Murphy's Law

I.

Listen:

When some of your best friends are people who exist elsewhere—characters in books you’ve read, musicians you’ll never meet, people from the past who died decades (even centuries) before you were born, or people you knew intimately who are no longer around—it might be time to ask some complicated questions.

Who are you?

That is, or should be, the first question, as well as the last question, and it should be asked as often as possible along the way.

You see, all men are islands. After all, no one else is inside you when you’re born, no one is going with you when you die, and between those first and last breaths, the decisions, actions and accountability are your own. All, all yours.

So: you find friends, you seek solace in yourself, you learn to discern redemption through the aimless affairs that comprise the push and pull of everyone’s existence. You realize, in short, that you are going through it alone, so you should never go through it alone.

Thoreau was quite correct about quiet desperation and the long shadow it can cast over us all, but you don’t want to run off to your own unseen island. For one thing, there are no islands anymore, except the ones you pay admission to enter; plus, it’s already been done; and above all, when Thoreau got lonely or hungry he walked home and had his mother cook dinner for him, a fact he forgot to mention in his quite convincing case for individuality. Besides, everyone is already on his or her own island. You can’t run away, and the farther you run, the closer you get to yourself. And you’re all you’ve got.

If you are fortunate enough to figure this out early on, you find friends: the ones who exist in your everyday world, and the ones who have been there all along, the ones you can always turn to, wherever or whoever you happen to be.

II.

I have visions.

As far back as I can remember anything, I remember it being there—and I’m not just talking about run of the mill malarkey like guessing who was on the phone before I answered it, or what the next song on the radio would be before it was played (although these were both common recurrences throughout the mini-visions of my formative years)—I’ve been aware of things that most, if not all, other people I know have no access to: visions.

A vision:

I was certain that I had been destined to die on my eighteenth birthday.

I was not clear on how it was going to go down, but it was definitely to be marked by dramatic and tragic overtones—it would be, in short, supremely adolescent. Not slow death by disease, or some unfortunate ailment of the elderly, but more of a movie star blaze of glory, think James Dean or Jimi Hendrix. I could see them all: friends, family, choice classmates—the ones who gathered around my locker now gathered around my casket—sobbing, singing, eulogizing. I saw it. The vision intensified when I discovered that my eighteenth birthday happened to fall on Senior Prom. At first the made-for-TV melodrama was daunting, a tad over-the-top; but then the vision accrued acumen and I got a handle on the situation: what a brilliant way to go! Either I’ll have just experienced my first—and last—blissful sexual encounter (speaking of visions), or I’ll shuttle off into the post-pubescent afterworld pristine, an unsoiled altar boy.

I have visions. I do not claim that they are always accurate.

After prom (where I failed not only to die but to murder my virginity) I awoke the next morning, more than a little astonished to have survived. Having applied to the appropriate universities, I glided through the formality of standardized tests, still not unconvinced that I would be going anywhere. I exercised less caution than the average teenage idiot, reckoning that my visions obliged me to abet—or at least tempt—fate a little bit, just on principle. Alive on arrival, I found myself at college, where I subsequently saw some things that gave my visions a run for their money. I made it through matriculation and then, the unreal world awaited.

Still alive, I had little choice but to keep on living.

III.

Listen:

To win? To lose?

What for, if the world will forget us anyway?

I didn’t write that. A poet wrote that. I’m no poet. Poets are always looking for things, like heroes. Who wants to be a hero these days? Who can afford it? The world could be—and might very well already be—full of folks who will ring changes and do their part to shake up the constricting and crazed institutions that keep us chained, bound and complacent.  There are lots of these people, I’m sure: tons and tons of them.  But the thing is, most of us are too busy trying to live.  It’s enough to just survive without seeking to pursue such lofty, such poetic propositions.

This is the new poetry: the more things stay the same, the more they change. Here is our art: haikus of horror in the cities, sonnets of sin and corruption, limericks of deregulation, free verse free trade, rhymed lines of laissez-faire, and the emboldened ghost writer, Death, forever at work on our collective life stories.

These days we look for poetry in all the wrong places. Some of us even believe we are gazing more deeply into the murky waters of existence when all we are actually seeing is our own reflections.

Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?

What he said.

 

IV.

These dreams are trying to tell me something:

I find myself back in high school. Often. At night.

The bell rings, students scurry, locker combinations are unscrambled. Except mine.

What is my fucking locker combination?

All around me doors are opening and then slamming shut, my buddies all about business, pictures of pin-ups inside their lockers replaced by pictures of their kids, my homeroom buddy with the beer gut easily fitting his briefcase into the small space, and here I am, imploding in this typical teenage crisis, attempting to be cool while the anxiety escalates on the inside: high school redux.

I’m going to be late for class—again!

And then, this: Shit! This is the math class I haven’t been to in two months (who could blame me, what with a full time job during school hours—a fact conveniently ignored in the insanity of this ceaseless scenario), more than two months, an eternity in dream years, and I’m not even sure what room it’s in. So here I am, unable to open my locker, again, realizing I’m late for the class I have already failed.

These dreams are trying to tell me something, I know. I’m just not sure what it is.

V.

License registration, no I ain’t got none,
But I got a clear conscience ‘bout the things that I done…

When you find yourself singing Bruce Springsteen lyrics in New Jersey to a state trooper in the hopes of avoiding a ticket, you might as well close your eyes, see what happens:
Maybe you could talk to the cop and explain that it was not disrespect for the rules of the road, but love of—and getting lost in—art that caused you to forget. To forget where you were and who you were, only to find yourself in the unfamiliar role of fugitive.
And maybe he would understand.
Maybe he would engage you in a discussion about music, and how it helps us, how it is always there, and occasionally compels us to do things we would not otherwise do.
And maybe, after everything was said and done, you would stop, and ask him if he was real, if this could ever actually happen.
And maybe he would wink familiarly, as if to say: This is America, ain’t it? Anything is possible.
And maybe you would believe him, even as you heard his footsteps fading away.
And by the time you opened your eyes, maybe you were still rolling down the road, the only reality being the speed and the sky, and the siren song of metal and machinery.

A vision:

Finally, his car needed fuel, he needed fuel; so he had no choice but to stop at the godforsaken rest area. Everyone, it seemed, had stopped at the same rest area: equal parts public toilet, food court and concessions stand. It was at once appalling and extraordinary; it was, in short, America.

Who were they, the people all around him? They were everyone: departing or arriving, leaving for vacation, returning to work, delighted, delirious, above all, anonymous. In New Jersey, or in any small town, or everywhere in America, there are people who find themselves lost; the people with nowhere left to go. A cliché? Sure. But clichés are made, not born. Reality, of course, is a cliché, and we have discovered that clichés—even as they are the enemy of art and authenticity—can be our friends. And so: going to church makes us sense spirituality, so we go; playing carols at Christmas facilitates a feeling of festivity, so we play; falling in love makes us feel loved, so we fall. We need all the help we can find, so we find friends and never look back.
He looked back; he looked around and in front of him, seeing the stereotypes: the ones in his mind that everything but experience had created. Or was the Cliché unfurling itself, the one that perpetuates from a particular place: experience, repetition, pattern, tradition? He saw them, he saw how he wanted to see them, he saw how they saw him, he saw how they saw him seeing them, and so on.
And who was he?
What was he all about? What had he done? Where had he been? Where was he going? Who did he think he was? Everyman? No man? Or worse: the type of person who actually asks questions like this.
Walking away, stomach full and mind clear, he saw her. He could not help noticing the forsaken sister walking in circles, seeking a corner of the room that wasn’t there. How old was she? Eighteen? Eighty? Somewhere right in between? Satisfied with a meek drink in the water fountain, she was the type of person who unthinkingly drank from public water fountains. Does anyone drink from public water fountains anymore? Do they still exist? Does anyone even notice them?
It was hard not to notice her, impossible not to notice that pain.
Pain: Dostoyevsky, disconcerted as he was with crime and punishment, saw all the suffering of the world in a prostitute’s eyes, and sobbed when he witnessed a peasant, hard-pressed with impotent anger, beating his horse to death. He opened his eyes and half expected to see this woman whipping herself while Nietzsche—knowing full well that God was dead— held his head and wept. Who was she, and what was she doing here?
A hooker, a homeless person? A mother, a case of mistaken identity? A human symbol of hope, or Hope herself—a deity deferred, paying the price for us all, all of us sinners and those sins we can scarcely describe.
She’s just like me, a voice inside attempted to say, a voice he very well may have listened to—a voice he had come dangerously close to growing into, under the shadow of the ivory tower—had he opted to make certain decisions along the way.
He walked over, ready to help: offer money, lend a hand, do whatever needed to be done, even and especially the things he had neither the ways nor means to make happen. He walked over and smiled, and she spoke, making him an offer he had no choice but to refuse.
It was enough to make one wonder if (and even wish that) the stories in the bible, and those fairy tales and myths men have made all have a foundation in fact. That the slow, ceaseless suffering some of us occasionally see is in accordance with a plan, a motion picture we have no part in producing. That it was not even personal, all this erstwhile, enigmatic madness, it was strictly business. It was enough to cause the hardest of humans to hope for a beneficent Big Guy (or Lady, but it is asking too much for God to have the decency to be a woman) upstairs, shuffling that proverbial deck. Or cutting and pasting the appropriate pieces of the puzzle, always keeping a wise eye on the endearing idiots underneath, and generally doing and saying the things that the creator of an entire universe says and does.
But how the hell are we supposed to have hope when Hope herself had been reduced to this, turning tricks at a rest stop on the Jersey Turnpike?

