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.