Altamont

In contrast to December 7 1941—the date “which will live in infamy,” the day the Japanese navy attacked the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii—which shall be commemorated today, the date of December 6 1969, the day of the Altamont Speedway Free Festival, went unacknowledged yesterday by the American mass media. Given that yesterday marked that notorious event’s 40th anniversary, it is strange (hypocritical?) there was no mention of it, given the deluge of Woodstock 40th anniversary commemorations and product tie-ins that occurred this year. The only acknowledgements of the Altamont concert of which I’m aware are last week’s issue by Criterion of the Maysles’ Brothers documentary Gimme Shelter (1970) on Blu-ray Disc, and the box set released last month revisiting the Rolling Stones’ late 1969 U. S. tour, Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out! The Rolling Stones In Concert—40th Anniversary Deluxe Box Set (cover pictured). Otherwise, the event has gone unremarked so far as I know.

The infamous Altamont Speedway Free Festival was held on Saturday, December 6 1969 at the Altamont Speedway in northern California. Headlined by The Rolling Stones, the concert also featured Santana, Jefferson Airplane, The Flying Burrito Brothers, and Crosby, Stills and Nash. Ironically, The Grateful Dead, which helped organize the event and were supposed to play, declined the opportunity to perform once the violence got out of hand. Since there was no commemoration of Altamont in the media over the weekend, I’ve excerpted below my and Becky’s discussion of the event, taken from our co-authored book, Donald Cammell: A Life on the Wild Side (FAB Press, 2006). Our discussion below is taken from the word file we submitted for publication, and therefore may not precisely match the version that was printed in our book. Our remarks about Altamont occur in the context of the U. S. release of Performance, starring Mick Jagger, in August 1970.

More than half a year had passed since The Rolling Stones’ tour had culminated sensationally at Altamont on 6 December 1969, but the notoriety of that violent event was still resonating in the media. The Maysles Brothers’ documentary of the last ten days of that tour, Gimme Shelter, was not released until 6 December 1970. The Criterion Collection DVD of Gimme Shelter, released in 2000, included outtakes; among them, filmed backstage at Madison Square Garden on 27 or 28 November 1969, is footage of Tina Turner and Mick Jagger looking at what possibly is an issue of Rolling Stone. Tina Turner is struck by a picture of Mick Jagger in his Harry Flowers guise, telling Mick she’s definitely going to have to see the movie when it comes out. Someone off-camera asks, “What’s the name of the movie?” It would become clear in less than a year that Performance wasn’t just another “movie.”

We are told that in later years, although Donald had helped the Maysles Brothers with Gimme Shelter, he lamented his contribution was traduced by them. The violence that occurred during the concert at Altamont Speedway transformed Gimme Shelter from a mere concert film into something much different. The event actualized—Donald’s term—an aspect of Mick Jagger’s ambiguous persona that Performance didn’t so much create as reveal. Donald later claimed to have done some editing on Gimme Shelter, and while the late Charlotte Zwerin was most certainly a superb film editor, we have no reason to doubt Donald’s claim. Whether Donald performed actual, “hands on,” editing of the film, or was consulted in order to suggest a cutting strategy, we cannot say. Some unused footage was shot in London in early 1970, but we have not been able to determine, how, or in what way Donald participated in that shooting, if he did at all. He was still in London in January and February 1970; the re-edit of Performance had not yet begun. He may not have become involved until later that year, after he finished the re-edit of Performance around the first of May. Donald is given thanks in the credit scroll at the end of the film, though he apparently felt his contribution deserved more than such a perfunctory acknowledgement. Subsequently, although Myriam Gibril indicates Donald remained friends with the Maysles and would try to hook up with them whenever he was in New York, privately his estimation of their friendship had changed. Perhaps he should have known better: don’t get your personal relations mixed up in business.

Pauline Kael attacked Gimme Shelter in a notorious review published in The New Yorker. The Maysles wrote a response, but at the time The New Yorker did not publish letters, so their letter remained unseen by the general public until 1998. The Maysles’ letter refers to the “ambiguous nature of the Stones’ appeal” and the “complexity…of Jagger’s double self…his insolent appeal and the fury it can and in fact does provoke.”* Yet these insights were as much Donald’s as the Maysles’. They are simply reading in Gimme Shelter what already had been revealed in Performance, which had preceded Gimme Shelter in the movie theaters by four months (and was in the can over a year before Altamont). Donald had long recognized the ambiguous allure of Mick Jagger, believing Mick Jagger to be infinitely more interesting—and more dangerous—as a rock icon than, say, Elvis Presley, who dared to do nothing provocative with his masculinity. Indeed, Donald thought Jagger was much more daring in the deliberately ambiguous display of his sexuality. Of course, Donald had great respect for Brian Jones also, and most certainly Mick had taken a few lessons from Brian Jones about the self as art. “[Mick’s] dilemma is that he knows what he’s into.” Donald said. “He knows about the violence. This movie [Performance] was finished before Altamont, and Altamont actualized it.”

