Golden Days Of Yore

Music critics have observed, correctly I think, that the most successful pop songs have always been sentimental. For an illustration of this insight, one need look no further than the Beatles. As Simon Frith observed (“Towards An Aesthetic of Popular Music”):

Twentieth-century popular music has, on the whole, been a nostalgic form. The Beatles, for example, made nostalgic music from the start, which is why they were so popular. Even on hearing a Beatles song for the first time there was a sense of the memories to come, a feeling that this could not last but that it was surely going to be pleasant to remember.

I thought of Frith’s insight while running a few last minute errands on this Christmas Eve, during which a local radio station played Frank Sinatra’s rendition of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.” Like many of the Christmas songs that are now standards, “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” dates from the World War II years, first sung not by Sinatra but by Judy Garland in the musical Meet Me In St. Louis (1944), in which she sings the song to her little sister, played by child actress Margaret O’Brien (see it here), during a scene set on—what else?—Christmas Eve. Although filmed during the war, in 1944, Meet Me In St. Louis is set in a nostalgic and sentimentalized past, late in 1903 just a few months prior to the opening of the Saint Louis World’s Fair—more properly the Louisiana Purchase Exposition—in April 1904. The title of the film is an allusion to a popular song recorded in 1904 in order to popularize the Saint Louis World’s Fair, “Meet Me in St. Louis, Louis,” or, in its truncated form, simply “Meet Me in St. Louis.” Although the Exposition was dedicated to scientific progress—mathematician Henri Poincaré gave a lecture at the Exposition, and various “primitive” cultures were on exhibition in order to emphasize the virtues of industrial civilization—40 years later the Exposition was used as an illustration a simpler, and better, America. Such is the strange distortion of history characteristic of the sentimental impulse.

Perhaps given the long delays and difficulty of air travel this holiday season, pre-9/11/01 America, although not a decade past, is now considered nostalgic. No doubt it shall be someday.

Once again as in olden days, happy golden days of yore,

Faithful friends who were near to us, will be near to us once more

Someday soon we all will be together, if the Fates allow,

Until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow

So have yourself a merry little Christmas now

Things We Do On Grass

“The green grass grows all around” is the title of a well-known children’s song, and in fact as a declarative utterance the lyric is quite true, as some form of grass is known all around the world, to all human cultures. For centuries certain grasses, when cut and dried and called “straw,” have been mixed with adobe to form bricks. Hence grasses, while a major source of food around the world, have many other uses, such as feeding animals—it has been estimated that grasses have been grown as food for domesticated animals for close to 10,000 years—and, of course, for lawns. In early twentieth-century jazz culture, a "joint" (a marijuana cigarette) was referred to as a “viper.” I cannot say precisely when, but at some point marijuana, or “Mary Jane,” become known as “grass,” which is how I remember it being called in the 60s. But marijuana was also referred to as “weed” as well, so marijuana, a plant which contains a pleasure-inducing drug, seems to elude conventional nomenclature. It is known as both “grass” and “weed.”

While grass is the name for marijuana (cannabis sativa or cannabis indica) in the drug culture, grass is also the plant used for lawns, that most coveted of American possessions, a sign of invidious distinction. In Arthur Miller’s masterful Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman laments he has no lawn, for in the crowded neighborhood where he lives, there isn’t enough sunlight for things to grow. Grass needs sunlight like rivers need rain. Willy’s desire to have a green lawn, and to raise a garden, isn’t simply a desire to belong to the middle class, but also expresses a desire to return to an idealized past (although for Willy that past is fictive, but he’s convinced himself otherwise). Grass is used in this way, as a metaphor for home but also a highly idealized past, in the song, “Green, Green Grass of Home,” a hit for Tom Jones in the mid-60s. The singer sees his childhood home, which he has not seen for a very long time. His parents, as well as his beloved, Mary, greet him as he steps from the train—they have come to meet him. He sees again the landscape of his childhood, including the old oak tree that he once played on. It is “good to touch the green, green grass of home.” But the green grass of home is only a dream: he has not returned home, but awakens in prison. He sees the four drab walls surrounding him and realizes that he was only dreaming. In fact, he is on so-called “Death Row,” and it is the day of his execution. His dream has foreshadowed his fate: he shall return home, but only to be buried. “Yes, they’ll all come to see me in the shade of that old oak tree, as they lay me ‘neath the green, green grass of home.” Green lawns also cover the dead. To quote Emily Dickinson, “Safe in their alabaster chambers, / Untouched by morning and untouched by noon, / Sleep the meek members of the resurrection, / Rafter of satin, and roof of stone.”

