The Times recently had a brief but very sobering post about Air Force Staff Sgt. Phillip Myers, the first KIA service person to be photographed in his flag-draped coffin, returning home. As per the conditions of the recent ban lift--the result of an executive order from President Obama--Myers family gave their consent to the press attending the ceremonial and sad homecoming.
Some things in the article really struck me. The first is how quickly things change, perhaps in general, but in war in particular: Myers was awarded a bronze star on March 19, yet just over two weeks later he was dead, and days later returns home draped in a flag. The second--and this is really nothing shocking, but brought things home for me--is that Myers was 30, as am I.
But the sentence I found particularly chilling was this: "Dover Air Force base, in Delaware, houses the largest military mortuary in the country and is the Pentagon’s point of entry for service men and women killed abroad." One assumed that there had to have been a location for something like this, but actually learning where it is sort of shook me. It is as if Pentagon has built its own private San Michele, which I somehow found troubling. I wonder if, among the military, there is the sense that one wants to go home, unless it's to Dover.
Those opposing the lift on the ban fear that the images of the draped coffins could become politicized. While this is certainly possible--(some might say inevitable)-- these images provide an essential dose of empathy, an illuminating look at how the military works, and in particular how it deals with their dead. Being able to see these photos has the potential to open eyes and alter perceptions.
It reminds me of something my grandfather--a WWII vet from the European Theatre--said during his interview for Soldier Songs, paraphrased here:
At First Army Headquarters, keeping a record of all the casualties--the dead the wounded--and that's about the first time it hit me, when you see all the casualties coming through, he dead the wounded...though I never recognized any of the names.
Just reading this short blog entry in the Times, well, in some ways it's really the first time it hit me. It made the war more real, more dreadful. It made the sacrifices of those who fight it--and of their families--all the more vivid. Is this somewhat unpleasant? Perhaps, but it is also very important. If this ban lift will help the American people better see the true (if difficult) cost of this war, then it is nothing if not positive.
I was just spending a little time getting to know my friend Andrew Tholl's relatively new website. Andrew is a very fine violinist and drummer. And as if that wasn't enough, he's started composing very seriously in the last few years, writing a whole slew of interesting pieces.
He's always been great with titles, at least in my opinion. He's one of two friends who I call if I am unsure about one of my own titles. Here are some of his gems:
our arrangement will never be mutually satisfying
poke and tickle
who’s cranky now
Maybe you need to know him, but these titles are pretty fantastic to me.
But one title of his totally takes the cake. It's called i’ll never be younger than i am today (for andrew tholl). It's for solo violin, and lasts 1 hour and 5 minutes.
So first, I think it's a deep title; lots of mortality hidden in there, but presented in a way that's not too morbid. But what gets me is the dedication!
I know that a lot of composers are also great performers. And I know that a lot of composer/performers write music for themselves to play. But I love (and have never seen before) the idea of composing a work for oneself, dedicating it to oneself, and making said dedication part of the title!
Pretty brilliant. Andrew Tholl is a mad genius. He hits the east coast this April with the terrific Formalist Quartet, who will make stops in New York, Princeton, and elsewhere. Check 'em out.
As the recession deepens people are still putting some money into entertainment, or at least into movies. At least that's what this article in today's Times reports, sayings that box office receipts are up nearly 16%!
The standard percentage of movie attendees is usually around 10% of the population. It's been that way, more or less, since the 1960s, bottoming out there after a gradual fall through the 40s and 50s. Thigh high-watermark for movie attendance was—perhaps not surprisingly—the 1930s, in the wake of the Great Depression. (Though this may also be attributed to the excitement over the advent of talkies, starting out with The Jazz Singer in 1927.)
But apparently it's not just the economy, it's also the films that studios are releasing in response to cultural desires: films that are, in one way or another, escapist. The article says:
The film industry appears to have had a hand in its recent good luck. Over the last year or two, studios have released movies that are happier, scarier or just less depressing than what came before. After poor results for a spate of serious dramas built around the Middle East (“The Kingdom,” “Lions for Lambs,” “Rendition”), Hollywood got back to comedies like “Paul Blart: Mall Cop,” a review-proof lark about an overstuffed security guard.
