Dialog with Beauty

The Voice: Your life on earth will be, as always, the interval between two significant glances in a mundane mirror.

Beauty: What will I be? Tell me?

The Voice: At first I thought that you would go this time as an actress in the motion pictures but, after all, it’s not advisable. You will be disguised during your fifteen years as what is called a “susciety gurl.”

Beauty: What’s That?

(There is a new sound in the wind which must for our purposes be interpreted as The Voice Scratching its head.)

The Voice: (At Length) It’s a sort of bogus aristocrat.

Beauty: Bogus? What is Bogus?

The Voice: That, too, you will discover in this land. You will find much that is bogus. Also, you will do much that is bogus.

Beauty: (Placidly) It all sounds so vulgar.

The Voice: Not half as vulgar as it is. You will be known during fifteen years as a ragtime kid, a flapper, a jazz-baby, and a baby vamp. You will dance new dances neither more nor less gracefully than you danced the old ones.

Beauty: (In a whisper) Will I be paid?

The Voice: Yes, as usual—in love.

Beauty: (With a faint laugh which disturbs only momentarily the immobility of her lips) And will I like being called a jazz-baby?

The Voice (soberly) You will love it...

From The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald (copyright 1922)

Trestles to Nowhere

Remnants of our railroad past. The iron horse splendor of days gone by, when our nation and our city had factories that exported goods, a blue collar middle class that could work for a better future for their children, and trains that carried materials to make those good and then took those goods so merchants could bring them to market. The trestles are all that are left, in the shadows of the turnpike, the edge of the neighborhood where the tall grass grows. The teenagers hang out there now, no cops or parents or dreams to bother them, only trestles to nowhere

Veteran’s Day Parade

Veteran’s Day Parade in a nation fighting two wars with no armistice for either in sight. I was working in the NYC office, saw bits of the parade during my lunch break. This U-Haul float was bizarre and sad. Now, I have nothing against this company and I have nothing against companies participating in any parade, showing community support and getting some good publicity while doing so. That’s fine and dandy. And, U-Haul is pretty cool; it’s truly a national company that helps a nation perpetually on the move to be on that move. It was this float that gave me a sour feeling. The three women were singing Karaoke Andrew Sisters, Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree and Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy. Okay, I hate camp and camp was always presence in these songs even back when they were first popular, decades before they were popularized again by the Queen of Camp, Bette Midler. But this was different, fabricating nostalgia for when the entire nation welcomed and celebrated our soldiers. One reason for that nation-wide moment was that the entire nation, the rich and the poor, were involved in the sacrifice. The men were in battle, and you knew one of them and even if you didn’t, there was rationing, civil defense corps, a huge government-financed industrial revolution where Rosie made rivets. Daily life was filled with reminders. Everyone sacrificed knowing that millions of others were risking the ultimate sacrifice. Not today so much. Enlisted men and women (and their families) are a small percentage of our population. Maybe we feel bad when we see an Iraq or Afghanistan story in the news, but do we honestly feel as bad from that empathy than as we do from the potential of the current recession ruining the next ten years of our lives? Beyond putting We Support Our Troops magnetic ribbons on our cars, what else can we do? I don’t know the answer. But I sure feel depressed and disappointed seeing fabricated nostalgia for when we as a nation cared enough to honor those who fought for freedom in a contemporary Veteran’s Day Parade. We have to go back 70 years to find a symbol and music we can all coalesce around in a unified show of support for our Veterans. What is wrong with this picture? Why celebrate ancient USO tours when we can celebrate USO Tours of own era? I guess we need a reenactment of when we gave a shit about Veterans to substitute for honestly giving a shit. Shut up, give me one of those magnetic ribbons and lower my property taxes. I support the veterans of today , they say, as long as they keep out of my neighborhood!