Green Grass And High Times:

Animal Collective – Grass
The Friends of Distinction – Grazin’ in the Grass
George Jones – When the Grass Grows Over Me
Tom Jones – Green, Green Grass of Home
Gary Lewis and the Playboys – Green Grass
Tim McGraw – Where the Green Grass Grows
The Outlaws – Green Grass And High Tides
The Pretty Things – Grass
Steppenwolf – Don’t Step on the Grass, Sam
XTC – Grass

ELVIS In March

According to ElvisNews.com, John Carpenter’s 1979 Emmy-nominated biopic, Elvis, with Kurt Russell playing Elvis Presley, is scheduled for release on DVD on March 2, 2010. The long-awaited release of the film on DVD coincides with the 75th anniversary of Elvis’s birth on January 8th. The film represents the first collaboration of Kurt Russell and John Carpenter, and earned Russell a Golden Globe nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor. Serendipitously, as a child actor, Kurt Russell had a small role in Elvis’s It Happened at the World’s Fair (1963), filmed late in 1962. My own memory of John Carpenter's Elvis is imperfect, although I remember liking it. The film appeared on American television in the years before I owned a VCR, and I’ve never had the opportunity to see it in the years since.

From the press release:

Timed closely to coincide with the 75th anniversary of Elvis Presley’s birth, Shout! Factory, in association with Dick Clark Productions, present Elvis on DVD for the first time March 2, 2010. This collectible DVD features the main presentation of the movie restored from the original film elements as it was meant to be seen, as well as an array of bonus features including: “Bringing A Legend To Life,” a featurette with archival interviews of Kurt Russell and John Carpenter (1979); commentary by “The Voice Of Elvis,” Ronnie McDowell, and author Edie Hand; rare clips and captivating photo gallery. Even 33 years after his passing, Presley continues to burn a powerful image of rock stardom and still conquers new legions of fans through his indelible mark in worldwide pop culture. Available for the first time in the home entertainment marketplace, this long-awaited DVD debut of the film Elvis is priced to own at $19.97. Directed by John Carpenter, the biopic of Elvis stars Kurt Russell and features the [70s] country music hitmaker Ronnie McDowell re-creating Presley’s signature vocals. Tracing Presley's life from his impoverished childhood to his meteoric rise to stardom to his triumphant return to Las Vegas, this film boasts an all-star ensemble including Academy Award® winner Shelley Winters (A Place In The Sun) as Elvis' mother Gladys; Season Hubley (All My Children) as his wife Priscilla; Kurt Russell’s real-life father Bing Russell (The Magnificent Seven) as Elvis’s father Vernon Presley; Pat Hingle (Batman) as Colonel Tom Parker; Robert Gray (Murder She Wrote) as Red West; Golden Globe nominee Joe Mantegna (Searching for Bobby Fischer) as Memphis mafia member Joe Esposito; and Golden Globe nominee Ed Begley Jr. (St. Elsewhere) as D.J. Fontana.

IN-DEPTH DVD SPECIAL FEATURES

• “Bringing A Legend To Life” Featurette With Archival Interviews Of Kurt Russell And John Carpenter (1979)
• Commentary By “The Voice Of Elvis” Ronnie McDowell And Author Edie Hand
• Rare Clips From American Bandstand
• Photo Gallery

Jennifer Jones, 1919-2009

Hollywood actress Jennifer Jones (born Phylis Lee Isley), who won an Academy Award for her performance as saint-to-be Bernadette in The Song of Bernadette (1943), died today at her Malibu home at the age of 90. The accomplished actress was married to two famously self-made men, motion picture producer David O. Selznick, who died in 1965, and millionaire industrialist Norton Simon, who died in 1993. Her first marriage, to actor Robert Walker, ended in divorce in 1945; she married David O. Selznick shortly after the divorce was final. Her final screen appearance was 35 years ago, in the big-budget disaster film The Towering Inferno (1974), but despite a successful Hollywood career in which she won the award for Best Actress and garnered several additional Academy Award nominations for her exceptional acting, she is notorious for having starred in the Sixties film produced by American International Pictures (AIP), Angel, Angel Down We Go (1969), subsequently re-released and re-titled Cult of the Damned.

