Bromancing the Stone: Roger Stone dishes on Trump, Florida and political combat

“They may call me a dirty trickster. I’m a real partisan; I’ve got sharp elbows. But there’s on thing that isn’t in my bag of tricks: treason.” Roger Stone has never backed away from a fight; indeed, he almost relishes starting them. Stone has been a human melee weapon, wielded to great effect in some of the biggest political brawls of the past half-century, dating back to his earliest years in the crucible that was the Nixon White House.

“1968 and 2016 were very similar, in many ways,” he says. “Just as leaders, Donald Trump and Nixon are similar. They’re both really pragmatists, neither is an ideologue, they’re both essentially populists with conservative instincts. … Both of them are very persistent, both of them had to come back from disaster.” The opposition is praying for further disaster, and they may well get their wish. To that end, Stone is one of several Trump affiliates under investigation for their dealings with various foreign nationals whose efforts helped facilitate Trump’s victory.

Stone’s newest book, “The Making of the President 2016: How Donald Trump Orchestrated a Revolution” (Skyhorse Publishing) lifts its title from the seminal series written every four years between 1960 and 1980 by journalist Theodore H. White (1915-1986), a quintessential DC Beltway insider who is, no doubt, spinning in his grave as we speak. One can’t help but view this choice as high-level trolling of the first order, which is his forte.

The subtitle is cunningly phrased, as every conceivable meaning of the words “orchestrated” and “revolution” seem to fit in this case. Speaking of which, Stone’s book notes the crucial role of one revolution—that waged in the Democratic primary by Bernie Sanders—in helping foreshadow the future president’s. “In many ways, Trump and Bernie, they’re riding the same wave. Donald’s voters think these trade deals have fucked America, and Bernie’s voters think these trade deals have fucked America. … And also, new voters: Both Trump and Bernie Sanders attract new voters in the primaries. It’s just more people upset about the so-called ‘rigged system’. Bernie rags constantly about the corruption and the power of Wall Street; so does Trump. So I think they’re very similar.”

This similarity was noted early on, and was key to Trump’s victory, according to Stone. “In order to win, Trump had to win three of ten Sanders voters, and he did.” Despite being a nominal frontrunner, Hillary Clinton was burdened with a top-heavy hierarchical campaign, largely disconnected from political reality. For all her billions spent, that money was squandered on failed strategies and poor logistics, reaching a peak as Trump barnstormed battleground states in the closing days, while Hillary had already begun taking victory laps. The Clintons expended so much time and energy fending off the Sanders insurgency that they never really got a handle on what awaited them in the general.

“I think they made the exact same mistake as did Jimmy Carter,” says Stone, who worked for Ronald Reagan in 1980. “The Clintons misunderstood Trump’s appeal. They didn’t think that his simple messaging would be credible; they didn’t understand that Trump talks more like average people than elites. The underestimated both his skill as a candidate, they underestimated his skill as a communicator, and they underestimated his ability to land a punch.”

When Trump first declared for president in 2015, there was almost no one who thought the man had any chance at all—except for Stone, who had raised the very possibility as early as 1988, when he arranged a meeting between Trump and his earliest political benefactor, Richard Nixon. “It certainly seemed possible to me, but let’s recognize that I’m a professional political operative, and I had at that point nine individual presidential campaigns in which I’m playing a senior role as experience. Plus I’ve known Donald Trump for 39 years; I have a very keen knowledge of his management style, his style on the stump, so I understand a lot of the basis of his appeal. … Trump is a giant, and he ran against a lot of career politicians who were essentially pygmies.”

As usual, Florida was a decisive factor in the election, and Stone expects that to continue in 2018. “Florida has proven once again to be the ultimate purple state. It truly is a state that’s always competitive in a presidential race, and less competitive, leaning slightly Republican, in a non-presidential race. The Democrats in Florida, because they have been out of power in the legislature so long, and because they have (generally-speaking) not done well in local offices, they really have no bench. They are yet to come up with a candidate who is a viable candidate for governor. It’s WAY too early to try to determine how Trump’s candidacy will impact the Florida electorate; it’s an entirely open question. Trump could be exceedingly popular, if he sticks to his agenda and gets things done by the mid-terms, or he could be unpopular, theoretically, for any number of reasons. But in politics, a year is a lifetime.”

Speaking of Florida, 2018 will be the first year in nearly three decades in which the shadow of Jeb Bush will not be blanketing the states political landscape, and by Stone’s reckoning, you can thank Trump for putting our former governor into permanent retirement. “If Jeb had stayed in the race, and there had been another debate, Trump was prepared to say, ‘Jeb, the [FDLE] had over 22 individual tips about the 9/11 hijackers training in Sarasota; you seem to have done nothing with that information. Don’t you think you could have stopped the attack on America if you had actually done something?’ That was coming, and I think Jeb knew it was coming, and of course that’s all documentable. Only Trump would’ve had the courage to do something like that.”

Today, at 64, Stone is prepping for what may be his biggest fight to date, waged on behalf of his good friend, President Donald J. Trump, whose election was somewhat controversial, to say the least. Although Stone has not officially worked for Trump since last fall, he remains very much in the mix, as far as the president’s wider circle of advisors and adjutants. Indeed, the fact is that the very idea of Donald Trump as POTUS originates in the always-fertile mind of Roger Stone, who never stops thinking of new angles and novel approaches to shaking up the political status quo. Of course, a lot of folks really wish he would stop, but after last year, that seems unlikely.

Whereas most folks tend to get all shy and introspective when talk of subpoenas begins, Stone is embracing his opportunity to face off with congressional Democrats before a live, mainstream audience. Having served in the White House under presidents Nixon and Reagan, Stone is by no means a stranger in Beltway circles, but his appearance at the Capitol will mark, for many national observers, their initial introduction to a man that, without whom, everything would be different today.

Stone has still not appeared before Congress at press-time, but he has made no secret of his enthusiasm. “They dragged my name through the mud in a public hearing. Several statements made by members were just flatly incorrect, others were chronologically out of order, and still others were written in such a pejorative way that I must have the opportunity to take that language and re-tell it my way, and then bitch-slap the member for his partisanship. … Here’s my proposal: Waive your congressional immunity, so I may sue you, and we’ll let a judge and jury decide if you have slimed me. And you know they won’t do that.”

sheltonhull@gmail.com

March 28, 2017

 

Album review: “Flight of the Vultures” (Parsons/Buckner/Barlow)

“Flight of the Vultures” is a snapshot of a band in ecstasis, a showcase for three jazz masters at the height of their creative powers. Trumpeter Longineu Parsons, who just recently earned his doctorate from the University of Florida, is joined by longtime collaborator Von Barlow and bassist Lawrence Buckner on a searing set of nine tunes, of which all but one are original compositions. Barlow and Buckner are well-known to local audiences from their longtime residency at the Casbah in Avondale on Sunday nights; with tenor saxophonist Eric Riehm, they comprised one of the best jazz groups working anywhere in the world.

The album starts out hot with Parsons’ own “Hannibal’s March part II”, then gets downright searing on the classic Coltrane tune “Mr. P.C.”, named for the late great bassist Paul Chambers (who played alongside Trane in the Miles Davis quintet of the 1950s). Barlow’s ride cymbal carries through into “Flute Song”, which leads into “Forward”. Buckner’s adept handling of the upright bass is featured prominently here, laying down a fantastically funky backdrop for Barlow’s tom-toms and the inimitable flute-work of the leader—shrill trills that chill and thrill as thoroughly as when you see him live, as I did at Jazzland Café just a few days ago.

From there, the band moves into their “Orgasma Suite”. Wilhelm Reich would be proud. 20 minutes of slow rising, brooding backbeats, building to a boil behind and the piercing wail of arguably the most underrated trumpeter of his generation. The recording is perfect, evocatively atmospheric; you can practically hear the shadows in the room. The last two tracks “Deeply” and “Searching”, sound like their titles, and make a fine aperitif after the stiff fluidity of the rest of the set. Overall, of my favorite albums by three of my favorite people. Good stuff…

http://tribaldisorder.com/ 

Tony Allen: an Autobiography of the Master Drummer of Afrobeat, by Tony Allen and Michael E. Veal. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 192 pp, illustrated.

“There would be no Afrobeat without Tony Allen,” said the late great Fela Kuti (1938-1997), leader of the Africa 70—originally Koola Lobitos, later the Nigeria 80. Together he and Allen rose together from their early years in Nigeria’s ‘Highlife” scene to the peaks of global prominence, together they built one of the hardest-hitting and smoothest-swinging big-bands of all time—a band as tight as Ellington’s or Benny Goodman’s, yet as expansive in sound as the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis group–and that’s only speaking as far as the jazz aspects of it. There are infinite other angles, as the reader likely knows already.

As weird as Sun Ra and as socially-relevant as James Brown, Fela’s music has only grown in popularity since his death, and the most indispensable component of his singular sound was his drummer, Tony Allen, whose memoir was published last month. His co-author, Michael E. Veal, previously wrote a well-received biography of Fela, so he entered the project already prepared and predisposed to tell Allen’s story with the fidelity it merits.

Tony Oladipo Allen was born in Nigeria’s capital city of Lagos on August 12, 1940—well, that’s what Wikipedia says; Allen declares his birthday as July 20 on page 21. The book’s first 40-plus pages covers that early phase in his career before he linked up with Fela. Both men were highly influenced by jazz, and some of my favorite stuff in the book comes from this early session, where Allen describes the evolution of his own inimitable drum style in the context of drummers who came before—giants like Gene Krupa, Art Blakey, Philly Joe Jones, Elvin Jones and Max Roach. This section also covers serves as a nice overview of what the Nigerian music scene was like before Fela’s crew became the dominant band of that era, in the process bringing Nigerian culture into the mainstream for the first time. The pages are peppered with long-forgotten names, and in that sense the authors have really done a service, not just for musicologists but for their country.

His career as a professional musician began around 1960. One of his earliest serious gig was drumming for Sivor Lawson and the Cool Cats when they opened for Louis Armstrong in 1960; he notes the great impression left his Pops’ drummer, Danny Barcelona (1929-2007), who became one of his first of his many friends working in western music. Allen himself would later become a major player in the fusion of African and Euro-American musical concepts, starting with the infamous Fela recordings with Ginger Baker, the former drummer for Cream. Baker lived in Nigeria for the first half of the 1970s, and his collaboration with Allen and Africa 70 became one of the great “percussion discussions” ever put to wax; their 16-minute drum battle (from 1978) is appended to the CD reissue of Fela’s album Live! (Capitol/EMI, 1971).

Personally, my first experience with Tony Allen’s solo material came via the World Music section of the Jacksonville Public Library, downtown. There was a compilation CD of music from Nigeria, and one of the tracks remains my favorite of his: “Get Together”, whose locomotive beat, fat bass lines and vocal harmonies—understated, but resonant—offered an ideal introduction to the man’s work. I still put it on mixes and such, a decade later.

Casual fans may recall the song “Heat”, by Common, an instant-classic from his Like Water For Chocolate album (MCA, 2000); was built around a beat J. Dilla sampled from Allen’s “Asiko”, track one on 1999’s Black Voices.

As it turns out, Allen’s experience extends well before and after his tenure (1968-79) with Africa 70, and this book really helps flesh out that history. The concert in Berlin that yielded the drum battle with Baker in 1978 was also Allen’s last as a member of Africa 70. By that point, the band had undergone significant trauma, much of it focused on the leader himself, who had made powerful enemies with his brazen critiques of Nigeria’s military dictatorship. Only by coincidence was Allen not at Fela’s home (known as the “Kalakuta Republic”) when it was raided by a thousand soldiers of the Nigerian military in 1977; it one of the most brutal examples of state-sponsored suppression of art in the post-war era. Fela was nearly beaten to death, his life only spared by an officer’s intervention, but the compound was burned to the ground along with his studio, his instruments and master-tapes. Worst of all, Fela’s mother was defenestrated through of a second-story window, causing fatal injuries, and one of the soldiers shit on her face afterwards. Neither Fela nor his music were ever the same again, and neither would Tony Allen.

Allen’s final break with Fela comes on page 127, and the remaining 58 pages covers the years after, as the author became an ambassador of Afrobeat and a touring act in great demand around the world. His solo work displays the same inimitable rhythms he pioneered with Fela, but the music itself is quite different; Allen long ago began to fuse his native sounds with the emergent aesthetic of hip-hop resulting in some of the most compelling music of the past 30 years.

There’s really very little, if anything, to complain about here, but for exactitude’s sake, a few quick points. First, this book would’ve benefitted from a few sparse footnotes, offering biographical details of some of the artists Allen mentions in the text. Many of the names will be familiar to casual fans, but a lot of them will be unknown and obscure even to obsessive fans of Afrobeat; in some cases, there is literally no information available about them at all. The book walks us back through the rise and evolution of the music, but footnotes would’ve helped flesh out the narrative and situate Allen’s work more comfortably in its broader context. To that end, while the book has a decent selected discography also could’ve used a sessionography—although that, too, is a minor complaint, since that information is available online, for anyone who might be interested.

All in all, Allen and Veal have combined to tell one of the most remarkable stories of the last 40 years of music history. They have also managed to flesh out the history of a man who has never quite been recognized for the vastness of his influence. Ultimately, Tony Allen deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as legends like Clyde Stubblefield, Al Jackson Jr. and Bernard Purdie—a true innovator, and master of a sound that would simply not exist without his efforts. That is a fact, and hopefully it will become even more apparent as time goes by.

Book review: “The Squared Circle”

The Squared Circle: Life, Death and Professional Wrestling, by David Shoemaker, aka “The Masked Man”. New York: Gotham Books/Penguin. 386pp, ill.

David Shoemaker’s The Squared Circle is only the latest entry into a literary market already well-saturated with books about professional wrestling. Most of these books have been hagiographical scribblings by ghostwriters, passing themselves off as memoir; these books are useful, given their access to the subject at hand, but they often fail to pass muster in terms of actual readability. Others have been written by outsiders, by fans and nominal wrestling “journalists”, some of whom are legit, while others are hacks who lucked into a small-press book deal.

Shoemaker’s book, however, is something of an anomaly within the genre—a full-length, hardcover book about wrestling published by a major imprint (or, at least, a subsidiary thereof) and handled with the sort of care that makes clear that, however bizarre and ridiculous pro-wrestling can be, the author retains real passion for a business that, frankly, makes no sense to the average person. In entertainment terms, pro-wrestling may be the ultimate niche market.

“This is a book about dead wrestlers,” he writes in the introduction, as if he’s offering the reader a spoiler alert for a pre-taped wrestling show that you personally attended. That is, there is no way to tell the story of professional wrestling over the past 30 years with any kind of historical accuracy without directly addressing the unprecedented wave of premature death that has befallen the business in that time, starting with that of David Von Erich in February 1984 and culminating with what the wrestling media now euphemizes as the “Benoit Family Tragedy” in June 2007.

Writing as “The Masked Man”, Shoemaker has done some of the most interesting writing about pro-wrestling in recent years, working mostly for Grantland and Deadspin. This book is not an anthology of that material; it’s rather takes a fresh look at a subject that has already been covered extensively from almost every conceivable angle. The fact that he manages to consistently generate new original insights speaks to his skill as a writer and, more important, his almost-intuitive grasp of what makes the business click. Shoemaker is at his best when explaining why certain characters resonated with fans as well as they did, breaking down their inner motivations and our own subconscious affinity with their message. Basically, he writes like someone who actually respects pro-wrestling; imagine that!

To say that The Squared Circle is a page-turner would be a gross understatement. Making the point more finely, it’s one of the more interesting wrestling books ever written by a non-wrestler. It has a good bit of new material that even seasoned fans will be unfamiliar with, but much of the stories spin around plots well-ingrained in the memories of casual fans from the ‘80s and ‘90s boom periods. Even so, Shoemaker renders all his information in a peppy, easy-to-digest style that, in itself, offers an object lesson in how the wrestling business has managed to achieve a new level of mainstream appeal that, while not as lucrative as in previous eras, is far more pervasive in the long-term, as well as the tragic price that so many stars paid for their success.

November 27, 2013

sheltonhull@gmail.com

Notes on Scared Rabbits, PopNihil, etc.

Track list and flyer…

Scared Rabbits/Burnt Hair/Vase/Cyril/Andy Borsz/Vile Wine

CoRK Arts District, 2689 Rosselle Street

Friday, August 9, 9pm

Artist Morrison Pierce has been performing and recording as “Scared Rabbits” for nearly a decade, but Darkness To Black marks the group’s first official full-length release. Although he’s already sold couple dozen copies of the album to friends and patrons, its formal debut occurs as part of an event being held at CORK on Friday, August 9 featuring five other bands. (They will also be doing a release party at Rain Dogs on the 22nd.) I met him there, a few days ago, to listen to the album and talk about its development.

While a number of talents have been involved in Scared Rabbits shows over the years (most notably Jay Peele and the late great Brian Hicks), the current incarnation as documented on the album features Pierce on vocals atop instrumental production by Chance Isbell, who’s been involved in the project for about a year. It’s just the latest multimedia collaboration between the two, both men are visual artists by trade, and both fixtures in the CORK scene from practically its inception.

Morrison Pierce, occupying his studio

The album was recorded entirely on four-track tape, and was culled together from hours of material, which will eventually spawn further albums. Tracks range from 2:21 to 12:44, and the overall noisy freak-out vibe is tempered (however briefly) by moments of genuine beauty. For me, highlights include the opening track, “America Loves You”, a tour-de-force running nearly 12 minutes, built around vocal samples of politicians’ overly sunny spin on what the artists view as a society in economic and moral decay. And then there’s the simultaneously  offensive-yet-funny “Lesbian Chicken”, which is the closest thing they have to a radio single—though really not that close.

Chance Isbell, setting that trap…

The evening also sees the release of new product by the local Popnihil label, whose founder Matthew Moyer will be performing as Burnt Hair with Trenton Tarpits. “The genesis of popnihil was really just a dissatisfaction with the creeping, all-consuming digitization of the parts of popular culture that I liked best (music, books, magazines),” writes Moyer, “and a realization that if I truly valued the physical artifact and truly wanted to stand against a sterile future of mp3s and ebooks, it was time to put my money where my mouth was and help make tangible, physical objects. popnihil began with Jason Brown and I making collaborative zines, and I started releasing cassettes soon after, just to get the music of Keith Ansel/Mon Cul out there. Since then, I’ve released a number of other tapes by Jacksonville-area musicians operating on the harsher fringes of sound. And zines, always zines.”