Read the top line there, “Another Generation of Veterans. Right on! Right wing blow hards love to invoke the lie that it was the counter culture that shunned the soldiers returning from Vietnam. That’s not the truth at all. It was the so called Greatest Generation. The World War II vets who shunned them. They didn’t want those crazed, dirty long hairs in their VFW Hall. There were more members of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War than in the VFW. World War II Vets didn’t want those who didn’t fight in the big war into their club. Vietnam was a police action, not a real war. Besides, we lost. It was the counter culture who struggled to stop the war and get our boys home, which was what the soldiers wanted because they know pieces of crap like Westmoreland were lying to the nation at the expense of their lives. It was the counter culture who supported Vets in their struggles for decent healthcare and the recognition of the effects from Agent Orange and Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. It was the counter culture that gave us films like Coming Home, Apocalypse Now, Platoon or records like Born in the USA or books like Going After Cacciato or Paco’s Story, which publicized what the soldiers went through. It was a “counter culture” president, Bill Clinton, who transformed the Veterans Association from a national disgrace to one of the best healthcare systems in the world! No one needs it spelled out. The so-called Greatest Generation let the Vietnam Veterans down. Baby Boomer Right wingers may treat the officers who come from elitist families, like John McCain, with honor and respect. But the grunts—those who enlisted or who weren’t lucky enough to get deferments like the chicken hawks back in the day or who today join the national guard to help pay for college and then are in Iraq dodging roadside bombs—the right wing sees them as saps. It’s the Vietnam Veterans who are leading the nation in taking care of the soldiers coming home form Iraq and Afghanistan. They do not want to commit the same sins as their fathers did.

I did some googling on this Satans Lil Angel. It may have been restored by the Military Transportation Organization of New Jersey. It’s not clear whether they plan to restore apostrophes.

Every few minutes, the parade came to a halt and the cops blew their whistles and waved manically for people to cross. Most of the groups marching in the parade looked like this, local middle age and getting older fellows, dressed in some remnant of the fatigues they used to wear. Informal, blithely disorganized. Attention and respect, never too much, never too late. Veterans have told me of their constant concern that their war and/or military experience will dominate their lives. One day a year though, they’ll do some Veteran’s Day stuff. I imagine it’s about celebrating life and memories, marching for those not here to do so.

Dress Uniforms. I don’t think they were doormen who wandered down from the Dakota. I wondered if they were part of some contingent of current soldiers giving official props to the forbears or just some guys who got into their dress blues to watch the parade.

High School Marching Band. The other called themselves a drum and bugle corps, but they seemed to be doing more gymnastics. Can’t have a parade without them. Actually you can, but be pleasant to young people and maybe they’ll carry on the tradition of public displays of tribute to those who served in our military. Maybe they will be able to do with more sincerity than simplistic nostalgia for the patriotism of an older generation.

The Agitators Collective Show

I solved the secret of the unicorn. Yes, click here for the July post on the Unicorn painted on a fence somewhere west of Brunswick. The website on the fence, sort of like a photo credit, was for an artist organization called the Agitator’s Collective, and though I asked a couple of my J.C. art friends about this, no one knew. Early evening Tuesday, walking on Coles Street, I passed the 58 Art Gallery and saw these dudes setting up an exhibit, with this funny I “Heart” JC underwear, and turns out that Jason (standing) and Brendan are the ring leaders of the Agitators Collective. I’m not sure if a collective can have leaders (although there was a Borg Queen) so maybe they’re just head agitators. Their exhibit opens up at the gallery on Friday, November 13th. Besides the wall-sized underpants mural, there was a collage with some neat images, some of which I’ve seen around. Throughout their website, and on the collage, is what appears to be the group’s motto: “Who Will Save Beauty?” which I believe is also the name of the exhibit. That’s the kind of agitation our times can use.

Visit the Agitators Website
Visit the 58 Art Gallery Website

Or just walk North on Coles until you see large underpants (briefs not boxers).

Boys of Summer in November

Rooting for The Mets meant an early end to the Summer. Yankee & Philly Fans had Summer right into the first few days of November. A warm snap during the first post-World Series Weekend gave these Jersey City guys some extra Summer, They were playing a pick-up Softball game. I wasn’t sure if it was the last game of the ’09 season or the first game of the Winter League. Many of them wore uniform shirts, but of different Softball teams. It seemed like an exhibition game of sorts, but these guys were good. They love playing on a sunny afternoon no matter what the Calendar says.

Discovering The Sun Sessions: A True Story

This is an absolutely true story about how and when I discovered Elvis & The Sun Sessions. I hesitate to make a grandiose statement that this album changed my life, but it certainly has defined my musical tastes for most of my adulthood.

