Elvis’s Record Collection: What would have been on the King’s iPod

In 1968, after finishing the ‘Comeback’ TV Special, Elvis asked guitarist and long-time sidekick Scotty Moore for a favor.  He had heard about Scotty’s fancy new recording studio, and wondered if he might transfer some of his favorite older records onto reel-to-reel tape.  Scotty agreed, and several days later received a suitcase containing Elvis’s record collection – a stack of 78rpms the singer had acquired between his days at Lauderdale Courts and well after the time he rose to international fame.  Moore transferred the records, but Elvis never came around to pick them up, so they have been kept for years in the same suitcase they were delivered in.  They offer a rare glimpse into the musical tastes of one of the most influential artists the medium of recorded sound has ever produced.  The great variety of style and genre contained within tell us that Elvis was someone willing to give anything a try.  Rather than sticking with any particular type of music, he seems to have listened to it all and kept whatever struck his fancy.  The following are a selection of sides in the collection that was handed over to Scotty Moore, chosen as a representative sample of Presley’s tastes:

My Song- Johnny Ace (1952)

Johnny Ace was a Memphis-born R&B singer who had a voice that caressed the ear with the eerie seduction of a midnight breeze.  His subtle way of turning a phrase always carried an undertone of sadness, adding an urgency to the romance of the ballads he sang.  His biggest hit was a posthumous one, “Pledging My Love”, recorded shortly before the singer killed himself in a game of russian roulette.  Elvis had been a fan since the beginning, and in one of life’s strange ironies, recorded Ace’s ‘Pledging My Love’ at what would be his last session.  Presley’s version appeared on his final album, Moody Blue, which would become a posthumous hit for him as well.

Brownie McGhee – I’m 10,000 Years Old (1952)

Bluesman Brownie McGhee began his recording career in the early 1940’s, and was soon paired with Sonny Terry on harmonica.  Together they would become a legendary folk-blues team that would travel the countryside performing with Woody Guthrie.  This solo recording from 1952 was picked up by Elvis while he was living in Memphis’s Lauderdale Courts government housing project.  He was undoubtedly attracted to the religious content of the song, as well as McGhee’s lyrical wit.  When digging to his roots in a 1970 jam session, Elvis recorded an off-the-cuff version of this song and used it as a recurring segue between the tracks of his one and only concept album, Elvis Country, an inspired tribute of the musics that had formed him artistically.

I’m Gonna Bid My Blues Goodbye – Hank Snow

Though it’s often understated in criticism, Country music was as large a part of Elvis’s musical identity as Rhythm and Blues or Gospel.  This early 50’s Hank Snow track was one Elvis apparently liked – he sang a snippet of it at the now immortal ‘Million Dollar Quartet’ jam session with Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis.  Snow was billed as the Canadian Cowboy, and just so happened to be Colonel Tom Parker’s main attraction before he discovered Elvis.  In fact, when Parker first signed Elvis, Snow was led to believe that he would share a percentage of the young performer.   But it wasn’t to be.  Parker soon pushed snow to the side, and Presley’s ‘added attraction’ status on Snow’s tour had to be revisited, too.  At one performance, after Elvis had worked the crowd to a fervor with his performance, the audience’s continual cheers for an encore were destroying Snow’s headlining set.  When the screams rose to a fever pitch, Snow stepped up to the mic and told the crowd “If you’ll let me finish my song, the little bastard will be out to sing for you!”.  From then on, Elvis closed the shows.

Because Of You parts 1 & 2 – Sammy Davis Jr. (1954)

This is one of the real oddball tracks in Elvis’s collection.  He’d always been an avid movie buff, and was doubtlessly amused by Sammy Davis Jr’s expert impressions of Hollywood icons and the popular singers of the day.  Elvis was always an admirer of Davis’s talent, and the two finally met in 1958 when Presley was filming King Creole.  They would remain friends for the rest of Elvis’s life.

Lowell Fulson – Reconsider Baby (1954)

This jaunty, mournful blues by Lowell Fulson was one of  the king’s all-time favorite songs.  Guitarist Scotty Moore remembers ducking out with Elvis between performances in 1956 to see Fulson perform at a blues club in Houston, TX.  The audience that night saw something to remember when Fulson invited Presley and Moore onstage to join in on a few numbers, and the they accepted! (a real rarity due to contractual prohibitions on that sort of thing).  Elvis recorded the definitive version of ‘Reconsider Baby’ on his terrific Elvis Is Back! album in 1960, and would continue to return to Fulson’s blues in live performances up to the very end in 1977.

Roy Hamilton – Hurt (1954)

Given the operatic beauty of his voice, it’s a bit of a surprise to learn that Roy Hamilton made a career as a prize fighter before becoming a recording artist.  If anyone can lay claim to being Elvis’s favorite singer, it’s Roy Hamilton.  Presley adapted more of his vocal mannerisms from Roy Hamilton than from any other individual performer, and was continually inspired by Hamilton’s recordings when making his own.  When one listens to Elvis’s versions of ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, ‘Hurt’ and even home recordings like ‘If I Loved You’, it’s clear that while he infuses the songs with his own personality, Hamilton’s voice was the one inspiring him to sing.  ‘Hurt’ was a particular favorite, one that Elvis performed at almost every show he gave in his last two years of performing (1976 and 77), frequently with encores of the song’s final, dramatic crescendo.

