Atlantic City Reprieve

It were better to be alive in a world of death

than to be dead in a world of life

—Gregory Corso

The Press of Atlantic City had hard news for its town all last week. High gas prices, unemployment, and a dour economy are not conditions that help populate slot machines, no matter how digitally stimulating of an experience they may offer. But Atlantic City is taking hits these days other than casino attendance, and these hits are starting to bruise. Most slots offer gambles for only pennies a pull, and while quarter and dollar slots are scattered across the dozen mega-hotel-casino complexes, there are fewer high rollers than ever before. On any given casino floor, slot fans have has his or her choice of ten similar machines, and half of the green felt tables go unused, even during peak evening hours. Twice as many people could fit into any bar, eatery, or gaming parlor I saw. Five card poker offer lower minimum bets than ever: Bally’s broadcasts to the Boardwalk foot traffic a recording that promotes its new dollar Blackjack games. In keeping with its American Old West marketing scheme, Bally's New Big Bar offers dollar drafts and two dollar shots, all happening at a 24-hour happy hour that features dancing girls in cowboy boots maneuvering around, clothed, on the bar.

Most of who’s walking the Boardwalk has heard that recording before; this includes the homeless, the cart pushers, and persistent tragic gamblers. Each casino pumps out its booming energetic rock and promotional messages, though most on foot appear to know where they’re going: those who stroll leisurely, on vacation, are less in number than those walking with mission, fast. Most travel in groups as the Jersey oceanside sun crosses over; some walk on the beach and stare at the waves. To gamble, to drink, to eat, to gamble with themselves and who they are: there was more interaction between strangers in Atlantic City last week than I’ve ever seen in my life (and I am old enough to remember when Tropicana was Trop World, and my grandmother rode the indoor ferris wheel). People seem ready, willing, and able to talk to each other, as if through our common and difficult conditions have come to find new ways to be human to each other—as we squander some time and some wealth on the risk of gaining more. There is a reason why Charlie Sheen mumbles still the word “winning,” perhaps the same drive that has Larry King hosting his own stand-up hour coming up on a glitzy stage in the Jersey heat of summer, perhaps what drove my grandmother to ride buses here on daytrips in the 1980s and 1990s.

Bad news began on Tuesday: the announcement of layoffs at the Borgota, the Trump Plaza, and the Trump Taj Mahal, “following deregulation of the gaming industry that includes the elimination of minimum staffing requirements” (Wittkowski, D., 5/10/11, The Press of Atlantic City) reinforced some locals’ animosity towards New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, for relaxing the rules that the Casio Control Commission needs to play by. Then, on Tuesday afternoon, Tropicana and other casinos posted their last month’s profit and loss statements, and Trop came out as the biggest loser: during April 2011, amid dwindling slot and table revenues, the wealthiest property on the Boardwalk lost $5.8 million dollars to gamblers' winnings. The next morning’s headline was announced to me by an exuberant valet attendant, who distorted the story into one smart/lucky player/cheater taking the place for all he could—the house was, for once, beat, it seemed.

Atlantic City has changes since its turn-of-the-century hilt; since the 1970s, gambling industry interests have created a new environment of urban development, a specific, transient, and risky economy. The lot where the Sands, one of the first generation casinos, stood, is still empty, following the demolition of the massive building a few years ago: outlived its usefulness, ‘not economically viable.’ The skyway that once led there from the Boardwalk is gone, its entrance serving as a bleak pavilion where ‘Official Atlantic City Information’ is distributed. One can’t find the menu to the Irish Pub here, however, or its specials—those are distributed by a man with a placard two blocks down (whose Boardwalk collapse on Wednesday night drew a crowd and ambulance, but he’s said to be alright). I was enjoying local drafts, a massive salad, and cheese fries at the Irish Pub on Wednesday night when negotiations between Local 68—the maintenance union, represented at all the casinos on the strip—and Tropicana collapsed. All of the other casinos had signed on to the union’s new contract, except Tropicana, who at the last minute demanded a five-dollar-an-hour pay cut. On Thursday, a crowd in hardhats, surrounded by television news cameras, waved American flags on the Boardwalk in front of the Tropicana.

One worker on strike described to me how The Quarter at the Tropicana is a marvel of engineering, a complete and synthetic southern environment, with faux sky ceilings, rotating fans, upscale shops, and food choices that offer a range of entrees, with prices from single-to-triple digits. I walked back to my room (and past some terrible, one-step-above-karaoke singing taking place in the casino bar) and thought of the feats of engineering, the accomplishment at work in the walls, ceilings and floor of the Tropicana--as well as the at the Taj Mahal, but also within the brick majesty of Resorts, built decades prior. There’s a lifespan to every structure, especially in a climate beside the ocean: the wind and sun carried the taste of salt all week in Atlantic City, and most were used to it. This includes the homeless, the chronic gamblers, the locals, and those standing in solidarity over a few dollars an hour.

I’m no high stakes gambler; fifty dollars in video poker over two nights led me to a couple free nights at Trop. In part because of the labor dispute, and in part because of my own thrift, I spent little at Tropicana on my last night—finding myself at the faux Irish Pub, Ri Ra, located near the popular dance club Providence. They could have been charging double; Harp pints were still two-fifty, and the crowd that straggled in and out of the no-cover bar were mostly waiting to go in or out of the dance club (open 11pm-5am). The band, however, was a highlight, perhaps one of the best ways to conclude a week of relaxation, in a place built for such, but a place that is having a hard time relaxing itself: Eleven Eleven (www.eleveneleven.com) is what you’d want from a Jersey Shore bar band, and their extensive touring schedule speaks to their proficiency. The band has over a dozen years under its boozy beach-based belt, started by frontman Jeff Guilani and drummer Rich Franchetta. According to their website, it’s “Mike D!!!” on guitar and “Stebs” on bass, backing up the two band founders. But they’re booked every night in May and June for good musical reason: they listen to each other, even crowded into a corner of a drunken casino, even at three am. At that hour, there’s nothing wrong with a carefully chosen Sublime cover before Bon Jovi, “What I Like About You/You Hold Me Tight,” and other schlock—unless it’s played badly. Eleven Eleven can be relied upon to not mess up anything familiar: high energy live classic rock happening before one’s own eyes makes the conflicts and strife of a rough week of news easier to swallow, aural and artistic truth to match the ever-popular liquid kind in Atlantic City.

I spent my last moments in the hot tub, attached to the pool, which is attached to the health club at the Tropicana: on the sixth floor in the unremodeled West Tower, a faux-gold-frame points to the pool, a remnant of a previous branding of the complete complex-- once, those gold frames were everywhere. I thought of the engineering involved in a sixth-floor swimming pool with attached hot tub; I thought of the workers, likely in the 1980s, tiling this and most other pools on the Boardwalk. Dried off and packed up, I pulled out of the Tropicana parking garage and into the New Jersey sunshine, which was warm, and bright, and free.

Enlightenment Rock: “The Age of Reason” (1794) and The Dark Side of the Moon (1973)

[academic writing, April 2011]

Thomas Paine’s 1794 essay “The Age of Reason” established themes of political, social, and theological independence for individuals, parts of life sought by New World settlers around the time of Paine’s scholarship. While individuals’ religious and intellectual freedoms were important for Paine to identify in 1794, the continued and rabid popularity of one “classic” rock album has helped continue discussion of Paine’s themes of reason and rigid individuality. British psychedelic rock group Pink Floyd’s 1973 release The Dark Side of the Moon [DSOTM] has been celebrated a great deal in the United States and worldwide: its notoriety has come as a work of music and aural experience, as well as its continued lyrical discussion of themes identified in Paine’s “The Age of Reason” (1794). In the tradition of Paine’s (1794) essay “The Age of Reason,” DSOTM (1973) is a work of a twentieth century Enlightenment in pop music, a work that, in its whole, was created to invoke and sustain within its audience a transformative spiritual experience.

Personal Relationships With God On the New Continent: Paine’s “The Age of Reason”

“The Age of Reason” (1794) addresses “my fellow-citizens of the United States of America” (p. 174), as Paine, among others, viewed his newfound nationality with pride. Born in England, Paine (1794) began his essay by assuming a distinct level of intellectual ability and trust among his readers: “I put the following pages under your protection […] He who denies to another this right [of reading this work] makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it” (p. 174). While Paine’s introduction may be easily overlooked, the accessibility of his writing was historically unprecedented and important; the author’s careful relationship with his audience may have aided in this effectiveness. It may be the Age of Reason itself that supports Paine’s assumption, that his readers would find his personal views on religion useful, a means for understanding their own relationship with a higher power.

