Jews Who Rock, a no-jive turkey & shelter from the storm: my weird day in metro Milwaukee

Before I get to the Jews Who Rock exhibit, I have to mention a few odd phenomena that crossed my path yesterday in metropolitan Milwaukee.  While hunting for the new ReThreads (a clothing swap-store) on East Capitol Drive in tony Shorewood, I spotted a wild turkey behaving in a fairly civilized manner outside the Wells Fargo bank on Oakland Avenue.  I swear that I did not hallucinate or otherwise imagine any of this surreal tale.

The preening cock stood over three-and-a-half feet tall & he was all business.  He let passersby know, by economical body language alone (rarely making so much as a peep), that he was not a bird to be messed with.  Some teen girls out on lunch break from Shorewood High School gave that no-jive turkey a wide berth as they scuttled past, shrieking and giggling.  I didn’t spot a single cop or animal-control officer anywhere.  

In New Orleans or Key West such a sight wouldn’t even raise an eyebrow.  But this was Shorewood, residential base to mostly wealthy whitefolk & the hometown of ultra-square US Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist.  It’s the kind of inner-suburb where yoga-panted 30-something MILFs perambulate their pampered progeny past Russian-Jewish immigrants' shops to the nearest fancy cafe in high-performance strollers.  So I smiled, silently applauding that rogue fowl’s territorial attitude.  The turkey’s apparent contempt (shades of Neko Case’s animal-rights anthem “People Got a Lotta Nerve”) as he observed the passing parade of vehicles & boutique shoppers certainly suited my mood. 

My laptop wasn’t charging, so I drove to the Apple store at nearby Bayshore Mall in Glendale at around noon.  A pretty blonde greeter referred me to Asher, a wispy ginger-bearded sub-manager.  This tall, skinny dude informed me that the next available appointment with one of their “geniuses” was at 4:30.  Well, I didn’t need a genius to tell me that Apple Inc. and its arrogant minions didn’t give a shit about my eBay-bought iBook and its short-circuiting adapter cord.  So I split, arriving at a Colectivo cafe in the old water-system pump-house near the McKinley Marina for a salad and some people-watching in the downpour.

Afterwards, I stopped by the Jewish Museum of Milwaukee (est. 2008) to check out a new exhibit I’d just read about in the Shepherd Express, latest publisher of my freelance journalism.  On display through August 10th, Jews Who Rock is a single-room exhibit about Jews who helped make pop music & rock ‘n’ roll cool over the past six decades.  Go ahead:  try to imagine how vacuous contemporary music might’ve become if Jews hadn’t written such songs as “Jailhouse Rock” (by Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller) or “It’s Too Late” (by Carole King).  

The cast of characters ranges from Fifties deejay & payola mastermind Alan Freed to the multi-talented Barbra Streisand, who sang in her Brooklyn high-school choir with Barry Manilow.  There are nods to characters like the intermittently insane Warren Zevon, whose Pa was reputedly a Jewish gangster in LA, his Ma a Mormon (so under Jewish law, I reckon he’s no Jew at all).  Then there’s the entrepreneurial Jann Wenner, founding publisher of Rolling Stone (est. 1967) & benefactor to the gentile - but rarely genteel - Hunter S. Thompson, a gonzo journalist & self-mythologizer with rock ‘n’ roll attitude to burn.  

I cannot recommend the Jews Who Rock exhibit, if only because the museum charges adults $6 & it just ain’t worth the price of admission.  Besides, it consists mainly of predictable texts on bowling-league-sized plaques, plus some safe photographs & a few souvenir records.  Unsurprisingly, it was organized by a generic entity called “National Exhibitions & Archives, LLC.”  

Instead of paying, I emulated Al Kooper, a non-observant Jew whose display of chutzpah in May 1965 at the Columbia Records studio in New York City when Bob Dylan recorded “Like a Rolling Stone” is deservedly legendary.  Kooper finagled his way into the musicians’ room & managed to come up with an organ part that Dylan dug & made the key riff of that breakthrough song.  Yet Kooper had rarely even played keyboards before.  Less impressively, I talked my way into the Jewish Museum by offering to blog about this exhibit in lieu of paying admission.  It worked, folks, and I don’t feel a shred of guilt about the deal.