Rock and Roll Bells – Louis Jones & His Band (1956)

This Rockin’ shouter from Louis Jones is a great example of the amazing obscurities that fill Elvis’s record collection.  The king was an R&B connoisseur par excellence.  Songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller (the guys who wrote ‘Hound Dog’ and produced a ton of great R&B sides on Atlantic in the early 50’s) noted this in their first meeting with Elvis, on the set of Jailhouse Rock in 1957:

Mike Stoller: “Jerry and I shared the uppity view that he and I were among the few white guys who knew about the blues.  In the first five minutes of conversation with Elvis, we learned we were dead wrong.

Elvis knew the blues.  He was a Ray Charles fanatic and even knew that Ray had sung our song ‘The Snow is Falling’.  In fact, he knew virtually all our songs.  There wasn’t any R&B he didn’t know.  He could quote from Arthur ‘Big Boy’ Crudup, B.B. King, and Big Bill Broonzy.

Jerry Lieber: “When it came to the blues, Elvis knew his stuff.  He may not have been conversant in politics or world history, but his blues knowledge was almost encyclopedic.  Mike and I were blown away…He definitely shared our passion for the real roots material and shared that passion with all his heart.  Just like that, we fell in love with the guy.

Billy Vaughn and His Orchestra (1956)- The Shifting Whispering Sands

Another oddball selection that speaks to Elvis’s catholic (in the non-religious sense of the word) taste in music.  This Billy Vaughn recording from 1956 is essentially a spoken-word western story with lavish musical accompaniment.  One can only wonder what drew Elvis to the track, but you can hear faint traces of the narrator’s dramatics in Elvis’s spoken bridge to ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’.

The Pearls – Your Cheatin Heart (1957)

This brilliant, kinetic doo-wop version of Hank Williams’ country classic ‘Your Cheatin’ Heart’ is another great discovery from  Elvis’s record collection.  It has an obvious appeal to Presley in that it is perfectly aligned with his musical vision-  marrying country and R&B influences into a new synthesis.  This record may have been the one that inspired him to record his own (very different) version of the song in early 1958.

Matchbox – Carl Perkins (1957)

This classic rockabilly side from Sun label-mate Carl Perkins features an as-yet-unknown Jerry Lee Lewis on piano.  Though he had left the label over a year earlier,  Elvis was actually at Sun studio on the day this song was recorded (December 4, 1956).  He’d dropped by to visit with sun records founder  Sam Phillips and his secretary (and the lady responsible for discovering Elvis) Marion Keisker and found the Perkins session in progress, sticking around to jam with Carl, Jerry Lee and up-and-comer Johnny Cash for a few hours afterward.  Phillips sensed an opportunity and called the newspaper to come take pictures.  Luckily for rock fans, he also surreptitiously placed mics in the studio to record most of what transpired.  A photo of the four future legends gathered around a piano appeared in the next day’s issue of The Memphis Press-Scimitar the headline “Million Dollar Quartet”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While you’re waiting…

My regularly scheduled Monday post doesn’t have the necessary polish to be let out yet.  Rather than release it in shabby fashion, I’m going to delay it for a day and let you enjoy a little tour video of the Cooper-Yound district in Memphis that my friend Justin and I threw together.  Apologies, and I hope this is a suitable replacement for the time being.

Be sure to tune in tomorrow.  Same Bat-time.  Same Bat-Channel.

Because I’m ti…

Because I’m tired and feeling uninspired, I want to share how I felt the day after the 2008 presidential election. This is a journal entry from that morning.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2008 

If I fear one thing, it’s that my entire attitude towards my citizenship will have to change. A beautifully talented, smart, and refreshing man has been elected to our nations highest office. I cried last night, and, this morning, when I realized it wasn’t a dream I cried again. I danced, I sang, and even leaped for joy. 

And for those who are sad about the status of President-elect Barack Hussein Obama II: you should know that he won not only the electoral vote, but the popular vote as well. As far as I know, he is the first president to have done so since LBJ. 

I was reading headlines from around the world today, the big news is, of course, President-elect Obama. One German article dismayed at the fact that, come January, Europeans can no longer simply blame the US president for all the worlds problems. Obama, the paper read, is not only facing high expectations from around the world, he has already demanded more from the world that Bush ever did. He is willing to work with other nations, be they friend or foe, in order to end current problems and prevent future ones. 

His Presidency is not a bad thing. We will not become a socialist or communist country, because he is neither of those. The global view of our nation has already increased. 

I’ve been disgusted by certain factions of our population. So many people “moving” to Canada or Europe to escape the new liberal America. Great guys, move to countries with socialized medicine, education, childcare, and many other services. Move to countries that widely respect the rights of homosexual couples, and promote the legality of marijuana and abortion. 

Let one thing be known, the majority of Conservatives from Canada and Europe make Obama look like Fred Phelps. Have fun escaping from a country that is ohh so liberal. 

I am, for the first time since I gained interest in Politics (I was 12, as I remember), happy about the state of our country. Proud doesn’t begin to describe how I feel. 

 

It’s one of those things where so much has changed. I’m still proud of our President, but I’m not nearly as passionate. 

