What have I been up to the past months?
For one thing, helping to develop the "3-D" multidimensional short story. One has been released here:
"Vodka Friday Night"
Tuesday, November 05, 2019
Monday, February 11, 2019
Behind the Wall
RECENTLY I made a post at the New Pop Lit NEWS blog about multi-dimensional thinking. (Read it here.) We at NPL intend to soon apply these ideas to art.
IN SO DOING, we've been scouring through a host of obscure stories, novels, and movies searching for elusive examples of the point we're trying to make.
Among the more obscure works we've found is the 1966 remake of Beau Geste, written and directed by pulp novelist Douglas Heyes.
https://rarefilmm.com/2017/07/beau-geste-1966/
Yes, the film is cheap, melodramatically acted, and scantly true to its original source. BUT, its structure consists of some fairly imaginative thinking.
The setting: an isolated fort of the French Foreign Legion in North Africa. A patrol approaches the fort. All they see: a wall, with smoke coming from behind it. A member of the patrol fires a rifle in the air. In return: shots, from the fort. Then they hear more shots.
A survivor is found inside the fort. He takes the story back to the beginning-- and the narrative progresses to the present. The scenes from the opening of the movie are replayed, but, simultaneous to the approach of the patrol, we see what happens inside the fort. Behind the wall.
Why is this important? Because the movie asks the question we ask of a person, and of events, in fiction and in life: What's behind the wall? WHAT is the full story? Then the movie answers the question. Simple, but basic. A template upon which to build similar ideas.
A mark, by the way, of the movie's obscurity is that only eleven reviews of it are posted at the popular IMDB website.
Wednesday, May 23, 2018
Karl Wenclas Reads from "Hamlet"
YES, I thought, why not tackle the best? In this recording I start out with one of the lesser-known soliloquies-- after Hamlet has just seen the ghost of his father. Needless to say, the young man is shaken and angry. Anyway, this is my interpretation--
https://soundcloud.com/user-231741316/a-hamlet-soliloquy
(Painting by Benjamin West.)
Tuesday, April 17, 2018
"Star Spangled Poet": A Recording
This was written circa 2006, during a time when I was more judgmental than now.
https://soundcloud.com/user-231741316/sets/spoken-word
Wednesday, March 21, 2018
"Bad Poetry"
A SPOKEN WORD POEM FOR WORLD POETRY DAY
I've just started getting back into spoken word (we have a new Open Mic feature at the New Pop Lit site). I did quite a few open mics when I lived in Philadelphia; read against some dynamite underground poets, Frank D. Walsh and Michael Grover among them. I wasn't always consistent-- but tried to make it difficult for someone to follow me in the lineup.
Here's something I recorded today for World Poetry Day-- partial reworking of something I wrote several years ago. A bit over-the-top! I'll be doing better. . . .
"Bad Poetry"
Here's something I recorded today for World Poetry Day-- partial reworking of something I wrote several years ago. A bit over-the-top! I'll be doing better. . . .
"Bad Poetry"
Tuesday, March 13, 2018
Rock and Roll History: The Harvard Viewpoint
AN ANALYSIS
AFTER a twitter exchange with a defender of Current Affairs magazine, I agreed to look at essays by one of their lead writers, Briahna Joy Gray, to see if they represented a tops-down, Harvard-oriented viewpoint. I selected her 9/6/2017 essay, "The Question of Cultural Appropriation." Rock and roll music has always been an interest of mine. From my earliest memories, I grew up listening to scratchy 45 rpm recordings by Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Fats Domino, Buddy Holly, Del Shannon, and other early rock luminaries.
THE QUESTION isn't whether Briahna Joy Gray's article makes sense, and speaks some truth. The question is the viewpoint. Or: Does the essay give the full story, or only part of the story? It's looking at a mountain from one angle and thinking you understand it. But we live in a three-dimensional world.
I've covered Gray's chief example of cultural appropriation in a separate blog post, "All About 'Hound Dog.'" The one point I didn't bring up there was that Big Mama Thornton's recording sold 500,000 copies across America, to consumers black and white. For a small record company, Peacock Records, this was an astounding achievement. The record could've sold more if promoted by one of the major record companies. Elvis Presley faced a similar, or worse, situation in the early days of his career, in 1954 and 1955 when recording with a tiny but ambitious outfit, Sun Records. Not until he hired Tom Parker as manager, and his contract sold to one of the majors, RCA, did his career become a phenomenon.
THE HARVARD NARRATIVE
The Harvard Viewpoint sees the world in simplistic terms-- the terms of neo-Marxist ideology. The caricatured lens of a Howard Zinn-style history. Tops-down in view and one-sided.