In writer-director Robert Thom’s Sixties oddity, Jones, then at or near 50 years old and in her penultimate film performance, portrayed the icy, abusive mother of a painfully insecure daughter played by folk singer Holly Near. In the course of the film, Jones delivered perhaps one of the most oft-quoted lines in all of trash cinema, “I’ve made thirty stag films and I never faked an orgasm.” Yet despite its widespread reputation as a trash cinema classic, Angel, Angel Down We Go is not a total waste of time despite the efforts of some to transform it into camp, and is perhaps best described as a low-brow Teorema (1968), although Joseph Losey’s Boom! (with a screenplay by Tennessee Williams) was released earlier the same year, and has a number of contingent connections as well. I cannot say whether Robert Thom was directly influenced by Pier Paolo Pasolini’s controversial film, Teorema, which, according to the IMDB, premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September 1968, but Angel, Angel Down We Go—this again according to the IMDB—opened in New York almost a year after, in August 1969. In Pasolini’s earlier and overtly allegorical film, a strange visitor, played by Terence Stamp, arrives at the household of a wealthy family and sexually seduces all of them—the maid, the son, the mother (played by Silvana Mangano), the daughter, and eventually the father. The family members all seem to have something close to a transcendent experience as a result of their intimate experiences with the charismatic young man, but soon after his final seduction, he leaves, and each member of the family (except for the maid, a peasant woman) undergoes an emotional breakdown, presumably because they are selfish, self-indulgent, and coldly materialistic (except for the good maid—salt of the earth) bourgeoisie.

Produced by Jerome F. Katzman, son of the legendary exploitation film producer Sam Katzman, Angel, Angel Down We Go starred Jones (but why not Thom’s wife, actress Millie Perkins?), Jordan Christopher, Roddy McDowall, Holly Near, Lou Rawls, and Charles Aidman. The Terence Stamp role is played by Jordan Christopher (playing “Bogart Peter Stuyvesant”) who, while not exactly a dead ringer for Jim Morrison, is close enough in appearance to the Lizard King that the resemblance is hard to miss (and just so connection can’t be missed, he’s the leader of a rock band). The band plays a slew of songs by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, including Angel, Angel Down We Go, “Mother Lover,” “Hey, Hey, Hey,” “The Fat Song,” and “Hi Ho,” and has been considered by some as a sort of companion piece to AIP’s earlier Wild in the Streets (1968), about a pop star becoming President of the United States, which was also written by Thom. (According to Louis Black, Renata Adler and Vincent Canby wrote in the New York Times, “Wild in the Streets is a kind of instant classic, a revved up La Chinoise or Privilege for the drive-ins in summertime.”)

Hence my belief that Angel, Angel Down We Go, which like Wild in the Streets also features a pop star as demigod, should be considered the Teorema of the drive-in set. After insinuating himself into the Steele household, Stuyvesant first seduces the plump neurotic debutante daughter, Tara (Holly Near), then the (neurotic) mother, Astrid (Jones), and finally the ineffectual father (Charles Aidman), with whom he is shown taking a shower - daring stuff for AIP in 1969. Thom seemed to wish to expose the ideological bankruptcy of Tara's materialistic parents, revealing their utter failure to be beneficent, nurturing parents as well as positive role models, in effect encouraging their hapless daughter to seek acceptance from a self-absorbed nihilist such as Bogart Peter Stuyvesant (“Bogie”). Thus, like other films of the 1960s such as The Chase (1966), it explores with a cynical eye the ideological exhaustion of that most cherished of American institutions, the American family. If you go over here, you can find a reasonably accurate transcription of the film’s action and dialogue, along with a rather interesting speculation about the way the film interacts with Gone With the Wind (1939), produced by Jones’ once husband, David O. Selznick (the Holly Near character is named Tara, after the name of the plantation owned by Scarlett O’Hara’s father).

Rather than disparage her participation, I have always considered Jennifer Jones’ appearance in the film as both bold and audacious, a “risk” that someone in her position could, and in fact, was ideally suited, to take. (She certainly did not need to work.) Although she gave up acting decades ago, the death of Jennifer Jones reminds us of the ever-receding cultural distance of Old Hollywood, as well as that elusive quality that made her a star, glamor.

Imagining Disaster

Recent releases such as WALL-E (2008), Terminator Salvation (2009), and 9 (2009) reveal that the imagination of disaster is a robust motion picture genre, as popular now as it was during the decades of the Cold War. Stories about the catastrophic end of civilization are ancient, of course. I was about to say that animated films such as Pixar’s WALL-E and the Tim Burton-(co)produced 9 reveal that post-apocalyptic stories are now being made for kids, but it occurred to me that outside of a few exceptions, they always have been. When I was a kid, books such as Robert A. Heinlein’s Farnham’s Freehold (1964) transformed nuclear disaster into a big, exciting adventure story, in effect allaying any fears I might have about a nuclear war. (I was one of those kids you have seen in those old civil defense films sliding off his desk chair onto the floor and covering his head with his hands, playing “duck and cover.”) No doubt this is what Susan Sontag meant, in her 1965 essay “The Imagination of Disaster,“ that fantasy serves to “normalize what is psychologically unbearable, thereby inuring us to it.” She said science fiction disaster films are a kind of “collective nightmare” that “reflect world-wide anxieties” but also “serve to allay them. They inculcate a strange apathy concerning the processes of radiation, contamination, and destruction that I for one find haunting and depressing. The naïve level of the films neatly tempers the sense of otherness, of alienness, with the grossly familiar.” They are, finally, “in complicity with the abhorrent.”