Mitt Romney: Nihilist

So, I’m watching the news today, and everyone is abuzz about the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare” – in the parlance of our times. At issue was the bill’s individual mandate, as President Obama explains it, it is “the principle that people who can afford health insurance should take the responsibility to buy health insurance…when uninsured people who can afford coverage get sick, and show up at the emergency room for care, the rest of us end up paying for it through higher premiums”. Phew, personal responsibility…not paying for freeloaders… this sounds like a plan tailor made for Republicans! Right? Well, that’s exactly what it is. This was, in fact, the Republican alternative to President Clinton’s more aggressive proposals for health reform in the 1990’s. Back then, when offered by Republicans, it was common sense conservatism. Now, when passed by a Democrat, it is socialism from the seventh rung of hell.

How times change.

Fortunately for the Republicans, they have nominated a candidate who changes with the time. Mitt Romney isn’t merely the man of the hour, he’s the man of the second-hand – able to bend and twist to suit the whim of the moment. Really, calling him a man is overestimating him. Romney is a malleable substance, a political Play-Doh that political consultants can cram into whatever mold pleases the voters they seek. Massachusetts likes Pro-Choice candidates? No problem. Romney-Doh fits that mold. In 1994, he told the voters of that state “I believe abortion should be legal and safe in this country. I have since my mom took that position when she ran in 1970 as a senate candidate. I believe that since Roe V. Wade has been the law for 20 years, that we should sustain and support it, and I sustain and support that law, and the right of a woman to make that choice”. He kept singing that protestant new-englander hymn in 2002, when he ran for governor. However, in 2008 the Republican base wanted a candidate of a different mold. Again, not a problem. Romney simply picked up the tune his audiences were humming. Now he says “I am pro-life and believe that abortion should be limited to only instances of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother. I support the reversal of Roe v. Wade, because it is bad law and bad medicine. Roe was a misguided ruling that was a result of a small group of activist federal judges legislating from the bench.”

The same story can be told on almost any of his political positions, not the least of which is the nation’s handling of health care. President Obama cites Mitt Romney’s massachusetts health care plan as the model for his own. Indeed, the plans are almost identical. As recently as 2009, when Obama’s bill was being debated, Romney wrote an editorial that urged the President to embrace the individual mandate in question: “First, we established incentives for those who were uninsured to buy insurance. Using tax penalties, as we did, or tax credits, as others have proposed, encourages “free riders” to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical costs on to others. This doesn’t cost the government a single dollar.” Though he doesn’t mention the word, he describes in precise detail what the individual mandate does in effect. He even makes some of the same points as President Obama. Later in 2009, the bill had passed, and the winds had changed yet again. Obama had indeed embraced the individual mandate, and since his Democrat name was on it, Republicans decided they didn’t like it. All of a sudden a good idea that wouldn’t ‘cost the government a single dollar’ became an excessive governmental overreach, and an unconstitutional one to boot. Earlier today, after the supreme court upheld the individual mandate – the one Romney had previously urged the President to embrace -, the GOP candidate had this to say: “I disagree with the Supreme Court’s decision…what the court did not do on it’s last day in session, I will do on my first day if elected President of the United States, and that is I will act to repeal Obamacare…Obamacare was bad policy yesterday, It’s bad policy today.” He then goes on to argue that it will raise taxes, hurt the economy, yada yada yada.

Stop and think about how unspeakably craven this is for a second. If he really believes that this type of plan hurts the economy and puts our health system at risk, he was willing for his state to pay that price for a personal political win while governor of Massachusetts. However:

If he believes his statements from the above video, he is a man willing to smash a hard won national health program, throwing the fates of forty million people and the “health insurance they deserve and need” to the wind, in order to satisfy the ignorance of his electoral base.

The same argument can be said of his views on abortion. If he really believes that life begins at conception, he was willing to accept (and even favor) the slaughter of thousands of innocent lives to win the governor’s seat in Massachusetts. On the other hand, if he really is ok with abortion, as he claimed from 1994-2006, then he is willing to make the lives of thousands of women miserable to suit his political purposes.

This brings us to the empty core of Mitt Romney. An ethical person wouldn’t be able to blithely justify these kind of sacrifices. If you hold something sacred, anything at all, you can’t see it butchered and abandoned for vanity’s sake. This seems to be a man with no firm convictions, no strong principles, and zero moral character. He seems all too willing to change any and everything about himself to win votes and victories. He wants for only one thing: That Americans ordain him to the Presidency he feels entitled to. What happens next- what he does with the office and the consequence it brings- simply aren’t important. It is only important that he obtain it, to satisfy his vanity or sense of entitlement, or whatever you want to call it. He says he wants to build a strong America, but won’t bat an eye before setting up a swiss bank account to avoid fully paying the United States the meager sun it says he owes. There doesn’t seem to be any evidence that Mitt Romney believes in anything. The American political scene has produced it’s fair share of skunks and shady characters, but this is perhaps the first time we’ve ever had a nihilist seek the Presidency.

It’s an old saw that voters have to pick between “the lesser of two evils”, but even evil requires a sliver of substance- something that can be weighed on the scale of justice. When we look at the center of Mitt Romney, however, we only stare into the abyss.

So Many Issues

Last Friday, I mistakenly posted this to my personal blog. Sorry for the delay.

 

A few posts ago, John took a look at on of the serious flaws of today’s young people, the unwillingness to grow up. Generation Y/The Peter Pan Generation/The Boomerang Generation/Generation Next (how uncreative)/Millennials…the list goes on. There are many issues to deal with concerning this group of people, the least of which is the number of names given to describe their overall suckiness.