Paine’s (1794) essay “The Age of Reason” establishes the nature of sovereignty for individuals regarding their own spiritual beliefs. While a full and separate study may examine Paine’s (1794) distrustful views on organized religion, the potential and ability that may result from one’s contemplation of their relationship with the divine: “It is only in the creation that all our ideas and conceptions of a word of God can unite. The creation speaketh a universal language, independently of human speech or human languages, multiplied and various as they be. It is an ever existing original which every man can read” (p. 179). Paine (1794) uses creation itself, including the non-human environment, as adequate grounding for any individual’s theological search: creation is beyond language and institution, “ever existing” and, by definition, universal.
Modern American religious pamphletry exists, though most call for readers’ ascription to specific denomination; some likely call for individuals’ forging a “personal relationship” with a specific divine entity (Paine would likely be more interested in how the dissemination of one religion’s core beliefs have become an issue of federal, national security). In “The Age of Reason,” after systematically dismantling popular religions including Christianity and Islam as being built upon “hearsay evidence and secondhand authority”(p. 177), Paine (1794) concludes by declaring “it is only by the exercise of reason that man can discover God” (p. 180). Reason is an action to Paine, a consciousness through which an individual may develop a more full awareness of oneself and one’s surroundings: “reason” is not an organized religion, a reason to attend specific services, or a means by which to pester unknown individuals with conversations about spiritual conversions. It is a means by which one may most fully and productively engage the world on an individual basis: “it is a contradiction in terms and ideas to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second-hand, either verbally or in writing” (p. 176). From Paine’s important ideas, in “The Age of Reason” and elsewhere, a new nation, with new artistic and theological freedoms grew to fruition.

Reasonable Psychedelia: Context for Pink Floyd

On February 17, 1972, a crowd gathered at the Rainbow Theater in London, to hear a live performance of Pink Floyd’s latest material, as the band prepared to embark on a tour. Previously, Pink Floyd had experienced only mild commercial success in Meddle (1971) and previous releases; prior to work on DSOTM (1973), band members David Gilmour (guitar), Nick Mason (drums), Roger Waters (bass), and Richard Wright (keyboards) were producing music for a number of film soundtracks. Pink Floyd’s music helped define the category of psychedelic rock in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as their experimentation with synthesized sound within the framework of popular rock music, mixed with themes of social criticism and individual perception and gained popularity. Prior to DSOTM, however, the band had yet to embrace the full ability of a work of popular music to establish a theme and focus for its critique.
The performance of an early version of DSOTM in London in February of 1972 quickly became critically acclaimed, and has since become the stuff of rock legend. This early manifestation of what many consider to be the band’s masterwork contained most segments heard on the album, released in March of 1973, though important distinctions help identify the band’s philosophical intentions: lacking the arpeggiation of synthesizers and other studio nuance to be engineered by Alan Parsons, the members of Pink Floyd filled what would become a non-lyrical improvisational space by a talented female vocalist with Scripture readings, with effective theatrical results. The memorable and defining songs that would appear on the studio release of DSOTM were in place, including the rousing chorus “Money,” the poignant “Us and Them,” and the album’s dramatic final sequence of songs, including “Brain Damage” and “Eclipse.”

More Than Mental Illness: Themes of Reason on The Dark Side of the Moon

While much scholarship on DSOTM notes former and founding Pink Floyd member Syd Barrett’s departure from the band in 1968, and his subsequent mental illness, as providing primary inspiration for the album’s themes, one individual’s descent into madness is an insufficient summary of what philosophy drives the lyrical content of this work: however unbased, the entry on Wikipedia regarding this album cites at least two occasions upon which the listener of DSOTM was brought to tears, having an emotional response to the work’s universal themes. If a discussion of lunacy and madness is the lyrical goal of DSOTM, a sense of reason, and rational behavior, is essential contrast to its thesis:

breathe/breathe in the air/don’t be afraid to care/leave/don’t leave me
look around/choose your own ground
long you live and high you fly/and all smiles you give and tears you’ll cry
and all you touch and all you see/and all your life will ever be
(“Breathe,” Pink Floyd, 1973)

The opening track of DSOTM makes use of common human action as a means for introducing themes of human accomplishment, relationship, and stability; boldly, many lyrics address the listener directly, as if making commentary on their own life. Throughout this strong lyrical assertion, an unspoken understanding regarding the limitation of human ability is at work, one described best by Paine: “Man frequently fails in accomplishing his ends from a natural inability of the power to the purpose; and frequently from the want of wisdom to apply power properly” (1794, p. 179).

The album’s first single, “Money,” gained ironic significance as it became the band’s first mainstream FM radio hit: with lyrics such as “I’m all right Jack/keep your hands off of my stack” (“Money,” Pink Floyd, 1973) and “share it fairly but don’t take a slice of my pie,” songwriter and bassist Roger Waters’ dark satire of greed may have become more accepted as a direct message of the album than was the band’s intention. Original vinyl pressings of DSOTM had “Money” begin the second side—an important position, in an era when listeners were required to physically turn over a product in order to hear the second half of the music. This track initiated DSOTM’s second sequence, the last four of which (“Us and Them,” “Any Colour You Like,” “Brain Damage,” and “Eclipse”) were blended seamlessly by producer Alan Parsons.
It is these tracks together that seek to transform individual listeners’ sense of reason most on DSOTM: moving from a pronouncement of difference amid conflict (“who knows which is which/and who is who?” on “Us and Them” (Pink Floyd, 1973)) to a pronouncement of difference regarding simple human ability:

the lunatic is in the hall/the lunatics are in my hall
the paper holds their folded faces to the floor
and every day the paper boy brings more
and if the dam breaks open many years too soon
and if there is no room upon the hill
and if your head explodes with dark forebodings too
I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon (“Brain Damage,” Pink Floyd, 1973)

As noted previously, the listener is addressed directly in the lyrics on DSOTM, here with strong rhetorical effect: among dire and unforeseen circumstance—from the unexpected breaking of a dam to “your head explodes”—one may take some comfort in reappearance and acknowledgement, in whatever alien environment lies ahead for us. It is a humanistic common sense that drives these lyrical conclusions, spreading the word that we can, indeed view the world as an “unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible whole is governed” (Paine, 1794, p. 179). DSOTM is not a work of predestinationism, but one of reason: if the audience is to make any sense of the events of their lives, their own ability to reason—that is, their own sanity—must be questioned.

A Legacy of “Eclipse”: Enlightenment Rock in the 21st Century

The impact of DSOTM on the music industry, and on genres of pop, rock, and experimental recording, is unprecedented. While its commercial success further enabled Pink Floyd’s career (notably, The Wall in 1979 sought discussion of human themes on a level of depth equivalent to DSOTM, through imposing a more direct narrative structure), and its legacy is represented in part by its widespread coverage: its singles are still frequently played, and its embrace by musicians across genres continues to grow. Last summer, the Flaming Lips performed DSOTM in its entirety, at a number of venues across the United States and Europe; at the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Tennessee, lead singer Wayne Coyne tossed giant balloons containing real money into the crowd. Echoing the songwriter’s ironic intention penned forty years prior, the balloons bounced across the crowd of thousands, and the bills were said to have been single dollars, each signed “with love, the Flaming Lips.”

How one work of popular rock music has and continues to inspire reason among its listeners, its audience is fascinating. Examination of other albums through a lens established by Thomas Paine’s 1794 essay “The Age of Reason” would be helpful in further assessing how pop music may embrace spirituality: while isolated genres of pop rock may disagree, mainstream and especially popular musical works may dismiss full theological discussions, but to agree that “the word of God is the creation we behold” (Paine, 1794, p. 178). In this, Pink Floyd’s 1973 Dark Side of the Moon serves as a fine example.

Works Cited

“The Dark Side of the Moon.” (n.d.) Wikipedia. Retrieved from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Side_of_the_Moon

Pink Floyd. (1973). The Dark Side of the Moon. [vinyl record]. Capitol: Los Angeles.

