The next song in the music library project is The Rolling Stones’ ‘All Down The Line’. I am reblogging Badfinger’s powerpop article about it, since that is where I first heard it (click on image below or go directly to the song at the end of this post). I was immediately impressed by it. I’m not a big Rolling Stones fan by any stretch but I have a few of their songs in my music library. I can appreciate why they are heralded as one of Rock n Roll’s greatest rock bands. Their live performances are something out of the ordinary. Few had the allure and charisma which Jagger possessed on stage and the ferocity of that instrumental backing power at their fingertips.
My body and my heart have been betraying me of late.
Physical illness combined with a broken heart is a heck of a one-two punch and can take us to really dark places.
But I don’t want to write yet another lament about my misfortunes in love. The temptation is there as I wrestle once more with deep depression, but it’s not helpful. (Read more)
You’ve no idea the trouble Noeline Hartstonge and husband Quentin had in procuring ethically sourced cocoa beans. They were to be used as a conclusion to an ordinary dinner with several other couples they had met through the local Croquet Club. Ethically sourced cocoa beans and organically grown bananas. These days it was fast becoming almost impossible to entertain. (Read more)
A jar of coins Set aside for another day Corner of a dresser Where once sat A woman’s brush In its place, now A layer of dust Telling a tale Of lost love, when love Was not enough..(Read More)
“In this episode of the Making Sense podcast, Sam Harris addresses listener concerns that he uses a “double standard” to evaluate the relative threats of white supremacy and jihadism.”
If it were not for Bob Dylan writing so many great songs, I would probably be listening to more classical music. Today we look at All Along The Watchtower, a Dylan song which became so famous because Jimi Hendrix covered it. Many claim it to be the greatest covered song in Rock history. It would also appear Dylan modified the song live from his original version to be a bit more like the Hendrix version. Wasn’t he quoted as saying “sometimes cover’s are better”?
Dylan’s original on his underrated John Wesley Harding album was ‘real’, a parable in my young mind, not obscure. I could see myself being part of it and I could see it from a distance. Hendrix took that essence of the original on John Wesley Harding, and exploded it, disintegrated the song, and turned it into this hypnotic beast. You can read an excellent review here about Hendrix’s version from fellow blogger Badfinger on his blog Powerpop.
To my ears there exists no better version where Bob is honoring Hendrix than live in Vancouver 11-11-1978. It’s a Tour de Force ramp-up of his own song which possesses this other-worldly chaotic barrage and mesh of strange noises, coalescing to form (if you could imagine it) a ‘circus’ big-band sound. I have not heard anything like it before or since from Dylan.
The song was compiled as part of a project called Dylan’s Desert Island Revue‘ which I undertook on the Expectingrain web site. More information about that project as well as the actual live recording can be obtained from the aforementioned link. The original studio record can be heard below:
Today on ‘Friday’s Finest’ we feature another compelling yet underrated Peter Weir film about the mysteries and forces of nature. The Mosquito Coast has just 6.6 on IMDB and 76% critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It was also a commercial disappointment having lost money. It may well be the only Harrison Ford film that has flopped so badly. I revisited the film only recently and I was captivated by it, like I was in my youth. It currently sits at 67 in my all time favourite movies list.
The Mosquito Coast is based on the novel of the same name by Paul Theroux. The film tells the story of a family that leaves the United States and tries to find a happier and simpler life in the jungles of Central America. “Ice is civilization”, Allie fox proclaims with unctuous authority. That will be the foundation for his utopian dream.
“We eat when we’re not hungry, drink when we’re not thirsty. We buy what we don’t need and throw away everything that’s useful. Why sell a man what he wants? Sell him what he doesn’t need. Pretend he’s got eight legs and two stomachs and money to burn. It’s wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.”
– Allie Fox (Harrison Ford)
But Allie is so headstrong, so convinced of his infallibility that his vision blinds him to reality. Lets just say he is not prepared for the reality of nature nor the threat other desperate humans pose. His jungle paradise quickly turns into a dystopia as Allie’s behavior becomes increasingly erratic and aggressive.
Ford really goes out on a limb in this playing a character so egocentric and domineering; distinct from anything he’s done before, but nails it in my opinion. Then we have the iconic River Phoenix who was at the prime of his youth in terms of his innate acting sensibility; stealing nearly every scene he is in. According to IMDB, Ford and Phoenix had a very close bond in this film and Ford even recommended Phoenix to Spielberg for Indiana Jones based on their time together making this film.
Taking a very Robinson Crusoe-esquire piece of fiction and putting it to film would not have been an easy process. Beyond the deep themes expressed in the script, The Mosquito Coast looks good visually. The tropical scenery is spectacular. Production design and cinematography are terrific. And the film’s score, by Maurice Jarre, is wonderfully exotic and majestic.