It’s a generation of kids who remain kids until they are in their mid twenties; one with no clear direction.

 

Religion is dying, politics has been reduced to an episode of St. Elsewhere, and (perhaps most importantly) they have made few, if any, contributions to the worlds creative culture.

 

Take music, for instance. The genres attributed to Generation Y are largely rehashings and corruptions of music done better the first time around.

Hip Hop (popular Hip Hop, what you hear on the radio) is disturbingly uncreative for a medium with infinite potential for translating ideas into change. Unless you dig, or have a good friend who digs, then you’re stuck with a bunch of grown men acting like toddlers and rapping about how big their genitals are (not something toddlers generally do, but still).

 

Grunge, post grunge, pop punk, rap rock, hardcore, emo; all disgusting imitations of music ranging from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. Nothing new is being done here; in fact, the original music is largely more relevant than the new. There’s no comparing Green Day’s largely plagiarized and infantily politicalAmerican Idiot to The Skids Scared to Dance, The Kinks Arthur (Or the Decline and fall of the British Empire), or anything by The Clash. The Ramones, whose music is simple and sloppy by most people’s standards, stand worlds above what modern punk offers.

 

Electronic music is a rather new genre, though not invented by Generation Y. The problem here is that Dubstep, mashups, and most other subgenres of the electronic persuasion rely almost entirely on the music of previous generations to create theirs. Sorry, no matter how much you may like dancing to his music, Girl Talk is a fraudulent talent. A man with a laptop is not a musician; he’s barely even human.

The point is there’s nothing new in the mainstream. New things are being done, but young people don’t pick up on it. There are good artists working in the old genres (or hybrids of the old genres), but they either water down their creations for a wider audience, or they stay true to their art and barely make a living.

 

It’s also a generation of people obsessed with the past. They (look, I know I’m one of them) are so minimally talented that looking to the present hurts the soul. Maybe it’s just too easy to create and put the product out for the public to view. This goes for every aspect of the arts. It makes being a professional artist nearly impossible. Why hire a photographer when your neighbor has a new camera and a trial version of Photoshop? Why buy a painting or print when you have a decent printer?

 

The problem isn’t simply that we refuse to grow up, or that we’re untalented. There is talent here, loads of it. We’re just too lazy to care or to invest in the world around us.

Dietary Concerns

We live in a world where people actually think humans started eating meat largely in the 1970s and only because the wealthy people in the world lorded it over the poor folk.

Some of that won’t make sense to you because she’s responding to other people. The parts that seem too stupid for anyone to actually mean; however, don’t make sense because they aren’t true. Also, she quoted Paul McCartney outside of a Beatles tune. That alone discredits her.
I shouldn’t have let it, but this person has caused me to lose most of the respect I had for vegans. I’m certain they aren’t all imbeciles; I know a few that aren’t, but that this type of ignorance is accepted in people is sad. This is the type of person that ignores facts and all reason because they do nothing but contradict her picture of the world. I mean…she called me self-righteous for saying I’d kill an animal if it meant the difference between feeding my family and letting them starve. Hardcore creationists have more sense. The Flat Earth Society is more logical.
A purely vegetarian diet is awesome, but it does require effort to make sure it is well rounded. A vegan diet has the same problem, except change that last part to “is impossible.” Calcium and B12 are essential to a healthy life and are readily available in nature, THROUGH ANIMAL SOURCES. Calcium is also available in several plants, though the type found in milk is more easily absorbed. B12 is also found in plants, though when derived from plants, the vitamin is not absorbed by the human body. Vegans rely on B12 supplements derived from bacteria to prevent psychosis and irreversible damage to their central nervous systems. Bacteria are not animals, but I’ll let you in on a secret, the bacteria used to produce these supplements are harvested from meat. Raw, bloody, red meat.
I have, for most of my adult life, not eaten the flesh of mammals or foul unless I was being provided the food. Hospitality goes both ways; I’m not going to ask someone to change their lifestyle for me. If I am offered beef at a dinner provided by a friend or family member, I will eat it. I only turn down what is going to make me sick (which is, to say, most fruits). I love fish so I eat it, and frankly diets are very difficult to balance without some animal protein in the mix. I practice this diet because it makes me feel better. There is no other reason anyone should consider when contemplating a diet. Are YOU healthier? If the answer is yes, then no scientific study about how something is bad for you should hold water. The same holds for any spiritual influences or whether or not what you eat feels pain. The only factor that matters is how the diet works for you.
I will concede with no prodding that we as a people eat far too much meat. It’s actually nauseating how much meat the average American when compared to the rest of the world consumes. On average, Americans eat roughly half a pound a day per person, about 180 pounds a year. That’s twice the meat compared to the rest of the world. As a population we represent 5% of the planet, but we eat 15% of the worlds consumable meat. This is a problem, but the solution isn’t to forgo all animal products.
Vegans would have us give up honey, something that bees naturally produce too much of. They would also have us not use leather or wool, materials that are largely better than their synthetic counterparts for just about everything. I should point out that a lot of vegan alternatives, as far as clothing and material goes, are petroleum based. That doesn’t harm the world at all. An ethical stance on a diet makes no sense. What does make sense is an ethical stance on where your food comes from. Luckily there are plenty of farms that produce meat, eggs, and dairy in ways that give the animals a long happy life. That’s something a vegan won’t have since they live shorter lives than those that eat a moderate amount of meat or practice  a pescotarian or octo-lacto vegetarian diet.
So, in closing. I don’t care what you eat. Just don’t be dumb asses.

