I hadn’t heard of the 2010 book “Popcorn: 50 Years of Rock ‘n’ Roll Movies” until I recently scored a copy for $2 at a library book sale. Penned by British music scribe Garry Mulholland, it was advertised as “The first and last word on the rock movie” six years before I self-published my tome “Rock Docs: A 50-year Cinematic Journey.”
So though I’d beg to differ with that blurb, I also know when to tip my cap to a pro. “Popcorn” is a wildly entertaining and rigorous look at both rockumentaries and music-themed feature films for the half-century starting in the mid-Fifties (my timeline is Beatlemania to 2014). Mulholland is a writer full of original thinking: astute, passionate, contrarian, righteous, risqué and often laugh-out-loud funny. You can’t wait to read the next review and find out what he’ll say about all these major music movies, even when you can tell by the star-rating that you’ll disagree with him.
That Thing You Do!: “Sixties rock according to Forrest Gump.”
This is a guy who likes “Help!” and “Yellow Submarine” better than “Hard Day’s Night,” prefers the Bob Dylan obscurity “Masked and Anonymous” over the iconic “Don’t Look Back,” and is as willing to praise John Waters’ “Hairspray” to the high heavens as he is to take the Rutles down a notch or two. But he will champion worthy obscurities like “Slade in Flame” with logic and love and assure us with 5-star ratings for “This is Spinal Tap,” “Quadrophenia,” “Gimme Shelter,” “Performance” and “The Filth and the Fury.”
The Kids are Alright: “Unique, thrilling, and a great reminder of when snotty bands smashing up stuff was still shocking, big and clever”
The films earning one or two stars usually get a (often much-needed) hatchet job. Check out these “plot line” blurbs that appear under the rating.
The Doors: “Twat stops shaving and dies.”
Purple Rain: “A $6 million tribute to Small Man Syndrome.”
The Monkeys’ ‘Head’: “Boy band force fed drugs and abused by hippie fuckwits.”
Pink Floyd’s The Wall: “Walls are bad. But women are worse.”
Control: “The aesthetically pleasing death of Ian Curtis.”
With such stylistic flair and free-ranging opinions, Mulholland can sometimes go a bit daft. About the only thing he likes in “The Last Waltz” are those cloying interviews Martin Scorsese had with Robbie Robertson to sell their cinematic ego trip about a grandiose farewell concert. Meanwhile, he treats the rest of The Band (who did not want to break up the group) as if they were Mumford and Sons. Not cool. The only guest spot he approves of is Muddy Waters, a rare foray into the dubious Rock Critic Guide to Street Cred.
In Bed with Madonna (aka Truth or Dare): “It’s like spending 113 minutes inside a homophobic joke.”
Elsewhere, Mulholland (who is white) delves deep into the ever-issue of white co-option of black musical culture and does so via an intellectual process, not by lazy virtue signaling. Like I said, he has a righteous streak. He uses it to body slam both the likes of “The Blues Brothers” (“trades on the non-existent joke of two ugly sexist white blokes being the Kings of Soul”) and “Ray” (“The sick, cruel, racist America is stylized-to-fuck until it has the requisite glow of nostalgic cool”), exposing the ineptitudes of both low-brow comedies and Oscar-bait star vehicles masquerading as biography.
As for “Ray,” the author dutifully misinforms us that Jamie Foxx won the Oscar for “Best Actor in Sunglasses.” Mulholland may be from England, but his cheeky sense of humor will be much appreciated by rock fans weaned on the good old days of Detroit-based CREEM magazine (“The Wall” is judged to be “the rancid toenail clippings of fetid rotting dogs”). You get the idea. Keep a lookout for “Popcorn” on the discount shelf or see if your library has a copy. Then have yourself a good laugh—and a good think.
But if you’re interested, I still have a few copies of my “Rock Docs” available for sale. Inquire in the comments below. Thanks, Rick Ouellette
When it comes to signifying images of 20th century pop culture, the screaming girls of Beatlemania are right up there. Of course, the siren-pitch of their collective hysteria is also unforgettable to those who watched the Fab Four on television or especially for those who saw them in person, where the din was so epic one could barely hear what they were playing.
This kind of hysterical fan reaction was not limited to the Beatles. A lot of other British Invasion bands got a similar reception in concert. A look back at the legendary “T.A.M.I. Show” filmed in late 1964 shows the young Los Angeles audience (about 75% female) going completely bonkers over everyone from Lesley Gore to Jan & Dean to James Brown. But for this post, let’s concentrate on four titles that were recorded in those exuberant days of the mid-Sixties, while also noting that the Beatles entry was not released until 1977.
Over time, it became de rigeuer that every major rock group post-1964 would eventually release at least one live album. The problem with the early ones was that the amplification and recording equipment had not caught up yet with what the bands were doing. As the 60s progressed, the technology dovetailed with the heaviness of the sound and the kids had grown up and gotten past their Shrieking Stage.
Got Live If You Want It? Nowadays, all but the most hardcore Stones’ fans would say “no thanks, I’m good” to their first live album, released in the fall of 1966. It’s an interesting artifact in its way but these renditions of hits like “19th Nervous Breakdown,” “Under My Thumb” and “Get Off My Cloud” will have you running back to the studio originals. Andrew Loog Oldham’s production is woefully tinny (sometimes it seems like Charlie Watts’ cymbals are the lead instrument) and at times it can barely compete with the audience cacophony.