VI.

When the train left the station, it had two lights on behind,

Well, the blue light was my baby and the red light was my mind.

I didn’t say that.

A vision. Actually, a fantasy: Every so often I can’t help hoping that there will be a knock on my door and when I open it, who is there but my sexy soul mate, a beautiful woman who heard the blues music every time she walked by, and wondered if, according to her own fantasy, a sensitive, erudite dude had been right there all along, waiting for her, waiting for happily ever after. And after a while, she could no longer ignore the siren song escaping through the small space under the door and came knocking.

Of course, this illusion presupposes three things, in descending order of unlikelihood: one, that there are such things as soul mates; two, that my soul mate happens to live in my building; and three, that anyone actually listens to—much less enjoys—blues music.

All my love’s in vain.

What he said.

 

VII.

He waits.

He looks out the window and he waits.

He does not look at the magazine, the one on top of the others that littered the table, the one last picked up by the last person who had sat in this room.

He stands, not wanting to sit, not wanting to look down at the magazine. He looks down at the magazine, which stares up at him, defiant, disinterested, doing all that was asked of it. The magazine did not ask to be brought into this room, it did not ask to be read or ignored, to be picked up and put down, to be digested and then discarded.

He stands, knowing that if he thinks about the magazine he wishes he were not looking at, the magazine he will not read, he will not think of the things he does not want to think about.

He does not walk into the corridor to look into the room that the woman is not in.

He waits.

He understands—anyone who has been where he is understands—that you must prepare yourself to wait a long time. So you prepare, and you wait. And then, it is even longer than that, longer than you remember. Much longer. He remembers: standing, then sitting in this room, almost the exact same spot, twice already (third time is the charm, he does not say) and still cannot help being surprised at how long he has had to wait.

He waits.

No one talks to him (they know who he is and why he is here), and no one knows the story he could tell (it is the same story everyone who has stood where he is standing would tell).

He stands silently, shifting and sorting his awareness that eventually they will bring her to the room. When they bring her to the room he will see her. He will see her seeing him, then see her seeing him see her. And then she will ask him and he will have to tell her. He will try not to tell her and she will look at him and remind him that he has to tell her.

He waits.

He wishes that they would hurry up (hurry up and get it over with, he does not say) and then he hopes that they will never come so he can stand, peacefully paralyzed in this forever moment.

Eventually, he looks at the table, and the magazine that waits for him to pick it up. He does not pick it up.

He sits down and does not think about the nothingness that surrounds him, the nothingness around him and the gnawing nothingness inside him. He does not notice the plants or the paintings or the cheerfully colored curtain that does not cover the light outside. He does not allow himself to contemplate the sterile silence screaming all around him, the vacant spaces, and the odd energies of dying life. Most of all, he does not think about it: how impossibly clean people in impossibly white clothes speaking impossible to understand languages using impossibly powerful tools and technology anesthetize everything but still cannot keep it out. They are only human and they cannot disguise it, it happens no matter what they do to prevent it or ignore it.

He finds himself staring, again, at the magazine, the magazine that he had picked up without realizing it. He does not open the magazine he under no normal circumstances would have even the slightest inclination to read. He does not open it and therefore does not, among other things, learn about which foods would improve his sex drive and help him sleep more soundly, he does not find out ways to make his partner reach new levels of ecstasy every time, he does not peruse his horoscope to see what the future has in store for him, he does not discover the secret to losing ten pounds in only three days, and he does not skim the interview that explains how the fragile millionaire singer lost the chance of making millions more dollars after having a nervous breakdown while filming a commercial for a soft drink she would not otherwise endorse.

He waits.

He does not pass the time planning opportunities that could create happiness. He does not deceive himself (this time) about the possibility of forgetting the present by focusing on the past. He does not dwell on the types of things they would enjoy doing again, the things they enjoyed, once, which they never found the time or forgot to do. Again. He does not think about the ways in which you discover that the things you loved, then, become the things that bring about inexplicable sorrow: the movies, the music, the meals, the books, the board games, the photo albums, the family.

And so: he does not allow himself to think about her as she is now or how she was then. Or how he is now or how he was then. How he will be.

He looks down at the magazine, again, and picks it up, again.

He understands that the second he opens the magazine they will arrive, wheeling her down the hall like the enigmatic magicians they were trained to be. If he opens the magazine, the magic act, performed (again) before an awkward audience, will begin. So he waits.

He stands up and looks out the window, at the horizon, beginning to disappear in heavy air beneath the tops of the trees. He looks down, far below, where miniature people inside miniature cars sit in miniature rows, stoically and slowly moving forward in the directions of their miniature houses and the miniature respites that may or may not await them. The sky continues to sag, ensnaring the world in its silent sentinel. The people, and then the cars, and then the earth all slip away, leaving only lights that sigh in their electrical language. He looks down at the waning waves of lights, and these lights do not look like a thousand sets of eyes, they do not make the darkness more discernible, they do not appear as poetry. They are exactly what they are: they are progress, they are pain, they are power. They are the cold crucible of machines that control the lives of the men who made them.

He does not let himself think about these things. He has too many other things not to think about.

He does not turn around.

He will hear them, eventually, when they come.

Eventually they will come, and he will hear them, and then he will turn around.

Then, he would…

He looks down; again, at the magazine he will not read. He knows, again, that if he picks up the magazine they will come.

He sits silently and stares at the magazine. He stands and looks out the window. He does not turn around.

He waits.

VIII.

I still have hangovers, thank God.

Everyone who has known an alcoholic knows that as soon as you stop feeling the pain, it’s because you are no longer feeling the pain; you are no longer feeling much of anything.

So, I welcome the horrors of the digital cock crowing in my ear at an uncalled for hour, am grateful for the flaming phlegm in my throat, the snakes chasing their tails through my sinuses, the smoke stuck behind my eyelids, the shards of glass in my gut, and the special ring of hell circling my head. Because if it weren’t for those handful of my least favorite things, I’d know I had some serious problems.

All of us can think of a friend whose father (or mother for that matter), we came to understand, was in an entirely different league when it came to the science of cirrhosis. The man who falls asleep fully clothed with a snifter balanced over his balls, then up and out the door before sunrise—like the rest of the inverted vampires who do their dirty work during the day in three piece suits. Maybe it was a martini at lunch, or several cigarettes an hour to take the edge of. Whatever it was, whatever it took, they always made it out, and they always came back, for the family and to the refrigerator, filled with the best friends anyone can afford.

Our friends’ fathers came of age in the bad old days that fight it out, for posterity, in the pages of books, uneasy memories and the wishful thinking of TV reruns: the ‘50’s. These are men who have never opened a bottle of wine and have no use for imported beer, men who actually have rye in their liquor cabinets—who still have liquor cabinets for that matter. These are men who were raised by men that never considered church or sick-days optional, and the only thing they disliked more than strangers was their neighbors. Men who didn’t believe in diseases and didn’t drink to escape so much as to remind themselves exactly what they never had a chance to become. Theirs was an alcoholism that did not involve happy hours and karaoke contests; theirs was a sit down with the radio and a whiskey sour, a refill with dinner and one before, during and after the ballgame. Or maybe they’d mow the lawn to liven things up, tinker under the hood of a car that had decades to go before it could become a classic. Or perhaps friends would come over to play cards. Sometimes a second bottle would get broken out. This was a slow burn of similar nights: stiff upper lips, the sun setting on boys playing baseball, mothers sitting on the couch watching TVs families did not yet own, of forced smiles battling bottled tears in the bottom of a coffee mug, of amphetamines and affairs, overhead fans and undernourished kids, of evening papers and a creeping conviction that there is no God, of poets unable to make art out of the mess they’d made of their lives.

It was a hard time where people did not live happily ever after, if they ever lived at all. It was a time, in other words, not unlike our own.

IX.

(And so, (you think), a life is not unlike a novel: too often they are eager to please, predictable, safe. You think: And so, you should feel obliged to occasionally ask yourself complicated questions. Such as: What are you doing to keep things interesting? What can you do to generate momentum, keep the narrative flowing?

Memories refract reality, where we see what we’ve done, or what we wished we’d done, or what we might have done, what we should not have done, what someone else may or may not have done, and what we may or may not have done if we were someone else. Kind of like a movie, a work in progress, a motion picture in your mind.)