Further reading:

http://www.scienzavegetariana.it/rubriche/cong2002/vegcon_B12_en.html

http://www.laurelofleaves.com/2012/04/a-vegan-diet-is-not-healthy/

Pure Psycho: The Art of a Midnight Masterpiece

NOTE: Please click on frames to enlarge.  Also, this piece may contain spoilers, and most likely won’t make any sense if you haven’t already seen the film.  Go watch it.  Right now.

My main satisfaction is that the film had an effect on the audiences, and I consider that very important. I don’t care about the subject matter; I don’t care about the acting; but I do care about the pieces of film and the photography and the sound track and all of the technical ingredients that made the audience scream. I feel it’s tremendously satisfying for us to be able to use the cinematic art to achieve something of a mass emotion. And with Psycho we most definitely achieved this. It wasn’t a message that stirred the audiences, nor was it a great performance or their enjoyment of the novel. They were aroused by pure film…That’s why I take pride in the fact that Psycho, more than any of my other pictures, is a film that belongs to film-makers, to you and me.

– Alfred Hitchcock to director François Truffaut in 1962.

Hitchcock wasn’t being grandiose in his assessment of Psycho.  It really is his purest, most effective visual accomplishment.  The Master of Suspense was an alumnus of the old school of silent-era directors that lived by the first rule of cinema: Show it, don’t say it.  They believed in the pre-eminence of visual storytelling – communicating emotion with only the moving picture – and understood that dialogue should be used as a supplement, to underline and augment the story being told with the images on the screen.  Pure film.  One doesn’t need sound or dialogue to understand the voyeurism, surprise, and claustrophobia communicated when Marion is discovered sleeping in her car by a passing Highway Patrolman, one only needs to see the sequence of compositions the director gives us:

Hitchcock is a master of manipulating an audience’s emotions with film.   He not only uses the medium to define his characters and the peculiarities of their situation, he also tells us (his audience) who we are by defining our relationship to the image on the silver screen.  The process begins immediately.  The opening shot of Psycho offers us a bird’s eye view (keep that in mind, it’ll be important later) that carries us over a city, to a window sill where we creep inside and see what we instantly recognize as the aftermath of a discreet sexual liaison.

We are intensely aware of the intimacy of the couple’s relationship, but Hitchcock never invites us to share that intimacy.  He keeps us at an awkward distance, leaving us to see the backs of heads and making us too aware of the surrounding room to be comfortable.  The lighting is deliberately naturalistic, denying us the glossy romanticism of Hollywood sex.  It is the vantage point of a peeping tom.  As we watch what unfolds before us, we are overcome with a seedy, perverse feeling.  We feel that we’re prying, witnessing something that we shouldn’t. Yet, we can’t look away.  This is exactly as Hitchcock wanted it.

While this is, in effect, the film’s opening scene, Hitchcock has already laid substantial groundwork for a theme that plays on our subconscious for the rest of the film.The famous title sequence, designed by Saul Bass, is a series of strong lines that fly violently in and out of the frame.  From every direction, they cut and break the visual flow we expect (along with the names in the credits) while Bernard Hermann’s frenzied, nerve-wrecking, but oh so utterly appropriate score shrieks in our ears.
The titles create in us a distinct feeling of unease, the memory of which the director will later evoke with the use of strong compositional line, unnaturally rigid horizontals, verticals and diagonals that tell our subconscious mind to be wary.  Hitchcock obviously enjoys this motif, using everything from fenceposts, street lines, telephone wires, and heavy rain to create these powerful, disruptive lines, lines that grow as Marion nears the Bates Motel.
Though at first, we don’t know why the lines make us uneasy, the reason is revealed in Marion’s motel bathroom.  They foreshadow murder.  We see strong lines of water from the shower, the lines of grout between tiles on the wall, the choppy lines that trace the slashing of a dagger, lines of blood that drip from the side of the pure-white bathtub.

The line motif is reprised to warn us of Aborgast’s murder.

Hitchcock is so invested in the motif that he cheekily sets the date of action at December 11th. When Marion checks into the Bates motel, she is given the only possible room.

The story’s titular Psycho is ostensibly Norman Bates (again, we’ll return to this later), a seemingly affable but odd young man living in the shadow of his domineering mother.  He is in fact psychotic, and you can’t have a good Psycho film without exploring what goes on in his strange mind.  Hitchcock proves that even something as complex and intangible as this can be endeavored visually.Remember the bird’s eye view in the opening sequence?  The one that led us to the peeping-tomfoolery in the bedroom that we weren’t supposed to see?  This is where it comes into play.  That first scene after the credits is the first time the film draws a connection between birds and sex and women (we fly in from the sky to see a sexual liaison and the beautiful Janet Leigh in her underwear).  We learn that these three things (birds, sex, and women) are inextricably linked in the twisted mind of Norman Bates.  In the dinner sequence that takes place in Norman’s parlor, Hitchcock delineates Norman’s mental associations in a manner that can be laughably blunt, yet still subtle enough to be missed by Gus Van Zandt in his “shot for shot” remake.The scene unfolds like this:After joking that eating in the office was too “officious” (a pun Vince Vaughn embarrassingly fails to recognize in the remake), Norman leads Marion back to his parlor, the walls of which are disturbingly decorated with clues to his psychological makeup.