Considering that Stones’ concerts often ended in riots back then, it’s remarkable that a quieter number like “Lady Jane” comes off reasonably well. The same could be said of Mick Jagger’s take on Otis Redding’s “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” although it turns out that song and “Fortune Teller” were studio tracks with crowd sounds added on. See below for a nice up-close glimpse of an early Stones show looked like.
The post-Pet Sounds Beach Boys were most noted for the creative dominance of Brian Wilson’s songwriting and studio wizardry. Later touring editions of the band often did not include Brian but did feature everyone from Glen Campbell to Blondie Chaplin, Daryl “Capt. and Tennille” Dragon and even Ricky Fataar, later of the Rutles.
So it is interesting to get a live taste of the original quintet, the three Wilson brothers, cousin Mike Love and neighborhood pal Al Jardine. This period piece stems from an enthusiastic 1964 show at the Sacramento Memorial Auditorium, with some post-production touching up to follow. The gatefold liner notes claims that unlike other live albums where they pump up the crowd sounds to add excitement, here they had tone it down. Such bragging! If so, I wonder what the decibel level was really like in the hall when fan fave Dennis Wilson stepped out from behind the kit to sing Dion’s “The Wanderer.” Shriek City, man!
All in all, this is a fun throwaway album, a mix of amped-up hits of their own (“I Get Around,” “Little Deuce Coupe” etc.) and a batch of covers, some well considered (Jan & Dean’s “Little Old Lady from Pasadena,” Dick Dale’s “Let’s Go Tripping,” a lead guitar showcase for Carl Wilson) and some just silly (Mike Love doing “Monster Mash”??). Beach Boys Concert was the first pop live album to top the charts, the guys’ only #1 LP aside from the 1974 compilation Endless Summer.
By the time The Kinks Live at Kelvin Hall came out in 1967, the band were already in the midst of a run of classic albums that were known for an introspective approach that was a marked progression from the teen-beat appeal of their early sound (their wistful masterpiece “Waterloo Sunset” was recorded the same month, April ’67, as this LP was released in the US as The Live Kinks). But at Glasgow’s Kelvin Hall it was all “this-one-goes-to-eleven” frenzy. The group don’t seem to mind: the audience was give one full channel on the 4-track recording and Ray and Dave Davies often egged on the screamers, as they do here before launching into “Dandy,” their astute ditty about an aging Casanova that teen-idols Herman Hermits would take to #5 on the Billboard charts.
The Kinks never turned their back on those early ravers: they open here with “Til the End of the Day” and encore with the world-beating “You Really Got Me” after a bizarre but entertaining medley of “Milk Cow Blues/Batman Theme/Tired of Waiting for You.”
Even the Beatles could not lay total claim for initiating this kind of hormonally-induced musical insanity. Frank Sinatra inspired similar reactions in the Forties, as did Elvis in the Fifties. But the Fabs really went level up when they broke in America, and the wild scenes of them playing the Ed Sullivan Show and at Shea Stadium are the stuff of legend.
Two of their more high-profile gigs on the West Coast were their appearances at the Hollywood Bowl in August, 1964 and in the same month the next year. Both were recorded but for various licensing reasons did not see the light of day until 1977 when highlights from both shows were combined for a 13-song, 33-minute album in what added up to a complete Beatles concert back then. Naturally, the screaming is super-intense and you got to give the lads credit for their energy level and musical precision (and good humor) given that they could hardly hear themselves.
On certain songs, like this 1965 take on “Ticket to Ride,” the girls seem to be taking a collective breather from the really crazy stuff and instead give the impression of a distant plague of locusts. Here, the band’s sound booms around the venue’s natural amphitheater. Elsewhere, they tinker with arrangements, like adding a pumped-up middle section to the pensive “Things We Said Today.” But nothing could negate the fact that this was not an optimal arrangement, especially with their growing musical sophistication in the studio. The Beatles last paying concert was the next August, at Candlestick Park on 8/29/1966, three weeks after releasing the game-changing Revolver.
That last factoid points up perfectly how rock and roll was quickly being transformed from a teen-scream sensation into a more cerebral, counter-culture art form. All four of these iconic bands were gearing themselves to the new studio-as-instrument ethos (esp. the Beatles and Beach Boys) while the Stones and Kinks had roadblocks to touring in the late Sixties: the former due to Brian Jones drug-bust-induced visa restrictions, the Kinks via a 4-year ban after a punch-up with officials from the American Federation of Musicians.
By the time they returned, the technology and amplification had caught up with the heavier sound of the new decade (see the Who’s thunderous Live at Leedsand the Stones’ own Get Yer Ya-Yas Out). The Kinks did a series of theater-rock presentations before making their own arena-rock move in the late 70s. Of course, the teen-hysteria thing never really went away and can be seen at shows by acts like Taylor Swift and the boy band of the moment. For us fans of the more classic rock type, the distractions at today’s show run more to people talking during the performance and impulsively holding up their smartphones. But that’s a story for another day.
In the annals of rock history, many bands are liable to be remembered only for their biggest hit. And so it is with Bloodrock, the Fort Worth-based outfit that graced the American Top 40 but one time. That single, of course, was the infamous “D.O.A.,” an exceptionally graphic dirge that depicted the immediate aftermath of a plane crash—told from the point of view of one of its soon-to-expire victims!
