Don't Let 'Em See You Cry, Kid......

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”  --Oscar Wilde

"It's alright to shake to fight to feel." --Stephen Malkmus (yes that one, ok?)

Perhaps most people are other people. And I know what Mr. Wilde intended when he wrote that. But it's hard to believe that deep down (down, down, down there) wherever *there* is people aren't, at the least, capable of acute intermediate periods of unbridled emotion. Lori and I often take our daughter to see a movie on the weekend. To see adults secretly cry and choke back sobs during PG movies as their children wiggle in their seats proves something, no? They refuse to look left or right, afraid they might be caught mid-breakdown, pretending they aren't seen. They wipe their cheeks and slink out of the theater, kids in tow, hoping no one has seen their "silly" tears. 

I know two sisters who, when alone in the safety of their own homes, will bawl during the opening title sequence of "Legends of The Fall" simply in anticipation (yes, in anticipation!) of the heartbreak they know is coming. But they are embarrassed, like the parents I mentioned above, to let anyone know. And rightfully so. Any display of emotion, of passion, of real feeling, is a sign of weakness today. Our modern selves adore the idea of stoicism. We strive for it. We chastise ourselves for feeling too much, for telling too much, for being too much. Of anything. Of everything. Until we all become Customer Service Representatives in our daily lives. Modern Marcus Aurelius'.

It's been proposed by recent revisionist historians that Abraham Lincoln was gay. His diaries and letters have been re-examined, re-compiled, and thoroughly re-considered by a generation of younger PhD's with too many books and not enough passion. Their own lack of emotionally charged relationships with people of their own gender has led them to believe falsely that Lincoln was on the downlow. The belief is centered around simple enough evidence: he told his closest male friends he loved them often, spoke at length about the depth of his own demons with them, discussed his feelings for them at length on occasion, and while traveling with them even they even (gasp!) slept in the same bed. By this logic Bob Frank and I are deeply committed homosexual lovers. On tour we have more often than not shared the same bed. Every phone call we have we end with a "love you", and we have discussed everything under the sun (somehow always coming back around to the subject of carnitas). Yes people, Bob and I are now gay. We've been outed.

Passion is a bitch. Today only the mentally ill are given a pass for displaying it openly. Love between friends (and often within families) must go unspoken, lest the speaker be branded a loon. Yet as modern as we may believe ourselves to be, humanity hasn't changed one iota since Lincoln's day. Passion, at the end of the day, is all we really have. It's all we have of any real worth, anyway. We each need our soapboxes. We deserve them. And we ought never step down for anyone, much less a faceless misnomer like "society". After all, what is society but a collection of neurotic individuals (thank you Mildred Dubitzky, my Freudian college professor, for that one). Indulge me this, a quote from William Faulkner's Nobel Prize acceptance speech: "I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking."

So I will continue my own puny and inexhaustible rant by giving some examples (and two awesome/one pathetic youtube clips) of people as themselves. And in these three cases they are of "people as themselves" and their failures when acting as, pretending to be, or attempting to re-create themselves as "other people". Or perhaps their acting, attempts, and re-creations are in fact "real". You be the judges and jurors. Seriously, post some comments, I wanna know myself. I'm a walking ball of confusion here, and it's now 1:30 in the morning.

Example 1: 

Eric Clapton. 

Clapton wrote "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs". The heroin-addled recluse wrote the brilliant album to woo Patti Boyd, his friend George Harrison's wife. He'd fallen in love hard, like a fifteen year old with sweaty palms. That singular goal, his friendship and artistic dependance on Bobby Whitlock, and perhaps even his inability to remain sober for more than five minutes at a time, allowed Clapton to create with such fire that he was capable of ignoring his own insecurities entirely. It eventually worked and Patti left her hubby, then sitar-loving culture-vulture George (don't worry, he got better later).  Then a heroin-free but drunken Clapton, the same "God" the English had branded and the Americans had embraced, recorded an incredibly soulless appropriation of Bob Marley's "I Shot The Sheriff" for an equally awful album. Maybe Clapton did shoot the sheriff. He should've shot himself and taken post-Genesis buddy Phil Collins out with him.... It would've prevented "Journeyman" and his entire post-Derek catalog, collaborations with 'ol Phil, and Phil Collins entirely. Damn. Sorry for that (sorta). 

Example 2:

Thomas Pynchon. 

