review

Jazz and reading John Darnielle: Part Two, This Year 365 Songs Annotated

~ Frank Hudson ~ Leave a comment

Here’s the final piece of this two-parter, and the place where I take off that hair shirt for a while and present a review of John Darnielle’s new book This Year, 365 Songs Annotated.

I largely owe my appreciation of singer-songwriter John Darnielle to my daughter, who found solace in his earlier recordings as she moved through adolescence. One 2005 song, the one that gives its title to a new book by Darnielle, features a 17-year-old speaker refraining: “I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me.” It resonated more than a decade later with another 17-year-old. What a good thing for a song to do.

I knew Darnielle’s work from a couple of songs recorded under his long-running project name “The Mountain Goats,” most notably the mysterious anthem “Jaipur.”   My daughter gifted me his All Hail West Texas  album one Bandcamp Friday a year or so ago. My immediate thoughts on Darnielle were that he was a good song lyricist. Like the late poet-associate of mine Kevin Fitzpatrick, his work is full of “other people,” and those people are often working class or lost-soul types who make themselves known as if in overheard declarations in his songs. Writing in Boomer classic-rock consumer-guide style “he’s like…” comparisons are misleading in Darnielle’s case. Saying he’s lyrically a mix of Randy Newman, Bruce Springsteen, Ray Davies, and John Prine is a bad assay, because he’s like all of them at once or in sequence, and he is his own man too. Still, the range of characters is an important strength. A lot of poetry, and a lot of indie songwriting too, is a singular solipsistic narrative, and Darnielle’s of the songwriting school that avoids this.

This Year cover

More than a collection of song lyrics (though they’re good lyrics)

.

Yet, This Year  is largely the story inside one person, a memoir in a different form: a book of days where he writes somewhat sequentially, but not by strict intent or always, about how 365 songs came about, what he thinks he was trying to express, and what his life was like as he wrote and recorded them. The entries can be quite short, a couple of hundred words typically, though a few extend for a few pages. The lyrics to each day’s song are included with each entry, which is helpful for any reader who’s not familiar with his work. I’m half-way through reading it straight through, but the book can also be read an entry at a time, as sort of daily thought-starter. I’m somewhere between a hardcore fan and someone that doesn’t know any of Darnielle’s work, and I’ve sought out some of the songs after reading of them in the book.

Things I’ve learned? It was not apparent to me beforehand, but he’s a poet who converted to songwriting, and many of his early songs had preexisted as page poems that he wasn’t planning to sing. Reading his lyrics silent on the page in this book demonstrates a literary poet’s craft in his writing, but my finding this out in memoir is a testimony to their lack of crusty poetese. Poets as well as songwriters would benefit from exposing themselves to Darnielle’s lyrical tactics, and he talks effectively about them in this book. I also learned that he spent formative years in his songwriting’s development living in a small town in Iowa, the kind of place I grew up in, in roughly the same part of the state, though I’m more than a generation older than him.

Another part of his story, which unreels through the day entries each devoted to a single song from his now large catalog of original songs, is that he began recording and making these songs public using meager equipment. He so far mentions almost nothing about the particulars of his instruments which are likely unremarkable and inexpensive, and a considerable part of his early career recordings – including the original versions of some of his best-loved songs – were recorded on a boom-box cassette tape machine at home. I resonated with that, having spent around 20 years using such cassette tape along with low-budget equipment. A late 20th century indie-music and fanzine samizdat network allowed Darnielle a slow-burn career doing that, around the time that my own nerve to share my work had faded. He recounts in the book, that royalties from the tapes sometimes paid part of the $170 a month rent,* but he had a day job in a lower-paid nursing field, again something I rhymed with in my cassette years.

The short entries in the book also tell a story of Darnielle’s religious journey, which began as a Catholic youth and has had elements of return, though I’m midjourney on that arc so far in the book.

