Andrew Jaffe: Leaves on the Line

Two crucial figures from outside the mainstream of American culture have died.

Tuli Kupferberg (1923-2010) has been hanging around, writing about and stirring up trouble in New York’s Greenwich Village since the 1950s as a writer, poet, occasional political activist and rock ‘n’ roller. First in the late 60s and early 70s and occasionally thereafter, he was one of the Fugs (named after the faux-expletive from Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead) singing both the poems of William Blake as well as “Slum Goddess of the Lower East Side”. Since then, he kept writing, occasionally reformed the Fugs with his partner Ed Sanders, but had suffered a series of strokes in the last year from which he never fully recovered.

Harvey Pekar (1939-2010) was a bit better known. For the last few decades, he had been writing a series of autobiographical comics, “American Splendor”, illustrated by some of the best comics artists of the last few decades, from R. Crumb and Alan Moore to Gilbert Hernandez, Chester Brown and Joe Sacco.They chronicled his life in Cleveland, Ohio, from the tedium of his day job as a hospital clerk, a bout with cancer (in the excellent graphic novel “Our Cancer Year”), and his occasional run-ins with fame — in the 80s, he was occasional guest on David Letterman’s late-night talk show (until he famously decided to use his slot to lambaste GE, the owner of the NBC television network), and in this decade was memorably played by Paul Giamatti in a movie, also called “American Splendor”, based on the comics. Only a couple of weeks ago, I discovered The Pekar Project, devoted to getting and keeping his newest works online. He was always surly, too high-maintenance for his own good, dependably dissatisfied with whatever his life threw at him. And will nonetheless be missed.

A couple of my friends have got into a bit of a spat on the internet. Megan McArdle, a writer for the Atlantic Monthly, wrote “The Freeloaders”, arguing that file sharing, as practiced by today’s 20-something young adults, is destroying the music industry.

Marc Weidenbaum, who writes the wonderful disquiet blog, first first answered in prose. Marc argues, mostly correctly I think, that Megan’s argument conflates the major-label recording industry with the music industry as a whole. Despite the illegality (and let’s not be coy about it, there is plenty of theft involved), the more general ethos of free culture has spawned plenty of great art that flourishes outside of the stranglehold of that same recording industry.

He then realized a better rejoinder would be in the great tradition of answer records: he invited some musicians to comment, musically, on the article (and its accompanying illustration): the result is Despite The Downturn, freely available (free as in beer and as in freedom), mostly electronica, an amazing turnaround of just a couple of days from thought to expression. So at least something good has come out of this disagreement.

I awoke Thursday Morning to an email from an old friend: Alex Chilton had died. Chilton was one of America’s greatest songwriters and musicians, blossoming first as a Blue-eyed soul singer with The Box Tops as a teenager in the 60s. He reached a short-lived and (at the time) too-obscure peak as the leader of Big Star, writing more than a couple of the best guitar-pop songs since the Beatles, like the perfect “September Gurls”. After Big Star, he spent a few years sinking into fabulous weirdness, eventually becoming part of the indie (then “post-punk” or “college”) rock scene that he inspired. Since that time, there have been a few slices of brilliance like the post-60s AIDS-era “No Sex”, and lots of fun and obscure R&B covers. But by then it was clear that as much as he loved the perks of the rock’n’roll lifestyle (the sex & drugs part), he didn’t feel like playing the game (or perhaps he just didn’t like the hard work). He died Wednesday at 59, too young and not famous enough, just before Big Star were meant to perform one of their fitful reunions at this week’s South by Southwest festival.

There are innumerable remembrances around the web, even a sincere appreciation from the usually sarcastic Gawker. And then there was the unexpected statement on the floor of the House Of Representatives from Memphis’ congressman, Steve Cohen. My favorite, though, is from another old friend, Rob Sheffield at Rolling Stone. Or you can just find some performances on YouTube — and it’s not too late to buy his records.

(The last time I wrote about Chilton it was to quash rumors that he had died in his latter-day hometown of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. So incredibly sad that it’s the opposite, now.)