Fade in:

Eventually, the patio is filled with people. Not customers, necessarily, but the cast of characters who congregated at this sad café, all the people who had put in time making the place everything it was. One by one, they stroll in and sit down.

The ceaseless discussion of suffering continued in the other corner, where Nietzsche attempted to speak calmly to the ever-irascible Dostoyevsky. You’d very much like to join them, but you have work to do.

After a while, you finally approach the one table you did not know, the two people who had been waiting patiently all along.

It was a mother and her son, and it was difficult to determine if he was a young boy, or an older boy trapped in a child’s body. He could have been eight, or eighteen, maybe older, probably younger—it was impossible to tell. He smiles, not needing to say a thing as the setting sun shines off the silver spokes of his wheelchair. He sits still, body inert but head moving: he looks up, down, sideways—everywhere; it seems, but straight ahead. His head was the stimulus and response, a crucible of his contained, constricted energies.

You think about his life.

Time: the time required to do everything, any one thing, every act obliging some manner of assistance. Time: double, triple, quintuple the time. It defied comprehension when considered on simple terms.

You think about your life.

And you know what you are supposed to do, so you think good thoughts, purposefully positive thoughts. You understand yourself well enough to perceive that you should intentionally avoid the possibility, the probability of letting your thoughts go where they likely wanted to go. Where they would go, if you let them. You know if you continue to watch the little boy, you are going to contemplate all the injustice and suffering his condition entailed. Nevermind the fact that the boy appeared content, possibly even happy, and very likely unaware that he was disabled, or in any way different from all the other people in the world.

You look at the mother and think about her life. You understand, as you watch her place the straw from her son’s drink into his mouth, that it was she who bore the burden. The burden of responsibility, of memory, the affliction of knowledge. You can only imagine her anger, the fear and frustration she felt.

And yet. You are unable to detect any evidence of those feelings on her face, and nowhere in her actions, which were an instruction of patience and grace. Mostly, it was her smile. A constant, unquestionable smile; the type of smile that is perfected through practice. The sort of practice that is neither forced nor fake: it was the smile of perseverance and peace—hers was the face of faith. And you have seen this face before. You recognize it: you had seen it at a sordid rest-stop on the outskirts of the Jersey Turnpike, you had seen it lying in a hospital bed, dying as a new decade began, you saw it every day in your dreams, you see it right now, smiling defiantly in spite of everything it had seen.

You see the smile and wipe tears from your own eyes, because you understand—you finally grasp—that it was love, and it was miraculous. It was love, real human love. The type of love that involves effort and embraces life, real life: ugly, inequitable, often unaccountable. The type of love that redeems instead of retreating, the kind of love that is faith, portrayed in a mother’s face.

It was a smile. A smile. No one could afford to smile anymore. And yet, somewhere, some people still smile. Love and soul, of course. That’s all it ever takes. A smile capable of restoring your faith.

Fade out…

 

X.

A vision:

Later, he stood alone by the lake, thinking about all he had seen, about what had happened, and what was going to happen.

He thought about his life.

Silently he stood, the same child who had stepped in the shadows of the once towering buildings—before the city’s haze obscured the sky—and looked up at the stars, scattered like bread crumbs in the dark air, wondering if they really led to a kingdom beyond the clouds.

As always, he thought about his family, his friends, the heroes who had created the art that made life more worth living, the places and feelings that comprised all the pain and profundity of existence, all the questions that belonged without answers: all of this was inside him. So as long as he lived, and made himself remember, they never ceased to be.

I Talk With The Spirits.

He heard voices (Spirits? His mother? Himself?), once again reminding him that too much unpaid labor helped bring him to where he was—the sweat of history and the backs strong enough to endure pains he could not comprehend—and that all he was able to achieve helped make amends for the names and faces he never saw. It is their voices—each immigrant who helped build this country with their bare hands, who erected buildings they never set foot in, all the dispossessed souls that worked and died and never learned to write—it was those voices that clamored for utterance, waking him in the middle of the night; it was their cries that fueled his disdain; their screams that insisted on his solidarity, providing purpose to his restless, otherwise aimless indignation. These were the voices he had always heard, the voices he had been afraid to fully understand. Now, he knew he should be afraid if he didn’t hear them. He had looked for peace but was beginning to understand—and appreciate—that his peace was having a purpose, because there was too much work to be accomplished. There could be no silence, never in this lifetime. Silence is death, and defeat. Those voices spoke to him, and through him, and told him he was not alone. He would never be alone.

He looked out on the water, at his face, which reflected up amongst the buildings and air, looking down and seeing the world in itself. Then the mirror imploded as he walked forward, leaving his shirt and shoes on shore. He strode into the dark, warm water, making his way toward the middle of the lake and diving deep, not stopping until his hands touched the bottom, gripping the cold marrow of murky mud.

Moments later he emerged, sucking in the air as though he had never tasted life before, as though he was breathing for the first time.

Not sure I’m sold on the synch-up of the music (Pink Floyd’s uber-psychedelic dreamscape “Quicksilver” from the criminally overlooked soundtrack to More) but this footage, from Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia is –and no other word will do– mesmerizing. (The clip from about 1.40 – 2.00 warrants repeated viewings: the balletic grace and the sheer perfection of the camera angle all framed by the Colosseum-like backdrop is breathtaking: it is a slow motion sequence of art and life imitating one another in real time.)

The good news: George W. Bush is no longer running Washington.

The bad news: He is now running the Washington Redskins.

No, not literally.

However: the comparisons go beyond simple simile and inexorably, enter into metaphor.

Daniel Snyder is George W. Bush.

I know.

The only thing more played out and passé than blindly bashing (or praising) Barack Obama is blindly bashing Bush.

He was the sine qua non for polarizing political certitude. And he is likely to remain the heavyweight champion for the foreseeable future. He is, not to put too fine a point on it, our country’s Asshole Emeritus. Like those wizened professors put out to pasture and summoned only at graduation ceremonies, Bush earned that status; he put in the time and we do him and ourselves a disservice if we ever forget how incredibly, and uniquely awful he was. This most untalented and incurious man had to experiment often to eventually understand—to the world’s chagrin—that his one true talent was being a moron. He was a genius at incompetence.

But everyone knows that.

So what is the point, where is the originality, not only engaging in the gratuitous name-checking of he-who-should-never-be-named, but using him as a basis of comparison for anyone? Logically, the rationale does not sustain itself; employing such a singular entity as a metaphor is a crime against grammar and sustained thought. But still, it is, in the end, inevitable. It was not a rhetorical flourish easily arrived at, and it was not for considerable lack of effort hoping to avoid it. Ultimately, it was as T.S. Eliot once wrote: We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

I knew that place for the first time when I—along with a loyal and long-suffering fan base—watched the Washington Redskins go from being a disappointment to an enigma to disgrace to, finally, an outright caricature. This once-successful (I can’t quite say once-proud because the name has always been Redskins which is slightly worse than unconscionable by any reasonable standard) franchise has now become a veritable case study for how not to run a professional sports organization.

Let’s get the unspeakable out of the way as quickly as possible. Here is something I never thought I would say: Al Davis is not the worst owner in sports. And, for anyone who does not know, Al Davis is the gold standard for over-the-top, meddlesome, megalomaniacal team cancers. But, at this point, he’s got one thing going for him: he’s not Daniel Snyder.

Seriously, at least at one point Al Davis was a legend. At one point Al Davis did put in the time and build a respectable (and winning) franchise. Snyder, on the other hand, knows less than a little about the actual nuts and bolts of evaluating talent or inspiring confidence. He is literally a nerd who happened to get filthy rich, so he bought a team. Put another way, Al Davis got old and senile and has slowly but steadily sucked the life out of his organization; he is a sports version of King Lear and his is a straight-up tragic story. But Raiders fans can hold their noses and hang in there until he eventually goes to that big pirate ship in the sky.

It would be tempting, and too simple to decree Snyder a sports version of Macbeth, (or better yet the conniving, deeply evil Lady Macbeth) but that sells these great Shakespearean figures short. Better off turning to an earlier, less significant work: perhaps Danny Boy, with all the failed plots and burned bodies in his wake, could be considered a sports version of Titus Andronicus. But no. Snyder simply does not have the heft to be tragic; he is little more than a bit player in a minor comedy. And yet, the team he has ruined is still the second most profitable franchise in all sports: the stakes are substantial and the ultimate carnage is infinitely larger than the man creating it. Looking at a tragedy and finding comedy, Daniel Snyder is the Pigskin Polonius. 

This is a serious charge, not made lightly. So let’s consider this with the carefulness it warrants and examine the case before us before we feel we can render a verdict without reservation.

The first step is diagnosing the subject and determining certain inviolable symptoms. So, for starters, let’s confirm that some or all of the obvious ingredients, shared by any bad owner, are firmly in place.

