A while back I started getting daily (sometimes multiple times a day) emails from the website Paste (pastemagazine.com).  Paste covers pop culture and describes itself as “your source for the best music, TV, books, comedy, craft beer, food, travel, tech, politics and more.”  The daily email provides recaps  on all these topics. Paste is an offshoot of Wolfgang’s Vault, a website of live recordings, merchandise, etc. related to the late rock impresario Bill Graham (whose middle name was Wolfgang).

The thing that I find interesting, and at times maddening, about Paste is their best of lists. Now those of you that read my posts know that I frequently go down this path presenting my favorite this or best that, in typical John Cusack/”High Fidelity”style.

Paste gives you lists on steroids. Here are a few recent examples:

• The top 100 movies currently on Netflix (I can never find any movies to watch on Netflix. Who has time to watch all these movies? I don’t even have time to go through the list.)
• 324 ofthe Best IPA’s Blind Taste-Tested (You’re kidding, right? How long did this take?)
• The 25 Best Nintendo Games of the 1980’s (Who could possibly be interested in this?)
• The Ten Best New Albums This Month (I haven’t found ten new records I’ve liked in the past six years!)

I can’t compete with this. I struggle to come up with ten examples for any given list. Anyway enough of my venting and on to the point of this post. Recently (May 29) Paste published their list of “The 30 Best Dystopian Novels of all Time”.

While agreeing with much of the list there were a few glaring omissions (which is surprising since the Paste lists are usually so long it’s hard to imagine anything being left off). Here are four (actually six) that I would add to the Paste list:

“The Stand”, Stephen King– This is classic early King.  Taking a break from his usual horror stories this is a tale of a mutating killer flu (Captain Trips) that  is accidentally released from a military installation killing “99 44/100%” of the world’s population. The survivors split into the camps of good and evil and face off in the aftermath. The evil survivors are holed up, fittingly, in Las Vegas. King is one of the great popular writers of our time. It is a gripping read and one of my favorites by him (It, The Dead Zone and 11/22/63 being the others).

“The Passage” Trilogy, Justin Cronin– “The Passage” was the first book I bought when I got my first Kindle in 2010.  In this first book a  government experiment goes wrong and unleashes mutant humans (virals) and a plague that kills most of the world’s population. The virals, vampire-like beings, prowl the landscape feeding on the remaining uninfected survivors. Meanwhile a six-year old girl may hold the key to saving humanity.  This book and the two others (“The Twelve”and “City of Mirrors”) in the trilogy lay out a sprawling adventure tale about the survival and rebirth of humanity.

“Station Eleven”, Emily St. John Mandel– This is one of my favorites. The writing is superb and the story is  rich and layered. A plague (flu again) is unleashed on a snowy night in Toronto by passengers arriving on a flight from Russia.  The flu wipes out most of the population and everything that defines society: “No more trains running under the surface of cities … No more cities … No more Internet.”  Not far from the hospital on the night when the flu was erupting an aging stage star collapses and dies during his performance.  The author weaves in this back story,  and others, while following the struggles of one band of survivors who roam the area around the Great Lakes putting on plays and concerts.

“War Day”, Whitley Strieberand James Kunetka–Before Carmac McCarthy’s “The Road”there was this 1984 novel about the aftermath of a 36-minute nuclear exchange between Russia and the United States. Five years later, the authors, playing characters in their own story, journey across America to interview survivors and assess the state of the post-war nation.

Paste got most of it right but I think their list should have included these. Does anyone want to hear about my favorite IPA?

ARTS ROUNDUP

Reading– During the summer I tend to re-read novels from my two favorite authors, John D. MacDonald(Travis McGee series) and Robert B. Parker(Spenser series). Recently I re-read Parker’s “Sudden Mischief”.  This one involves the ex-husband of Susan Silverman, Spenser’s long-time love interest,  who has come to her for help because multiple women are suing him for sexual harassment. Susan asks Spenser to look into it and the situation proves to be more than first described.  His alter ego Hawk as well as Boston police lieutenant Quirk are along to support Spenser in his inquiry. Really good late period Spenser.

Watching  – Wimbledonon ESPN3. I’ve written about this before but this is the only way to watch the first week of this tennis major. Accessed via Apple TVyou can select the matches you want to watch. Total viewing freedom. I wish the network coverage of the golf majors would do this i.e., let you select the groups to watch in early rounds.

Listening – “Pure Jerry: Keystone, Berkeley, September 1, 1974”, Jerry Garcia & Merle Saunders Band.  Garcia was touring this band during the Dead’s mid-seventies heyday. It’s all long, jamming workouts  of cover tunes.  Saunders shimmering Hammond organ, Jerry being Jerry and Martin Fierro on sax (and flute) creates a jazzy, R&B mix.  “Roadrunner” and “Going, Going Gone” are two of the highlights of this three-disc set. Thanks to my friend Doug for turning me on to this band.

Joan Didion is a writer, a very well known and accomplished writer, from California. Her first book of essays “Slouching Towards Bethlehem”, written in the sixties, is centered mostly around, or jumps off from, her home state. I mentioned her and this book in my Arts Roundup a few weeks ago. Now that I am most of the way through this book I wanted to share my thoughts about it with you. Much has been written about Didion throughout her long career and much more eloquently than I can do. But nevertheless this book has had a strong impact on me and I wanted to write about it.