For Moyer, who spends his days toiling at the Jacksonville Public Library, and certain nights hosting “Lost In the Stacks” for WJCT, popnihil has been a labor of love for the music, and his friends who are involved in making it. The CORK show will function in part as a showcase for that whole scene, a scene whose potency has only increased over this long, hot summer. “The product being released this Friday includes the new cassette by Voids, ‘Burial In The Sky’,” he writes. “Voids is the project of noise prodigy Jon Thoreson, and it’s really his most fully realized work yet. Beautiful, spare soundscapes give way to discipline-and-punish grind. And he collaborated with members of NON, Swans, Chelsea Wolfe, and Tim and Eric’s Awesome Show. No foolin’. Then there’s the debut demo from local garage savages The Mold. They make a mighty, blown-out racket with just keyboard, bass, drums and snotty (oh so snotty) vocals. Fourteen minutes of pure juvenile delinquency on a snot-colored cassette, that repeats on the other side. Just like ‘Reign In Blood’ does. They’re not going to be a local secret much longer. And I need to give another mention to the new Game Show tape, which came out at the end of July. It’s Josh Touchton and Zach Ferguson’s severely damaged hip-hop project. It’s kinda the line in the sand between people who say they like weird music and people who REALLY like freaked out music. Also the new popnihil music zine is coming out, if I can get it together in time. And, of course, the last remaining copies of tapes by Encounters and Beach Party will be on offer.”

So, that’s up to a half-dozen new recordings available that night, not to mention whatever else the other bands bring with them; Moyer “handpicked all the bands for Friday’s lineup,” and is far better equipped to describe them than I: “There’s the aforementioned Voids for starters, as this is the their tape release party. Burnt Hair, my coldwave/goth project with Trenton Tarpits of 2416/MREOW, will play a set. Vase (formerly Mohr) is John Ross Tooke’s project, first show of 2013, and it will be full-on overcast industrial nightmarescapes. Andy Borsz from the noise juggernaut Slasher Risk (and new Jax resident) is going to play a rare solo set, and you never what to expect from him. I’m excited that some friends from Austin are going to play this show as a one-off: Cyril is the solo endeavor of Aaron from Weird Weeds, and it’s just evil electronic hypnosis, and Vile Wine is a collaboration between Aaron and Sheila from No Mas Bodas/Suspirians, and it’ll be total armageddon, for certain. Closing out the night will be cult volume abusers Scared Rabbits. What will they sound like? Who will be in the band for the night? One never knows….”

https://www.facebook.com/events/618494358185002

 

Show flyer

 

sheltonhull@gmail.com

August 9, 2013

Interview with Alessandra Altamura, author of “Music Club Toscana”

Music Club Toscana: Music time stories, by Alessandra Altamura. Piombino, Italy: Edizioni IL FOGLIO. 192 pp. www.ilfoglioletterario.it

It was mid-afternoon in late March when the postman’s knock interrupted my nap. (Being in journalistic exile leaves much room for napping, and other forms of self-reflection.) The package I signed for had ten stamps on it—five depicting the Terme Di Bonifacio VIII, and a row of five up top depicting the late singer Nino Reitano (1944-2009)—totaling 12.50 Euros, the equivalent of $16.07. Interesting: I hadn’t even opened the package yet, and I’d already learned something! That was to prove a useful omen.

Inside the envelope was a fresh new copy of the debut collection of 22 short-stories by Alessandra Altamura, an Italian-born literature teacher who turns 40 this November and graduated from the Liceo Classico Macchiavelli and the University of Pisa. The contents were pleasant, but of no surprise; I’d been waiting for it for a few days. Altamura, the author, had sent it off from her home in Lucca (near Pisa), in Tuscany in the great historic country of Italy on March 12. Two weeks days to travel across the Mediterranean, the European continent and the Atlantic Ocean seemed quite reasonable.

I was looking forward to seeing it for myself, and I was in no way disappointed. Music Club Toscana: Music time stories is a labor of love in the most literal sense; it combines her dual passions for music and her own native culture. Translated from the original Italian, the writing is vibrant and briskly-paced; the text moves fast over 192 pages. The book’s contents are like its packaging: smooth, compact and colorful. Speaking as someone who no longer makes regular practice of reading much fiction, I enjoyed the book immensely. After reading her book, I got the chance to briefly interview Ms. Altamura via email from New York City, where she arrived to begin her book tour last week.

SDH: How long did it take to write this book? Where did the idea come from?

AA: I wrote my book in a few months, less than one year, but I collected the material for these stories [over] my whole life. The idea comes from my love for music, especially live music. I have many friends who are musicians, also my brother plays the guitar. Other than that, music clubs are full of stories and characters.

SDH: Are your characters all real people, all fictional, or a combination?

AA: Some characters are real, with their real names, some are fictional and some are a mix of reality and fantasy.

SDH: What kind of music do you like?

AA: The first story was born in a club in Florence where my friends usually play, then came all the others. In the book there are many kinds of music, because each person needs a different kind of music. Personally I prefer jazz, the great songwriters and in general a music that makes people meet and think.

SDH: Which of the venues did you visit first?

AA: I visited first the places closest to my town. Lucca, Pisa, Florence. Then I went to the farest, like Siena, Arezzo or Grosseto, just to have a complete vision for my book.

SDH: Which venue in the book is your favorite?

AA: My favorite venue and also my favorite story is the one that takes place at Le Murate, that was the prison of Florence before becoming a club.

SDH: Tell me a bit about the lady who translated the book into English…

AA: Shayna Hobbs is a friend of a friend, who lived some time in Italy and taught me English. Now they live in Georgia and they will host me after Florida. oh, this is a funny thing, because each story is translated from a different friend. So in English there are really many characters and voices. Then a lady read it to see if there were mistakes. Maybe there are still some mistakes, because we did all quickly when I was leaving to London, but the English version is a proof that my friends love me…

SDH: Do you plan to write more books? Have you decided on the topic yet?

AA: I think to write another book, with stories that take place all over the world. In fact I’m trying to travel and know better other countries.

SDH: Who are your favorite Italian musicians?

AA: My favourite Italian musicians are the big songwriters, who are also poets: de Andrè, Fossati, Guccini, De Gregori and others. I went to the concerts of many of them and I liked much, but I’m sorry, because I never listened to a concert of de Andrè, before he died.

[She will be at Chamblin’s Uptown, in downtown Jacksonville, on Sunday, July 21 to sign copies and give a presentation on her work. If you’re into travel literature or jazz, it’s well-worth checking out.]

sheltonhull@gmail.com

July 19, 2013

Gang War (1940) [a.k.a. Crime Street]

Really grimy, even by Harlem 1940 standards. Not sure why this film isn’t a classic; it hits the marks like Brody in Japan. Star Ralph Cooper went on to become the long-time host of “Amateur Night” at the Apollo…

“Cast (IMDB): Ralph Cooper as Bob ‘Killer’ Meade; Gladys Snyder as Maizie ‘Sugar’ Walford; Reginald Fenderson as Danny (Meade’s chief henchman) (as Reggie Fenderson); Laurence Criner as Lew Baron (as Lawrence Criner); Monte Hawley as Bill (Baron’s henchman); Jess Lee Brooks as Lt. Holmes (as Jesse Brooks); Johnny Thomas as Phil (Meade’s driver); Maceo Bruce Sheffield as Bull Brown (as Maceo Sheffield); Charles Hawkins as Tip (Brown henchman); Bobby Johnson as Waxy (Baron henchman); Henry Roberts as Slim (Meade henchman); Harold Garrison as Slicum (Meade’s publicity man); Marie Bryant as Dance Specialty (uncredited); Willie Covan as Dance Specialty (uncredited); Louise Franklin as Phil’s Girl (uncredited); Halley Harding as Baron Henchman (uncredited); Ray Martin as Man in Bar (uncredited); Ernest Morrison as Gang Member (uncredited); Edward Thompson as Man in Courtroom (uncredited).”  

“Last Splash” at 20: The Breeders Ride Again

Original cover of “Last Splash”, 1993.

Full disclosure: From a personal and professional perspective, there is no way to overestimate the significance of the Breeders in my own life and career. If music is a drug, and there have been studies suggesting that the two affects part of the brain in similar ways, then the Breeders were my marijuana, my gateway drug—at least, to the circles in which they ran and rotated. As such, I was thrilled to hear that the original lineup—Kim and Kelley Deal, Josephine Wiggs and Jim McPherson—was reuniting this year to tour in support of the 20^th anniversary of their most well-known album, 1993’s Last Splash (4AD/Elektra).

The “classic” lineup. Front: Jim McPherson and Josephine Wiggs. Back: Kelley and Kim Deal.

The album, which was a touchstone of the “alternative rock” scene of that era, has been re-released in stunning new form by 4AD’s Vaughan Oliver, who’s been established as a master of album cover design and packaging for a quarter-century. The new “LSXX” version contains 46 tracks, spread across three CDs for a very reasonable price of $23; the same material is also available on a sumptuous seven-LP box set for $90—worth every penny for a serious fan. Both versions of the box set contain not only the entire original Last Splash album, but other key documents from that time, including: the full 16-track Stockholm concert that was previously only available in truncated form through the Breeders Digest fan club; 14 tracks recorded in settings ranging from demos and BBC/Peel sessions to guest appearances on compilations like the epochal No Alternative; and all four of the four-song EPs that came immediately before and after the album—1992’s Safari and 1994’s Head To Toe, in addition to the singles for “Cannonball” and “Divine Hammer”. There’s also a 24-page booklet.

Last Splash LSXX

LSXX, interior…

At this writing, the box-set is in pre-order; the CDs start shipping on May 14, but the vinyl doesn’t go out until June/July. For me, as a longtime fan who’s not gotten my copy yet—although “fan” seems imprecise; the old wrestling term “mark” seems more appropriate—just reading through the tracklist brings back fond memories of not only the music itself, but of the often extreme lengths I once went to in order to obtain this material in the good ol’ days before the Internet, before e-commerce, eBay, Amazon and automated shipping.

For me, a Breeders run usually meant a trip to historic Five Points in Jacksonville, the longtime hub of my city’s alternative/indie scene before the action began diversifying into downtown and Springfield while crossing over into other genres. Last Splash was a hit, so it wasn’t necessary to hit up spots like Now Hear This!, since it could be had at the mall, but I got it from there anyway; it was my first trip to that neighborhood, and I also bought the excellent Copacetic album by Velocity Girl that day, starting a relationship with the area (where I now live) that will always persist in some form or another.

Now, getting hold of the EPs was a chore involving phone calls, special orders and the kind of research I only put now into corrupt politicians or would-be business partners. In the ‘90s, my resource for this stuff was a place called the Theory Shop, on Park St. It was owned by the Faircloth sisters; they also owned the legendary Beaches club Einstein-A-Go-Go, where many of the era’s top alternative bands performed and where a whole generation of artists, musicians, writers, fans and entrepreneurs first met each other, slowly knitting a social fabric that now stretches across most of this country. (A lot of those shows were taped, but sadly I’ve never heard any of it; it probably comprises an indispensable auditory document, and hopefully it sees light someday.) They were geniuses for special orders; if they didn’t have it, they could get almost anything, and usually for far less than one was willing to pay. They had the music, and certain curios that are now almost impossible to find: autographed posters, signed Breeders tube socks, even promo copies of the album on green vinyl.

The 1990s were an especially explosive time in the cultural development of a nation that is always pushing hard toward the future, and a big part of that era was what was then called “alternative music”. The term has fallen out of favor now, even retrospectively, as that music’s pervasive impact ultimately overwhelmed whatever outsider pretentions once existed. But, at the time, it was the perfect description not only of the actual music itself, but also of the intent that drove the many artists, producers, record executives, journalists and fans who were involved in its production and proliferation, starting with the man who was, for a time, at the center of the entire music world: the late, great Kurt Cobain. Had he not existed, a significant portion of the last 20 years of music history would quite possibly have never happened, and that fact is of special relevance in regard to the subject at hand.

Last Splash was officially released on August 31, 1993, but audiences were already primed, myself included. I was 15 back then. I was mostly into jazz and rap music; my tastes in rock and roll at that time were strictly limited to AC/DC, Queen, Hendrix and Guns and Roses; I recall enjoying GNR’s Use Your Illusion double-album, which I bought on cassette, way more than any decent human being should, absurdly, decadently, obnoxiously hyperbolically brilliant as it was. (To this day, I’m still kinda sad that the Axl Rose/Bob Guccione, jr. fight never actually happened; if it ever does, someone please inform me.) The first CD I ever bought was the self-titled debut by Rage Against the Machine, and I enjoyed it, but I was in no way culturally-inclined toward the rock music of that time, not at that point. My favorite rock band then was Led Zeppelin and, as much as I love the Breeders, they remain a very close second.

Many of my peers, of course, came from backgrounds were they were able to experience the genesis of what would evolve into “alternative music” holistically, so the effect of its rise was perhaps not as game-changing as it would be for. At that time, I had no idea what had been percolating in the New York, or Boston, or Athens. Seattle? Other than it being the estranged home of Hendrix, I knew nothing about the rock scene there, or anywhere else, until Kurt Cobain got the big push and methodically began programming names into the collective database of pop-culture. Once he started wearing certain t-shirts, covering certain songs and hiring certain bands to open for his band or sit in with them, I, like most people, spent the rest of the decade playing catch-up to what he had already internalized and regurgitated as the music of Nirvana.

Cobain’s infamous description of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” as his failed attempt to write a Pixies song was to the eternally-corrupt American music industry what then-president George Bush’s declaration of “a New World Order” was to geopolitics. It was, in both cases, the start of a new era in mass-consciousness, a new formulation of the context in which we all exist. To be a Nirvana fan meant you had to listen to all these bands you’d often never heard of, because you knew their work was crucial to the development of the stuff you like. It’s like how the British Invasion forced mainstream America to take a second look at the Blues, or how hip-hop helped spur a new appreciation of older black musicians ranging from Clyde Stubblefield to Roger Troutman—or, for that matter, how the “New World Order” concept became the global context in which we placed the many obscure, localized conflicts and atrocities that have happened in the subsequent years. While it is entirely coincidental that Bush made the relevant remarks to a special joint-session of Congress on September 11, 1991—which happened to be the day after “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was released, it’s fitting.

By the time Last Splash made its big splash, the Nirvana push was almost two years old, and the; Cobain would be dead within seven months of its release-date, but a significant portion of the time he had left was spent in various ways of giving the Breeders the rub. They were one of the opening acts on Nirvana’s last American tour, and they got perhaps the biggest exposure of their careers when they opened for Nirvana on MTV’s (pre-taped) New Year’s Eve special in 1993, playing the two lead singles from their album, “Cannonball” (released August 9) and “Divine Hammer” (released October 25).

“Cannonball” was released as a single 22 days before the album, which eventually went platinum based largely on that song. To this day, it remains their best-known song, and one of the more recognizable musical documents of that era. It’s been so ubiquitous, in fact, such a pure and perfect song, that it will always threaten to overshadow the depth, diversity and dynamism of their other stuff—a legacy that jumps genres and hews to no particular pre-defined aesthetic. For as the Deal sisters made their way through the business in those years, they did so as themselves; it’s not that their music conformed to people’s expectations, but that the expectations conformed to the music. That seems a trait they shared with Cobain, a trait he recognized, appreciated and did his very best to encourage, on- and off-stage. (Some seven months before Last Splash was released, Cobain praised Pod as one of his favorite albums ever in an interview with Melody Maker; “It’s an epic that will never let you forget ypur ex-girlfriend”, he said, and he was right.)

Cobain was neither the first nor last artist within those circles to meet a tragic, premature and, frankly, suspicious end, but because it was him, the overall effect was much, much worse. Culturally, Cobain’s death was later book-ended by the murders of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls, but many great talents fell in the interim. The summer of 1994 was a summer of death for the musicians who knew him most closely, many of whom took their own demons on the road, touring through grief and uncertainty. Among the casualties of that brutal year were the Breeders—that is, the version of the band that recorded Last Splash. After Kelley Deal was allegedly caught signing for a FedEx package of heroin, virtually all of the band’s forward momentum to that point was stopped cold as a corpse. She went to rehab, Wiggs and McPherson left to pursue their own projects, and Kim Deal simply remained Kim Deal—the one constant in all of this. Despite all of the great work they’ve done since then, separately and together, they would never again ascend to a commercial plateau anywhere near their peak, which sucks, but life moves fast, and the fickle tastes of the pop-music business move even faster.

The sisters Deal and their colleagues continued recording their own projects for the rest of the ‘90s and then, like a phoenix of sorts, the Breeders was reborn in May 2002. That Title TK happened at all was viewed by some as miraculous, and by others as a sign of the apocalypse, but not even their most hard-core fans (and I count myself among them, maybe even at the tippy-top of the list) would have expected the album to be as unbelievable epic as it was. It’s not just that it was a good album by the Breeders; it was an amazing album by a version of the Breeders that did not exist prior to that point. With its antecedents in the Deals’ solo work in those frustrating years between Breeders albums, the difference between Title TK and Last Splash, in terms of both form and content, was as dramatic as that between Last Splash and Pod. Aside from the vocals and a couple little musical tricks, the three albums might as well have been by three completely different bands, and to a certain extent they were.

It’s now been over a decade since the revamped Breeders lineup strolled into the new century, recording two full-length albums, releasing two albums and an EP in that time while touring the world and landing high-prestige gigs like Coachella and All Tomorrow’s Parties (ATP). Despite this new era of success, some fans remain nostalgic for the “classic” version of the band, with Wiggs and McPherson. With the new lineup gelled and seasoned, it seemed unlikely that would ever happen, but as one has come to expect from the Breeders, anything can happen. As such, the Deal/Deal/Wiggs/McPherson version of the band will reunite and tour this year, in celebration of the 20^th anniversary of the record that made them. I’ve not seen them play in a decade, and I just realized I’ll have to miss their show in Atlanta on May 15; it irritates me beyond words, but that feeling is well-surpassed by the overall joy I feel, just knowing that the Deals are not only alive and well, but thriving. And as they celebrate the 20^th anniversary of their biggest commercial success, it’s really more like a celebration of a scene they helped create—a scene that now holds a dominant position across the scope American culture. As it turned out, with Last Splash, the Breeders were just dipping their toes into the water.

