Happy Birthday to WORT!

It's such a weird pleasure playing receptionist at WORT in Madison (Wisconsin).  This afternoon, during Jim Schwall's special jazz & pledge-rap show, ex-Madison musician Barbara Kooyman (co-founder of Timbuk3) called from Austin, Texas, and sang "Happy Birthday" (to WORT) into my ear.  WORT is celebrating its 35th anniversary today. 

Check out Barbara's new music-for-life project at www.sparrowswheel.com.  Many happy returns of the day, WORT-FM Back Porch Radio Broadcasting!  You hardly look a day over 30.  And Austin weather sounds good this time of year.

"Next Stop Is Vietnam" war & music symposium

I learned alot & heard many moving stories at last weekend's Wisconsin Veterans Museum symposium, celebrating the release of the archival CD set Next Stop is Vietnam:  The War on Record (1961-2008), curated by musicologist Hugo Keesing.  This event in Madison served as a valuable reminder that music has the power to help musicians tell personal stories as well as to help listeners endure traumatic experiences.  

Country music expert Bill Malone, PhD candidate Charles Hughes (who's writing a dissertation on soul music), African-American writer/vet Art Flowers and musician/vets Jim Walktendonk & Lem Genovese offered fascinating insights into how those who served in Vietnam were uplifted by popular music and how folks on the home front reacted - through country, rock & soul music - to the war's unfolding futility. 

Emotions were strong among Vietnam vets in the audience, but the abundance of laughter made attending the 5 sessions a pleasure.  Here's a list of the songs most mentioned by Vietnam vets - including nurses - as having a special resonance, according to researchers Doug Bradley (a USARV reporter in Vietnam) and Craig Warner (UW professor and a self-described "undrafted hippie" musician from Colorado):

1. "We Gotta Get Out of This Place" by The Animals, written by Barry Mann & Cynthia Weill (for the Righteous Brothers) - the title suffices to explain its popularity among US troops in Vietnam.

2. "Fixin' to Die Rag" by Country Joe MacDonald (a veteran who still supports fellow vets as well as an iconic anti-war activist) & the Fish. 

3. "Leaving on a Jet Plane" by Peter, Paul & Mary (written by John Denver) - originally released in 1967, but not a hit till '69 - beloved by soldiers overseas for its theme of reluctant parting from a lover.

4. "Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay" by Otis Redding (co-written by Steve Cropper) - sadly, a posthumous release & another melancholy lyric full of longing.

5. "Detroit City" by Bobby Bare, a crossover country hit popular among troops due mainly to its mournful refrain "I wanna go home."  Some 58,000 of our nearly 3 million Vietnam vets never did make it home.  Many more couldn't adjust to their post-Nam world.

6. "Purple Haze" by Jimi Hendrix, an ex-paratrooper & rebel hero to many fighting men, especially combat grunts in Vietnam, after the war turned sour in 1967.

7. "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'" by Nancy Sinatra, who has made a living largely from entertaining Vietnam vets.  And, of course, she looked damn good in those boots circa 1966.

8. "The Letter" by The Box Tops, memorable mainly because of its urgent theme - i.e. missing my gal - and the late Alex Chilton's great growling vocal delivery.

9. "Chain of Fools" by Aretha Franklin - US troops in Vietnam apparently applied the lyrics to the military chain of command, among other sources of irritation.

10. "What's Goin' On" by Marvin Gaye - title track of  that masterpiece album, which Marvin wrote after deep conversations with his brother Frankie upon Frankie Gaye's return from combat duty in Vietnam.  Art Flowers said that the cut "What's Happenin' Brother" just about blew his mind when he first heard it after his Nam tour.

Miss Meaghan Owens live on the radio

Dear Miss Meaghan:

What a treat to be sitting at the Oregon (Wis.) Public Library, my comfy Sony headphones plugged into their Dell computer, dialing up WORT-FM on the Internet and hearing your irresistibly distinctive voice and gorgeous guitar playing on Jim Schwall's For the Sake of the Song show. Talking about your work with Guitars for Vets and the new CD, Gun Shy of a Kiss. Then you perform that Nashville song ("Saturday Girl") and my heart melts. Brava, bellissima! Encore! And then Jim plays your recording of "Honey Bee."

Lay your gypsy head down and take a bow. Your chicken ring-tone is calling.  See you at Madison's Brink Lounge Thursday night.

Jay Farrar at the Majestic: Shared Dream

I shared a sort of waking dream with 204 other people Saturday, November 6th, at the Majestic Theater (capacity: 600) in downtown Madison, Wisconsin.  Although I arrived 15 minutes late, I found an empty seat in the front row.  Onstage Jay Farrar and sideman Gary Hunt played and sang mostly melancholy songs with a quiet urgency and mellow determination.  Farrar's acoustic guitar blended perfectly with Hunt's electric guitar, acoustic guitar, mandolin and fiddle, yielding an entrancing contemporary Americana sound.  

Poised and serious in a black cowboy shirt, black boots and black jeans, Farrar proved that he is still a better singer than his old bandmate Jeff Tweedy (Uncle Tupelo, Wilco), but his songs are more meandering and vague than Tweedy's best stuff.  Farrar may not have had the success with Son Volt that Tweedy has had with Wilco, but he is clearly as talented.  I couldn't name the songs, aside from "Big Sur" - an homage to Jack Kerouac - but they all moved or intrigued me.  Sadly, not many local music fans seem to be in on the secret.

"I don't know about you," Farrar said in his mild Belleville drawl, introducing a song, "but when I hear the word 'God,' I think of Willie Nelson.  Locoweed grows because God says so."  Farrar also name-dropped Leadbelly in one tune and alluded to Highway 61 in another.  Jay Farrar appears to be travelling the same wild desolate road as Dylan, Willie, Cash, Kristofferson and other American mystic-rebel explorers of music, mood and truth.  In his shaggy moptop and freakfolk beard, Farrar ushered the small devoted crowd to a celebratory gathering under artificial blue stars - a weary guide, but a good one.

He deserves more ears.  Twenty years ago, while fronting punk-country pioneers Uncle Tupelo, Farrar wrote "Screen Door" and sang a bold cover of  "No Depression," A.P. Carter's classic hymn to heavenly hope.  He's now age 44, still creating smart lyrical songs, like Michael Stipe's younger country cousin.  The only important difference:  he now sips water onstage, not beer or whiskey.

Sen. Russ Feingold concedes with Bob Dylan quote

I was impressed by the class that Senator Russ Feingold displayed in his concession speech Tuesday night in Middleton, Wisconsin. This modest man of principle who voted against the so-called Patriot Act "because I read it," a progressive hero to millions, went down defiantly, saying that the fight continues.


Yet he closed on a grace note, quoting "who else - Bob Dylan: 'But my heart is not weary / It's light and it's free. / I've got nothing but affection for all those who sail with me.'" Thanks for serving our country so well since 1992, Russ. I'm proud to call you Captain, my Captain! (- from a poem by Walt Whitman re Abe Lincoln)

Hank III - Rebel "Hellbilly" Within

The crowd at Hank (Williams) III's show at the Barrymore Theater last night was as frisky and freaky as those Mexican masks atop the lobby of that cozy Madison venue.  Hank III plays with a variety of personae, an actor with a heavy family legacy to bear. 

At first, he's the acoustic honky-tonk hero in Stetson and boots playing original ballads - mostly about his blues and his related love of intoxication - with a crack 6-piece backing band that features an upright bass, old-timey fiddle, banjo and pedal-steel guitar.  "A Little Bit of Smoke and a Whole Lotta Wine" is a typical title.

Then he slips on the "hellbilly" rebel outlaw mask - singing "Tattooed and Branded," kicking the musical tempo up a notch, adding a screamer on backup vocals like some demented Freudian id or demonic alter ego, but still playing mostly pleasing melodies with sardonic wiseass lyrics.  Finally he straps on an electric guitar, plops on a Copenhagen tobacco cap and delivers loud repetitious hardcore with fellow metalheads in a group provocatively called Assjack.  That divides the diehards from the more casual listeners, who leave.

Apparently it ain't easy being Hank, who has forged his own intriguing style of punk, alt-country and speed metal.  The endearing 40ish musician gave his enthusiastic fans a treat for Halloween:  an entertaining preview of the Apocalypse perhaps.  Meanwhile, across town, Bob Dylan played the Overture Center.  Reportedly, Bob barely acknowledged the crowd.  The Times They Done Changed, eh?

Happy Birthday, Chuck Berry!

Johnny B. Goode's creator Chuck Berry turns 84 years old today.  John Lennon once said, “If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it ‘Chuck Berry.’”

He may be an ex-federal-felon (Mann Act), but that brown-eyed handsome man could play his guitar just like a-ringin' a bell.  Check out the old rocker's weekly gig in his hometown (St. Louis) before he passes.   Roll Over, Beethoven - tell Tchaikovsky the news!

Letter to a fellow Lennon fan

Hey, Stu Levitan:
I enjoyed your Tribute to John Lennon radio show on October 10. Very creative use of your 1980 Madcity Music Scene article, embellished with Lennon/Beatles song excerpts. Loved that guy - still miss him. Imagine the songs he'd have written since Double Fantasy!

I wrote an essay (re: what John Lennon had been up to since 1975, etc.) for my freshman English Composition class with Prof. Nicholas Doane, father of the Orpheum's Henry D., at UW-Madison in November 1980 - just before John so sadly died.

By the way, I was born 4 days before John Lennon's 20th birthday, on October 5th, 1960 in Heidelberg, West Germany (where The Beatles launched their career).
Truly,
Muse of the Weird

R.I.P., Solomon Burke - Soul Man

Sad news from Amsterdam yesterday, when soul legend Solomon Burke died suddenly at age 70.  He was sitting in an airplane, just arrived from LA, when a heart attack felled the big singer.  His performance throne sat empty at the sold-out Dutch concert venue.  May he rest in peace.  Long live Solomon Burke, the King of Rock 'n' Soul!

Warren Zevon: Mr. Bad Example

I liberated a beat-up cassette tape from the basement of WORT the other day.  Lo & behold I found a funny song with lyrics that fit me too.  It's - who else - Warren Zevon:

I got a part-time job at my father's carpet store
Laying tackless stripping & housewives by the score.

I loaded up their furniture & took it to Spokane 
Auctioned off every last naugahyde divan.

Of course I went to law school & got a law degree 
I counselled all my clients to plead insanity.

Then worked in hair replacement swindling the bald 
Where very few are chosen, fewer still are called. 

-  "Mr. Bad Example" (Mr. Bad Example album, 1991)

Racine, Wis.: Vibrator Capital of America (circa 1912)

Dig this WSJ story, y'all. Ya gotta love my weird hometown, former vibrator capital of America: host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/doug_moe/article_f4a7b498-d24e-11df-a019-001cc4c002e0.html

Grad student Ms. Hallie Lieberman presents an intriguing idea: build a vibrator museum in Racine. AND IF THEY BUILD IT, WE WILL COME!