Owner never actually played the sport at a competitive level: Check.

Owner’s wealth has obliterated any sense of perspective that might allow him to relate—with anything approximating authenticity—to the fan base: Check.

Owner is petty: Check.

Owner is a bully who insists on surrounding himself with craven and sycophantic lackeys: Check.

Owner, despite unimaginable net worth, is consistently cheap and will cut corners every time: Check.

Owner has the worst sort of interpersonal skills: Check.

Owner takes rabid and historically solid fan base largely for granted? Check.

Owner confident in powers of perception and intelligence that do not remotely exist: Check.

Owner alienates people who do—or have—worked as employees: Check.

Owner can’t find anyone not on the payroll to offer support, solidarity, or utter any sentiment that could be construed as positive: Check.

You get the picture.

But for a fair and accurate rendering of what an impossibly tone-deaf, cocky and self-immolating imbecile Daniel Snyder is, one act stands out (above and beyond the coaches who have turned the front office into a not-so-merry-go-round, the abrupt firing of a successful and respected GM, the cycle of signing increasingly outrageous and irresponsible “big name” free agents—often at the expense of high draft picks, the firing of a coach who had managed to wrestle the key away from the inmates only to hire the head lunatic, the unwarranted promotion to VP of Football Operations of the most singularly and spectacularly unqualified buffoon who happens to be his racquetball buddy) above all others: having owned the team for little more than a year—and on the heels of yet another in a series of mind-numbingly stupid free agent signings (Bruce Smith? Deion Sanders?! Jeff George?!?!)—had the temerity, nay the audacity, nay the chutzpah to charge fans admission to watch the team practice in training camp. If ever there was a moment where prescient people should have taken to the streets with torches and pitchforks (or, short of anything truly dramatic, just refused to show up at that dump called Fed-Ex Field—of which more shortly), this was it. Everything we needed to know about the man, and where he was coming from (hint: it rhymes with $), was abundantly revealed in all its non-glory. Practically everything that has happened since has grown out of that indelible desecration.

Anyone who follows the team knows the sordid details, so no need to rehash each and every awful decision, underperforming free agent, abandoned draft pick and stadium-related outrage. But speaking of that abortion called FedEx Field (how many rotations per minute do you think Jack Kent Cooke is doing in his coffin, by the way? Dude owned the Skins during the glory years, and paid for the new –albeit awful– stadium, which was appropriately named after him, only to be sold, literally, to the highest bidder, so Snyder could wrangle every stinking penny he possibly could out of his investment: file under: soul, sold), that is just a matter of terrible timing that JKC was in the process of building a new palace for his franchise (which never, ever should have left RFK –the best home field advantage in sports during the ’80s along with the also dearly departed Boston Garden) when most baseball and football stadiums were wisely following the excellent example of Camden Yards and incorporating old school aesthetics with modern amenities.

Suffice it to say, FedEx Field is old school in the awful sense of the word: it has every deficiency of those ancient concrete monstrosities from the ’60s and ’70s with none of the charm. It’s oversized yet underwhelming, it has an utter absence of character and it’s conveniently located in the middle of nowhere, with no hope of utilizing that new-fangled concept of public transportation that most major cities use as a prerequisite before construction on a new stadium is undertaken.

In fairness, it’s important to point out that Snyder inherited this mess. So he gets a mulligan for buying a team that happened to have a brand new, terrible stadium. But, in his inimitable fashion, he has not only done nothing to improve the situation, he has actually exacerbated it. The parking lot was a disaster in 1997; it remains a clusterfuck in 2009. The concessions are the worst in the world (this is coming from a person who had the misfortune of eating cinderblock pretzels and dirty-sponge hot dogs at the old Shea Stadium), and they are expensive. No doubt, concessions are expensive everywhere these days, but at least in the new stadiums you get quality food and drink. Case in point: it costs a pretty penny to get a snack at Verizon Center but the food is consistently good (and hot) and you have options beyond plastic bottles of Bud or Bud Light. Speaking of bang for your buck, ever seen that monitor? You’d have a better chance watching replays via a Time Machine. And those graphics (DEFENSE!) are pretty cutting edge. Way to enhance the experience there, Danny Boy. Having sat in the upper, upper decks multiple times, I can propose with some degree of certainty that the PC speakers I had in 1995 were capable of producing louder sound with better fidelity. Think I’m piling on or being petty? Try tacking an hour onto the experience (especially after a loss!)  battling the catastrophe masquerading as a parking lot. Ernest Shackleton had an easier time navigating his ship through ice in the South Pole. But at least the parking is free. Just kidding.

Many Skins fans have gone through the familiar stages of grief over the past several years. Once Spurrier spurned Snyder, that seemed like a low point of sorts: the clown prince of college football couldn’t hack it as a pro coach and left many millions on the table to walk away from the team. Joe Gibbs seemed to represent an overdue oasis, but he too finally decided he could not get back to Nascar fast enough. He did try and anoint the controversial, but undeniably talented, Gregg Williams as the heir to his throne. Needless to say, Snyder (and his half-witted consigliere, Cerrato) put their clown shoes through that plan. Besides, who needed a proven veteran coach when untested, inexperienced and underwhelming Jim Zorn was waiting in the wings? (Hiring him was ridiculous enough; the Bataan Death March he is now being made to endure is…typical. Everyone knows Zorn is gone, it’s not a matter of when he’s fired, it’s how much meat will be left on his bones by the time his body is taken off the spit. The recent indignity of bringing in the Bingo-playing Sherm Lewis to call the shots is…typical. But if, as seems likely based on his track record and lack of character, Snyder is stringing the emasculated Zorn along in the hopes of inciting a resignation so he doesn’t have to pay him in full, well he is officially beneath contempt –not just as a scumbag businessman, but as a human being.)

Riggo speaks big truths.

Here’s the thing: it’s not the quarterback, it’s not the coach, it’s not even the useless GM (though it’s impossible to overstate the wreckage he has left in his wake); the reason this fish stinks is because it’s rotting at the head. And that head is Snyder. The only hope is for the owner to hire an accomplished (or merely adequate, if need be) individual to run the operations and step quickly and quietly out of the way. And stay out of the way. (Use some of that impulsive energy constructing a new stadium, in D.C.; or better yet, invest some money into revamping the cathedral otherwise known as RFK Stadium and get the team playing where it never should have left.)

One can only wonder what Snyder sees when he looks in the mirror.

Here is what the rest of us see:

  +  =

Presumably, disgracing a franchise and a fanbase was not the mission he wanted to accomplish.

In conclusion, it’s obvious what Snyder needs to do, and only he can do it. That’s the answer.

The question is, will he do it? Can he?

 

 

Everyone knows YouTube is the best shortcut to favorite, as well as forgotten video clips. And while it is well worth recognizing, and celebrating, the millions of anonymous DJs out there manning the Internets have been doing work bringing the noise. Literally. YouTube is becoming (or has become) a reliable source for tunes. Everyone knows this, but there is no accounting for what gems you might stumble upon while surfing for that favorite (or forgotten) song. Of course, that is what Last.fm, Rhapsody and LimeWire are for. YouTube is less for programmed setlists and more for dedicated investigatory treasure hunts. Like the universe itself, the site is buzzing with signs of life and ready-to-be revealed secrets. If you boldly go where some men (and women) have gone before, you can collide with some very happy accidents.

Category One: Live Gems

 

Marvin Gaye!

 

Emerson Lake and Palmer (prog-rock nirvana!):

Oh, you want more prog rock? How about some Genesis? You may recognize that reverse-mohawked lead singer…

The Moody Blues keeping it REAL:

Pink Floyd (not live, but there is plenty of that to be had; here is a rare promotional video, i.e., Prog rock apotheosis!):

John Fahey!!

 

Category Two: Jazz!

 

Big Friendly Jazz Orchestra: “Fables of Faubus”
(First of all, that these songs are available is awesome; that this is a high school band (!) of Japanese girls (!!) playing –among other things– Mingus tunes (!!!) is bordering on miraculous. God bless them and God bless the Internets.)

Version One:

Version Two:

Charles Lloyd and Billy Higgins:

Art Motherfucking Blakey:

 

William Parker!

(Special appreciation for the things you were looking for all of your life — but didn’t know it until you found them):

Sun Ra:

The Keith Tippett Group. Who? Exactly. (King Crimson fans will recognize this woefully underappreciated pianist):

Grachan Moncur III:

Pharoah Sanders:

 

Category Three: Personal Favorites

And then there are the old friends you sometimes need to dial up just to get through another case of the Mondays:

(I mean, a little Funkadelic never hurt anyone; in fact, it did a lot of people a whole lot of good. And hopefully a few of you have never heard of Standing on the Verge of Getting It On, and are now addicted. I know what you’re thinking: Wow, what an incredible album title! Here’s the best part, that’s not even the second best Funkadelic album title from the first half of the ’70s. How about Cosmic Slop? Or the truly hysterical (or hysterically true) America Eats Its Young? Of course there is also Free Your Mind…And Your Ass Will Follow. And, for anyone still not convinced, we can cut through the cleverness and get to the heart of the matter with Maggot Brain. Yeah, you may be thinking, but how serious can a band be with album titles like that? The answer, incidentally, is: serious as a fucking heart attack.