The book is made up of three sections. The first is about people (e.g., John Wayne) and events (“Woman on trial for killing her husband”) in California, the second are more introspective pieces and the third are stories about various places. Though her writing is powerful throughout I want to focus on a few of the essays in the second and third sections.

On Keeping A Notebook – In this essay Didion traces her need to write things down back to her days as a young girl. She wonders about the origin of certain entries and why she chose to document them in her notebook. Later on in the essay she writes:

“I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them.”

On Self-Respect – An essay on knowing yourself and coming to terms with that knowledge, the good and the not so good things that we all are. It is in a way her version of “On Self-Reliance”[1] in that it is what we think of ourselves, not what others think of us, that matters in the end. She cites as one example the character from the “Great Gatsby” the tennis player Jordan Baker:

“Jordan took her own measure, made her own peace, avoided threats to that peace… Like Jordan Baker, people with self-respect have the courage of their mistakes. They know the price of things.”

Los Angeles Notebook – This is kind of a spooky essay about what it’s like to live in California. Parts of it sound like something ripped from today’s headlines and not a story written 50 plus years ago. After the catastrophic fires this past year, Didion writes this about the fires that ravaged California during the Santa Ana season:

“The Santa Ana caused Malibu to burn the way it did in 1956… In the winter of 1966-67 eleven men were killed fighting a Santa Ana fire that spread through the San Gabriel Mountains.”

Throughout the book there are numerous references to the Santa Ana winds that Didion portrays more as a cosmic force of nature with powers over people and not just some seasonal climatic event.

“To live with the Santa Ana is to accept, consciously or unconsciously, a deeply mechanistic view of human behavior… Raymond Chandler once wrote about the Santa Ana … ‘Anything can happen’.”

Goodbye To All That – This is a wonderful essay about Didion’s time living in New York City where she went for six months and stayed eight years. Living at times on the edge of poverty she hung on to experience the magic that is New York City when you are young:

“I still believed in possibilities then, still had the sense, so peculiar to New York, that something extraordinary would happen any minute, any day, any month.”

In the end this is not a critique or even a review. This is more a fan letter, a recommendation. And though I have shared some quotes from the essays they are not spoilers. The book is filled with prose like the examples I have shared. I find it all quite powerful indeed. It is a gift to discover even one writer or book like this a year. 2018 will have to struggle to keep up. As for what’s next for me, I’ll be running down Didion’s second book of essays “The White Album”. I’ll report back.

ARTS ROUNDUP

Watching- I’ve been in a bit of a slump lately in my viewing choices. But that ended with the new Netflix limited series “Collateral”. The four part series stars Carey Mulligan as the lead detective investigating the murder of an immigrant pizza deliveryman. It is a very complex story written by David Hare with great performances by a very deep cast. Highly recommended.

Listening – The latest issue of Rolling Stone Magazine had one of their occasional overviews they do of all of a band’s albums and their latest one profiled Steely Dan. So I pulled up the greatest hits “Decade of Steely Dan” from my iTunes archive. They had an impressive run in the 70’s from the early albums’ radio friendly hits like “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” and “Reelin’ In The Years” to the frictionless surfaces of “Aja” and “Gaucho”.

Reading – There was an interesting profile about Keith Richards in last week’s Wall Street Journal Magazine. Part Connecticut country gentlemen, part rock and roll pirate; it’s always fun to check in on Keith. To paraphrase the title of the article, one of the legends of rock is still rolling at 74.

[1] Ralph Waldo Emerson.

The topic this week is my favorite mystery series (i.e., books featuring a continuing character). In many of these series the main character will also have a foil, a close friend or assistant, that gets involved in the caper at hand, providing the necessary support, with some complementary skill. The main characters in these series sometimes follow the more traditional professional detective or lawyer path (Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch and Robert Parker’s Spenser). Then you have the more “unofficial” investigators like John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee.

Though the title of this essay addresses the men in this particular sub-genre, series featuring female characters abound. Some of my favorites through the years have included Janet Evanovich’s hilarious amateur sleuth Stephanie Plum (numbers in the titles e.g., “One For The Money”) and Sue Grafton’s private eye Kinsey Milhone (Letters in the titles, e.g., “A if for Alibi”). [1]

Here are my favorite authors/characters in this mystery sub-genre.

John D. MacDonald/Travis McGee – This series’ titles all contain a color (e.g., “The Deep Blue Goodbye”). Travis lives in Fort Lauderdale[2] on his houseboat, The Busted Flush that he won in a marathon game of poker. He earns his living as a “salvage consultant”, who helps people get back something they have lost after all legal means have been exhausted. For this Travis keeps half of the recovery. He takes his retirement in installments (living off the most recent salvage job) and is a self-described beach bum. Still Travis isn’t smug about his freedom from the more traditional life. He knows it comes with a cost. He is ably assisted by his economist friend Meyer who lives nearby on his boat, The John Maynard Keynes. MacDonald’s writing rises above the pulp fiction he cut his teeth on and Travis’s adventures include lengthy asides where he waxes philosophic on life, Florida and other matters. MacDonald passed away in 1986 after publishing 21 books featuring Travis McGee. I own two complete sets of the series.