I steeped myself in some imported culture this week — modern classical music by two of the most famous living American composers. Thursday evening I went over to the Barbican to hear the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by John Adams, performing his own new City Noir, written about Los Angeles in honor of Gustavo Dudamel’s taking over the LA Philharmonic last year. The evening started with what seemed to me perhaps slightly halfhearted performances of Debussy and Ravel, but things picked up fantastically after the break.

Jeremy Denk took on the piano (which rises majestically from a hole in the stage) for Stravinsky’s Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments. He pounded the hell out of the keyboard, with the orchestra barely (but successfully) keeping up: Adams seemed almost to be sharing conducting duties with Denk at the piano. Although originally written when he lived in Europe, Stravinsky revisited the Concerto after he had moved to Los Angeles in the 1940s, (along with so many other European composers) so it made an appropriate prelude. City Noir fulfilled its brief: evocative of the sleaze and grit in our minds’ versions of those film-noir classics. Indeed, the only movies Adams mentions by name are the revisionist Chinatown, and “The Naked City” (which was NY, not LA, in both its film and TV incarnations), which brings to mind yet another contemporary American composer, John Zorn, although Adams works harder than Zorn to keep his chaos at bay.

The next night I went to the English National Opera’s production of Philip Glass’ Satyagraha from 1980, the story of Gandhi in South Africa in the early 1900s. Produced by the wonderful Improbable theatre company, combining the expertise of their “skills ensemble” at puppetry, dance, stilt-walking and imaginative production design with the ENO’s musical abilities in a magical production.

The over-the-top activity of the production works well with Glass’ so-called minimalism, highlighting the action and emotion present even in the intentional repetitions of notes and phrases. The centrepiece and high point of the production recounts, or at least alludes to, “The Indian Opinion” a newspaper founded by Gandhi to recount and communicate the tale of the opposition to racist policies in South Africa. Using individual newspapers, rolls of newsprint evoking the printing presses, the scene is gorgeous, one of the best-realized fifteen minutes of music and theater I have experienced in a long time.

The only glaring fault (aside from the London Coliseum’s closely-packed seats and a thermostat seemingly set about five degrees too high) was not aesthetic, but logistical: the use of projections onto the back of the stage, parts of which were hidden from anyone above the first level of seating. It was an unexpected oversight in a production that was otherwise so perfectly choreographed.

Finishing off my summer of aging-but-still-strong rock ’n’ rollers and jazzmen, I pilgrimaged to New Jersey, the state of my childhood and adolescence, to see Bruce Springsteen play Giants Stadium at the Meadowlands, one last gig before they tear the place down. I’ve seen Springsteen a few times before: my very first concert back in 1980, and a couple of times in the mid-1980s for the “Born in the USA” tour. In fact, the last time I saw him was in Giants Stadium itself, just about (and scarily) 25 years ago. This time, we — thanks especially to my wonderful father who has come relatively late to Springsteen’s rock ’n’ roll — had great seats (but I only had a terrible phone-camera, as you can see from the photos — does anyone have any pointers to better photos from that night, September 30, 2009?).

In memoriam of its coming demolition, Springsteen opened the show with the new “Wrecking Ball” written just for the occasion, and followed with several of his concert standards from throughout his career. He then got to the centerpiece of the show: all of “Born to Run” in order, from “Thunder Road” through “Jungleland”. This was the record that started the hype in the 70s — Jon Landaus’s infamous quote “I have seen the future of rock ’n’ roll, and its name is Bruce Springsteen” (although perhaps this version is apropos given my previous concertgoing experience) — and it still holds up as a rock ’n’ roll masterpiece, showcasing Springsteen’s ability to craft epics out of quiet desperation, managing to be anthemic but not pretentious. With rave-ups like “She’s the One” alternating with the slow “Meeting Across the River”, we got a few chances to catch our breath, although Bruce and the E Street band hardly let up.