Paine, T. (1794). “The Age of Reason.” The Portable Enlightenment Reader. Ed. I. Kramnick. Penguin: New York.

You And Me: Harvest Moon Lingers Long

We watched the moment of defeat/played back on the video screen
Somewhere deep inside of my soul
-- “Natural Beauty,” Neil Young

On a random weeknight nearly a decade ago some friends and I drank scotch and looked out at the view from the thirty-ninth floor of a boardwalk hotel in Atlantic City. The static lights on the ground stretched far west into the dark New Jersey night, and our view faced that direction, out towards where the ghosts of our adolescent dreams rose and hovered, without shadow and without being seen, above the rooftops and porchlights and maddening crowd that shared our streets in those, our suburbs. Many new days dawned since those talkative nights, and each morning has seen the rise of the hotel's shadows as they draw across each other, and the ocean. Uncounted, unaccountable and long rough nights have passed, built of loss and sadness, some others built of hope and love. These nights and days, and the elements that filled them, and made life more complete at the time; it adds up maybe to the action of growing up, of living long enough to see young dreams rise and hover above, like city smog or birthday balloons. Whose defeat, and which video screen to watch it from, became the best question for some of us to answer, as a new century split open before us.

Neil Young's Harvest Moon is the only record in the world I am unwilling to hear: won't put it on. I own it—a nicked disc with a tattered sleeve in a broken case, all the wounds of a well-loved CD—but reel today in trying to describe how sadly true it all became, how Neil's mellow return to country ended up writing stories we would live out. I was thirteen years old in 1992, and had a copy within months of its release (I am eternally grateful to the now-defunct music-by-mail company BMG). Copying compact discs wasn’t something our computers could do yet; I bought my best friend Adam a copy at The Wall, a defunct music chain at the Granite Run Mall in Media, Pennsylvania. We consumed it separately and discussed it together, at fourteen, fifteen, across each formative year of high school. “The broom,” Adam told me once, “the broom in the song ‘Harvest Moon’—it’s a key part of the percussion. I mean, it’s there and is as important as all the rest of the instruments—some guy on a broom.” We reeled at the wild woman who, as if out of the pages of a Kerouac novel, was “somewhere on a desert highway/she rides a Harley Davidson/her long blond hair flying in the wind/she’s been running half her life…” (“Unknown Legend”). We dreamed of days in which we had friends ("scattered/like leaves from an old maple") to pen letters to. By the time we graduated high school together in 1997, Harvest Moon had gone double-platinum.

1992 was the year before grunge, the final year before pop became allowed to get grittier, if not self-destructive: we were still months away from chasing down any self-loathing pop Nirvana, and the hardest of rock was still only built of the metallic residue of Metallica, and those extensive big-hair volumes that instructed us almost-high-school boppers on how to Use Our Illusion. Neil Young ran himself death-metal-ragged being innovative through the last of the 1980s, producing works of stock guitar thrash that ranged from bemusing and quaint to the absurd. People like Eddie Vedder, Dave Grohl and Soundgarden were listening to these, Neil’s inharmonic uses of the hardest of rock idioms, and would pick up and carry that torch to new heights through the 1990s and beyond. It took years, not months, to stop the ringing in Neil’s ears; his next project was to gather musician alums from 1973’s mellow epic, Harvest, to produce its thematic sequel, Harvest Moon.

There aren’t many rock albums one might consider deserving of a sequel. Neil’s strained ballads in 1973—“A Man Needs a Maid” and “Out On the Weekend” especially—spoke of romantic relationships with profound wide-eyed wonder, making his aged perspective an important return in his career (props on the bravery; geezers of rock don't always seek such introspection). The original Harvest featured Neil’s choosy top-of-the-range vocals supporting lyrics that set new bars for those residing in and defining the lucrative James-Taylor power pop ballad genre. Harvest was released just as designations of “easy listening” and ‘soft rock” were being born, but none of the songs on the 1973 original would be likely found on any such playlist: Neil’s acoustic guitar on “Old Man” is unspeakably legendary and influential, a defining moment for rock and roll on an acoustic guitar. You’ve heard it, and Neil’s wail “old man take a look at my life” at least one hundred times, in grocery stores alone.

So many of us weren’t around for the release of Harvest. And, many of us weren’t likely prepared, or had real time to devote to such a down-home country product, from a man who hauled around a battery of Marshall stacks through the last years of the 1980s, posing as the gritty front man for a band that made great, tighter, faster and more chaotic forms of Neil Young chords. Harvest Moon sang out beneath the waves of grunge and subsequent pop iterations, presenting complete and distinctly moving ballads—nearly hymns, with choruses of declaration and simple celebration. The band, built of alums from the 1973 Harvest sessions as well as background singers James Taylor and Linda Rhondstat, ends up sounding much more like the modern down-home stomps of the Avett Brothers or the Old Crow Medicine Show than anything else. Was it his return to acoustic strumming following a long bout with metal that drove Neil deeper toward his creative source?

Adam and I went on separately to live lives full of fun and adventure, relative to the excitement of our youth: I fled for the hills of Vermont, while Adam pursued community college and a host of unfulfilling jobs. We both fell in love with women beneath harvest moons; both reeled and sung high like Neil in recounting our affairs of the heart; both pushed brooms for pay, working ways through higher education. “Such a Woman,” from Harvest Moon, takes four minutes and only four piano chords to state “you are such a woman/to me” and “no one else can kill me like you do/and no one else can feel our peace,” and it still resonates as one of the most tender and passionate statements I’ve ever heard made in music: and has made sense more consistently than most music that's persisted this long in my life. Like Neil Young, and so many other artists, Adam and I both commiserated and relished in the ability to fall wildly, madly and deeply in love. It seemed almost a super power, love to be something so large as to sway one’s heart and devotion, something to dismiss the rational and force any individual into true impassioned action, something worth being swept away by. If our high school interpretations of Harvest Moon had focused on Neil’s glowing ability to sum and lyrically shine light upon his own career, carefully mentioning successes as well as failures (“From Hank to Hendrix”), we were able to make much less sense of Harvest Moon in our early twenties (Sublime's self-titled debut diverted our attentions, too). Adult life gets complicated, a lawyer once told me: few things are as complicating as the sense of passion presented by the songs on Harvest Moon. Affairs of the heart and complications and bad and destructive decisions: “can we get it together/can we still stand side by side/can we make it last/like a musical ride?” (“From Hank to Hendrix”). Adam’s decision to take his own life in August 2005 stands as the letter unwritten, but the letter Neil wrote a song about: “one of these days/I’m gonna sit down and write a long letter/to all the good friends I’ve known…” (“One of These Days”). And now, with a trail of virtual email from the first half of the past decade being the best and worst representation of this gone guy, my memories of Adam persist now with more solidarity than all of the twinkling of the lights in Atlantic City. He was never any less fickle, but like us all, subject to the sudden bursts of greed, ignorance, and whimsical egoism that might drive us down here or elsewhere: a police cruiser's blue light flashes as it rolls south, shining briefly on all it passes, and the night is nearly over and the scotch is almost gone. Adult life, complicated though it may become, still remains a luminescent and boldly bright force, as we all continue to move about and interact with each other as best we can at the moment.

I’m a dreamin’ man/yes that’s my problem
I can’t tell when I’m not being real
in the meadowdust I park my Aerostar…
-- “Dreamin’ Man”

Harvest Moon was so good, so timed, so complete, so inviting to tears and joy and memory: these may have been reasons why Neil chose to release a compilation of a few nights’ performances from 1992, performances made around the time of the release of Harvest Moon (officially, this is disc 12 in Neil’s concert archive releases). I am not alone in my shying away from Harvest Moon as dinner music, or even concentrated listening sessions. This 2009 album, “Dreamin’ Man,” is a rearrangement of all the Harvest Moon tracks, performed by Neil alone, and I am becoming ever grateful for these tonight. One of these days, God willing, I will write Neil the letter he still clearly asked for—what if the whole of us, humans, sat to write out our thanks to those we’ve known, cherished, loved? “My friends are scattered/like leaves from an old maple/some are weak/some are strong” (“One of These Days”). The wide stretch of twinkling from the lights above the beachfront streets rings out and into my middle-age, through the cold late March early dawn wind, coming from the direction of the ocean, that gray blur beyond even the night’s shadows. I have been drinking Glenmorangie, and, with a bumper sticker in the window frame foreground that reads “Be Spontaneous But Think About It First,” I have been hearing new versions of songs I previously feared to confront. And, there is a different, revisited form of peace that comes in hearing that sage and songwriter perform his work by lonesome: from humble thumps on the guitar body to his harmonica wails, the “Dreamin’ Man” live album is even more calming and grounding than Harvest Moon itself. The words, like the twinkling sum of Atlantic City, still carries the same, if not a heavier weight: with each shadow and reflection, the outline of those dreams still hovering and pensive above our hometown comes more clear with each day, week, month, year further away from those visions. We find ourselves in places far different, unanticipated, from those in which we floated in high school, where the outlines of our dreams loomed, and we grew up as we faced our own throbs of the heart. Thanks, Neil.