Namely, stuffed birds and classical paintings of women being molested.  Pretty direct, eh?  Hitch uses the dialogue to support his visual thesis, and clue in the perceptive viewer to the horror that awaits Marion, and the fate that has already befallen Norman’s mother.

	        NORMAN
	You eat like a bird.

		MARION
	You'd know, of course.

		NORMAN
	Not really. I hear that expression,
	that one eats "like a bird," is really
	a fals...fals...fals...falsity, because
	birds really eat a tremendous lot.
		(A pause, then
		explaining)
	But, I don't know anything about birds.
	My hobby is stuffing things...
	taxidermy. And I guess I'd just rather
	stuff birds because...  well, I hate
	the look of beasts when they're
	stuffed, foxes and chimps and all...
	some people even stuff dogs and
	cats... but I couldn't do that... I think only
	birds look well stuffed because
	they're rather...  passive, to begin
	with...

So we hear (as well as see) Norman drawing the connection between Marion and the dead birds on his wall.  The next bit is exceptionally telling.  Marion flatters Norman by telling him “a man should have a hobby”.  Norman reacts by leaning back, placing one hand on the inside of his thigh (near his crotch) and his other hand on one of his stuffed birds.  He then replies, looking directly at her, “It’s more than a hobby”.

This is what I meant by laughably direct.  Hitchcock is literally drawing the audience a picture of Norman’s mental associations in as blunt a way as can be decently imagined.  Van Zant’s remake completely misses this!  It’s what happens when a lesser artist can see the ‘what’ when copying a master, but doesn’t grasp the ‘why’.The bird/woman associations in the dialogue continue.  When Marion suggests that Norman place his mother in an asylum he reacts with indignity.  “She’s as harmless as… one of those stuffed birds.”  We will later discover that he means this literally, having killed and preserved his mother in the exact manner as his favored fowl.  The words Norman chooses to describe both Marion and his mother draw the same connection:  “they cluck their thick tongues”, “[she’s not] a raving thing”.  Perhaps most importantly, it is during this sequence that Norman learns the full name of his visitor: Marion Crane.As Marion leaves the parlor to return to her room, we see her from Norman’s view.  Hitchcock is careful to place birds in his compositions alongside her, to make tangible for the audience the association that Norman makes mentally.  We again see birds in framed pictures on the wall beside Marion as Norman watches her undress though a peep hole.  Creepily eyeing her in her underwear, he re-enacts what we were party to in the movie’s first scene.

The similarity between our role in the first scene of Marion’s liaison and Norman’s in the scene that directly prefaces her murder is an important one.  On one level, it strangely compels us to sympathize with a character we know we should abhor.  On another, it suggests that Norman’s scizophrenia, the duality that has consumed him, exists within all of us – kept in check only by our fragile consciousness. In fact, Norman Bates isn’t the first split personality we’ve seen in the film.When we are introduced to Marion Crane, she is shown to be a woman grown tired of living a secret life with her lover.  She longs for a relationship that can be lived openly.  “We can see each other”, she tells her lover, “We can even have dinner… but respectably, in my house with my mother’s picture on the mantel and my sister helping me broil a big steak for three!”  Yet, when she is tempted with the luminous spectre of $40,000, she steals the money and begins another secret life.  Marion, too, contains multiple personalities.  Hitchcock uses mirrors to show us both personalities in every pivotal scene involving the stolen cash.

And there are others.  Through shadow and reflection, the dual nature of every key character is revealed; Marion, Norman, Marion’s boyfriend, even her banal sister Lila carries multiple versions of herself with her.
In the journey that takes Marion to the Bates motel, we observe her decent into madness.  She transforms from Good Marion to Bad Marion (or at least normal Marion and abnormal Marion) before our very eyes, while she imagines what her persuers must be saying about her.  The voices in her head speak harshly, and with increasing intensity.  Hitchcock traces Marion’s transformation by subtly manipulating the lighting on her face as he cuts between shots of girl and highway.  What begins as a naturalist shot of a normal Marion, ends with a highly expressive one as she reaches the brink of insanity.

This stylistic shift throws the audience into the same off-kilter paranoia that Marion experiences.  We become less sure of what is real and what is illusion.  Which of her thoughts are reasonable and which irrational.  This is key to the film’s power to disturb and unnerve.  It doesn’t just tell us about someone going crazy, it takes us along for the ride.  The film’s structure even denies us the grounding of a “main character”, forcing us to shift sympathies (and empathies) from person to person.  It makes us vicariously experience multiple personalities.

Look again at Marion’s expression in that last frame of transition.

Look familiar?

On Religion and the Presidential Nominees

What you are about to read contains ideas on both religion and politics. I know these topics are not discussed in polite society; this is one of the problems with our culture. We as a people are so narrow minded that differing ideologies cause us to revert to our base defense mechanisms: whining, yelling, and throwing poop.

Much has been said and will continue to be said regarding the role of religion in this year’s presidential election. Not so much concerning President Obama; anyone not yet convinced that he is not a secret practitioner of Islam is beyond all hope and reason. He is clearly guided by a moral code. It may not be the one you subscribe to, but that doesn’t matter.

Something that has been discussed constantly over the last year or so is Republican nominee, Mitt Romney’s, beliefs as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints (LDS/Mormon). There are several questions that keep popping up. Will this guide his hand were he elected president? What exactly does he believe in? Will the Mormon Church choose to play an active roll in seeking his election? Let us take these questions in turn.