Against a morbid musical backdrop of funeral organ and blaring sirens, Bloodrock vocalist Jim Rutledge spares us no detail, whether it’s his missing limbs or the blood-soaked sheets applied by a paramedic who is overheard saying, “There’s no chance for me.” The song ends with Rutledge’s over-the-top cry of “God in heaven, teach me how to die!” before the final chorus yields to the sound of multi-tracked sirens sounding off on route to the morgue.
Brilliant stuff, to be sure. Just enough of us twisted teenagers bought the 45 (the full LP version ran past 8 minutes) to enable “D.O.A.” to claw its way to #36 in early 1971. I still have my copy. The b-side (“Children’s Heritage”) was more typical of the band’s output, a righteous if plodding boogie typical of the era. While the band’s signature song may not have been intended as a novelty (their guitarist Lee Pickens had witnessed a small aircraft crash), Bloodrock were to be identified with “D.O.A.” as closely as the Baha Men will be stuck forevermore with “Who Let the Dogs Out.”
For their first three albums, Bloodrock were under the clientage of both John Nitzinger, the sketchy kingpin of Texas blooze-rock who penned many of their songs, and manager/producer Terry Knight, who was also the combative Machiavelli behind Grand Funk Railroad. But by 1972, Rutledge and Pickens had left the band and Bloodrock had a new frontman in the person of fresh-faced Warren Ham. Ham was the lead singer and quite handy with the flute, saxophone and harmonica.
In late ’72, two years after recording “DOA,” came their fourth album, Passage. Gone was Terry Knight and his brainchild that their every LP sleeve design had to have dripping blood somewhere. Instead, the cover was a cryptical woodcut-like illustration of a clipper ship passing an underground cave, a nice touch. Similarly, the new Bloodrock sound was imaginative, and suggestive of the era’s preeminent progressive-rock sound.
The biggest and best surprise being the second track, “Scotsman,” an outright ringer and tribute to Jethro Tull leader Ian Anderson. With its scootering flute riff, weighty Hammond organ accompaniment (by key band holdover, Stevie Hill) and jaunty jig-rock arrangement, it could have been slotted into a Tull album like War Child or Songs from the Wood, if not for the singing accent.
While this edition of the band would never be mistaken for Yes or Peter Gabriel-era Genesis, other artful touches spice up this record. The buoyant opener “Help is on the Way” has a deft instrumental coda and “Life Blood” has some nimble dynamics and fresh splashes of synth that can stand up there with the best proggers of the day and contains some still-relevant lyrics (“I have seen a picture of hate, formed in a thousand ways/People say it’s all too late, talk of numbered days”).
The 8-minute semi-epic “Days and Nights” is a nice slab of organ-led heavyosity that should appeal to anyone who’s ever enjoyed a Uriah Heep album. There’s even a topical number, a nifty blues shuffle called “Thank you, Daniel Ellsberg,” giving props to the man behind the “Pentagon Papers” expose. Despite this new lease of life, Passage did not catch on and Bloodrock would only be around for one more studio album.
Since this “For the Records” series focuses on the obtaining of records as well as the listening to them, here are the somewhat odd circumstances of how I got my copy of Passage. After a night on the town, I pulled up in front of a used record store in North Cambridge, Mass. The owner of the Blue Bag Records store sometimes puts a pile of free discarded albums outside the door after hours. There was no pile this time, but the place was open despite the late hour (I think the guy was doing his accounts). Since I was likely going to be the only customer at that time, I had to be supportive and buy something. Nothing interested me until I saw this baby for eight bucks. I love the covert art (reminiscent of nautical mysteries like “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” or Poe’s novel “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket”) and I had heard a few of its tunes online. So it came that I bought my second Bloodrock record, some 52 years after purchasing the “D.O.A.” single.
Although Bloodrock were not long for the world by the time that this album was released but Warren Ham went on to a long and successful career (still ongoing) as session and touring saxophonist for everyone from Kansas and Toto to Olivia Newton-John to Donna Summer. He has also been in several iterations of Ringo Starr’s All Starr Band (see above). In fact, I saw him on one of these tours and of course never made the connection then. Too bad. If I ever had the chance to meet him I would love to see his reaction when I told him: “Hey, I loved that “Scotsman” song you did way back when.”
May 6th is Free Comic Book Day and I have a bunch of introductory 20-page mini-comics of my graphic novel-in-progress “In a Dream of Strange Cities” to give away. Here are some sample pages, if you are interested, please leave a message below and/or Like my Facebook page In a Dream of Strange Cities. Thanks! Rick Ouellette (writer) and Ipan (artist).
“Herb Alpert is… “ a pretty good documentary tracing the life and career of an introverted East Los Angeles kid who grew up to be the trumpet-playing leader of a band that for a while in the 1960s were arguably the biggest in the world, even outselling the Beatles for a spell. This is a story well worth telling, especially since the genial and low-key Alpert is still here to tell a lot of it himself. He is seen here in his early 80s, painting, sculpting, and running his charitable foundations—and still performing with his wife Lani Hall. Herb’s story is an encouraging tale of a creative life well-lived, in sharp relief to our age of trivialized Tik-Tok “stardom.”