Letter to the Herald of Randolph, 3/20/11

Dear Editor,

I am writing to thank all supporters of the concert held on March 20, 2011 at Bethany Church. Together we raised over $3,800 to support American Red Cross relief efforts in Japan! The concert included musicians from Randolph, Rochester, St. Albans, and Braintree, and the silent auction contained a wide variety of items, from handmade crafts and quilts, to snowboards and products and services from local businesses. I am especially grateful to Japanese exchange student Tina Goto for her participation, and beautiful playing on the piano, as well as for the beautiful voices of so many community members. Regrettably, a few items donated to the silent auction were not included in the auction held on Sunday. These items are available for silent bidding in the downstairs of Bethany Church, Main St., Randolph; bidding will close at 1 PM on Sunday, March 27^th, and all proceeds will continue to support the relief efforts of the American Red Cross in Japan. I am grateful for Vermont/New Hampshire Valley Red Cross Executive Director for being in attendance, and receiving the proceeds of this past Sunday's event. Personally through this experience, I have grown ever more grateful to live in a place that both embraces both music and charitable giving to such an extent; it is what helps make us a unique, strong, and beautiful community. Again, thank you.

Sincerely,

Christopher Smith

Braintree, Vermont

A Concert for Japan 3/20/11

A concert and silent auction will take place this Sunday, March 20 at 3 PM, at Bethany Church in Randolph, Vermont, to benefit American Red Cross relief efforts in northern Japan. The event will include sets of rock and pop music as played by a host of central Vermont musicians, including Chris Smith, Ed Delhagen, Barry Vermont and Hillary and Andy Leicher. Chinatsu “Tina” Goto, an American Field Service exchange student attending Randolph High School, will perform on the piano and has donated some of her original artwork to the silent auction; her hometown is near Tokyo. The auction will take place in the vestry (downstairs) of the church from 3 PM until around 4:30 PM, and includes gift certificates, products and services from local merchants, as well as artwork and crafts. Admission to the event is by donation. To contribute to the silent auction, contact Chris at cjs02190@vtc.edu or email Joy Mortelliti at jmivt@yahoo.com.

At present, the silent auction includes:

Three Stallion Inn, Randolph: certificate for one night's stay
Greg Mortelliti, Bristol: new Burton snowboard
Tom Watros, Bristol: new Burton snowboard
Village Tire, Randolph: free state inspection
The Herald of Randolph: $100 in advertising
Common Grounds, Bethel: 1lb. Vermont Coffee Company beans
Kyoko Davis, Middlebury College: sushi platter, or sushi-making lesson
Curves For Women, Randolph: free one-month membership
Real Country 1320AM, Randolph: $100 in advertising
Blue Mountain Guitar, West Lebanon: guitar strings for a year
Marla Berger, Essex NY: gift basket of local produce, jams and jellies
Busy Bee Bookeeping, Stockbridge: tax preparation certificate
Kristin Watros, Bristol: new Analog winter jacket
Jessica Leal, Bristol: new women's 686 winter jacket
M&M Beverage, Randolph: case of soda (winner's choice)
Jennie Harriman, Tunbridge: photography session ($100 value)
Chef's Market, Randolph: springtime gift basket
The Animal Hospital, Hinesburg: gift basket of healthy pet treats

Gift certificates from:

Beacon Printing, Randolph
Three Bean Cafe, Randolph
College Formals, West Lebanon
Towne Studios, West Lebanon
Seven Barrel Brew Pub, West Lebanon
Al's Pizza, Randolph
Royalton Village Pizza, Royalton
Dandelion Acres, Bethel
Cockadoodle Pizza, Bethel
Mills Hardware, Bethel
Fenix Fine Foods, Randolph
Mid State Sports, Randolph
Village Pizza, Randolph
Randolph Depot, Randolph

Artwork by:

Cynthia Sandusky, Brookfield (earrings)
Barb Baumann, Randolph (jewelry)
Tina Goto, Japanese exchange student (visual art)
Joy Mortelliti and Jessica Leal, Blackbird Designs, Bristol (fiber arts)

Performers:

Tom Schersten, vocals
Steve and Naomi Pratt, vocals
Chris Smith, piano, vocals
Ed Delhagen, bass
Dawn Forcier, vocals
Geoffrey Parr Doering, clarinet
Dar Lynn Tredwell, didgeridoo
Andy Leicher, guitar
Hillary Leicher, vocals
Barry Vermont, sax
Jo Ellen Messier, vocals

The Age of Adz Is Upon Us

Well I have known you/for just a little while
But I feel I've known you/I feel I've seen you...
In all reflections/I see your method/I see it all
And what about you? And What about me? Are we the lost of lost?
-- "The Age of Adz"

No education could prepare anyone for the political revolutions of 2011, and maybe only music-- maybe only Sufjan Stevens' "The Age of Adz"-- can really help anyone take it all in. After his last full-length recording, "Illinois" in 2005, Sufjan produced a collection of outtakes, a Christmas album, a film and original score, an an "EP" of complex and hopeful anthems. All of these endeavors might have only been creative practice towards "The Age of Adz," Stevens' finest, and most complete work, to date. Its presentation of hope, loss and love comes among a unified and difficult, if not apocalyptic vision of the exterior world.

While even Stevens' most recent previous release, the "All Delighted People EP" fancied Paul Simon's words as most appropriate (citing "hello darkness my old friend" and other phrases from "The Sounds of Silence"), "The Age of Adz" addresses humans more often than darkness or highways, talking to people and groups more often than anything else-- including the wild looking monster on the cover. This image, replete with its penned scripture and pop culture phrases ("the day the earth stood still"), was created by Royal Robertson (1930-1997), whose influence on this work might not be underestimated. From a blurb on Sufjan's own site:

The Age of Adz refers to the Apocalyptic art of Royal Robertson (1930 –1997), a black Louisiana-based sign-maker (and self-proclaimed prophet) who suffered from schizophrenia, and whose work depicts the artist’s vivid dreams and visions of space aliens, futuristic automobiles, eccentric monsters, and signs of the Last Judgment, all cloaked in a confusing psychobabble of biblical prophecy, numerology, Nordic mythology and comic book jargon. Portions of the album use Robertson’s work as a springboard into a cosmic consciousness in which basic instincts are transposed on a tableau of extraordinary scenes of divine wrath, environmental catastrophe, and personal loss.

While Robertson's carefully drawn art complements and may have inspired the music's lyrical themes, this connection isn't necessary to make sense of "The Age of Adz." In an interview a few years ago, Stevens-- himself a person with a spiritual upbringing--claimed to see music as a medium that was not useful for outright theological discussion. Thus his choices in how to answer the cover's idiom "The Day The Earth Stood Still," and other end-of-civilization themes come framed not in religious zealotry, but through building some sembelence of human connection and shared understanding-- even if that semblence is built of the moments of our lives when exterior elements have shattered us, destroying our ability to perceive our own decay. The day the earth stood still-- the Age of Adz, as it were-- will be known for its motionless rapture, its "Bad Communication" and fleeting clarity ("Now That I'm Older," "I Walked," "I Want to Be Well"-- all song titles). The last track, "Impossible Soul," tries to define something of how a relationship might work within a frantic (and 25-minute) sonic environment.