In this view, America's economy is a static, stratified thing, rigidly in place, with inflexible hierarchies based primarily on race. No understanding that this complex dynamo is in constant flux, absorbing influences and undergoing continual change.
To the Harvard-based-or-educated commentator-- the staff of Current Affairs, say-- there's the Music Industry. Run by plutocrats and highly placed. The Industry decreed that black performers were to be shut out. (Countless counter-examples from Duke Ellington to Ella Fitzgerald and Nat King Cole need not be considered, as they don't fit the narrative.)
Under the Harvard Viewpoint, black musicians and white musicians were separate entities, with strictly separate musical styles. There's enough truth to this to make Briahna Joy Gray's essay believable. When performers like Chuck Berry invented rock music (and he did help invent it), the Industry needed a white face to slap onto the genre-- and lo!, Elvis Presley was plucked from obscurity, through no effort of his own, to become the acceptable face. Thereby benefiting immensely.
This is the impression given by the Current Affairs essay.
THE INDUSTRY
In 1955, when rock music exploded onto the larger cultural scene, the industry was something of a monolith, dominated by the "Big Four" of RCA, Capitol, Decca, and Columbia. (Similar to the "Big Five" publishing conglomerates of now.) At the same time there was enormous musical excitement on the margins of the industry.
Roots music from the poorest segments of American society had been creeping into public consciousness at least since the 1930's, from the folk music trio the Carter Family, sprung from the wilds of Virginia, to seminal blues guitarist Robert Johnson in Mississippi.
DON ROBEY
Rock music would never have happened without business pioneers. The first black recording business upstart was Don Robey, of Peacock Records (founded in Houston, Texas, in 1949), and later, Duke Records. Robey recorded Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton's original version of "Hound Dog" in 1952.
CHESS RECORDS
At about the same time, 1950, Leonard Chess and his brother Phil started Chess Records in Chicago. (Leonard's original name was Lejzor Czyz. "Chess" was an appropriation.) In 1951, Chess Records released what many consider to be the first rock n roll record, "Rocket 88," performed by the Ike Turner band, though the record was credited to the vocalist, Jackie Brenston. Another appropriation?
BILL HALEY
In the same year, a low-rent country-western band, Bill Haley and the Saddlemen, recorded a cover of "Rocket 88." An appropriation. Haley, one of the top cowboy yodelers of the 1940's, had become increasingly interested in rhythm and blues, though his previous recordings had been of songs like "Ten Gallon Stetson." In 1952, he dropped the cowboy hats and changed the name of his band to The Comets.
CHUCK BERRY
While Bill Haley performed rhythm and blues with a country-western flair, fledgling rhythm and blues performer Chuck Berry began adding country songs to his repertoire. See my separate blog post about Chuck Berry.
*******
(WHILE rock music's roots were in the blues, it was way more manic.)
*******
THE POPULIST NARRATIVE
The populist narrative views American culture as not imposed from on high by conglomerates, nor by Harvard-trained culturati in Cambridge. Populism means genuine culture springing from a land and its people.
In this narrative poor whites and blacks in the South were experimenting with a variety of musical styles-- extensions of their original homelands; whether folk traditions in Scotland, England, and Ireland, or folk traditions in Africa. With the invention of the phonograph and the rise of radio, increased mixing of styles took place. Cultural integration. Integration that had been happening anyway. Technology increased its pace. As a teenager, Elvis Presley watched B.B. King playing on Memphis streetcorners, but he also listened to the radio.
Culture-mixing wasn't a one-way street, and the exchange was more horizontal than many believe. One of the few commentators to cover the topic has been Thomas Sowell, courtesy of a controversial essay, "Black Rednecks and White Liberals," in a provocative book of the same name.
Neither rhythm and blues nor country and western music were mainstream or pop enough to capture middle-class America's full attention. Only when performers like Bill Haley, Chuck Berry, and Elvis Presley synthesized influences and added a pop sensibility did rock n roll move on from its stray beginnings to become a truly separate entity. The result was a cultural earthquake.
THE MUSIC BUSINESS
More than a musical revolution, though, it was a business upheaval. Do-It-Yourself versus Monopoly. At the dawn of the rock era, the Big Four, along with mid-majors Mercury and MGM, controlled close to 90% of the record-selling market. Within a few years they lost nearly half their market share to many hundreds of new record labels. Unprecedented business change. This was with RCA buying Presley's contract from Sun Records.