Andrei Codrescu Lectures at UW-Madison: DaDa!

Andrei Codrescu's lecture at the Union Theater last night was the perfect 50th birthday present to myself. His NPR commentaries are brilliant feuilletons of the absurd. He talked about being inspired by Dadaist madman Tristan Tzara & meeting scholar Mircea Eliade in Chicago in 1967.

A dark wry poet-editor-adventurer who immigrated from Transylvania to the USA via Rome in 1966. He lived in New Orleans, where I first heard him speak circa 1988, for decades & retired from LSU recently.

Hilariously enough, his new (vacation) home is in the Ozarks wilderness. Redneck country. See the documentary Road Scholar, about Prof. Codrescu belatedly obtaining his driver's license & exploring America by automobile.

Imagine H.L. Mencken crossing America by car with Groucho Marx (Codrescu's a Jew whose native tongues are German & Hungarian) & they pick up Jack Kerouac & John Lennon hitchhiking. Gotta love this crazy world!

Two Farm Aid 25 Highlights

Picture 64-year-old Neil Young with a straw fedora on his grizzled head blowing a harmonica while pumping on a church organ & singing the old spiritual "The Water is Wide" with new lyrics, after urging us to "READ THE LABEL" on food before buying crap from factory farms. His wife Peggy & a pair of backup singers lend a choir air.

Imagine 43-year-old Jeff Tweedy (in the apparent uniform of the day flannel shirt) strumming an acoustic guitar while performing his passionate Wilco song "I'll Fight" solo, before treating us to "You Are Not Alone," which he wrote & produced for Mavis Staples. Another true believer in the cause: healthy sustainable agriculture. But he dedicated "I'm the Man Who Loves You" to his wife Sue.

It was a friendly family affair in Milwaukee on October 2nd, 2010. I'm glad I attended.

Leonard Skinner, RIP

Sad news yesterday on NPR that Leonard Skinner, former Robert E. Lee High School (Jacksonville, Fla.) gym coach, died at the age of 77. In the late 1960s, Coach Skinner sent Gary Rossington & a few other budding rockers to the principal's office for violating school policy by wearing their hair long. In mocking tribute, they later named their band Lynyrd Skynyrd, (1973 debut album: "Pronounced Lehn-nerd Skin-nerd").

A Sinatra fan who considered most rock 'n' roll noise, Mr. Skinner nevertheless allowed the band to use a photo of his real-estate company sign for the inner sleeve of their third album. He came to regret it after receiving many late-night calls from drunken Lynyrd Skynyrd fans. Members of the band once jammed at Skinner's bar, The Still, on San Juan Avenue.

His son, Leonard Skinner Jr, told "All Things Considered" yesterday that his father enjoyed the notoriety he'd gained & that he particularly dug Skynyrd's song "Gimme Three Steps." When I met retired Skynyrd guitarist (& co-writer of "Sweet Home Alabama") Ed King in Nashville last winter, he called that band's singer/frontman, the late Ronnie VanZant (1948-77, died in a plane crash while on tour for the "Street Survivor" album), a poet.

But Ed grew up in the LA area, so he hadn't been subject to Coach Skinner's old-school Southern discipline. Rest in peace, Coach Skinner! Lynyrd Skynyrd lives!

Chris Hillman on American Culture in the '70s & Today

Chris Hillman, multi-talented co-founder of The Byrds & the Flying Burrito Brothers, one of the seminal figures in LA's country/folk-rock sound, had this to say about the 1970s in the book Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock and Roll's Legendary Neighborhood by Michael Walker (2006): "The whole decade I find is a complete waste in all facets of American culture. There were some good things, don't get me wrong. But that wasn't a good time for me. I lost a lot of people [including Gram Parsons, who overdosed in 1973]."

Things have not improved, from Hillman's point of view: "Look at what we're dealing with now - the end game: American Idol." You can hear more of Chris's opinions on Internet radio this Wednesday, September 29. Hillman is scheduled to appear by telephone on Bill Malone's Back to the Country show on WORT (89.9 FM - Madison, WI), where I volunteer. Bill tells me that Chris Hillman should be on the air around 11:00 a.m. You can hear it anywhere in the world via the Web at: www.wort-fm.org (listen live or via Archive). Enjoy!

Bob Mould, Jackson Browne, John Lennon & Me

I just learned - via factoid on WXRT-FM's (Chicago) website - that Bob Mould was born on October 16, 1960 (eleven days after me), albeit in Malone, NY & not Heidelberg, Germany, birthplace of me & Jackson Browne. Bob's band Husker Du (sorry, no umlauts handy) was born in the Twin Cities, of course, where Mould attended Macalester College. John Lennon is another October Birthday Boy. Librans seeking balance?

Next Stop: Vietnam!

This morning the wise & warm country-music expert Bill Malone hosted one of his best shows ever on WORT-FM, a 3-hour special on Vietnam-era country & folk music. You can hear it via a link at www.wort-fm.org (click on Archive & search for Back to the Country, Sept. 15th).

His guest was UW professor & Vietnam veteran Doug Bradley, who culled excerpts from a new 13-CD UW Archives collection, The Next Stop Is Vietnam: 1961-2008 (available from the cool German label Bear Family Records, see www.bear-family.de). The boxed set includes North Vietnamese pro-surrender propaganda broadcasts by Hanoi Hannah as well as American pro-war propaganda by Nobel Peace Prize winner Henry Kissinger.

Here are a few of highlights from the show, which ranged from the ridiculous ("Goodbye High School, Hello Vietnam") to the sublime (Jimmy Webb's gorgeous "Galveston" - popularized by Glen Campbell):

* Johnny Cash's "Singing in Vietnam Talking Blues" - a tale of his eye-opening trip with June Carter to entertain U.S. combat troops, featuring a support-the-troops message with a protest spirit (the last word of the song is "peace").

* Merle Haggard's "Fightin' Side of Me" & "Okie from Muskogee" - Merle once admitted to an interviewer that he was more ambivalent about the counterculture than the latter song's lyrics suggest, noting "The only place I didn't smoke [pot] was in Muskogee." Lefty folkie Phil Ochs picked up on the redneck satire, performing "Okie" & praising Haggard on his weird Gunfight at Carnegie Hall (1970) live album.

* "Sam Stone" by John Prine, who'll probably perform it Friday (9/18) at the Overture Center in Madison. The chorus, from the junkie/vet's kid's perspective ["There's a hole in Daddy's arm where all the money goes / and Jesus Christ died for nothin', I suppose..."] always moves me.

* Several angry tunes by U.S. Vietnam veterans, including the defiant Agent Orange victim Jim Wachtendonk & compassionate bluesman Watermelon Slim.

We seem to live in the age of perpetual American warfare. Our nation's misadventure in Afghanistan feels a lot like Vietnam to me - 9 years & counting. Bring the troops home already!

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: Gentleman, Rebel, Joker & Folksinger

“I shook the hand that shook Woody Guthrie’s hand!” exclaimed the 20-something guitarist for the Drunken Catfish Ramblers outside the Stoughton Opera House on a warm Saturday evening. The San Diego-based musician, whose string trio is busking their way across America - traveling by thumb & freight car, no less - had good reason to be excited. It was September 11, 2010, a sad anniversary for the USA, but a fine night for music in southern Wisconsin. He was referring to Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, who was in town to entertain us with songs, stories & jokes honed over 6 decades of performing & recording.

The son of a Jewish doctor, Jack was born Elliott Adnopoz in Brooklyn (NY) in 1931. He ran away from home at age 15 to join a rodeo, but soon reluctantly returned home. In 1950 he met the legendary Woody Guthrie, who sealed Elliott’s fate as a roaming trickster-style folksinger. He established his reputation as a performer & recording artist in London (England) in the mid-1950s. By the early 1960s, Ramblin’ Jack had matured from a Guthrie protegé to a mentor for Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs & other more obscure folkies around the New York scene. He still gets around, having played a Blues Festival in Oslo (Norway) just before his gig in Stoughton, Wisconsin, a town south of Madison settled mainly by Norwegian immigrants.

Stoughton also happens to be the birthplace of the show’s opening act, Miss Meaghan Owens. A talented young Americana singer-songwriter, Owens’s sweet girlish voice, percussive fingerpicking & enthusiastic stage persona provided a good contrast to Jack’s crotchety seated performance. Dressed in a fancy white-and-pink cupcake dress above cowboy boots, the petite redheaded Miss Meaghan played 5 songs, mostly from her new CD Gun Shy of a Kiss (available at her website, www.missmeaghanowens.com). Owens seemed nervous & a bit awed by the grand venue, but the crowd encouraged her with generous applause. She remarked on the contrast between the hushed, gilded Opera House & the loud, dirty honky-tonks where she usually plies her trade. The highlight of her set was its opener, “Saturday Girl” (co-written by Nashville veteran Bobby Hicks), a catchy melody with plaintive lyrics about a neglected lover’s yearning. Owens will open for Junior Brown at Shank Hall in Milwaukee on September 25th.

Ramblin’ Jack took the stage almost shyly, despite his rather flamboyant outfit: pink cowboy shirt, brown kerchief, blue jeans, boots & a broad-brimmed hat. Warming up with “San Francisco Bay Blues,” he played his guitar - which featured a longhorned steer painted below the sound hole - in his customary flatpicking style. He paused between numbers to tell funny stories about some of his famous pals (Guthrie, Cisco Houston, Townes van Zandt, Willie Nelson, et al.) as well as various roadies & broncobusters he has befriended. He interjected a tall tale or two, including a claim that his husky/sheepdog mix Caesar could drive a car. He embellished the story by noting that the unlicensed canine “was the best road manager I ever had.”

At age 79 Ramblin’ Jack Elliott’s tenor may be shaky & strained, but his repertoire is deep & wide. The songs he performed in Stoughton ranged from cowboy ballads (“Buffalo Skinners”) to talking blues (“Talkin’ Sailor Blues”) to Carter Family classics (“Engine 143”), to Woody Guthrie protests (“1913 Massacre”) to cosmopolitan country (“Blue Eyes Cryin’ in the Rain”) to old-timey tunes (“Rakin’ & Ramblin’” - made famous by North Carolina banjoist/folklorist & lawyer Bascom Lamar Lunsford) & even pop hits of the 1960s (Tim Hardin’s “If I Were a Carpenter”).

A solid interpreter of others’ compositions as well as a purveyor of ever-evolving folk songs, Ramblin’ Jack is refreshingly modest & self-deprecating. He can also play the cagey put-on artist à la Dylan. “I’m not a music lover,” he told us with a deadpan expression. “I just do this for cat food and diesel fuel.” I only wish his LA record label hadn’t neglected to supply him with CDs to sell at his concerts. After apologizing about that & complaining that the label had “dropped the ball,” Jack took it in stride. “It’s only money,” he said stoically, “it’’ll show up soon.”