Director John Scheinfeld takes the viewer on a compact trip thru Alpert’s early years as he takes up the trumpet in high school, spends a couple of years in the USC marching band and begins his professional career as a vocalist on a few L.A.-area novelty hits. Unsure of his future direction, he takes a break in Tijuana, and spends a day in the city’s traditional bullring stadium. He comes up with the idea for “The Lonely Bull,” a beautifully moody piece of music he records with his new band dubbed the Tijuana Brass. The single hit #6 on Billboard and its indelible melody still feels like a timestamp of the early Sixties.
This video for “The Lonely Bull,” nearly as evocative as the tune itself, was shot for a TV special in 1967. The original hit single was from five years earlier.
It’s probably for the good that the Herb Alpert and Co. got famous when they did. The group’s Mexican-American branding would be seen today in some corners as “cultural appropriation” much like some people now bemoan how surfing has robbed native Hawaiians of an important part of their heritage (really). Nobody in the band was Chicano (Herb’s parents were Eastern European immigrants), with members coming from as far afield as Staten Island and Newark, NJ. Back then, of course, the band’s bolero jackets and hits like “South of the Border” and “Tijuana Taxi” were just great fun. Their light and lively records were as an essential an ingredient to the success of a pre-Boomer party as was the club soda in a Tom Collins cocktail.
Alpert went back to singing for his #1 1968 solo hit “This Guy’s in Love With You.” The film also posits that the period following was a low point in his life personally We are shown a great archival interview on a bluff overlooking the Pacific, where he hesitantly questions his own happiness. This was around the time of the divorce from his first wife, while the fortunes of the Tijuana Brass were taking a dip during the ascendancy of rock music (Alpert even stopped playing for a few years and had to “relearn” the trumpet). Better times were to come with his subsequent marriage to Brasil ’66 vocalist Lani Hall and the founding of A&M Records with music mogul Jerry Moss. A&M would be a major player for the next two times, the two men personally shepherding the careers of such household names as Cat Stevens, Joe Cocker, the Carpenters, the Police, Janet Jackson and the Go-Gos.
The album cover that launched a million schoolboy fantasies (at least). This title track was later used as the theme music for “The Dating Game” TV show in America.
Interspersed among all the old gratifying film clips and photos of his heyday, are equally welcomed shots of the self-effacing and ever-active Alpert today—whether he’s painting or sculpting in his studio, attending an event at one of his many arts and music academies or performing with his wife. So while “Herb Alpert Is…” may run a little long at two hours (I would have cut out the extraneous testimonials from the likes of Sting and Billy Bob Thornton) there is a lot of inspiring stuff here to wow his many fans and maybe convince some of the younger folk that the successful life of a creative is based on running a marathon and not a 100-meter dash.
Born in 1958, I well remember the days of my early record-buying youth, looking up to my rock and roll heroes. The guys in the Beatles, Stones, Credence and the Who were all first wave baby-boomers, coming into this life during or just after World War II. The band members of the punk/New Wave groups I followed enthusiastically and so identified with were my contemporaries. Even though great music is timeless, the age factor is an important variable when it comes to musical appreciation.
So what happens to aging rock ‘n’ rollers when, like me, you are approaching Social security age? For many years, what I would call “Instagram Pop” has dominated mainstream charts, my main exposure to it being the endless parade of forgettable, dance-heavy one-hit wonders that tend to show up as the musical act each week on “Saturday Night Live.”
You can always dial into a classic-rock station or listen to the old favorites in your collection. But how does one satisfy a lifelong urge for new musical discoveries? Well, in this age of the Internet and streaming, access to newer acts that carry high the torch of Rock music is easier than ever. Here are several of my more recent finds. Keep in mind that the word “newer” is relative for an old geezer like me. The criteria I used is that the band in question had to have dropped their first album in 1990 or later.
Apricity—Syd Arthur (2016)
In the Seventies, the “Canterbury Scene” was a vital musical hotspot—this ancient English cathedral city was home to bands like the Soft Machine, Caravan, Gong and Matching Mole. In 2003, a talented young band named Syd Arthur (pronounced like the Herman Hesse novel but also a tribute to rock iconoclasts Syd Barrett and Arthur Lee) emerged from the same town. The pedigree was not unnoticed: Soft Machine co-founder Hugh Hopper offered the group advice (and one of his bass guitars) and Paul Weller was an early fan.
Syd Arthur fit loosely inside the wider neo-prog rock genre. On their albums their songs are propulsive and airy, with thoughtful lyrics and unfussy but expert musicianship. They are led by singer-guitarist Liam Magill and his bass-playing brother Joel, on keyboards and violin is Raven Bush (nephew of Kate). This is (was?) a great band, the only thing I would say is that their records leaned heavily on tightly arranged 4-minute songs that had a certain sameness of approach. That is why I prefer their fourth (and to date, last) album, Apricity. The formula is loosened up with various intros and outros and it’s a strong batch of songs. I especially like the closing title track (“Apricity” means the warmth of the sun that can still be felt on a cold day).
I saw Syd Arthur open for Yes in 2014 and was surprised and impressed how they delved into ambient psychedelic instrumental passages along with their more conventional songs. Although they have been inactive since 2017, here’s hoping for a reunion and maybe a willingness to explore this intriguing experimental side of their sound.