The reaction came in 1960 when Congress, prodded by big business, held "payola" hearings in Washington designed to reign in free booting music tycoons. Alan Freed was destroyed. Dick Clark, more cooperative, later claimed he was forced to dissolve 200 corporations in one day. The two disc jockeys had owned or controlled hundreds of new labels.
MOTOWN
Yet sharp Do-It-Yourselfers able to spot talent continued the wave. Prominent among them was Berry Gordy Jr. in Detroit, who founded Motown (first called Tamla) Records in 1959 with $600 borrowed from his sister. Gordy created another synthesis-- well-produced and structured rhythm and blues with a pop style-- "The Sound of Young America." Gordy deliberately sought to appeal to a very broad audience-- and succeeded, turning his upstart enterprise into a billion dollar empire.
CHANGE
In the real world, as opposed to Marxist-leaning textbooks, this is how change is made. By hustlers, of any color. Wannabe capitalist tycoons with over-the-top dreams. In changing the business-- and making money as a by-product-- they also went a long way toward integrating and changing American society.
****
(Be sure to read the rest of this analysis, "All About Chuck Berry" and "All About 'Hound Dog.'"
AFTER a twitter exchange with a defender of Current Affairs magazine, I agreed to look at essays by one of their lead writers, Briahna Joy Gray, to see if they represented a tops-down, Harvard-oriented viewpoint. I selected her 9/6/2017 essay, "The Question of Cultural Appropriation." Rock and roll music has always been an interest of mine. From my earliest memories, I grew up listening to scratchy 45 rpm recordings by Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Fats Domino, Buddy Holly, Del Shannon, and other early rock luminaries.
THE QUESTION isn't whether Briahna Joy Gray's article makes sense, and speaks some truth. The question is the viewpoint. Or: Does the essay give the full story, or only part of the story? It's looking at a mountain from one angle and thinking you understand it. But we live in a three-dimensional world.
I've covered Gray's chief example of cultural appropriation in a separate blog post, "All About 'Hound Dog.'" The one point I didn't bring up there was that Big Mama Thornton's recording sold 500,000 copies across America, to consumers black and white. For a small record company, Peacock Records, this was an astounding achievement. The record could've sold more if promoted by one of the major record companies. Elvis Presley faced a similar, or worse, situation in the early days of his career, in 1954 and 1955 when recording with a tiny but ambitious outfit, Sun Records. Not until he hired Tom Parker as manager, and his contract sold to one of the majors, RCA, did his career become a phenomenon.
THE HARVARD NARRATIVE
The Harvard Viewpoint sees the world in simplistic terms-- the terms of neo-Marxist ideology. The caricatured lens of a Howard Zinn-style history. Tops-down in view and one-sided.
In this view, America's economy is a static, stratified thing, rigidly in place, with inflexible hierarchies based primarily on race. No understanding that this complex dynamo is in constant flux, absorbing influences and undergoing continual change.
To the Harvard-based-or-educated commentator-- the staff of Current Affairs, say-- there's the Music Industry. Run by plutocrats and highly placed. The Industry decreed that black performers were to be shut out. (Countless counter-examples from Duke Ellington to Ella Fitzgerald and Nat King Cole need not be considered, as they don't fit the narrative.)
Under the Harvard Viewpoint, black musicians and white musicians were separate entities, with strictly separate musical styles. There's enough truth to this to make Briahna Joy Gray's essay believable. When performers like Chuck Berry invented rock music (and he did help invent it), the Industry needed a white face to slap onto the genre-- and lo!, Elvis Presley was plucked from obscurity, through no effort of his own, to become the acceptable face. Thereby benefiting immensely.
This is the impression given by the Current Affairs essay.
THE INDUSTRY
In 1955, when rock music exploded onto the larger cultural scene, the industry was something of a monolith, dominated by the "Big Four" of RCA, Capitol, Decca, and Columbia. (Similar to the "Big Five" publishing conglomerates of now.) At the same time there was enormous musical excitement on the margins of the industry.
Roots music from the poorest segments of American society had been creeping into public consciousness at least since the 1930's, from the folk music trio the Carter Family, sprung from the wilds of Virginia, to seminal blues guitarist Robert Johnson in Mississippi.
DON ROBEY
Rock music would never have happened without business pioneers. The first black recording business upstart was Don Robey, of Peacock Records (founded in Houston, Texas, in 1949), and later, Duke Records. Robey recorded Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton's original version of "Hound Dog" in 1952.
CHESS RECORDS
At about the same time, 1950, Leonard Chess and his brother Phil started Chess Records in Chicago. (Leonard's original name was Lejzor Czyz. "Chess" was an appropriation.) In 1951, Chess Records released what many consider to be the first rock n roll record, "Rocket 88," performed by the Ike Turner band, though the record was credited to the vocalist, Jackie Brenston. Another appropriation?