While I think the vast majority of Sontag’s points are still valid, she wrote the essay 45 years ago, a couple of years after the so-called “Cuban Missile Crisis” (October 1962) and decades before 9-11. What the events of that latter event reveal is the relationship between a catastrophic historical event and the subsequent instability of the so-called “metaphysical realm,” the way one’s “world view” is supported and enabled by one’s daily existence. Put in another way, the world looks vastly different depending on which way the gun is pointed. As long as the gun is pointed in the right direction, one’s life is both content and perhaps even banal - “routine.” But once the gun is pointed in the wrong direction, though, the beauty and stability of the world is no longer assured, and complacency is impossible. Do the post-apocalyptic films released since 9-11 reflect this fear? As David Byrne sings in “Life During Wartime,”

This ain’t no party
This ain’t no disco
This ain’t no fooling around

13 Songs About (Mostly Nuclear) Apocalypse:
Black Sabbath – Electric Funeral
The Clash – London Calling
Bob Dylan – A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall
Donald Fagen – New Frontier
Jimi Hendrix – 1983... (A Merman I Should Turn to Be)
Jefferson Airplane – Wooden Ships
King Crimson – Epitaph (including "March For No Reason" and "Tomorrow and Tomorrow")
Barry McGuire – Eve of Destruction
Men At Work – It’s A Mistake
Nena – 99 Luftballons
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark – Enola Gay
Rush – Distant Early Warning
Talking Heads – Life During Wartime

White Christmas

I’ve hardly done an exhaustive study, but I suspect that virtually every major popular singer or band has made a Christmas album, or at the very least recorded a Christmas song. I’m reasonably sure, though, that next to Bing Crosby’s rendition of Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas,” perhaps the most famous Christmas song is Nat King Cole’s “The Christmas Song” (“Chestnuts roasting over an open fire…”). But like Crosby’s version of “White Christmas,” the most widely known version of Cole’s “The Christmas Song” isn’t the original recording. Interestingly, both songs date from the World War II era, the first (surviving) recording of “White Christmas” dating from 1942 (issued on record in conjunction with the release of the film Holiday Inn) and “The Christmas Song” from 1944, written by Mel Tormé and Bob Wells and perhaps inspired by the massive popular success of “White Christmas.”

The Nat King Cole Trio recorded “The Christmas Song” twice over the space of two months in 1946, the second version recorded with a small string section. It was this second version, released in November 1946, that became the huge hit. However, the version that receives the most airplay today, and the one I heard on the radio yesterday, is the version Cole re-recorded in stereo in 1961. As a consequence of hearing the song yesterday, I was motivated to peruse James Haskins’ and Kathleen Benson’s Nat King Cole: A Personal and Professional Biography. They indicate that although Cole won over a white audience in 1946 with “The Christmas Song,” he continued to suffer at the hands of white bigots. For instance, when he moved into a largely white neighborhood in Los Angeles in 1948, various acts of vandalism were committed against his house. At another time Cole’s daughter recalled, “Someone came in the night and on the front lawn they burned the word ‘Nigger.’ This was an isolated incident, but it was so powerful—burned in the lawn. I think I went out that morning to wait for the school bus, and here was this word. And it seemed to take the longest time for the grass to grow in. The shadow of that word was always there” (p. 81). In 1949, Cole was unjustly harassed by the IRS, and in April 1956—eighteen months after the release of the “beloved” Christmas movie, White Christmas (1954), starring Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye (pictured above, with Cole)—members of the White Citizens’ Council, an organization advocating regional resistance to the Supreme Court and Federal prerogatives regarding race, attacked Cole on stage in his home town of Birmingham, Alabama. (A month before, Martin Luther King was on trial in Montgomery, Alabama for leading a conspiracy to violate the state’s boycott laws, for which he was found guilty.) I conclude that ten years after Cole’s hit recording of “The Christmas Song,” and in the context of the Civil Rights era, the song could no longer encourage white audiences to believe that the suppressed anger felt by a black man could be channeled into ”harmless” music.