Korean War vet Pynchon. wrote "The Crying of Lot 49". It's no secret that I generally (and that's being generous) despise post-modernism (and all the post-post-posts, too - keep the meta vomiting going...). Yes, yes: I know at times I act as if it is my personal duty to dispute it's relevance and show it's inherent dishonesty as an art form and as a philosophy. But back to Tommy, the man in question. "The Crying of Lot 49" is a heartbreaking work of staggering genius (you better believe that cruelly awesome pun was intended and that I'm crazy proud of it). A postal conspiracy: true. I've mailed things. There is a counter in the front and super secret work happening behind walls decorated with holiday stamp promotions and labeling instructions and restrictions. Written as a secret organization, well.... Faceless and soulless Oedipa, the bumbling and confused Mucho? Brilliant. The inclusion of goofy pre-New Age Berkeley, California as it's partial setting? Very, very satisfying. All of this is hard to admit. After all, any 22-year-old with a freshly printed English Degree would call Pynchon one of the fathers of the (more modern) post-modern lit movement. Then there was "V.", "Vineland", "Gravity's Rainbow", and countless other works of pure and unadulterated shite. Did anyone actually read "Mason & Dixon" in it's entirety (or just buy it when the paperback hit the bargain shelves immediately after it's release for less than 5 bucks)? Strangely, there is a twist. My father gave me "Inherent Vice", Pynchon's newest, and it's good. Go figure. But the facts remain. His "spark" was a flash in the pan (that may be sparking again, but still...). 

Example 3:

Werner Herzog.

German filmmaker Werner Herzog has been compelled, seemingly since birth, to both terrorize and enlighten his audience and to make sense of the world around him by using the tightly focused lens of his own thought and existential experience. His documentaries, since his earliest days with the camera, have been brilliant. Werner is capable of taking the ordinary, the mundane, and the (often to me, anyway) plain boring and turning it into something else entirely. Something greater even than the sum of it's parts. Herzog, in my goofily proud opinion, is more capable of exposing the violence of nature, the cruelty of humanity, and the indifference of the universe than any documentarian alive (or dead). He is capable of doing so while also shining the brightest of lights on the beauty of the world, the quixotic cry and indignant commitment of the human spirit, and the ambiguous grey area where everything genuine in this forsaken place exists. He's only able to do this, though, as a documentarian. Instead of hiding behind the camera, he inserts himself fully in the drama. It's his own philosophizing and his own struggle to understand himself in relation to his subjects that makes his work so brilliant. Herzog is always his own subject. And his subject never fails to both illuminate our world and force the viewer to uncomfortably examine the ambiguity Herzog examines. He has been, at times, a brilliant filmmaker, too. "Fitzcarraldo", "Stroszek", and "Aguirre: The Wrath of God" are masterpieces. Two of these, however, are aided greatly by his dysfunctional personal and working relationship with the insane (and insanely talented) Klaus Kinski, his "Best Fiend" and the greatest actor Werner ever worked with. The majority of the rest are utter shit. I know many of you will disagree. I respectfully (sorta) disagree with you. "Rescue Dawn", with it's plot lifted directly from one of his own documentary subject's actual experience as a POW, couldn't even be salvaged by Christian Bale's central acting role. "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans" is simply terrible. That's all on that one. And "Nosferatu"? Even Kinski couldn't salvage that turd of an idea. Anyone who knows me, though, knows that I love Herzog's work deeply, though. So it's with great difficulty that I criticize him at all (notice how much I wrote about the dude?). I mean, this guy literally ate his own shoe on film in front of an eager theater full of people to make good on a promise. This guy is the real deal. But when he falls he doesn't catch himself with his hands. He hits face first. Really, really hard.

"Anyday"

Derek & The Dominos
eric as derek = genius.




A German dude reading from Pynchon's "Against The Day".
A shitty book read by a German guy with some serious teutonic toughness.
I am begging you to just watch the first ten or so seconds. Hilarious.
Must I say anything else?


Werner Herzog eating his own shoe.
A man of integrity questioning the idea of integrity.
Why I love Werner:

A Picture is Worth A Thousand Words (a song has a bunch of 'em in it)

"Abstract Art: A product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered."
-- Albert Camus

I tend to agree with 'ol Al there. Dali makes me want to puke in my mouth. Picasso seems obnoxious to me, and not in a "it stirs my unconscious so deeeeply" kinda way. But sometimes I get confused. Hey: I like what I like....


I've struggled my entire adult life to understand almost all visual art. I've been told what I should see in specific pieces, asked what I think of others, and been given primers and maps to categorize the rest. If I didn't get it (read: didn't like it, wasn't moved by it), then why would I care after I've read about it or been told about it's place in our fictional collective history? Is anything worth, well, anything, if it has to be defined in relation to something else? If it can't stand alone then should it have to be bolstered by things like it's time in history, it's place in a movement, or by the works of others?