BILL HALEY
In the same year, a low-rent country-western band, Bill Haley and the Saddlemen, recorded a cover of "Rocket 88." An appropriation. Haley, one of the top cowboy yodelers of the 1940's, had become increasingly interested in rhythm and blues, though his previous recordings had been of songs like "Ten Gallon Stetson." In 1952, he dropped the cowboy hats and changed the name of his band to The Comets.
CHUCK BERRY
While Bill Haley performed rhythm and blues with a country-western flair, fledgling rhythm and blues performer Chuck Berry began adding country songs to his repertoire. See my separate blog post about Chuck Berry.
*******
(WHILE rock music's roots were in the blues, it was way more manic.)
*******
THE POPULIST NARRATIVE
The populist narrative views American culture as not imposed from on high by conglomerates, nor by Harvard-trained culturati in Cambridge. Populism means genuine culture springing from a land and its people.
In this narrative poor whites and blacks in the South were experimenting with a variety of musical styles-- extensions of their original homelands; whether folk traditions in Scotland, England, and Ireland, or folk traditions in Africa. With the invention of the phonograph and the rise of radio, increased mixing of styles took place. Cultural integration. Integration that had been happening anyway. Technology increased its pace. As a teenager, Elvis Presley watched B.B. King playing on Memphis streetcorners, but he also listened to the radio.
Culture-mixing wasn't a one-way street, and the exchange was more horizontal than many believe. One of the few commentators to cover the topic has been Thomas Sowell, courtesy of a controversial essay, "Black Rednecks and White Liberals," in a provocative book of the same name.
Neither rhythm and blues nor country and western music were mainstream or pop enough to capture middle-class America's full attention. Only when performers like Bill Haley, Chuck Berry, and Elvis Presley synthesized influences and added a pop sensibility did rock n roll move on from its stray beginnings to become a truly separate entity. The result was a cultural earthquake.
THE MUSIC BUSINESS
More than a musical revolution, though, it was a business upheaval. Do-It-Yourself versus Monopoly. At the dawn of the rock era, the Big Four, along with mid-majors Mercury and MGM, controlled close to 90% of the record-selling market. Within a few years they lost nearly half their market share to many hundreds of new record labels. Unprecedented business change. This was with RCA buying Presley's contract from Sun Records.
The reaction came in 1960 when Congress, prodded by big business, held "payola" hearings in Washington designed to reign in free booting music tycoons. Alan Freed was destroyed. Dick Clark, more cooperative, later claimed he was forced to dissolve 200 corporations in one day. The two disc jockeys had owned or controlled hundreds of new labels.
MOTOWN
Yet sharp Do-It-Yourselfers able to spot talent continued the wave. Prominent among them was Berry Gordy Jr. in Detroit, who founded Motown (first called Tamla) Records in 1959 with $600 borrowed from his sister. Gordy created another synthesis-- well-produced and structured rhythm and blues with a pop style-- "The Sound of Young America." Gordy deliberately sought to appeal to a very broad audience-- and succeeded, turning his upstart enterprise into a billion dollar empire.
CHANGE
In the real world, as opposed to Marxist-leaning textbooks, this is how change is made. By hustlers, of any color. Wannabe capitalist tycoons with over-the-top dreams. In changing the business-- and making money as a by-product-- they also went a long way toward integrating and changing American society.
****
(Be sure to read the rest of this analysis, "All About Chuck Berry" and "All About 'Hound Dog.'"
Wednesday, March 07, 2018
All About Chuck Berry
(This post is the second of three posts. The first, "Cultural Appropriation: The Harvard Viewpoint" is yet to be written. The third is here.)
THIS BLOG THREAD is an examination of Briahna Joy Gray's 9/6/2017 essay for Current Affairs magazine, "The Question of Cultural Appropriation."
*******
ONE OF THE KEY POINTS Gray makes in her essay is about rock n' roll pioneer Chuck Berry, using him as an example of an artist overlooked while Elvis Presley was given the spotlight. To bolster her argument she quotes Kenan Malik:
"In the 1950s, white radio stations refused to play (Berry's) songs, categorizing them as 'race music.' Then came Elvis Presley. A white boy playing the same tunes was cool. Elvis was feted, Mr. Berry and other black pioneers largely ignored. Racism defined who became the cultural icon."
The quote is a distortion at best. At worst, a falsehood. While Chuck Berry's life was by no means easy-- he went to prison as a young man-- his ascent as a recording artist went fairly quickly.