For someone whose life is dedicated to making art, the idea that Paul Blart is what society is looking for right now is troubling, a feeling driven home here: “A bunch of movies have come along that don’t make you think too much,” said Marc Abraham, a producer whose next film is a remake of “The Thing.” The article continues: "Cinematic quality has little to do with (financial success). The recent crop of Oscar nominees has fared poorly, for the most part, at the box office. Lighter fare has drawn the crowds."
This is perhaps the best sign of how the recession might directly impact me. Financially, I live on very little money, have no serious investments, and can't really get laid off. But if the audience for the type of art I feel it is important to make no longer demands what I can supply, well, that could be a problem. Soldier Songs, for example—though not about the Middle East—is a "serious drama" intended to "make you think," and the upcoming Dog Days, though a (black) comedy, does involve a family starving in the wake of a devastating (maybe nuclear) war. (Sunshine and Puppies!) I will be very interested to read between the lines of the reviews for performances of these works in the coming months, to see if this sentiment—that they are too serious for these serious times—is expressed.
And though it's not his fault, President Obama provides a double-whammy for this scenario. I was recently talking to my friend Dallas (whose new record is quite good). He was discussing the correlation between the popularity of metal and political power cycles. When the Republicans are in office, he said, metal thrives as a genre. But when Democrats are in office, it fizzles. The reason? People are simply less angry under Democrats, (or so he says…personally, I think I’m equally angry under each).
He claimed that during the Clinton administration, Slayer—one of the greatest of all time—couldn't get anywhere near the top of the Billboard 200 charts. During the Bush administration, however, their Christ Illusion debuted at #5. (Who was at the top of the charts during the Clinton years? Hootie & The Blowfish, who were #1 twice, in 1994 and 1996, #5 in 1998!)
A quick look around the Billboard charts suggests that it's a little more complex than this, and metal is certainly not a genre that is going to cast as broad a net as pop. (That’s part of what metal is about anyway: insider/outsider tension.) But it's still interesting to consider what might have shifted culturally to have Slayer in the same Billboard slot that Hootie & The Blowfish had held eight years earlier.
Compare this 1996 performance by Hootie and The Blowfish, which makes Lionel Richie look like G.G. Allin...
...to Slayer's 2006 take on PTSD; timely and intense. (Warning: some graphic images.)
The influence of metal is a big part of my work, as is the desire to encourage thought and questioning. If the above is in fact true, I’m not sure that what I can offer an audience artistically is really what they want right now, though it might be what they need. I guess I'll just make what I need to make, and they can catch up to me when the smoke clears, and they’ve seen one Paul Blart too many.
Last night I attended the premiere of of Mermaid in a Jar--an excellent one-act opera by Rachel Peters and Royce Vavrek. After the show, I had the pleasure of meeting, among other people, Tom Ridgely. Tom is a director, and co-founder of the theater company Waterwell.
Checking out their website, I found this funny and adventurous fund raising campaign, giving potential donors countless reasons why they shouldn't donate to the theater:
My favorite lines?
*"I'm Tom Ridgely. For just $12 a day you can get our Dramaturg the bottle of Pino Grigio she so desperately needs to fall asleep each night."
*"They don't need your money. They don't need it. They're just telling you that because they like to buy nice things."
*"The other day, I saw them stepping on kittens."
Brilliant! I'll be curious to know how well it worked!
So I just returned from Miami, where I had the pleasure of working with the wonderful musicians at the New World Symphony, along with my old friend Jeff, and my new friends Timo and Daniel. (We were there to hear the premieres of new works inspired by Charles Ives. It was a really great show, organized by the wonderful Yuki Numata.) The orchestra's headquarters is in South Beach on Lincoln Road, which is a strange mix of Aspen, Venice, Atlantic City, and some of the older-feeling parts of LA. It's a pretty out place. Not too much of what you see is real, and by the second morning I had officially proclaimed Amanda Lepore as the patron saint of South Beach.
Getting caffeinated before a rehearsal, I noticed a woman sitting at a nearby Starbucks who was the closest thing to Lepore that I may have ever seen. It was pretty ridiculous. So collagen-injected she could barely speak, she was a wonderfully grotesque example of "beauty" in that particular shallow, late-capitalist, crumbling society sort of way.
Suddenly an older gentleman walks in and sits down next to her. I swear he looks like Jackie Mason, but I can't remember if Mason is dead or not. (Is that terrible?) This gentleman tries to flirt with the plastic lady, and she treats him kindly, like a cute grandfather--(I am at this point tending to my cream and sugar needs)--but what matters is that I got to hear his voice, which further suggests that it might well be him.