Interesting facts about The Mosquito Coast from IMDB Trivia:
Jack Nicholson was originally offered the lead role, but backed out partly because he could not watch Los Angeles Lakers games in Belize, where part of the film was to be shot.
Of all of his films, star actor Harrison Ford considers this to be his favorite.
River Phoenix was raised in the Children of God cult, where he and his family had been stationed in Venezuela. River was motivated to act in the movie because he recognized the many similarities between the film and his childhood.
Actors Martha Plimpton and River Phoenix started a personal relationship on this movie which continued for a number of years.
As a an impressionable young adult in the early 90s, the big music blasting our vivacious hearts and minds was ignited from Seattle. Bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains and Sound Garden were pumping the airwaves with a vast array of steely melancholic grunge tunes. It enchanted disenfranchised students like us and we explored ways and means to experience obscure beatnik places in Canberra that embraced such music.
The song that had the biggest impact on me from the outset was Alive by Pearl Jam. It was their debut single and appeared on their debut album Ten in 1991, which I still consider one of the greatest 90’s albums. The story behind how the song came into being had circulated among us with great relish adding to our immense appreciation of this track. Even re-reading the origin of Alive now, I find myself as stirred as when I first heard it. It has to be one of Rock ‘n’ Roll‘s most remarkable stories of serendipity in the wake of sorrowfulness.
The following excerpts from wikipedia give you the low-down of this legendary rock-n-roll story which is ‘Alive’:
Origin and Recording
Guitarist Stone Gossard wrote the music for the song, which he titled “Dollar Short”, in 1990 when he was still a member of Mother Love Bone. According to Gossard Mother Love Bone frontman Andrew Wood had even sung on it. After Wood died of a heroin overdose, Gossard and his bandmate Jeff Ament started playing with guitarist Mike McCready with the hope of starting a new band. “Dollar Short” was one of five tracks compiled onto a tape called Stone Gossard Demos ’91 that Gossard, Ament, and McCready circulated in the hopes of finding a singer and drummer for the group.
The tape made its way into the hands of vocalist Eddie Vedder, who was working as a security guard for a petroleum company in San Diego, California, at the time. He listened to the tape shortly before going surfing, where lyrics came to him. “Alive” was the first song for which Vedder recorded vocals. Vedder mailed the tape back to Seattle. Upon hearing the tape, the band invited Vedder to come to Seattle and he was asked to join the band.
(Less than 2 years later Eddie Vedder would be performing Masters of War at Bob Dylan’s 30th anniversary concert in Madison Square Garden!)
The band recorded “Alive” during a demo session at London Bridge studio in January 1991. The version recorded during this session would later appear on the group’s debut album, Ten.
Lyrics
“Alive” tells the story of a young man discovering that the man he thought was his father is actually his stepfather, while his mother’s grief leads to an incestuous relationship with the son, who strongly resembles the biological father. “Alive” has been revealed by Vedder to be part autobiographical and part fiction. When Vedder was a teenager, his mother revealed to him that the man he thought was his father was actually his stepfather, and that his biological father was dead. The first and last verses detail those actual events, but the second verse is storytelling on Vedder’s part. The lyrics of the second verse read, “Oh, she walks slowly, across a young man’s room/She said I’m ready…for you/I can’t remember anything to this very day/’Cept the look, the look…/Oh, you know where, now I can’t see, I just stare…,” and Vedder revealed that “she” was the mother, and “the look” referred to was not the look on her face, but “the look is between her legs. Where do you go with that? That’s where you came from.”
I suppose that leaves us to pause and ponder how Vedder’s voice and his lyrics propelled this group to become one of the world’s most successful bands for nearly 3 decades. Even his influence as a solo artist has been impressive. His acoustic soundtrack on Into The Wild is nothing short of eerily beautiful. Which other lead singer/s and lyricists have had such an an immediate and immense impact on their band’s success as Eddie Vedder? I’m sure some of you with a more consummate knowledge of contemporary music may be able to wield your weight on this topic.
‘If in Doubt Cut it Out‘ is an old writer’s slogan used to remind budding writers to get rid of unnecessary noise and clutter. Cutting words remains one of the hardest, yet necessary parts of writing. Even after all these years I consider myself a novice in abiding to this KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid!) principle. I tend to congratulate myself prematurely on an early draft and not respect the voice of the following day, telling me ‘Actually, it’s not that great‘. When a cooler head prevails I find myself relenting and either changing or deleting the text and it’s always better for it. I feel grateful for every word I can cut.