Robert B. Parker/Spenser – Where MacDonald’s writing can be expansive Parker’s is all about economy in this dialogue driven series about the Boston private investigator Spenser (no first name). Spenser is a wisecracking, renaissance man. He looks like a thug but he is well read and cooks like Julia Child. I remember reading one of Parker’s early novels and busting out laughing while riding on the NYC subway (no one noticed). Spenser’s companion in many of his cases is his friend Hawk, who he has known since his boxing days, who makes his living on the other side of the law doing freelance work for the Boston mob. The common themes running through this series and MacDonald’s are self-reliance and a certain code for living, specifically how a man acts and lives his life. Other recurring characters in the Spenser series (Police lieutenant Martin Quirk) also exemplify this code.

Michael Connelly/Harry Bosch – From the other side of the continuum comes Los Angeles homicide detective Harry Bosch. Harry is a grinder, working his murder book (the document that is constructed as the case proceeds) to unravel the threads of his latest mystery. Harry is a divorced, Viet Nam veteran, jazz aficionado, who lives in the Hollywood Hills. He can be humorless, and at times even a little self-righteous, but he also exemplifies this code of being his own man. His dedication to the solution is single-minded. As Harry likes to say, “Everyone matters or no one matters”.

Harlan Coban/Myron Bolitor – The very popular Coban writes many stand-alone books besides this series about the sports management business owner/sometimes sleuth Myron Bolitor. Myron is from Livingston, NJ, where his parents still live, and resides in New York City where he runs his business, MB Sports Reps, and gets involved in various mysteries. Myron was an all-American college basketball player who blew out his knee in one of his first pre-season games with the Boston Celtics. His assistant, Esperanza Diaz, a former woman’s wrestling legend, accompanies him on many of these adventures as does his college roommate, the spooky, borderline psychopathic, investment bank owner, Windsor “Win” Horne Lockwood III. Win, like Hawk in the Spenser series, is almost an anti-hero who brings an interesting ethical angle to the decisions that have to be made during the course of the investigation. But whereas Hawk reminds us of what Spenser could have become, the parallel between Myron and Win is subtler.

Chris Knopf/Sam Acquillo – This is one of my new favorites. Sam lives in South Hampton in his parents’ old summer cottage looking out over the Little Peconic Bay. He escaped to the Hamptons after the self-destruction of his corporate career and marriage. He lives there with his dog, “Eddie” Van Halen and his girlfriend Amanda who lives in the next cottage over. Sam earns his living doing woodworking projects for local contractors. His other primary activity is hanging with Eddie and Amanda, sipping copious amounts of vodka in his Adirondack chair looking at the water. Sam also finds his way into local mysteries, which usually wind up involving folks from the “other” Hamptons.

A new release in one of these series is like getting together with an old friend and finding out what they’ve been up to. This made the passing of MacDonald, and more recently Parker, particularly difficult. Combine this with Coban writing Myron Bolitor books less frequently the last few years and I am constantly on the lookout for new mystery series. The caper is obviously important but it is the richness of the characters and how they live their lives that makes these series special. I find myself re-reading books from these series, especially the Travis and Spenser books. I usually re-read at least one Travis book each summer. It’s almost time to check back with my old friend down in Bahia Mar.

ARTS ROUNDUP

Reading: As I just mentioned I’m always looking for new mystery series. “Saratoga Longshot” by Stephen Dobyns features Charlie Bradshaw who is a detective with the Saratoga Springs police department. In this first installment of the Saratoga series he is down in New York City trying to find the son of an old girlfriend. Charlie, in his early forties, has a quietly tenacious, everyman quality about him that grows on you. I’m giving the second book a try.

Listening: I recently read that Radiohead will be doing a deluxe three-album 20^th year anniversary reissue of their 1997 “OK Computer” album. I was tempted but decided instead to just give the album a re-listen on Spotify. It definitely holds up well especially songs like “Karma Police” and “No Surprises”. The album is from a time when the band still played guitar-driven music.

Watching: I just checked out the Netflix series “Pinky Blinders” (now in its fourth season – I’m always late to these series). A lot of the shows on Netflix are a bit dark and this one is no exception. It takes places in the early twentieth century and follows a Birmingham, England gangster operation called Pinky Blinders. Sam Neill plays the detective trying to bring them down. It was interesting but not sure yet if it is a keeper.

[1] In the crossover category of women authors writing male characters there is also Kate Atkinson’s terrifically complex Jackson Brody series.

[2] Bahia Mar marina, slip F-18 to be exact.

I just finished Robbie Robertson’s “sort-of” memoir “Testimony” (I’ll explain “sort-of later). My brother-in-law loaned me the book saying that it might be a future blog. Having written about the Band last year I wasn’t planning on doing a piece about this book. However it did offer some new perspectives on the Band’s story.

Robertson was the principal songwriter for the Band[1] and this is the final word on the group (unless Garth Hudson decides to weigh in, which is unlikely). Like his songwriting, Robertson is an engaging storyteller. We get a lot about his early days in Toronto and his very colorful, and somewhat lawless, extended family.