These similarities paradoxically bring up the personal gap which makes reading his book so meaningful to me now. From what I’ve read so far, Darnielle apparently retained confidence in his own work through these long-beginnings, low-rent, lo-fi years, and even if there are dark nights of the soul in coming parts of his book, he displays that now as he discusses the work in retrospect. I had, and still have, substantial gaps in being able to carry that in public during my cassette years. Having days of private levels of self-confidence in some of my musical work is not an effective dose to properly present it to others, and my doing so “blind” without that confidence led me to some painful comedy of misreadings of likely interest. Those two things (managing self-doubt, being able to present one’s work effectively to others) interact. Darnielle may have been more personally engaging, or just more persistent in his networking. Elements of luck might have been significant (with me, they were in my “day job.”) Thinking of this difference as I read Darnielle’s book, it’s (too) easy for me to think, “Well, it must have been easier for him, his work was so darn good.” He’s a better vocalist and performer than I am (no-biggie, almost everybody is), and though I’m not sure how far apart we are in “on a good day” guitarist skills, his song lyrics are teaching me new tactics even after decades of my doing this on the page and with guitar.

In the first part of this pair of posts I sincerely worried about my work and hubris when I put it up against the skillset and history of Jazz. Despite those differences in how we’ve used our parable of the talents, I find reading Darnielle’s book heartening so far. You don’t have to be a songwriter, if you are any kind of writer – and likely if you are an artist of any kind – spending time with this book may be helpful.

Here’s an early song of mine, recorded on primitive equipment before the nearing 900 songs of the Parlando Project had started counting off, but consistent with its principles, a setting of John Keats’ “In the Drear Nighted December.”   Audio player gadget should be below, but if not, this highlighted link will open a new tab with its own audio player.

 

.

*For any younger folks reading this, the $170 a month rent (for a house!) must seem a dormouse fantasy. For younger musicians, the idea that royalties from indie recordings might contribute in any substantial way to making rent must seem equally fantastic.

Some Presidents Day Stories

~ Frank Hudson ~ 1 Comment

I was talking to Glen at the café I rode to for breakfast this morning. “It’s President’s Day. Did you get him anything?”

Glen has a pretty quick mind, but he thought for a moment and countered “Well, it’s one of those vestigial holidays. We’ve got a tailbone, but how many million years since we’ve needed it? It’s on the calendar and that’s about it.”

I think he’s right. It used to be more at Washington’s Birthday, and in some states Lincoln’s Birthday was also celebrated this month. And then one of the reasons February is Black History Month is that this short month also includes the date celebrated as Fredrick Douglass’ Birthday.

No sub-text here: 19th century celebrating heavenly Presidential bromance

.

My celebration, my observance was taken up with the ubiquitous modern American civic act this weekend, watching things on a screen alone — which is kind of sad, but the others in my family have more proximate concerns nearer to them than my fiddly interest in musty histories and art.

I started by watching Lincoln’s Dilemma,  a four-part, four-hour documentary mini-series produced by a number of Afro-Americans that is available on Apple TV+ now. It covers the time from Lincoln’s entry into state politics until his burial, focusing on his evolving and politically and war charged relationship with American chattel slavery and the Afro-American’s subjected to that. I was a teenager during the centennial of the American Civil War who read avidly about it, and between that and my interest in American Black history there was a lot that was only refrain and time-line refreshment for me, but like any well-done extensive overview there’s a power in putting things together and linking this and that.

Two things discussed fairly early in the documentary were stories I hadn’t known. One deals with the Christiana Incident, something I’d heard nothing about. It’s easily as gripping as my own city’s Eliza Winston story, or the Emily Dickinson adjacent stories of Angeline Palmer or Dickinson’s “Preceptor” Thomas Higginson’s armed assault on a Boston jail. The other was its accounts from the under-covered period between Lincoln’s election, his subsequent spring-time inauguration, and the firing on Fort Sumter that started the Civil War. I would eagerly see entire documentaries or “based on a true story” depictions of either. For example, did you know (I didn’t) that during this period, as a last-ditch effort to placate southern states that were issuing their declarations of succession based on the Federal Government and its soon to be leader’s insufficient devotion to slavery, that a proposed 13th amendment that would constitutionally prohibit  the ending of slavery was put forward? It passed the House and Senate with the required 2/3 majorities. Although the Civil War would soon be raging, five! states ratified it.

If this sort of thing sounds interesting to you, and you have access to it, I easily recommend Lincoln’s Dilemma.

I took a break halfway in on Lincoln’s Dilemma  to watch John Ford’s 1939 Young Lincoln  staring a startlingly well-made-up Henry Fonda as Lincoln. For good and ill this well-made film hits all the John Ford tropes* and is very inconstant in a “print the myth” way regarding historical accuracy. I suspect Young Lincoln’s  emotional content no longer communicates, and more the same, it’s earnest civic lessons would be lost to most audiences today too. But it’s Ford, so we’re left with mise en scene and striking tableau frames that contemporary film makers might still copy. For humor’s sake I could try to hype its contemporary value as “The story of the trial of a pair of accused cop killers who are surprisingly defended by a lawyer reverently devoted to the law.”