*The Maysles’ letter was eventually published in Kevin Macdonald and Mark Cousins, Eds., Imagining Reality, p. 394.

The Mono Box

Although I wouldn’t consider myself a “hard core” fan (the designation suggests a degree of irrational obsession), out of curiosity I nonetheless was compelled to purchase the recently issued, and unfortunately rather expensive, Beatles box set, The Beatles in Mono. The box contains the first 10 albums in remastered (as opposed to remixed) mono—Yellow Submarine, Abbey Road, and Let It Be were recorded in stereo—as well as a double album of singles and EPs collectively referred to as “Mono Masters.” I happen to agree with those reviewers—meaning the reviewers I’ve happened to have read—that these remastered albums sound fresher and cleaner than any previous issues of the Beatles on CD, and exhibit a heretofore unrealized dynamic range (on CD). Most of these same reviewers agree that the mono versions of the albums collected here are the best the Beatles have sounded on CD, and I have no reason to dispute that assertion—or any interest to dispute it, for that matter. As is quite well known, the stereo mixes were often done days, sometimes weeks after the initial mono mix, and could include different takes by the engineers doing the overdubs. It is also well known that the Beatles’ U.S. recordings evolved from the British releases, revealing the rather banal insight that the two countries, at least for the greater part of the decade of the 1960s, approached rock ‘n’ roll recording quite differently. As Dave Marsh observes in his excellent 2007 book, The Beatles’ Second Album, “In almost all cases, the process by which the 14 songs that were standard on the UK albums were whittled down to the US standard of 12 (or fewer) was haphazardly done by people with no ear whatsoever for what might have been a group’s musical breakthroughs or signature performances” (p. 6).

Yet the bowdlerizations of the Beatles’ albums for U.S. release isn’t what primarily interests me. Most reviewers have suggested, implicitly or explicitly, that the virtue of The Beatles in Mono is that it both recovers and restores the band’s musical breakthroughs and signature performances (to use Marsh's formulation) for the digital era. It also reveals something else about the Beatles, something that tends to be ignored in order to extol the range of their genius. The fact that the Beatles were the greatest rock ‘n’ roll band on the planet Earth from 1964-69 hardly needs to be restated yet again; rather, what needs to be said is that the effect of so-called “show business” on the Beatles was entirely salubrious. My point is best expressed by analogy, and I’ll quote here jazz critic and historian James Lincoln Collier writing on Duke Ellington:

Ellington thus was deeply enmeshed in the entertainment industry, and the symbiosis had a direct and dramatic effect on his career as a composer. Ellington admitted that he was more prone to look for good times than sit at the piano and write. “Without a deadline, baby, I can’t finish nothing,” he once said. . . . [W]ithout [song publisher Irving] Mills, Ellington would have recorded a lot less than he did. Mills needed tunes to publish and he needed to get the tunes he published recorded. Ellington was . . . eager to establish himself as a songwriter, because there was far more money in writing hit tunes than there was in leading a dance orchestra. The system was circular: it was not economical to go into the studio to cut one tune. You needed at least two to make up a recording, and in fact it was the usual practice to record four or even more at a session.

The consequence was that Ellington was forced to produce a steady freshet of new works. In 1926 and 1927, Ellington had only a hazy grasp of music theory. But, with his great, if untrained, musical intelligence, he began to work out his own methods of composition, in which he would enter the studio with scraps and pieces of music in hand, and develop something on the spot. . . . In sum, a great deal of Ellington’s music, including many of the treasures we revere today, was produced solely to meet the demands of the entertainment industry the Ellington orchestra was part of. . . . Ellington learned by doing; by 1940, when he was turning out some of the greatest works in jazz history . . . he was the undisputed master of the short jazz composition. And he had learned his craft because show business had forced him to do it. (Jazz: The American Theme Song, pp. 107-09)