Let It All In—Arbouretum (2022)
The Baltimore-based group Arbouretum have been releasing excellent music since 2002 but have only attained a regional/cult following. Led by the enigmatic singer-writer-guitarist Dave Heumann, they have gotten some wider recognition, mainly for 2011’s The Gathering, which made the best-of-year lists of the UK’s two standard-bearing rock magazines, MOJO and Uncut. That album concludes with the brooding ten-minute-plus “Song of the Nile” which sprouts a glorious fuzz-drenched solo by Heumann, a not uncommon point of attack for him.
Arbouretum were more-or-less on my radar for years, via YouTube clips or the odd compilation track, but I finally ponied up and bought their latest (and tenth) album off their website. Let It All In is a strange beauty of an album. The heightened naturalism of Heumann’s cryptic song scenarios gives the whole album a hauntological vibe—he even name drops Telesphorus, the child-god of healing. Heumann’s voice seems to inhabit his own folklore, a few songs here sound like Gordon Lightfoot with Tom Verlaine on guitar. In their more hard-driving moments (the locomotive 12-minute title cut) their momentum is unstoppable, as is the saw-tooth lead guitar and the terse self-actualization that informs much of Heumann’s compelling lyrics: “Polestar don’t know where you are, only where you are drawn/Headwinds turn tail, hard to fail if you know where to begin.”
Alvvays (2014)
Alvvays (pronounced “always”) have put Canadian indie rock squarely on the map since releasing their self-titled debut in 2014. They hail from Atlantic Canada (formerly known as The Maritimes) but have re-located to Toronto. They are fronted by Molly Rankin, progeny of the Rankin Family, Nova Scotia’s first family of Cape Breton-style Celtic music.
That first album opened with a great one-two punch. The attention-grabbing opener “Adult Diversion” is followed by the ironic twee-pop plea “Archie, Marry Me” that, with its earworm chorus, became a cult hit. The aloof charms of the photogenic Rankin inform every song, her vocals are invariably both yearning and wised-up. Alvvays’ other two long-players, Antisocialites (from 2017) and Blue Rev (2022), are also excellent. Highlights include “Dreams Tonite” from the former and “Tom Verlaine” from the latter. The first is accompanied by a gratifying video that digitally inserts band members into the crowd at the Expo ’67 in Montreal (I was there as a 9 year-old but those guys hadn’t been born yet).
The second is not necessarily about the legendary Television frontman who passed away three months after the album’s release. Instead, Molly assures a Delphian boyfriend, “you’ll always be my Tom Verlaine.” Hipsters of the past and present will know exactly what she means.
England is a Garden—Cornershop (2020)
A big sunny musical highlight of the grim Covid year of 2020 was England is a Garden by the British indie-rockers Cornershop. The band, fronted by Tjinger Singh and Ben Ayres, was formed in Leicester in the mid-90s. In 1998 they had a #1 UK single with “Brimful of Asha,” a bouncy and delightful tribute to an Indian singer featuring the immortal tag line, “everybody needs a bosom for a pillow.”
However, Cornershop may be too quirky overall for sustained commercial success. It’s not the fault of the music: England is a Garden is a non-stop infectious mix of strumming guitars, flutes, tambouras and percussion, playing infectious rhythms under appealing melodies. But at times it is a bit hard to suss out what these lads are on about. (The CD comes with a fold-out poster that could have been better utilized as a lyric sheet). So while I may never understand “St. Marie Under Canon” or the tale of the “Uncareful Lady Owner,” they are still fun listens.
But when all their pistons are firing, this is some of the most enjoyable music I’ve heard in years. In time-tested form they celebrate their subculture and bemoan authority’s failure to appreciate it in “Everywhere the Wog Army Roam” (“policeman follow them”). In the chipper “Highly Amplified” they acknowledge that “hell is deep and the world is sinking” but refuse to give in to despair if there’s another rave to be had.
England is a Garden also features a pretty instrumental interlude (the title track), a radiant sing-along cover of a tune from a Seventies Hare Krishna pop album and two tracks that fall into the band’s long line of T. Rex/Sweet homages, one of which (“No Rock: Save in Roll”) pays clever tribute to the big role their native West Midlands area played in the development of hard rock.
Take Care, Take Care, Take Care—Explosions in the Sky (2011)
Explosions in the Sky are an all-instrumental “post-rock” band from Austin. They have released seven studio albums since 2000 and a few soundtracks as well, including one for the film version of “Friday Night Lights” about high-school football culture in their native Texas. Even their non-soundtrack work sounds like the compelling incidental music for the cinema of the mind. The music ebbs and flows and cascades, and often builds up to magnificent guitar crescendos.
The music of EITS can certainly be cathartic and their live shows come highly recommended though they’ve not been around my way that I know of. Like their other albums, 2011’s Take Care is great “listening listening” for those who have the time. Yet I can’t but help feel there’s a little something missing: yup, it’s the lack of vocals. The reflective folk-rock opening of a song like “Human Qualities” just cries out for an opening verse. While the group refer to their music as “mini-symphonies” there’s not enough variety in the arrangements to really make that stick. Still, at their evocative best (like in “Postcard from 1952” posted above), there’s something quite enchanting about EITS that made me glad I did get around to checking them out.
English Electric, Part Two—Big Big Train (2013)
Big Big Train are one of the more high profile bands of recent decades that inhabit the multi-variate world of neo-prog rock.. They formed in 1990 in the city of Bournemouth on England’s southern coast, and have released 14 studio albums and a clutch of EPs and live sets. Their overall sound falls somewhere between the late Peter Gabriel-era Genesis (Selling England by the Pound) and the early post-Gabriel Genesis (Trick of the Tail, The Wind and the Wuthering). Admittedly, that’s a narrow window so you can probably hear their sound in advance.