For most performers, a full album would be the bulk of a concert, but given Springsteen’s reputation for marathon shows, we also heard plenty more, from some of his earliest music — “Growin’ Up”, “The E Street Shuffle” and “Rosalita” — through quite a bit of his amazing post-9/11 record “The Rising” and beyond, including his recent stomper “American Land” and Stephen Foster’s “Hard Times”, which brought out obscure New York rocker Willie Nile and was prefaced with a much-needed and I hope well-received reminder of the perhaps naive but worthwhile sentiment that “nobody wins unless everybody wins” (although I did get the impression that some of the people around me didn’t share these political sentiments). Still, he spent most of the night receiving something between adulation and worship from the tens of thousands in the audience. The rest of us can only wonder what it’s like to feel that on such a scale, night after night, year after year. Does he get used to it? Is it addictive? Or just a job?

One of the great things about living in (or, depending on the details of geographical definitions and your political philosophy, on the outskirts of) Europe is just how short a distance it is to other countries. Last week, I took advantage of this and made a last-minute trip to Barcelona to see Leonard Cohen perform at the Palau Sant Jordi.

Today is the thirty-second anniversary of Elvis Presley’s death. It was recently brought to my attention that I am now older than he was on that day. But rather than sit in the bathroom and eat cheeseburgers, I’ll just leave you with this:

I was thinking that night about Elvis
Day that he died, day that he died
I was thinking that night about Elvis
Day that he died, day that he died
Just a country boy that combed his hair
And put on a shirt his mother made and went on the air
And he shook it like a chorus girl
And he shook it like a Harlem queen
He shook it like a midnight rambler, baby,
Like you never seen

I was thinking that night about Elvis
Day that he died, day that he died
I was thinking that night about Elvis
Day that he died, day that he died
How he took it all out of black and white
Grabbed his wand in the other hand and he held on tight
And he shook it like a hurricane
He shook it like to make it break
And he shook it like a holy roller, baby
With his soul at stake

I was thinking that night about Elvis
Day that he died, day that he died
I was thinking that night about Elvis
Day that he died, day that he died
He was all alone in a long decline
Thinking how happy John Henry was that he fell down and died
When he shook it and he rang like silver
He shook it and he shine like gold
He shook it and he beat that steam drill, baby
Well bless my soul

He shook it and he beat that steam drill, baby
Well bless my soul, what’s wrong with me?

I was thinking that night about Elvis
Day that he died, day that he died
I was thinking that night about Elvis
Day that he died, day that he died
Just a country boy that combed his hair
Put on a shirt his mother made and he went on the air
And he shook it like a chorus girl
He shook it like a Harlem queen
He shook it like a midnight rambler, baby
Like he never seen

—Gillian Welch, Elvis Presley Blues

Now, go watch the ‘68 Comeback Special, or listen to Suspicious Minds.

The summertime British music scene is taken over by a series of festivals up and down the country; the biggest and most famous is Glastonbury, but the same weekend London’s Hyde Park holds the somewhat scaled-down (no sleeping over in tents) “Hard Rock Calling”. I arrived too late for the Pretenders, whom I had last seen play Radio City Music Hall in New York in, I think, 1984. The acts on offer meant that the crowd skewed toward the gray and/or bald, which put me reassuringly away from the upper age envelope. (Although it was a refreshing change to see people wearing Ramones t-shirts who could possibly have seen them live!) I made it in for Seasick Steve, fun in his cartoony way, and Ben Harper with his more antiseptic blues, We drank beer out of plastic bottles, huddled under umbrellas during the brief storm, and Fleet Foxes were lovely but a bit overmatched by the surroundings.

But Neil Young can handle a crowd of a few hundred thousand. Especially Neil Young with Crazy Horse, the hard rock version. So we got loud and crunchy with “Hey Hey, My My”, “Everyone Knows this is Nowhere”, “Cinammon Girl”, “Mansion on the Hill”, and an acoustic set with “Heart of Gold” and “Old Man”. Unlike The Who or the Stones, he hasn’t made himself irrelevant through a combination of prostitution and crappy music; with the exception of some 80s meanderings, his career doesn’t fit neatly into a few phases like Dylan; and unlike the members of the Beatles (more on them in a moment) he’s continued to produce great music even until now — although he probably hasn’t produced a masterpiece since Ragged Glory, his latest Fork in the Road shows him at his surly best. And after all these years, like his fellow headliner (in London and Glastonbury) Bruce Springsteen, despite all the complications, Neil Young still seems to believe in the power of rock ’n’ roll.