Mutatis mutandis, what Collier observes about Duke Ellington is true of the Beatles and especially of the Lennon-McCartney songwriting team. Albums they made, but the Beatles métier was the single: the bulk of their best music, especially the early breakthrough singles, was made under the duress of what Collier above refers to as “show business” pressures. After 1966’s Revolver, when they turned their energies to more ambitious, album-oriented “conceptual” works such as Sgt. Pepper’s (and therefore freed of the pressures that drove their early career), despite the time and money they lavished upon them, they became musically less compelling and innovative. It is true that Sgt. Pepper’s, along with albums such as Magical Mystery Tour, have their defenders, but few rock critics would trade these records’ experimentalism and grandiosity for the musical breakthroughs found on Rubber Soul and Revolver, to name a couple of examples. Make no mistake: I love the sheer musical diversity of The Beatles (aka “The White Album”) and still cherish the copy of Abbey Road I purchased with a pocketful of quarters and a couple of half-dollars (my allowance) forty years ago last month. I'm not trying to diminish the artistry of these records (and even if I wanted to, I couldn't), but make the point that the musical achievement these albums represent did not simply emerge out of the Beatles' musical imagination, but were, as James Lincoln Collier observes of Duke Ellington, forced out of them by the entertainment industry of which they were a part. The Beatles in Mono allows us to map that development in their first sonic realizations.

That Ol’ Professor of Swing

I’m extremely happy to report the publication of Steven Beasley’s biography of Big Band leader Kay Kyser, titled Kay Kyser: The Ol’ Professor of Swing! America’s Forgotten Superstar (Richland Creek Publishing, 2009), which I finished reading this morning. Steve Beasley, who owns one of the largest collections of Kyser memorabilia in the world, has worked on this project for twenty years, and the result is clearly evident. The book—remarkably, the first published full-length biography written on the once immensely popular band leader—in addition to its many fascinating biographical details, is loaded with rare and unpublished photographs and interviews, sheet music and magazine covers, and the definitive Kyser discography. I congratulate Steve for his achievement and thank him for his important contribution to our understanding of America’s Swing Era of the 1930s and 40s. The biography was long overdue, but thanks to Steve’s efforts, that problem has now been redressed.

During the course of his career, from the late 1920s until his retirement in 1950, Kay Kyser and His Orchestra had 11 “Number 1” records and 35 “Top 10” hits. In addition, Kyser had a top-rated radio show for eleven years on NBC, featuring the Ol’ Professor of Swing along with his show, “Kay Kyser’s College of Musical Knowledge.” No band leader of the Swing Era has a more extensive filmography than Kay Kyser, who starred in seven feature films and had appearances in several others. He frequently outdrew the Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman orchestras in live appearances; ballroom attendance records set by the Kyser orchestra during the Swing Era have never been toppled. In short, Kay Kyser was one of the most and popular and beloved entertainers in America from the late 1930s to the late 1940s.

Wearing wire-rim glasses, a mortarboard and an academic gown, the Ol’ Professor of Swing (a stage persona probably inspired by the 1937 comedy Swing It, Professor, starring the obscure comedian Pinky Tomlin) had surrounded himself with equally eccentric personalities, such as “Ish Kabibble,” who sported bangs to his mid-forehead and had a dead-pan demeanor modeled on Buster Keaton, and great talent, including the top-notch arranger and composer George Duning (during the years 1927-1944). In the late 1930s RKO invited Kay Kyser to Hollywood, where it produced his and the band’s first film, That’s Right—You’re Wrong (1939), featuring Lucille Ball in an early, major supporting role. The success of that film lead to Kyser’s second film, the haunted house mystery You’ll Find Out (released Thanksgiving weekend 1940), starring Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and Peter Lorre, in their only film together. He would make three more films for RKO: Playmates (1941), My Favorite Spy (1942), produced by comedy legend Harold Lloyd, and Around the World (1943). Kyser also made features for Columbia and MGM. The viewing pleasure of these films now largely resides in their nostalgic value, as the films’ topical references and allusions, and the presence of a once hugely popular entertainer forgotten by all but a few today, makes them seem now to be woefully antiquated and déclassé. Although Kay Kyser died over twenty years ago, in 1985 at the age of 80, Kyser orchestra hits such as “Three Little Fishes,” “Who Wouldn’t Love You,” “Jingle, Jangle, Jingle,” and “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition” have remained durable in the decades since they were first recorded. Serendipitously, just last weekend, my wife Becky and I were doing some Christmas shopping at a local department store when we happened to hear over the store’s stereo system the Kyser orchestra’s fine recording, “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?” Happily, I can report that Kay Kyser's widow, Georgia Carroll, who appeared in several of the aforementioned feature films, celebrated a birthday recently; she has lived in Chapel Hill, North Carolina since she and Kay retired there in 1950.