I did, however, learn something new.  Namely, that Madison-based jazz-piano master Ben Sidran (formerly of the Steve Miller Band) was, like me, raised in Racine.  Ben was born in Chicago, whereas I was born in Heidelberg (Germany), exactly twelve years after Jackson Browne met the world in that lovely town - since 1945 the HQ of the US Army in Europe.  My favorite photo in the Jews Who Rock exhibit shows Bob Dylan (born Robert Zimmerman in Duluth) circa 1964, holding an acoustic guitar at a table, seated across from Allen Ginsberg & (a guy who appears to be goy novelist) Ken Kesey with a blonde boy on his lap.  

There’s a box of puffed-rice cereal at Ginsberg’s elbow, a nice mundane touch.  Dylan looks bemused & beatific, a Beat trickster’s apprentice, a persona he frequently adopted in public before the pressures of fame drove him underground in ‘66.  The museum’s permanent exhibit is fine, if you’re fascinated by the history of Jews in Milwaukee (Golda Meir et al.).  Just know in advance that it goes on & on, like a garrulous Jewish mother (or even mine) urging you to eat the chicken soup, lest you catch a cold in this awful weather we’re having.  At least the Jews Who Rock display is presented in a well-lit room.  

Check out this ethnic niche museum if you need a break from the Summerfest crowds.  The Jewish Museum of Milwaukee, located at 1360 N. Prospect Avenue, is within walking distance of that (now all-too corporate) music festival’s beer-soaked grounds along Lake Michigan.  Bonus trivia question:  Which member of the J. Geils Band was not Jewish?  (Answer:  Mr. Geils himself!  Peter Wolf, the group’s gifted cantor - I mean, singer - hails from Boston.)

Finally, a few hours later, I was typing an e-mail at the Racine Public Library (RPL) when a young lady’s voice ordered everyone to take shelter in the basement.  A tornado warning had been issued for the Belle City & the renovated RPL has an entire wall of plate-glass facing the great lake.  As a result, a few dozen patrons - mostly women and children - hung out in the bowels of the RPL, awaiting either the all-clear or our moment of doom.  I kept humming "This Tornado Loves You" by Neko Case to amuse myself.  

It ended well, of course, and I left bearing two mint-condition albums of show-tunes by Noel Coward and Kurt Weill (another Jew), compliments of the generous Friends of the Library.  I survived the meteorological - as well as the zoological - weirdness of a thunderstorm-damaged afternoon in southeastern Wisconsin.  But I can’t help but wonder how that poor turkey’s doing.

Meanwhile, groovy Jews like Neil Diamond, Mark Knopfler (Dire Straits), Kinky Friedman (& his Texas Jewboys), Susanna Hoffs (the Bangles), Paul & Carly Simon just keep on rockin’ in the free world.  I remain eternally grateful to them as well as to their (presumably Jewish) agents & managers. 

Now picture Lou Reed entering a kosher version of Rock & Roll Heaven, where he gets to jam with fellow Jews such as Jeffrey Hyman, aka Joey Ramone (the Ramones), Buddhist convert & bassist/rapper Adam Yauch (the Beastie Boys) or Milwaukee’s own Howie Epstein, bassist with Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers as well as a session player on many famous records.  Oy, play!

Agnetha Fältskog, Birthday Diva: Celebrating ABBA (a Muse of the Weird milestone episode)

Saturday (April 5th) marks the 64th birthday of Agnetha Fältskog, a Swedish musician who long ago fell off the radar of most culture-commentators.  It might not seem like a momentous occasion to normal critics.  But I find it interesting enough to exploit for the 100th episode of this experiment in free expression, Muse of the Weird ("blogpost" is such an ungainly portmanteau, I've euphemized it with a TV-serial term).  