Circus

As a consequence of last night’s extremely rare screening on TCM of Donald Cammell and Nic Roeg’s Performance (1970) starring Mick Jagger, I awoke this morning thinking about the Rolling Stones. I realized that today’s date, 12 December, serendipitously was the date the Stones finished the filming of The Rolling Stones’ Rock and Roll Circus, filmed 11-12 December 1968 (frequent delays on the 11th caused the filming to continue on into the wee hours of 12 December). A true museum piece, the show was designed as a made-for-TV special intended for airing on the BBC as a Christmas special in order to promote the release of the Stones’ album Beggars Banquet, which had been released in the UK a few days earlier, on 6 December. Featuring appearances by Jethro Tull, The Who, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Taj Mahal, Marianne Faithful, and Eric Clapton, Rock And Roll Circus was to have been the first appearance of the Stones after an absence of several months, a consequence of Mick Jagger making Performance. With most of its featured performers dressed as clowns, and Mick Jagger, improbably, serving as the Ring Master, the outcome was so ludicrously silly that it was deemed unreleasable, and remained so for 28 years, until 1996. Additionally, legend has it that the Stones felt they had been upstaged by The Who. Bootlegged Rolling Stones tracks from the soundtrack appeared in the years after, but Rock and Roll Circus is perhaps more significant as the last time the original Stones—with Brian Jones—performed together. He was fired soon after.

When the show was eventually released on home video in 1996, the music the Stones played on the show was shown not to be as terrible as rumor had it, but the show’s concept—an extravaganza produced and starring the Rolling Stones—simply didn’t fit the Stones’ image. In contrast, the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour (1967) concept—in which the Beatles, along with a large number of their friends, drove around the British countryside zonked out of their minds playing psychedelic music—had a certain commercial potential based on its novelty. Critics, however, excoriated it, even if it roughly conformed to the Beatles’ image, given the picaresque films they’d made previously with Richard Lester. The Stones, however, had made no such movies, and simply weren’t convincing as fun-loving hippies, especially when dressed up as clowns. As a joke, it wasn’t funny, or rather, it was painfully funny. The trouble is, the Rolling Stones never made convincing hippies. Bohemians they were, hippies they were not. What Performance would reveal—which had finished filming a few weeks earlier, in mid-October, but would not be released until August 1970—was the threat and danger of Mick Jagger’s persona. I find Rock And Roll Circus a curious misfire, a true oddity in the history of rock, significant only because it represents Brian Jones’s last “live” appearance with the Stones. And for Mick Jagger’s first performance after Performance.

Performance Screening Tonight

I highly recommend you tune in, or set your recorder, to Turner Classic Movies (TCM) tonight as there is a rare screening of Donald Cammell and Nic Roeg's classic Performance (1970) beginning at roughly 2:00 a.m. Eastern (technically, Saturday morning). The film rarely shows on American television, so if you haven't seen it, or don't have a copy of it, tonight is the opportunity to see it. Additionally, Richard Harland Smith's essay on the film is available here on the TCM website. Put your tie on!

Strength Lies In Improvisation

These are the days when no one should rely unduly on his “competence.” Strength lies in improvisation. All the decisive blows are struck left-handed. – Walter Benjamin

The day before yesterday, I blogged on the long forgotten British band Hard Meat. As is usually the case, having written about a particular topic, inevitably my thoughts are preoccupied by it for several days or even weeks after. This morning I woke up thinking about the final song on the second (and final) album Hard Meat released (Through A Window), a song titled “The Ballad of Marmalade Emma and Teddy Grimes,” and it occurred to me that the song may have been based on an actual couple. (Why the thought had never occurred to me before I have no idea, but I’ve become a firm believer in Salvador Dali’s paranoiac-critical method.) It struck me that perhaps Marmalade Emma and Teddy Grimes possibly might have been the British equivalent of Bonnie and Clyde. Hence I was compelled this morning to do a web search, and sure enough, there was a British couple named Marmalade Emma and Teddy Grimes (pictured), although they were not outlaws of the Bonnie and Clyde sort.

Happily, as a result of my search I came across the weblog of Martin Newell—“Performance Poet, Author and Pop-Genius”—who reveals that he had been researching the late Victorian/early Edwardian-era couple and finally uncovered their story. I encourage readers to click on the above link to his blog and read his fascinating post about the couple that inspired Hard Meat’s ballad. Although you can read it there, I was so struck by Mr. Newell’s eloquent analysis of the mendicant couple that I am compelled to reproduce it here:

Still, though, Marmalade Emma and Teddy Grimes stare out from that wintry picture in a world far removed from the one in which we now live. They’d probably be given short shrift if they existed today. Their begging would be strongly discouraged. On one hand, they’d be descended upon by those agencies whose job it is to sort such problems out. On the other, they’d be at serious risk of attack from any team of drunken yobs who came across them. Hounded from the rural haunts now gentrified and peppered with Neighbourhood Watch stickers, simply bedding-down in the country would be difficult. People would be frightened of them. That haunting old photograph of the pair, however, radiates a robust dignity which you'd be hard-pushed to find in their modern counterparts. It tells you that for all of our improvements, state benefits and social safety-nets, certain elements of individual freedom and basic charity which they knew, have almost completely vanished during the past century.

