Chelsea, MA
5/2
I grew up as a sports crazy kid in Yonkers, NY, and since all of my friends were the same way, we played pickup games all year-round. Tackle and touch football and baseball and stickball and whiffle ball and dodgeball and kickball and basketball. Little League baseball was the only organized sport so that was the only time I actually played on an official team. Mostly, after school, we just picked up teams and played until it was too dark or it was time for dinner. We did this pretty much every day.
One memory I have is the summer I decided I wanted to be a left-handed pitcher (I was normally right-handed). I would wait until my father got home from work and after rushing him through dinner I'd make him come outside and play catch with me. He would stand there indulging me while I either bounced pitches off his legs or winged them over his head into Mr Levy's yard next door. I don't imagine this was fun for him but he never complained. He was great about that stuff. He might have been tired after a long day but he never said no. Thankfully, for him, this left-handed obsession lasted only one summer.
My dad died suddenly at the end of January so this is the first year I can remember where we weren't discussing spring training or the upcoming Yankee season. He was a life long Yankee fan and watched all the games with great enthusiasm. He would often call me in Boston with the highlights of some afternoon game he had just watched. A funny thing he did was call the players by their first names. He'd say things like, 'Mariano was just terrific' or 'Derek got two hits' or 'Andy pitched a great game'. It was like all his favorite players were members of our extended family so he called them by their first name. It was very sweet.
We had the chance in the last few years to go to some games together. Twice I met up with him and his buddies from the Senior Center to see the Yanks play the Sox at Fenway. Me and thirty or forty old guys sitting in the right field grandstand. It was great. We also went down to Yankee stadium twice. Once Mike Mussina out-pitched Dontrelle Willis and the Marlins for a 1-0 win and in the final season of the old Yankee Stadium we witnessed a Nick Swisher walk-off home run for another win. Those memories would have stayed with me anyway, but now they are especially significant.
Baseball and sons and fathers has become a bit of a cliché over the years (with all the teary sentimental movies it's no wonder), but like most cliché's there's a lot of truth to it. When my mom died suddenly in September 1999, we took solace in watching the Yanks win the World Series. Those games gave us a temporary respite from our collective grief; a brief diversion from our own pain. It brought us closer together and in the years that followed it kept us close. It remained a great comfort to us both.
It's been hard getting interested in baseball this season. I miss my dad.
11/3
The expression 'The best things in life are free' seems silly until you ride the Staten Island Ferry at night.
10/27
My local NPR station had yet another show about the Tea Party this morning. An hour wasted discussing the various angry, crazy, racist, homophobic nitwits that make up what they think is a new wave of Angry Americans. What they don't seem to do is ever look more deeply and question the coded rhetoric of these various people. That the vast majority of them are white and are 'angry' at our black president never comes up. That many of them continue to spout hideous racist sentiments about minorities or immigrants is never questioned, that often what they say is factually incorrect or blatant lies is never challenged. If someone says it, then it must be true. That much of this 'anger' from 'regular people' is, in fact, funded by wealthy Americans (the Koch brothers among others) and foreigners looking to increase their political influence by having other people do their bidding for them is conveniently ignored.
What NPR needs to do is to stop patting themselves on the back with one hand and asking for 'listener support' with the other and get back to being a news organization. There are far too many opinion pieces and columnists and editorials and news analysts and not nearly enough actual reporting. What people need are facts, not another windbag's opinion or analysis about something they can't be bothered to get out of the office and report about.
When NPR's Juan Williams was fired last week there was an uproar about this 'respected journalist' being fired for expressing his opinion. What wasn't discussed was that Mr Williams hasn't been a serious journalist for years, he's an analyst. He simply comes on the air and talks. He's one of the increasing number of people who make a (very good) living giving their opinion on various news outlets. Everybody's got an opinion, even if they haven't done any fact finding. We're a nation of pundits. You know the expression, 'Everyone's got an opinion...' Well, in my opinion (ha ha ha) if Juan Williams was a real journalist, he wouldn't been playing the clown in Bill O'Reilly's circus. Anyone with a level of self respect wouldn't do 'Ol Bill's bidding. He'd also be embarrassed to play the fool on the same network that brings us O'Reilly, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity.