Two words: Eddie Hazel:

Category Four: The Wisdom of Crowds

And finally, there are the geniuses amongst us who take the time not only to upload great music, but create arresting –and original– images to accompany it:

Exhibit A, Portishead:

Exhibit B, OutKast meets The Peanuts:

Exhibit C, Jimi Hendrix meets Earl King!!!

Exhibit D, Klaus Kinski, remixed:

And finally, Karlheinz Stockhausen — the only possible way to conclude this particular list:

Chris Hedges knows more than you do.

So it is his prerogative to be pissed off. He’s seen the things many of us have not seen (indeed, have not even heard about because it would require being in the places he has been since our mostly craven media certainly isn’t providing anything approximating an unfiltered account). It is sometimes painful to read his work because he is so obviously aware of what he is talking about, and he is so utterly vindicated by the courage of his convictions. The uninitiated are encouraged (and the ignorant are admonished) to pick up a copy of War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning (excerpt here). Little is likely to change, but the war against war is a battle that can only be won one victory at a time, and each person who becomes awake and enlightened counts as a victory. The only people who can speak truthfully about war are the people who fight in them and the people who witness them. More on that, shortly.

Hedges contributes a column each week to truthdig and, as I say, his writing is both unsettling and essential. He begins this piece with a righteously indignant J’accuse wherein he takes Obama –and us — in his sights:

The right-wing accusations against Barack Obama are true. He is a socialist, although he practices socialism for corporations. He is squandering the country’s future with deficits that can never be repaid. He has retained and even bolstered our surveillance state to spy on Americans. He is forcing us to buy into a health care system that will enrich corporations and expand the abuse of our for-profit medical care. He will not stanch unemployment. He will not end our wars. He will not rebuild the nation. He is a tool of the corporate state.

The right wing is not wrong. It is not the problem. We are the problem. If we do not tap into the justifiable anger sweeping across the nation, if we do not militantly push back against corporate fraud and imperial wars that we cannot win or afford, the political vacuum we have created will be filled with right-wing lunatics and proto-fascists. The goons will inherit power not because they are astute, but because we are weak and inept.

He then elaborates one of the dirtiest and most despicable open secrets in American soceity: how we handle veterans of our wars. I feel obliged to quote extensively because there is little I could say that is as persuasive, intelligent and disturbing as what he so cogently lays out.

The Afghanistan and Iraq wars have unloaded hundreds of thousands of combat troops, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or major depression, back into society. According to a joint Veterans Affairs Department-University of San Francisco study published in July, 418,000 of the roughly 1.9 million service members who have fought in or supported the wars suffer from PTSD. As of August 2008, the latest data available, about a quarter-million military veterans were imprisoned on any given day—about 9.4 percent of the total daily imprisoned population, according to the National GAINS Center Forum on Combat Veterans, Trauma and the Justice System. There are 223,000 veterans in jail or prison cells on an average day, and an unknown number among the 4 million Americans on probation. They don’t have much to look forward to upon release. And if any of these incarcerated vets do not have PTSD when they are arrested, our corrections system will probably rectify the deficiency. Throw in the cocktail of unemployment, powerlessness, depression, alienation, anger, alcohol and drugs and you create thousands, if not tens of thousands, who will seek out violence the way an addict seeks out a bag of heroin.

War and conflict have marked most of my adult life. I know what prolonged exposure to industrial slaughter does to you. I know what it is to confront memories, buried deep within the subconscious, which jerk you awake at night, your heart racing and your body covered in sweat. I know what it is like to lie, unable to sleep, your heart pounding, trying to remember what it was that caused such terror. I know how it feels to be overcome by the vivid images of violence that make you wonder if the dream or the darkness around you is real. I know what it feels like to stumble through the day carrying a shock and horror, an awful cement-like despair, which you cannot shed. And I know how after a few nights like this you are left numb and exhausted, unable to connect with anyone around you, even those you love the most. I know how you drink or medicate yourself into a coma so you do not have to remember your dreams. And I know that great divide that opens between you and the rest of the world, especially the civilian world, which cannot imagine your pain and your hatred. I know how easily this hatred is directed toward those in that world.

 

Those who cannot cope, even by using Zoloft or Paxil, blow their brains out with drugs, alcohol or a gun. More Vietnam veterans died from suicide in the years after the war than during the conflict itself. But it would be a mistake to blame this on Vietnam. War does this to you. It destroys part of you. You live maimed. If you are not able to live maimed, you check out.

But what happens in a society where everything conspires to check you out even when you make the herculean effort to integrate into the world of malls, celebrity gossip and too many brands of cereal on a supermarket shelf? What happens when the corporate state says that you can die in its wars but at home you are human refuse, that there is no job, no way to pay your medical bills or your mortgage, no hope? Then you retreat into your private hell of rage, terror and alienation. You do not return from the world of war…There is a yawning indifference at home about what is happening in Iraq and Afghanistan. The hollow language of heroism and glory, used by the war makers and often aped by those in the media, allows the nation to feel good about war, about “service.” But it is also a way of muzzling the voices that attempt to tell us the truth about war. And when these men and women do find the moral courage to speak, they often find that many fellow Americans turn away in disgust or attack them for shattering the myth. The myth of war is too enjoyable, and too profitable, to be punctured by reality. And so these veterans nurse their fantasies of power. They begin to hate those who sent them as much as they hate those they fought. Some cannot distinguish one from the other.

It is we who are guilty, guilty for sending these young men and women to wars that did not have to be fought. It is we who are guilty for turning away from the truth of war to wallow in a self-aggrandizing myth, guilty because we create and decorate killers and when they come home maimed and broken we discard them. It is we who are guilty for failing to defy a Democratic Party that since 1994 has betrayed the working class by destroying our manufacturing base, slashing funds to assist the poor and cravenly doing the bidding of corporations. It is we who are guilty for refusing to mass on Washington and demand single-payer, not-for-profit health care for all Americans. It is we who are guilty for supporting Democrats while they funnel billions in taxpayer dollars to sustain speculative Wall Street interests. The rage of the confused and angry right-wing marchers, the ones fired up by trash-talking talk show hosts, the ones liberals belittle and maybe even laugh at, should be our rage. And if it is not our rage soon, if we continue to humiliate and debase ourselves by begging Obama to be Obama, we will see our open society dismantled not because of the shrewdness of the far right, but because of our moral cowardice.

I’ve waded into these waters a handful of times over the past year, offering my thoughts here, here and here. Mostly, I’m content to pass the proverbial mic to those who know, and get out of the way. Tim O’Brien has spent most of his life reflecting on his time spent in Vietnam. Miraculously, he has been able to grapple with the demons and despair and somehow managed to turn his pain into profoundly beautiful fiction. Fiction that, in a phrase he is fond of repeating, is truer than truth. I consider The Things They Carried to be one of the five best books written by an American in the second half of the 20th Century. Let me put it this way: it is impossible for me to take anyone seriously who wishes to speak about war (and veterans, and the homeless) if they are not at least acquainted with the work of Chris Hedges and Tim O’Brien (not to mention Senator Jim Webb, who wrote one of the enduring masterpieces of the Vietnam experience, Fields of Fire). It’s true that some of the better fiction writers are able to imagine other realities and some successfully write about things with which they are not intimately aware. That said, no one who has not been to war could write The Things They Carried. And even most people who have been to war could never compose something as shattering as the short, deceptively simple “How To Tell A True War Story”. Here is an excerpt:

We crossed that river and marched west into the mountains. On the third day, my friend Curt Lemon stepped on a boobytrapped artillery round. He was playing catch with Rat Kiley, laughing, and then he was dead. The trees were thick; it took nearly an hour to cut an LZ for the dustoff.

Later, higher in the mountains, we came across a baby VC water buffalo. What it was doing there I don’t know – no farms, no paddies – but we chased it down and, got a rope around it and led it along to a deserted village where we set up for the night. After supper Rat Kiley went over and stroked its nose.

He opened up a can of C rations, pork and beans, but the baby buffalo wasn’t interested.

Rat shrugged.

He stepped back and shot it through the right front knee.