If there is a problem with my reproducing the image of the couple on my blog (taken from Martin Newell's blog), please contact me about the matter and I’ll remove it.

Fetish

In Luis Buñuel’s Diary of a Chambermaid, characters frequently entertain each other’s foot fetishes. Céléstine (Jeanne Moreau) indulges Monsieur Rabour’s (Jean Ozenne’s) fascination with her feet (pictured), an expression of some sort of fetish, but what it might be isn’t clear—which seems to be precisely the point. Each individual is forced to acknowledge that his understanding of others inevitably must be incomplete; there is no book that, in the space of a few hundred pages, can provide the perfect simulacrum of the many years of a person’s life. The impossibility of perfect understanding, however, does not negate the possibility of partial understanding. But there seems to be a much bigger issue at work: It is not the enigma that lies between the fetishist and the “interpreter” of the fetish, but the greater enigma that lies between the fetishist and the unnameable. The inability to communicate the meaning of the fetish would seem to be essential for a true fetishist.

My understanding of the fetish differs from that put forth by Freud. The later Freud seemed to conclude that the fetishist was not a solipsist. He argues, in An Outline of Psycho-Analysis, in his discussion of the fetishist that “the detachment of the ego from the reality of the external world has never succeeded completely” (p. 60; see also p. 61). However, Freud most certainly did not show, finally, that the fetishist is not a solipsist; he simply defined the fetish as “a compromise formed with the help of displacement” (Outline of Psycho-Analysis, p. 60) of cathexis from the instinctual object to some signifying object, an effect that tells us nothing about whether this signifier as such is understood by one, ten, a hundred, or one hundred million people. For instance, the example of the foot-fetishist in Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis provides no help given the narrative’s glaring lacunae, as he simply recounts the (illusory?) scene of origin of the fetish, though this explanation tells us nothing of the meaning of the fetish (pp. 348-49). He concedes, in “Fetishism” (1927), that it is not always possible “to ascertain the determination of every fetish” (p. 201) though the impossibility of this determination is unrelated to the more daunting issue of the meaning of the fetish.

What is the fetish? An enduring material object, X, that acts as a signifier of some other object, process or relationship, Y. Fetish is thus to be distinguished from ritual as object is from event, the spatial axis of a related pair whose temporal axis is ritual: The Sacrament of Holy Communion is the ritual, the transubstantiating wine and wafer the fetish. The signified entity, Y, is, in turn, instinctually highly cathected for sexual, religious or economic reasons, or even because of some atypical neurological condition. In the fetish complex the signifier—the fetish object—in turn becomes cathected, acquiring the affective import of the instinctual object. How does the fetish object become cathected? In other words, the question is how it is possible that a signifying object (even one possessing materiality) can provide some part of the satisfaction of the instinctual object. This paradox certainly confounded Freud and would seem to be the primary reason for his interest in fetishism, especially in those cases where the fetish is unrelated to the instinctual object by metonymy—for instance, when a cowry shell is more mysterious than the female foot. Unlike the cowry shell, though, the shoe is more obviously metonymically related to the foot. The paradox is why the shoe (or, as in Diary of a Chambermaid, Céléstine’s high-heeled leather boots) has more affective import that the foot—a paradox expressed by Carl Perkins who, as legend has it, when first hearing about the story of the prized pair of blue suede shoes, was chagrined that a man actually would value his shoes over a beautiful girl. Put it another way, signs may be consumed but they are not nutritious.

Valuable Shoes:

Adam Ant – Goody Two Shoes
The Beatles – Old Brown Shoe
Kate Bush – Red Shoes
Elvis Costello – (The Angels Wanna Wear My) Shoes
Depeche Mode – Walking in My Shoes
The Drifters – I’ve Got Sand in My Shoes
The Eagles – Those Shoes
Elton John – Who Wears These Shoes
K. C. & the Sunshine Band – Boogie Shoes
Carl Perkins – Blue Suede Shoes
Ray Price – My Shoes Keep Walking Back to You
Paul Simon – Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes
Joe South – Walk A Mile In My Shoes

The Importance Of The Name

I’ve written previously on this blog about one of the central myths informing rock culture (first established by The Velvet Underground and Nico album), that initial commercial neglect guarantees greatness. This myth is so fundamental to rock culture that it enables commercially neglected albums to achieve considerable cult cachet in the years, perhaps decades, following their original release. Often these records acquire greatness because there are legendary circumstances concerning the band’s musicians, and/or troubled or difficult conditions associated with the album’s production. Myths also develop concerning the financial and/or physical conditions that constrained the record’s making that affected the time and moment of its release. An issue frequently surrounding a “cult” record is that for various reasons it was “delayed,” and the causes for this postponement contribute to the formation of its legend. The point is, often non-musical factors contribute to an album's cult status.