To what extent is this an electronic album? More importantly, to what extent does one notice? The more one knows of Stevens' earlier work, the more one might miss technical banjo licks and expressive acoustic guitar strumming, but-- as orchestral as Stevens' work has become-- the presence of synthesizers and beats not only trump any "natural" sounding instrumentation, but create a music that is meant to be heard during the Age of Adz: a tumultuous time of discovery and renewal, of learning and holding dear what is essential between all of us. If Stevens were less proficient in harnassing the power of his keyboard arsenal, these soundscapes may be fast cluttered. Each track is distinctly not overburdened by elements, but carefully and strategically-- and more interestingly than most Phish jams, notably-- arranged to include some movement, from one musical place to another. As Charles Bukowski's sparse and crude lines made up his Last Night of the Earth Poems (1992), "The Age of Adz" allows a listener to expect the interplay of raw synth tones, electronic beats of varying complexity, live drums, and the rise and fall of melodic themes. Stevens' tireless work in the studio is reflected in each track; sonic environments are created and destroyed, as civilization, and its individuals, rise and fall.

A vegetable vendor has his scale taken from him in Tunisia; Egyptians protest and oust their leader; people in many countries, connected by new virtual networks of knowledge and power, try to replicate Egypt's example. Relationships themselves, between individuals and groups, fall and rise, against a background of wildest fantasy, and in these-- each of these-- we try and share what Best we can.

Now I have known you for just a little while
I feel I must be wearing my welcome
I must be moving on

For my intentions were good intentions
I could have loved you/I could have changed you

I wouldn't be so/I wouldn't feel so
Consumed by selfish thoughts

I'm sorry if I seem self-effacing
Consumed by selfish thoughts

It's only that I still love you deeply
It's all the love I got -- "The Age of Adz"

Legacy of the Tragic "Bozo Dionysus"

[academic writing; January 2011]

As the genre of rock music entertainment and its identification of celebrities have developed into its own canon through the second half of the twentieth century, often reckless and chaotic individuals have been, and continue to be, popular, lucrative and acceptable, no matter how tragic. This discussion will apply Aristotle's definition of a tragic figure as presented in the Poetics to a concept of rock musician as posed by Lester Bangs in an August 1981 Musician magazine article, “Jim Morrison: Bozo Dionysus a Decade Later” (2003, p. 213), in an effort to better understand how rock music continues promote dark, chaotic and often tragic characters as noisy and reckless, creative heroes.

Aristotle's Tragedy in Poetics

In Aristotle's tragedy, individuals experience “good or bad fortune” that “extends from the beginning of the change to the end” (Aristotle, n.d., Part XVIII, para. 1): a definition of plot in which some transformation may exist within at least one of the individuals involved. This transformation serves to shape the characters in question, as Aristotle reiterates, “...the best test to take is the plot. Identity exists where the Complication and Unraveling are the same” (Aristotle, n.d., Part XVIII, para. 3). The definition of a dramatic and tragic work comes through the simultaneous plot elements.

Tragic characters in a dramatic work need four elements: a general goodness, “propriety,” both “consistent” and “consistently inconsistent,” and an understanding of “the necessary or probable” (Aristotle, n.d., Part XV, para. 1). These elements together create a character in conflict at least on one count; a character's wrestling with any individual element of these four, in the face of “good or bad fortune” (Aristotle, n.d., Part XVIII, para. 1) may alone suffice to create dramatic tragedy.

The abundance of Poetics concerns the elements of dramatic tragedy; its opposite, comedy, is delivered fleeting attention, as in Part V: “Comedy is, as we have said, an imitation of characters of a lower type-- not, however, in the full sense of the word bad, the ludicrous being merely a subdivision of the ugly. It consists in some defect of ugliness which is not painful or destructive” (Aristotle, n.d., Part V, para. 2). Tragedy is also built of imitation, and may extrude and amplify from life those “defect[s] of ugliness” which are “painful or destructive.”

Through establishing guidelines for the construction of plot, for the use of the burden of tragedy (in contrast with the “ludicrous” of comedy), and for identifying what elements are necessary to create a viable character, a definition of the tragic figure emerges: one who has been faced with a truth and has responded with transformation, however “consistent” or “consistently inconsistent” (Aristotle, n.d., Part XV, para. 1). This may come to include a character in exterior or interior conflict, one in love, in pain, or as one experiences moments of fleeting clarity.

Tragedy in Rock: Context for the Lizard King

Has rock music always been built of Aristotle's dramatic and transformative tragedy? Elvis' first gold records were teenage love songs, however tragic; Chuck Berry wrote little else. Among so many others, the Doors began their career and amassed their fame during the second decade in the evolution of the genre of rock music, during a period when music and songs were being increasingly linked to social movements and polarization. For this reason alone, the identity and characteristics of who sang what during the 1960s became important, and new models of recording artists' musical and personal transformations became necessary. Novelty and humor during rock music's most formative years became relegated to being elements of psychedelic perspiration, and directly tragic themes began to prevail.

Much scholarship on the Beatles has detailed their collective and individual embrace of chaotic, excessive seriousness, moving from outright-love pop songs like “Eight Days a Week” to the dark rapture of “Helter Skelter” in only a handful of years. If there had been any humor to rock and roll music during rock's earliest days, of Bill Haley and Elvis, social revolution and war may have weeded it out, as these 'consistently inconsistent' events exterior to the craft of rock music promoted among some musicians an embrace of a dark and chaotic transformation.

Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek started The Doors in California, in July of 1965 (“The Doors,” 2011), and made new use of the evolving medium: Morrison's poetry served as lyrics for Manzarek's keyboard riffs, and national success came quickly. Morrison's implosion as a rock 'success' is legendary, and helped set a tragic precedent for creative individuals working in the genre of rock music; as if taking part in Aristotelian dramatic tragedy onstage, his 'good fortune' of success yielded painful personal transformation to a fatal extent.

The plot of Morrison's fame may be studied in detail using Aristotle's distinctions meant for staged tragedy: a Dionysian loss of self in the face of wild success matches themes of “Complication” and “Unraveling” (Aristotle, n.d., Part XVIII, para. 3). Bangs' (1981) article illuminates some of Morrison's outrageous behavior, including arrests for public indecency and repeatedly insulting his audience at a concert (p. 218), to make a larger point regarding cultural acceptance of : “these kids today would feel threatened by any performer who came out today and started acting like Morrison did, so is it only the remove of a decade that allows them to feel safe enjoying his antics?” (p. 217).

The Tragedy of the “Bozo Dionysus”

Aristotle's definition of tragedy informs Bangs' (1981) characterization of Jim Morrison as rock's groundbreaking “Bozo Dionysus” (p. 213), as dramatic, tragic figures experience moments of realization often too late, and the drama comes through an abandonment of the self. Bangs' (1981) point continues to be relevant: “If Jim Morrison cared so little about his life, was so willing to make it amount to one huge alcoholic exhibitionistic joke, why should they or we or anybody finally care, except insofar as the seamy details provide trashy entertainment?” (p. 218). While modern, mass media may contribute to the roots of present-day “trashy entertainment,” Aristotle's tragic and ill-transformed character may be seen to be at work.

Continued reception and regard for creative, tragic figures like Morrison may do more harm than good, according to Bangs (1981): “it's exactly such insane tolerance of another insanity that also contributes to them [artists like Morrison] drying up as artists. Because how can you finally create anything real or beautiful when you have absolutely zero input from the real world, because everyone around you is catering to and sheltering you?” (p. 218). Morrison's death came in 1971, his final tragic transformation. The “insane tolerance” of Morrison has only continued, and may be seen as having spread to realms of both film and political celebrity, perhaps for different reasons.

Bangs (1981) was writing to ponder a wild resurgence in the popularity of the music of the Doors, after the publication of a biography, long before any films had been produced. Since Bangs' question, a number of films, and hundreds of subsequent releases of material have emerged from the Doors vault, and the catalog of modern rock music celebrities mostly follow in Morrison's Dionysian footprints: from Kurt Cobain to the King of Pop, each a valued, electrified, dark and mystical, tragic minstrel.

Aristotle's Poetics (n.d.) provides a definition of tragedy that includes an individual's transformation through events arranged in a plot, and identifies traits of a character that may play a role in dramatic tragedy, including the potential for an individual to reside in inner conflict. As defining successful individuals working in the field of rock music, Jim Morrison's personal and creative transformations, and the lasting popularity of such, is likely to help continue a tragic disposition for rock musicians.