Before I leave you, let me touch on George Washington, the man who posthumously gave up his birthday for President’s Day. The story of the Civil War and the end of slavery is but one example of a dictum often taken as absolute by revolutionaries: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” And of course, as the leader of an armed revolution, Washington would seem to be an example** of demand backed by guns. But the singular greatest fact about Washington, a thing we should be grateful for beyond other things, is that after the American state got independence and he became its leader, he willingly, and without demand or struggle, gave up power. That’s rare.

Love of the thing one is struggling for, not for personal power, or opportunity, or mere revenge and expiation, is a hard thing to find — perhaps even more so in those who win some part of their struggles. So, let me leave off this Presidents Day not with a piece about a President, but about the man who stated that revolutionary’s dictum above, Frederick Douglass. Written by poet Robert Hayden,*** with my music and performance, you’ll can hear it with a graphical player below if you see that — or if you don’t, with this highlighted link.  If you want to read Hayden’s sonnet about Douglass as you listen, you can find the text here. Back with new pieces soon.

.

*Although I’m reasonably familiar with why Ford is viewed as an important foundational cinema artist, I actually haven’t seen all his best-regarded films. Only last year I saw his The Searchers  for the first time. As to that film: I found it highly compelling, significantly because it’s a film about racism made largely by men that could be fairly judged as patriarchal racists, and yet it’s not Triumph of the Will,  some sharply focused mirror of evil, either. Somehow, Ford and fate made it multivalent.

**Combining slavery and Washington is a natural combination alas, since Washington was a considerable slaveholder. Rather than the myths of cherry trees, I like this story of Washington and how he crossed paths with an Afro-American boy freed as the spoils of war.

*** Thanks to the publisher for permission to perform this. “Frederick Douglass” is Copyright © 1966 by Robert Hayden. From COLLECTED POEMS OF ROBERT HAYDEN by Robert Hayden edited by Frederick Glaysher. Used by permission of Liveright Publishing Company

Todd Haynes Velvet Underground film, a review

~ Frank Hudson ~ 1 Comment

The Velvet Underground is important to me for two reasons. First, I have a high degree of respect for musical outsiders, those who choose to vary from the expectations for sound. That doesn’t mean I enjoy listening repeatedly to every outsider and experimental musician. I ignore and sample listlessly more of it than most mainstream listeners ever do. And some of it, and the Velvet Underground is one of those “some,” does something for me that other more generally likeable music doesn’t.

The second reason? Despite or because of their musical oddities, they attracted social outsiders. Haynes film reminds us that Cher* was once famously quoted as saying the VU would “replace nothing except suicide.” That was clearly understood as a slam on their dark outlook. It’s also commendably true in another way — that for some people this band of strangeness comforted some who felt unacceptably strange.

It’s OK, really, if you don’t like the Velvet Underground’s music. But I hold that you should still be grateful they existed. So how about Haynes film revisiting their formation and career? Grateful there too, though I want to second-guess Haynes more than most reviewers of this documentary. Before I do that, let me say that I respect the effort to put this together. Just looking at the long, long scroll of rights holders that needed to be placated and credited tells you that this was no easy thing to bring off.

Throughout the film I was thinking “they aren’t putting enough context here for those not already knowledgeable about this scene to understand who and what is happening.” However, reviewers have been almost universally kind, and this section of mid-20th-century NYC history can’t be all that widely known in detail to reviewers in 2021. This indicates that enough must come through for some. Perhaps I underestimate the value of samples of things to satisfy or attract interest, and overestimate the missing details that I personally find interesting or telling.

Am I being fair? The film does supply enough detail to see how the Mekas school of art film and the Fluxus associated music scene became the soil in which the band took root. And while it might not be surprising given that this is a film made by a filmmaker, I had not seen any other account that made an effort to tie those film and music threads together. So, props to that effort, but watching the documentary I wondered how many fresh eyes would be able to understand the variety of things the Jonas Mekas DIY film circle was experimenting with. Early in the film I watched a Stan Brakhage clip appearing on the left split screen, an experiment in drawing with light by scratching directly on the film stock. Annoying pedant that I am, I pointed at the screen and enthusiastically shouted out that that was Brakhage’s work. I stifled myself quickly, but the film didn’t credit it on screen at the time. I could surmise that not identifying it was part of the effect that Haynes wished to convey, that a sense of “what can you do that is novel and different” was ubiquitous then and there.