The animal did not make a sound. It went down hard, then got up again, and Rat took careful aim and shot off an ear. He shot it in the hindquarters and in the little hump at its back. He shot it twice in the flanks. It wasn’t to kill; it was to hurt. He put the rifle muzzle up against the mouth and shot the mouth away. Nobody said much. The whole platoon stood there watching, feeling all kinds of things, but there wasn’t a great deal of pity for the baby water buffalo. Curt Lemon was dead. Rat Kiley had lost his best friend in the world. Later in the week Rat would write a long personal letter to the guy’s sister, who would not write back, but for now, it was simply a question of pain. He shot off the tail. He shot away -chunks of meat below the ribs. All around us there was the smell of smoke and filth and greenery, and the evening was humid and very hot. Rat went to automatic. He shot randomly, almost casually, quick little spurts in the belly. Then he reloaded, squatted down, and shot it in the left front knee. Again the animal fell hard and tried to get up, but this time it couldn’t quite make it. It wobbled and went down sideways. Rat shot it in the nose. He bent forward and whispered something, as if talking to a pet, then he shot it in the throat. All the while the baby water buffalo was silent, or almost silent, just a little bubbling sound where the nose had been. It lay very still. Nothing moved except the eyes, which were enormous, the pupils shiny black and dumb.

Rat Kiley was crying. He tried to say something, but them cradled his rifle and went off by himself.

The rest of us stood in a ragged circle around the baby buffalo. For a long time no one spoke. We had witnessed something essential, something brand new and profound, a piece of the world so startling there was not yet a word for it.

This is a story that is truer than the truth. If we hope to see change we can believe in, more of us start need to believing –and confronting– the types of truths witnesses like Hedges and O’Brien are describing.

This face:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And this story.

Azaiah immediately took to the dog, whom he named RaeLee (pronounced “Riley”). Segovia and her sons bought the dog a collar, leash, ball and brown bed from the dollar store, and all that day, Azaiah played with the dog, laughing gleefully whenever RaeLee licked his face. “Don’t fall in love with him,” Segovia warned.

Segovia and Savige made 4,000 FOUND flyers with the dog’s picture, stuffed mailboxes and put an ad on Craigslist. When no one called, RaeLee stayed the night at the Segovias’ house. His dog bed was placed in the living room, but when the boys climbed into their twin beds, RaeLee dragged his bed down the long hallway and bunked with the boys in their room.

By Saturday — four days later — no one had called to claim RaeLee, and he was still living with the Segovias. The honey-colored terrier had started responding to his new name. He almost never barked, loved playing rambunctiously with Azaiah, and was tender with Christian.

One afternoon, the dog settled himself on the floor near Christian as he watched a “Barney” video in his room. Segovia was outside watering the plants when the placid moment was shattered by the sound of RaeLee crashing into the screen door and barking crazily. Alarmed, Segovia opened the door, only to have the dog race back through the house towards the boys’ room. Segovia followed, screaming when she caught sight of her son. Christian was “slumped over, his body writhing in a seizure, blood streaming from his nose and mouth.” RaeLee stood next to him yelping, but suddenly went quiet when Yolanda reached down to hold her son.

“If he hadn’t come to get me,” Segovia said, “the neurologist said Christian would have choked on his own blood and died.” The dog, she decided, was a keeper.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I know I’d be ecstatically grateful if, having never heard of these guys, someone turned me on to them. So in advance: you’re welcome.

Here is a trio of progressive rock bliss from the California Guitar Trio.

Performing Pink Floyd’s seemingly uncoverable “Echoes”:

An almost too-good-to-be-true cover of the ultimate prog-rock eargasm, “Heart of the Sunrise”, featuring not only bass god Tony Levin but the singer of the original song, Jon Anderson:

And then, when you are thinking: Well, that is damn clever and who knew they could craft all-acoustic covers so convincingly, they kick up the creativity a notch and combine two old classic rock chestnuts (apologies for the most gratuitous alliteration since Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Bells”, and speaking of bells, this is pretty tubular):

And a bonus cut of the boys performing with the ukulele maestro Jake Shimabukuro:

Any discussion of Beastie Boys’ third album is likely to divide fans into two camps: those who contend that Paul’s Boutique was—and remains—their masterpiece, and those who feel that their second album, while amazing, was also a necessary gateway for their best material. Put another way, they had to make Paul’s Boutique, and once it was out of their systems, they could embark on new challenges. This reviewer thought Check Your Head was a surprising and refreshing leap forward in 1992, and the passing of 17 years has done little to diminish its enduring appeal. It remains vital and engaging, in part because of the way it documents a particular moment when the band embraced the past while anticipating the future. A forward-looking album that establishes a distinctive ‘70s-era soul vibe? Only this band was capable, at that time, of pulling off such an ostensibly paradoxical achievement, and bringing the masses along to the party. That the group was able to establish a foundation from which their future work would flow was only slightly more momentous than the ways in which they turned a white-hot light on the myriad influences they wore so gleefully on their sleeves.

When the boys picked up instruments and actually proved they could play them it was intriguing; that they produced an album brimming with original, occasionally indelible material remains something of a revelation. Who woulda thunk it? This is the same band that announced themselves (quite successfully) to the world as wiseass clowns on License to Ill. They rallied the underage troops to fight for their right to party and, beer bongs in hand, a nation of nitwits made them millionaires. But there was always a sense that this was a naked, calculated ploy for commercial success. To their credit, it worked. So it was impressive and, frankly, astonishing, to see how quickly they put away childish things and got busy concocting Paul’s Boutique. Indeed, the prepubescent fan base deserted them as quickly as it had embraced them, and their second album earned instant street cred simply for not being a retread of what had worked so wonderfully the first time.

Although it eventually became a cult classic, Paul’s Boutique was deemed a commercial dud when it dropped in 1989. It was such a departure from the simplistic, goofy boys-just-wanna-have-fun shenanigans of their debut, it obviously alienated some, and left many indifferent. By refusing to ride the gravy train, the band drew a line in the sand and has never retreated. It took a while for fans to catch up with them, but enough people eventually gravitated to Paul’s Boutique to ensure they had indeed made an astute decision, artistically and commercially. And so, some of these newer fans must have been shocked when, three years later, Check Your Head appeared, signifying another radical musical makeover. The response this time was immediate and undeniable, with the album breaking into the Billboard Top Ten. The first single, “So What’Cha Want” was so good, and so fresh, it managed to turn haters into backers. It was, and still is, a magic nugget of pop perfection.

Not everyone loved this release, and a critique that resurfaces to this day is that the album lacks cohesion; that it’s an uneven mess with some great moments, some weak moments, and some middling material. Another way of looking at it is to suggest that the rap-to-rock kitchen sink methodology works just fine, and is in fact an ideal strategy that allowed Beastie Boys to embrace their disparate interests and obsessions. The authentic DIY sensibility wins style points while augmenting what was, at the time, a burgeoning aesthetic integrity. If they couldn’t acquit themselves on their instruments, or their composing chops were weak, all of this would have been exposed and the album would have been a failure. By taking off the sample-phile training wheels, they effectively boxed themselves into a corner and put the onus entirely on their collective creativity. Where they once relied (too much?) on a hodgepodge of pirated pop culture treasure (courtesy of the justly venerated Dust Brothers production team and their set the controls for the heart of the sample M.O.), Check Your Head places the band itself in the spotlight and the focus is evenly split between music and mood.

Not to worry, the rhyming and stealing is still on display, but ultimately the words are part of a much bigger picture: where Paul’s Boutique was an elaborate comic book, Check Your Head is like a successful remake of an old B-movie. The music itself is the star attraction, with Adam (Ad-Rock) Horovitz handling the guitar, Adam (MCA) Yauch on bass and Michael (Mike D) Diamond doing drum duties. It is worth remembering that these gentlemen first formed a group in 1979, so it wasn’t as if they had never played instruments before; of course, it was as a punk/thrash outfit that they first gained attention. The best supporting actor is keyboardist Mark Ramos-Nishita (Money Mark) who makes crucial contributions throughout, adding color, flavor and sometimes a whole foundation the band builds on. It is difficult to overstate how important the organ player’s presence is: Money Mark is the fourth member of this outfit in much the same way George Martin functioned as an indispensable fifth Beatle on much of their later work.

The songs that retain their capacity to impress and amaze are the same ones that opened eyes all the way back in ’92: the instrumentals. Altogether, there are three tracks without any sort of vocals, a handful with minimal vocals and a couple where the vocals function as a part of the music (the chanting on “Something’s Got to Give” and the practically whispered words on album-closer “Namaste”). All of these songs are successful: once the novelty of these clown princes of rap playing instruments wears off, it quickly becomes evident that they also can compose memorable tunes. They have gone from sampling Curtis Mayfield (on “Paul’s Boutique”) to creating bona fide slinky ‘70s soundscapes. And yet, even as they are taking fairly giant strides forward, the band can’t help looking (lovingly) backward: many of these tracks invoke the aforementioned ‘70s soundtrack vibe (“POW”, “In 3’s”) while others recall the past as a springboard for the band’s unique vision (“Lighten Up”, “Gratitude”). And then there is the funkified anthem “Groove Holmes”, an unadulterated tribute to the jazz organist generally considered one of the forefathers of acid jazz. It was never this good before, and never got this good again.