For reasons that are not entirely clear, it is a harsh fact that sometimes excellent records are released that just simply do not sell. (One can therefore deduce that the opposite is true as well, that for unclear reasons poor or mediocre records may sell exceptionally well.) One band that released two very good albums that sold poorly at the time of their release—almost forty years ago—and then vanished was a British trio called Hard Meat, composed of brothers Mick Dolan (guitars, vocals), Steve Dolan (bass, vocals), and their friend Mick Carless (drums, percussion). Hard Meat released two records for Warner Brothers Records in 1970, its first the eponymously titled Hard Meat (WS 1852, released ca. February 1970) and the second Through A Window (WS 1879, released ca. September 1970). I mention this band because while perusing eBay the other day, I learned that these two albums are now fetching premium prices. Astonishingly, some dealers are listing sealed copies of these albums for $99 as the “Buy It Now” price. This is a remarkable development, because thirty years ago, give or take a month or two, I was able to pick up sealed copies of these records for 44 cents.

I discovered the music of Hard Meat almost 40 years ago through what were known as Warner Brothers “Samplers.” These were promotional records featuring bands making records for Warner/Reprise that were available for purchase directly from Warner Brothers for $1 (in those days, you could mail in a dollar bill, cold hard cash, with your request and get a record in return). Warner/Reprise also issued some two record promotional sets (e.g., 1969’s Songbook) for $2, and once even issued a three-record set for $3, Looney Tunes Merrie Melodies, this around March 1971 as I recall (some sources indicate 1970 as the year of release, but I think this is incorrect). It was in this latter three-record set that I encountered Hard Meat’s “Smile As You Go Under.” Liking the song, I ordered through a now defunct record club the band’s second album, Through A Window, the only one available through the club. I very much liked the music I heard on the album, and played it frequently. I liked its sparse production (by John Roberton—not Robertson—also producing Steeleye Span at the time); it wasn't what is called “over-produced,” and while there were a couple medium tempo rockers, the bulk of the album had a folk rock sensibility, but was entirely unconventional in its approach. (The band's first album includes a cover of Bob Dylan's “Most Likely You Go Your Way And I'll Go Mine” from Blonde on Blonde). (Incidentally, a trio of songs from the second album are available on youtube: A Song of Summer, Free Wheel, and The Ballad of Marmalade Emma and Teddy Grimes; a couple songs from the first album are available as well, although I haven't conducted an extensive search.)

At the time, 1970-71, although I scoured the record bins for it, I was never able to track down a copy of the band’s first record. However, a decade later I found the band’s eponymously titled first album in a second floor record store in Omaha, in a bin composed primarily of used 70s disco records, 12” dance club mixes, and various cut-outs. In fact, I found six or eight sealed copies of it as I recall, all marked 44 cents. I purchased two of them, opening one in order to play it and leaving the other sealed (to this day). At the same time, I also found a sealed copy (to this day) of Through A Window for the same price. For that little amount of money, why not pick up a second copy?

I don’t believe I’ve ever encountered a band’s records so widely available in still-sealed form, a phenomenon made even more remarkable by the fact that so many such copies are for sale on eBay, sealed, 40 years later. I can therefore only surmise that Hard Meat’s records didn’t just sell poorly, they did not sell at all. The wretchedly bad sales ended the band’s career virtually from the get-go, a career that showed great promise. Indulging in a bit of speculation, the band’s poor sales may have had to do with its name, a crucial factor in achieving widespread acceptance. At the time (then a teenager), I remember thinking, perhaps naively, that “Hard Meat” was an oxymoronic name inspired by rock band names like Led Zeppelin and Iron Butterfly, “hard” as in “hard rock” and “meat” as in “tender” or “raw,” the sort of band name that might invoke one of its prestigious contemporaries such as Soft Machine. I now realize that “hard meat” invokes the language of pornography, and I wonder if this association didn’t have something to do with the band’s utter failure to sell any records. I can’t believe it was the music, as the number of sealed copies to this very day suggests no one ever actually heard it. As is widely known, no major avant-garde group or movement has ever achieved acceptance without a provocative name: think of Surrealism, Cubism, Situationism, Futurism, Deconstruction, Semiotics, and Punk Rock—or even Dada for that matter, which parodied the names for such artistic movements. But no major acceptance is going to occur with a name like Hard Meat. It's neither catchy nor youthfully insolent, like “The Sex Pistols” is, for instance. The name just doesn’t serve as a hook that would allow promoters to further the band's publicity, which would lead to major acceptance. I suppose there’s a lesson to be learned here, in the same way there’s a lesson in the names of other failed bands, such as The Peanut Butter Conspiracy and Test Icicles.