The book’s back cover asks the question, “How could one who accomplished so much be forgotten today?” The answer, to which Beasley dedicates several chapters, is that in 1950 Kyser disappeared from show business “without so much as a word.” Recognizing that the Swing Era had ended after the end of World War II, and tired of show business, Kyser returned home to his beloved state of North Carolina and became a very active statesman, helping bring Public TV to the state and raising millions of dollars for medical services for returning war veterans. He also became a religious leader later in life. A very private man with many contradictions, Beasley explores Kyser’s post-celebrity life in fascinating detail. Because Kyser retired from public life permanently in 1950, his career and accomplishments have gone largely unnoticed by the so-called “Baby Boom Generation,” by far the vast majority of which were born after Kyser had quietly retired, explaining why he is so rarely heard of today.

Almost twenty years ago, Image Entertainment issued on laser disc the films Kay Kyser made for RKO; these titles were also issued on VHS at the same time, and are now long OOP, although they occasionally show up for sale on eBay. These films, as well as the other films starring Kyser made in the 40s, also screen on Turner Classic Movies now and then. Recently, Warner Home Video issued on DVD You’ll Find Out as part of its Karloff & Lugosi Horror Classics set, which also included The Walking Dead, Frankenstein 1970, and Zombies on Broadway (You’ll Find Out, tellingly, has no audio commentary, as do two of the three other films).

Again, I must congratulate Steven for his outstanding accomplishment, and commend his tenacity. I should mention that he has, for years, also been working on a documentary film on Kyser, and hopefully the publication of this biography will help him realize that project as well. I spent a few pleasant and enjoyable hours with Steven a few years ago while in Los Angeles, when he shared with me some rare footage from the documentary, and I wish him the best of luck with that important project. Additional information on the book can be found at kaykyserbook.com, and I’ll also direct readers to the Kyser website Steven maintains, kaykyser.net. He can also be found at www.myspace.com/officialkaykyser.

The Wikipedia page for Kay Kyser can be found here, which contains several links to additional sources. C'mon chillen, yess'dance!

Going For Baroque

“Baroque pop,” commonly understood to refer to any ornate, or heavily arranged, pop song, seems to me to be a subgenre of what is sometimes referred to as “Art Songs,” meaning highly ambitious pop songs. Note that I say pop songs, not folk songs or rock songs. In contrast to folk music, the primary mode of which is ritualistic and participatory, that is, for singing and dancing, Art Songs are non-participatory, that is, they are primarily designed for consumption, as commodities to be purchased within the marketplace, not for singing and dancing (see Chris Cutler, “What Is Popular Music?,” in File Under Popular, Autonomedia, 1993, pp. 12-13). It is therefore unlikely, although not impossible, for a folk singer/songwriter (or a rock singer/songwriter for that matter) to find his or her songs referred to as “Art Songs,” a designation generally reserved for pop-based ones. Cutler explains the reason for this by claiming that the Art Song is always “wholly conscious of itself as an aesthetic exchange” (p. 12). The intrinsic aesthetic interest in the art song is the pop song form itself. Baroque pop emerged during the 1966-67 period, and its commercial zenith was probably most fully realized in albums such as the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), The Moody Blues’ Days of Future Passed (1967), and in Love’s Forever Changes (1967).

Ten Baroque Pop Classics, 1966 – 67
The Association – Requiem For The Masses
The Beach Boys (with Van Dyke Parks) – Heroes and Villains
The Beatles – Eleanor Rigby
The Electric Prunes (with David Axelrod) – Kyrie Eleison
The Left Banke – Walk Away Renee
The Merry-Go-Round – You’re A Very Lovely Woman
The Moody Blues – Nights in White Satin
Procol Harum – A Whiter Shader of Pale
Love - Old Man
Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood – Some Velvet Morning

A Good Beginning To The Week

According to James R. Kincaid, when discussing the issue of laughter, “some degree of oversimplification is inevitable.” At the core of the debate about laughter is whether laughter is incompatible with sympathy or geniality, that is, with empathy. Kincaid identifies two camps, the “dark-laughter” theorists, deriving from Thomas Hobbes, and the “genial-laughter” theorists, deriving from Jean Paul Richter. As I understand it, at the heart of the debate is whether laughter is ever anything but disguised hostility and aggression. Laughter may be a consequence of so-called “civilized” behavior, in which one’s real attitudes and beliefs must constantly be disguised and hidden.