But maybe I'm the fool, because the day after Williams got fired he signed a contract with Fox News for 2 million dollars. So no more pity or outrage for Juan Williams (and no more discussion of racism), because he got what he wanted. A fat check and a chance to play the fool on a regular basis.
P.S. Where was the outrage recently when a gubernatorial candidate in Rhode Island said President Obama "Can take his endorsement and really shove it"? If a candidate had told President Bush to "really shove it" there would have been tons of outrage for being disrespectful towards the sitting president. But with president Obama, the media is noticeably silent; more concerned about Juan '2 Million' Williams.
7/25
My cd player has been broken for weeks so while it's getting repaired I've been listening to my large, if old, vinyl lp collection. Specifically records by local Boston bands from the 80's.
And one thing I couldn't help but notice was that even though they may have been crudely recorded or lack technical expertise, they all rocked like crazy. Bands like the Neats, Lyres, Del Fuegos and Scruffy the Cat played with a passion I often find lacking in younger, hip, bands of today. These bands may not have been the greatest musicians, but they more than made up for it in sheer exuberance. A combination of punk's do it yourself attitude mixed with a garage rock aesthetic, it's loud, fast, often sloppy, but with an urgency that rings true. It sounds like rock and roll.
Compared to some popular bands of today it feels like night and day. Whereas a lot of new bands have greater technical and recording chops, they seem to have drifted away from anything resembling rock and roll. As if musicians get their training now studying music theory, philosophy or poetry and then turn around and write maudlin songs based on entries in their 'journals'. It sounds so precious and cloying that I want to scream. Someone gave me a recording by Jack Johnson a few years ago and all I could think of was a guy strumming a guitar in a college coffee house trying to get laid with songs based on his bad poems. It was so self consciously sensitive (and awful) that it was a cliché.
Grizzly Bear is another band that makes me want to throw myself out a window. Given the cd Veckatimest (say what?) as a gift, I tried listening to it a bunch of times and could never get through the entire thing. At around 30 minutes into it I would shut it off so my screaming wouldn't disturb the neighbors. It was awful. Like a bad version of the Beach Boys meet choral music. I don't know what it is but it's not rock and roll. It couldn't be any more pretentious.
The thing that bothers me about this music is that it feels so disconnected from the origins of what created rock and roll. If you listen to it you hear nothing resembling blues or country or rhythm and blues, or rockabilly or soul or swing or funk or surf music or punk or anything. It doesn't make you want to dance or yell or have sex or cry or get into a fight or feel you're alive. There is no emotional component (aside from naval gazing self pity) so for me, it doesn't resonate in the least. It's soulless, like a lot of postmodern art. Something created in an insular environment that has little or no connection to everyday experience. It's a completely interior monologue. Technically proficient and theoretically based, it tries to be perfect but it lacks the emotion necessary to make it real. It's so perfect it's lifeless.
5/31
I had the chance to see Gene Smith's 'Jazz Loft Project' show a few weeks back and I must say I keep returning to it in my mind. It's the kind of photography that was dismissed out of hand in graduate school (it's black and white, old and thoroughly NOT postmodern), but the kind of work that has inspired me since I picked up a camera.
It's an incredible, if somewhat obsessive (as only Gene Smith can be), document of the loft building in NYC where Smith lived in from 1957-1965. He not only photographed the life within the building, (where musicians came to jam after gigs and parties lasted all night) but what he saw on the street as he looked out his windows. And from the enormous output, Smith photographed EVERYTHING.
1,447 rolls of film and about 40,000 pictures comprise this document, but perhaps the most interesting part of it had nothing to do with actual photographs. Smith also managed to wire the building for sound and record (via 1,740 reel to reel tapes) everything that took place within it. Included in this incredible collection is Thelonious Monk rehearsing for his legendary appearances at Lincoln Center and other various jam sessions, but also lots of things he taped off of the radio (plays, news programs, a World Series baseball game).
The exhibit displays the photographs and recordings in equal measure, which allows the viewer to completely immerse themselves in Smith's world. You get the chance to look at photographs and then listen to numerous recordings. The Monk rehearsals are breathtaking. There are also films of Smith discussing his work and various musicians talking about their experiences in the loft building during this time. It's an incredible document of a time and place that no longer exists; one that would have been lost if not for Smith's obsessive recording of everything around him.
Overall, it's one of the best shows I've seen in years and once again confirms Gene Smith's place as one of the most important documentarians in the history of photography.
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