Will this guide his hand were he elected president?

Romney is clearly guided by his faith. There is plenty of evidence for this, but two instances stick out. His sacred garments can often be seen through his shirt under press lights and his response to a supporter’s use of the phrase “Choose the Right.”

His garments serve several purposes:

1. They are a modesty guideline. Many Mormons will not wear any clothing that does not cover the garments in their entirety.
2. They act as a constant reminder of one’s faith as they are seldom removed for reasons other than bathing.
3. Many members of the Mormon Church believe that the garments literally protect them from harm. Both spiritually and physically.

A few months ago, during a routine campaign stop, a supporter shook Romney’s hand and said, “Choose the Right” a Mormon slogan the reminds members to well…choose the right. In one of the few personable moments he has had on the campaign trail, Romney froze and said, “Always,” in a cool, humble tone that hadn’t yet been heard during any of his speeches.  Many members of the Mormon Church wear jewelry (usually rings) with the letters CTR as a physical reminder to make positive decisions.

So yes, Romney’s faith will undoubtedly guide him. It’s at the core of his being. This is not a bad thing, nor is it predictable. Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, is guided by the same faith, and he’s a Democrat.

What exactly does he believe in?

Mitt Romney himself is the only person that could give an actual answer to this question. The LDS faith is complex, but here are a few basics. Mormon’s have four sacred scriptures: The Holy Bible (KJV), The Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and The Pearl of Great Price.

It is amazingly difficult to actually describe the tenants of all of these books, so Mormons often rely on thirteen “Articles of Faith” that are outlined in The Pearl of Great Price:

1. We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost.
2. We believe that men will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam’s transgression.
3. We believe that through the Atonement of Christ, all mankind may be saved, by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel.
4. We believe that the first principles and ordinances of the Gospel are: first, Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; second, Repentance; third, Baptism by immersion for the remission of sins; fourth, Lying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost.
5. We believe that a man must be called of God, by prophecy, and by the laying on of hands by those who are in authority, to preach the Gospel and administer in the ordinances thereof.
6. We believe in the same organization that existed in the Primitive Church, namely, apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, evangelists, and so forth.
7. We believe in the gift of tongues, prophecy, revelation, visions, healing, interpretation of tongues, and so forth.
8. We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God.
9. We believe all that God has revealed, all that He does now reveal, and we believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God.
10. We believe in the literal gathering of Israel and in the restoration of the Ten Tribes; that Zion (the New Jerusalem) will be built upon the American continent; that Christ will reign personally upon the earth; and, that the earth will be renewed and receive its paradisiacal glory.
11. We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may.
12. We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law.
13. We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men; indeed, we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul—We believe all things, we hope all things, we have endured many things, and hope to be able to endure all things. If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.

I won’t go into any further detail here, but if you have any questions, ask. I’ll answer promptly.

 

Will the Mormon Church choose to play an active roll in seeking his election?

I’m quite passionate about this particular topic, so bear with me.

The answer is no…at least not officially, just as they didn’t weigh in during the Proposition 8 campaign in California that stripped a large group of people of the right to marry. In no way did they take part in the political process during that campaign. It’s not like the majority of all donations came from members of the LDS faith or anything like that.

See what I did there?

 

The Mormon Church’s official stance is that they maintain distance from politics. The Mormon Church has many qualities to be respected. This is not one of them. This statement is complete horseshit. The leaders or the organization may not officially endorse, or even condone, these contributions, but they aren’t trying to stop it either.

I can’t say that collections for the Romney campaign are being taken during the weekly meetings of the latter Day Saints, but personal experience tells me that, outside of Utah, they most certainly are.

The Recorded Soul : I Found A Love

When Thomas Edison perfected recorded sound, a revolution occurred within the art of music.  Sadly, this seems to have escaped most people writing music criticism in the United States for the last 40 years.  So it is for their benefit, rather than yours, dear reader, that I take pen in hand (or rather, keyboard in hands) to explain what I feel is being missed.  Bear with me, if you will…

Since first spirit was lifted by melodic note, humanity has struggled to capture the magic of musical sound, thisessence that has the power to lift us to extacy or shake us to our mortal foundations.  Musicians were, for a time, singularly handicapped among artists: sculptors’ creations had the permanence of marble or clay, painters had canvas, writers immortalized words with pen and paper, but music could exist only in the air that surrounds us.  Like the air, it had the strength to absorb and sustain us, yet was as ephemeral as the next breath.  Our first attempts to capture this magic were born of feeble necessity.  They were elaborate systems of notation and direction for other, future musicians to read and recreate.  But (as anyone hearing Seal interpret Sam Cooke’s ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’ will attest) the spirit of a song is greater than the sum of it’s notes.   Imagine the futility of attempting to recreate the desolate, late-night grotesque of Van Gogh’s ‘Le Café de nuit‘ from only the artist’s letters.  Do words even exist that adequately communicate what is captured by the painter’s brush?  Could anyone other than Van Gogh reinterpret his writings into the living experience of the original work? Could even he recapture it once the moment of inspiration had passed?  However elaborately detailed they may be, transcriptions can only be a poor substitute for the voice of the artist, for the sensibilities that inform the spontaneous gesture of his hand.