Now don't get me wrong, I may not have graduated from high school and may have gotten a strange BA from a now defunct school, but I'm not a luddite entirely. Mama didn't raise no fool. I love photographs and have been moved by many of them (though I can't seem to create any worth the price of processing myself). When I see Goya's human violence and obsession it is never lost on me. Neither are Bosch's landscapes of cruelty and horror painted against fever dream visions of a fluid paradise. Occasionally even something more modern makes it's way into my memory. Lucian Freud's "Double Portrait" and "Girl With a White Dog" are sinister and alluring, full of both beauty and pathos. It doesn't hurt that he is Sigmund's nephew, either, or that, as the Screamin' Jay Hawkins of the art world, is rumored to have sired over 40 illegitimate children.

My cousin, the immensely talented artist Charlie Buckley, once posited to me that, "Beauty is truth and truth is beauty". As much as I trust and adore my dear cousin, I only find the second half of that statement palatable. Incidentally I've asked him to write a post here to expound on the idea more fully (and in relation to music) because I could be misunderstanding his meaning (after all, he holds the MFA...). But still, "Beauty is truth" sounds too much to me like Plato's assertion from The Symposium: "The true .... is to begin from the beauties of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these steps only, and from one going on to two ... until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is". Plato's belief that there is such a thing as absolute beauty (God's objective beauty) is ridiculous.

Unless you are certain there is a God - and if you are, might I meet 'em? - then what might a human illuminate about a God he claims to know but who's mailing address they keep misplacing (much less a reliable cell phone number, which would certainly begin with 662 or 601). Even for those of us who try to believe in something, we can't be sure. We can definitely never be sure of God's intent, lest we paint ourselves in God's image. I'll stop now before I'm pegged as an inquisitor or an all-knowing being. But you get the idea (of my idea, anyway) right? "Perfect" has no reference point in this world and neither does God, whether God exists or not. If this is true (and it is), then no work of art (be it visual or musical or a signed urinal) can do anything more than illuminate the human heart and the condition of man (and ladies, don't forget the ladies). Anything that strives to or claims to approximate divine vision (except for William Blake and a handful of others) is necessarily vacant. As Andre Malraux said of Goya, "He revealed his genius from the moment he had the courage to stop trying to please. His loneliness cuts right across the chatter of his epoch.".

So, if beauty has no mooring in this world then beauty really is "in the eye of the beholder". Of course, the beholder and their eye may both be ugly. They could even have an eyepatch and a crazy cane. Or a glass eye they can magically see through. Your decision. Mine too, please don't leave me out..... The battlegrounds of "taste" are too wrought with fun and awesomenesss to be passed over. Maybe our judgments of the hard rawk loving meathead aren't founded in anything outside of "taste", but that's enough to make for a damn good time!

As if I hadn't said too much, rambled on for too long, and not mentioned Dylan even once(!), I am continuing. Not by writing more useless shite, but by pairing paintings and songs. Just three. You'll make it. Welcome to "Rock and Roll Art History 666", students. Take a seat and get out your #2 pencil and college ruled notebook, please.....

NUMBER 1:

Hieronymous Bosch

Ship of Fools

and

Aretha Franklin

Chain of Fools

NUMBER 2:

Francisco de Goya

Third of May

and

The Rolling Stones

Street Fighting Man

NUMBER 3:

Rene Magritte

(see, there are exceptions!)

#21 Golconda

and

The Afghan Whigs

Gentlemen

--John Murry

Honestly, I Love You (but a few suggestions?)

The age of facebook has allowed anyone (at any time and as often as they so choose) to post youtube clips of songs to entertain (or annoy) those who receive them in their feed. So, outside of the long-armed reach of facebook, I'd like to post a few suggestions. Earnest suggestions. Type "1" songs (see below). I'd like to post a few clips with the hope that they receive consideration from you outside of any vapid forum and in the clear knowledge that I am posting them because I love the songs. See, the way I see it is this: there are three types of song posts on facebook. Let me clarify my methodology and list for you:

1: These are the songs posted in earnest. The songs that the poster can't stand to keep trapped inside their lil laptop's monitor. They're stuck in the heads of the people who post them all day long (perhaps on endless brain loop for days, weeks even). They are loved songs. They are brought out only when company visits. They're played for new lovers on that third or fourth or whatever date when the listener is studied intently (but secretly) for reaction, and when the listener does (or doesn't) react appropriately, well, I dunno.... Are they really that good looking?