Aristotle. (n.d.). Poetics. The Internet Classics Archive. Retrieved from http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/poetics.mb.txt

Arnott, W. (1985). Aristotle on comedy [Review of Aristotle on Comedy: Towards a Reconstruction of Poetics II by R. Janko]. The New Classical Review, 2, 35. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.proxy.myunion.edu/stable/3063307?seq=2

Bangs, L. (2003). Mainlines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader. Ed. J. Morthland. Random House: New York.

Cooper, L. (1922). An Aristotelian Theory of Comedy. Harcourt, Brance and Company: New York. Retrieved from http://books.google.com.proxy.myunion.edu/books?id=hZZZAAAAMAAJ&ots=2eQBxrpfgJ&dq=Tractatus%20coislinianus&lr&pg=PP5#v=onepage&q=Tractatus%20coislinianus&f=false

“The Doors.” (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Doors

Academic Music: The Saturday Giant, Cincinnati, Ohio 1/5/11

The Saturday Giant is the digital one-man-and-looper band whose real name is Phil Cogley, and whose latest album is about those pesky Reptoid Theories: the ones that have Princess Di and G.W. Bush shape-shifting behind closed doors. Treated to a weird performance as part of a doctoral seminar on creativity, Phil has earned Ohio street cred as one Super-Duper Looper: performing previously at a TEDx Conference in Columbus, there probably isn't anyone whose crafty use of select technology builds up such soundscapes without the egoism that calls for showing off technical proficiency. The first tune, "The Times They Are Up," was built of sweet electric riffs and choice piano notes, before Phil broke out in the best white-boy beatboxing he could muster, getting up close with a specialty Shure mic. After minutes of velvety drones, the tune turned darker and more rich, and the Boomerang III propelled a whole different section of that same opening number. Phil felt the downbeat as his four-beat strumming went off the rails intentionally, by one eighth note or more. The song crashed into itself.

Phil laughed as he described his complicated rig: "it's all cables and knobs and stuff." Having recently recorded and mixed "You've Heard of Dragons," his April 2010 solo release, Phil said it's "less of a challenge to make an album that sounds polished," and that his live performance can't, by nature, strive for his thesis in the studio: to "put it [his music] in the world as perfect as possible." Playing live, Phil's ability to pluck away at his strings in different ways was essential: eyeing carefully the timing lights on his Boomerang, he strummed violently, with and without a pick, playing as squarely as possible against his own voiced beat. In describing his willingness to experiment with new forms and sounds, Phil called himself "blue collar: ...it's a mindset that I have, that means I'm going to work hard."

I didn't catch any revelations about the coming Reptilian Empire, though I was entertained thoroughly in a conference room in a lavishly sterile basement conference room of the Marriott, on the campus of the University of Cincinnati for about an hour. I heard Phil's pronounced tenor attempting to soar across the MIDI-trigger'd, double-amped, violently-strummed electric. Phil couldn't pin down what it is he does: "post-rock" was suggested, as was a Todd Rudgren reference; later he admitted his songs "don't necessarily follow" the structure of The Pixies or Nirvana... but there's something there.

One of the most characteristic parts of Phil's show (The Saturday Giant is a very likable, bad-Spanish translation of the popular show "Sabado Gigante") is actually not his ability to stomp on the looper triggers at the right time: it's his keen embrace of whatever gear lets him produce crispy guitar notes on the top four strings, and killer, threatening bass drops from the last two: magical pickups, or keen outboard frequency analysis. No matter: beatboxing and looping can really only lead to one-chord drone tone soundscapes with an Eastern flair, and Phil's dramatic starts and stops were inflected with quick choices and intentionally-less-than-sharp beats. His lyrics are stock, it seems, if lizardly in a vague way-- I caught him singing dramatically, of "the blood of our babies" as he moved his capo and adjusted some knob on his pedalboard, and the cadence behind his voice carried on. He then broke out in a Brian-Wilson falsetto line that could have used some heavy verb-- but nothing is perfect when it's live, and that's the beautiful point to be made: as his closing song broke out in a new rock beat and a quite Pearly and Jammy progression that kinda beat up on my ears, I wondered what it sounds like when Phil works without an audience: "the way I work now is I go in the basement and press record..." He should keep up on both pursuits.

If you'd like a "hand-stenciled, hand-assembled" copy of his disc, check here for availability: http://thesaturdaygiant.bandcamp.com/track/reptilian-s

Woosterrific Phish: 12/27/10 and 12/28/10

Phish set themselves up for a strange engagement in late December 2010: forgoing any larger tour, the band set up two nights in Worcester, Massachusetts’ DCU Center, before a three-night run at Madison Square Garden— to go ring in a larger and more fruitful year for this nation. Suspicions were mostly confirmed: whether or not Worcester was taken by the band as a warm-up to Madison Square Garden mattered little.

The first night was weirdly calm—what I’d expect if, since the Halloween run, the boys haven’t talked or practiced any Phish fodder: Mike’s been busying touring and pressing his latest solo effort on vinyl, and Trey’s been conducting orchestras in New Jersey ever since they closed their three night run in Atlantic City. The first set of the first night held in it some of the strangest spontaneous choices of any band in live performance I’ve ever witnessed: after a pedestrian “Sample In a Jar” and an unremarkable “Funky Bitch,” it was clear that Trey was consulting with Mike, calling the next tune completely on the fly. These suspicions were confirmed as Page and Trey kicked off a Motown/bluesy take on the long-forgotten Velvet Underground cover “Cool It Down.” Why did this happen—a call to “cool it down” on the third song of nothing but a five-night run? Trey was off tempo, and his playing wandered around as they jammed happily along that one chord Lou Reed wrote—a subtle and different treatment than most other jams, if only for its vintage Velvet origin. Later, as Trey called out “Roses are Free,” and the crowd—having amply applied magic droplets from non-Visine bottles to their palms—jumped up and down as if the Ween tune was a winning lottery ticket. I wished the Regal Raisin himself, Gene Ween had been there to help out Trey’s wimpy guitar stylings: not akin to Mark Knopfler’s carefully-chosen licks, and nothing like the crunchy funness that is a Gene Ween solo. Trey was pensive; perhaps the tempo was one notch lower than his cranium’s metronome could handle at that moment. He showed nearly-redeeming, expressive sloppiness through a fast-paced “It’s Ice;” in more fascinating moments, Trey invented new ways to make his axe go dweedle-dweedle-dee way up high on the scale. Special guests that could have reminded how to play his axe would have included Johnny A, the Allman Brothers, and, as requested by the “LA GRANGE” banner that hung from the railing beside the stage. Highlights there were: the guy next to me spoke emphatically about how he’d been “chasing that “Mound” since 1995,” and that the version of “Cavern” was something more than pedestrian. Trey's repeated guitar notes across the verses of "Heavy Things" were barely enjoyable, though wholly appropriate to the vibe. As we all wandered back through the blistering cold winds, talk of the sets’ references to the prior night’s blizzard didn’t add up to any vastly redeeming display of technical accuracy, creativity or humor: Page chose to employ each of his keyboards during a lengthy jam within “Seven Below,” making great use of the variable oscillator adjustment available on his vintage Yamaha synth—but this experimentation was foreign admist the rest of the right hand-piano/left hand-organ work. I shouldn’t have been left wondering: why was “Seven Below” worthy of cool synthy tricks, and we were left to flounder in the same old groove through most of the show? Finest moments included the ultimate and seasonally-appropriate "Farmhouse," treating this ho-hum ballad as tenderly as any poignant Paul Simon torch song; the greatest instrumental work was certainly "What's the Use?," a chord progression that seemed to belong to King Crimson or the like, but was treated with emphatic whole-note respect, some driving and simple psychedelic anthem. "Possum" was interesting, but held no value compared to what I heard of that song this summer.