DVD Review: John Cage: Journeys In Sound

 John Cage: Journeys In Sound (Accentus Music)

The late composer John Cage (1912-1992) is one of those artists whose legacy is almost impossible to overstate. There was a world before Cage came along, and that world remains long after he’s gone, but those worlds are very different, and Cage’s seminal sound-craft is a decisive factor. He didn’t just change the music business; he changed music itself, in the process recalibrating the way humans make music, how we listen to music and how we think about music at the most basic and fundamental levels, from orchestrations and collaborations with other artists to manipulations of instruments and recording techniques. As a composer, I see him really as the heir to Arnold Schoenberg, but that could be debated.

A new DVD from Accentus Music, John Cage: Journeys In Sound, was released last October in celebration of Cage’s 100^th birthday. It takes a look at the world he left behind, demonstrating in several different ways how the man’s influence persists even now, 20 years after his death. Cage is one of the very few modern composers to have a serious presence in the larger pop-culture, known even to people who’ve never heard his music—and there is a lot to be heard. This release results from the collective efforts of two critically-acclaimed documentary filmmakers, Allan Miller and Paul Smaczny, who together led a production crew numbering some three dozen different people and companies. Miller, a two-time Oscar winner, was a longtime friend and colleague of Cage’s, and he comes armed with archival footage dating back to the 1960s, which he and Smaczny augmented with material drawn from a wide variety of sources around the world. The result is not so much a unified whole, but a series of sketches that all revolve around a central theme: “John Cage”.

The film begins as an old-school 1950s TV set opens up from its place in a sunlit field; the footage shows a young Cage employing various household items to create sounds for an audience whose nervous laughter gives away their general confusion—a common reaction. It then cuts to an older Cage, making meticulous edits to a film project he was constructing out of his famous “Chance Operations”. A scene in Times Square captures a cross-section of people talking about Cage on the street; the point seems to be that, while Cage may be obscure, he is hardly as obscure as one might expect, at least in that setting. The sights and sounds of the city, among other locales, acts as

22 different artists are featured in the film, besides Cage himself. Most of these people would be virtually unknown to the casual observer, with some few notable, indeed crucial exceptions. Topping that list are John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who actually appears in two different incarnations, in her youth alongside Lennon and Cage (bearded, Bob Ross-like), then later in life, after she’d long since become a sort of godmother to the New York avant-garde performance-art circles in which she and Cage both operated for years. Now, it’s not like John Cage needs John Lennon, or anyone else, to lend credibility to his work (which was often controversial to the point of being divisive, like an Albert Ayler or a Lou Reed, circa Metal Machine Music), but his very presence in the film, like some kind of omniscient, omnipresent ghost, elevates the whole affair beyond the quotidian; Lennon, as always, flirts with the sublime.

Journeys In Sound is a documentary about a musician, and not an actual music video, although we are treated to interpretations of Cage’s work in multiple contexts and configurations. Those who may find that there’s not enough actual music on the DVD to suit their tastes will be assuaged somewhat by the bonus material, which begins with a performance of Cage’s infamous exercise in ambient noise, “4’33”, conducted by the great David Tudor. The Schlagquatett Koln applies their percussive skills to Cage’s “Second Construction”, while pianist Steffen Schleiermacher performs a piece from Cage’s “Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano”, followed by his “Water Music”; the latter two pieces really touch on those aspects of Cage’s artistry that has resonated the most contemporaneously. The set is rounded out by interviews with Cage, his longtime companion Merce Cunningham—a former dancer for Martha Graham who later emerged as arguably the leading choreographer of modern dance—and artist Robert Rauschenberg, all of whom were giants in their respected fields but who together pioneered a whole new concept of multidisciplinary art. The DVD booklet also includes a five-page interview with Miller, which helps put the film in context.

John Cage: Journeys In Sound will not add too much to the knowledge-base of serious Cage fans, but it offers a very nice introduction to a man whose work often defies explanation, in part because so many skilled musicians themselves made the effort to put Cage’s influence in their own words. If Cage himself were alive, or could be sent a copy of the DVD in whatever dimension he presently occupies, he would probably enjoy it very much. Of course, if one can construct a documentary whose very subject could watch it and learn something, that is the mark of success—a mark that Messrs. Miller and Smaczny have certainly earned.

sheltonhull@gmail.com

DVD Review: Jon Moxley

Stories From the Streets: The Jon Moxley Story (Smart Mark Video)

 

For most pro-wrestling fans, their first real glimpse of Dean Ambrose in action came on December 16, when he and his colleagues in The Shield won their WWE on-screen debut in a six-man Tables, Ladders and Chairs (TLC) match against Kane, Ryback and Daniel Bryan. It was, without question, one of the most impressive “debuts” in the recent history of the sport. For three “rookies” to not only hold their own, but to win in decisive fashion against two former world champions and a likely future champion in Ryback demonstrated the great value WWE has put on Ambrose, Seth Rollins and Roman Reigns.

That said, a certain percentage of the wrestling audience that night was able to put that match in broader context, to see it not only as the brilliant arrival of three new characters, but also as the present culmination of the individual journeys all three young men have taken to reach that point. In the case of Ambrose, that journey is all the more remarkable: Over the course of the past decade, he has worked his way up from the very bottom of the industry to a place that is, if not quite yet the very top, certainly someplace a little bit higher and far more special that the oft-maligned WWE mid-card, which for many talents has proven to be the functional equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle. That Shield were able to basically leapfrog so many guys on the roster in their first month on the air shocked many observers, but it was hardly any surprise to those of us who’ve followed Ambrose’s path to success.

A 2011 DVD release in Smart Mark Video’s “Best On the Indies” series helps put all this in context, offering a pretty comprehensive look at Dean Ambrose when he was known as Jon Moxley on the independent circuit. The “Dean Ambrose” character was born upon his arrival at FCW (now a rebooted NXT), the WWE developmental territory in Florida run by Dusty Rhodes and Steve Keirn. This DVD shows the viewer what WWE saw in Moxley when they signed him in April 2011. It would be imprecise to say that Ambrose and Moxley are the same character, although they are portrayed by the same guy. Both are wild and unpredictable, their promos laced with menace, but Ambrose’s fury is much more contained, focused, directed.

Jon Moxley could’ve never been in The Shield, because he didn’t trust anyone. He entered FCW with a head of steam after running wild across the indies in 2010, and set himself apart immediately with the most intense promos ever cut in that company, augmented with a series of game-changing bouts against Damien Sandow and future Shield teammate Seth Rollins (who, as Tyler Black, was Ring of Honor champion for seven months).

What really put him on the mainstream wrestling map, however, was his two matches against William Regal, widely-viewed as one of the greatest pro-wrestlers of all-time. It was a “passing of the torch” kind of angle, which played out over the course of a year: Ambrose baited Regal into a match, which he reluctantly accepted despite a suspicion that Ambrose would end his career someday; Regal beats Ambrose in brutal fashion, giving him a shoulder injury that would allow Ambrose to steal the ol’ Martin Riggs “pop it back into socket” gimmick from Lethal Weapon; Ambrose broods for a year, getting increasingly unhinged as Regal refuses to grant him a rematch; then, finally, he gets it, in the last match of the last episode of FCW, and destroys Regal. Between the stuff with Regal and the stuff with Rollins, Ambrose exposed himself as one of the versatile and convincing workers anywhere, and it’s hardly surprising that WWE saw fit to bring him to the main roster in such strong fashion.

Much like the Sara Del Rey DVD reviewed here last year, this box-set begins with an interview with Moxley; it runs over two hours, and finds him detailing some of his personal background, as well as his entry into pro-wrestling, his experiences in various places along the way, and his overall views on the business. Such features are always interesting, but especially so in this case, because one of Moxley’s drawing-cards in the ring has been his exquisite sense of ring-psychology. Born in Cincinnatti, OH, the six-four, 225-pound Moxley was never a high-spot artist who dazzled the crowd with somersaults, nor was he a suplexing MMA acolyte. Like fellow WWE stars Wade Barrett and Antonio Cesaro, Moxley was a throwback to the old-school; his style was all about aggression, energy and logic. Even when his character was depicted as basically a full-on lunatic, one always had the suspicion that he hadn’t lost nearly as many brain-cells as he would have us think.

Years later, that suspicion would be borne out at TLC, where Ambrose took the finishers of all three of his opponents, yet still somehow managed to leave the ring on his own two feet. Watching the announcers express their shock at Ambrose’s casual facility with the items of plunder laid out for the match was a laugh-out-loud moment for smart marks nationwide; “Of course Dean Ambrose knows how to use a chair,” they might say; “Have you ever heard of Jon Moxley? Duhhh!” Moxley, you see, was a two-time former CZW Heavyweight Champion. His two reigns had a combined length of 357 days, broken up only by a seven-day reign by Nick Gage; during that time, Moxley competed in some of the most brutal matches held in this country in recent memory. What elevated these hardcore bloodbaths from the common, boring “garbage wrestling” shtick was Moxley’s persona.

The 14 matches included in this set are drawn mainly from his run in Combat Zone Wrestling (CZW) in 2009 and 2010; there are also matches from his early years in the Heartland Wrestling Association (HWA). Sadly, there is none of his work as leader of Kamikaze USA in Dragon Gate USA, nor his matches from Evolve, though one suspects that material will be packaged for wider release soon enough. There are also none of the promos on which Moxley made such a big part of his reputation. He is, without question, one of the best talkers in wrestling over the last few years, and his work in FCW/NXT/WWE so far offers just a glimpse of what he can do. It’s unclear what specific stuff drew the attention of WWE, though he notes in the interview that he’d already wrestled some dark matches against MNM and the Big Show some years ago, so maybe they were always following his career.

Moxley’s CZW title defenses against Nick Gage and “The Ego” Robert Anthony were incredibly brutal, as well as a barbed-wire match against archrival Drake Younger from WXW; they are among the highlights here. The Death Match style can be widely-seen in the US and Japan, and most of it manages somehow to be boring despite the extreme gore. Moxley’s work in that genre is more reminiscent of a Terry Funk-type, in the sense that all the crazy spots are used to punctuate the psychology, not to define it. It becomes less about “When will Moxley hit the wire?” and more about “Will Moxley hit the wire at all?” It’s a crucial distinction, in terms of keeping the audience’s attention. This creates a lot more narrative tension early on, while nicely offsetting the violence that comes later. The match with Anthony, in particular, belongs in any serious anthology of the modern-day Death Match style.

Moxley following a CZW match with Thumbtack Jack, courtesy http://neverhandover.blogspot.com/

Watching this material certainly helps give last year’s brief, aborted Ambrose-Foley feud some needed context. But what also comes through quite clearly is that, like Funk, Moxley didn’t need weapons to sustain the crowd’s attention; that, of course, made his usage of them all the more compelling when it happened. Two matches feature Sami Callihan, who himself has also become a huge name on the indie scene. As the Switchblade Conspiracy, they were one of the dominant stables in CZW. In this set, they team to face Cheech and Cloudy (aka Up In Smoke) in a tag match where, in a fairly rare occurrence (outside of Dragon Gate, anyway), Moxley is actually the biggest guy in the ring; watching him doing power spots as the heel makes for hilarious viewing, which presumably was the point. Later, they face each other in an excellent match for Moxley’s CZW title.

Personally, my favorite match in this set is a time-limit draw with Davey Richards from HWA in February 2010; it’s only 15 minutes, but could have easily gone much longer. Richards, a trained paramedic who studies Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu on the side, is one of the best wrestlers in the world today—a former world champion for Full Impact Pro (FIP) and Pro-Wrestling Guerilla (PWG) who’s also held tag-team gold in New Japan. He’s best-known, of course, for his work in Ring of Honor. Out of 17 ROH World Champions, his 321-day reign (which paved the way for Kevin Steen) was the fourth-longest in ROH history; only Bryan (462), Nigel McGuiness (545) and Samoa Joe (645) held that belt longer. In other words, Richards is as technically-adept as it gets these days, and Moxley’s ability to hang with a guy of that caliber with no gimmicks or tomfoolery surely turned some heads, because he won three world titles in the next six months.

Whereas the indie scene and its plugged-in fanbase was once the stuff of ridicule on WWE TV, recent years have seen a massive influx of talent from that very realm. Not only were the talents ready to perform on that level, but social media, YouTube, podcasts and other web-based platforms proved that they were verifiably marketable. That logic has proven spot-on in the cases of CM Punk, Daniel Bryan, Sandow and Cesaro, with more coming on an almost weekly basis. As nominal leader of The Shield, Dean Ambrose is the next stage in the evolution of this business model, and he’s already demonstrated his ability to run with the ball. The man’s been calling himself the future of wrestling for years now, and it appears increasingly possible that he may be correct. Stories From the Streets shows us how that future began.

sheltonhull@gmail.com

DVD Review: “Women Of Honor” (ROH)

Women Of Honor (Ring of Honor DVD)

In my opinion, 2012 was one of the best and most productive years ever for the unique artform that is women’s professional wrestling, particularly in the American market, where the ladies have had to struggle for acceptance and respect from fans, the media and indeed the industry itself. But they have succeeded, and then some. At this moment, the active roster of women’s wrestlers in this country is probably the strongest it has ever been, and at the forefront of that movement is Shimmer Women Athletes.

Shimmer has been running its own live events since 2005, as exhaustively-documented on the more than 50 volumes of DVDs released since then. They’ve recently partnered with the Florida-based Shine promotion, whose Internet pay-per-views feature a number of Shimmer mainstays. The new and steadily-evolving “iPPV” market has already been a serious boon to independent promotions over the past couple of years, allowing them to project their products to fans worldwide with minimal overhead, increasing exposure for the companies and boosting revenue for bookers and workers alike. But a significant factor in Shimmer’s success has come through their partnership with Ring Of Honor, which is currently the third-biggest wrestling promotion in America, but stands in good position to eclipse the chronically underperforming TNA/Impact Wrestling in the next couple of years.

During its decade in operation, ROH has put forth some of the very best matches of the 21^st century; their former world champions include currently WWE/TNA stars Daniel Bryan, CM Punk, Samoa Joe, Seth Rollins and Austin Aries, while current champion Kevin Steen has been on fire all year. “Women Of Honor” showcases the best of the collaboration between Shimmer and Ring Of Honor. It also functions as a nice introduction to the women’s wrestling scene in America and its leading talents.

It’s worth noting that, while the stars women’s wrestling strive to be regarded on the same level as the men, of course, in my opinion certain differences between the genders result overall in products that are fairly similar, but very much unique and distinct from each other, while being equally compelling on their own accord. Not everyone cares for the joshi game; many wrestling fans can barely sit through five minutes of Divas action on Monday Night Raw, let alone 20-30 minutes. The apostates can’t even appreciate one of the old Manami Toyota-Aja Kong classics, which basically defined the art-form at its peak; they would have no use for the material discussed herein, and that is entirely their loss.

The ROH DVDs have none of the sweet documentary-style content associated with WWE releases; they are simply compilations of matches, so there’s no backstory of promos to provide context, but the fan-base would already be up to speed on all that. (Curiously, WWE has never done a serious anthology of its own rich women’s wrestling history, which extends from the Fabulous Moolah down to AJ Lee. One would presume that such a thing would be easy to make, and a solid seller; it seems inevitable.) What this disc does offer is more top-notch joshi action than you’re likely to see anywhere, outside of Shimmer itself.

The double-disc set includes 33 matches, featuring 25 different women; there are also three mixed-tag matches. Allison Danger appears eight times. Sara Del Rey appears 15 times. Another standout here is Lacey, who also appears in 15 matches as a singles competitor, and also in a tag-match with Del Rey against Daizee Haze and Awesome Kong. Lacey, who retired to earn a Master’s degree in Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine, and who’s now working on her PhD in China, was a major figure in the evolution of both Shimmer and Ring of Honor. Her dealings with Jimmy Jacobs made for one of ROH’s all-time enduring storylines, while in Shimmer she teamed with Rain to form the infamous Minnesota Homewrecking Crew, which was the dominant heel tag-team of Shimmer’s early years, the equivalent of today’s Canadian Ninjas (Nicole Matthews and Portia Perez). Lacey, Haze and Del Rey were the early triumvirate around which the ROH women’s division was built, and this DVD set captures those formative years nicely. Any Lacey fans out there will want this; looking back, thinking mainly of promos and angles she was involved in, one forgets how good Lacey was in the ring.

Certainly the most important thing of all about “Women Of Honor” is that it is probably the closest thing wrestling fans will ever have to an anthology devoted to the work of Daizee Haze, who wrestles in 23 of the 33 matches collected here, including all three mixed-tag matches (all against Lacey, by the way). Besides just wrestling, she was also a trainer for ROH and Shimmer, and she main-evented the latter company’s first four shows; she (along with Del Rey) also helped bring the joshi scene into Chikara.

Haze (who is also notable for being one of the few pro-wrestlers whose real name is not public knowledge) abruptly stepped away from the ring in August 2011, and it’s been almost impossible to find out anything about what happened to her. As such, the best year yet for women’s wrestling in America has taken place with one of its chief architects on the sidelines. One hopes she returns, but whether she does or not, her presence makes this DVD essential. There are also matches featuring the likes of Allison Danger (Steve Corino’s sister), Sarah Stock (aka Dark Angel, aka Sarita in TNA), Alexis Laree (aka Mickie James), Serena Deeb, Sumie Sakai, Jetta, Eden Black, Tracy Brooks, Mercedes Martinez, Nikki Roxx, Persephonie, Jennifer Blake, Ashley Lane, Tomoko Nakagai, Hiroyo Matsumoto, Ayumi Kurihara and former Shimmer champions MisChif, Madison Eagles and Cheerleader Melissa. The whole thing’s a lot of fun to watch, having seen how far all these ladies have already come Now that the industry has taken notice of their abilities, it will be even more fun to see what happens next.

sheltonhull@gmail.com

Album review: Screamin Eagle, “Her Kingdom”

Her Kingdom is the second full-length album by Christopher Alan Nanney, age 24, who performs as Screamin Eagle. It would be hard to imagine a more fitting alias. The sound of his voice—at once high-pitched and nasally, yet also guttural and sonorous—can at times evoke calls from birds of prey, and his musical style could be described as “quintessentially American”, to the extent there is such a thing. His own personal vision is fully-illuminated on his website, with essays and scanned pages from his own hand-drawn chap-books.