Some of these stories we have heard before in other books and re-release line notes: the chaos of the ’66 Dylan tour of Europe, Allen Toussaint losing his horn charts for the “Rock of Ages” shows and the preparations and execution of “The Last Waltz”.[2]

One of the interesting story lines for me is how Robbie eventually emerged as the leader of the Band. It didn’t start out this way. The drummer Levon Helm is the leader early on. He recruits Robbie in the early sixties into the Hawks, the backing band for Ronnie Hawkins. Levon and Robbie become close during this time. Eventually after multiple personnel changes, the Hawks lineup becomes the future members of the Band. After they split from Hawkins they become Levon and the Hawks. The Hawks are at a crossroads when Robbie goes to NYC and meets Bob Dylan at the recording session for “Like A Rolling Stone”. Dylan asks him to play guitar on his upcoming tour. Robbie then recruits the rest of the Hawks to back Dylan on his infamous ‘66 tour. Levon quits early on because he can’t take the unruly crowds. From this point on Robbie becomes the leader of the Hawks and later the Band. By the time Levon returns to join them in Woodstock it’s Robbie’s show.

Robbie becomes tight with Dylan on the ‘66 tour. This close relationship will continue on through their sabbatical in Woodstock after Dylan’s motorcycle accident, all the way through “The Last Waltz”. It’s probably not going too far out on the limb to say without Dylan there would be no Band. There is also Robbie’s relationship with Dylan’s manager Albert Grossman who champions the young group and helps them get signed. This is the development of Robbie as the ultimate insider, which continues after the Band moves to California and he forges relationships with David Geffen and Martin Scorcese.

The Band was atypical for the times. This was the peak of the counter culture. Kids were turning away from their parents and rock was leaning toward loud electric music with extended guitar solos. The Band cut against this grain with an understated, ensemble approach. They even put a photo of themselves with their extended families on the back cover of their first album. Their time in Woodstock shielded them from the influences of the outside world so they could forge their own sound. After they released their first album, “Music From Big Pink”, the world came looking for them trying to understand where this new music was coming from.

The Band, in addition to their understated ensemble sound, was also unique for having three lead singers, that didn’t include the principal songwriter (Robertson). According to Robbie he wanted this to be a balanced group, not one where he wrote the songs, sang them and played the solos. The fact that Rick Danko, Richard Manuel and Helm were outstanding singers helped achieve this goal. Even their stage setup was non-standard with Helm’s drums set up stage left in the front and Garth Hudson’s keyboards setup center, back where the drum riser usually is.

Robbie goes on at some length about the musical gift of the other bands members, particularly Garth Hudson, who is a virtuoso on his Lowery organ. All the members of the Band, other than Robbie, ironically, are multi instrumentalists. Rick Danko is said to be able to learn almost any instrument in a short time. The four would regularly switch seats and instruments during  their shows.

Creatively the Band was effectively done after the release of their fourth album,” Cahoots” in 1971. Robbie and the others must have been feeling the strain of keeping up with the first two records. After Cahoots they would only release one more album of original songs, “Northern Lights, Southern Cross” in 1975 (not counting the outtakes, B-sides “Islands” that was put out in 1977 to satisfy their contract with Capital Records and allow “The Last Waltz” album to be released on Warner Brothers).[3] Helm, Danko and Manuel getting involved with heroin was the primary reason given for this drop in creative output. Robertson seems to stop writing altogether during this period.

Still Robbie plays nice when recounting his relationships with the others in the group particularly Levon Helm (compared to Levon’s Robbie bashing in his Band memoir “This Wheel’s On Fire”). Almost too nice when you know the tensions that were building after the their third album “Stage Fright”.

The book is strangely paced. The bulk of it deals with the Hawks, Dylan’s ‘66 tour and the Band’s time in Woodstock recording in the basement of their house with Dylan. The first 400 pages of the book take us to the 1971/72 New Year’s shows at The Palladium in New York City (from which the live album “Rock of Ages” is sourced). The last 100 pages covers from early 1972 to The Last Waltz in November 1976. There is a lot of ground to cover here: the Band’s members’ slide into heroin addiction, the historic show at Watkins Glen in 1973 with the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers (one page), the 1974 tour with Dylan and of course the Band’s farewell at Winterland with The Last Waltz. Then the book just ends. Nothing about the last album “Islands” or putting together The Last Waltz movie and album. And he completely avoids recounting the acrimony that ensued when the rest of the group realized that Robbie was moving on after The Last Waltz.

ARTS ROUNDUP:

Watching: Got back into the second season of “Billions” on Showtime. This is such a great show with US Attorney Chuck Rhodes, played by Paul Giamatti, chasing the hedge fund titan Bobby “Axe” Alexrod played by Damian Lewis. The show gets all the little things right that most TV series don’t, especially when it comes to the finance industry. The soundtrack is also killer, featuring the likes of Car Seat Headrest, Keith Richards and REM.

Reading: “Open and Shut” by David Rosenfelt is the first installment of a series featuring the New Jersey lawyer Andy Carpenter. Andy is a smart aleck who sometimes tries too hard to be funny but most of the time he is an entertaining and likeable character. It was a good, fast moving story and features the various NJ locales. I’m in for number two in the series.