BBT have long resembled a collective more than a fixed group; on their records as many as seven or eight musicians are used per song, according to the sonics needed. These are some lush audio landscapes. The album I bought was English Electric Part Two (though Part One is also good) and the combination of the songwriting of founding member (and bassist/keyboardist) Greg Lawton with vocalist David Longdon was a creative peak (at the time, ex-XTC man Dave Gregory was on lead guitar. Longdon died in 2021, aged 56).
This music is unabashedly pastoral and nostalgic, with longish well-arranged songs that extol the virtues of farmers and shipyard workers and railroad engineers etc. These multi-sectional pieces with their florid piano, flutes and guitar crescendos will be too precious for some. Titles like “Curator of Butterflies” and “Swan Hunter” may even be a deal-breaker for some. But people like me who were weaned on the classic prog-rock sounds of Yes, Moody Blues and, yep, Genesis, will likely be intrigued.
This is a partial list, and I didn’t included bands that I followed more closely (like the Decemberists or British Sea Power) or those that I want to find out more about, like last year’s indie darlings from the Isle of Wight, Wet Leg. Everyone remembers “Chaise Lounge,” their buttered-muffin breakout hit, but I like this best of the follow-up singles, with the girls cavorting on the headlands of their home island. Til next that next time…
A little sneak-a-peek from my graphic novel work-in-progress, “In a Dream of Strange Cities.” It’s an odd filmgoing experience from the chapter “The Last Days of Odeon Circle.” Text by me (Rick Ouellette), drawing by Ipan.
Odeon Circle was a faded entertainment district that backed up to a still-desirable neighborhood but fronted a less-than-desirable one. I was nearly late for the film, so I hurried into the cinema and took a place in the steep overhang balcony, just like in the old days.
“Objective: Venus” played in fits and starts. The stolid monochrome actors planned their space trip, unaware that their new navigator planned to horde the mined gold and leave the others stranded on the Evening Star. The movie stopped and a bit of a World War II newsreel played backwards, effectively reversing the Allied victory in Berlin. Just as quickly, the film started up again. The un-helmeted crew were already standing on Venus and the lovely heroine was revealing the bad guy. The screen flared; the crew were either melted by the sun or there was some burning celluloid in the projection booth.
I gave up the ghost and headed down to the lobby. Outside in the Circle, there seemed to be trouble afoot.
Watch this space for asample chapter, coming soon!Or better yet, like the “In a Dream of Strange Cities” Facebook page.
Boy, was January a tough month in the increasingly busy field of pop-music obituary writing. It saw the passing of some folks with huge names (Jeff Beck, Lisa Marie Presley, David Crosby) and others less famous, but hitting just as hard for particular fan bases (Screaming Trees’ bassist Van Conner, original Yardbirds guitarist Top Topham). Social media has sort of made us all into amateur memorializers, and by the end of January I was getting a bad case of Obituary Fatigue Syndrome and mostly just clicking the sad-face icon when a friend would post about any of the names mentioned above.
But on the 28th, another reported death, that of Tom Verlaine, prompted me to pick up the ol’ pen, for an alternative tribute. Verlaine, first with his band Television then as a solo artist, inspired me greatly in my development as a writer, in a curious field that in recent decades has got its own name: hauntology—the persistence of spirit that lives on in man-made environments.
Of course, Tom’s main influence will be musical, the enigmatic beauty of his songwriting and his otherworldly guitar skills. But in many a better written obit about Verlaine, a common theme persists: how he evoked a whole era and how his songs were almost literal surveyor marks in the changing New York City landscape of the late 70s. It was a time that Gotham was in the throes of financial crisis and social disruption but also giving creative birth to the epochal punk and hip-hop subcultures: both of which would soon have global reach.
Television, First Avenue NYC 1977
From L to R: Fred Smith, Verlaine, Richard Lloyd and Billy Ficca. They and countless other musicians and artists flooded into a (then) low-rent Lower East Side in the demographic upheaval of the white-flight 70’s Big Apple. The rediscovery and reutilization of neglected places is a key tenet of hauntology and urban exploring.
Verlaine became known to me ever since my end-of-1977 listening centered on Talking Heads ’77, Marquee Moon by Television (I bought MM on the strength of one great magazine review) and the Ramones Rocket to Russia, which a roommate had. Everything changed after that.
The inspiration for me was Verlaine’s lyrics. Marquee Moon’s mind-blowing 10-minute title epic is the key track, but my favorite Television song was “Venus.” It is a master class in urban psychedelia, the best song possible about tripping balls at night in Lower Manhattan with a couple of friends (and one of them is Richard Hell). “Broadway looked medieval/it seemed to flap like little pages,” Tom sings. This is the Broadway that extends down from the gothic majesty of the vertiginous Woolworth Building to its colonial terminus at Bowling Green. A lot of this stretch is basically unchanged in the last century. It was the site of many a famous ticker-tape parade and features two of New York City’s oldest churches.