I’m not sure exactly what year, 80 or 81. I might have been a sophomore or junior. In college. I went to school in the rural southwestern region of New Jersey. It was Stockton college, maybe you’ve heard of it, must people have not, especially back then. I was a troubled teenager with a knack for getting into a lot of trouble and I was lucky to get into any school. I was basically ecstatic to get away from my parents and siblings and the hometown I had grown to despise, and had grown to despise me.

I loved Rock & Roll. I was a Dylan (Dylan, always Dylan) freak (still am) and in High School, it was the Grateful Dead, The Band, and Patti Smith. I also loved 50s rock. In 8th grade, my first “dance” was at this church-sponsored 50s revival dance. In the 70s there was a big 50s revival going on, sparked by Sha Na Na at Woodstock. Hell, even Phil Ochs caught the bug at Gunfight at Carnegie Hall, a record that I liked. Chuck Berry had that My Ding A Ling single, but everybody got this record with that song as well as the more respectable Chess Classics, which a lot of bands of that era covered anyway. There used to be things called cut-out bins in supermarkets, like Grandway, where I picked up a bunch of Byrds and others records—for 99 cents—and a two LP set by Howlin Wolf, all his Chess classics. I didn’t really know his name, but he had a bunch of songs done by the acts of that era. Truly revelatory. And, it had that 50s sound. I just always loved the way the instruments sounded in the recordings of that era.

One of the big Summer movies right before my Freshman year was The Buddy Holly Story. I loved that movie, as did my circle of friends. We saw it multiple times. We knew enough not to get the Gary Busey Soundtrack but the original Greatest Hits by Buddy Holly.

I was 20, finally away from my family, in a completely new environment than the suburbs in which I grew up. Meeting girls and talking about majors. I was majoring in Philosophy (with a minor in Economics and a concentration in writing, Jesus that sounds so silly now but it sounded impressive back then, around the keg or the bongs). My favorite records were: Street Legal, Marquee Moon, Give ‘Em Enough Rope, Rocket to Russia and Buddy Holly’s Greatest Hits. And, of course, I had at least 200 lps that had a lot of the 60s acts, Ochs, Jefferson Airplane, The Doors and assorted Punk/New Wave Acts. Buddy Holly was of course covered not just by the Grateful Dead, but by Blondie and the Knack.

My buddy Tony, with whom I attended many concerts during our dazed and confused high school days, went to New York University. This was basically just after the Punk Rock scene peaked, at least the New York birth had lost its luster, but some fun could still be had, like “smoke” and wander the streets, or up to museums like the Guggenheim, see Bands at nights, go to bookstores. Tony and I have been having a conversation that started when we were 13 and continues to this day.

I would take the two hour bus ride up, watch the pinelands and Jersey beach towns evolve into the Perth Amboy industrial north, glimpse the Statue of Liberty as the highway curved towards the Hudson and into a tunnel emerging into the grimy temple of the transitory, Port Authority Bus Terminal. Then, down to the subways, where I ascended into the Village, land of dreams—Piss Factory Bohemia Paradise.

For a semester or two, Tony had a had a part time job in the box office of this NYU sponsored theater company. I saw free plays, the first plays I had ever seen. My first theater experience. They were heavy stuff, like Oedipus at Colonous and Don Juan in Hell. I remember the names, although not the plays exactly. Tony would go to work, and I had to kill an hour or two walking around the Village. He always made sure I knew where I was going, where the theater was, since then and now, my sense of direction ranges from awful to nonexistent.

So, the night of the Oedipus play, I killed some time to this village record store—Bleeker Bobs. This was during the days of vinyl and only vinyl. . The store was filled with records, arranged like books in a library in addition to rows and rows of bins. The shelves on the walls were filled from floor to ceiling with LPs. The owner was on a ladder, putting away records or something. Everything had to be arranged systemically I guess.

They had a cut out bin, and I saw a record by Carl Perkins, Sun Sessions, for $2.99, which was about the only record I could afford at the time. I decided to buy it.