Nanney’s a native of Jacksonville. He worked serving sushi at a local café in Riverside over the past year when he wasn’t out performing, but with the onset of autumn he’ll be heading down to Gainesville, where’s he is enrolled in the prestigious Florida School of Massage (FSM). I’ve seen him perform a bunch of times over the past year or so, at places like Underbelly, Dos Gatos and Burro Bar. He was also a regular presence at the now-defunct Thief in the Knight building downtown during ArtWalk, right near where the sumptuous vegan vittles from Dig Foods were offered, and he also performed at the first big CORK event.

The album cover shows him sitting at a table in a dimly-lit restaurant somewhere. He’s wearing a blue t-shirt and placid smile, with silverware and a glass of water nearby; he looks mellow, composed and controlled. It wasn’t always that way: He was arrested for breaking into First Baptist Church in April 2010. The episode is reminiscent of recent incidents involving the Russian band Pussy Riot and MMA fighter/”Bully Beatdown” host Jason “Mayhem” Miller. A report by First Coast News claims police found him “standing on top of a water fountain. He had no shirt or shoes, was wearing a piece of purple cloth like a cape, and was holding a wooden club. Those items are listed in the arrest report as being stolen from inside the church. Police also noticed Nanney had several pages torn from hymnals [specifically, ‘A Hymn For Mother Nature’] stuffed down his pants.” A six-month stay in a mental hospital was followed by the recording of his debut album, Hurricane.

Certainly, it was an unconventional way to worship, but ultimately harmless. In fact, it may have been to his ultimate benefit. As noted on Nanney’s website, he credits the incident with helping to cement his commitment to music, a process that has led right up to the new album, which is excellent. Overall, Nanney’s crafted a collection of several excellent songs that all fit together nicely as a unified whole; there’s little fat, and almost no gristle. The 14 songs on Her Kingdom represent just a fraction of Nanney’s recorded output, which by his estimation may exceed 50 tracks so far. His work has already drawn praises from outlets like Movement, EU and Void. He usually performs as a solo act, using just his voice and acoustic guitar, but the album adds a few dimensions to that sound.

Nanney’s skills on electric guitar are used to nice effect—driving, anthemic—on the opening title-track, then entirely differently on the proto-blues “Rich Man”; it leads right into “The Gift”, which sounds like a cross between early Lou Reed and new Hamell On Trial. “Holy Ground” has a very Led Zeppelin III feel to it, a feeling reinforced by his slide-work in the album’s middle section on “Built To Last”, “King” and “The Meaning Of Life”. “Kundalini Rising” is an instrumental digression running five minutes-plus; it sounds like what a rising kundalini might sound like, if indeed it made a sound at all—and maybe it does, but that’s beyond the scope of this record review. “Pack Your Bags” resumes the electric-blues motif, while the brevity of “Like An Angel” and its repetitive pattern makes it sound like a lullaby. “The Drinkin Song” could, too, especially with its improvised chorus, recorded live at one of his shows. It should have been the last song—13 is an appropriate number, given the elements that combine to make the album—but “To Resist” ends it nicely.

He’s got just a few more shows booked in Northeast Florida before he leaves in September. They include gigs at Underbelly on August 18, Casbah on the 27^th and Nobby’s in St. Augustine on the 30^th. The reader will have probably missed all of those shows by the time you read this, but that’s fine. Without question, we’ve only seen the beginning of Nanney’s career; he’ll be playing around Gainesville’s always-interesting music scene, and he’ll be back in Jacksonville for the occasional set. The Screamin Eagle has only begun to stretch his wings.

Lost In the Stacks: Notes on jazz finds at the Jacksonville Public Library

The title of this piece is stolen from the name of a radio show on WJCT-FM, 89.9 in Jacksonville, Florida. “Lost In the Stacks” is hosted by Matthew Moyer and Andrew Coulon, two of the librarians at the Jacksonville Public Library downtown. The show revolves around music that can be found in the library’s collection, and I was fortunate to be invited as a guest one week in May 2012, as we previewed the Jacksonville Jazz Festival. I’d intended for this to have been online by then, to supplement the material discussed on that broadcast—that did not happen, but better late than never.

SDH at the WJCT studios, May 10, 2012. (Note that I’m holding a set of drum-sticks hand-crafted and signed by the legendary drummer/teacher Von Barlow, who left them there for someone else.)

The tracks referred to here were all obtained via compact disc, and almost all of it can still be found at there. The JPL held a pretty extensive stock of vinyl records, archival-preserved, augmenting that as the CD era took flight in the 1980s. By the early-‘90s, when I first started browsing those stacks in a serious way, the library had one of the most extensive holdings of choice material to be found anywhere—be it a storefront or a private collection. And bear in mind, there was plenty to go around: WJCT had a literal ton or two of records and CDs; UNF still has an excellent collection (in part because they kept their vinyl); local record stores still thrived, and there remained solid commercial chains like Coconuts.

When Barnes & Noble opened in Mandarin, they hired saxophonist Joe Yorio to stock their music section, and he might have ended up doing the same at Borders; I always appreciated his recommendation of Coltrane’s Afro-Blue Impressions, which were the first album I’d heard by him that I loved almost as much as the singular Interstellar Space. It was at places like that where I caught up on the new stuff; at local record stores like Stripmine Records, I’d fill in the gaps of the more obscure labels and musicians—your Hat Art, Tzadik, Black Saint, Leo, Enja material. But my main sources remained the radio and the library.

Like WJCT, the JPL began divesting itself of vinyl as the century turned. I recall buying a dozen first-pressings of Glenn Gould from the library for, I think, seven dollars—since misplaced, but worth a couple hundred if ever found. The jazz stuff had already been liquidated, all for 50 cents or a buck each. But the library has nonetheless continued to thrive in the digital future, or present, whatever. A large portion of my life was spent on the second floor of the old Haydon Burns building, which housed the library’s main branch for 40 years, walking up and down the stacks, neck craned 45 degrees to the right while edging slowly sideways, scanning the discs lined up vertically, efficiently. Back then, it took about 15 minutes to look at everything once, without touching anything, which is not possible; 15 minutes really meant an hour, for practical purposes, and you couldn’t bring coffee in with you.

Now, the music collection is split—the classical stuff (which is pretty nice) is on the third floor (closer to the reference books relevant to that subject), and the rest is down on ground level. It is situated perfectly, in the back; one must walk through the jazz section to reach the Young Adults section, and that’s a good thing for the youth, because it’s their birthright, anyway. Now the CDs are lined up in such a way that you have to flip through each disc, or grab a handful at a time to scrutinize them; it takes a little more time, but you can bring coffee now. Now, as then, folks often come prompted by Bob Bednar of WJCT; his playlists are some of the best ever, anywhere. Everyone has their favorites—stuff they heard there that might have otherwise gone unheard for years, if not forever. The web has facilitated a much faster route to learning about jazz, but there is nothing more holistic than a good public library, and Jacksonville is lucky to have a very good one. My picks (randomly listed) would include:

Charlie Christian, “Waiting On Benny”: Charlie Christian wasn’t the first great jazz guitarist in history—there was Eddie Lang, Les Paul, Freddie Green, Django Reinhardt, Oscar Aleman and others. He was not even the first to electrify the jazz guitar; he was, however, the man who made it stick. He was a game-changer in every aspect of his short career. The library doesn’t have much of his stuff—not the epic take of “Topsy” from Minton’s, nor his sessions with Lester Young—but his run with Benny Goodman’s sextet is well-documented. The high point was, in fact, an afterthought, hence the title: the leader was late, so the remaining five jammed out for five minutes until he showed up. It’s one of the greatest examples of small-group jazz in the immediate pre-war era, ruthlessly swinging the 4/4.

Lennie Tristano, “Turkish Mambo”: The music of Lennie Tristano was a revelation for me from the very first second, as it remains. The library has a CD of Rhino’s repackaging of two Tristano records made for Atlantic Records about 50 years ago. His was a very mathematically precise sort of jazz; he trained Lee Konitz, Warne Marsh, Billy Bauer and Sheila Jordan, among others, and was friends with people like Charles Mingus, Max Roach and George Russell. I was a big Anthony Braxton fan, and I’d gotten a copy of an album of Tristano songs he did from the late great Stripmine Records (its second incarnation, in Five Points). So I grabbed the Tristano disc, which contains some of the most sublime piano music you’ll ever heard. Folks who say the man played without feeling are delusional. On the first album he plays around with tape-speed, speeding-up and slowing-down certain tracks for effect; the second is straight-ahead solo piano. “Turkish Mambo” is a masterpiece—Tristano overdubs three (or four?) tracks of himself, each in a different time signature. Multi-layered, but seamless. Even the metronome swings!

Sidney Bechet, “The Sheik of Araby”: I remember wondering why the library would bother to have two copies of an old Bluebird compilation of tracks by a man largely unknown outside of musicians and critics—but then I heard it, and understood. Bechet is one of the great characters in jazz, and the comp cut a wide swath, leading off with the definitive version of “Maple Leaf Rag”. The track cited here features Bechet overdubbed on all the instruments using the primitive technology of the monaural era, literally cutting new tracks onto the disc, step-by-step. Any mistakes he made could not be fixed, so he didn’t make any. This was the beginning of so much of what we take for granted, in terms of how music is made today.

Sidney Bechet, “Sweet Georgia Brown”: Fast-forward 17 years, and Bechet is in France, a leader of the vibrant expat jazz scene in Europe. Bechet would be dead in a year, but this track, recorded live in Paris, shows that he retained his absolute mastery of the soprano saxophone until the very end. Never has this tune been swung at a faster tempo, never were more notes stacked against the harmony; it was the intersection of Bechet’s NOLA roots and the modernism he spawned. The credible solos of trumpet, trombone and piano are just scenery—the song belongs to Bechet, and drummer Francois “Moustache” Gallipedes.

Django Reinhardt, “Blues For Barclay”: When one speaks of jazz in Paris, thoughts go immediately to the gypsy who changed the game singlehandedly—literally. In 1947, Django Reinhardt brought his quintet into the studios of Blue Star Records and made his first serious recordings on electric guitar. He’d risked death by continuing to perform in occupied France during the war, caught the bop bug, came to New York and was basically rejected by the modernists; his sound was too soft, too dependent on syncopation, too acoustic to be heard in a bop setting. So he came back to Paris with a chip on his shoulder, haunted by not having gotten to assert himself as the rightful heir to Charlie Christian, and you can hear it in damn near every note he played for the remaining six years of his life. The CD Peche ala Mouche collects the cream of electrified Django from 1947-53. To this day, it remains the most slept-on aspect of the man’s legacy, and the CD is out-of-print; I was lucky enough to cop a disc of the 1947 stuff in Chicago, and some of the rest is on YouTube. The song mentioned above was written for Eddie Barclay, who produced the session and was, overall, an invaluable supporter of jazz in Europe, and European Jazz as well. Note the presence of silky clarinetist Hubert Rostaing and Andre Jourdan, one of three amazing French drummers who put in work on these sessions. This is the sound of a man playing for his life, and succeeding.

Larry Coryell/Elvin Jones, “Stiff Neck”: Even five years after first hearing this, it’s still usually the first thing I listen to in the morning; it’s like orange juice for your ears. Elvin Jones was bulletproof for years; his run with the Coltranes (John and Alice) cemented him as the kind of drummer who could do anything—trios with Sonny Rollins, orchestras with Gil Evans, the Pawnbroker soundtrack with Quincy Jones, whatever. He could show up in a movie and just randomly solo in a cowboy outfit, or run through 10-minute fusion workouts in a mesh t-shirt, white leather shoes and disco pants, and it was all good.

Lionel Hampton/Gene Krupa, “Air Mail Special”: It would be impossible to pick one person as my favorite jazz musician ever, but if I were pressed I’d defer to Krupa, since my studies of jazz music initially began as a quest for Gene Krupa records. Damian Lee sold me a Columbia repackaging of Krupa’s epic post-war trio, and it was off to the races. A common fallacy holds that Swing Era icon Krupa, who was in the 1930s the go-to guy for both Benny Goodman and George Gershwin, failed to adapt to post-war modernism, that bop left him in the dust. Untrue. While he could never be construed as a bebopper proper, the man carved his own highly relevant path through that era. Gene Krupa’s 1950s recordings are exceptional.

Sonny Rollins, “What Is This Thing Called Love?”: I’ll be honest—the music of Sonny Rollins took a while to grow on me. I became familiar with his work first through connection to Max Roach, who co-led the quintet with Clifford Brown where Rollins first became a big name in jazz. Rollins’ solo career had already begun before Brown, Richie Powell and their wives were killed in a car accident in summer 1956, but it really began in earnest as well after that; he and Roach both emerged from that tragedy as different, better musicians. Some of their best work was done together in the subsequent two years: Max Roach +4, Jazz In ¾ Time, Saxophone Colossus, The Freedom Suite. All this was nice, and moreso later, but for me what really set me straight about Sonny Rollins’ genius was his awesome 1957 double-album A Night At the Village Vanguard, which is arguably the best recording ever made at that historic NYC establishment. (Similar arguments can be made for the albums made there by John Coltrane and Bill Evans, both of which were made four years after Rollins’. The Cole Porter standard, which is taken full-bore for nearly 15 minutes, also marks one of the first real displays of Elvin Jones’ genius as a drummer. In the mid-50s, Rollins got to work with Roach, Shelly Manne and Art Blakey, among others, but it’s Jones who stands out as maybe the most versatile jazz drummer ever. The whole album is great, but it starts on the best foot possible.

Chick Corea, “Matrix”: Blue Note’s Best of Chick Corea compilation features highlights of his run fronting mostly acoustic trios for the label. I’m not the biggest fan of his stuff, but I like that era, and “Matrix” (from the 1968 album Now He Sings, Now He Sobs) is one of my favorite piano trio recordings ever. Much of the credit is due to his colleagues, bassist Miroslav Vitous and drummer Roy Haynes.

Machito, “Tanga”: The library once had a Verve CD entitled “The Original Mambo Kings” (taking off from the movie released around that same time in the 1990s), and it remains my favorite Latin-Jazz album ever, even though I haven’t heard it in 15 years. A lot of material would just disappear from there, and this was one of them. I don’t really blame them, because it was a great album that, like Peche A La Mouche, is ridiculously hard to find even now, let alone back in the days of special-orders. Still though, they could have just taped it, and not robbed all the rest of us of its pleasures.

Don Byas/Slam Stewart, “I Got Rhythm”: I’d heard a little Slam Stewart’s stuff with Slim Gaillard, whose nonsensical “Vout” style of slang reportedly remained a favorite with the Reagans well into their dotage. Stewart was known for vocalizing along with his with upright bass, sounding much like a bow being dragged across the low strings, creating its own sort of harmony alongside the string-plucking. It was an acquired taste, one that frankly didn’t resonate with me most of the time. But there were two occasions when Slam Stewart was The Man, and this five minute duet with pioneering bop tenorman Don Byas (who can also be heard on the Charlie Christian bootleg sessions) was one of them. The other was a gloomy, ethereal solo version of “Angel Eyes” (written by Matt Dennis, and old running buddy of my old friend, the late great Robert Eskew, whom I met through Alan Justiss).

Gil Evans Orchestra, “La Nevada”: Having noted the supreme versatility of Elvin Jones earlier, here’s another example. Out Of the Cool (Impulse!, 1961) was the greatest Gil Evans album; the man best-known for arranging Miles Davis’ big-band epics was a star in his own right, and “La Nevada” marks the peak of his compositional and orchestral achievements—15 minutes of swirling, throbbing, pulsing perfection from an all-star band driven by Jones, with some assistance from Dizzy Gillespie alumnus Charlie Persip. (Incidentally, the two also turn up together, along with Art Blakey and Philly Joe Jones, on the impossible-to-find Gretsch Drum Night At Birdland album.)

Turtle Island String Quartet, “Milestones”: In the 1980s, Turtle Island String Quartet took jazz to new levels by arranging a number of classic tunes for their group. Songs like “A Night In Tunisia” and “On Green Dolphin Street” not only opened the door to new perceptions of jazz, but crucially made the classical world more accessible to my young ears—a process accelerated shortly after by Glenn Gould and Martha Argerich. Among the classic TISQ efforts of that era are their versions of Bud Powell’s “Tempus Fugit” (which is hard enough, arranged for solo piano, let alone a string quartet) and the track I consider their masterpiece, “Milestones”, a song that always lends to excitement. They played the song at a much faster tempo than the original version, and the finger-picking is just brilliant. When I got to see them perform at the Church of the Good Shepherd (as part of the Riverside Fine Arts Series), it was like a pilgrimage, and one of the best concerts I’ve ever seen.

Joe Lovano/Ed Blackwell, “Modern Man”: For me, all this music represented seismic shifts in my cultural consciousness, but almost all of it was classic material from the Swing Era on through 1950s post-bop and the broader explorations that would culminate with Free Jazz in the 1960s. If the library had a weakness, in terms of their jazz collection, it was that there just wasn’t much new stuff; it was not the place to catch up on the innovations of my own time; that’s why places like Barnes and Noble and Borders became so useful. But, as one might expect, the little bit they did have was the best. Joe Lovano’s album From The Soul (1991) was the point of a spear being thrust by a resurgent Blue Note Records into the future, and it’s one of the finest jazz albums ever recorded, in any era. It was a lineup of future hall-of-famers, most of whom had yet to make their greatest contributions to the music, and one aging legend who took that moment to make a final stand that will never be forgotten. Lovano was joined by bassist Dave Holland, who went on to lead arguably best large jazz group on the planet, and pianist Michel Petrucciani, whose legacy as the heir to Bill Evans’ absolute dominance of jazz piano remained unimpeached until his premature death in 1999. The opening track, “Evolution”, catches the whole band on fire, but neither Holland nor Petrucciani appear on “Modern Man”. Instead, that track is a duet between Lovano and drummer Ed Blackwell, who was probably best-known for his work with Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Archie Shepp and Mal Waldron.

Dinah Washington, “Cry Me A River”: No one sounded like her—maybe the purest, most resonant voice in the entire history of music. Like all the great singers, hers was an utterly unique vocal instrument. Dinah Washington died way too young, but the stuff she left behind will last until the end of time, starting with “Cry Me A River”. It defies my ability to explain why’s it such a game-changer.

sheltonhull@gmail.com; May 30, 2012

Book Review: Bill Banfield

Representing Black Music Culture: Then, Now and When Again? By William C. Banfield. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, Inc. 263 pp, illustrated.