Listening: I went to my local music store on Record Store Day last weekend. I almost bought a live album by the band Halestorm (I bought something else). I then looked them up and streamed their album “The Strange Case of…” They’re a hard rock band from York, PA formed by the brother and sister team of Elizabeth and Arejay Hale. She’s the lead singer. Picture Pat Benatar fronting Guns n Roses, at least for two thirds of the record. The middle section is a little less in your face but still has an edge. A song like “Beautiful With You” veers close to pop and you could imagine Taylor Swift singing it.

[1] The Band was Robbie Robertson, Levon Helm, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson.

[2] Robbie’s account of strong-arming the legendary promoter Bill Graham to cooperate with director Martin Scorcese’s preparations sounds strangely out of character for the mercurial Graham.

[3] “Northern Lights, Southern Cross” had some great songs on it. “It Makes No Difference” is one of the most gut-wrenching romantic songs ever written and “Ophelia” would fit on any of the Band’s earlier albums.

Here’s the best of what I’ve read, watched and listened to in 2016.

Books

1. “Razor Girl”, Carl Hiaasen – OMG, laugh out loud funny as Hiaasen chronicles the latest band of Florida crazies and their schemes.
2. “Before the Fall”, Noah Hawley– This is the best book I read this year. Crazy mystery about a private plane crash off Martha’s Vineyard. Read this book.
3. “The Travelers”, Chris Pavone – Somewhat a return to form for the author of the breakout hit “Expats”. Pavone returns with a tale about a travel writer who gets caught up in international intrigue where all is not (as you would expect with Pavone’s thrillers) what is seems.
4. “City on Fire”, Garth Risk Hallberg – Big, complex, multiple character book with intertwined stories set in NYC from late 1976 to summer of 1977.
5. “Home”, Harlan Coben – One of my favorites series with two of the great main characters in Myron Bolitor and his sidekick Win. If you haven’t read this series it is worth going back to the start with 1995’s “Deal Breaker”.

Movies/TV – I am way behind on new television and movies… but of what I did get to these were my favorites:

1. The Crown (Netflix) – I wrote about this one recently. Clare Foy plays the young Queen Elizabeth in this four season Netflix series. A bit of methadone for those dealing with Downton Abby withdrawal.
2. Soundbreaking: Stories From The Cutting Edge of Recorded Music (PBS) – All you music lovers out there find the reruns of this eight-part PBS special on the recording of popular music over the past 50 years.
3. Madame Secretary (CBS) – Losing a little steam in its third season but still very watchable and Tea Leoni holds it all together.
4. Arrival – The one movie on this list (as I said I am way behind). Amy Adams stars as a linguist dealing with one of the alien ships that have “arrived” in various parts of the world. It’s a story about communication and the concept of time. I didn’t really completely understand what was going on but I enjoyed it all the same.
5. Good Behavior (TNT) – Michelle Dockery goes 180 degrees from Lady Mary on Downton Abbey to play an ex-con, meth addict who becomes partners, not willingly, with a professional assassin.
6. The Americans (FX)– I just finished the third season and this is one of the best shows of the modern television era. Makes you think about your neighbors.

Music

Albums – I listen to a fair amount of new music but to be honest not much sticks in terms of wanting to hear the whole album again. Here’s the few that made the grade in 2016:

1. Kasami Washington, “The Epic” – Is it ever. Sax player Washington emerges fully formed with this three-record jazz/funk extravaganza. I picked up the vinyl at Spinster Records in Dallas earlier this year.
2. Lydia Loveless, “Real” – Third full length LP from Loveless. At first I thought she had filed off her rough edges a bit too much and was veering off into Taylor Swift land. But not to worry, upon further listens, and a recent show in NYC, she’s as scrappy and rocking as ever.
3. Car Seat Headrest, “Teens In Denial” – These guys are on all of the best of lists so I thought I give them a try. The lead singer sounds a lot like Ray Davies of The Kinks (at least to me). Good solid record. They have a lot of this album on YouTube if you want to check them out.
4. Dinosaur Jr., “A Glimpse of What You’re Not” – J Mascis at his guitar shredding best, 20 years on with the original lineup.

Songs – I also keep a list of memorable songs from artists I’ve tried in the last year:

1. Kings of Leon, “Waste A Moment” – Classic late-period KOL arena-style tune.
2. John Fullbright, “When You’re Here” – A sappy love song but a good one.
3. Datura4 , “Out With The Tide” – This Australian band is a crazy mix of styles from this one that opens the record to others that sound like ZZ Top, Aerosmith and on it goes. This song has a bit of a T. Rex vibe.
4. The Record Company , “Off The Ground” – This is a band to watch. This swampy, tune with its slithering slide guitar sounds more like a seasoned roadhouse blues band than a first album from a bunch of young guys from LA.

Happy New Year!

Back in the eighties I had heard that two companies in Japan made all the VCR’s for dozens of well-known firms like Sony and Toshiba. A similar theme runs through John Seabrook’s new book “The Song Machine: Inside The Hit Factory”. It turns out that most of the “pop” songs we hear on the radio by the likes of Beyonce, Katy Perry and Rihanna, are all written by the same few people.