One hole I noted was any contextualization of how other bands and musicians beyond La Monte Young and John Cage influenced the VU sound and the courage of its exploration. R&B influences appear visually in the film, and early on some doo wop stunningly segues** into what I think was a La Monte Young piece, and I thought this side of VU’s influences would be demonstrated, but that brilliant moment was not repeated or expanded on. As a composer, half-baked musician, and writer I would have gone there, but I’m not Haynes, and he’s the filmmaker who made the film.

In general, other possible musical connections were lightly inferred. Perhaps this area is rock fan trivia? There was a passing mention of how Bob Dylan had opened up songwriting. In one film clip Allen Ginsburg is announcing an event which will include VU, other parts of the Warhol scene, and the Fugs, and Ginsburg nods to Fugs’ principal Ed Sanders in the room. The VU and the Fugs*** seem to have formed close to the same time, 1964, and despite The Fugs not having a John Cale figure, both were groups of Greenwich Village poets forming a band whose material will be unafraid to shock general society. I’ve never found any mention of either band knowing of each other, yet in the small world of NYC in the mid 60 they had to. We do know the Mothers of Invention and VU knew of each other — and in summary seemed to hate each other, perhaps because these two groups clearly competed in format to the degree that any so unique conceptions could compete. Given that the Mothers were West Coast until a summer-long stint in the Village in 1967, it’s less likely they knew of each other at their formation in 64-65 however. Here’s a link to a short run-down of those frictions.

Moving to my poetry side, there was also no mention made of the beatnik jazz-accompanied poetry which must have also fed into this band’s conception, even though Lou Reed’s college teacher Delmore Schwartz’s dark but unaccompanied poetry is covered

The included footage of the ‘66-‘67 Exploding Plastic Inevitable shows looks fascinating. In the interviews regarding the oft-told tales of the VU’s 1966 west coast tour EPI performer Mary Woronov mentions that west coast light shows were not in the same class. Yet another report from eye-witnesses says that the EPI shows were haphazard with inexperienced hangers-on and even audience members running the lights. This might have been a night-by-night difference over the run of the EPI. Or it could just be home team cheerleading by the VU/Warhol entourage. The transience of the multimedia lightshow/music events of this era makes this so hard to evaluate, and that era of improvisational multimedia collage surrounding live music has largely left our culture. In its place we have giant video screens so that we can assay the length of the lead singer’s nose hairs at concerts. It’s likely no one cares anymore who was first or better in this field, alas.****

One fleeting remark made when discussing how the West Coast Scene and the Velvets contrasted was an observation that there was an overlap in fans of VU and the Grateful Dead. I’m reminded of what I wrote here in 2016 about how it was too easy to paint all the West Coast bands as dilettante flower power Pollyannas and the VU as dark, hardened, and street-tough:

“Each band is fronted by a guitarist who has a problem with heroin. The bass player (and sometimes the keyboard player) is really an avant-garde classical composer. They both start out playing to dancers swimming in colored lights at events heavily associated with and promoted by a non-musician guru. Both bands had trouble selling records, at least at first, but those who did buy the records started forming bands beloved by cliques of college students. Both bands are known for an un-compromising poet maudit stance. Of course, one band hangs out with gangsters leading to a well-publicized incident of an audience member getting killed at a show. One wanted to call an album “Skull F**k.” One band put a drug kingpin in charge of its sound system. The other band hung out a lot with artists in lofts and had girl-germs for letting a woman be their drummer.”

Reviewers made much of the film breaking the talking heads format for music documentaries. Now having seen it, this point was oversold in reviews and publicity. Haynes had an authenticity policy of only using “eyewitnesses” who actually saw the band and its circle for his contemporary interviews. This only reduces the candidates, and those used, are used rather conventionally but effectively. I do hope that some of the interview material only excerpted in the movie is made available as a scholarly resource.