2: These are posted to prove wit. These are the posts one would expect from members of They Might Be Giants or some similarly over-learned under-feeling NPR porn band. They are posted to caress the ego of the poster (is that considered psychic masturbation?). They are, simply speaking, "Isn't this ironic?!? HA!" posts. Of course, sometimes things are posted for sheer hilarity. If the poster thinks old ladies falling down is funny, so be it. Their disdain for the world is a necessary consideration. These types of posts must be judged on the basis of:

     A) The trustworthiness of the poster (isn't there another word for "poster"? Shit.)

     B) Level of funniness. This is a dangerous area, listener. As your mother said a gazillion times, "Be careful, children. Remember: F-u-n rhymes with g-u-n". She didn't say that? She should have. Unless she regularly packed heat. Regardless of what your mama said, funny is funny. Sometimes a "hee" sometimes a "ha" and sometimes, just sometimes, it's truly hilarious. But regardless, these types of posts are unreliable. They are not earnest, though they might not be arrogant either. (Disclaimer: I'm a fan of the funny for the the sake of the funny).                                

3: These are unreliable posts due to simple chemical abnormalities (or normalities, depending on your friends). These clips are posted under the influence of chemicals, be they notable drugs (like, oh i dunno, crack cocaine or the lesser considered substances like Tylenol PM). Of course, not knowing your "friends" personally, perhaps these clips are posted on psychiatric drug holidays (brief vacations from substances that may make the "friend" less insufferable, whether they be suffering themselves or not). Sleep deprivation can also complicate a post. It's a clinical fact that psychosis slowly sets in when sleepless nights accrue, and though it may not seem it, your friend is certifiable. An innumerable number of factors could be at play, and while it may entertain both of us for me to further illuminate these many and varied possibilities, I am becoming bored with myself now so I'm moving on.


And so, dear reader, I submit to you (absolutely unapologetically) these three songs. I am not submitting them for the video included necessarily, but for the love of the song. No irony is intended or implied. I've nothing to prove. I was never and will never be a member of any modern-day novelty troupe (unless it pays well, then all bets are off). I have taken all my medication as directed (even took the last one with a full glass of water! Just as directed!). Nothing has entered my bloodstream that ought not be there (unless enchiladas are now known to the state of California to cross the blood-brain barrier). These songs are stuck in my bones. They aren't the "greatest", the "most relevant", the "most underrated", etc. I just love them. Now. Today. Please: let me know what you think. Even better, gimme some of yours. After all, these are what real recommendations are (and by "are" I mean I really get off on this shit and I hope you will, too).

The first is the Sparklehorse song most often stuck in my head. It's from Linkous' 2nd record Good Morning Spider, maybe the least remembered or critically loved (but who really knows or cares - I never claimed to be a critic or historian, just someone who likes rock and roll). And since Mark Linkous died Saturday it's been stuck up there:


The second song is a Spiritualized song full of musical violence and brilliance that was released on a record that began their exit from the hipster critic lovefests (they're out of vogue now? so what...) called Let It Come Down. But the song stands alongside anything they've done and, in my mind, Jason Pierce is still making great records (Songs in A & E absolutely has it's moments) But I unabashedly love this song (and yes, in this case the I adore the video as well). And I know it's super sentimental and all. I love it for that. Here goes:


The third and last I first heard on an Oxford American magazine sampler cd. Google "Jim Ford". His story is too amazing to not research further. Raising Brando's kids, hanging with Sly Stone, appearing in cartoon form in Playboy, writing Harry Hippie for Bobby Womack... This guy did it all. Then died in a trailer north of San Francisco working on Fiats and afraid to leave the house. The song oozes soul and the man is as white as they come. Go figure:



So that's it. I did the best I could to write this post and then post for y'all the first three songs that came to mind. Refreshingly honest, you say? I imagine most of you know me too well to mix the "h" word with my name in conversation (except in jest). But I did, quite simply, post the first three songs that occurred to me to post without any consideration, so there ya go. I'm sure they'd be different tomorrow or maybe five minutes from now, but doing it this way is the closest I'm gonna get to "givin ya what I got" or something like that. Adios.

--John Murry

Surviving The Revolution ( "I'm Not There" But You Are Definitely HERE)

"There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at the typewriter and open a vein."

-- Walter "Red" Smith

Just like any other musician or any music lover, I've spent hours in discussion with "audiophiles" dissecting the sonic merits of every album that's made any reputable (see: acceptably hip) "Top 100 Albums of All Time" list. Over the last several years almost all modern references have fallen out of these discussions, with any recently released album being replaced by another "vintage gem", perhaps even one that no one bought and listened to in it's own day and that's only found on the shelves of the most discriminating indie shops today (shops that have been all but replaced by iPods).