THE FIRST RECORD
During his audition with Chess Records, his first recording session, he recorded a cover ("appropriation") of the 1938 Bob Wills country-western record "Ida Ray." According to wikipedia, Leonard Chess asked Berry to alter the lyrics and change the name to something less countrified-- Maybellene.
The wiki entry for the song states:
"It has been asserted that it was a common practice in the 1950s to alter the instrumental parts and lyrics of old songs and represent them as new songs . . . This practice took place because copyrights on older recordings were rarely asserted."
Recorded May 21, 1955, "Maybellene," Chuck Berry's first record, "--was a major hit with both black and white audiences," selling a million copies and reaching #10 on the pop charts, #1 on the rhythm and blues chart.
How could this happen?? While radio stations, then as now, had formats for which Berry's record wouldn't fit (as with Presley's records), an increasing number of "white radio stations" were playing rhythm and blues, and its newborn cousin, rock n roll.
CHUCK BERRY GOES COUNTRY
At the same time that several country performers were playing rhythm and blues, and adapting the songs to their own style-- Bill Haley first among them-- Chuck Berry was playing country songs and adapting them to his style. Also adapting his style and voice to sound more "white," eager from the beginning to appeal to the broadest possible audience.
The rockabilly singer Carl Perkins, who toured with Chuck Berry, noted that "Berry not only liked country music but knew about as many songs as he did," per wikipedia.
It's interesting to note the natural process of musical integration taking place at the roots level. Picture Bill Haley and the Saddlemen in cowboy gear playing the occasional rhythm and blues song to redneck audiences-- by some accounts, being occasionally booed-- and Chuck Berry playing occasional country songs in front of black audiences, who were also at first hesitant, then accepting. This is what being a pioneer in any field is about.
RADIO PLAY
Among the white disc jockeys across America featuring black music was Dewey Phillips in Memphis. Many of the recordings he played came from the tiny Memphis storefront recording studio run by Sam Phillips (no relation), a southern talent scout for Leonard Chess. Sam Phillips recorded both white and black musicians, quickly starting his own label-- Sun Records.
Elvis Presley's first record for Sun, recorded on July 19, 1954-- ten months before Berry's-- was "That's All Right," backed with a country bluegrass tune, "Blue Moon of Kentucky." While the record received local airplay due to Dewey Phillips, it didn't chart. The only recording Presley made for Sun which made it onto the pop charts was "I Don't Care if the Sun Don't Shine," in 1955. It went to #74.
Not until Presley jumped to RCA at the end of 1955 would his career take off nationally. Why? Because RCA was one of the bigs and was able to give his recordings for them-- "Heartbreak Hotel" in January 1956 first among them-- better promotion and distribution.
MOVIES
One area where whitewashing of a sort did take place was in the movies. The 1957 Elvis movie, "Jailhouse Rock," in at least a couple of its particulars better matched the life of Chuck Berry than of Elvis.
However, Chuck Berry appeared in at least three early rock n roll films himself. "Rock, Rock, Rock" in 1956, "Mister Rock and Roll" in 1957, and "Go, Johnny, Go!" in 1959.
WHY ELVIS?
Why did Elvis Presley, and not one of the other rock pioneers, become a monster national phenomenon? Why not Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Fats Domino on the black side, or Bill Haley, Carl Perkins, Gene Vincent, or even Pat Boone on the white side?
Part of the reason was race, no question. It's unlikely this would have happened if Presley were black. But another reason was that Presley was able not only to synthesize the various roots music strains into his style, but to add to the mix a more "pop," mainstream, crooner aspect as well. A touch of Bing Crosby or Dean Martin. (Pat Boone did this, but couldn't get the rest of it down.)
Undeniable as well was the fact of Presley's youth, looks, and charisma. What happened was that, like the fine-tuned universe, every aspect of the Elvis presentation, by intent or accident, was calibrated to create pop hysteria. He was outrageous-- but not as outrageous as Little Richard. (Though Elvis also wore mascara at some of his shows, perhaps an appropriation of the Little Richard act, though at this stage no one really knows.)
Promotion is never easy. The promoter-- especially when operating at a lower or working class level, like carny barker Colonel Tom Parker, the man with the big cigar-- is continually looking for just the right performer, or right mix, to punch a hole through the general, tops-down dominated culture. When Parker spotted Elvis he threw over his current act, bland country singer Eddy Arnold, for the more exciting and new.
*******
NEXT: In Part One I'll tie the argument together-- I'll make the basic argument-- and examine the difference between the populist and elitist viewpoints applied to American culture.
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