 

Of course, there are some rambunctious reminders of the good old days, with marble-mouthed rapping front and center on songs like “Finger Lickin’ Good”, “Stand Together”, “The Maestro” and “Professor Booty”. The highlight of the band’s rap-and-roll 3.0 is the tour-de-force “Pass the Mic”, where they demonstrate that they can still pull off what worked best on Paul’s Boutique. This is their tightest, most authentic rap song, a tag team effort crammed with ideas and energy, incorporating everything from Jimmy “Kid Dy-no-mite” Walker to James Newton (a five second flute sample that inspired an ultimately unsuccessful lawsuit). Obviously words can’t convey what sounds achieve, and the best way to “feel what they’re feeling” is to watch and listen:

Sample junkies can have a field day with what could (should?) have been a simplistic throwaway, the infectious “Funky Boss”. In actuality, it is a clinic of sound-collage adrenaline, from the bongo beat/cop-show theme introduction to samples ranging from Barrington Levy, Ohio Players and Richard Pryor—all in just over 90 seconds. “Finger Lickin’ Good” goes all the way from Rahsaan Roland Kirk to Sly and the Family Stone to…Bob Dylan (!). Speaking of Sly Stone, the band’s cover of “Time for Livin’” is like a brick through the window: a short, sharp shock wherein they manage to represent their hardcore roots while working in some borrowed lyrics from the immortal Lee “Scratch” Perry. And here again is an opportune time to reiterate why this album somehow manages to be slightly better than the sum of its parts. An entire album of (or, even a couple more) punk rock workouts would be entirely too much of a not-so-good thing; but coming as it does between the droll “The Biz vs. The Nuge” (sampling Ted Nugent’s “Homebound” with the irrepressible Biz Markie’s serenade) and the almost shockingly subtle “Something’s Got to Give”, it explodes as a one minute and 48-second smoke bomb.

 

What about the obligatory goofball quotient? The balance is just right, proving that the boys, no longer brats, could still be bratty. The gleeful sample from (actual album?) On Wine—How to Select and Serve is a refreshing change of pace, and the faux night club noodling of “Live at P.J.’s” is amusing enough, while showcasing Money Mark’s flawless organ embellishment. But the ultimate inside joke is the opening section of “The Maestro” which utilizes an actual voice mail left for the boys by someone who called the number for “Paul’s Boutique”: “Yo Paul…you can kiss my ass, I ain’t interested in you anyhow…”

Special mention must be made of the group’s tribute to Jimi Hendrix, the moment when all of these elements come together. “Jimmy James” is certainly one of the ultimate opening statements of any album made in the last two decades, and it still reverberates as the shot heard ‘round the record industry. Listening to this one, then, was an immediate announcement that we weren’t in Brooklyn anymore, and listening to it, now, is an unnerving reminder of how many bands (the good, the bad, and the awful) tried to imitate this hardcore rap rock amalgamation, with little success. Of course the boys themselves emulated the great Run DMC. Obviously they understood they could never sound as authoritative (or make it sound as effortless, think “It’s Tricky”). On the other hand, “Jimmy James” sounds quite unlike anything anyone else had done (or has done): building a sound structure from the ground up, all on a groove from an obscure Curtis Knight song (“Happy Birthday”, featuring a young Hendrix). It anticipates Beck and the full fruition of live music married to samples on Beck’s (Dust Brothers produced) Odelay. Here, the sick sounds of the B-Boys’ science coalesce: the raw scratching and brilliant sampling interspersed with their newfound joy of playing music. Interesting trivia tidbit: Unable to get approval from the Hendrix estate, the original version was “refined” and the actual Hendrix snippets (from songs like “Third Stone from the Sun” and “Still Raining, Still Dreaming”) were smoothed over; although even in the album version you can hear the split second of “Foxey Lady” that spins the song out. Check out the “Original Original Version”, below:

So why now for the deluxe reissue treatment? This being the 20th anniversary of Paul’s Boutique, which itself was remastered a few months back, means there is no time like the present to spruce up the best of the back catalog (their next album, Ill Communication will follow this summer). Frankly, the sound on the original CD was top-notch (much credit should be given to co-producer and engineer Mario Caldato Jr, aka Mario C.), so while you can certainly hear all “eight bazookas” on this edition, the real draw is the second disc chock full of B-sides and remixes. There is plenty of throwaway material here, but for fans who never splurged on the 12-inches, here is an opportunity to get all the detritus in one place. There are some interesting, if inferior versions (and/or remixes) of the mega-hits “Pass the Mic” and “So What’Cha Want”, and there are some tasty nuggets, such as “The Skills to Pay the Bills”. The true highlight is that “original original” version of “Jimmy James”; you can hear all those Hendrix samples and the groove is as aggressive and gnarly on this take.

As always, the material left on the cutting room floor tends to put the final product in appropriate perspective. The fact that they decided to omit a song like “The Skills to Pay the Bills”, which is, by any reasonable criteria, a better “song” than “Live at P.J.’s” or “Mark on the Bus” is ultimately not the point; it wouldn’t have fit into the flow as well. Each song on Check Your Head eases (or crashes) into the next, coming out guns blazing with “Jimmy James” and drifting off to serenity with “Namaste”. It might be said that this is one of the first CDs that truly approximates the feel of a double LP: it has the ups, downs and (importantly) the in-betweens that ultimately add up to an artistic statement: if nothing worthwhile is being said, it’s forgettable, when the material is tight and timeless, it endures as a stylistic and soulful milestone.

“Gratitude” (A joyful riff on Pink Floyd at Pompeii):

And the original, from Floyd:

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/73740-beastie-boys-check-your-head/

The Easy Star All-Stars, to their credit, do not believe in half-measures. In 2003, they introduced themselves to the world with their reggae reimagining of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, appropriately rechristened Dub Side of the Moon. The results surpassed even the most open-minded fans’ best expectations. Not content to be a one-and-done novelty act and, no doubt, encouraged by the acclaim their first effort garnered, they returned in 2006. Having already tackled the quintessential ‘70s album, they turned heads, again, when they dropped Radiodread, their version of the near-universally worshipped ‘90s classic OK Computer. Incredibly, this release was even more impressive, expertly finding the ideal balance between respectful homage and brazen departure. Displaying an even greater sense of adventure than they demonstrated on Dub Side, the band went several steps further in reimagining Radiohead’s songs, occasionally even (blasphemy alert!) taking them in directions not attained on the original. It was—and remains—an instant and uncanny archetype, in part because it manages to sound so strikingly different while always feeling oddly familiar.

How could they possibly follow this up? Obviously by setting their sights on the most discussed, dissected, and influential album of all time. Simply stated, the chutzpah factor is officially off the charts with the release of Easy Star’s Lonely Hearts Dub Band. The band is now three-for-three in the sense that, before listening to a single note, they deserve substantial credit for even going there. It is, therefore, more than a little disappointing to report that they have saved their sophomore slump for the third album. ESLHDB is not a failure so much as a mediocrity; it’s less a failure of execution than a failure of imagination. How, it seems fair to ask after their previous, almost impeccable track record, could this possibly be? Perhaps they (finally?) bit off more than they could collectively chew, or maybe they have run out of creative steam (temporarily?) this time out. The results would seem to suggest that the band was ultimately reluctant to tinker too much with an album that is so important to so many people. Of course, this timidity tends to obviate the refreshing audacity that made their previous efforts so rewarding.

Obviously, there is a subjective line separating inspiration from appropriation, and while the Easy Star All-Stars need not worry about clueless critics impugning their integrity, this one still feels dialed in. A healthy irreverence is what makes their concept work, and too much of the time, that is what ESLHDB lacks.  Perhaps the clearest, and fairest, way to highlight what is missing here is to consider what worked so wonderfully before. It’s not difficult to recall the ingenious ways they mixed up Dub Side while remaining remarkably true to the letter and spirit of the original. For instance, the coughs and sputtered inhalations alongside the bubbling bong water that replace the cash register at the beginning of “Money”, or the free-form reggae rap substituting for David Gilmour’s immortal (and inimitable) guitar solo in “Time”. Or, later, on Radiodread, the melodica on “Subterranean Homesick Alien” or the brass replacing the guitars on “Paranoid Android”. Then there is the total reworking of “Let Down”, which remains a revelation: not just a left-field, upbeat redirection, but a thorough rethinking, obviously enhanced by Toots Hibbert’s irrepressible vocals. Nothing on ESLHDB is as arresting, or interesting, as the work they did on the first two albums. And that observation is not meant to imply that the random employment of oddball effects or disorienting tactics would necessarily invigorate the results. But by not putting their peculiar imprint on this material they constantly remind the listener of all the ways it fails by comparison with the original.