I'm not attempting to defend either the vinyl or iTunes cultures or to illustrate how any grander cultural or economic force has changed what we listen to. The reason I'm not is because I don't believe it has, at least not to any important extent. In fact, we are now living in an age in which even if you are dead broke you can, at any given moment, download any band's complete discography with the click of a mouse (if you own a computer, of course). If you have even the slightest interest in hearing something you've never before heard you can go to a myriad of websites for free, read what Pitchfork or PopMatters has to say, and download the next newest thing all free of risk (hey! it's free, right?). So why, then, in this brilliant age of constant communication, during the height of the satiation of the generation of entitlement's reign, are we talking less and less seriously about anything being released today and more and more about things we've been discussing since 1990? Because we are confused? We no longer know what we like?

No. Now that it can all be had instantly we have too much and we know that not as many people have the same albums as we do (ya know? it's a product-to-people ratio kinda thingy.). In the studio when we search our lobes for references for the music we want to create, our tiny little primate brains stutter. We don't have the nerve to say things like, "Something kinda like the intro to that LAST Dylan record". Instead, we start talking about "Blonde on Blonde" (or "Tonight's The Night" or "Hunky Dory") or any number of records made before 1980.

Man, we talk about Dylan ALOT. And rightfully so, but never about anything after "Blood On The Tracks", lest we receive a slap on the wrist for breaking this grand and unspoken rule. Rarely are lyrics even mentioned. My personal least favorites that have weasled their way in most recently are Joni Mitchell's "Blue" and Van Morrison's "Astral Weeks". Now don't get me wrong, both have their value and are "masterpieces", whatever the hell that means (though I'm not a fan of Joni Mitchell at all, really), but they weren't being mentioned ten years ago AT ALL. And yes, I have one dear friend who sees "Blue" as the very gateway into his own music making (and he makes it quite well). Of course they were talked about in music circles but, in my experience, they were never mentioned as reference points in studios and have seemingly, by something akin to divine intervention, been referenced over and over (and over and over) more recently.

And yet those two albums and a myriad of others discussed ad infinitum have had little effect on the records I've seen made (and little to none on those I've heard at all). In the 80's people wanted to sound like someone on SST and in the 90's it was SubPop and if they were "talented" (if they had something, anything) they ended up sounding a bit like those bands but ultimately sounded like themselves. When Sam Philips recorded Elvis I seriously doubt he said, "Mr. Presley, what I'm hearing here is a kinda (insert something here) crossed with a bit of, you know, (insert something else here). Berry Gordy went looking for teenagers to sign (who certainly weren't studying Mom and Dad's records at home in preparation).

In his book "How The Beatles Destroyed Rock and Roll" Elijah Wald blames it on the over-synthesizing of disparate musical forms and on there not being enough of the intangible(the "it feels good!" stuff) in all things after the Brit invaders washed ashore for good. I think Mr. Wald is right in his assertions, for the most part. But I think the scourge of modern music (or indie rock, anyway, cause hip hop hasn't lost it yet) is the endless meta-analyses that float around in discussions and the disuse of the body. As rock star neurologist Oliver Sacks has said, "Certainly it's not just a mathematical experience, it's an emotional one". Rock and roll (the name itself) is a bawdy old reference to gettin' it on (literally).

My thesis, my manifesto (here, today, right now anyway), is that we are analyzing and referencing and counter-referencing the heart and soul straight out of rock and roll. We are taking up so much oxygen running our mouths that we are choking out the intangible and the magical. We are, by talking too much about what moves us musically, not moving ourselves at all. We are too afraid to tap our feet, too afraid to shake our collective ass, too thoroughly post-modern to let anyone know we love something (I mean REALLY love it). Musicians are becoming scientists. And strangely scientists (like Dr. Sacks) are becoming musicians. Like sportswriter Red Smith (the Michael Lewis of his day) says above, to create art you have to do much more than synthesize or imitate. Ya gotta bleed. You have to inject yourself into it (awesome pun intended).

So go home, illegally download GNR's "November Rain", and wait for Slash's solo to kick in. And then, without any hint of irony, play the shit out of your air guitar and give your girlfriend/boyfriend/husband/wife/friend/pet that knowing nod (you know what I'm talking about). Because yes, people: deep down we all know it just feels right. And any song or album that doesn't ain't worth shit.

--John Murry