Polite, snow-haired Jack doffed his cowboy hat several times during the concert & thanked us all for coming. A rebel as well as a gentleman, Mr. Elliott may have disappointed his parents (who’d urged him to be a doctor), but he rarely disappoints an audience. In fact, he’s a kind of alternative healer, bringing the medicine of laughter & the wonder of music to stressed souls well into the 21st century. Long may he continue to ramble!

Vox Americana: Wilco Deserves Your Undivided Attention

In case you have only a passing acquaintance with them, Wilco and its singer/songwriter Jeff Tweedy are perhaps the greatest musical artists toiling in the alt-country/power-pop fields today. I’d like to explain why they deserve your undivided attention.

Please don’t consign them to your iPod shuffle list. Kindly do not relegate them to aural background to your next happy meal or sexual fantasy. Give them a careful listening by playing an entire album, the way good music used to be heard. Your effort will be rewarded.

The songs of Wilco are ambitious artifacts of individualistic Americana, rich and passionate soundscapes, refreshing soundtracks to a money-mad society too often hostile to art that dares to criticize as well as celebrate life. They inspire me to make my own art. Pardon me if I wax evangelistic, but I am a true believer in this Chicago-based band and its gifted leader.

Tweedy and Wilco provide a wakeup call from the American cultural nightmare while also offering lullabies that help return us all to a better dreamland. They make vital joyous music, occasionally dark and existential as a good film noir. Wilco’s music is mysterious yet natural as fog.

A Sonic Shoulder to Cry On: Wilco Will Comply

Wilco was established in 1994 in St. Louis, in the wake of the messy demise of founder Jeff Tweedy’s legendary alt-country band Uncle Tupelo (1988-93), which had kick-started the roots/indie-folk No Depression movement. In the course of releasing eight albums, plus collaborating on the outstanding Woody Guthrie project Mermaid Avenue (Volumes 1 & 2), Wilco has become the most creative and interesting American band since the heyday of R.E.M., circa 1985-95.

If you’re sceptical of this claim, then I advise you to see the protean Nashville segment in the Wilco concert/tour documentary Ashes of American Flags (2009). Jeff Tweedy - as his name might suggest - is not a particularly charismatic performer. Fortunately, Wilco’s songs and their live sound require no pyrotechnics. Yet Tweedy opened up emotionally in Nashville, seizing the moment, filmed at a 2008 show at the intimate Ryman Auditorium, in his fancy white Nudi suit festooned with embroidered cardinals and red roses.

Tongue in cheek, Tweedy tells the ecstatic audience that if this turns out to be one of the greatest rock concerts of all time, it’ll have to bear an asterisk. He had been injected earlier that day with steroids, he explains. And the drugs made it possible for Tweedy to sing that night despite a damaged throat. Then the band launches into “A Shot in the Arm” (from Wilco’s 1999 masterpiece Summerteeth) and blasts a home run into the Ryman balcony.

Singer-songwriter Jeff Tweedy, who turned 43 on August 25th, is a rather crabby-looking anti-rockstar of a frontman. He normally projects a vibe that says shy loner with a hangover. In fact, he suffers from chronic migraines, as shown in a painfully revealing scene in the somber Wilco documentary I Am Trying to Break Your Heart (2003), in which Tweedy vomits in a studio toilet during the making of Wilco’s breakthrough Yankee Hotel Foxtrot album.

But Tweedy is no longer a drinker, having quit alcohol years ago and having undergone treatment for addiction to prescription drugs more recently. He does, however, still deal with anxiety attacks and occasional stage fright, especially when performing solo. His personal dramas and musical artistry are described sympathetically in Chicago Tribune rock critic Greg Kot’s excellent book Wilco: Learning How to Die (2004).

Now a 6-member unit (Jeff Tweedy - vocals/guitar; John Stirratt - bass/vocals; Glenn Kotche - drums; Nels Cline - guitar; Pat Sansone - keyboards/guitar, etc.; and Mikael Jorgensen - guitar/keyboards), Wilco may be even better at making records than at entertaining crowds. Adding touches of electronica and eerie ambient soundscapes to Tweedy’s lyrically pointed songs, Wilco transcends genres.

The unfortunate consequence of their open-minded experimental spirit, however, is that radio station programmers rarely feature Wilco on their playlists, which are mostly targeted at a narrow demographic of listeners without adventurous tastes. While Wilco does appear on television now and then (e.g. PBS’s Austin City Limits, late-night mainstream talk/music shows), they created the most media buzz when a pair of their songs were used in Volkswagen advertisements.

Most discerning critcs respect and endorse Wilco’s music. As you might have guessed, their record sales have not met their promise. Reprise, Wilco’s label at the time, even refused to release Yankee Hotel Foxtrot in 2001, simply releasing the band from their contract instead. But Wilco is the kind of band, like the Velvet Underground in the ‘60s, that has launched a thousand other disciple bands. We will be charmed and artists will be influenced by Wilco’s music for decades to come.

Wilco are in it for the long haul, having already endured several changes in the lineup over the past 16 years. The only original members are Tweedy (who sometimes performs as a solo act) and bassist John Stirratt. Former member and sometime co-songwriter Jay Bennett died last year, while his lawsuit against Wilco and Tweedy was pending.

The band’s name comes from the two-way radio transmission abbreviation meaning “will comply,” as in “roger wilco” (i.e. “I understand and will comply”). Wilco is a sublimely humane and accessible band that lives up to their claim, embedded in the lyrics of “Wilco (the song),” that they offer fans a “sonic shoulder to cry on.” Tweedy understands that life is tough, but that music makes it easier to take. At least when the songs sound as revelatory, ambiguous and sometimes confusing as life itself.

I have listened to their latest album, Wilco (The Album), at least a hundred times since I got it last summer and it still sounds fresh to me. Songs like “You and I” (duet with Feist), the defiant “I’ll Fight,” the anthemic “Sonny Feeling” and the compassionate manifesto that is the eponymous opening track all amaze me with their ability to evoke vivid images, to move me, to console my heart and please my mind.

What’s New? Tweedy as Producer/Solo Performer; Wilco Exhibit & New Label

Jeff Tweedy is scheduled to perform solo at the Farm Aid 2010 concert on October 2nd at Miller Park in Milwaukee. He just produced a forthcoming album by legendary gospel/folk singer Mavis Staples. The newly released single from that record, a soul-folk number called “You Are Not Alone” (also the album’s title) was highly praised by Rolling Stone magazine.

Wilco hosted the Solid Sound Festival, a concert in conjunction with exhibits curated by members of the band, on August 13-15 at the MassMOCA museum in North Adams, Massachusetts. The band was awarded a pair of Grammys in 2005 for the album A Ghost Is Born: one for Best Alternative Music Album and another for Best Recording Package. Wilco albums have also been nominated for Grammy awards in the rock (2008), contemporary folk (1999) and Americana (2009) music categories.

Wilco recently announced that it would soon leave its current record label (Nonesuch) and form its own label.

Memphis Twang Comes to Door County

Last evening (Aug. 9th) at Harborside Park in Ephraim I finally found the sound I've been missing since leaving Nashville in early March: genuine twang. Delivered by Eric Lewis & Tommy Burroughs from Memphis, Tennessee, along with a local drummer & electric bassist. Those fellas dug deep, playing bluegrass/Americana from the heart & soul And a big enthusiastic crowd ate it up like spicy Southern Bar-B-Q too.

I arrived just in time to catch their cover of the Flying Burrito Brothers apocalyptic paean to LA circa 1969, "Sin City": "On the 31st floor/A gold-plated door/Won't keep out the Lord's burnin' rain..." The Dwight Yoakam/k.d. lang duet ballad-style cover of "Sin City" (from the late '80s) is pretty damn good, but Tommy & Eric's harmonies did the song proud while capturing the somber tone of the FBB original.

In addition to a couple of their own originals, Lewis & Burroughs offered inspired versions of tunes by the Grateful Dead, George Gershwin, John Hartford & The Beatles ("I've Just Seen a Face"), closing with a runaway freight train take on "Orange Blossom Special," featuring that diminutive live-wire Tommy on fiddle & lead vocal. His mandolin & guitar playing are excellent, as is Eric's guitar-picking.

Best of all, I get to hear them as a duo on Aug. 11th - and so can you, for free - at A.C. Tap, just a mile down Hwy. 57 from my Pa's place. They're also playing in Fond du Lac soon, Washington Island on Sept. 3rd & at Fishstock in Door County's Camp David on Sept. 12th. Check 'em out, y'all. Lewis & Burroughs are the real deal.

Square Music Hurts the Hip

We’re Square, We’re There - Get Used to It!

by Joseph Crawford Mrazek

While observing a dozen people, from teenaged to oldaged, stiffly going through the motions of square dancing at the Sister Bay Village Hall barn dance on Saturday (July 31st), I had an epiphany: the music that moves most listeners is so hopelessly unhip. Why do audiences prefer square sentimental tunes to more interesting original songs? Is it simply a matter of bad taste being commonplace? Or is there something more elusive and complex behind this troubling phenomenon?

Although the Door County Folk Alliance musicians onstage at the quaint stone bayside venue nearly outnumbered the square dancers that evening, folk and country music used to move millions of Americans. Among the first popular radio programs heard nationwide were the WLS Barn Dance from Chicago and the Grand Ol’ Opry, broadcast by Nashville’s WSM. Both of those popular-music shows started in the 1920s; the Opry can still be heard, now worldwide via the Internet and satellite radio. The nuns at St. Edward’s Grade School in Racine even bothered to initiate us aspiring rock-n-rollers into the mysteries of allemand-left and doe-see-doe in the early 1970s.

I gained some insight into the general preference for square music at a Fish Creek restaurant on that same Saturday night. On an outdoor stage beside the firepit at Gibraltar Grill, a tall grayhaired acoustic guitarist and mediocre singer with the odd stage name “Cookee” captivated a gathering of diners and drinkers. His repertoire, comprised entirely of Top 40 hits from the 1960s and the John Denver songbook, was pretty dull stuff. Moreover, this weirdly compelling entertainer (real name: Gary Coquoz) was a visual parody of middle-class, middle-aged summer tourist - i.e. Jimmy Buffett fan - style: Hawaiian print shirt, white cargo shorts, sneakers and a yellow headband. Yet, despite his cheesy baritone and corny stage patter, Cookee charmed even a jaded amateur critic like me. How’d he pull that off?

Well, I suppose he understands intuitively how music creates a temporary community out of an assembly of distracted strangers. Cookee made the audience part of his act with teasing asides and singalong choruses. He embodied the essence of effective communication: good storytelling. He fed our craving for humor, emotion and wisdom like Jesus Christ dispensing loaves, fishes and beatitudes to the multitudes. But the grizzled mustachioed troubadour Cookee, who hails from the mountain town of Leadville, Colorado, accomplished his minor miracle without invoking an original lyric or even a single note of his own invention. Nevertheless, his tip jar attracted dollars like an evangelist’s collection basket.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I love a good cover song as much as the next guy. I was thrilled, for example, when Adam Mackintosh perfomed John Lennon’s “I’m Only Sleeping” last week at Harborside Park in Ephraim. Then again, that semi-psychedelic ode to indolence remains a hip song, despite the passage of 44 years since Lennon recorded it on The Beatle’s Revolver album. Even so, I reserve my greatest respect for musicians who write their own excellent material. Unfortunately, few songwriters approach what Hank Williams, Bob Dylan, Bob Marley and Joni Mitchell managed to accomplish in their heyday.