Earlier today, now back north, I remembered this bizarre scene, and decided to Google "Jackie Mason" and "Miami." Lo and behold, it turns out that Jackie Mason was on Lincoln Road in South Beach on that very day shooting The Ultimate Jew, his video-blog, where he pretty much rambles nonsensically, sounds off on Republican talking-points, and gets schooled by young whipper-snappers on politics. It's enlightening.
Watch Part 1 here, in which Jackie discusses the closing of Guantanamo with a fellow Jewish stand-up comic who is also, coincidentally, a relative of Senator Chuck Schumer:
"Heresy is a word that has no meaning to me now, for I renounce the whole system of Catholic or other theology, which is based upon the fear of hell and the hope of getting into heaven by all sorts of dubious bargains."
- Ammon Hennacy, On Leaving the Catholic Church (1965-1968)
There is a really interesting interview with my good friend and fellow composer Ted Hearne over at InDigestMag.com. It covers a lot of ground, though focuses mostly on Ted's Katrina Ballads and the musical and political issues that relate to it. Of particular interest to me are Ted's thoughts on drum set in classical music, which I hope to write more about here. As always, you can be sure that Ted is going to speak his mind. There's no pussyfooting around.
An excerpt of the premiere performance of Robert Davidson's "Generation After Generation" from the Newspeak/Anti-Social Music Election Night Party! 11.04.08
In June, the one and only Judas Priest released a brand new two-disc concept album called Nostradamus. Based on the title alone, I am thinking that it's probably either one of the best things ever, or the absolute worst. After hearing the single, however, I think it may well be both. (Hello orchestral introduction!) This gets to an issue I've been thinking about for a while: heavy metal as camp.
I've realized lately that part of what I love about metal is that, despite its inherent silliness, it takes itself so seriously. In this, it is both noble and totally absurd. Musically, especially within the Extreme Metal genres, the bands tend to be highly skilled, but the look of metal has always been problematic,
Judas Priest is a great examples of this. They are technical masters and musically solid--Painkiller is one of the best metal albums ever--but as for taste, well...
Alex made a great point about Judas Priest versus groups like Mötley Crüe, or even KISS. These latter groups, less musically skilled, seemed too aware of their over-the-top image to really be camp. To be camp--if we follow Sontag--something has to be so out that it loses the ability to judge just how out it actually is; and it has to be dead serious.
This in so many ways is the essence of what metal is about--extra-musically--and I can think of no greater example than Judas Priest. I mean come on, does it get any worse than this?
While researching Marc Blitzstein's The Cradle Will Rock, I encountered the following passage from Michael Parenti's Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism.
Somehow it felt relevant to share.
"Corporations like DuPont, Ford, General Motors, and ITT owned factories in enemy countries that produced fuel, tanks, and planes that wreaked havoc on Allied forces. After the war, instead of being prosecuted for treason, ITT collected $27 million from the U.S. Government for war damages inflicted on its German plants by Allied bombings. General Motors collected over $33 million. Pilots were given instructions not to hit factories in Germany that were owned by U.S. firms. Thus Cologne was almost leveled by Allied bombings, but its Ford plant, providing military equipment for the Nazi army, was untouched; indeed, German civilians began using the plant as an air raid shelter."
"Long before aeroplanes were invented he anticipated the horror of bombing attacks on people in air raid shelters. He is the lyric composer of the gas chambers of Auschwitz, of Dachau concentration camp, of the complete despair of the man in the street under the heel of fascism. That is his humanity. It is proof of Schönberg's genius and instinct that he gave expression to all these emotions at a time when the world seemed safe for the ordinary man in the street. Whatever one may say against him, he never lied."
The title of this blog comes from the 1934 Workers' Songbook, which states in its foreword: "Music is a Weapon in the Class Struggle." This idea served as justification/ motivation for many young, left- leaning composers of that period, like Seeger, Eisler, and Blitzstein. From what one reads, these composers really believed—at least at the time—that music could bring about real social change at a time of great social crisis, and composed their music accordingly.
At a time when history may well be repeating, these seem like interesting and important ideas to once again consider. ( I am also writing my dissertation on related issues, and intend to share bits of that when they're ready.)
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