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.