The subject of Lou Reed’s mercurial personality gets some play — an inescapable choice. Haynes shows us the VU was a combination of ingredients, but the idea that Reed’s is the largest contribution is hard to argue with. It was good to see Cale given his due here. Percussionist Tucker and guitarist Morrison’s contributions are mentioned but these mentions are comparatively brief. For example, the sole example of Tucker’s contribution to the band’s sound concerns one short (if endearing) featured vocal. If percussion is important to you, this hour-long video is an extraordinarily good dissection and demonstration of Moe Tucker’s musical contribution to the VU sound. On the other hand, I think Morrison’s musical contributions get less than a minute in the film. Was Sterling Morrison just that unimportant to the band? Has anyone who saw the band or witnessed the recordings ever outlined his contributions to the VU unconventional two-guitar attack? Is there just no one to speak for him on musical matters, and so Haynes had nothing to leave out?

Nico was always peripheral to the band, though interesting in her own right. In her case, I think Haynes does justice to the connection.

Back to Reed. The film hints at a more out and homosexual Sixties Reed than some other accounts I’ve read. The Rashomon aspect of who’s talking shouldn’t be surprising. Nods to transgressive gayness and gayness’ connection with the demi-monde (which was common linkage then, in gay and homophobic worlds both) was part of the band’s appeal without a doubt. Haynes presents this visually in a matter of fact way. This became culturally important, as important as the music — and in an odd way helped us into a world where gayness is no longer inevitably connected with a thoroughgoing outsiderdom.

The film once briefly nods to elements of misogyny in the scene. Some documentaries would never have made even that brief mention. My wife noticed this too and added that both the women and the musicians appeared to be treated as merely decorative by the Warhol Factory. In this matter, the scene too often, too easily followed mainstream culture and even the ironic elements of camp are subject to the mask becoming the face. In its defense, we could enter the question if it was less patriarchal, or no worse, than the general Sixties popular music scene.

The loud, aggro VU is fine, but then there’s this side. Here, you can hear the entirety of “Candy Says” referenced below. Doug Yule’s disarming vocal and Reed’s songwriting are superb here.

.

All the film’s en passant moves may still capture. Something informative and entertaining did  accumulate over the course of the film’s two hours, but the emotional impact was less than I expected. We are not compelled to care about the human beings on the screen even as we consider them for their exceptional choices. Haynes respects and expects the audience to bring that element themselves. A personal emotional exception within the body of the film: 15 seconds of “Candy Says”  plays to help introduce us to John Cale’s controversial successor in the group, Doug Yule, who sang this Lou Reed song on record. Musically, there’s nothing avant garde about the song, but it’s emotionally gripping to me, more so now. The documentary’s  final sequences help summarize things a little. If an audience sticks it out, and brings their own empathy and intelligence to it, my summary is that the film could encourage some people today who wish to do something off-the-beaten path artistically; and Haynes’ film has rewards for those who are established fans of VU, whatever size that grouping is today.*****   Should I be concerned about the size of the audience? After all, there are still Velvet Underground performances that can all but clear a room in minutes. The principal members of the Velvet Underground consciously chose that path, deciding to choose an audience who would stay for contrasts and experiments, an audience that in turn found a community of understanding when some of those and their experiments weren’t welcomed.

After 2,000 words in this review I’m hesitant to ask any more of your attention today, but here’s a short piece, “Up-Hill”  I did several years ago where I combined Christina Rossetti’s Christian allegory with some VU inspired music. Player below for some, highlighted hyperlink for those that won’t see the player.

.

*It’s such a slick quote that I wondered if it was actually written by a publicist to be attributed to her. This was once a common tactic, for ghost-written quotes to be given to nightlife and gossip columnists as the clever things that celebrities were to have said in order to keep the pot of notoriety boiling for their charges.

**This was also something integral to Frank Zappa’s music. Late 60s listeners thought Zappa was just taking the piss out of an outdated pop music format when he’d do R&B vocal harmony, but he would tell anyone who asked that he loved that music and saw it as a valid sound and compositional color. The additional truth that satire was involved was incidental. There was satire involved when Zappa referenced Stravinsky, Berg, and Webern too.

***The definitive third-party consideration of The Fugs remains unwritten and unfilmed. It’s often occurred to me that The Fugs formation was as much or more than the Velvets, or The Stooges, or the Ramones, or the Sex Pistols the genesis moment of Indie Rock, and for punk outrage they easily outranked that list of founders even if the quality of their musical achievement was more inconsistent.

****Is revival possible? A few 21st century artists are still exploring this, for example guitarist Kaki King.

*****I suspect that within later generations now, there may be another grouping unfamiliar with the Velvet Underground, for whom the old joke can be repurposed “You mean, Lou Reed was in a band?”