From one perspective Seabrook is just describing the evolution of the music industry’s long-standing A&R function. The term A&R stands for artists and repertoire. Back in the early days of popular music the A&R man found songs for his artist to sing (e.g., Sinatra). Then there was the Brill Building and Berry Gordy’s Motown Records that churned out songs for their artists. In the late sixties songwriters Boyce and Hart wrote songs for the TV-created band the Monkees. The modern era has seen the likes of superstars like Linda Ronstadt who built her career interpreting the works of her southern California contemporaries.

Artists didn’t write their own songs until the sixties when Dylan and The Beatles came along. Since the demise and uber-fragmentation of radio we have seen a permanent bifurcation in the music industry. On one side we have pop stars that get their hit songs on the radio. Then there are the artists/bands who continue to write and perform their own songs, get little or no radio play (except for satellite) and make most of their money touring. What Seabrook describes in his new book is the impact of technology and things like the songwriting DNA of the Swedish people that has created the modern equivalent of the Brill Building on steroids.

Seabrook’s story begins in Stockholm with Louis Pearlman who, along with the songwriters at Cheiron studios, created the boy bands The Back Street Boys and N’Sync. They also launched the career of Britney Spears. We hear the stories of people like Max Martin, Stargate and Dr. Luke, the new alchemists that all the pop stars turn to for hits (as of this writing Coldplay and Adele have been added to the list).

At the heart of this story are these “songwriters” who with the help of technology have attempted, with great success, to reverse-engineer the pop hits of the past. Where the hook? How soon should it be introduced? This is the alchemy of hit song writing, the 21^st century version of “give them what they want”.

Today’s pop songs are more assembled than written. First we have the “track and hook” specialists. Then there are the melody and lyric specialist that travel from studio to studio working on dozens of potential hits per day. Every finished song that is not deemed a potential hit is discarded and they move on to the next song. A good song is not enough. They need hits, preferably mega-hits.

It’s a game of numbers and percentages. It may take assembling dozens of these tinker-toy like songs to find one hit. Hundreds to find that mega-hit. They just keep playing around with beats and hooks until the right combination is found and out pops (sorry) the hit song. What Seabrook describes is truly a songwriting factory.

The old fashioned record executives like Clive Davis that have “ears” for hits are a dying breed that have been replaced by these new alchemists. Davis is still active and responsible for some of the biggest names in pop like Kelly Clarkson. In the chapter of the book about Davis’s impact on Clarkson’s career. There is the story about how she was dead set against recording one of Max Martin’s songs. The song was “Since U Been Gone”.

Seabrook also describes the emerging problem of copycats. Competitors have begun reverse-engineering the song structures and sounds of the innovators like Cheiron Studios and Max Martin. Suddenly you have songs hitting the pop charts that sounded like Cheiron’s stuff but were in fact replications of their approach. Again technology was accelerating the process. The pressure to continue to innovate and stay relevant is intense. Pop stars are only as good as their last hit and the same goes for the professional pop songwriter. We have songs coming out today that are similar if not blatantly the same as songs that were hits for another artist six months ago. Sometime this has resulted in some artists filing law suits.

Now we have mainstream stars crossing over in search of a hit song from the factory (e.g., Bon Jovi’s “It’s My Life”). The crossover doesn’t always work. Liz Phair traded in her Indie street cred in an attempt to become a pop star on her fourth album. The fans saw it for what it was. We haven’t heard much from Liz since.

This is not where art and commerce intersect. This is where art and commerce have diverged and may never see each other again. You can say that it’s just an amped up version of what’s been going on since Sinatra recorded songs written by the Gershwins or Carol King wrote “The Locomotion” but something in the world that Seabrook describes is different. The songwriters of old were artists while Max Martin el al seem like technicians and, in the end, imitators. In today’s world it seems pop music can no longer also be art.

A few months ago I was made aware of the sociologist Brene Brown (thanks again to Tim Ferriss of “The Four-Hour Work Week” fame). Brown’s book “Daring Greatly” and her House TED talk lay out her research on shame and vulnerability. I didn’t really know what to expect from a shame researcher.

Brown’s research on shame lays much of the blame on our society of scarcity. Specifically our “not enough” culture e.g., not pretty enough, not thin enough, not rich enough, not Kardashian enough. We don’t measure up to society’s image of what we should be and we feel bad about ourselves (shamed). Part of getting over these feelings of shame and inadequacy is to realize that we are enough, whatever enough is.

Vulnerability is the other side of this coin. It is just another way of thinking about taking risks; in our relationships, jobs, whatever. Vulnerability is being willing to show others we are comfortable with who we are. Putting yourself out there in situations where the outcome is uncertain is her definition of vulnerability.

Many people try to avoid vulnerability but this is a slippery slope. Brown calls it numbing vulnerability. The problem is you can’t get rid of the bad stuff without losing the good things along with it, the things that make us emotionally whole. Numb to one thing is numb to all things.

According to Brown’s research there are people who willfully embrace vulnerability. They’re not comfortable with it but they view it as a necessary part of their lives. For the rest of us with practice, embracing vulnerability can become a more natural, and rewarding, behavior.