The writing style of one of the greatest American literary figures of the 20th century Ernest Hemingway is arguably the best example of the ‘If in Doubt, Cut it out‘ and ‘KISS‘ principles in practice. Hemingway revolutionized American writing with his short, declarative sentences and tense prose. I’m currently reading one of his masterpieces The Sun Also Rises for the third time. It is my favourite Hemingway book mainly because I just find it such an enjoyable read. I needed to detach myself from the sombreness and sternness of the books I discussed here previously, as magnificent as they were. Hemingway’s sparse writing style and restrained use of description allows my reading senses to de-clutter and re-calibrate. Also, I was up for another trip to Paris, France in the 1920s with a motley crue of expatriates (the lost generation).
Wednesday’s book quotes will feature further excerpts from The Sun Also Rises and I won’t bother you with a detailed description of the book today. Instead, I would like to use this opportunity to demonstrate the no-nonsense, short prose of Hemingway which made him such a colossal figure in modern American literature. What better way to start than from page 1, Chapter 1:
Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton. Do not think that I am very much impressed by that as a boxing title, but it meant a lot to Cohn. He cared nothing for boxing, in fact he disliked it, but he learned it painfully and thoroughly to counteract the feeling of inferiority and shyness he had felt on being treated as a Jew at Princeton. There was a certain inner comfort in knowing he could knock down anybody who was snooty to him, although, being very shy and a thoroughly nice boy, he never fought except in the gym. He was Spider Kelly’s star pupil. Spider Kelly taught all his young gentlemen to box like featherweights, no matter whether they weighed one hundred and five or two hundred and five pounds. But it seemed to fit Cohn. He was really very fast. He was so good that Spider promptly overmatched him and got his nose permanently flattened. This increased Cohn’s distaste for boxing, but it gave him a certain satisfaction of some strange sort, and it certainly improved his nose. In his last year at Princeton he read too much and took to wearing spectacles. I never met any one of his class who remembered him. They did not even remember that he was middleweight boxing champion.
I mistrust all frank and simple people, especially when their stories hold together, and I always had a suspicion that perhaps Robert Cohn had never been middleweight boxing champion, and that perhaps a horse had stepped on his face, or that maybe his mother had been frightened or seen something, or that he had, maybe, bumped into something as a young child, but I finally had somebody verify the story from Spider Kelly. Spider Kelly not only remembered Cohn. He had often wondered what had become of him.
Robert Cohn was a member, through his father, of one of the richest Jewish families in New York, and through his mother of one of the oldest. At the military school where he prepped for Princeton, and played a very good end on the football team, no one had made him race-conscious. No one had ever made him feel he was a Jew, and hence any different from anybody else, until he went to Princeton. He was a nice boy, a friendly boy, and very shy, and it made him bitter. He took it out in boxing, and he came out of Princeton with painful self-consciousness and the flattened nose, and was married by the first girl who was nice to him. He was married five years, had three children, lost most of the fifty thousand dollars his father left him, the balance of the estate having gone to his mother, hardened into a rather unattractive mould under domestic unhappiness with a rich wife; and just when he had made up his mind to leave his wife she left him and went off with a miniature-painter. As he had been thinking for months about leaving his wife and had not done it because it would be too cruel to deprive her of himself, her departure was a very healthful shock.
Alexandra Leaving is the third song from Leonard Cohen in the music library project and is the seventh song on his 2001 record Ten New Songs. Alexandra Leaving is based on The God Abandons Antony, a poem by Constantine P. Cavafy. This is another one of his songs which just gets better the more you listen to it. It’s like drinking from a wellspring and each time you take another sip it becomes more blessed, more enriching for the soul.
In contrast to the intensely direct Aint No Cure For Love, Alexandra Leaving is a quietly understated poetic meandering about the ebbs and flows of romance and divine inspiration. Leonard Cohen beset to his spiritual axiom postulates when something so divine touches us we should not take it for granted nor should we try and grasp for it when it decides it’s leaving.
Even though she sleeps upon your satin Even though she wakes you with a kiss Do not say the moment was imagined Do not stoop to strategies like this
And you who were bewildered by a meaning Whose code was broken, crucifix uncrossed Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving Then say goodbye to Alexandra lost
You can read more about the interpretations of the song at songmeanings.com which includes the following:
This song is based on Constantine Cavafy’s Poem ‘The God Abandons Antony’. The same Antony from ‘Julius Caesar’ and ‘Antony and Cleopatra’. The original poem itself is based on Plutarch’s story that Antony heard a ghostly, musical procession the night before he lost the siege of Alexandria to Octavian. The procession – among other things, signified the desertion of his God protector, Bacchus. The departing procession could thus signify the loss of love, glory, fame, fortune, love….