Retro-chic combos playing jazz and jump-blues from the Truman era - including Shout Sister Shout, a fine Michigan-based ensemble that performed at the Peg Egan PAC in Egg Harbor on Sunday (August 1st) - have their place. But rock ‘n’ roll gradually made such sounds obsolete to most contemporary ears. The resurgence of interest among young music fans in bluegrass and other old-timey sounds is more a faux-nostalgia driven fad than a trend with commercial or artistic staying power. Hip hop can also be politically and aesthetically challenging, but it has mostly degenerated into stale ghetto cliches and empty dance beats.

Sadly, nowadays the masses go for lamer stuff than the rock and soul music that I grew up with in the ‘60s. Music buyers and concertgoers flock to such vacuous pop stars as the earnestly square Taylor Swift and the artificially hip Lady Gaga, neglecting brilliant accessible artists such as Wilco and Neko Case. If the marketplace of culture reflects the times, then we seem stuck in a sterile (albeit sometimes lyrically dirty) era. It’s true that the musical analog of comfort food can be nourishing. Among my own guilty pleasures I count Abba and The Bee Gees. And I certainly would not impose fine sonic cuisine on ears unable to appreciate it.

In the USA we can all enjoy the smorgasbord of musical choices. It’s just too bad that most of us choose junk food. It makes pop-music radio so unpalatable for listeners with above-average taste. Maybe that’s why the Sony Walkman and the Apple iPod succeeded immediately: they made it possible for every person to be his or her own private DJ, hip or square.

Joan Baez & Loudon Wainwright III folk up Door County

Joan Baez, at age 70, was gracious & luminous in a Door County Auditorium concert July 16th. Her rendition of Woody Guthries's "Deportees," which she dedicated to the immigrants of Arizona, especially moved me. I enjoyed hearing her perform, with a fine 4-piece band, Robbie Robertson's brilliant "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" for an encore. Then she made an "I'm Sleepy" sign as if to apologize for a short show (it actually lasted over two hours).

Why did Ms. Baez only have one big hit in the Sixties anyway? Some of the audience applauded the opening notes of "There But for Fortune," a Phil Ochs song that she made famous circa 1966, among other favorites. "Diamonds & Rust" got some FM-radio airplay in the late Seventies, as I recall. She didn't play that one here.

Loudon Wainwright III, dressed in short pants - due, he said, to American Airlines having lost his luggage & CDs in Chicago - was professionally entertaining at Egg Harbor on July 18th. The outdoor crowd & I sang along to his early 70s novelty hit "Dead Skunk (in the Middle of the Road)." Head tilted back, tongue lolling & mouth distorted for comic effect, he played 40 years of his weird music, including a tender song ("Five Years Old") for his now famous daughter Martha Wainwright.

But then Loudon disappointed us by backing out of the traditional Peg Egan PAC post-concert reception. Oh well, I couldn't have bought his 2009 Grammy-winning CD "High, Wide & Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project" from him anyway. Still, I would've liked to get an autograph from that sometime actor. Son Rufus Wainwright may be an even better songwriter and performer than his father.

It Came from Memphis

I've discovered a fantastic book about the weird rock music scene in Memphis in the 1960s & 70s. It's called "It Came from Memphis" (1995) by Robert Gordon, a Memphian. It has an introduction by Peter Guralnick and features lengthy interview excerpts with the late great Memphis singer/guitarist & songwriter Alex Chilton (The Box Tops, Big Star).

Dig this grisly little taste, from Gordon's description of a bizarre mid-1970s cinema verite-style documentary called "Stranded in Canton," mostly shot in Memphis. It describes a scene in which a pair of circus geeks square off in a chickenhead-biting contest on the streets of New Orleans:

"The disappointing part of seeing a human being bite the head off a live chicken is the ease with which the chicken's neck disengages from its body. Geeks don't so much 'bite' the head off as, with the chicken's head in their mouth, they pull the head and neck loose, kind of like sucking your thumb but yanking it all the way off."

Now that's what I call journalism you can use. God, I miss the weirdness of the South sometimes.

The Weird, the Bad & the Unbearable

Surviving a World of Crazies
(a satirical essay)

“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”
- Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

People like to categorize things. Being a person, I’m no different. For example, I divide other people into 3 types. I do this for my amusement as well as for my safety. Although they might seem like vague catchall categories, the utility of such a classification of our fellow humans is indisputable. Mine may not be a scientifically precise schema, but it works. Keep in mind that there are borderline cases, people who are difficult to classify precisely. People can be ambiguous and deceptive buggers.

1. The WEIRD.
The first anthropological type that I’ve identified is the weird. These are your garden-variety, everyday, more or less regular folks. It includes neurotics, eccentrics and harmless weirdos as well as more conventional men and women who hide their weirdness - which is an innate characteristic of humanity. Generally, they make good friends and sometimes even decent lovers. You might even be one yourself. In fact, odds are you are weird: government-funded studies indicate that approximately three out of four people are merely weird and, therefore, not normally dangerous. Basket cases and tattoo addicts may be weird; then again, they may be unbearable (see category 3 below).

2. The BAD.
These are the truly awful people, mean-spirited geniuses or morons without a conscience. Do not be conned by them. Such humanoids are not bad in the the ironic slang sense of “bad” (meaning good). They are evil and must be exterminated. Or at least shunned. They operate with a constant death wish, either their own or perhaps yours, should you cross a bad guy’s path at the wrong time. The term encompasses everyone from perverted psychopaths like Milwaukee’s own Jeffrey Dahmer, sadistic dictators like Idi Amin and most armed compound dwellers. Throw in some neo-Nazis, a few Islamic jihadis and the pedophile next door and suddenly you’ve got a dangerous cocktail party of bad actors. Fortunately, such unregenerate assholes are relatively rare. But they make up for their low numbers by posing a threat to society’s very existence. They are the nuclear bombs in our midst. Defuse them if you dare!

3. The UNBEARABLE.
This is the sort of person who grates on the chalkboard of your nerves simply by being proximate. To illustrate this sizable sector of the population, imagine the boy or girl, man or woman who most frequently gets your goat. Who needles you with predictable frequency. Who pesters you persistently. Who provokes you, who mocks your defects mercilessly. They may be a busybody blood relative, a schoolyard bully or that obnoxious co-worker who plays loud gangster video games in the next cubicle. You are probably forced to spend considerable time in the company of these jerks, due to family or work obligations. Worse still, you have to pretend to their face not to detest their every annoying habit, quirk and tick. If you didn’t have a family or employment relationship, their unbearability could be easily curtailed or avoided. For me, it’s my father, who inflicted his name on me when I was a defenseless baby. Dad and I despise one another as only immediate family members can. Dysfunctional families are often fun on TV, but they rarely are in reality.

So, you may wonder, how does it benefit me to know which subspecies of homo sapiens I am dealing with in any given situation? Well, for your convenience I’ve reduced the answer to this acronym: WE BASh UnDEAD, which stands for
* Weirdo? Embrace ‘em.
* Bad? Annihilate or Shun ‘em.
* Unbearable? Don’t Even Answer the Door.
That little mnemonic device could save you hundreds of hours of grief or even prevent your imminent murder. The next time you sense discomfort in the presence of another, ask yourself (silently, of course): Is he weird, bad or merely unbearable? It could be a matter of life and death. Especially in the USA, which leads the world in the rate of bad and unbearable citizens. No wonder America’s prisons and jails are so full!

DISCLAIMER: The weird are sometimes suicidal, the truly bad are frequently homicidal and the unbearable will gradually smother your spirit with their tedium. Choose your companions and associates wisely, friend. Life’s too short to spend much of it among the non-weird. My advice? Find your own kind and enjoy peace of mind.

Tribute bands: cultural parasites or well-meaning imposters?

Having just enjoyed a fine Simon and Garfunkel musical impersonation (called a "tribute" act in the biz) in Egg Harbor, I was puzzling over this question: Do such imitators constitute a parasitical scourge on culture or a deserved homage to great musical artists? It's a busy world of perpetual entertainment, so I'll brief.

Some, like tacky Beatles tribute band Rubber Soul, which I saw recently at a casino in Madison (Wis.), commit crimes against culture. I could devise no more fitting punishment for the likes of those insect-feeding clowns than the one they've already condemned themselves to: earning their bread by competing with the deafening din of slot machines being pulled by a thousand obese grannies. The Native Americans' revenge on the British Invasion perhaps.

Others, like Messrs. Swearingen and Beedle, keep fond musical memories alive. Nostalgia, after all, sells better among Baby Boomers than sex nowadays. Besides, since the real Simon and Garfunkel are on medical hiatus (instead of touring as planned this summer), what could A.J. and Jonathan possibly do that might hurt the eardrums of a harmless crowd of old folkies hungry for a memory-taste of the Sixties?

I only hope the Roy Orbison tribute act, booked to play the Door County Fair in Sturgeon Bay on August 4th, won't disappoint those who know and love that weird genius's music. If you go, you'll have to let me know. I'll be at the New Pornographers show at the Orpheum Theater in Madison that evening - ain't nothing uncreative or especially derivative about Neko Case and her Canadian gang!

Meeting my deer totem

I was rounding the corner of Norway & Willow
near the village of Ephraim (Wisconsin) on my
Trek bike one hot afternoon when I nearly ran
into a doe, a deer - a female DEER -
standing in the middle of the street.

I stopped, hoping she wouldn't charge me.
I finally won the inter-species staredown:
scuttling hooves as she turned, she hurdled a
wooden fence & ran into the forest.

A beautiful tawny female animal
in the bright sunlight of July asphalt
darted into the darkness of woods & disappeared.
Karin Wolf of Madison told me that deer
are totems of gentleness & I believe it.

Jack, Sam, Me & Death - an essay

"Poetry is the revelation of higher truths." -J.W. von Goethe

"There are no truths - only stories." -Zuni proverb

After my cousin Sam's funeral in Fond du Lac on October 5th, 2009, I walked into a bookstore and bought The Dharma Bums. It was my 49th birthday and I wanted to commemorate the dual occasion, Sam's death and my birth, by getting a novel that would honor his memory and inspire me. A fellow Jack Kerouac fan, Sam had barely made it to age 30 when his mental pain became so unbearable that he killed himself. I understood that kind of desperate grief, having survived an overdose of anti-depressants. But I was luckier, or less determined, than my cousin.