As a matter of fact, Fältskog's anniversary provides the perfect opportunity to confess an embarrassing secret:  I sincerely love some pretty saccharine pop-music of yesteryear.  And I don't just mean the Bee Gees, one of the most common guilty pleasures among the cognoscenti of music journalists, bloggers & fans.  

My weak spot for well-crafted pop-songs is deeply rooted.  My adolescent tastes were largely shaped - perhaps distorted is the better word - by absorbing a constant parade of puerile teeny-bopper hits (e.g. "Sugar Sugar" & "Yummy, Yummy, Yummy") as well as the occasional adult song ("Lay Lady Lay" & "What's Goin' On") on American Top 40 radio in the 1960s & '70s.  But when it comes to the Bee Gees, at least, I've really got nothing to feel guilty about in those fraternal harmonies.  

The eldest Brother Gibb, Barry, co-wrote, arranged, produced & co-performed several of the greatest pop songs recorded in the rock era, from the Bee Gees' transcendent double-hit single "To Love Somebody" b/w the psychedelic weeper "New York Mining Disaster 1941" (1967: Have you seen my wife, Mr. Jones?) all the way until "Too Much Heaven" in 1979.  A generous Aussie-turned-Manxman (resident of the Isle of Man) who eventually moved to Miami, Barry Gibb shared the surplus of his abundant gorgeous material with many other artists, a list that includes Melbourne native Samantha Sang ("Emotion"), youngest brother Andy Gibb (1958-88; "Love Is Thicker than Water") & even Barbra Streisand (who duets with Barry on "Guilty"). 

More psychedelic bubblegum tunes like the Box Tops' "Cry Like a Baby," the Shondells' "Crimson and Clover" & the Lemon Pipers' "Green Tambourine" usually uplift me, like dancing always does.  The radio hits generated by the Scandinavian group in question, however, evoke more complex emotions.  This act's first big single was released in 1974, following their triumph on the internationally televised Eurovision Song Contest.  

As though foretelling the band's global success & subsequent demise, "Waterloo" echoes Napoleon, with lyrics in the voice of a burned lover:  couldn't escape if I wanted to . . . /  finally facing my Waterloo.  Their final release, a dreary New Wave-influenced synthesizer-infested album entitled The Visitors, barely dented the US charts in 1981.  The group, now a mutually divorced foursome who lacked cohesion as well as creative direction, split the following year.

That's right, I'm talking about the legendary Swedish chart-toppers ABBA (1972-82).  Recently, while watching a retrospective British documentary called ABBA:  A Music Masters Collection 4 DVD Set (2012), I was encouraged to take their songs more seriously.  Witnessing Fältskog gently sway & lip-sing in a tacky polyester costume on Polish television in 1976, I empathized with her.  Was her career actually sidetracked - or even ruined - by joining ABBA?  As Agnetha pretended to harmonize with the others on the introspective smash hit "Knowing Me, Knowing You" (ah-haaah) I felt strangely sorry for the beautiful 26-year-old blonde singer.  

By 1976, of course, Fältskog was rich (even in highly taxed, fairly egalitarian Sweden) & widely famous.  She'd been a successful songwriter & pop-star in Sweden since age 17, having dropped out of school at 15 in order to commit herself to show-business.  Trained as a pianist, Agnetha rarely got to display her instrumental chops in ABBA.  The unlikely geniuses who formed the band, keyboardist-composer Benny Andersson & guitarist-lyricist Björn Ulvaeus (who married Fältskog in 1971; they divorced in '79, with a boy & a girl to raise), were content to let the ABBA ladies, soprano Agnetha & the ginger-haired mezzo-soprano Anni-Frid "Frida" Lyngstad (temporarily married to Andersson), function onstage primarily as singing, dancing eye-candy, enticingly underplaying their natural sex appeal.  