Professor William Banfield, director of the Africana Studies Center at the prestigious Berklee College of Music, is what one might call a “Renaissance Man”; “Harlem Renaissance Man” is more like it. This book is, first and foremost, a book about William Banfield, and that’s a story well worth telling. Born in Detroit, 1961, his matriculation was shaped by his local music scene, which was then one of the world’s best. He was playing guitar in bands as a teenager, writing his own music in college, and released his first recordings in the early ‘80s. As such, he knows a lot of people, and he doesn’t mind dropping names; it’s pretty cool. The index runs ten pages, and includes many of the leading figures in Black Music over the past 40 years; odds are he knows anyone who’s living among them. In fact, there’s probably a picture.

While most of the narrative transpires in native haunts like Boston, New York and Minnesota, it was a pleasant surprise to see that pages 58-65 relate to events in Jacksonville, where William Brown died in October 1994. Banfield was a longtime friend and collaborator of Brown, who sang tenor at high-end spots around the country (ending with a run at Friday Musicale) while teaching at the University of North Florida and other places. Banfield’s only trip to the city was for the funeral; it was the second time in three days that he had to bury a close friend, which is the hard part of being a creative artist in any field. Life is short, and one is constantly reminded of that in that business.

The selections from Banfield’s journal entries offer slices in the vital life of a full-time academic and veteran musician. The rest of the book consists of Banfield’s essays on matters related to the art today, and they’re fine enough. The author’s prose modulates from pedantic to ponderous; the second half doesn’t read quite as breezily as the front. There are some splendid interviews that he conducted with artists like Don Byron, Wynton Marsalis, Nnenna Freelon, Maria Schneider and Dr. Billy Taylor, and an awesome section near the end with sketches of key colleagues and concepts built around photographs. The pictures are, in general, a real highlight here. Mr. Banfield is only 50 years old, but has already had a tremendous run in the business; this new book looks back on that past, while laying the groundwork for a prosperous future.

 

sheltonhull@gmail.com; May 10, 2012

Jazz Festival Preview: Sonny Rollins

The Lion In Winter: Sonny Rollins, the last best hope of Hard Bop

 

Sonny Rollins, who headlines this year’s Jacksonville Jazz Festival, was born in New York City on September 7, 1930. His arrival is a triumph for local jazz fans who’d lobbied for his inclusion for years, perhaps as long as the festival itself has been in existence. I know that, in my ongoing conversations on the subject of jazz with Bob Bednar, host of WJCT’s “This Is Jazz” program (and recently a member of the festival’s Hall of Fame), Rollins’ name was in circulation since the late-1990s. We’ve both mentioned his name repeatedly, not that doing so was necessarily necessary, due to his legend status—but, then again, it’s only happening in 2012, and we should consider ourselves lucky to have had the chance for so long.

In the years just after Charlie Parker’s premature death in 1955, Rollins emerged as the dominant new saxophone star of the jazz world. He was then a member of the great Clifford Brown-Max Roach Quintet, sharing the front-line with Clifford Brown, whose meteoric rise was halted by a 1956 car-wreck that also killed the group’s pianist, Richie Powell—whose older brother Bud Powell was in fact one of Rollins’ old employers. When Max Roach pushed through his grief to reemerge with a new band, just a few months later, Rollins was key to its sound. Max Roach + 4 found Rollins out-front with Kenny Dorham, one of the most underrated trumpeters ever, with Roach now taking unprecedented amounts of solo space; the Max Roach that most jazz fans think of today really began in 1956.

Rollins’ work on Roach’s seminal Jazz In ¾ Time helped cement the drummer’s place as a leading figure in the jazz mainstream, while adding further shine to Rollins’ reputation, which even then, in his 20s, was approaching mythic status. The years 1956-‘62 saw him cranking out a string of perfect records: Sonny Rollins+4, Newk’s Time, Tour de Force, etc. For the newcomer who wishes to hear the purest distillation of Sonny Rollins at his peak, one is advised to immediately get ahold of Live At the Village Vanguard. It was his first time recording in what would become, in time, his ideal setting—the trio.

Also, Tenor Madness featured a rare recorded meeting between Rollins and John Coltrane, who was also then beginning to get a serious push as well. Theirs was not a rivalry, so much as it was a case of two relentless perfectionists evolving on parallel tracks. Saxophone Colossus was the Rollins sound encapsulated; “Blue 7” features a solo by Roach that is a masterpiece of minimalism. Way Out West sees Rollins reinventing shopworn tunes of the Old West, while drummer Shelly Manne turns in one of his all-time finest efforts.

The Freedom Suite marks Rollins’ first experiments recording in a more expansive style, a form he’d return to often in later years. His trio includes Roach and bassist Oscar Pettiford, in one of his last major efforts before dying just a couple years later. It also led to a favorite musical curiosity: While waiting for Rollins to arrive at the studio, Roach and Pettiford jammed on the standard “There Will Never Be Another You”, which is 1) the high-point of Pettiford’s recorded legacy, 2) one of the greatest bass solos ever recorded in jazz, and 3) one of only a handful of recordings documenting Max Roach’s singular style when playing brushes.

Rollins returned from sabbatical with a new band built around the sumptuous harmonies of guitarist Jim Hall, who’d spent the previous period making key contributions to two of the most unique groups (in terms of their sound and approach to composition—Chico Hamilton’s quintet and the original Jimmy Giuffre Trio. The title-track of the group’s first record, The Bridge (1962), sounds exactly like what it is: a formal announcement that Sonny Rollins was back, and ready to reclaim a tenor crown that Coltrane effectively abdicated with his brilliant but polarizing excursions in the stellar regions of free jazz.

One of the true jewels in Rollins’ output, and one that doesn’t get enough attention, is his 1966 collaboration with master post-bop trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, East Broadway Rundown. The 20-minute title track evokes “The Freedom Suite” with its length—which wasn’t nearly as big a deal by then, just four years later; credit Coltrane for that—but the sound was completely different. Typically for Rollins, there is no piano; he probably became convinced of the value of this approach while working with Roach, who abandoned the piano chair entirely in ’58. This quartet also includes bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Jones, who were at that time also the backbone of Coltrane’s quartet—surely no coincidence. The sound is also reminiscent of Ornette Coleman’s quartet, circa Change Of the Century.

Incredibly, there may be many jazz festival fans for whom Sonny Rollins is actually an unfamiliar name. When dealing with a man who’s recorded at least 38 albums to date (not counting the copious live sets, bootlegs and sideman gigs), one may be challenged to find an appropriate jumping-in point. While any record makes for a good jumping-off point, the essence of Rollins’ artistry can be gleaned from an excellent double-disc set released by the Concord Music Group to commemorate his 80^th birthday in 2010. The Definitive Sonny Rollins on Prestige, Riverside and Contemporary includes 21 of the key tracks recorded between 1951 and 1958, including “Blue 7”, “Tenor Madness” and “the Freedom Suite”.

Rollins’ most recent album is Road Shows, Vol. 2, released last September. Rollins has continued to record and tour into his ninth decade, winning three Grammys in the 21^st century so far. For those of you who are truly newbies to Rollins’ music, there is no better place to start than the Main Branch of the Jacksonville Public Library, which has almost every major recording by or featuring Sonny Rollins; you can check out his entire career, fit it all into a canvas tote, and (if so inclined) load it all up onto your computer. It’s some of the best music ever made.

sheltonhull@gmail.com; April 16, 2012

Notes on Names Divine and Christopher Bell

[I’ve seen lots of musical acts so far this year—the more, the better. They’ve been mostly local, but plenty have come through on tour; here’s a few quick notes about two of my favorites:]

On a recent Monday evening—Feb. 13, to be exact—I had the great pleasure of watching a band from Chicago called Names Divine perform at Burro Bar. It was their second time playing this city, but surely not their last, as local audiences have already taken to them, and vice-versa. It was a crowd filled largely with other musicians. The Infinitesmal Records crew was out; bought a Kevin Lee Newberry CD, which is excellent and well-worth having.

Names Divine is a large band, led by singer/guitarist Kendra Calhoun, a spectral young woman who’s the only person I’ve ever heard cite Jendak as their favorite musician. Lukas Wolever played a drum-set that appeared to be missing its bass drum; it is unclear whether that was a matter of course or a concession to the inefficiencies of van-travel. The band has at times numbered up to nine; the show at Burro had seven, all shrouded in dark, a whooping whirlwind of sound built around Calhoun’s guitar, the clarinet of Kalina Malyszko (which rhymes with “Zbyszko”) and Ike Floor’s violin.

Names Divine has a two-song EP (containing the songs “Something Vague” and “Maybe Rotten”) available for download via Bandcamp, with more recordings planned for the year. The EP was originally released in a limited cassette-only edition of 100; the hemp cases, hand-woven by Calhoun, are useful for all kinds of things, but those versions are surely gone by now. Another two-track EP was released last December, and hopefully all this is building to a proper full-length release, along with another trip to Florida, at some point this year.

Watching Christopher Bell performing at Burro Bar, where he opened for the sumptuous Canary In The Coalmine on March 3, was something of a revelation. The music was excellent, but his means of making it was even more compelling. Bell’s approach to crafting a full-band sound for his solo sets begins with his instrument of choice, the cello. While almost all cellists prefer to play from a seated position, which is better for bowing, Bell plays his standing up, like an acoustic guitar, with more emphasis on finger-picking than the bow.

His style with the instrument reminds me, oddly enough, of the late jazz bassist Oscar Pettiford: After breaking his wrist playing baseball, Pettiford was unable to comfortably play the double-bass for a time, so he went with the cello; his recordings during that period are marked by a delicacy of sound that almost anticipated Chico Hamilton’s groundbreaking groups.

Bell’s cello is augmented with a self-contained wooden box full of effects pedals, as well as a keyboard that he uses to sample himself, as he crafts his beats in real-time. It was fun, and instructive, to watch each song come together, piece-by-piece, and it speaks to his dedication to performance that he does this for every show, instead of just playing over pre-recorded tracks. Despite his affable demeanor on-stage, which comes off somewhat geekish and slightly goofy, his command of the tools before his gave the performance a professional sheen.

His new album, Cashing In On My Mistakes (2012) represents a huge step forward—more songs, more complex, better-recorded. It’s the sound of a musician who, after years of experimentation, has finally found his mature sound. That was how he sounded at Burro. It would be interesting to hear him performing with Robin Rutenberg & Friends next time he’s here, just to hear the contrast in cello-work between him and Ms. Naarah Strokosch, who is my favorite cello player in the world right now—not because I’m some expert on the instrument, but because she’s cool, and so is that band’s music–a new CD out now.

DVD Review: Sara Del Rey

Best of Independent Wrestling Series Presents: Sara Del Rey (Smart Mark Video)

Is Sara Del Rey the best women’s wrestler in America? That the question even needs to be asked speaks to the depth of the women’s wrestling scene today. While the Japanese promotions have utilized their female talent as serious athletes pretty consistently for the past 30 years, the United States has been inconsistent, at best, in the modern era. That’s a sharp departure from territory days, when audiences could see legends like Mildred Burke, June Byers, Fabulous Moolah and the sublime Vivian Vachon plied their trade with no quarter given or taken.

With some notable exceptions (Moolah’s last run, GLOW, the AWA, portions of mid-‘90s WCW), women’s wrestling was put on the backburner in the ‘80s and ‘90s. While there were plenty of awesome wrestlers in that era—Sherri Martel. Medusa Miceli, Jackie Moore (aka Miss Texas)—women were used mostly to great effect as valets/managers and, in WWE, to get crossover appeal via Playboy spreads. Even with the arrival of ladies like Trish Stratus and Lita, the physical viability of the women’s roster was actively downplayed, with excessive gimmick matches and embarrassing storylines that stunk of misogyny and alienated audiences.

By most accounts, Fit Finlay was responsible for helping to transform the WWE’s women’s division into what is now one of the most important components of their overall product. The men’s magazine spreads still happen sometimes, but you’re more likely to see the Divas doing charity work, anti-bullying or pro-literacy campaigns, or maybe putting out yoga DVDs or sitting-in on martial-arts instructional tapes. Over the past decade, the match quality has spiked upward as the women have been allowed to wrestle more, wrestle longer and with more credibility. The current Divas division is probably their best ever—certainly in terms of sheer numbers; a Diva-for-Diva comparison between the 2012 roster and their counterparts from a decade ago would be interesting, some other time.

WWE’s success helped inspire the competition, as the emergence of TNA/Impact has offered another opportunity to evolve the structure of women’s wrestling, and their Knockouts division has regularly had some of the highest-rated segments of their programming. Their roster contains a nice mix of established stars from WWE and girls who came there straight from the many independent promotions out there. They are the only company to ever put a women’s steel cage match on TV, as far as I know. The Knockouts suffer from the same issues as everyone else who has to work with that material, but they manage to do well nonetheless.

The increased visibility of women’s wrestling on national TV via WWE and TNA, and the platform it creates for wider success, has acted as a rising tide lifting all boats—that is, the indies. WWE has an infrastructure for training new female wrestlers, but like TNA they mostly recruit women with some experience on the indie circuit; there is no real female equivalent of men’s amateur wrestling system, besides maybe Judo. So, for them, the independent circuit is truly essential, not just for learning their craft, but for perfecting it.

As good as the very best ladies in WWE and TNA are, their colleagues on the indies are as good, or better. And—with all due respect to Daizee Haze, Nicole Matthews, Madison Eagles, Melissa Anderson, MsChif, LuFisto, Portia Perez—Sara Del Rey is at the top of that list. She’s never worked for WWE but, at 31, it seems inevitable that she will. She’s already been able to claim key roles in the evolution of arguably the top three independent promotions in the country: Ring of Honor, Chikara and Shimmer.

Del Rey and Melissa Anderson are standing in the back of the picture, on either side of the chandelier.

For the record: Sara Del Rey is of no relation to singer Lana Del Rey. She was born Sara Amato, she was trained in California by a fella named Bryan Danielson, who at this writing is WWE’s World Heavyweight Champion. (He was also named PETA’s 2011 Athlete Of the Year, but that’s another subject.) In some ways, she can be considered a feminist icon of this era, with her insistence on training and wrestling right alongside the guys; given that they included folks like CM Punk, Chris Hero, Claudio Castagnoli and Samoa Joe, is commendable. She’s known for her arsenal of kicks and her finishing maneuver, the “Royal Butterfly”, best described as a double-underhook neck-crank into a suplex; it’s one of the signature moves of the women’s scene, right up there with the “Glam Slam”.

The greatness of “Queen of Wrestling” is celebrated in a recent triple-DVD release by Smart Mark Video. While not as fancy as the amazing releases being done by WWE, it’s no-nonsense, straightforward style fits perfectly with its subject. Disc one consists mostly of an interview conducted in late-2011; it runs nearly an hour, and features her talking about how she got into the business, telling stories—the usual shoot-interview fare. The rest of the package is filled-out by 21 matches recorded over the past six years of her career. She appears here for nine different promotions with 22 different opponents, including three men (Castagnoli, Icarus and Chikara founder Mike Quackenbush).

One thing that comes through crystal-clear from the DVD is Del Rey’s versatility. She can play power-games with smaller women like Daizee Haze and Portia Perez, but she can be the versatile underdog when facing opponents like Amazing Kong (who’s had a rough year as the WWE’s Kharma). As for the inter-gender matches, the best compliment one can give them is that they don’t come off as gimmicks. There are two matches with Castagnoli in the collection, and one almost forgets that Del Rey is a woman; it seems more like a match between two guys, albeit with a significant size advantage. Their second match here was one of his last for Chikara before going to FCW, and one of the promotion’s greatest moments; the post-match angle was also the last time anyone’s heard anything from Daizee Haze, who’s really one of the best performers in all of pro-wrestling in the last few years.

Eight of the last nine matches on the DVD are from her run with the BDK in Chikara, starting with one of my favorite matches ever: Del Rey and Daizee Haze against Amazing Kong and Raisha Saeed. (Melissa Anderson appears in four matches, more than anyone else; Haze and Castagnoli appear three times.) She tags with Castagnoli against Quackenbush and Manami Toyota, widely-viewed as the best women’s wrestler of all-time, and later faces off against current Shimmer champion Madison Eagles. Also included is her match with Quackenbush in the semi-finals of the 12Large Summit tournament that ultimately crowned Eddie Kingston as Chikara’s inaugural Grand Champion. I’d also like to point out that Tim Donst’s commentary in the Del Rey vs. Icarus match is a highlight of the whole package.

WWE and TNA have so far been remiss in featuring their women’s rosters on DVD, in part because neither company has really given any of their women time to put together enough material to do such a thing. Of course, both companies have enough to each do at least one nice historical overview of the divisions. Ratings and web-hits would suggest the market is ripe, but we’ll see; a rumored Trish-Lita “Rivalries” package would be an interesting start. More so than any DVD package released so far, this collection finely skims the cream of women’s wrestling in America, and makes a pretty compelling case that Sara Del Rey is, as the cliché goes, “every bit as good as she says she is.” For those looking to get themselves up to speed with the best crop of women’s wrestlers in American history, this release is a great place to start.

sheltonhull@gmail.com; March 12, 2012

OccupyJax: The End of the Beginning

Much like music (especially jazz), politics has been an obsession of mine since adolescence, which now covers a period of nearly 20 years. And in that whole time, I’d say that the first Occupy Jacksonville rally on October 8, 2011 was without question one of the greatest days in my life as a political junkie. The part of me that once scoffed at Hunter S. Thompson’s assertion that politics is “Better Than Sex” can now almost appreciate his sentiments, having seen that movement develop over the past six months or so, and the tremendous upside it’s had since.

Within a few weeks, members of Occupy had decided to take up the full-time, 24/7 encampments that defined the movement nationally, voting almost unanimously to begin the Occupation downtown on November 5, 2011. The four-month anniversary of the Occupation’s start arrived on March 5, but by that point there was no Occupation to celebrate, because the General Assembly voted the evening of March 3 to break down the camp two days earlier. I walked by, during a break in the Warehouse Studios benefit show at Thief in the Knight, and found out shortly after. I sat with four of the leaders at Burrito Gallery, debriefing over tacos and beer. It wasn’t a sad time—more like watching a friend’s graduation.