Night two was made of marked change: "Kill Devil Falls" as an opener wanted to sound like a swampy John Fogerty rock stomp, but couldn't help emulate Great Moments of Last Night. Most important to the quality of the second DCU Center show was Phish's ability to Make Humorous their own material: Mike's grand "My Mind's Got a Mind of its Own" was quick and right and fast, and Trey's goofing around with a recorder that held and played Sarah Palin quotes during "Alaska" helped establish a more relaxed vibe for everyone involved. Because what are the stakes? One may assume a legion of Phish-show attendees are in it for the "beautiful buzz/oh, what a beautiful buzz" (the chorus that ended night one); as literally hundreds gathered to partake before and after the show in those Irresistible Nitrous Balloons, being dispensed on the side streets surrounding the downtown venue, and as Visine bottles were passed down aisles, and careful drops applied to palms and tongues, I came to understand more about how Phish's musical proficiency doesn't especially matter to those on acid, or those racing to consume as much Bud Light as possible from aluminum bottles. What does matter to these folks is Phish's ability to laugh and be creative: Trey's fooling around with Hockey Mom sound clips, and the incredibly apt and useful "She Caught the Katy" that followed were crowd-pleasing on many levels-- and this vibe came to sum in the second night's finest moment: the first set's "Wolfman's Brother," a song I've never especially dug but was thrilled to be a part of on Tuesday night. The night before, during an especially pseudo-tender ballad, I mentioned to a friend that they sounded, without reason, like Murph and the Magic Tones, featuring Mark Knopfler. Four songs in on the second night my Blues Brothers dream came true. Set two began with "Carini," always an interesting and weird non-Zeppelin riff. Songs like "Stealing Time from the Faulty Plan" and "Backwards Down the Number Line" appear fixed in the band's rotation, and add, I guess, an air of Phish 3.0 notoriety to any set. The acapella song "The Birdwatcher," a B-side rarity from years back, was performed for the first time as the first set's closer, and its tight, weird harmonies were intriguing, not grueling or wrong. From "Limb by Limb" to "Harry Hood," night two set two descended into mediocre musicality akin to the Phish cover band playing at the crummy bar up the street (except the aforementioned and stellar "Albuquerque"). The encore may have been the best choice possible for the time and place: dearest Massachusetts teenyboppers, old heads, dreddies, smelly hippies, drunk jocks, wasteoids, "may the good Lord/shine a light on you/make every song your favorite tune/may the good Lord/shine a light on you/warm like the evening sun." Onto the cold streets of Worcester we all spilled out on both nights from the DCU Center, and probably most of us were still seeking such revelation, as the wind made us cold: our faces were made to shine, warmly, to reflect back to the world the beauty we encounter and hear.

"Inside Job"

If everything in the Charles Ferguson film "Inside Job" is true, the twenty-first century's collapse of the dollar might, at present and at best, have a spotty and elusive autobiography: one whose last chapter is yet to be written.

Surely Wall Street ran amok amid a new culture of deregulation in the 1980s, as told by Oliver Stone through the phoenix-like character Gordon Gekko across two films; "Inside Job" uses that history as foreground to the current collapse. Worth noting: these are fast and wild days, enough that 'temporary' documentaries, ones that retell a true story that the viewer may act accordingly and in a timely fashion, have come to garner enough attention as to be released and distributed by Sony, through Sony Pictures Classics.

There was a noble and animated attempt to explain the principles at work: subprime and predatory lending, derivatives, among many shots of the New York City skyline and helicopter views of massive office buildings. Surrounding the fall of Lehman Brothers, and its relationship with AIG, many names and faces swirled, from Reagan up to Rham Emmanuel and Obama: they're mostly all in on it, always have been, it seems. Hank Paulson's $700 billion bailout plea to Congress made logical sense, as does the recent international community's call for an end to a culture of bonuses in bank administration.

The film's incrimination of Columbia and Harvard was most striking: interestingly enough, while news of a sizable drug ring on Columbia's campus broke this morning, the other theater was running a flick on Ginsberg's formative trials regarding "Howl," a poem he wrote mostly in his dorm room at Columbia, until he was tossed out. "Inside Job" specifically charges Columbia's economics faculty with violating ethical standards, in preaching one thing in the classroom, and making money on the side doing something different. What's a documentarian to do with such a dead end: an injustice uncovered, an audience left with a massive issue unresolved.

There isn't much characterization of Treasury Secretaries; there isn't anything to laugh at, and almost nothing to be truly entertained by. Leaving the theater with the money in my wallet feeling more brittle and crisp-- as if it may evaporate-- I said a prayer for all the money-lenders, the teachers and the audiences. The Statue of Liberty, not a solution, closes the film, which left me with my hands in the air in disbelief, over shrugging my shoulders.

The Last Gasps of Howard Stern?

If the self-proclaimed King of All Media were to retire, his departure would as quiet and unpublicized of a disappearance from the airwaves as any minor commercial voice-over drone: a human voice grown so familiar suddenly replaced by a human voice of another, as someone new enters the Theater of the Mind. Howard Stern's counting the days left before the termination of his five-year deal at Sirius, and the show has become increasingly nervous entertainment. If Howard were to be planning his descent into production, ending his routine morning drive-time ritual and, essentially, his career, life on the Stern show would look much as it has, and does.

Howard got wistful months ago, inciting a conversation between Fred ("King of Mars") Norris and "Vegetating" newswoman Robin Quivers, as to who really had an outstanding beef with the show's longtime writer, Jackie (The Joke Man) Martling. After Jackie left over a contract dispute, his seat in the studio would come to be filled-- for a time-- by troubled standup Artie Lange. While Artie's problem was heroin, and his formal and informal rehab will likely prohibit any future appearances on this incarnation of the Howard Stern Show, Jackie'd jump at the chance to appear, even for a day. A few months back-- perhaps seeking to give cred to what were his finest hours in radio-- Howard began to shift toward the sentimental, resulting in his deep voice trembling ever-so-slightly, as it has in decades previous over divorces and national tragedy, over the long-awaited in-studio interview with the elderly creator of a female masturbation machine. Still, Howard attends therapy, at last count, four times each week: his drive to provide for his audience helps him maintain his high standard. In the mind of Howard Stern, success is only available to those who fully commit to a task; thus, the show has been ending consistently at 11:00AM, meandering through Robin's news with a humorous and false sense of hurry.

Howard's neurosis may mean he's never going to "retire," only to repackage and market his vast catalog: clips of his famed Channel 9 shows are wildly funny, and not only for their low-production-value, campy, bad-hair qualities. More easily than may first appear, Howard Stern may further descend into weird post-celebrity mental illnesses-- like Brando or Orson Welles-- if his laurels and previous accolades are what he chooses to rest upon. For now, he still has the chance: it's likely none of us will know the fate of his contract until, perhaps on some January morning, the channels on my Sirius reorganize themselves and his persistent presence will be gone.

Getting Bluesy and Peculiar with John Sebastian

Tupelo Music Hall, White River Junction 11/28/10

What happens to a first-wave pop-rock guru, a Beatles contemporary, who goes on to have his own tie-dyed career, later to proclaim the virtue of the jug band, having penned unprecedented and goofy tunes such as "Rainbows All Over Your Blues?" From beneath some flat stone did crawleth John Sebastian on Sunday night, all the way to Vermont, bringing with him two guitars (an incredible hollow-body Guild), a Fender Jazz Chorus amp, and his own problematic Audix microphone. Former Lovin' Spoonful frontman and songwriter Sebastian wore black and gray, his mop of thin, nearly-white hair kept from his eyes by trademark spectacles: from beneath these came "You Didn't Have to Be So Nice," "Nashville Cats," "Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind?," and so many other anthemic themes relegated to oldies radio. Famously, John Sebastian forgot his own lyrics onstage at Woodstock; he forgot no lyrics on this cold night at the Tupelo, but danced around the stage in a novel, professional, entertaining way: one that made the slender, gaining-on-antique audience almost not notice that Sebastian was picking a solo along with the band playing only in his head.

Picking was the main verb, over singing or strumming: Sebastian played the whole show with a thumb pick, stopping once to file his nails, even. In the style of Mississippi John Hurt, Sebastian used his guitar diligently, skillfully-- far more adept and off the cuff than I had imagined. A keen sense of the beat may be Sebastian's biggest strength, as a performer: every song deserved at least a gentle foot tap (including the bluesy set closer "Tap That Thang"), and I don't think anything was in three-quarter time. Through playing a lullaby written for his son, and a few tunes written with David Grisman for a 2007 album, Sebastian had moments of guitar proficiency akin to some of Paul Simon's complex patterns on a fingerboard: the way a few minor key changes in "Daydream" were played blew me away (a song written, interestingly enough, in response to being the Supremes' opening act in 1965, and the influence of a 'straight-8' beat in pop music. Sebastian laughingly admitted "Daydream" sounds nothing like a straight-8 Motown beat).