The title of her book comes from this longer quote by Theodore Roosevelt:

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

Johann Goethe was thinking along similar lines when he said “Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid”[1].

Emerson also goes to the heart of vulnerability in his essay “On Self Reliance” when he writes about young men and their careers:

“If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises, they lose all heart. If the young merchant fails, men say he is ruined. If the finest genius studies at one of our colleges, and is not installed in an office within one year afterwards in the cities or suburbs of Boston or New York, it seems to his friends and to himself that he is right in being disheartened, and in complaining the rest of his life. A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days, and feels no shame in not ‘studying a profession,’ for he does not postpone his life, but lives already. He has not one chance, but a hundred chances.”

Taking chances is willing to be vulnerable. The irony is that when we are at our most vulnerable is when we are most alive. Brown calls it loving with your whole heart. Leaving nothing behind. Here’s the link to her TED talk. I think you’ll be blown away. Check out the book too. We are enough.

[1] Which I first heard quoted in the movie “Almost Famous” when William’s mother Elaine (played by Frances McDormand) is speaking on the phone with the Stillwater guitarist Russell Hammond (played by Billy Crudup). You needed to know this, right? What’s a post without a footnote?

I finally got around to reading “The Girl On The Train”, the recent bestseller by Paula Hawkins that has been billed as this year’s “Gone Girl. [1]The structure of the book is similar to GG with the story being told from multiple characters points of view. In this story three women present the different points of view. There is the main character Rachel (the girl on the train), Megan (the missing girl) and Anna (the girl who marries Rachel’s ex-husband and lives on the same street as Megan).

Rachel rides the train each day to and from London and the train stops at the same signal each day where she looks out at the same set of houses, one of which is where Megan and her husband Scott live (Rachel dubs them Jess and Jason until she learns their real names). They are always out on their deck and appear to be a loving couple living the perfect life. Then one day Rachel sees Megan on her deck with a man, who is not her husband, leaning over and kissing her. How can this be? Scott and Megan are the perfect couple. Not long after this Megan goes missing and we are off to the races (or down the train tracks).

Rachel has been in a bit of a downward spiral since her marriage to Tom broke up. She becomes increasingly depressed and starts drinking way too much. There are many drunken fights. Then Anna sweeps in and takes Tom (and they quickly have a baby adding to Rachel’s pain). Now Rachel rents a room in a friend’s house up the train line. The drinking continues to the point that Rachel blacks out in her old neighborhood (stalking Tom and Anna) on the night that Megan disappears. Rachel wants to help by going to the police about what she has seen from the train but her deteriorating condition makes her an “unreliable” witness.

The story unfolds slowly and carefully, with each of the character’s back-story filled in to create more and more depth and complexity. Gradually doubts and questions creep in from every corner of the story as we try to determine who is responsible for Megan’s disappearance. Was it Megan’s husband? Her therapist? Someone from her past? Or did she just disappear? Could it be Rachel? And what did Rachel see the night she blacked out? Will she be able to remember enough to shed some light on what happened to Megan? It’s a twister Dorothy!

So I think it is worth checking out “The Girl On The Train”. And for all you train commuters you may want to look straight ahead at those signal stops.

Afterword: The other book that I have recently read and recommend is “The Martian” by Andy Weir. During an expedition to Mars a savage dust storm causes the captain of the crew to abort the mission after only six day (sols in Martian time). They believe one of their crew has been killed in the storm so they leave Mars in their ship without him. Only one catch… he’s not dead. Now he’s stranded on Mars and must find a way to stay alive until the next Mars mission that is four years away. What really made the book enjoyable for me is the guy they left behind, Mark Watney, in addition to being brilliant (he is a botanist and an engineer), is a serious wiseass and the story is told via his hilarious journal entries. It’s fun and suspenseful at the same time as we watch Mark try to stay alive long enough to be rescued.

[1] The comparison to Gone Girl brings up another question.This being Hawkins’ first novel (GG was Flynn’s third novel) one wonders about she will follow through after her first book was such a mega-hit. The temptation to play to the audience can be strong.

Oh, this is a very good book. Most book reviews tend to tell you a lot of details about the story. I have to admit I like these reviews because they sometimes saves me from reading the book, though this is usually for non-fiction and biographies. This is not that kind of review. I will sketch out the story but you need to read this book.

Author Ann Patchett (I haven’t read much of her work but it she is on my list) is now my go-to person for book recommendations. In a recent interview she recommended the novel Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, as one of her favorite new books. After finishing the book in less than a week I have to agree. This is one of the best books I have read in a long time. It’s one of those books where when I am on my ten-minute bus ride into the city I am hoping for a little traffic so I can read longer.

Station Eleven is a new spin on a story that been told many times. Some apocalyptical event occurs wiping out most of the world’s population along with our electricity-based infrastructure (planes, cars, cell phones, PCs…). Post event we follow groups of survivors as they make their way in this new world. “The Stand” by Stephen King and “The Passage” by Justin Cronin (which is referenced in this book and is the scariest of all them) have told similar stories, as have movies like the new “Planet of the Apes” series and the recently cancelled television show “Revolution”.