In one of the world’s great books, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (1905), Freud argues that the technique of the joke is similar to that of the “dream-work”: the latent content of the joke, like the latent content of the dream, is disguised through the operations of condensation, displacement, and so on. “Wit,” a means of producing laughter, originates in aggressive or “obscene” tendencies, but the aggressive (or obscene) content is activated in the unconscious but disguised by the joke-work so that the psychic energy aroused can be safely relieved. A successful joke results in what Freud describes as “the economy of psychic expenditure” - the psychic energy required to repress the dangerous or obscene content is released as laughter, which (presumably) nullifies the actual threat posed by the obscene material (e.g., the humor of scatological jokes). The so-called “pleasure” of a joke lies in the psychic release called laughter.

But in his essay “Humour” (1928), Freud says humor is also a way of dealing with pain. As an example, he uses a prisoner on the way to the gallows, who remarks, “Well, this is a good beginning to the week.” The prisoner’s humorous comment is a way of denying his existential pain, the ego declaring that it is invulnerable and indomitable. However, and more importantly, for the listener the humor in the condemned prisoner’s remark is derived from what Freud calls the “economized expenditure of affect,” by which he means that the energies associated with any strong emotion such as pity are aroused but then shown to be unnecessary. As a consequence, they are, happily, available for laughter instead.

Perhaps Smokey Robinson & The Miracles’ “The Tears Of A Clown” is good example of the “economized expenditure of affect”:

People say I’m the life of the party
Because I tell a joke or two
Although I might be laughing loud and hearty
Deep inside I’m blue
So take a good look at my face
You’ll see my smile looks out of place
If you look closer, it’s easy to trace
The tracks of my tears

By saying that his inner heartbreak is disguised by laughter, as listeners our empathy is aroused but shown to be unnecessary. That is, despite his situation, if the singer is able to muster a laugh, then our pity is not required. In the face of his self-described clownish behavior, we can repress the need for empathy. The song does not arouse laughter as such, but reveals the operation of the joke-work nonetheless.

Required Listening:
The Beau Brummels - Laugh, Laugh
Bob Dylan - It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry
The Guess Who - Laughing
Charles Jolly - The Laughing Policeman
Napoleon XIV - They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!
Randy Newman - Laughing Boy
The Residents - Laughing Song
Neil Sedaka - Laughter in the Rain
The Teardrop Explodes - Ha-ha I’m Drowning
Mary Wells - Laughing Boy

Free Range

Legend has it that the first Thanksgiving was celebrated by the Pilgrims and took place at Plymouth Plantation in 1621. Americans memorialize the Pilgrims’ deaths as sacrifices made on behalf of the nation, but they, the Pilgrims, could not have understood their deaths as such--the nation didn’t exist for another hundred-and-fifty years. Thus the values honored during Thanksgiving need not have been fully understood by the Pilgrims, those who sacrificed for the American nation. The living can, and do, speak for the dead, expressing for them their aspirations and desires.

Perhaps because the wild turkey is native to North America, roast turkey has graced the American table most commonly for Thanksgiving dinner, and has done so since before Abraham Lincoln nationalized the holiday in 1863. According to a recent statistic, 270 million turkeys were raised in the United States in 2006, representing roughly five billion pounds of turkey meat valued at around $8 billion. A ridiculous-looking creature, here where I live in Kearney, a polygamous male with four or five hens has spent the past few winters, beginning in early November, within the city limits, roaming through people’s yards, holding up in a wooded area near the baseball park. Because they are dwelling within the city limits, they cannot be hunted--pretty smart on their part. Becky and I have had them in our back yard on several occasions, scaring the daylights out of our outdoor-dwelling cats. We therefore consider those turkeys part of our neighbor family, but feel no guilt that one of their species will grace our table tomorrow for Thanksgiving dinner, to be celebrated with family and good friends.

Because it is the most common main dish, Thanksgiving is often colloquially called “turkey day.” In celebration of the turkey, and the bird in general (often seen as a figure of transcendence, and of resilience), I’ve compiled the following list of bird songs in honor of the North American turkey, so much a part of American identity.

Bird Songs (Bird Is The Word):
The Beatles - Blackbird
Jack Blanchard & Misty Morgan - Tennessee Bird Walk
Pat Boone - When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano
Jimmy Buffett - Strange Bird
Bobby Day - Rockin’ Robin
“Little” Jimmy Dickens - May the Bird of Paradise Fly Up Your Nose
The Grateful Dead - Bird Song
The Holy Modal Rounders - If You Want To Be A Bird

It’s A Beautiful Day - White Bird
B. B. King - Hummingbird
Lynyrd Skynyrd - Free Bird
Bob Marley - Three Little Birds
Anne Murray - Snowbird
Patti Page - Mockin’ Bird Hill
Carly Simon and James Taylor - Mockingbird
The Trashmen - Surfin’ Bird (Bird is the Word)
XTC - My Bird Performs