters. After a movie date, he walks her home, kisses her on her front porch, then the inevitable happens....and holy smokes she winds up pregnant. Not good for a poor single girl in 1951. Monty thinks he loves her, but now that she's knocked up, he decides that maybe he doesn't. But we don't know this yet.

The acting is amazing in this picture. Clift's character outwardly appears to be a good guy, raised in a religious home by his pious mother (the great Anne Revere), whom he phones regularly. Mom is the sister of the wealthy dress manufacturer. It was Mama who got him his job.

But once he finds out Shelly is pregnant, he's forced to grow up quickly, and he can't, so he sends her to a doctor for an abortion, but the doc, an older, principled man, counsels her against it, suggesting every way in which the baby might be saved. Shelly returns to Monty with the news, and he halfheartedly agrees to marry her, to "man up" in today's terminology. However, he has previously met, in passing, the daughter of a friend of his boss. Her name is Angela Vickers (a ravishing Elizabeth Taylor in her first dramatic role). She beguiles him from the first, and instead of doing right by Shelly Winters, Monty gradually ditches her, step-by-calculated-step, for the glamorous Angela, a move that will also make him an in-law to the family fortune if he plays his cards right. His deviousness thereafter seems accidental at times, as if Monty can't help himself, since Angela loves him back with unbridled passion. She even tells him to "say you can't live without me." He discovers he can't, which means poor Shelly and her unborn baby are doomed.

Man, this is one brutal flick. The trio of Clift, Taylor and Winters ranks high in the all-time acting list for multiple performances in one movie, and there is no bigger figure in the world of film than George Stevens, who - in addition to helming several classics and Oscar winners -  headed a World War Two Army unit that filmed D-Day, the liberation of Auschwitz, and the meeting of the US and Russian armies at the Elbe River. This info is included in an interview with George Stevens Jr. on the disc. Elizabeth Taylor is also interviewed. Her life was of course one of Hollywood's great train wrecks, and yet - as evidenced here by her debut dramatic performance at only 17 - she had the capacity to be an outstanding actress. She could've won a best actress Oscar for this film and would've deserved it more than for "Butterfield 8". Her demons got the best of her, likely for the usual reasons: a showbiz childhood in which she was given pills at MGM like Judy Garland, who died at 49. Taylor must've had an iron constitution to make it to 79, given the amount of drugs and alcohol she consumed, including an opioid addiction. Being married twice to Richard Burton didn't help, but as he reportedly told Monty Clift: "She likes me, dear boy, but she loves you". In the interview, Liz plays this down, calling Monty her lifelong friend, but they were really the loves of each other's lives, even though Monty was gay. 

Beyond all the human drama, though, is the artistry, which includes but is not limited to monumental acting skill. Taylor talks about this, detailing the minutia of hitting one's marks, memorizing lines, but she goes on to marvel at how Monty could literally bring sweat to his forehead if a scene called for such intensity. Watch him closely in this movie, the way he uses his eyes, facial muscles and posture. He invented James Dean. She says she wonders what was inside him, which we fans wonder about all great artists.

After not watching films for a while, I have now seen three in a little over a week, and all with similar themes of true and ongoing love, in each case fraught with obsession. This interests me because I chose them all on the spur-of-the-moment. "Leave Her to Heaven" and "A Place in the Sun" both feature climactic rowboat scenes (the lesson, haha, being "never get in a rowboat with Gene Tierney or Montgomery Clift"). But yeah, in all three, including "Fire Walk With Me", both the tenuousness and unbreakable pull of true love are explored in as much depth as you will see in any movie, including the probability that such love extends in an infinite line in both directions from the present life, before it began and after it will end, thus connecting kindred spirits for all time... 

I am currently in the process of formatting my book, learning how to "line space" on Google Docs. It's pretty easy once you get the hang of it. When you copy and paste your text from another source, as I am doing, it ends up "all spaced out" on Google, so you kind of have to close it up again, and it's an art form because you want to make your text rhythmic and "easy on the eye." Have you ever read (or tried to read), say, a Tome of 600-800 pages, perhaps a scientific or philosophical book, where the author, editor or publisher has crammed a solid block of words onto almost every page, with nary a "white space" between? No paragraph or dialogue breaks? That's excruciating on the eye and difficult to read. Try Oswald Spengler's "Decline of the West" on for size...yikes.

I've been studying a paperback I have here in The Tiny Apartment, "The Orchard" by Charles L. Grant, as a perfect example of how to line space. The late Mr. Grant (who I discovered through a Stephen King endorsement about ten years ago) was a wordsmith non pareil and a master of economy. His writing was simple, poetic and effective, and he (or his editor) keeps his word count to about 300 per page. There's plenty of white space, which makes his books very easy to read. FWIW, he called his style "quiet horror", and there's a story in "The Orchard" called "The Last and Dreadful Hour" that I've read several times now to try and get in in my DNA, because that's how it's done. Man, what a scary story.

Hopefully, I will have my book formatted by the end of this month, then all I'll have to do is convert it to Microsoft Word for uploading to Lulu, which (I think) is the publisher I'm going to use, for the simple reason that they offer hardcover and Amazon does not. I realize that by (potentially) forgoing Amazon and Kindle, I would lose their enormous marketing power, but since I'm a DIY operation anyway, with limited funds, I'm not gonna be buying any advertising (just like I'm not going to pay Hal Leonard 300 dollars per song for lyric licensing), and I'm not as concerned with sales as I am quality of product. I mean, don't get me wrong, I hope people will read, but it's probably gonna be word-of-mouth ("Hey, did you hear? Ad has a book out. Man, if you thought he was nuts before...."). I kid. It's a fun book, but it has some stream-of-consciousness sections that might make some readers ask "What the hey?" My first goal is to sell 100 copies. If I can do that, and maybe sell one to someone who doesn't know me, that would be great, and it would give me an outside chance to reach my second goal, which is to sell 1000 copies...

But it ain't about money because when you self-publish, you only make a few bucks per copy anyhow, so it's about readers. I just hope someone will read what I've written, and the more the merrier. 

 Anyhow, I'm also experimenting on Adobe, working on a book cover, and also drawing (or trying to draw) potential covers with my Prismacolor pencil set. We'll see how it all shakes out. As long as I don't get bogged down in any uploading problems related to being a Computer Caveman, I hope to have it published in August, on a specific date for a specific reason. As of now, none of this is official, so don't hold me to it, but I am gearing up for it and am determined to have it out by then. Maybe I'll make a Facebook page for the book when the time gets closer. 

Wish me luck.

It's important to see things in the Big Picture and the Micro Picture at the same  time. Ritchie Blackmore was once quoted as saying "People tell me I can see what's going to happen next, and I say, but it's so bloody obvious." Meaning, "how can anyone not see what's coming?" But most don't, because they are too busy doing burnouts in their high-acceleration cars, or, if they are older, they are worn down by the grinding-of-feet-on-concrete, instead of soil. Such is life in the modern predicament, ergo the solution of music and art as product of the human spirit. I wish you a nice Moon in Pisces evening.