Sam had chosen a remote location for his final act. In fact, it took a few days for searchers to find his remains inside the parked car near the marsh. I decided to bid the world adieu from a busy stretch of Lake Michigan shoreline. After riding a bus into downtown Racine, I managed to walk as far as the public library on Lake Street when I collapsed, unconscious, and was rescued by some good Samaritan. The hospital was nearby and so the emergency-room staff had time to defibrillate my stopped heart and filter my poisoned blood before brain damage had set in. Sam chose carbon monoxide poisoning for his duel with Depression. He left a wife and small child behind. His mother, at least, was spared the terrible news. Judy - Sam's lovely Mom, my sweetheart of an aunt - had already staked her claim on the grave. She killed herself six years earlier, by CO poisoning.

When I entered the bookstore on Main Street that sunny autumn afternoon, I was pleased to discover a new Penguin edition of Kerouac's novel on the shelves. I asked for a pack of American Spirits cigarettes, charmed at having found a literature store that also sold tobacco. I justified the purchase by noting that Sam was a smoker too. Then I started the long drive north to Oconto County, where I was going to visit my friend Wolf. Ironically, Wolf's only brother, a pharmacist and Vietnam combat veteran, had killed himself too, swallowing a precisely fatal dose of barbiturates in the winter of 1979.

As I sped north on Highway 41 in my little black Volkswagen, I passed Winnebago, where the state had institutionalized me for the second half of 1984. The treatment consisted of: (1) psychotropic medication (not unlike the stuff that had nearly killed me); (2) group therapy; (3) occupational therapy (art /craft projects); and (4) exercise, especially via sports (basketball, softball, tennis) and hiking. I had survived ECT, so nothing psychiatric scared me anymore.

I also recall reading a book during my 5-month stay at Winnebago Mental Health Facility, by the Catholic priest-philosopher-scientist Fr. Teilhard de Chardin. It may have provided some mental stimulation, but it certainly failed to convince me of God's existence.

Somewhere north of Neenah, I cast my mind back even further, to the summer of 1983, when I discovered The Dharma Bums at the public library in Portland, Oregon. I was living hand to mouth at the time, auditing lectures on Chaplin and Nietzsche at Portland State University and briefly staying at a skidrow flophouse where I got pubic lice from the bedlinen. I had hitchhiked to the Rose City all the way from San Antonio, Texas, where my meager bus funds had taken me from New Orleans. I stayed with friendly drivers or at less glamorous places along the way. In exchange for my staying awake to an hour of gospel propaganda, for example, some hospitable Christians fed and bedded me at their rescue mission in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

I was emulating Kerouac's hobo-inspired mode of living before I had read his road novels, which helped set off the Sixties "rucksack revolution." Like Jack, I had acquaintances on the West Coast who'd put me up for a few days. But mine were in dull middle-class places - San Diego, Burbank - rather than Jack's beloved bohemian San Francisco. And yet, as much as Ronald Reagan tried to turn America's cultural clock back to the repressive Fifties, my road experience could sometimes be weirder than Kerouac's. Jack, as far as I know, was never escorted to a gay bar in the Castro district by a Christian Brother high-school teacher. That highway savior gave me a lift from near LA all the way to San Francisco Bay. Afterwards, I was glad that I had not chosen the life of a Catholic monk.

Nevertheless, as a natural loner and habitual observer (so was Kerouac), I've always felt monkish. That inclination cannot be undermined by society's disapproval or people's suspicions. In his Buddhist days, Jack aspired to be a bhikku, a Zen monk who lives out a creed of compassion. He sometimes wanted to become a bodhisattva too, an enlightened person who renounces nirvana in order to show others a way out of their suffering. Like his nineteenth-century American literary forebears Mark Twain (an agnostic Southerner) and Walt Whitman (an impoverished homosexual), Kerouac saw himself an outsider.

The son of strict working-class French-Canadian Catholic immigrants, Kerouac also had Iroquois blood and a dead brother, Gerard. He didn't even master the English language until he was in his late teens, attending Columbia University on a football scholarship. Despite that chance at entering the nation's elite, he dropped out of the rat race instead. He dared to became a writer, turning his sympathies toward fellow outsiders, rebels and misfits.

Preferring wild men to tame ones, Kerouac celebrated in his writing the antics of personalities as diverse as the delinquent speed-freak Neal Cassady (called Dean Moriarty in On the Road) and the scholarly Zen-poet Gary Snyder (Japhy Ryder in The Dharma Bums). Despite his embrace of adventure and exuberance, Jack's moods could turn world-weary in a heartbeat. Norbert Blei may be right in asserting that "there's a Kerouac inside every writer." Fortunately, not every would-be Kerouac drinks himself to a death by middle age.

There are many better - yet, admittedly, some far worse - ways to die. In a dark poem from Mexico City Blues (1959), recorded for posterity by Kerouac on Poetry for the Beat Generation, Jack seems fed up with this sad planet: "I wish I was free of that slaving meat wheel, safe in heaven dead," he says in a deadpan monotone.

By the late Fifties Kerouac had written his best stuff. Arguably, he had accomplished the mission laid out for himself in a moving passage, set in September 1955, that opens The Dharma Bums. Here Jack (as Ray) describes his encounter with a timid old hobo, with whom he shares his wine, bread and cheese in a railroad freight car travelling from Los Angeles to San Francisco:

I believed that I was an oldtime bhikku in modern clothes wandering the world . . . in order to turn the wheel of the True Meaning, or Dharma, and gain merit for myself as a future Buddha (Awakener) and as a future Hero of Paradise . . . The little bum in the gondola solidified all my beliefs by warming up to the wine and talking and finally whipping out a tiny slip of paper which contained a prayer by Saint Teresa announcing that after death she will return to the earth by showering it with roses from heaven, forever, for all living creatures. [Kerouac, The Dharma Bums, Viking Penguin, 2008 hardcover edition, p. 2.]

Kerouac then introduces the character who inspired the novel while suggesting what its title signifies:

The little Saint Teresa bum was the first genuine Dharma Bum I'd met, and the second was the number one Dharma Bum of them all and in fact it was he, Japhy Ryder, who coined the phrase. Japhy Ryder was a kid from eastern Oregon brought up in a log cabin deep in the woods . . . interested in animals and Indian lore so that when he got to college by hook or crook he was already well equipped for his early studies in anthropology and later in Indian myth . . . [He] became an Oriental scholar and discovered the greatest Dharma Bums of them all, the Zen Lunatics of China and Japan. [The Dharma Bums, p. 5.]

Whether unconsciously or by design, Kerouac summons the compelling power of myth by casting his literary alter egos, Sal Paradise and Ray Smith, and their buddy-protagonists in On the Road (Dean Moriarty) and The Dharma Bums (Japhy Ryder) as heroes enacting a sort of mythic quest across the epic landscapes of the West in nuclear-age America.

As Joseph Campbell notes in The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), mythological adventures are similar across all cultures, whether the hero is Prometheus, Gautama-Buddha, Moses, Jesus or Mohammed. Myths share this story-pattern: (1) the hero ventures forth from the common world into (2) a region of supernatural wonder, where (3) she wins a decisive victory, after which (4) she returns with the power to bestow boons on the community. Myths derive their power, Campbell says, from a kind of tough spiritual instruction, surpassing both moral didacticism and psychological drama:

Where the moralist would be filled with indignation and the tragic poet with pity and terror, mythology breaks the whole of life into a vast, horrendous Divine Comedy. Its Olympian laugh is not escapist in the least, but hard, with the hardness of life itself - which, we may take it, is the hardness of God, the Creator. Mythology, in this respect, makes the tragic attitude seem somewhat hysterical, and the merely moral judgement shortsighted. Yet the hardness is balanced by an assurance that all that we see is but the reflex of a power that endures, untouched by the pain. Thus the tales are both pitiless and terrorless - suffused with the joy of a transcendent anonymity regarding itself in all of the self-centered battling egos that are born and die in time. [Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Princeton University Press, 1973 paperback edition, pp. 45-46.]

I suppose I was on my own kind of quest in the summer of 1983. Jack was an enthusiastic adventurer some 30 years earlier, but he grew tired of the road. Then fame really soured him on life. Travel, when done in a spirit of receptivity, is the perfect antidote to the soul-sucking tendencies of television and the Internet. Adventure-driven travel is active, spontaneous, liberating, reflective and real. Therefore, it can be dangerous. My travels throughout the 1980s and into the mid-90s were less mythic adventures than attempts at the old geographical cure. I was fleeing the feeling that I had become a hostage of depression. I was more fugitive than hero.

Sam drove to Nevada once, reportedly on just such a romantic geographical quest. In Sam I saw a kindred soul: a young man struggling to derive joy from a melancholy existence. He endured, putting up daily resistance to the seductive siren voices urging self-destruction. Death seems merciful when your own mind turns against you. Death, after all, is the ultimate egalitarian, a massive leveler. Death doesn't give a damn who you are. In the end, death embraces us all with the cold indifference of a Great Plains blizzard.

Jack Kerouac, at least, tasted the satisfaction that successful artists know. He left us a library of stories and poetry that continue to move and inspire millions. As far as I know, Sam left no suicide note. So I'll compose this epitaph on his behalf: Spend your allotted days as meaningfully, as intensely, as beautifully as you can. Bring back a boon of some kind. Share the fruits of whatever victory you manage to attain in this contentious world.

And, above all, dream harder.

Cory Chisel & some Fourth of July synchronicity

Well, it's nearly Independence Day & I just experienced a weird bit of pre-midnight synchronicity at the University of Wisconsin Memorial Union (UWMU). Here's the story, friends, as briefly as I can sketch it.

"The show ain't great till somebody gets naked," said Cory Chisel from behind Ray-Bans on the sun-blinded stage at Memorial Park in Appleton this afternoon, near the end of his fantastic hometown set with The Wandering Sons. Part gospel fervor, part hipster cool - a perfect blend in music & style.

As much as it pains me to say it, a performance by mediocre LA roots-rockers Dawes' here at the UWMU terrace tonight might have officially gotten great: I just saw a nude dude diving off the pier into Lake Mendota. In fairness, he seemed more inspired by booze than music.

I still maintain, as I said to the UW sound guy, that Dawes sucks compared to Cory's band. Anyway, the thing is, I saw Cory open for Dawes in February at the Mercy Lounge in Nashville - and he was far better than them.

Okay, nobody's ever erected a monument to a critic. But the truth deserves to be told. While getting Cory's autograph on his (re-released 2006) CD "The Little Bird" today, he said that he was still jetlagged after his return from the famous Glastonbury Festival in England.

For you trivia buffs, Cory Chisel shares a hometown with fellow Appletonians Houdini & Willem Dafoe. Cory certainly knows how to make magic with a guitar & microphone. You lucky people in the Fox Valley can see him at the Paperfest in Kimberly & at Cranky Pat's in Neenah later this month.

And God bless America - for producing such wonderful music!

How weird can Door County get?

After a personal walking tour (nobody else showed up) of historic downtown Fish Creek, led by retired schoolteacher & native local Barb, whose parents ran the Summertime ice-cream parlor/gift shop on Cedar Street for decades, I hurried north along the coast to Sister Bay in time to catch the Newtonburg Brass Band play in period attire at Waterfront Park yesterday. The musicians sat in formal 1910 dress as though the intervening century of progress in more comfortable styles & cooler fabrics had never happened.