In Station Eleven the event is a super-flu that has been transported from Russia to Toronto on plane full of infected tourists. From there it is a matter of weeks until the end of civilization (One in 300 survive). On the same night in Toronto, during a snowstorm, an aging actor playing the lead in King Lear is stricken during the performance and dies on stage. It is the multiple entanglements that many of the characters have with the actor, Arthur Leander, that propel the story forward. Among them is the man who leaps onto the stage from the audience to try and save Arthur, the eight-year-old actress who is watching this from the wings, his best friend, two of his ex-wives and his young son.

After these opening scenes in Toronto, Station Eleven then leaps to 20 years after the flu. In the new world we follow The Traveling Symphony, a group of surviving musicians and actors who travel around the Great Lakes region to new settlements, performing Shakespeare. This is juxtaposed with the back-story of Arthur Leander and those whose lives he has intersected with in the years leading up to the super flu.

The title comes from a series of graphic novels written, but never published, by one of the main characters. The subject of the graphic novel becomes a metaphor for the adventures of the characters wandering in the post flu world. The characters are well drawn and Mandel makes you care about them. The back-stories are rich. The story is hopeful, not grim.

It all fits together seamlessly creating a book that is hard to put down.

I’ve been thinking about this post for a while. The last few years have seen many aging rock icons putting out their memoirs. Some are quite good, and one makes it onto this list, while some are just awful (Clapton’s book was almost un-readable – quite a disappointment). This list also includes books about rock and roll by various non-musician insiders as well as books about artists written by other authors.

Frank Zappa still has the best quote about rock journalism: “People who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t speak, for people who can’t read.” Second best is from Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lester Bangs in the movie Almost Famous: “They’ll get you to write sanctimonious stories about the genius of rock stars and they will ruin rock and roll and strangle everything we love about it.”

Here’s the list:

Shakey (Jimmy McDonough) The quintessential book on Neil Young and way better than either of Neil’s two books. The author had access and the detail is incredible. I re-read sections frequently.

Life (Keith Richards with James Fox) The standard by which all rock memoirs will be judged. A little snarky about Mick but otherwise very well done with some great back story stuff e.g., how Keith invented his five string open tuning that created the “Stones sound” from the late 60’s on. The book opens with Keith, Ronnie Wood and others being pulled over by the cops in Arkansas with a trunk full of drugs during the 1975 Tour of the Americas. Somehow they get off and back to the tour. The rest is history.

Bill Graham Presents (Bill Graham and Robert Greenfield) A biography of this legendary impresario. My favorite parts (surprise) are the rise and fall of the Fillmores, which coincides with rock moving from being about the artists (and the Fillmore’s approach to presenting the rock show) to its focus on money and staging shows in arenas like Madison Square Garden (“that concrete box”). If you want to dig deeper into this period I recommend Live at the Fillmore East and West (John Glatt).

The Rock Snob’s Dictionary (David Kamp and Stewart Daly) My daughter gave this to me because I am a truly pedantic, rock snob. Lots of short, obscure minutia that only lunatics like me will appreciate like the organ on Procol Harem’s “Whiter Shade of Pale” was not a Hammond B3 but some other model. I don’t remember the organ model offhand proving that this guide outstrips even my grip on meaningless detail. Total lunacy. I love it!

LZ 75 (Stephen Davis) From the author of Hammer of the Gods (also a must read) the book provides a day-by-day account of Zeppelin’s 1975 Physical Graffiti tour. The notes were discovered 30 years after the tour and only recently published. The book paints a picture of the band at its creative and popular zenith with forebodings of the fall to come (e.g., the growing disintegration of John Bonham on the road).

Bumping Into Geniuses (Danny Goldberg) Goldberg’s been in the music business since the 60’s in various jobs (journalist, PR, management…). He was doing PR for Zeppelin during their 1975 tour (see above). He was also involved with everyone from KISS to Stevie Nicks and was involved in the MUSE no nukes concert and film.

STP (Robert Greenfield) Stands for Stones Touring Party and is the author’s firsthand account of the 1972 Exile On Main Street Tour. This is my favorite book about any Stones tour (Lisa Robinson’s series in Rolling Stone covering the Stones 1975 Tour of the Americas is a close second) capturing the action onstage and off. The tour culminates at the Playboy mansion in Chicago and it is probably the tamest section of the book. The Glimmer Twins at their 70’s decadent best. For a deeper dive into this classic album try Exile On Main Street (Bill Janovitz). Janovitz is the guitarist/singer from the Boston band Buffalo Tom and this book is a song-by-song deconstruction of the record.

Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (Lester Bangs) The title says it all. This is a collection of writings from this infamous and outrageous rock critic. My favorite piece: “James Taylor Marked for Death.” The one and only.

High Fidelity (Nick Hornby) The book that the movie is based on and takes place in London not Chicago. The record store scenes and the philosophy of what makes a great mix tape are classic.

Robert Christgau’s new book has just come out to mixed reviews but he is one of the most  influential rock critics of the past 40 years so this is probably worth checking out. He also has published a series of his reviews by decade that is another way to dip into his work. Also check out the recent book by another of the critical legends, Greil Marcus. I can never get enough of this stuff.

Zappa was mostly right but these books are some of the exceptions to his rule.