I get in line, which was one person long, behind a Japanese fellow. There was a guy behind the counter, and the owner of the store was in the back of the store. The Japanese guy in broken English is having an argument with the guy behind the counter and the guy behind the counter is shouting at the owner of the store, who is on a ladder arranging records on the top shelf. The owner shouted back. He was angry about something or another.

I’m just standing there, some shy dopey kid from New Jersey hoping I remember how to get from the store to the NYU theater. The Japanese guy, who is struggling with the language, is bickering with the guy behind the counter, who in turns yells to the owner way in the back of the store. The owner is standing on one of the top rungs, near the ceiling, and shouts a long spew of vulgarities. The clerk screams back at the owner, the Japanese guy screams at the clerk. Nobody else but those three screaming men and me are in the store. They are all getting really angry. The only time I had seen such anger, a fist fight ensued.

Eventually, the Japanese guy throws up his hands, leaves the records he was going to purchase on the counter, and storms out. The owner is still shouting from the back, although after the door shuts he calms down. The counter guy is shaking his head, upset. I put my $2.99 Carl Perkins cut-out on the counter and he looks at it, rings it up, says you’re really going to like this, and then puts the two records the Japanese guy was going to buy into the bag and winks at me, charging me only $2.99. I’d like to believe I was cool enough not to say a thing, but the reality was that I wasn’t sure what I was seeing, the wink, the other records in the bag. Half a block away, I looked at the records, and the receipt., which was still $2.99. The two other records? Elvis Sun Sessions and Elvis Golden Hits.

Now, at the time, which was only a few years after the death of the King, I only knew Elvis from those really crappy movies that used to play on the 4:30 Movie. I remember thinking these are worse than Gidget things. I knew nothing of his work. I may have had an inclanation towards 50s Rock & Roll, but Elvis? Wasn’t he friends with my childhood Moloch, Nixon?

I went to the play, it was this small basement, off-Broadway space. I remember having this great conversation with this NYU professor, a heavy set fellow who just engaged me in conversation. I knew nothing of Sophocles, but I was reading Plato. It was just one of those conversations one has at that age, one that you never forget. Then I watched the play, which was really hip, but don’t ask me for a synopsis. I liked it a lot though.

After the play Tony and I bought some beers and we went back to his tiny closet of an apartment to ‘smoke’ and listen to records. I told him of course about what happened, it was incredible. He says, “Well, since you got two records, you have to give me one.”

And I agreed, of course, that was the thing to do, something called Karma. He’s a buddy and if it wasn’t for him, I would not have been at Bleeker Bobs at that specific time when a sales clerk needed to get back at his boss. I decided to keep the Sun Sessions, since it had Mystery Train and I always loved the Band’s version on Moondog Matinee. Tony still had the LP when he lived in NYC, I’m not sure if made the trip to L.A.

I took Sun Sessions cause it had Mystery Train on it and I liked the Band’s version. I don’t remember listening to the records with Tony. At the time, I lived with two other guys, Dean and Drew, a drummer and guitarist in this house in Port Republic, New Jersey, deep in the pine barrens. We had a punk rock band we called The Urgency. I played rhythm guitar because I never could progress beyond making chords with my left fingers and strumming away with my right hand.

As I pry into my mind to peer into my recollections, I’m sitting around listening to the Sun Sessions with Dean and Drew for the first time, for all of us. We immediately play it twice. I listened to it again and again for days, days. It soon became one of my favorite records. By the end of the 80s, I’m a diehard Elvis fan—of his music—I had some greatest hits and other cassettes. In the 90s, I picked up all the box sets of CDS, even most recently the Gospel Collection. I love all of Elvis, but the Sun Sessions, that’s a personal touch stone. Every time I listen to them, I’m fascinated again.

I can still see me and the college buddies, sitting in that living room, paint peeling in gashes off the wall, battered, flea-infested furniture, upholstery stained with bong water and beer, and hearing Milk Cow Boogie, the faux beginning and Elvis saying, hold on fellas, let’s get real gone for a change and then they kick in. The Beatles ruled our childhoods, classic rock our High School years until the liberation of Punk. The Sun Sessions linked these various streams, crystallized them, made them not as disparate and contradictory that the times and the marketing departments of the record companies and radio stations wanted us to believe. Another realization was the sheer awesomeness that is and always will be the music of Elvis—this was the same drugged-out fatso who made shitty movies? It was just so astounding. The innuendo or dare I say, symbolism, of the Milk Cow song, or Baby, Let’s Play House, with Elvis repeating the first syllable of Baby in an endless stream that was certainly as part of the mania of lust the song infers.