Man, I thought, dig that lady pounding the drumkit, garbed in a big black sun hat & ankle-length dress like some proto-punk Lizzie Borden! I sat on the grass, surrounded by the geriatric set, stifling an urge to mock those bandgeeks from Manitowoc County who acted as though Sousa marches remained all the rage in 2010. A sad sunny spectacle indeed. Still, their music may have sounded better than the hip-hop & pop dreck no doubt pouring into the iPod-covered ears of those teenagers barely clad in bikinis on the beach a stone's throw away.

I stopped at the Piggly Wiggly to pick up a few food items & I ran into my former media-crush, Milwaukee TV sportscaster Jessie Garcia for the second time this week. I hightailed it home, ate & read some Norbert Blei essays. Later I got drunk while watching Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas on a DVD courtesy of the Menominee Tribal Library in Keshena (via inter-library loan, godsend to poor intellectuals stuck in the boondocks). The drug consumption habits of Dr. Gonzo & Raoul Duke made me feel like a piker, so I drove off to Husby's to hear The Mullet Hunters. The band was a no-show, though, due to a sick child, the baldheaded bartender told me. Note to self: never trust any group, rock or otherwise, with "mullet" in its name.

I sat & studied the crowd, sobering up by slowly sipping a Guinness stout for an hour and a half. The more energetic drinkers, mostly youths born before I managed to graduate from college (1986), regarded me with suspicion - as small-town folk regard all silent strangers. I was pleased, however, to have found a Northwoods tavern where women outnumbered men. My patience was rewarded in with a song by The Ramones: "I Wanna Be Sedated." And so, it seems, does sedate Door County, Wisconsin, USA.

A Chinese fiddler in Egg Harbor

This summer I'm volunteering at the Peg Egan Performing Arts Center in Egg Harbor, Door County (Wisconsin/USA), home of the 2010 Sunset Concert Series. At the opening show on Sunday evening, June 27th, hundreds of sun-drenched music fans enjoyed Chicago harmonica virtuoso Corky Siegel's eclectic Chamber Blues project.

Siegel presented an intriguing fusion of the blues, classical & world music. His touring group features a beautiful young Taiwanese-born musician named Chihsuan Yang on violin & erhu, a traditional Chinese two-stringed fiddle. The highlight of the show for me was when Ms. Yang led the group on her own untitled composition - "a Chinese blues," Siegel quipped - which started with a long, captivating erhu solo.

At the post-concert reception, I asked Ms. Yang whether she agrees with critics who claim that the violin is the most emotionally expressive instrument, aside from the human voice. She disagreed, asserting that the shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute) is actually the most expressive instrument. Ms. Yang, who also plays piano & Okinawa shansin, admitted that she was distracted during the concert by the sublime clouds floating around the Egg Harbor venue.

Ms. Yang is versatile, having played erhu for the Dalai Lama (during his June 2007 talk at Millenium Park in Chicago) as well as having toured as a violinist with Brian Wilson (The Beach Boys). The Corky Siegel Chamber Blues group is playing at the Chautauqua Festival in upstate New York & the Montreal Jazz Festival this week. Catch them if you can.

Steel Bridge Song Fest 2010

Here's an incredible small-town music festival you might not have heard of: the Steel Bridge Song Fest (SBSF). This year, the 6th annual SBSF, was an inspiring gathering of 150 musicians, singer-songwriters & (mostly ad hoc) bands, spread over 4 days on an outdoor stage & inside 15 various venues in downtown Sturgeon Bay, Door County, Wisconsin (USA).

Saturday I spoke with LA session drummer Wally Ingram (of Timbuk 3, Stockholm Syndrome & the Sheryl Crow band), who worked with me in Madison in the summer of '81. He played at Butch's, a throwback neighborhood bar, Friday night with co-organizer pat mAcdonald (Timbuk 3) as well as San Francisco guitar virtuoso & singer Eric McFadden in a heavy-blues group called the Legendary Sons of Crack Daniels (sample lyric: "I'm all out of love, baby, let's make some more!").

Pat's raw blues project with fellow Door County resident melaniejane, Purgatory Hill (listed as hailing from "Heaven/Hell, WI") might just blow your mind. Their CDs distributed by the University of Wisconsin Press. The crowd on Sunday afternoon certainly dug their abbreviated set. Among the other highlights for me at SBSF this year:

* Dry-witted, big-hearted Texas troubadour James McMurtry ("Painting by Numbers" etc.) performing with his banjo-playing son Curtis at a moving Fathers & Sons/Mothers & Daughters set.
* New Orleans native (a Hurricane Katrina refugee by way of Memphis & Atlanta) James Hall, who coaxed sweet sounds out of his Gibson hollow body & sang with a passion reminiscent of the late Alex Chilton. I rewarded him with an ear of roasted corn during the closing blues jam Sunday.
* Wisconsin-born ukulele-strumming singer-songwriter Victoria Vox making uncanny trumpetlike vocalizations on both her own tunes and during an all-star jam session.
* Noah Engh howling his California blues into a eerily distorting CB microphone while wailing on slide guitar, sweaty hair flying to the delight of the audience at Butch's late on Friday night.
* Geri X, a riveting rootsy tattooed brunette rocker transplanted from Tampa Bay to Atlanta, moving the Saturday crowd to dance. She autographed my copy of her new CD, "The Bedroom Sessions." She looks as good as she sounds too.
* Solo Per Adulti (For Adults Only), a weird acoustic group of Italian pretty boys led by a scatalogical blasphemer of a singer, who did one tune in English.
*The Maybenauts, a self-described glam pop band from Chicago, featuring a male guitarist who performs in a panda mask, a dynamic young female singer in silver pants plus a pair of tattooed chicks on drums & bass.
* Gospel & bluegrass for the churchy feeling of a Sunday morning coming down.

Not only is Sturgeon Bay (pop. 9,500) packed with hipsters & hotties on SBSF weekend, the supportive community vibe of SBSF is spectacular. The skies may have been mostly gray, but the music was bright & intoxicating. Put it on your calendar for next year (second weekend in June) if you love live original music. It's a non-profit event created, in part, in order to preserve the historic 1930 Michigan Street steel bridge (currently undergoing rehabilitation by the state). Among the vendors this year was Guitars for Vets, whose slogan is "putting the healing power of music in the hands of heroes."

And always remember, folks, it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that TWANG!

A wounded fawn along a Wisconsin country road

At the corner of Sugar Hill Road & Hillcrest Drive in the town of Brooklyn (Wis.) this morning I saw a fawn. She was stoically dragging her broken right rear leg as she moved dow.n the side of the sunny asphalt country road.

A white wolfish dog watched the injured deer from across the road, his owner keeping him at bay by voice command. It was just about the saddest damn thing I'd seen in ages, but I admired that fawn's struggle to survive. I slowed down immediately. I pray that I never hit a deer with my little Volkswagon.

I am moving to Door County (Wisconsin) this Friday - just in time for the Steel Bridge Song Fest this wseekend. I hope I have better luck finding a job up there, where the rich Chicagoans temporarily dwell. At least for the summer tourist season. Enjoy the summer, everybody!

Farewell, (UW Professor) Nancy Kaiser

I found the Spring 1988 (the same year I visited East Berlin) issue of the UW-published Monatshefte. It's the classic Lester W. J. Seifert issue guest-edited by (my ex-linguistics prof) Juergen "Aber Deutsch ist eine leichte Sprache!" Eichhoff - on a free-books cart at the Oregon Public Library yesterday. Pathetically it featured a "5 cent" sticker (& the initials DL) on the groovy green cover.

Inside I found a book review by Nancy A. Kaiser captioned "Women in German Yearbook 1: Feminist Studies and German Culture." I especially enjoyed her phrase "Johnson's critical examination of gendered structures in the West German Peace Movement." It makes me nostalgic for my waning undergraduate-student days. Ah, Madison, Wisconsin - circa 1986...

Have a happy retirement, Professorin Kaiser! Danke noch einmal fuer Deine fantastische Hilfe mit meiner Honors-These ueber die Berliner Mauer!
Dein Freund und Student
Josef C. Mrazek

Whiskeytown National Recreation Area

This sounds like my kind of national park:
Whiskeytown - no longer merely a '90s
alt-country band featuring
the younger hipster Ryan Adams,
now a sacred place near Klamath, CA.
"I'm headin' for the golden hills
of Californ-eye-ay / with a mandolin
on my knee..."

http://www.nps.gov/whis

Ode to a Stylish Critic

To a FILM CRITIC & FRIEND

I like your new specs, Mike,
those clear plastic frames
reminiscent of Warhol.
Stay critical & droll:
Keep viewing culture
through non-rosy lenses.
You're top of the heap!
Now, did you keep
the Icelandic ash
Cannes souvenir?

-Joe Mrazek (Madison, Wis./USA)
An INSOMNIAC in the state capital

Why I love RADIO

Just as I was driving out of Racine on Thursday evening, WXRT (93.3 FM, Chicago) played a live from the archives cut. Picture a smoky Chicago nightclub, March 1978, packed with all manner of freaks.

Onstage you observe the irrepressible Warren Zevon howling "Werewolves of London" while banging on a piano & leading a tight touring band. Warren was not yet sober then.

I had to pull over & savor that song. Thank you to whomever invented radio (Marconi et al.).

Rep. Tammy Baldwin & the 3-legged dog

I met a vet student walking her 3-legged white wolf-like collie mix at the tip of Picnic Point Friday afternoon. That was one frisky, well-adapted, happy, fast-moving 5-year-old puppy! I could tell that she wanted to jump into Lake Mendota & swim after some ducks near the shore.

On Saturday afternoon I saw Rep. Tammy Baldwin (Democrat), the lesbian Congresswoman from Madison, running along the Picnic Point trail. I wanted to say "Run, Tammy, run!" But I gave her the gift of anonymity instead.

She is an inspiring political leader, but not quite as inspiring as that dog with three legs.

The kind bud, an Earth Day ode

Kind is the green bud,
Harbinger of spring,
Bringer of good mood:
Sweet evergreen bud -
Kind friend, ember end.

-JCM (4/22/10)

Bumper Sticker in Madison, Wisconsin - April 22 (Earth Day), 2010

On a car parked beside Lake Mendota,
at the Warner Park boat launch:
"I'd rather be at a STEVE EARLE concert."
Amen, man. Nice graphics too. Sunny day.
I gave a shout out to the folks on the jetty
who owned the vehicle bearing that sign.
The Hardcore Troubadour lives!

Literary thoughts for Earth Day 2010

"There is, one knows not what sweet mystery
about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings
seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath."
- Herman Melville
[anthropomorphic as usual]

This is the epigraph to a chapter entitled "The Pattern of the Surface" in Rachel Carson's beautiful 1951 National Book Award winner, The Sea Around Us. It concludes with this sentence:

"For all at last return to the sea -- to Oceanus, the ocean river, like the ever-flowing stream of time, the beginning and the end."