Leonard Cohen changes Alexandria to Alexandra, making the loss more firmly that of love. The song, in Cohen’s hands, becomes about how to face the loss of a lover and all the accompanying promises and expectations. The warrior’s exhortation to face up to the loss of life on the eve of battle transforms into the lover’s counsel to be strong and accept the loss of a relationship. – thespianphryne songmeanings.com
Interestingly Ten New Songs is dedicated to Joshu Sasaki (see image above) a Buddhist monk and rōshi (venerable teacher) who Cohen regularly visited at Mount Baldy Zen Center in California. He served him as personal assistant during Cohen’s period of reclusion at Mount Baldy monastery in the 1990s. Leonard Cohen speaks about his life as a Buddhist monk here.
Welcome back to Monday’s News on the March – The week that was in my digital world. Wow, what a week huh?! If you’re reading this we made it through the other side or you may have just paid someone at technical support for the ‘life extension cryogenic experience’. Whichever I’m glad you are here.
You tube video from Jordan Peterson at the independent institute:
Not the greatest questions but Jordan answered all of them thoughtfully and took the conversation in interesting directions:
‘You weaken people if you say they are the passive victims of externals forces. Then they become the passive victims of externals forces. It’s not good’.
“Read something great. Write about it. Get your thoughts in order.”
The Diddly-Squat Auralians were the inhabitants of a distant exoplanet thousands of light years away from Planet Earth. Diddly-Squat Auralians was the term used by Earthlings to describe the aliens, as no one had a clue what the Diddlies called themselves.
After scouring hundreds of venues and shows at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the panel submitted their favourite six jokes. Without naming the comics behind each one, 2,000 members of the British public were invited to choose the funniest.
In the middle of the night it hits. With a few swift, smart, agile and adept finger clicks – my entire bank account is emptied in one fell swoop. I awaken to emails & texts from my bank telling me that I’m overdrawn. I log in to see $0.00 staring back at me.
The next song in the music library project is Dwight Yoakam’s ‘Ain’t That Lonely Yet’. I am reblogging Badfinger’s Powerpop article about it (click image below), since that is where I first heard it. I found this country song really soothing on the ears. The lyrics won’t set anyone’s world on fire, but you could sum it up as ‘a woman hurts him and now wants him to take her back’.
His sarcasm in the early stanzas makes me chuckle:
You keep calling me on the telephone You say you’re all alone Well that’s real sad
And you keep leavin’ Notes stuck on my door Guess you’re hungry for some more Girl that’s too bad
I think it’s a little bit deeper than that; he is really tempted and the whole song is him talking to himself, telling himself that she is bad for him and he needs to forget about her.
I normally reserve my movie reviews for Friday’s-Finest, but I hastily brought this one forward since I just saw Monos at the cinema and it has been selected as the Colombian entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 92nd Academy Awards. What made me run literally 5 minutes up the road to see this today was the following article from BBC: Ten films to watch this September:
The Guardian says that (Monos -monkeys) “This overpoweringly tense and deeply mad thriller is … something between Apocalypse Now, Lord of the Flies and Embrace of the Serpent”. If that weren’t recommendation enough, Guillermo del Toro is quoted in the trailer deeming Monos “mesmerising”, and co-writer-director, Alejandro Landes, “a powerful new voice in cinema”. Released 13 September in the US.
Plot – Wikipedia: In a remote mountaintop setting somewhere in Latin America, a rebel group of teenage commandos perform military training exercises while watching over a prisoner (Julianne Nicholson) and a conscripted milk cow for a shadowy force known only as “The Organization.” After an ambush drives the squadron into the jungle, fracturing their intricate bond, the mission begins to collapse.
Monos is a very disturbing film to watch. I found it vexatious seeing adolescents conduct themselves as they do in this movie. Some might find it sexually exploitative even though it is most likely an accurate reflection of how teenagers under the same duress might react. This is Colombia and only yesterday Ivan Marquez an ex FARC rebel issued a call to arms. Kids like these; even much younger have for years been enticed and many times coerced into forming allegiance with similar renegade groups. As much as Monos at the surface level for international viewers may seem a fantasy, believe me it isn’t.
Monos is definitely a movie to be seen in the cinema since what impressed me most was the hypnotic soundtrack and spectacular cinematography. I can’t think of another recent movie where the soundtrack has played a more pivotal role and been so effective. Regarding filming..If you enjoyed Alejandro G. Iñárritu – The Revenant’s ‘stream of consciousness’ cinematography then you will certainly admire this one.
Monos is a comparatively short thriller film and when the credits rolled I was left fixated on the screen trying to process that which had occurred, but indebted all the same for this jarring movie experience.