On a 1979 ABBA tour, Agnetha seized the chance to perform her own composition "I'm Still Alive" (with lyrics by Ulvaeus) solo on piano & vocals.  The song, however, was never recorded.  A multi-talented performer, Agnetha Fältskog had also been a theater star.  In 1972 she played Mary Magdalene in a Swedish production of Jesus Christ Superstar.  Her early solo sound was folkier; she cited as her strongest musical influences such diverse '60s artists as Marianne Faithfull, Aretha Franklin & Lesley Gore.  

Agnetha relaunched her solo career at least three times after ABBA dissolved, failing to attract much attention in the States with either her '80s albums (e.g. Wrap Your Arms Around Me, 1983), her critically acclaimed 2004 CD My Colouring Book, a big Euro-Australian success, or her 2013 album A.  In November of last year she performed a moving duet ("I Should've Followed You Home" with Gary Barlow) for a children's charity TV show in London, her first stage performance since 1988.  Agnetha's relaxed beauty & inspiring talent were on ageless display.

The most reclusive ex-member, Fältskog seems ambivalent about ABBA's legacy.  In May 2013 ABBA The Museum opened, with Agnetha participating in a low-profile way.  This massive tourist draw is housed inside the Swedish Music Hall of Fame facility in Stockholm.  Meanwhile, Andersson & Ulvaeus parlayed their diverse ABBA hits into a campy 1999 London stage musical (source of the follow-up 2008 Hollywood film), Mamma Mia.  The 1992 collection ABBA Gold: Greatest Hits continues to sell untold millions of copies.  

ABBA's best work presents a blend of styles, ranging from rousing hook-driven pop-rock ("SOS") to Spanish flamenco meets Andean flute concoctions ("Fernando"), Latin-flavored military marches ("Chiquitita") & operatic bad-romance ballads ("The Winner Takes It All" & "One of Us," both featuring Agnetha's subtly emotional lead vocal).  In their prime ABBA was a four-headed musical force of nature, hardly your typical European flash-in-the-pan pop act, á la Dutch rockers Shocking Blue (1970's "Venus") or West Germany's enigmatic Nena ("99 Red Balloons/99 Luftballons," 1983).  

I can assure you, based on personal experience in US & western European discotheques of the late '70s & early '80s, that few songs filled a dance floor faster than ABBA's syncopated, symphonic breakthrough "Dancing Queen" (1976).  Even the inane chorus has its naive charms:  You are the dancing queen / Young and sweet, only seventeen / Dancing queen, feel the beat from the tambourine / Oh yeah / You can dance, you can jive / Having the time of your life / See that girl, watch that scene / Dig it, the dancing queen.  Having grown up on the neutral frontier of the Cold War, these four talented Swedes managed to capture the zeitgeist of the escapist decade par excellence while performing in a foreign language. 

Many of the hits feature baroque melodies, orchestral strings and/or chord progressions borrowed from Bach ("Voulez-Vous" & "Mamma Mia").  They shamelessly exploit hypnotic rhythms & repetitive phrasing ("Money, Money," "Gimme, Gimme, Gimme" & "I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do").  ABBA was all over the place & their fans embraced most of these intriguing hybrid tunes.  

ABBA's greatest songs are timeless (unlike their typically hideous stage gear) because, in part, they incorporate good musical ideas from earlier eras.  It's a revelation - as well as a relief to sore mirrorball-blinded eyes - to see Agnetha, Frida, Benny & Björn in late 18th-century finery performing their mod hits on a 1978 Swedish TV broadcast from Stockholm's grand opera theater.  

Although their repertoire didn't reach the level of aesthetic perfection to which Andersson (a wannabe contemporary Mozart) & Ulvaeus (a poser-poet) aspired, their oeuvre is rich in musical gems nonetheless.  If you doubt the complexity of ABBA's records, try listening to the irresistible four-minute single "Take a Chance on Me" through high-fidelity headphones.  