Originally from Birmingham, discussion on this board indicates in the early to mid-60s the Dolan Brothers played with local blues sensation Jimmy Powell and while still in Birmingham had a blues band named the Cock-A-Hoops (British slang for being in a state of boastful elation or exultation). The board also indicates band member Steve Dolan died a few years ago; he apparently spent a number of years as a session musician. I've come across various sources that indicate Mick Dolan has worked as a producer and audio engineer for various British bands and musicians, so he obviously stayed active in the industry for many years, and perhaps still is so. For those interested, below is a Hard Meat discography such as I have been able to assemble; I can't claim it is complete, although the major albums and singles are included.

I would welcome any additional information about the band, or additions to the discography.

Hard Meat Discography:

CD
Hard Meat/Through A Window Progressive Line PL582, 2002 [Australia] (pictured)
LP
Hard Meat Warner Bros. WS 1852, 1970
Through A Window Warner Bros. WS 1879, 1970
7”
Rain/Burning Up Years Island WIP 6066, 1969 (pre-Warner Brothers single)
The Ballad of Marmalade Emma and Teddy Grimes/Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow Warner Bros. A 6100, 1970 [Germany]
Compilation (LP)
Looney Tunes Merrie Melodies Warner Bros. PRO 423, 1971 (3xLP) (“Smile As You Go Under”)
Together Again MH 12915, 1971 [?] [Argentina] (Song unknown)
From Burbank To The Bay Area Warner Strategic Marketing 5046-66294-1, 2005 [UK] (2xLP) (“Free Wheel”)
The Melting Pot Volume 2 Good Groove Musik GGLP002 (Year Unknown) (Bootleg?) (“Free Wheel”)
Compilation (CD)
From Burbank To The Bay Area Warner Strategic Marketing 5046-66294-2, 2005 [UK] (“Free Wheel”)
Feel The Spirit: Other Worldly Folk Music Gems And Psychedelics Optimum Sounds OPTCD002 [UK] 2006 (“Free Wheel”)
Covers (LP)
The Human Instinct [New Zealand blues-rock band], Burning Up Years (Pye, 1969)
Title track of the album is taken from the B side of Hard Meat’s Island single issued in 1969

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In their well-known book, Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson argue that metaphor is not simply a literary device but an irreducible part of language itself. Moreover, metaphors have a cognitive function, structuring our thoughts and perceptions. A predominant metaphorical concept that governs our perception of life, they argue, is “life is a gambling game.” Some examples they provide to illustrate this metaphorical concept are, “I’ll take my chances,” “The odds are against me,” “He’s a real loser,” “He’s bluffing,” “Maybe we need to sweeten the pot,” “That’s my ace in the hole,” “That’s the luck of the draw,” and so on. The point is, these metaphors reveal how we perceive life, not gambling—life itself is perceived as a gamble, one filled with great risk. Lakoff and Johnson see these kind of common linguistic expressions as “speech formulas,” “fixed-form expressions,” or “phrasal lexical items”—they function “like single words, and the language has thousands of them.” Since popular song lyrics are so dependent on colloquial and vernacular expressions, it should therefore come as no surprise that they are loaded with “speech formulas” and “fixed-form expressions.” A song such as Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler” isn’t simply about gambling, it’s about life itself, a way not only of imagining life, but a way of living it. In the gambler’s words, the singer says, “I found an ace that I could keep”:

You got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em

Know when to walk away and know when to run
You never count your money when you’re sittin’ at the table
There’ll be time enough for countin’ when the dealin’s done

The gambler’s simple, homespun words have the force of a homily. Many pop songs have applied the metaphor of “game” and “gambling game” to life, as the following (short) list reveals.

Playing Games, A-Z

Abba – The Name of the Game

Blood, Sweat & Tears – Go Down Gamblin’

Ray Charles – Blackjack

Bob Dylan – Lily, Rosemary And The Jack of Hearts

Tommy Edwards – It’s All In the Game

Shirley Ellis – Name Game

Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders – The Game of Love

Peter Gabriel – Games Without Frontiers

Larry Gatlin – Love Is Just A Game

The Hollies – Son of a Rotten Gambler

INXS – Deliver Me

Alan Jackson – Just Playin’ Possum

Kansas – Play The Game Tonight

John Lennon – Mind Games

Steve Miller Band – The Joker

Graham Nash and David Crosby – Games

Otis Redding – The Match Game

The Alan Parsons Project – Games People Play

Queen – Play The Game

The Radiators – Life’s A Gamble

Kenny Rogers – The Gambler

Sonny and Cher – Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)

Joe South – Games People Play

Talking Heads – Slippery People

U2 – The Fool

Van Morrison – The Healing Game

Amy Winehouse – Love Is a Losing Game

XTC – Complicated Game

Neil Young – Cowgirl in the Sand

Frank Zappa – A Game of Cards