A couple of years back I spent a day-night-day in the Lower Broadway area, a block from the gargantuan old Custom House building, with its monumental sculptures representing the continents. I had my own sort of “Venus” moment when I stumbled on it for the first time on a misty night around 1980. I got some great photos of just the sort of thing that has inspired a passage in my graphic novel-in-progress “In a Dream of Strange Cities.” It was the page I was leading up to when I heard of Verlaine’s passing. My protagonist “sleep voyager” emerges in a Midtown NYC stripped of many of its buildings. He walks in the blazing sun until he reaches unchanged Lower Broadway, mythical home of O. Henry’s Transients in Arcadia, where’s it cool and shadowy and timeless. He’s on his way to a secret meeting with (wait for it, please) a utopian princess. (Free introductory comic of “In a Dream of Strange Cities” coming soon!)
Having a close look at lower Broadway in the spring of 2021. Photos by the author
Anyway, here’s a great quote from a more-or-less professional obit man/rock scribe about the quality of Mr. Verlaine’s hauntological aesthetic (from Matt Mitchell at Paste magazine).
He was walking art awash with the uncertainty of a midnight sky; a poet gleaning geographical imagery into his pastorals as if he was his city’s only architect.
Surely, Mr. Verlaine’s spirit and influence will live on indefinitely in every instance of someone falling under the spell of great cities and great possibilities. RIP Tom.
“If you’re really a Dylan buff, I mean tuned right into the stereo microgrooves of his soul, you’ll get a kick out of this.”
So begins the eager-beaver “Introgush” of Toby Thompson’s “Positively Main Street.” It was one of the first books I ever read about a music star and still one of my favorites. First published in 1971 and reissued in 2008 with the helpful subtitle “Bob Dylan’s Minnesota,” it depicts two trips to the North Star State taken by the recent college graduate in the late Sixties, while rock’s poet laureate was still in seclusion, two years after his mystery-shrouded motorcycle accident. Over the succeeding decades, books about Dylan have become a robust cottage industry and the exact number of Dylanologists now roaming the earth would be hard to quantify. Many of them have turned out portentous volumes indeed, befitting the decade’s “Voice of a Generation.”
But Thompson’s modest-seeming book turned out be a trailblazer, and it remains one of the most appealing on the subject, a genial and immersive street-level journal of time spent in Dylan’s hometown of Hibbing. He interviews friends, family, teachers and townsfolk. He visits all the relevant sights (both in Hibbing and in Minneapolis where Bob briefly attended college) and develops a friendship with Echo Helstrom, Bob’s high-school sweetheart who was the probable inspiration for his classic “Girl from the North Country.”
Echo Helstrom in 1969, photo by Toby Thompson. The pictures he took in Hibbing, of local landmarks as well as many of the adorable Helstrom, were previously used in “Positively Main Street’s” original incarnation as a series in the Village Voice. Several are reprinted in the look-back interview with Thompson in the new edition of the book.Helstrom later moved to California and passed away in 2018.
In today’s hyper-accessible and saturated media landscape, it’s a little startling to read how humbly the book came into the being. Knowing his subject’s real name and hearing an anecdote that his father and uncle owned a hardware store up there; he uses directory assistance to call the family business (actually Zimmerman Furniture & Electric Company) and is casually invited up to Hibbing by an uncle: Bob’s dad had recently passed away.
Thompson doesn’t need much convincing to pack up his semi-reliable VW Bug and take the long drive from D.C. to northern Minnesota during a deep Northwoods autumn. Toby is motivated as much by the imperative to become a member of the New Journalism as he is by fanboy fever. Sure, he’s the kind of guy who studied the lyrics of Dylan’s John Wesley Harding LP when it came out in late’67 (after a 20-month recording absence), comparing notes over the phone with friends. Almost a year later, with no other word from their hero, he decides on his mission—probably just as much to find himself as to get to the origin story of the man born as Robert Zimmerman.
There is a vivid Beat-style detailing of the drive thru the East’s REAL physical landscape, the infrastructure and turnpikes, before reaching out into the great Midwest Americana. Thompson tools down the legendary Highway 61 and hears “Just Like a Woman” on the radio as he’s approaching his destination. The clean-cut and unimposing (but insistent) young writer is soon out hitting the bricks of Hibbing, a small but somewhat well-appointed city with music shops, teen hangouts, lively taverns and a couple of cinemas (also owned by the Zimmerman clan).
You know it was the early days of the Dylan Studies discipline when Thompson is shocked to learn that Bob, who made his legend with socially-conscious folk songs, had fronted a rowdy rock band in high school. A glance at his school yearbook reveals a desire to “follow Little Richard.” But aside from the odd person (like his astute English teacher), there just isn’t a whole lot appreciation for “Bobby Die-lan” (as the locals often call him). The woman down at the music store, who sold him his first harmonica, says her old customer’s albums are not big sellers in these parts (“people don’t like his voice”).
These days, there is more appreciation of good ol’ Bobby Die-lan in his hometown. Each May, Hibbing holds a “Dylan Days” festival. This promotion for a Dylan cover-band concert is on the side of the house where Bob grew up. When the Zimmerman family sold this house, there was a codicil that called for his upstairs bedroom (included some personal possessions) to remain as is. Thompson visited that bedroom while writing his book and Dylan himself reportedly visits it from time to time.