OccupyJax was one of the last of its kind in this country; where other cities saw the end weeks ago, ours stuck around long enough to do what no one ever expected was possible—to end it on their terms. Having run the most progressive political campaign this state has seen yet in this century, I can appreciate the patience and stamina that entailed. (Funny: While writing this column, at 6:23am on the morning of the 5^th, news broke via WJXT that Occupiers in West Palm Beach had chained themselves to an old courthouse building downtown—further proof that, no matter what the haters say, they’re absolutely serious.)

So, what was accomplished in this stage of the movement, besides pedagogy? Well, it offered a disgusting display of widespread, coordinated police misconduct, which has been called out by professionals in that industry–like the police chief of Seattle during the WTO protests of 1999; the actual inventor of pepper-spray (who personally trained 10,000 officers to train most of the others) went on the radio to cite multiple cases of his own directions regard the use of these chemicals being disregarded. Had he not done that, we’d probably not know that the tear-gas being used to brutalize pro-democracy protesters in Egypt was actually supplied by US corporations—a useful tidbit.

It showed folks that even our most liberal politicians aren’t acting quite as progressively as their supporters might “hope”, and that conservatives are willing to violate the Constitution if it means suppressing political dissent. Occupy should have been the beginning of a progressive surge that stymies the upward trajectory of, how you say, “lunatic right-wingers”, in this state and nationwide. Instead it stands right now as another example of how Democrats have kept a defensive, compliant posture instead of challenging for those big-money spots the President needs to implement the policies he’s promised.

And it provided many thousands of people (especially young people) with direct, useful experience in political science, which they can carry on into the high-schools, colleges and professional careers; it’s the birth of the new political elite.  Around the country, friendships were forged, love affairs begun and ended, strengthened and made more complex (in ways surely both good and bad). It won’t be long before the first batch of Occubabies is born; sadly, the first one died, in utero, after its mother was tear-gassed and kicked in the stomach while Occupying Seattle—the movement’s first martyr.

Occupy also generated millions (if not billions) in economic stimulus for most cities where it occurred. Locally, the failed initiative to give $1.25 million in taxpayer money to JP Morgan Chase was stalled-out in large part because of the efforts of OccupyJax, along with Concerned Taxpayers of Duval County and others. Personally, I think it was great for downtown business, but others would certainly disagree.

OccupyOne thing is certain, here and nationally: The end of formal Occupation does not, in any way, mean the end of the movement itself. In fact, they may be now poised to achieve on a level previously unseen in the realm of progressive politics. Having already done the impossible, the next logical step is moving on to the extremely unlikely, and there is no better time than 2012. All the critics, who wanted the Occupiers off the sidewalks so badly, may now end up wishing they had just left well enough alone.

sheltonhull@gmail.com; March 6, 2012

Review: “The Journals of Spalding Gray”

The Journals of Spalding Gray, by Spalding Gray, edited by Nell Casey. New York: AA Knopf/Random House. 326 pp., illustrated.

“I know that there’s a part of me so in love with death that I feel like I have already died and am looking at the living.”—Spalding Gray, 1976

It took some time for the dire circumstances surrounding Spalding Gray’s premature death to enter the public record, but time finally filled-out the final chapter of a brilliant life, lined with tragedy. Gray was last seen alive aboard the Staten Island Ferry, of which he apparently jumped. His fans were mostly shocked and confused. For many, Gray was the epitome of cultured, cultivated calm, the kind of person one might have assumed would be always graceful and resilient under any kind of pressure. But the truth fell well-short of that impossible standard.

The Journals of Spalding Gray document Gray’s graveyard spiral in painful, intimate detail, but there’s much more to it than that. Few public figures of his era were as open and honest about their history, their secrets, their feelings. Where other celebrities existed in a sealed bubble of hype and hagiography, armored-up inside characters created by their press agents, Spalding Gray walked the Earth virtually nude, intellectually and emotionally. It’s that quality that made him the greatest monologist of our time. He breathed life into a tired, stale format by bringing the audience directly into his mind, and his heart.

His Journals were published in 2011, presumably to coincide with what would have been Gray’s 70^th birthday. Editor Nell Casey sorted through boxes of material containing over 5,000 pages of text, hours of audio tapes and countless other related documents, then supplemented that by interviewing some two dozen of Gray’s friends, relatives, colleagues and collaborators. The book, which spans the years 1967-2004, is more than just a collection of journal entries; the editor has duly rendered the closest thing to a memoir there will ever be.

Its pages are laced with pathos and tragedy from almost the very start. He was never really, truly, totally happy with himself. The brilliant and beloved public figure we all admired from afar was, at his best, deeply neurotic and reckless, even by the standards on post-war New York City. At worst, he was a full-on sociopath whose exit was foretold by the man himself from very early on, as this book documents. Few people could even pretend to be comfortable with the level of intimacy Gray displayed throughout his career, and the journals take it even further. While he was apparently writing with the intent of future publication, one presumes he had no intention of ever living to see that day. (It’s kind of like the Nixon Tapes, in that sense.) Any future scholarship on him must take these “journals” as primary-source material.

Not unlike its author, the book is at their best in the 1970s. The early entries burst with fresh-eyed optimism, sometimes in spite of himself; one instantly hears that voice, a voice like none other. The early entries are breezy and pretentious, as one might expect. He writes like a poet in love for the first time—which, in a sense, he was. These were heady times. He spent a few days in a Vegas jail, and even appeared in two old-school porno flicks, “Little Orphan Dusty” and “The Farmer’s Daughter”, where he helped invent a now-common group-sex position known in porn as “the split-roast”. (He also cried on the set.)

Yet, the dualism is set early. On a trip to Mexico, he writes: “I think now that I want very much to live.” He was only 26. Upon returning home, his father told him a) that his mother had killed herself; and b) to go collect her ashes at the post office, allegedly. It’s impossible to conceive of the cataclysmic shock this moment must have been to him; his journals don’t even contain full, complete sentences for nearly a month afterwards—just fragments.

It’s fun reading the first-hand, real-time experiences of someone who played such an important role in the 1970s theatre scene in New York. The trope has been exhausted, but it’s still true: In this book, the city exists almost like a character in and of itself. For Gray, the city was where he escaped from a tumultuous youth; it was the place where he created the persona we now associate with him, and where he found the first in a series of women who served as muses, lovers and victims of his own self-destructive behaviors.

Elizabeth LeCompte was a writer, director and occasional actor in the same Wooster Group Gray helped found; she oversaw the development of his first monologues. Their love, slightly fictionalized, forms much of the plot of Gray’s only novel, the underrated Impossible Vacation, whose laborious composition is the subject of one of his best monologues, Monster In A Box. His years of peak professional success were also the years in which he did the least amount of journal-writing. Maybe the success helped satisfy something in him, making the ol’ existential hand-wringing less necessary in that period, or maybe he was just too busy. Either way, even in 1985, when his life was outwardly perfect, he was writing: “If I continue being who I am now, I see disaster written on the walls.”

Noted names float throughout the text: Laurie Anderson, Eric Bogosian, Annie Liebowitz, Craig T. Nelson, Steven Soderberg, Sam Watterston. For years, he shared an apartment with LeCompte, his first great love and herself a pivotal figure in that scene; they continued to share it even after splitting. She had a child with Willem DaFoe, who moved in, and Gray moved on to Renee Shafransky, who exists in a sort of parallel world as a character in his best-known works; she is the only one of his great loves who did not participate in this book, for reasons pretty easily guessed after reading it.

Kathie Russo (who was exceptionally brave to have permitted this portrayal of her, which is not often that complimentary) would become his widow, the mother of his children, the driver of the car in which they almost died, through no fault of her own. She tamed Spalding Gray, got him domesticated and primed for what should have been the next 30 years of their lives together. Instead, they only got a decade.

They were in Ireland on late-June, 2001, on a vacation he was reluctant to take (in part because their host had died a month earlier), in the back-seat of a rental-car without his seat-belt. “Gray fractured his hip, which would leave him with a drop foot, a limp on his right side, and permanently in need of a leg brace in order to walk,” Casey writes; “he also suffered an orbital fracture … Later, in surgery, hundreds of shards of bone were found lodged in his brain. Russo, meanwhile, got fifteen stitches in the back of her head where Gray had hit her with his own head as he flew forward in the accident.” Everyone else walked away.

And then 9/11 happened, and the city where he had the greatest moments of happiness in his life was deluged with negative energy. A man who’d spent his entire life trying desperately (and unsuccessfully) not to think too much about death had, within just three months, had the subject forced into the forefront of every aspect of his personal and professional life. Gray was physically broken and in constant pain, mentally distressed and traumatized, and struggling to cope with the impact of an ill-advised move into a new community and a home that was a money-pit, all while his output was slipping. As the dust-clouds floated up and away from Ground Zero, the shadows rolled in on his soul.

In the last 19 months of Gray’s life, he spent parts of at least six of them in mental-health facilities. He was given prescriptions for drugs including Aventyl, Celexa, Lamictal, Neurontin and Zyprexa. He also received approximately 21 electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) “treatments”, despite concerns over giving such treatments to a man with a metal plate covering his brain. The ECT treatments occurred in 2002: Gray had committed himself, but he, his family and friends (and at least one trained neuropath) had begun requesting his release after six weeks. The hospital refused, keeping him for three more months, during which time the ECT happened. By the time he was released, he had less than a year to live.

In November 2001, two years before he died, he wrote: “I’m a dead man. A ghost.” It’s remarkable to read the moments of lucidity and focus in his journals in the final years and recall that, no matter what, he kept working. Despite a six-hour operation to insert a titanium plate into his forehead, Gray was back on-stage within ten weeks of the accident; his last performance, at PS 122, was about a month before his death, which was apparently incited in part by watching the movie “Big Fish”. The journals document how hard he tried just to maintain, but much like his mother a quarter-century earlier, the conclusion was foregone. It was an act of will.

As a fan, someone who once sought out VHS copies of “Swimming To Cambodia” and “Monster In a Box” as was entranced by the man’s abilities, the experience of reading Gray’s own account of his last days was just heart-breaking. Casey’s additions are indispensable at this point; reconstructing the circumstances of the car accident, the awful extent of his injuries and his final descent into total madness, dissolution and death was, as with the book in general, an impressive display of journalistic skill. The whole situation never made sense to me until I read this book, and got the story from Spalding Gray himself.

His confessional style may have evolved as it so often does, in response to his repressed conservative upbringing, in particular by seeing how his mother suffered and eventually perished under those conditions. Many of the unique and now-legendary personalities to coalesce in New York’s performance-art scene of his era wrestled with similar issues, and slipped those surly old bonds. But he never quite slipped them fully, no matter how far he went.

 

sheltonhull@gmail.com; February 28, 2012

Notes on Occupy Orlando

Raising the Bar: Occupy Orlando sets the regional standard.

This reporter, who lives in Jacksonville, recently spent a couple of days visiting Occupy Orlando, which was then in its third week. The Occupy movement began in New York City, then quickly went national as graphic evidence of police misconduct inspired others to start their own local offshoots in solidarity. As such, while each Occupy location does have certain features common to all, they mostly reflect the distinctive character of the cities and towns they are situated in.

Having already spent hundreds of hours researching the subject in general, including communications with insiders, observers and other journalists at Occupations around this country, the chance to sprint south and check out the scene in Orange County was welcomed eagerly. It certainly helps that Orlando is a beautiful city with great food, from eateries like Dandelion Community Cafe and Ethos Vegan Café, multi-media madness at Rock and Roll Heaven and Park Avenue CDs, which is the best record store in all of Florida. Right around the corner, Stardust Video and Coffee makes epic soups and sandwiches and a massive selection of DVDs for rental. Each Monday evening, their parking lot hosts the Audubon Park Community Market, while the Homegrown Local Food Cooperative (HomegrownCoop.org) provides sustainable fruits, vegetables and dairy to homes and restaurants throughout Central Florida.

The city’s impressive development in the half-century since Disney’s arrival makes it an ideal location in which to weigh the costs and benefits of the corporatized society the Occupiers stand opposed to. The fact that so many of them (the students, in particular) are beneficiaries of this system does not invalidate their position; rather, it reinforces their responsibility to get involved.

After putting the word out via social media (the author maintains the greatest Facebook page ever, full disclosure), about two hours elapsed before receiving a phone call from Brook Hines, part of their Media Relations team. At 45, her experience in the media and public relations world was put to good use. This type of rapid response and vigor in regard to outreach efforts has been crucial to their rapid success in a state that is generally almost devoid of large-scale progressive activism of any kind. As she puts it, “We want to work with the city, rather than crash it.”

There were veterans of the Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam wars. Some got their first taste of politics via the Obama 2000 campaign. Others are veterans of older movements, including the assorted presidential campaigns of Ralph Nader, Ross Perot and Dennis Kucinich. A smaller segment comprised folks old enough to have participated in the seminal protest movements of the 1960s; for many old-school activists, these may be the final act in their political lives.

As Hines wrote in one of the group’s press releases: “Like Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Orlando is a leaderless movement, but it is far from disorganized. Coordination takes place online and at daily General Assemblies where … participants present ideas and dialogue until reaching consensus. Then, we take action to accomplish out collectively approved goals. The formation of multiple committees, including media, medical, peacekeeping, legal, transportation, food, event facilitation and materials preparation, enables all participants to contribute to the movement.”

The actual Occupation of Orlando commenced on Saturday, October 15, but planning began two weeks earlier, including two General Assemblies held at the Orange County Regional History Center. The date was announced in advance, a website was set up, Facebook pages and Twitter feeds built, supplies gathered, responsibilities designated and promotional materials (flyers, buttons, posters, etc.) prepared. They even sent out a letter soliciting the support of local businesses. The work paid off. The first event was arguably the biggest political protest ever held in Orlando, drawing between several hundred and a couple thousand participants, depending on who you ask.

Beth Johnson Park is just a quarter-mile or so down the street from Boom Art Gallery, a shop showcasing the brilliant hand-crafted work of Glenn and Sandy Rogers, which they describe as “the fusion of functional furniture and nostalgic art”. Their client list is awesome, and includes Ann-Margaret, Jay Leno, Paul Shaffer, Jeff Foxworthy, Mandy Moore, Robert Plant, Carrot Top and Shaquille O’Neal.

The art is must-see, and the artists are two of the most interesting people I’ve ever met. Glenn’s dual backgrounds in fine art and as an International Flooring and Home Furnishings Designer led to a diverse career that included technical work on Broadway, shows, art exhibits in SOHO, storyboarding the “Mr. Whipple” commercials for Charmin, acting credits in Hollywood and the New York stage; he also helped create the Yellow brick Road used in The Wiz. The Rogers met and married during their 15 years spent touring together as clowns in the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Sandy was, for seven years, Director of it Clown College, in which capacity she helped train Steve-O. Unsurprisingly, they offered full support for Occupy Orlando.

“This is redress of grievances, not a wedge-issue protest,” said Matthew, a 23 year-old student and musician part of a group of young people sitting on blankets in the park one day. His group included several people who’d been part of the OWS group, but were reticent about sharing further details with a journalist.

Over 2,000 people had taken part in the occupation, over 200 of whom spoke at the General Assemblies; and another 10,000 people had expressed support online in just the first five days, and those numbers spiked in subsequent weeks as Occupy caught steam nationally and Occupy Orlando started getting mainstream attention.

Like many of their fellow Occupy operations, the Orlando group maintained a camera streaming content directly to UStream.tv. Depending on the size of the crowd and the amount of activity in a given city at any given time, most full-time occupations run live video 24/7, while others fill the “dead” time with video of earlier activity; some cities have more than one feed, in addition to whatever is being done by individuals. This type of instant connectivity isn’t just great for outsiders (advocates and critics alike) to watch what’s going on directly and interpret for themselves. It is crucial for the actual occupiers in each of those cities, who can now learn from each other in real-time, share knowledge, adjust their methods, streamline tactics and goals, as well as networking.

Maybe no other city in Florida has brought in as much money from multinational corporations than Orlando, but there are many ways to quantify it. But its public image is tied-in with Disney and Universal Studios in a way no other city is with the many large companies doing business in them. Theme-park money spurred tremendous growth, and the landscape reflects it, especially compared to the relative bleakness and desolation of the outlying areas like Winter Park, Casselberry, Maitland and Ocoee. (The blank-yet-knowing looks on the faces of the kids working at the Walgreens and Steak and Shake in Apopka made me want to adopt them all, or at least write them recommendation letters to the UNF.) Mass-transit out there sucks, putting the lower-income families living out there at a persistent competitive disadvantage for jobs and schooling, the youth in particular.

The reader has probably seen the video(s) from Zucotti Park, where those three wee lasses felt the hot stuff (which really hurts, by the way). Note that at least one officer was already conducting a discussion with the ladies related to their refusal to get up and leave. While not exactly cordial, it was civil until his colleague imposed his own will upon the proceedings. The original cop’s agitated response, directed toward the one who deployed the burning, stinging mist into a group of civilians and fellow NYPD officers, presaged later confirmation of prior complains against the same guy at political events.

The nefarious action of one cop means little compared to the historic reputation of a department that saves and improves the lives of people every day, nor does it mean that the women sprayed that day were necessarily right. But the incident was recorded from a number of angles, and the targets were highly intelligent, well-connected members of a well-organized protest operation that was already ongoing in New York, with affiliated groups already starting elsewhere. The hardest part of civil disobedience is to not fight back when violence is used; that’s why most people generally want no part of it.

NYPD handed Occupy an image to, for lack of a better word, brand their movement, and like all good brands, it has staying power: young people being pushed around for engaging in political protest. Thanks to cell-phone cameras, YouTube and streaming video sites, a huge portion of the thousands of Occupy-related arrests have been documented, replete with scores of clear-cut incidents of abuse. The situation in Oakland alone could fill a book; surely a number of student protesters will apply their field experience directly to the classroom.

It only took a few good squirts of poorly-aimed pepper-spray to transform Occupy Wall Street into a national movement, and Florida is doing its part

 Beth Johnson Park sits at 57 S. Ivanhoe Blvd. It curves off the I-4. Whether approaching from any angle, the first thing one will see is the American Flag. Currently, Beth Johnson Park closes at 11pm. All citizens must vacate by then, but the sidewalk is not subject to those rules. As such, Occupy Orlando adopted what’s called “Sidewalk Solidarity” by standing on the sidewalk in shifts, 24/7. However, the law does prohibit sleeping on the sidewalk, sitting down on it, or sitting in a chair (all activities that are allowed in the actual park when it’s open). Sleepyheads make use of a privately-owned parking lot across the street, 20 feet away. Although trespassing charges was raised by police, they did not occur because the lot’s owner either refused to make a complain, or was otherwise not present.