After a too-short main set proving the point with the anthemic “Rockin’ in the Free World” (with a half-dozen false endings for us to sing along to), I was hoping for an encore of “Powderfinger” (does anyone know what that song’s about, by the way?). But instead we heard the familiar opening to the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life” which I then remembered that he had been playing for the past year or so. Despite the context, it still surprised all of us when a figure joined Neil on stage for the middle eight: Paul McCartney. I’m pretty jaded about rock ’n’ roll by now, and the guy (McCartney) hasn’t written a great song in about 35 years, but the fucking hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

The annual Meltdown festival took over London’s South Bank Centre this week. I saw Yo La Tengo’s rock ’n’ roll Q&A, and unfortunately missed a performance by David Murray, one of my favorite saxaphonists.

But the highlight was curator Ornette Coleman himself, in an evening dedicated to his “Shape of Jazz to Come”, the record which marked the transition from the era of Bird and the “cool” Miles Davis to the much wilder 60s.

Coleman shuffled on stage in a shimmering suit, playing from his 50 years of songs, and reaching back to an amazing version of the the famous prelude to Bach’s Cello Suite, as well as a take on “Rite of Spring” via his own “Sleep Talking”. He played with the current incarnation of his quartet, his son Denardo on drums, and Tony Falanga and Al MacDowell on acoustic and electric bass. Bill Frisell joined them on guitar for most of the evening, and rock goddess Patti Smith sang/spoke/chanted on Ornette’s 80s track, “In All Languages”. The Master Musicians of Jajouka (Not to be confused with “Joujouka”) came on for an almost unbearably intense jam on Lonely Woman, and I don’t think I’m exaggerating about “unbearably” — the droning Moroccan wind instruments put out a pretty ferocious but wonderful noise.

The performance reminded of a morning almost exactly twenty years ago. I was living in New York City, and my friend Marc and I got up before dawn to take the subway down to Battery Park, the southern tip of Manhattan. There, we got to hear Sun Ra and his Arkestra along with trumpeter (and one-time Ornette Coleman sideman) Don Cherry greet the sun for the 1989 Summer Solstice. I don’t remember much from the event, just Sun Ra and the Arkestra playing and chanting “the sun…. the sun… the sun…” and Don Cherry sitting down, leaning against a wall, playing his pocket trumpet. I must have spent the day in a sleepy attempt at working at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies where I spent a year studying the Antarctic ozone hole, and I vaguely recall ending the night at Central Park’s Summerstage dancing away to Tito Puente.

To mirror that evening, albeit with many more skinny, pasty-faced white people in ironic t-shirts, I went back to Meltdown the next night for some post-rock jazz with Kieran Hebden, Steve Reid and others. Actually, the post-rock moniker doesn’t do it justice. If Ornette was playing the future of jazz in 1960, this is the future we’ve got now: undoubtedly jazz, but taking advantage of technology and forms of music that were barely contemplated fifty years ago.

Sonic Youth on “Later with Jools Holland” reminds me of a US TV appearance by the band around 20 years ago, on a show called “Night Music” co-hosted by, in fact, Jools Holland and sax player David Sanborn. Sanborn’s solo recording career has largely (and not incorrectly) been tarred with “smooth jazz” brush; his broader musical tastes have never matched his own much less compelling output. On “Night Music”, he proved he could skronk along with Sonic Youth and even John Zorn.

I missed Sonic Youth’s London concert this week, but their performance of “Daydream Nation” in 2007 was one of the best shows of the last few years. It’s never quite the same on TV, but nonetheless S Youth were their usual magnificent selves, bashing away at a full three songs, from their upcoming “The Eternal” and reaching all the way back to “Teenage Riot”, in between the anodyne Depeche Mode and the (admittedly pretty good) Lily Allen. A couple of times the camera showed Andrew Marr and Elton John in the audience. I wonder what they thought of the loud guitars.