Amen, sister. Happy Earth Day, everybody! Please help keep our precious planet clean.

Hank Williams, posthumous Pulitzer Prize winner

Howdy, Friends!
I read yesterday that the geniuses at the Pulitzer Foundation gave
Hank Williams (Sr.) a special Pulitzer Prize for composing songs that
helped popularize American country & western music globally.

Too bad he's been dead since 1953. Old Hank would have appreciated the
recognition, though. But he'd have just spent the money foolishly, I reckon.
So it's just as well he's not around anymore.

Maybe next time they could award a Pulitzer to a great composer who's
still alive, like Bob Dylan - who didn't even get a Grammy till 1998.
Or maybe give it to somebody who could use the cash, like Alex Chilton
(Box Tops/Big Star). Oops - too late - he's dead now too. Relative obscurity is a bitch, ain't it?

Nashville Adventure

Music City Hostel and Other Budget Ideas

by Joseph C. Mrazek (April 2010)

It's estimated that at least three dozen aspiring stars arrive in Nashville every day. After all, it's been the undisputed capital of country music since the late 1940s, when recording studios were finally installed in that bustling city of a half million souls on the banks of the Cumberland River.

But the city has been synonymous with what used to be marketed as “hillbilly music” since at least 1925, when the Grand Ole Opry commenced its regular weekend radio broadcasts from Nashville, Tennessee. Carried throughout North America via AM-radio powerhouse WSM, the station is an acronym for "We Shield Millions" - slogan of the life-insurance company that once owned it). Now an Internet-driven mecca, Music City USA is stuffed with singers, songwriters, studio musicians, wannabe managers, clever promoters and those techno-wizards known as record producers. Only Los Angeles and New York have nearly as many show-biz types per capita as Nashville.

Many of the newcomers, like Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton once upon a time, have more talent than money. If you're looking for for a weird low-budget adventure in Nashville, you should check out Music City Hostel (www.MusicCityHostel.com). Conveniently located between the Tennessee capital's bustling downtown and the leafy Vanderbilt University campus, this homey little hostel occupies a pair of former apartment buildings at 1809 Patterson Street in the Mid-City neighborhood. It's a hit with professional musicians and amateur songwriters alike.

Owner Ron Limb, who emigrated from Korea to the USA as a young boy, and his wife Tracee, a native of South Dakota, run this international oasis in a spirit of true Southern hospitality.

"We see ourselves as a family, a community, here at the hostel," says Limb, a former engineer who modeled his dream-business on the better hostels he had stayed at while traveling the world. He started Music City Hostel in early 2005 and has built a positive reputation, partially via the Internet postings satisfied guests have left to guide others.

Google, the Limbs' energetic Boston terrier, might even pay you a visit. Good company from around the globe is always on hand, in case you feel like meeting new people and making new friends. You might even get to practice your foreign language skills with another guest. I got to speak German with native speakers again after a long layoff.

A bunk in a shared room costs just $25 a night (or $150/week), while a private room for two is $70. The hostel features a small lounge with television & nearby laundry machines & rental computers (there’s free WiFi Internet access throughout the facility), and a large kitchen stocked with cooking equipment. Coffee, tea, oatmeal & waffle batter are complimentary and free food items left by prior guests are usually available. The dormitory suites as well as private rooms have keyless locks for extra security. Ron also has apartments available on short-term leases, for those in town temporarily. Several guests I met were in Nashville for a medical internship or to conduct business.

Guests can walk safely to a tempting cluster of ethnic restaurants around West End Avenue & upper Broadway - everything from Middle Eastern to Indian to Mexican places plus the Noshville Delicatessen. Lower Broadway, with its panoply of honky tonks (live-music clubs) is also within walking distance or a short cab ride away from Music City Hostel. I've stayed at numerous hostels in Europe and Japan, but have found few inns quite as welcoming. Only the famously cozy low-budget bed-&-breakfasts spread across Ireland can compete.

Now for the downside. You might get a roommate who snores, or an unwelcome wake-up call at 3:00 a.m. from a cowboy-booted bar closer. Peace and privacy can be hard to come by. The kitchen is sometimes messy, but at least the bathrooms are cleaned daily. It's not a bad trade-off for the opportunity to meet adventurers from faraway places. You can explore hip and historic Nashville with fellow hostelers.

Here is a partial list of good excuses to visit Nashville, alias Music City USA, in case you need one:

Pay your respects to Hank & Patsy

- The Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum (CMHFM) at 222 Fifth Avenue South, is open from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. daily (closed for a few holidays plus Tuesdays in January & February). Permanent exhibits include Webb Pierce's weird customized Bonneville, complete with mounted chrome-plated pistols and real silver dollars glued to the dashboard. Other items of interest include original handwritten lyric sheets, and a collection of stage outfits and well-worn guitars used by stars like Johnny Cash. Special exhibits, such as one I saw on the Hank Williams family musical legacy, rotate every few months. Admission is $19.99 for adults, $11.95 for kids age 5-17, and free for kids under age 5. The Museum Store is stocked with CDs, postcards, t-shirts, posters and many other souvenirs. If you don't want to tour the collection, you can grab lunch or a drink in the spacious glassy atrium, where "Music City Ambassador" Dave Anderson takes requests and plays country favorites on his Epiphone electric guitar while roving among patrons' tables.

Enter “Honky Tonk Heaven”

- You can drink and dance at more than a dozen bars, such as Robert's Western World (try the fried pickles), that feature free live music all afternoon and evening long in Nashville's neon-lit entertainment district, also called simply “The District.”.
- Until 10:00 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, you can enjoy a good cheap buffet-style meal at Jack's Bar-B-Que. Look for the Flying Pig sign at 416 Broadway. Or you can walk around the corner and visit
- the historic Ryman Auditorium (at 116 Fifth Avenue North), spiritual home of the Grand Ole Opry. Concerts by such artists as Neil Young and Emmylou Harris occur several nights a week at the Ryman. Tickets are accordingly expensive. The Opry moves back to the Ryman from suburban Opryland USA for a couple of months every winter. See it then, if you can afford it.
- You might also catch a celebrity, like musician/producer Jack White (The White Stripes, The Raconteurs, Dead Weather) who moved his ultra-hip recording studio and vinyl-record shop Third Man Records from Detroit to Nashville last year. Kid Rock, Alison Krauss, Taylor Swift and other stars are frequently seen hanging out, shopping or carousing around town.

Buy fresh produce and mingle with local farmers

- The Farmers Market, just downhill from the modest-sized Tennessee state capitol building downtown, is open every day except Christmas and New Year's Day. In addition to vendors selling local fruits, vegetables, molasses and jam, this roofed but open-air market also has a cluster of restaurants in a food court that cater to tourists and state office workers.

Soak up some Culture

-The Frist Center for the Visual Arts (919 Broadway) features exhibits of Southern regional art and world-class fine art. They also sponsor free concerts by offbeat musicians as well as more mainstream groups in the lobby on Friday evenings.
-The Tennessee State Museum (at 505 Deaderick Street) has many interesting artifacts and special exhibits, such as one on the February 1960 lunch-counter sit-ins by young civil-rights activists.
-The Hermitage, site of General & President Andrew Jackson's 19th-century estate, is a national historic landmark and museum located about 12 miles from downtown, in suburban Hermitage. Admission is steep, but it's free a few days a year, including the January anniversary of Gen. Jackson's victory at the Battle of New Orleans.

Brush up on your manners

People say "sir" and "ma'am" without a trace of irony in Nashville because it's the South, where politeness is required and rudeness is not tolerated. I was once refused service by a gas-station cashier in Nashville until I said "please." Etiquette and formality, like relics of a dying civilization, are fast fading up North and elsewhere. In Music City you can experience social life as it used to be, but even better since Jim Crow racism has been rooted out. We Yankees could use a refresher course in good manners. Most Southerners will set a good example for you, but in a relaxed way.

Travel backwards in time

Whether you’re
- picnicking alongside the Parthenon, the world’s only full-scale replica of the Athenian temple, at Centennial Park (adjacent to Vanderbilt University),
- hobnobbing at the renovated “first church of country music” - the Ryman Auditorium,
- gazing at ornate murals above the grand lobby of the gorgeous and historic Union Station Hotel (1001 Broadway); or
- boarding a passenger car at thetiny Tennessee Central Railway Museum,
Nashville offers plenty of opportunities for time travelers to visit another era. Some sites, such as the 4 highlighted above, can even be seen for free.

Nashville is an exciting modern city well worth exploring, whether you spend a few weeks or just a few days there. It's a creative capital, full of musicians and music fans, and sits conveniently in the middle of Tennessee, 35 miles south of the Kentucky state line. Louisville is merely 3 hours away by car, and Wisconsin is just ten hours distant. In fact, Wisconsinites will find a familiar convivial and welcoming spirit there.

© 2010 by J.C. Mrazek

Alex Chilton (1950-2010): works of genius endure

Sadly, the great singer/songwriter & guitarist/producer Alex Chilton died of an apparent heart attack yesterday (March 17) in New Orleans at age 59. He achieved fame as a teenaged singer with blue-eyed soul group the Box Tops, whose enduring hits include "The Letter" (1967), "Cry Like a Baby" (1968 - in Nashville last month I met the drummer who played on that session at the legendary American Sound Studio in Memphis, Gene Chrisman) & "Soul Deep" (1969).

The son of a jazz musician, Chilton was born in Memphis, Tennessee, 3 days after Christmas 1950. His early 1970s power-pop, British Invasion-influenced band Big Star influenced many subsequent bands, including REM & The Replacements. Among Chilton's many solo & side projects over the years was the post-punk band Tav Falco's Panther Burns, which he co-founded in 1979 in order to deconstruct blues, country & rockabilly styles. He also produced records by punk rockers The Cramps, among other artists. He received the most royalties for "In the Street," a Big Star track that was used as the theme song for the TV program That 70s Show. "September Gurls" from Big Star's second l.p., Radio City (1974), was covered by both The Searchers & The Bangles.

I met Alex Chilton in 2001 at Club Tavern in Middleton, Wisconsin (where I am now housesitting for friends). He graciously gave me an autograph & chatted amiably with fans during set breaks. He was a true Southern gentleman with an artist's heart & mind. Chilton was scheduled to play with a new lineup of Big Star at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin (Texas) this weekend. He is survived by his wife Laura, son Timothy & sister Cecilia. He will be missed by fans all over the world.

In 1987 the legendary Minneapolis band The Replacements recorded a superb tribute song about him. Here are some of the lyrics to "Alex Chilton" (written by Paul Westerberg; from the Replacements' Pleased to Meet Me album):

"Children by the million sing for Alex Chilton when he comes 'round
They sing 'I'm in love. What's that song?
I'm in love with that song.' . . .
I never travel far, without a little Big Star."

Rest in peace, Alex & thanks for all the music.

