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.
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