He has, however, lost some of his vocal range: one bluesy number made me think one of his few career moves left may be to pick up a banjo and go join Tom Waits' growing chorus of vintage wailers... and not only for his voice, but Sebastian picks guitar across mid-20th century genres as fine as just about anybody. Old-school pop-rock-folk supergroups aren't in vogue, but if they were, John Sebastian would serve well as the leader of some new legion of lyrical potential. One of his best tunes, aside from having an unfortunate tagline and title ("Strings of Your Heart"), was written as the theme for a television show about guitars... which was canned before it went to production, Sebastian admitted. Quick wisps of high feedback plagued his storytelling, by no fault of Tupelo's top-notch crew: there were three times that his narratives elicited no reaction from the crowd at all, not even a laugh-- one was something about tuning a guitar, and how someone said "don't tune, ever," and he lifted his guitar tuner and said, "look, see, this is all you need!" It was likely weird babble over any reasonable metaphor; then back to picking something relatively interesting. After dispensing a requisite number of hits, Sebastian moved the crowd through one patternful number after another.

Particularities and peculiar (and faulty?) proprietary gear aside, it was a treat to see John Sebastian: I found his "Cheapo-Cheapo Productions Presents Real Live..." album at a yard sale when I was fifteen, and marveled at his ability to persuade and lead a full audience through the whimsy of the less-than-serious song. After seeing him live in 2010, I might assume how that end of life holds less, if not a different brand, of whimsy: after an introductory John Hurt number, Sebastian reflected on his five summers at a summer camp outside of Keene, New Hampshire, and how he was thrust before a crowd of seven-year-olds and told to entertain them, to make up songs and to get them to sing. Later, in describing how he plays songs for his kids, he reiterated his thesis: aim to entertain children and you'll seldom go wrong.

New Ben Folds Album NOT About Ben Folds!

I had all but given up on Ben Folds. I came to expect Ben seeking to treat fans to Ultimate Repackaging of the same handfuls of hits (through symphonies, college acapella groups, etc.), while letting his own new creative work trickle out-- through unfortunately banal collections as "Back to Normal" and "Songs for Silverman." A few chestnuts reside on each, but neither album had more than a few examples of Ben working hard: the words, it seems, MUST be truly personal, for Ben to be able to even think of an appropriate chord structure and melody, matching the similarly-valuable message.

I don't fault Ben for this-- my own songwriting career feels plagued by the same reluctance to 'get into the hard stuff' of life, tending towards the goofy and the general over the personal and confessional. Three divorces, kids, and a big relocation to Australia, and Ben still hadn't achieved a lyrical ability to speak generally, honestly, and without tongue in cheek, about his life-- in the same way that one of his obvious heroes, Randy Newman, achieved in the early 1970s, certainly within his first three albums. I wish Ben would have challenged himself to some different extent over this near-decade of ego: perhaps covering Newman's "It's Money I Love" over arranging "Brick" for perennial symphony, acapella and solo piano engagements. Because the message would have been the same.

This is why his best album was still (until recently, perhaps) the final effort by Ben Folds Five, "The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner." Running with liberties made of his seizing another's identity (that of the name and photo found on Folds' adolescent fake ID), those songs held an intrinsic connection between words and the music that was somehow more earnest, forthright.

All those days are over now for Ben: with "Lonely Avenue," he's become as empowered as Elton John, and as separate from the meaning of his songs. His Bernie Taupin is Nick Hornsby, and the lyricist and Ben have done a yeoman's job of delineating their relationship, and the evolution of such, via Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, and all manner of New Media. It's all very lovely, and worth your reading.

What this means for this music is that Ben is relieved of half of his duties, and that's not a bad thing. The first song, "A Working Day," is Ben at his best, and most clear, at the helm of everything in the studio: if Stevie Wonder set the bar back in the day, for performing all instruments in the multi-track environment, Ben uses "Lonely Avenue" to explore his own abilities to literally build in his own drum fills, making every choice imaginable-- except the lyrics. That whole collaboration with William Shatner, with Captain Kirk reading his poetry and Ben jamming out doesn't count in this genre-- that was spoken word, and weird performance, and "Lonely Avenue" is seeking (again) the pop song, with attach-yourself-to-'em lyrics.

And those are good, too-- most notably, "Levi Johnston's Blues" and "Claire's Ninth." Whether or not "Lonely Avenue" reaches heights of piano-power-pop set by songs like Elton John/Bernie Taupin's "Tiny Dancer," or even achieves standards set by Ben himself decades ago ("Alice Childress," "Eddie Walker") remains to be seen: I need more listening time. I hope to find the same reasons to pound the dash and sing loud while driving, as found back in the day myself. At the very least: props to Ben for trying something new.

Gandalf Murphy Opens Tupelo Music Hall!

The new Tupelo Music Hall is not located in Slambovia, but White River Junction-- though Gandalf Murphy and the Slambovian Circus of Dreams was happy to "launch the maiden voyage" of the new small-scale, upscale venue over two easy-ridin' sets, to a sold-out crowd. Frontman Joziah Longo took a poll after the first song, and was surprised to find that half of the crowd were Slambovian virgins. Mentioning their old stomping ground, the defunct Middle Earth Music Hall in Bradford, the band may have been expecting a reunion with crowds from those days: they had prepared songs from their earliest studio albums, to present alongside new material.

This didn't matter, though. Joziah and company have become Masters of their Craft, to the extent that any song, it seemed, was do-able, even the Van Morrison number "She Gives Me Religion," dedicated to an about-to-be-married couple in the fifth row (Joziah noted how this and other "sissy" songs were all too useful on the folk festival scene-- their 'live bootleg' from Falcon Ridge in 2009, among other recordings, was available in the lobby). "We wanted to come up and visit y'all," said Joziah, "but we didn't have a place to play." Until now. By the close of the show, Tink, the band's talented instrumentalist and vocalist, suggested (to the roar of the crowd) the Slambovians return to Tupelo for a Christmas show. They closed the show with one of their best inventions, taken from that holiday catalog: "Angels We Have Heard On High," breaking into a Doors-style "G-L-O-R-I-A" chorus, as triumphant as any other joyful noise I've heard.

Gandalf Murphy's strength lies in their variety: introducing one song as being a mix of Syd Barrett, the Moody Blues and Jose Feliciano, their embrace of post-psychedelic ideals through country, folk and rock idioms makes sense (and, as they'll be traveling to London this fall, money). Many tunes sounded like they were written by a less-formal Tom Petty, or was the result of long consultation with the powerless late pop of Paul McCartney-- "Let Me Roll It" would be an excellent cover for the Circus. Gandalf Murphy stuck to the basics, however, pulling two songs from their recent Dylan tribute album, including a remarkable "Positively 4th Street," a "singalong" for the crowd. This sounded far more like Bob's 1975 Rolling Thunder Review over The Basement Tapes, and though the crowd didn't likely know much more than the line "Johnny's in the basement/mixing up the medicine," lead electric player Shark took the opportunity to shine. Through the show, he wailed away on a number of guitars, never trusting sustained feedback-driven notes over his own noodling choices: his licks were quality, thoughtful, sounding as though they belonged on a mid-1970s Dick's Picks. He used a slide on everything, including his phasered-out electric mandolin. The setlist was fluid; the sitar was onstage, but went unused. At one point I wondered how much Aerosmith Shark knows by heart, while more often I imagined his work in a New Riders of the Purple Sage: hiding out among a Nashville groove, picking away, doing on electric guitar what pedal steels can't.

Tupelo could have made easier opening-night choices; the crew owner Scott Hayward assembled obviously doesn't shy away from challenges in microphonics and amplification. Besides singing, Tink played viola, accordions, a glockenspiel, a baritone uke and a few other interesting instruments. Only a truly proficient sound crew could attenuate the room's spankin' new Meyer M series sound system to adequately differentiate between the massive kick drum (18" at least) and Joziah's habit of pulling bass notes out of the last string on his acoustic, while Shark took the lead. In a heavier song (more Deep Purple, less folk) called "Genius" they teased "Voodoo Chile" and Lennon's "I Am The Walrus," before resorting back to more-typically-structured songs, built of simple, complicating shuffles.

In all, the first show at Tupelo Music Hall in White River Junction may serve as proof positive, confirming suspicions: it really is BYOB, it really is classy enough to welcome all manner of New England concert patrons.And, most importantly, Tupelo's crew won't allow anything to go wrong during a performance. The sound of a Circus is fantastic.