I’ve never come around to appreciating the flicks, but then and there I began to understand Elvis, the kind of Artist he was, and the weird, overpowering falsehood of celebrity. I’ve come to believe, that He Is The King, and what that really means.

Theories abound as to what was the first Rock & Roll song. Most are good theories. I’m no musicologist, but I do have my own opinion. Elvis Sun Sessions are the first Rock & Roll, that’s my historical analysis. Elvis, with Scotty Moore and Bill Black were essentially country musicians, albeit ones with big ears who were well aware of, and motivated to become adept at, the “race” music of the time, Gospel, R&B and Blues. When they play, Good Rockin Tonight, the two rivers of American Music, cross and this gave birth to Rock & Roll—the melding of Country and Jump music. Sun Sessions, by all accounts, where a loose affair, with Phillips basically pressing the record button. Research shows this to be apocryphal mythmaking, but there has to be a kernel of truth to it because it sounds so spontaneous, an accident that everybody immediately clued into and rode it for all it was worth. You hear these guys discovering something—and no matter how many times you hear the Sun Sessions, or how many decades have passed since the recordings were made—you still hear their making that discovery. Take a listen to Mystery Train and keep an ear out for the bridge in the middle of the song. Kicking everything into gear is Elvis, strumming powerful rhythm guitar, lifting the tempo by the necessary increment that transforms the moment into timeless musical ecstasy. Only a few seconds long, the guitar by Elvis here is one the best examples of rhythm guitar in Rock & Roll ever burned into wax. As Johnny Cash pointed out in one of his autobiographies, what makes the Sun Sessions better than anything RCA released is the guitar playing by Elvis.

The discovery that was made in that Memphis studio, I as a listener experienced as well, and I believe all listeners do (or will or should). The listener is beholding the unfolding nativity of Rock & Roll, a moment so powerful it has persists in numerous incarnations to our current era.

I’ve read at least a dozen books on Elvis—even prepared a book proposal once with Tony (he’s a lawyer) about an aspect of Elvis that never quite got off the ground, but took a lot of research, research that I gladly conducted—and as mentioned, I have listened to just about everything. He could never quite replicate the Sun Sessions, although components of the recordings—like that powerful velvet voice—were actually presented in better contexts later in the career. As much as being a great, landmark recording of Rock & Roll, the Sun Sessions are also a document of the first discovery of that genre. When I heard it way back then, that discovery, so beguiling and uncanny, was part of my own discovery. I knew nothing about the Sun Sessions or their significance. The discovery the listener makes is the same discovery Elvis is making.

The Sun Sessions belong to what I consider the deepest records. Now, there are many landmark recordings, many watershed moments, but they are not always the deep, by which I mean that they transcend music and are comparable to the great literature of masters such as Melville, Rimbaud, Blake, Huysman, Faulkner, Raymond Carver, Flannery O’Connor, Whitman, to name a few. In other words, comparable to Shakespeare and with Shakespeare, can stand next to Scripture. These are recordings to go Deep into the soul of humanity, speak about and to the human condition, Other recordings in this category, include but are not limited to, Horses, Blood on the Tracks, In The Wee Small Hours, What’s Goin On, Darkness on the Edge of Town, Love Supreme, The Hissing of Summer Lawns (and everything by Howlin Wolf and most everything by Muddy Waters!)

Please note: These are not just landmark recordings, or a best of list. These are records that transcend music. I would have included several other Dylan recordings, but didn’t want to cloud the issue further. Feel free to ad which ever one you like, you will not be wrong.

Anyway, the Sun Sessions belongs on this list. And, I GOT IT FREE! My love of 50s music spread to R&B, Rockabilly, Country and Jazz. The only causality of this story was Carl Perkins. I liked the record, like his music, but I never really picked up anything else or bought a CD version. I do not blame Carl, but the Elvis Sun Sessions—and the way I got it—how could Carl ever match up?

Big Pepsi

Super-sized Bottle Cap in a window above Iris Records