Echo Helstrom was of course, someone who did get Bob. They went together their whole junior year of high school, bonding as two of maybe a handful of kids grooving to the sounds of the blues and the new rock ‘n roll emanating at night from faraway stations in places like Shreveport and Little Rock. Echo, who Dylan compared both to Brigitte Bardot and Becky Thatcher, is a fair-haired and mini-skirted blithe spirit with the “finest smile this side of White Bear Lake.” Although she had previously been interviewed (by author Robert Shelton for a book that would not come out until 1986), she was delighted with the attention and regaled Toby with tales of teenage Bob that few if any fans would have known. The two form a quick conspiratorial bond, heading up to Hibbing in the VW to kick up a little dust. They visit the old haunts, close down a bar or two and even a crash a local radio station so Echo can return the favor and sing a little tune she wrote (“Boy from the North Country,” natch), accompanied by Toby on guitar.
Nowadays, where self-serious writers like Greil Marcus pen whole books about a single Dylan song (Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads), Positively Main Street comes across as a breath of fresh air from a more ingenuous age. Towards the end of the book, Thompson interviews Bob’s mom at a local diner. She does protest a bit about a couple of unappreciated private details that showed up in the Village Voice article (and as to why he’s running around with “that Echo”) but the mostly cordial conversation reveals what readers have likely sussed out by this point: that Robert Zimmerman had a pretty solid and regular Midwestern upbringing.
And that’s OK, even better that way. I say this because there was a lot of deification of Dylan back then, as well a certain amount of mythmaking, some of it perpetuated by the liner notes of his first album that would have you believe he ran away to join the circus as a boy, never knew his parents, yada-yada. But real art and talent come from hard work and drive and knowing from whence you came, not from some magic talisman passed down to a lucky few. Bob Dylan did (and does) have a extraordinary knack for absorbing the great American experience in all its many forms, not the least of which was the stark but sensible place (“where the winds blow heavy on the borderline”) that informed his spirit, a place that Toby Thompson let Dylan fans feel for the first time.
A sort of food-court dystopia takes hold in and around a super-mall on the outer edges of metropolitan London in J.G. Ballard’s incisive last novel, published in 2006, three years before his death. The English author was a foremost chronicler of speculative societal fracturing in works such as Concrete Island, High Rise and Crash. The kind of high concept dissolution of those books are also featured here in the story of Richard Pearson, a recently let-go advertising man who goes to investigate how his estranged father came to be one of victims of mass shooting in the main atrium of the Metro-Centre, a sprawling modern shopping center buffeted by hotels, offices and several sports stadiums that are regularly packed with enthusiastic and sometimes volatile fans.
Pearson gives up his trendy flat in Central London to immerse himself in the strange, semi-fictionalized world of the “motorway towns” in the vicinity of Heathrow Airport. Despite this area being only 15-20 miles from Trafalgar Square, it is a place apart in Ballard’s vision. A terse, maze-like psychogeography takes hold. The Metro-Centre presents itself as an optimistic unifying force, in contrast to the “alienating” effect of modernism found in “heritage London.” Underneath its enormous central dome, Pearson is met by the mall’s PR man: “he was smiling, friendly and crushingly earnest, with the pale skin and overly clear eyes of a cult recruiter.” He assures Pearson that the denizens of Brooklands (the town is fictitious but named after the former racing circuit nearby and seen below) have “pulled together” after the tragedy and that retail business there suffered only a minor setback.
Pearson moves into the condo of a dead father he barely knew and soon becomes all too aware of a regressive “pocket revolution” in his midst. Organized groups of sporting clubs, most wearing shirts emblazoned with England’s St. James’ insignia, have rallies that quickly turn into racial attacks on Asian and Eastern European immigrants. Of course, these dark energies are quick to be harnessed. Shades of Brexit and Trumpism rise to the surface, though the book predates them by a decade. Ballard could be masterful at trenchant observation as when describing the shadowy figures behind this grim initiative. They are trafficking in “a violence of the mind, where aggression and cruelty were part of a radical code that denied good and evil in favor of an embraced pathology.” Nowadays, that sounds all too familiar.
A popular and ubiquitous TV host of the complex’ in-house cable channel, with the blithe name of David Cruise, is put up as the nominal, would-be head of state. As a man who is “authentic in his insincerity” he seems just the ticket. Pearson even takes a new stab at his old occupation, becoming his ad man, even reusing a pitch (“Mad is Bad, Bad is Good”) that kinda got him fired in his old job. But he takes the role to infiltrate the movement and find out who’s behind the killings—a case that has become clouded in deception—while also becoming curious as to what the true end game of his chosen profession might be. After all, he spent a career cultivating a suburban mindset where people identify themselves through their purchases. But this domain of “Consumerism Uber Alles” is soon embroiled in a proxy war as the militias who profess to protect the shoppers are besieged by government forces who have had enough of this Banana Republic banana republic.
Kingdom Come is not a perfect book. It feels padded at time with catchphrases and dialogue that seem more like panel discussions, while character motivations often seem confused. But as a speculative look into a world where mob violence is described as “local pride” and an undervalued population ready to shade into madness, Ballard’s book is vivid and alarming. In a way we are all ensnared in this world. It’s esp. true here in America, where 70% of the economy is tied up in consumer spending and where there were two mass shootings in shopping areas the day I started this post.
It may be easy to think of Kingdom Come as an overwrought fever dream, and it does slip into that at times. But Ballard was uncanny in a lot of his prognostications (High Rise mirrored the current folly of the practically unlivable supertalls on New York’s “Billionaire’s Row”) and I’ll never look at a shopping mall in quite the same way ever again.
Reel and Rock 