This is just among the many examples of how, despite the anti-capitalist talking points and the alarmist rhetoric of commercial media, sizeable portions of the business community around the country are exerting subtle forms of support for Occupy activities. Another is that the nearby Doubletree Hotel offers its bathroom facilities for the occupiers. (Note also that Zucotti Park, the epicenter of Occupy Wall Street, is itself owned by a billion-dollar corporation that clearly has no issue with their presence, as long as they clean up after themselves.)

Most occupiers have chosen to heed those rules, but as expected others forced the point. Occupy Orlando took a huge, risky step forward on the night of October 22, when a small group of activists chose to openly defy city rules and remain in the park after 11. They, as individuals, chose to stage their own independent action without the approval of the General Assembly; some 200 people were doing Sidewalk Solidarity at the time. Some allege it was a blatant publicity stunt, others that it was an attempt to be more aggressive in the face of political power.

This civil disobedience resulted in Trespassing arrests for 19 people, including two women and a juvenile. By all accounts, the police were entirely professional in doing their job. (It’s always worth noting that law-enforcement has very little actual influence on the crafting and implementation of our nation’s laws, and citizens are worse off for it.) If it was a publicity stunt, it worked perfectly by forcing the occupation into commercial media, thus helping to grow the numbers. Another 13 arrests were made a few days later, as activists refused to vacate the park following the teach-ins on November 5—Guy Fawkes Day, incidentally, and also a day after the epochal success of Bank Transfer Day.

 

Among those 19 arrested that night was a wheelchair­-bound young man who had been doing unpaid volunteer work for President Obama’s national reelection campaign, similar to his activities in 2008. His disability leaves him unable to do most types of work, so he lives at home with his family, on a fixed income, while he pursues his studies. Like many people in his position, he’s felt the heat of price increases and the pressures exerted on many Americans as state legislatures around the country clip strategic holes in the social safety net; those concerns manifest as political action.

His involvement with Occupy Orlando was as a private citizen, not as any type of representative for an Obama campaign that many critics allege the Occupy movement is designed to help, much as the Tea Party ultimately served Republican interests. However, after the news of his arrest became public, he was dismissed from his official duties and rendered persona non grata, on the pretense that his arrest brought negative publicity to a campaign that hasn’t even been officially declared yet.

Further, the fellowship that made the delicate balancing act of his student life possible was immediately pulled, throwing his educational future into some doubt. The crushing news was delivered by telephone, by a supervisor who was either unwilling or unable to say exactly who made the decision, or to delineate the process by which his life was ruined. He was still emotionally wrecked, visibly and palpably so, as I spoke to him ten days later; the police who arrested him were downright kind, compared to the allies who shafted him, over a petty charge that will most be dropped.

Yet, despite this life-altering humiliation, the young man was insistent that his name not be used here, because that’s how strongly he feels about reelecting Obama. That, in a nutshell, in what the Occupy movement is about: Young (and not-so-young people doing what they think is right, despite the extreme consequences that may result. His plan now is to hit the road, visiting and collaborating with other Occupy operations in places like New York, DC and Chicago, culminating with the ongoing actions in the city of his birth, Philadelphia.

Many activists on the scene gave vocal credit to students from the University of Central Florida. Many of those UCF “Knights” have lived up to the moniker, in terms of their contributions to the effort, from logistics to publicity.

           

            October 25 saw 15 Occupy Orlando activists expanding outreach efforts even further by sitting in to show support for the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1596, which was negotiating with the Board of Directors for LYNX, Orlando’s bus system. According to a press release, “Drivers have not seen wage increase in three years and are being offered only a 0.5 percent wage increase at a time when inflation for food is forecast to rise as much as 4.5 percent.” They had no obvious effect on negotiations, which remain calcified, but it made for valuable experience.

            Such action has become a worthwhile habit.      The day before, Occupy Orlando sent  27 people in business clothes to the Orange County Legislative Delegation meeting, where they had meetings with state representatives from both parties. Occupy has also become a regular presence at meetings of the Orange County School Board and the Orlando City Council.

November 1 was Day 18 of the occupation, and coincided with the “Awake the State” rally. The day’s most popular whipping boy was the local Chamber of Commerce. It operates out of a large multi-story building adjacent to the park, yet reportedly pays only $1 in property taxes per year. Spicing the brew, Mayor Buddy Dyer had apparently, a couple days prior, made the astoundingly absurd claim that there was no corporate money at all in Orlando. 

A low makeshift stage was laid out near the entrance to the park, placing the Chamber building (and the sunset) behind the speakers. Their modest PA was sufficient. Speakers included an older activist whose rights to vote had been forfeited via felony; he copped to his mistakes, and urged everyone else to cast the votes he could not. The owner of Dandelion talked about the wildly disproportionate environmental impact fees that undermined profitability and her ability to hire new workers. A member of the teachers’ union noted that Florida teachers haven’t received a cost-of-living wage increase in three years; “Education cuts don’t heal”, she said. The delightful Sundrop Carter brought glad tidings from the United Auto Workers, who are stepping up organizing efforts in Florida, a state basically built around the automobile.

Although no elected officials made their presence felt on Day 18, the crowd did include a number of veteran political insiders, as well as a couple of candidates. Mike Cantone, 28, is seeking to unseat mayor Buddy Dyer in next year’s elections (scheduled for April 4, 2012). He comes off as a smart, earnest young man who’s quickly developing a certain facility with the lingo of leadership. Having myself run for Jacksonville City Council in Jacksonville earlier this year, I was curious about how his new-reality based, grass-roots approach would fare against an entrenched incumbent like Dyer.

 He began smartly, with a streamlined and systematic approach to his platform. He broke it down into seven key components; for each he created quick, one-line synopses of his vision, then identified a number of forward-thinking proposals he would implement in order to methodically each component of the larger agenda. Listed alphabetically, they are: Clean Energy (4), Coordination (3), Education (4), Innovation (10), Public Safety (7), Quality of Life (6). As a Jacksonville resident, I appreciate the catchphrase “A Bold new Vision for Orlando” even more than his slogan, “I Like Mike!”

As one might expect, he’s fully-synchronous with social media, and his promo materials are well-done; they’re also union-made. The aesthetic centers on soothing blues and greens, reminiscent of the city’s waters and lush plant-life. The candidate’s picture is good, with a nice sunset background, but it can be improved upon.

We both agreed that the non-partisan, “unitary”-style elections held at local levels offer the best chance to get new progressive talent into office, as opposed to the standard process, which allows Democratic gatekeepers to freeze out any dissenting voices. As we have both noted repeatedly, the great efforts made by Occupy so far will be wasted unless they translate to serious political gains in that epochal year of 2012.

Occupy Orlando has a lot of electoral activity they can exert potential influence on. Senator Bill Nelson is up for reelection, and the popular Democrat will have several marginal Republicans chasing his rear bumper; a strong progressive turnout helps bolster what looks so far to be an fairly easy win, and be crucial if conditions change. All seats in the US House are up for grabs next year, and those are always volatile; Occupy’s exact place amidst is impossible to guess..

Locally, besides Dyer’s seat, four of the seven School Board seats in Orange County are up for grabs, as well as three of six seats on the Board of County Commissioners and three of five seats on the Soil and Water Board. The offices of Sheriff, State Attorney, Public Defender, Clerk of Courts, Comptroller, Property Appraiser, Tax Collector and Supervisor of Elections are all on the ballot in 2012, so the stakes are huge. This election will decide the future of their city.

In real terms, a guy or gal like Cantone would need a massive groundswell of progressive activity statewide, the rising tide to lift all boats. He (or any other, similarly-inclined candidates elsewhere next year) can probably build a formidable street team, but to keep them all activated at full efficiency, it takes money. 2012 will be the most expensive election cycle in history; to win in that environment does not necessarily require more money, but it does require a substantial amount of ready cash. My campaign, for example, did not result in victory because I was not an effective fundraiser, and could not find anyone who was. Cantone and his ilk must be a lot better, a lot faster, and it’s quite possible.

I also met a fella named Curtis Southerland, also from Jacksonville. His path into the realm of political activism was neither planned nor voluntary. His obscure, outsider campaign to unseat Jacksonville Sheriff John Rutherford as a write-in candidate in 2011 was motivated by his desire for redress after his brother Mark[?] was killed in a one of those “police-involved shootings” that have now become an unfortunate trademark of the Jacksonville Sheriffs Office. He lost, of course, but that’s fine because the fix was in from the start; former JSO Public Information Officer Ken Jefferson had an excellent chance to win, but regional Democrats stymied his fundraising, for unknown reasons. Southerland’s campaign was more of a protest against the system and a means of telling people about the tragic death of his brother.

Local media coverage was generally fair, though laced with the same snarky cynicism typical of Occupy reporting in general. Leading the pack, surprising, was the nominally liberal Orlando Weekly, which functions in the case as a gatekeeper for an Establishment Left that has been uncomfortable with Occupy from the get-go. In its October 27 issue, staff writers Billy Manes and Jeff Gore flog the standard commercial media talking points: That Occupy has no “list of demands, a chief goal or an overarching political philosophy”. While conceding their sidewalk strategy to be “brilliant”, they repeatedly note the “(ostensibly) leaderless nature of their organization” and keep the focus squarely on the negative aspects, like arrests and shady characters.

Granted, this was published only 12 days into the Occupation, and surely there is more left for them to say on the subject. But as a visitor to the city, I was disappointed to see its leading liberal publication projecting a generally dismissive attitude toward young people whose political views are basically consistent with the values of alt-media in general. It’s the sort of reductionist thinking that has essentially tanked political-based print media in general, in particular an alt-weekly market that has become aggressively corporatized and unresponsive to the needs of their audience.

Ironically, that issue’s cover features a snarling, broken-toothed Tea Party caricature as part of a series of poorly-done humorous Halloween masks. Occupy gets a nod, too, with a cut-out version of the now-ubiquitous Guy Fawkes mask adopted from “V” For Vendetta, which is now a universally-recognized symbol of Occupy and the larger (and more amorphous) Anonymous movement. “Initially dismissed as iPad-wielding hippies, the occupiers leered and groaned in the face of authority, anxiously anticipating police brutality and pepper spray,” writes Manes.

“The very notion that this leaderless movement had come to life as a pseudo-political monster is enough to cause apoplexy and anxiety among those in power [including, apparently, OW itself]. ‘Give us your list of demands!’ they screamed at the occupiers in a panic, only to realize that there really wasn’t a list of demands.” Imagine, two completely contradictory ideas coming from the same writer, in the same publication, just nine pages apart. This kind of cognitive dissonance certainly helps explain why the mainstream media still struggles to comprehend the depth and complexity of Occupy.

http://www.occupyorlando.org

http://www.occupythehood.org;

othorlando@gmail.com 

http://www.mikecantone.com

http://www.ocelections.com

http://www.HomegrownCoop.org

http://www.stores.ebay.com/boomart

sheltonhull@gmail.com; November 7, 2011

Imported Goods: Candy Lee follows her bliss to Jacksonville

Candy Lee Long and her husband David moved here from Fayetteville, Arkansas at the beginning of the summer, to study and be closer to their friends; she has quickly gotten established herself in a scene already swollen with skilled singer-songwriters. She notes Tobacco Pat, Robin Rutenberg, Gospel Music and Sunbears! among those she’s enjoyed so far, when not herself working spots like Burro Bar,European Street, Dog Star Tavern, Speckled Hen Tavern, New Orleans Café and the Riverside Arts Market. She hosts the open mic nights at the Wine Bar and has featured at Creekside Songwriters Showcase. A strong start, but any standard.

She’s new to this scene, but not to Florida, or the business. Born in Ft. Myers 27 years ago, Candy Lee lived briefly inVermont but spent the last three years studying and performing in her adopted hometown of Fayetteville, which is where her artistry really caught stride as leader of a group (which included Dan Dean, Warren Dietzel, Jennifer Graham and Emily Jenkins) aptly dubbed “Candy Lee and the Sweets”. It was there where she found the confidence to really begin to define herself as a creative individual, performing as a solo act and putting the emphasis on her own songs. And feedback was positive: she was named Best Female Singer/Songwriter and Best Female in a Band by the Northwest Arkansas Music Awards.

Lee has been singing since childhood, and performing in school bands and various other groups for almost as long, but only started on guitar four years ago. “I used to play clarinet, but haven’t since high school. Now the only instrument I play proficiently is my voice. My knowledge of music theory is minimal. I can read music, but when it comes to what I do as a singer/songwriter, I mostly play by ear.” With diligent practice she’s evolved on the instrument to effectively support her songwriting. These skills are ably displayed on her debut solo recording, The Gate, which comes in a package entirely designed by her. (It’s worth noting here that Candy Lee is also a skilled artist and graphic designer.) Not many musicians are as intimately involved in every aspect of their recording.

According to her website, “The Gate is a project of music, art, and philosophy. It explores the evolution of human thought, as experienced by Candy Lee. It is the story of the hero’s journey to Self-realization and enlightenment.” Recorded inFayetteville last year, the album features her own artwork and her own compositions, which display a melodic sense of unusual potency. It captures a musician of ferocious self-assurance, one unafraid to go full speed ahead and miles away in pursuit of her artistic objectives.           

Candy Lee’s voice changes tone and pitch from song to song; the voice services the song, rather than the other way around. Hers is the only voice heard on the album, frequently overdubbed for harmonic purposes; this comes out in places like the choruses on “Worst Enemy”, one of the album’s best tracks. In practice, her voice sounds very much like the Casady sisters, aka Coco Rosie; this comes through on the opening track, “Blues Skies”. At others, like on “Experiences”, it’s more reminiscent of Cranberries singer Delores O’Riordan. It doesn’t sound derivative, but more like a set of certain sonic tools employed in service of the songs.         

Following the album itself, a few minutes of silence yield to a bonus track that shows off yet another aspect to Candy Lee’s artistry: electronic music, rendered by her group “Metasapien”, whose debut disc, Art Or Die, was released a couple years ago. Candy Lee sings the hooks while husband David Long raps over beats they crafted together. The two met shortly after she graduated high school, playing together briefly in an acoustic duo called 50 Cent Trade. Long also records as “I Am”; his third album, Spiral Dynamics, was released in February, and all can be had via his Bandcamp site.

From a newcomer’s perspective, what are her initial impressions of our scene? “I like the indie folk scene and the fans who attentively listen at shows,” she says. “I didn’t really know what to expect when I got here, as far as the music scene goes. I had heard that there were plenty of places to play, but nothing in detail about the other bands in the scene. My initial impressions of the music scene in Jacksonville were positive. I am happy the music scene here is so diverse.

“What I dislike about Jacksonville is that it seems very commercial, like most of Florida. I miss the small town, environmentally conscious vibe of Fayetteville, with its independent businesses, bike trails, community gardens, and kid friendly events. The environment there gave rise to a certain level of introspection” in the resulting cultural products. Of course, many people here are working to change both that perception and the underlying realities; the fact that the city still attracts her type, even in this ridiculous recession, is certainly cause for optimism.

Long earned her BA in Environmental Studies at Florida Gulf Coast University, and picked UNF to pursue a Master’s in Environmental Engineering. Having made the successful transition into a new phase of her life and career, her immediate goals are simple: keep moving forward. She’s building contacts and booking gigs in new (to her) venues, while planning to tour in November. The home studio she used to record The Gate will be used to record her follow-up, with release slated for sometime in 2012.

@the Green Door, 2008. Photo by "Noir33"

www.candyleemusic.com

http://www.facebook.com/CandyLeeMusic

http://twitter.com/CandyLeeMusic

http://iamdavidlong.bandcamp.com/

sheltonhull@gmail.com; September 19, 2011

DVD Review: Martha Argerich/Mischa Maisky

Martha Argerich & Mischa Maisky—Luzerner Sinfonieorchester/Neeme Jarvi (Accentus Music)

The world’s greatest living classical pianist, Martha Argerich, celebrated her 70^th birthday this June 5, and having beaten cancer years ago, she shows no sign that age has caught up with her. In fact, age can barely see her at all, she’s so far ahead, and that has always a trait common to her creative endeavors. After studying with the famed teacher and performer Friedrich Gulda (who made some daring forays into the jazz world decades ago that have aged quite well themselves), Argerich made a cannonball splash into the public eye with an award-winning recitals at Geneva and Bolzano in 1957, then Warsaw in 1965 and the ripples she made have continued rolling into the 21^st century.

To commemorate the occasion, Accentus Music has released a DVD of a concert recorded in Switzerland on February 9-10. She is joined by longtime collaborator Mischa Maisky (born 1948), quite arguably the world’s greatest living cellist; they are backed by the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra (founded 1806), with guest conductor Neeme Jarvi (born 1937), for a program that mixes old and new with seamless precision.

For the last 30 years, Argerich the musician has existed in two distinct yet still mostly overlapping forms—as the grand dame doyenne of the 88 keys in our modern world, and also as a major facilitator of the musical arts in multiple countries. In a sense, she could be considered somewhat analogous to women like Marian McPartland, Cosima Wagner or even Pannonica de Koenigswarter or Lorraine Gordon, all of whom played a role in developing the most important music of the past 100 years; Argerich is herself a beneficiary of their contributions. She has provided instruction, encouragement and her money to three generations of classical musicians, in addition to the priceless benefits of association with her name, whether in collaboration with Argerich or in conjunction with the various events she is associated with. Argerich serves as president of the International Piano Academy Lake Como, which offers top-shelf training for seven selected pianists per year, and as General Director of the Argerich Music Festival and Encounter in Beppu, Japan, which she founded 15 years ago. Her annual performances at the Lugano Festival are always noteworthy for the new talent she collaborates with.

Argerich has also proven a boon to the more non-musical aspects of the industry, especially in terms of recording. Whether done in-studio or live on-stage, the unique technical challenges involved in getting good sound from a classical session have helped lead the charge in the evolution of recording technology, particularly as it relates to a) the development of stereo sound on the records, and b) the structural features of the records themselves, as the industry moved from 78s to LPs to compact disc and beyond. The jazz world was doing similar work simultaneously, and the resulting methods were applied to other genres, thus making possible the extraordinary, world-changing sonic revolution wrought by rock and roll, R&B and soul.