The opening song sets the tone in a way that is emblematic of the entire album: Junior Jazz sounds fine singing those oh-so familiar words, and the song is a perfectly adequate cover. Therein lies the rub (a dub): that it is merely adequate is at once the best and worst thing that can be said of this effort. The next two songs are pretty much pedestrian reggae remakes: neither offensive nor particularly memorable. Of course, one alternate perspective might propose that there were so many unusual and previously unheard-of sounds on Sgt. Pepper that the more straightforward arrangements represent a kind of ironic alternative. If so, mission accomplished, but that faint praise only underscores the perplexing lack of vision throughout.

Some of the songs are more successful. Max Romeo’s trippy take on “Fixing a Hole” recalls the oddball energy of the previous Easy Star albums: the extended dub outro hits the mark while leaving a mark. “She’s Leaving Home”, featuring Kristy Rock (who did such a stellar rendering of “Paranoid Android”), recalls Radiodread’s “Let Down” in the way it takes a somber song and turns it into a rocksteady romp. This strategy does tend to undermine the original song’s lyrical import, but at least the band is stretching out a bit. It seems a shame that Lee “Scratch” Perry was not spirited into the studio to tackle “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite”—a song that screams out for his outlandish skills (indeed, he was spearheading his own primitive studio innovations at and around the same time George Martin and the boys began breaking the mold at Abbey Road).

The rest? More of the same, mostly. “Within You Without You” is another unremarkable rendition, although Matisyahu’s lugubrious vocals and subdued human beat-boxing are appropriate for the occasion. It is difficult to quibble with Sugar Minott’s ebullient reading of “When I’m Sixty-Four”, and it’s fair to suspect that some of this material might be conveyed more effectively in a live setting where it has room to breathe. Both “Lovely Rita” (featuring U-Roy) and “Good Morning, Good Morning” (featuring Steel Pulse) would seem to provide ample opportunity for interesting departures, but they are uninspired on arrival. Finally, the moment of truth: what will (can?) they do with “A Day in the Life”?  Nothing special, alas. Certainly, it’s a neat moment when we hear the lines “dragged my fingers through my dreads” (in place of “dragged a comb across my head”) but … we need more.

Ultimately, this seems like an extraordinary opportunity missed. Not wasted, necessarily, but in a way, that’s worse, isn’t it? It’s better to shoot for the (dark side of the) moon and fall short than to play it too safe by half and end up with something second-rate. In the end, no matter how iconic its intentions, this release must be assessed for what it is: an underwhelming set of cover tunes that comes entirely too close to sounding like a novelty act—the very fate this band managed to avoid the first two times out.

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/72221-easy-star-all-stars-easy-stars-lonely-hearts-dub-band/

God I miss mixed tapes.

(Which begs the question: Is it mixed tape, mix tape or mixtape? I say all of the above, and shall use them interchangeably.)

I know this is an old school skill that everyone boasts about; people have even written books about it: some of the stories are successful, some are very good novels that were inevitably made into very mediocre movies.

You can, of course, approximate the experience via iPod and playlists. Anyone can do that. And that’s the problem: anyone can do it. It’s too easy. It might even be easier to create superior product, because when the entire world is your library (also called iTunes), there are no limitations a quick download can’t conquer. But a mixed tape, aside from being an art unto itself (which songs would, assembled in the appropriate order, come as close as humanly possible to 45 minutes per side, often requiring a calculator and album credits to ensure individual song lengths), demanded effort and considerable deliberation, all based on songs already available to the mix-maker. Thus, it was truly a reflection of one’s personality; these were songs the individual had cared about enough to own the album (or, ahem, the CD) in the first place.

For a mix of one specific band, it was a wonderfully excruciating exercise in mixology; the methodology was distinctly Darwinian: only the strongest would survive. Therefore, if you were making a 90-minute mix for, say, Led Zeppelin or The Doors, you had to necessarily eschew some of the longer (and better) tracks to ensure maximum bang for the proverbial buck. Not much point in taking up half of one precious side to ensure that “When The Music’s Over” and “The End” made the cut; or, while it’s hard to argue that “In My Time of Dying” and “Tea For One” don’t belong on any Zep mix, you could fit in “I Can’t Quit You Baby”, “That’s The Way”, “Down By The Seaside” and “For Your Life” in the same space. Of course, mixes for the ’70s prog supergroups were difficult, (think Genesis or King Crimson), to impossible, (think Yes or Pink Floyd.) Sometimes, you simply had to get creative: for a semi-encompassing summation of Rush’s oeuvre (understanding that at minimum two tapes were necessary: one for their first decade and one for their second), you had to cut and paste the old fashioned way. Can’t fit 2112 on, but it has to be included, so perhaps you just put in “Discovery” or “Oracle: The Dream”, or (like I did) just do a several minute pastiche of all the guitar solos from the entire opus. With Pink Floyd, you had to have the epic side-long suites represented in some fashion, so you just took the magisterial opening section from “Atom Heart Mother” or perhaps Part One of “Dogs” (or perhaps Part Two) and, obviously, you had to use your best judgment regarding “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”. It goes without saying that the type of band mix differed depending on the target audience: if it was for personal use, anything was allowed. For friends, particularly ones uninitiated with the artist in question, it was incumbent upon the mix-maker to ensure all the essential tracks (i.e., the ones that did or would show up on a greatest hits album) were chosen (whereas those invariably didn’t make it onto the personal mixes, for a variety of functional and aesthetic reasons). Mix, play repeat: Practice made perfect.

The primary M.O. for mix tapes, of course, was for the intrigue they added to relationships. A mixed tape was de rigueur for establishing, assessing and understanding the various levels of any serious romance. The first mix was as important, in its way, as the first kiss: too early and you could blow it; too late and you may have missed an opportunity to send the right signal at the right time. This ground has been covered ad nauseam and everyone who ever gave or received a mixed tape will recall the rules of engagement. If you remember mixed tapes you received without the slightest pang of remorse, enthrallment or unforced sentimentality, either the relationship or the tape sucked. Probably both. (My condolences.) I know I ended up missing some of the mix tape miracles I gave away more than I missed the women I made them for (which is not necessarily a commentary on the enthralling women who tolerated me for any amount of time so much as an unapologetic appraisal of the one thing I always got right).

Intermission: If this guy wasn’t on one of your mix-tapes, your problems exceeded simple musical myopia:

It occurs to me that I’m probably the only person who believes some of his finer mixes should be enshrined in The Smithsonian.

If obliged to select a few for canonization, among the first inductees for my mix tape Hall of Fame ballot would be Say It Once Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud Vol. 2 (Volume One covered off some of the more readily accessible (i.e., car-friendly) material from mix tape MVP James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Sam Cooke, et cetera, while subsequent volumes covered the bases and the outfield with everyone from Otis Redding and Louis Jordan to Johnny Ace and Sly Stone). Vol. 2 was the sum of its parts, which means it was an embarrassment of riches. It started with Marley’s “Natural Mystic” and ended with Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ “I Put A Spell On You.” Songs with words were not always necessary; for instance, Herbie Hancock’s “Speak Like A Child” melted into Shuggie Otis’s ”Rainy Day” and then Young Holt Unlimited’s “Soulful Strut” to round out side A. Flip that sucker over and business gets taken care of courtesy of Aaron Neville, Jerry Butler, The Shirelles, Isaac Hayes, Etta James, Elmore James, The KINGS (B.B. and Albert), Lightnin’ Hopkins and Vernon Reid’s Lightnin’, Dennis Brown and Black Uhuru, The Gladiators and The Chantelles, Bessie Smith, Abbey Lincoln and Fela Motherfuckin’ Kuti. I could say more, but I’ve told you too much already.

Another epic mix that is at once too arduous and too awkward (for the author) to detail is the self-explanatory “Some of the Future Mrs. Murphys” series. This title referred to some (but not all, hence the “some”) of the female artists I would eagerly marry, purely on the basis of what their music did to me. More about them another time, maybe. For now, a handful of sirens who enjoy Emeritus status are lovingly represented, below.

       

Forward progress, particularly in technological terms, is seldom an unfortunate scenario. Letters are almost instinct now that we have e-mail, canned vegetables have mercifully been supplanted by aisles of organic goodness, clunky video cassettes have been replaced by online pirating, I mean DVDs. Even big, energy inefficient monstrosities (cars, as well as TVs) that once signalled American predominance are quickly becoming cuckoos of the 21st Century. These are all welcome and overdue advancements.

And yet…

Not to get all Ray Davies or anything, but the old ways ain’t ever coming back. So it’s seems respectful and perhaps more than a little necessary to let out a little howl for the way we used to roll. What we’re left with now when it comes to mixmanship is, by default, an exercise in onanism: we make playlists for ourselves. The sound quality and song selection are unquestionably superior, but the impetus for creativity and the urgency of the interaction is lacking. A playlist listened to with headphones on the morning commute can never compare with the indelible memories an effective mixed tape could inspire. It was always a fundamentally human exchange: it was an unspoken act of love. Giving was often as good as receiving. There was a specific message that only a mixed tape was capable of conveying, and once we lost that, we all lost a small but irretrievable portion of our souls.