The technical limitations of paper notation created a musical caste system with the composer (musician as architect) at it’s head and performer (musician as pyramid-building slave) at it’s lowly feet.  While the composer could create intricate works, the core essence of his pieces, their individualized spirit, was subject to the capabilities of those who performed them.  Similarly the spontaneous expression of the performers were kept within the confines of the conductor (musician as slave-driver).   This is the problem one encounters when attempting to reduce art to an exercise in technique.  It loses the whimsy and immediacy, the freedom, of an artist given free reign.

So, Thomas Edison comes along and solves this problem for all eternity.  Of course, by the time he did, we’d fooled ourselves into thinking we had a sufficient solution. Some, like bandleader John Philip Sousa, saw the phonograph as detriment rather than liberation:

“These talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development of music in this country. When I was a boy…in front of every house in the summer evenings, you would find young people together singing the songs of the day or old songs. Today you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a vocal cord left. The vocal cord will be eliminated by a process of evolution, as was the tail of man when he came from the ape.”

While the auto-tuned success of Rascal Flatts suggests a grain of truth in his words, he ignores the promethean gift of the gramophone.  For the first time, a single musical performance, with all of the delicate subtleties, inflections, and sensibilities of an individual performer, was not subject to the dustbin of history.  As Sun records founder Sam Phillips once said (about his recordings of Howlin’ Wolf), “This is where the soul of man never dies.”  Musicial performers finally had an adequate canvas to render a small piece of their soul accessible for the ages.

Though it took a while for us to embrace the implications, this turned the world of music on it’s head.  The kingdom of the composer was scattered to the winds, his slaves set free.  It was now the individual performance, rather than the composition, that was the supreme work of art.  This is why we are disappointed when we download a CD of re-recordings or crappy live versions of treasured songs (thank God for the iTunes preview). The living spirit of music is as ephemeral as it ever was, and if it isn’t captured adequately at the moment of it’s existence, it may never live again.

OK, now that that’s taken care of, let me elaborate on my issues with the failures of music criticism…

The critical establishment seems to soldier on as if the old rules still apply, pretending that the Revolution of Edison never happened.  How else can one explain the gallons of ink spilled in publications like Rolling Stone that have lionized the half-talents of the singer-songwriter movement, or swooned over the cultural pretensions of ‘Eleanor Rigby’?  The problem one encounters when assessing pop music through the ‘songwriter-as-artist’ metric is that songwriting isn’t an art unto itself, but the bastard spawn of composition and poetry.  Three-to-five minutes is hardly time to score a worthy symphony, and as Peter Piper’d probably posit, pop platters make poor poetry.  One need only read a Jim Morrison lyric to realize that.

That isn’t to say that the process of songwriting is totally irrelevant, only that barring rare exceptions like Dylan, it might as well be.  Good songwriting doesn’t make great records.  If you don’t believe me, go listen to Gordon Lightfoot.  Good songwriter. Shit records.  Great lyrics can be humbled and bad ones made golden through the strength or weakness of an interpretation.  But so much of the power of interpretation rests on intangibles, and intangibles are hard to write about.  How does one measure the excitement of the scream that kicks off James’ Brown’s ‘I Feel Good’, or make an accounting of how easy it is to become lost in the world of the lonely nights with Frank Sinatra’s reprise recordings?  I think this is what Frank Zappa meant when he said that ‘writing about music is like dancing about architecture’.  Not that it’s an exercise in futility, but that it’s difficult to do in a meaningful way.

This piece would be remiss if I didn’t offer an example of what I’ve been talking about.  The Falcons’ ‘I Found A Love’ is a masterwork of the Edisonian revolution.  Recorded in Cincinnati, Ohio on a summer day in 1961, the song sat unreleased until Detroit’s Lu Pine records picked it up for release the following year.  The Falcons’ had two future soul legends in their roster at the time, Eddie Floyd (of ‘Knock On Wood’ fame) and lead vocalist Wilson Pickett (who would later score hits with songs like ‘Mustang Sally’ and ‘In The Midnight Hour’).  Nothing special was ever expected of the record, it was lyrically simple (even minimalist) and full of standard-fare musings along the lines of  ‘If you leave me, I think that I would die’, but the planets aligned to make this a recording of overwhelming power.

The song evokes through it’s glorious imprecision.  Speaking technically, the instrumentalists aren’t great, but emotionally they’re pitch perfect.  You couldn’t change a single note or beat to improve upon it.  Everything is simply as it should be. The way the piano walk-up seems to skip.   The drums that sound at times like a Salvation Army marching band.  The mellow saxophone can sound like a voice and the bass singer that sounds like an instrument.  And then there’s the sheer weirdness of the guitar tone as it alternates between stabbing at us like an ice-pick and dancing across the ceiling like light from a disco ball.  Everything just works.  Even the limitations of the vinyl format seem to thrust the singer’s passions into overdrive.  And what passions they are.  Wilson Pickett was one of the greatest singers of his generation, but you’ll rarely find him working harder than he is here.  He delivers his message with the holy zeal of a man aflame, and that message reaches far beyond the meager lyric.   It shows us the ecstasy of love, the lonely drama of the searcher, the private hell of desire.  It is a sonic experience of almost sacred impact, reaching to us across generations to let us feel the intense emotion of a single moment.  It is a monument to an era when men were unashamed to reach for something beyond their experience, something greater than themselves.  It is Soul.