Nina Hagen at 55: Weird & Wonderful

The mother of [German] punk turns 55 today - "so what the fuck!"

Catharina "Nina" Hagen was born in East Berlin on March 11, 1955. Her estranged father Hans was a scriptwriter whose Jewish parents died at the Nazis' Sachsenhausen concentration camp during WW II. Pretty Nina was a child opera prodigy & her teen group Automobil had a hit East German pop single in 1974 called "Du hast den Farbfilm vergessen" ["You forgot the colour film"].

Nina emigrated to West Germany in 1976, along with her actress/singer mother Eva-Maria, in the wake of her controversial folksinger/poet stepfather Wolf Biermann's expulsion by East German authorities. She launched her punk rock band in West Berlin in 1977, moved in 1980 to Santa Monica, California, where she gave birth to daughter Cosma Shiva (she later had a son, named Otis, by a Frenchman).

Nina lived in Paris for much of the 1990s & even hosted a UK sci-fi TV show. My favorite Nina Hagen album is NunSexMonkRock (1982), which features a psychedelic cover photo of Nina as the Madonna with her daughter Cosma as the Christchild.

I saw Nina Hagen perform at Shank Hall (yes, it's named after the fictitious unlucky club in "This Is Spinal Tap") in Milwaukee in the summer of 1995. She may have been past her hellraising & sexually daring prime, but Nina remained quirky & fun to watch. She really moved me with her cover of Nirvana's "All Apologies," which she performed as a tribute to the then recently deceased Kurt Cobain.

Nina Hagen's webpage is www.myspace.com/whymeohlord. You can watch her have a telephone conversation with dead gospel diva Mahalia Jackson.

Happy Birthday, Nina: I'm watching for the UFO's & awaiting any lessons they wish to share. "Love is the Truth."

Down South - a Dixie poem, nostalgic

Down South in Old Tennessee

by Joe Crawford Mrazek

"'Preciate you," they sometimes
say down in Dixie, where y'all
bend vowels like the lower
Mississippi, where y'all
drop g's like damned
Yankee dollars circa
Eighteen Hundred and
Sixty-One, see?

It's friendly,
traditional,
Nashville -
the Southland.
Ya gotta fit in
somehow everywhere
anyway, don't ya?

So start drawlin' if you
feel so inclined, mister.
Soften & stretch your
voice, ma'am.
Take it easy:
rest a spell.


March 10, 2010
Racine, Wisconsin (USA)

Man in Black: Birthday Boy (Feb. 26, 2010)

I read in this morning's Tennessean that the folks over at American Music (producer Rick Rubin et al.), who just released Johnny Cash's posthumous album "Ain't No Grave," are urging fans of the Man in Black to wear black clothes in his honor tomorrow.

Johnny would've turned 78 on February 26, 2010. Here's a lyric from that classic Cash country song:

Ah, I'd love to wear a rainbow every day,
And tell the world that everything's okay
But I'll try to carry off a little darkness on my back
Till things are brighter, I'm the Man in Black.

("Man in Black" copyright 1971 by Johnny Cash, 1932-2003)
RIP, John.
-JoeM.

About a televised dual concert from Austin, Texas

Okay, it was Kris Kristofferson on Austin City Limits, not REM. But ain't that just as good? "Sunday Morning Comin' Down" is about as flawlessly poetic a song as you'll ever hear, even when raspy-throated Kris performs it.

The old buzzard gave me gooseflesh when he sang & strummed "Help Me Make It Through the Night" & "For the Good Times." And he made me smile when he said about the capital of Texas:

"Okay, this isn't Music City. But it's Music Soul anyway."

But Mr. Steve Earle doin' Townes Van Zandt's songs & telling stories about his dead pal tonight was even better for me. God bless you, Townes, wherever you are.

Stop the Slaughter! - green Peace love

Here's a poem-email that I sent my brother David in Hood River, Oregon (USA), the other day from a computer in our hometown, Racine, Wisconsin (U$A).
Hope it moves you.

Br. Dave:
Saw the sad
photo of the California seal feasting on chinook
salmon at the base of the Bonneville Dam, all the way up
river from Portland. Not knowing his hours on earth were ending.
Euthanized to protect the migrating fish, the authorities said.
Bummer, man.
-Br. Joe

Buying Old Crow bourbon in Louisville & achieving satori

I stopped in Louisville on my way from Nashville to Racine & I was blessed with the discovery of some genuine weirdness downtown. First I tried the Thomas Edison House on a decrepit block of Shelby Avenue, but it was closed. Then I visited the Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory, where I got an official rules of baseball book for $5 & some postcards at the gift shop. I even popped into the Frazer Historical Arms museum, where they sell deadly-looking but non battle-ready swords (to adults only, the gift-store clerk assured me). That stretch of Main Street, lined by restored brick, granite & marble facades circa 1900, is architecturally impressive.

But the sidewalks near the banks of the mighty Ohio River were windy, cold & nearly deserted. After eating a pint of ice cream, I bought a cheap green French-made khaki shoulder bag & some Army-issue wool-cotton-nylon socks at a shabby military surplus store run by a funny old veteran kept company by a yappy Yorkshire terrier. I skipped the Muhammed Ali museum because they charge $9 admission. No place celebrating the life & legacy of the Louisville Lip is worth that much to me.

Anyway, I wanted to buy a bottle of Old Crow Kentucky bourbon whiskey in honor of Louisville native & Old Crow addict Hunter S. Thompson. I popped into a liquor store but they didn't carry that brand, so I found a CVS drugstore above the Hard Rock cafe that did - at just $8 + tax for a fifth. On the way back to my car, parked on the corner of Fourth & Muhammed Ali Blvd. [now named Thomas Merton Square] downtown, I noticed a big metal historical marker that read as follows:

"Thomas Merton, Trappist monk, poet, social critic & spiritual writer (1915-1968), author of the autobiography 'The Seven-Storey Mountain' (1948). Merton had a sudden insight at this corner on March 18, 1958 [i.e. , that led him to refine his monastic identity with greater involvement in social justice issues. He was 'suddenly overwhelmed witht the realization that I loved all these people . . . walking and shining like the sun.'"

Ah, but it's easier to love humanity on a sunny afternoon in March, like the one I enjoyed yesterday in Louisville. And people get on your nerves a little less when you're a monk cut off from most human contact, I reckon. That's about as close to a satori moment as I've had in a while. Maybe the Old Crow will help enlighten me further when I open the bottle.

Final Report from Music City

Nashville, Tennessee (USA)
March 2, 2010 - 7:15 a.m. (CST)

Ladies & Gentlemen:
I'm writing this final report on my mission in Dixie, in part, in order to help wake up my hungover & mortally sleep-deprived brain, in preparation for the long drive north to Racine, that dirty old hometown on Lake Michigan. My belongings are sprawled across the lounge of Music City Hostel & I dread the prospect of puzzling them together in my tiny VW in the cold sleet. Alas, some things must be left behind in this material world of limited space. Okay, maybe it ain't Sophie's choice, but some lucky bastard at the Starvation Army thrift store on Charlotte Avenue is gonna get something nice of mine, and cheap.

I dodged a DUI bullet just a few blocks from home at 1:30 a.m. when I was pulled over - for the third time here - on account of defective tail lamps caused by a January battery failure messing up my car's computer. My passengers, Tatiana & Gregoire, bailed immediately. Tat tossed back an almost sarcastic "Good luck, Joe" as they walked away. I passed the horizontal nystgmus gaze test & Officer Friendly let me go with a warning to fix the lights. Thank you, Nashville Metro PD. I love you almost as much as Kid Rock said he likes your fine jail at his induction to the Music Walk of Fame last November. I got within 50 feet of Dolly Parton that warm sunny afternoon & the good vibes coming from her were palpable, folks. Mmmmmm, Dolly....

Well, I failed to find employment in the rapidly downsizing music industry here (C'mon, people, BUY MORE DAMN CDs) but I found something almost as precious: a new direction in my career & life. I'm not sure exactly what it entails, aside from blogging & moving to Seattle as soon as I can get the scratch together. But if it's half as fun as Nashville has been - even on an income of just $198/week UE benefits (plus barter work for my bed), then I can't wait to find out. I spent a couple of hours in the Land of a Thousand Dances last night, otherwise known as rock & soul retro-disco night at the 5 Spot in east Nashville. Man, that was like a scene from the movies when they played Chuck Berry, Wilson Pickett & the Shangri-Las & all the lovely gals in sexy outfits started twisting! But enough about my frustrations & joys & wonder.

Thank you all for sharing this weird journey south with me. Let's get together soon & swap stories. I gotta write some books, I could use your vicarious adventures for additional material or inspiration. Ciao for now, y'all.

Friendly folks on a warm winter afternoon in Nashville

I drove across the Cumberland River last Friday afternoon to a green-space in east Nashville called Shelby Bottoms. I came upon a ballgame at the riverside Old Timers Field. It must have been cabin-fever that drove me to check it out because baseball usually bores me. I found a scuffed brown baseball along the outfield fence as I walked to the gate, contemplating whether to keep it as a souvenir. It was still only 45 degrees Fahrenheit & that ball was a welcome harbinger of springtime - a sporting rebuke to the barren trees.

"Hey," I said to a group of Belmont University bullpen pitchers, "Can fans keep home-run balls in this league?"
"Sure," a tall friendly young player said. I handed it to him anyway.
"'Preciate it," a teammate said.
"Might be a good a batting practice ball, at least," I explained. "Who are y'all playing?"
"Eastern Illinois University," the pitcher replied.
"Well, kick their ass," I exclaimed. "I'm from Wisconsin & we don't care much for Illinois."
"Well," the fella answered, "I'm from Illinois & we don't like you Wisconsin folks much either."

We all laughed at that & I went to watch a few innings from the sun-drenched bleachers for free, surrounded by pretty gals & entertained by music between batters. Bill called me from Salt Lake City during the top of the third. He reported that they were having similar warmish sunny weather out West. But he is off to an even warmer climate in a few days: New Zealand, that lucky adventurous soul.

Afterwards, I almost walked into the path of a young lady chipping golf balls high into the air on a steeply sloped driving range. She waved me on, but I demurred. "I'm just glad you're an accurate hitter," I said with a smile. My beret is no helmet & I am disconcertingly accident-prone.

"I'm just glad to have a warm day to hit," she replied. "I'm from Ohio." I learned that she was a high-school senior with a scholarship to play golf for the University of South Carolina in the fall.

"Nice place for golf," I told her, remembering my summer in Charleston (1996).
"Yeah," she agreed. "It's warm there."

And so are most of the people you meet here in Nashville - even in wintertime. Like the singer/percussionist Mississippi Millie & her Wild Animal guitarist Tiger Gagan, who entertained me with a blues set at Flying Saucer on Saturday night. That was a nice warmup for (Appleton, Wisconsin's own) Cory Chisel & the Wandering sons show at the Mercy Lounge. I'm gonna miss this place after I leave town tomorrow.