A free agent from day one, Argerich has recorded for almost every major classical label, and many of the minor ones; only RCA-Victor andColumbiasomehow missed the boat. While it is unclear if the effect was deliberate, but she remains a top seller for all those labels, generating revenue that has allowed those labels to produce more music in an industry where most new albums sell a few thousand copies at best. Some of this material might not have been possible without those few extra dollars—what I like to call “the Norah Jones Effect” (as demonstrated with the resurgence of Blue Note Records). In this manner, countless artists have further profited from their connection to her.

In the case of Accentus, a fairly new label based out ofLeipzig,Germanywith only about ten DVDs out so far, the release of an Argerich disc is crucial to a strong start for the company. While they also carry discs by heavyweights like Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim, Ricardo Chailly, Joshua Bell, Pierre Boulez and Evgeny Kissin (some of which are previewed on this disc), there is only one Martha Argerich—no one sells like her, and it’s possible that no one ever will again.

While barely out of girlhood, Martha Argerich dove headlong into a classical music world that was then still populated with the giants of 20^th century music. Leading orchestras were being conducted by the likes of Igor Stravinsky, Arturo Toscanini, Herbert von Karajan and others. The piano world was dominated by titans like Vladimir Horowitz, Sviatoslav Richter. New stars were coming along like Glenn Gould, Leonard Bernstein, Mitsuko Uchida, Van Cliburn and Earl Wild. She was, without question, one of the most beautiful women in the world then, but looks alone were not enough. The fact that she was so successful and so widely acclaimed amidst such a tough crowd attests to her skill, in particular her singular facility with the music of Frederic Chopin.

In my opinion (which is shared by others with infinitely more credibility than I), Martha Argerich is the greatest interpreter of Chopin’s music for solo piano than anyone since the composer himself. That fact will be the foundation of her legacy, but there is much more to her than that; she also reaped a mighty harvest from the seeds sown by the Russians Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev, whose works were mainly popularized by Richter and Horowitz. She has worked effectively in everything from solos and chamber groups to symphony orchestras, and is among the most-recorded artists of the past 50 years.

As one might expect, Argerich and the camera get along nicely. Once notorious for canceling concerts, she has been filmed in performance almost every time she actually performs. Every phase of her career has been thoroughly-documented, and in recent years she’s been the subject of several excellent documentaries. She bears much responsibility for the very existence of a “classical video” market; most companies involved with such material have their own Argerich material available.

The DVD reiterates its star’s diverse interests and wide-ranging capabilities. The programme, which runs nearly two hours total, includes pieces by Antonin Dvorak, Cesar Franck and Dmitri Shostakovich. But the concert’s centerpiece is the world premiere of Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin’s “Romantic Offering”, a piece commissioned and written for these specific performers; he had previously written a piece for Maisky’s 60^th birthday, in 2008.

The orchestra begins the set alone, without the featured soloists, sauntering through Dvorak’s “Scherzo capriccioso in D flat Major, Op. 66”. Argerich and Maisky then arrive together—with the latter wearing an incredibly shiny, puffy silver-grey shirt—to begin the Shchedrin piece, which runs about half an hour.

“Romantic Offering” opens in a moderate, ruminative vein, with the soloists working through the piece in public for the first time, before plunging into a sprightly second movement; Argerich’s mastery of the keyboard’s high-end is on display, as Maisky bows like a Muay Thai fighter, with his wild, wooly white hair flying around like he’s playing speed metal—and perhaps he is, in a sense. Talk about aging gracefully! It appears that neither he nor Argerich have lost a step. The horns strike a chord that pushes the reset button, before the whole orchestra jumps in, Argerich leading the way. Thrilling stuff, and probably the DVD’s highest point. The third movement meanders, aiming for a mood that isn’t quite evoked; hard to say whether the composition falters here, or if the band doesn’t quite mesh as well as in the previous movement. My guess is the former.

Following a round of applause and flowers presented, the principals (Argerich, Maisky, Jarvi and Shchedrin) exit stage right, returning for a brief curtain call. The bits of backstage interaction are always fun to see, in part because one sees so little of it. After a break (either an intermission, or more likely a cut to footage from the second concert), the group returns to play “Sonata for cello and piano in A Major” by Cesar Franck. To my ears, it sounds almost like Gershwin in parts, if not Aaron Copland.

The set concludes with the infamously splendid “Symphony No. 9 in E flat Major, Op. 70” by another Russian, Dmitri Shostakovich. The piece was written in celebration of the Russian victory in World War II, but was apparently suppressed because the music was deemed too happy for the solemn occasion—typical Soviet-era wrongheadedness. It’s a delightful piece of music, and the orchestra is at their best working these playful melodies and martial rhythms; Argerich and Maisky are not present. The woodwinds get to shine here, with a bespectacled lady oboist the star of the first movement.

Seizing on the expanded capabilities afforded by the format, the DVD also includes about 20 minutes of bonus documentary footage featuring Argerich, Maisky and Shchedrin. Entitled “Behind the Scenes At a World Premiere”, it’s an interesting look at a side of the business rarely visible to outsiders, and a nice way to wrap up a performance. It appears that Argerich’s golden years might be downright platinum.

sheltonhull@gmail.com; July 21, 2011

Review: “Coltrane On Coltrane”

Coltrane On Coltrane: the John Coltrane Interviews, by Chris DeVito. Chicago: A Capella Books (an imprint of Chicago Review Press ). 379 pp., illustrated.

The life and legacy of John Coltrane embodies the spirit of Teddy Roosevelt’s battle-tested axiom “Speak softly and carry a big stick”. Coltrane recorded extensively in all types of musical settings, but he didn’t seem to make a big deal about it. He just worked and worked, always pushing forward for the next step along what was arguably the most unique path of musical progress ever walked.

“Coltrane On Coltrane” features some 55 articles, essays and interviews related to Coltrane, authored by some of the best jazz writers of that era, including Stanley Dance, Leonard Feather, Ira Gitler, Ralph J. Gleason, Nat Hentoff, Frank Kofsky and Gene Lees. The appendix features interviews with people who knew the subject from his roots in North Carolina and his musical matriculation in the smoking-hot Philadelphia jazz scene of the 1940s and ‘50s.

Coltrane’s status as a tireless student of the game is on full display as he nearly aces one of Downbeat’s famous “Blindfold Tests”. (Incidentally, some day it would be really nice to have all of the blindfold tests collected in an anthology; it’s truly one of the most unique gimmicks ever conceived in the journalism business, and it’s surprising that more media in other genres, especially hip-hop, haven’t made fuller use of it.) One also reads a lot of his love for artists like Ravi Shankar and Ornette Coleman, as well as his perpetual struggle to find the perfect reed. We learn that Coltrane’s rapid mastery of the soprano sax was not nearly so effortless as it might have seemed; the embrochure was very different, and for years he expected to reach an eventual crossroads, forced to choose between horns.

We also learn more than ever before about his early years, and the long, winding road he took to immortality, thanks in part to old interviews with a former childhood friend and one of his first music teachers. A key thing to remember about Coltrane, a fact reiterated over and over through the text, is that he was never particularly satisfied with any of his recorded work. He viewed everything in terms of evolution and exploration; the records were often months or years behind the pace of his restless spirit, and he viewed the records more as souvenirs from his journey.

The text ends around 1965, just as the tumult surrounding “A Love Supreme” gave way to the overt controversy of his last few years, as Coltrane became the crown jewel of the avant-garde movement, with multiple drummers and large horn sections; the transition from McCoy Tyner to Alice Coltrane, and Elvin Jones to Rashied Ali, were not just symbolic of his shift, but vital aspects of it. There’s not much record of how Coltrane felt about himself or his music toward the end; all we know is that he did not stop until he was physically unable to work any more. One has always suspected that the diagnosis of liver cancer that he apparently received around that time may have spurred him to speed up his musical experiments, thus making the schism between past and future even more profound. The critics did what they always do when confronted with art that defies their ability to explain: they either attacked his music or ignored it. To think that John Coltrane was denied coverage in Downbeat for years is unthinkable today, yet that is how strongly his music affected people.

This book is such a well-executed labor of love that offering any criticism at all feels almost bitchy, but there are minor flaws that can be easily corrected in later editions or the paperback version. The painting of Coltrane on the cover is nice, but I’d rather see one of the many iconic images instead, to reinforce the seminal nature of the text; DeVito found several unpublished photos that could be used for this purpose.

Also, a discography and partial bibliography would be nice; since everyone who reads this book will likely be a serious Coltrane buff, such information would make it even easier to follow-up his words with his actions. Granted, Coltrane’s did a massive amount of work in his short life, and the subsequent 45 years have seen countless reissues and a flood of new material being released. Putting together comprehensive backmatter of this sort would have been a full-time job in itself, and one can easily imagine how exhausting DeVito’s job already was. Still, such material would have pushed the text beyond 500 pages and made this book truly indispensable. But, as it is, Coltrane On Coltrane is a must-read for all fans of the artist and the times he lived in. DeVito has done yeoman work, and the results are recommended without hesitation.

sheltonhull@gmail.com; July 1, 2011

 

 

“Revolution Girl Style Now: A Look at Kristin Noelle Hinga” (1997)

“I’m going to say exactly what I want to say, I don’t care if it’s flowery or pretty….” A pretty girl with bright red lipstick, smoking, keeping track of how many cigarettes she’s had, not for any health reason, but simply because she likes to write things down. She goes through a notebook a month this way, and anyone who’s read her writing knows it’s worth it.

Kristin Noelle Hinga is on a couch in a now-defunct coffee house, sharing the secrets of her “thing,” which is the kind of all-encompassing cop-out term that exasperated hacks with too much irony in their bloodstream would apply to Hinga’s multimedia endeavors. Given Hinga’s disputatious nature and her propensity to let you know exactly what’s on her mind (if only all women were more like her, then maybe I wouldn’t have missed my deadline from stressing out over a girl), you’d be well advised to avoid all smarmy generalizations, because all generalizations are bad. A better perspective can be had of what she does by watching her do it, oh, say, November 11, when she will be doing her one-woman show, “Motion Pictures.” Another view can be taken on the 22^nd, when she will be having a public opening of her artwork on St. Augustine’s Artwalk. And of course, you, the reader, having demonstrated your enthusiasm for fine literature by reading this, just have to go get her collection of poetry, Typewriter Ribbon.

In the end, it doesn’t really matter how one characterizes her work, because the resounding fact is that it’s good. She may be the only well-known writer in Jacksonvillethat no one ever really sees. Not that she’s reclusive; she’s merely busy, and she tries to keep herself as busy as possible. She’s the publisher, editor, and owner of Brown Booth Publishing, geographically based inSt. Augustine, though its real center is the brain of its 23 [?]-year-old creator. She started Brown Booth in an effort to control the ways in which her writing would be produced and presented to the masses. She’d always been influenced by writers who at least appeared to be self-contained, free of corporate polish and shine, like Anais Nin, Jim Carroll and Henry Rollins. She says that Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo (who, by the way, will be performing at Beep Caffeine on Nov. 15 with bandmate Thurston Moore and veteran jazz drummer William Hooker) “is the reason” why she chose to do her own “thing.”

“He taught me that it’s not about the money,” she says of Renaldo. What it is about to her is changing other people’s perceptions. Or not. In fact, she’d rather that you did it yourself. She has founded her own literary/art movement called Sarcasm, which is based on her infamous Sarcasm Manifesto. “Sarcasm is not a movement of all the people together, it’s more each person on their own.”

Sherman Skolnick book review (2004)

Ahead of the Parade: a Who’s Who of Treason and High Crimes—Exclusive Details of Fraud & Corruption of the Monopoly Press, the Banks, the Bench and the Bar, & the Secret Political Police, by Sherman H. Skolnick. Tempe, AZ: Dandelion Books, 2003. 315 pp.

Sherman Skolnick is probably best-known as the founder of Citizens’ Committee to Clean Up the Courts, founded in 1963 to conjure up concepts of corruption and criminality that could be used as political leverage against judges and lawyers. While many of his targets would dispute his version of events then and now, it can’t be denied that more judges and lawyers have gone to jail because of his efforts than any journalist or politician who immediately comes to mind. I could not imagine what price Skolnick has paid to pursue his particular line of dialogue with history, nor, perhaps, what price has been paid to him. I do know, however, that he’s almost 80 years old and knows enough HTML to get a book deal.

His take on politics is less reliable, as demonstrated in his book Ahead of the Parade. It’s technically his second book, but The Secret History of Airplane Sabotage (1973), which examined in excruciating detail the crash of United Airlines 553 at Chicago’s Midway Airport in December, 1972, never actually made it through the first printing—perhaps because he concluded that the crash occurred at the request of Richard Nixon, the master of dirty tricks, who wanted to silence the wife of Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt; she died alongside a US congressman and a CBS News reporter.

So he could be viewed as credible on the subject of judicial affairs, especially in his hometown of Chicago, a tough place to come up doing that kind of work today, more so especially if crippled by childhood polio. Apparently Skolnick’s parents appealed to FDR to personally intervene in obtaining hard-to-find medical care, and he did, even having the boy out to visit with him in Hot Springs, where he made available some of the “alternative therapies” developed for the (usually) sitting President. In later years Skolnick would accuse FDR of complicity inPearl Harborand the squandering of US gold reserves, though he remains fond of the old autocrat. More recent Presidents get harsher treatment, and W is depicted as fundamentally illegitimate.

The challenge here is to describe Skolnick without using the phrase “conspiracy theory,” which isolates the reviewer from heat associated with the author’s arguments but is nonetheless prejudicial. Where once the phrase enjoyed a certain cachet, just a few years ago, in the years since the most flamboyantly destructive conspiracy in modern history was executed by associates of Osama bin Laden the phrase has been used to slur a lot of content that is verifiably true. The liberation of Iraq, for example, was widely and vociferously opposed on the basis of arguments since proven correct, even endorsed by those who argued most stridently for war—and apostates before and since have to worry about being labeled as “conspiracy theorists” by professional conspirators.

Skolnick’s writing style has real old-school punch, like a cross between William S. Burroughs and Walter Winchell. It would be fun to read on almost any subject, but that his chosen field is sabotage and dirty tricks is just delightful! His skolnicksreport.com is loaded with what is, at the very worst, the very best political satire available in English, and at best the finest conspiracy theory this side of Lyndon LaRouche. Until a better phrase comes along, it will have to be called that, though doing so begs the question of whether it is possible for conspiracy theory to ever be true. Having written more about Mr. Skolnick than any other living journalist, and being reasonably educated in many of the matters that come up in his work, I would say: Yes. Conspiracy theory permutates from game theory, and is a fundamental component of political science as an art form.

A number of individuals and organizations come under suspicion within this framework, including the CIA, FBI, MI-6, Mossad, McDonald’s Federal Reserve, Bank of America, Chicago Board of Trade, Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola, CREEP, BCCI, Jesse Jackson, Marc Rich, Rahm Emanuel, Timothy McVeigh, Saddam Hussein, Al Gore, Gore Vidal, and “William Rockefeller Clinton” (don’t ask). All the great dynasties are here: Rothschild, Rockefeller, Kennedy, Windsor (whose matriarch is Queen of England) and five different men spanning three generations of the Bush family, including the current “occupant and resident” of the White House. Now, even those of us who doubt that China uses Wal-Mart’s transportation channels to move drugs into the US and pays law enforcement to look the other way, or that JFK was supposed to be killed at a Chicago Bears game a month before Dallas, can marvel at the audacity with which Skolnick hammers out his theses.

If a fifth of Skolnick’s reports on national and international politics were ever proven true, the shock would reverberate across the world. A fun mind-game to play when reading Ahead of the Parade is to assume that, amidst all the questionable content, there is one line in it that is absolutely true—but which line?

A large portion of the book is devoted to theIllinoisjudicial scene—namely, the details of a lawsuit that sought to overturn copyright protection for Coca-Cola. He writes of judgeships and media anchor-spots being purchased, and of secret courts that do the elite’s bidding behind the scenes. Unless one has a passion for jurisprudence (or lack thereof), or like collecting dirt on one of the world’s most successful brand names, the reader will skip through much of this material for the meat—the dirty deeds of our nation’s elite. Bush, Clinton, Gore, the Pope, the Queen of England, the Rockefellers, Jesse Jackson, Marc Rich, Chandra Levy, even Simon Wiesenthal—very few escape his poison pen, and those who do are excoriated repeatedly on the website.

The visual of an 80 year-old man speaking quite sincerely about how the Pope has killed people to keep up margins in the soybean trade, or how Al Gore was nearly killed twice by air power in the week before JFK, Jr. died in similar fashion (which he has done at length on his cable access show, “Broadsides”), is plenty amusing, like a senile relative rewriting history. But there is a method to his madness, which centers on dissolving the reflexive belief that it is possible to exert real power in this nation while also holding true to professed morality. In that sense, Ahead of the Parade could be viewed as the sequel to the late William Cooper’s Behold a Pale Horse (1991), that classic of conspiracy theory that reads as more legit with each passing year.

The most obvious lesson to be taken from Skolnick’s opus is that most if not all the major global powers have people hard at work on behalf of their interests right here in America. Another lesson would be that bribery is a very specific art form, the mastery of which can greatly relieve the pressures of an aggressive life. I doubt that anyone would seriously question such notions anymore, but it was flatly dismissed as late as the Enron collapse in summer 2001, which to outsiders looked much like a controlled implosion done for the benefit of shadowy forces, and whose perpetrators escaped justice by throwing money at our government.

If this book has any real flaw, other than the questionability of its content, it is that the book could never come close to the sheer vicious joy of the website. A better idea would have been for Skolnick to anthologize his infamous “Overthrow of the American Republic” (OOTAR) series, now numbering 66 parts. But that would be too easy. There is something clearly quixotic about Skolnick’s quest to piss of the entire Western ruling structure, so to see a book under his name at all is pretty heartening for those Americans who truly value our (current) freedom of speech.

The distinct possibility that our country, for better or worse, has already been sold out from under us to people whose identities we won’t know until it’s too late has not been articulated in this way since William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsburg got really deep in the early 1970s, and I would hazard to guess that they would enjoy Skolnick, in moderation. If nothing is true unless you see it with your own eyes, then most of what we know to exist really doesn’t, which is an infinitely more frightening prospect than if everything was true. As the recently pardoned Lenny Bruce once said “Chicago is so corrupt, it’s thrilling.” Indeed.

sheltonhull@gmail.com; December 13, 2004

*Note: Sherman Skolnick died in 2002, but his website remains intact.