Remarkably, despite a public image that suggested bourgeois Nordic eroticism, ABBA was considered safe enough by Communist censors to appear on Polish television in the mid-'70s.  At a time when few Western pop acts passed muster in the Eastern bloc, perhaps their coming from (non-NATO-member) Sweden helped ABBA.  Ironically, the title track of their final album, "The Visitors (Crackin' Up)" concerns a political dissident disturbed by constant government surveillance.  It's hardly surprising that ABBA's liberating sound found an audience in countries (such as the USSR, Czechoslovakia, East Germany) whose narrow-minded leaders used to denounce the alleged decadence of Western rock 'n' roll.

ABBA always did its most impressive work in the recording studio, where engineers & producers can layer instruments & vocals into masterpieces that still satisfy hordes of casual listeners.  They were also technological pioneers, recording digitally a few years before compact discs hit the market.  ABBA's spacious Polar Music Studio, housed in an old movie palace in central Stockholm, had cutting-edge equipment.

Although she put on a brave public face, I wonder whether Agnetha Fältskog felt like a dissident in the cult of ABBA.  Her post-ABBA solo work was tepidly received by the American market.  If she became periodically fed up with an industry that only respects record (now also download) sales & sold-out arena concerts, who could blame her ?

Born in Jönköping, a trading city of 90,000 souls in Småland province (south-central Sweden), on 5 April 1950, Fältskog was the elder daughter of middle-class parents.  Musically precocious, she wrote her first song ("Two Little Trolls") at age six, started piano lessons at eight & also sang in a church choir.  Young Agnetha must have dreamt of a fulfilling artistic future.  Did she get her wish?  

Let's examine the evidence.  During a 1981 television special, with her marriage in tatters & ABBA's heady days behind them, Fältskog looks tired & sad.  She hesitantly answers Dick Cavett's awkward questions in the bored company of her soon-to-be ex-bandmates.  By then, at age 31, Agnetha had long stood on the mountaintop of pop stardom.  She might've found the view more distressing than thrilling by that point.

Agnetha has categorically ruled out participating in any ABBA reunion ever since the group evaporated in December 1982.  Except for this:  I found a New Musical Express (London - Nov. 2013) article which quotes Agnetha as being open to a brief ABBA reunion this year ("Waterloo" plus 40 ans).  Rejoice!  Will she or won't she?  Dig it, the Dancing Diva.  Here's the link for more details: http://www.nme.com/news/abba/73746#mL2Bh8LQd5X8SqTR.99

Given their considerable artistic & commercial accomplishments (they're the third best-selling recording artists ever), ABBA deserves more respect than most music fans are inclined to give them.  The over-enunciated vocals may seem cheesy, the arrangements might sound melodramatic, but it's hard to argue with international popularity on the scale of the Beatles & Michael Jackson.  ABBA was inducted into the (US) Rock & Roll Hall of Fame by Barry & Robin Gibb in 2010.

Agnetha, Benny, Björn & Anni-Frid (A-B-B-A) made several enduring works of pop art.  For nearly a decade, they pulled off the miracle of being complementary professional as well as marital partners.  The blonde soprano Agnetha (aka "Anna") was the most charismatic member of the group to most guys like me (ten years younger than her & possessing a sense of sight).  But what do I know?  

Paraphrasing the unfashionable Karl Marx:  the critics have only interpreted the culture differently; the point, however, is to change it.  And ABBA certainly did.  But there's a caveat, from (who else?) pop-culture critic Chuck Klosterman:  "By the end of the twentieth century, it was far more contrarian to hate ABBA than to love them."

With gratitude, sympathy & a note of nostalgic desire, I send this love-letter to the lovely Agnetha Fältskog.  May it venture out into the vast mystery of cyberspace & find its mark.  Muse of the Weird, still rolling along - an unmossy stone at the 100 post-mark, wishes you a very Happy 64th Birthday indeed.  May I have the next dance, ma'am?

Postscript:  Dig this link to the Dutch magazine Hitkrant's 1978 article noting that ABBA (politically neutral yet commercially ambitious) intends to conquer the pop-music markets of the (then nominally Communist) USSR, Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, etc.  It also features photos of Agnetha & ABBA.  It's late-Cold War disco madness!

LINK:
http://abbaarticles.blogspot.com/2009/08/hitkrant-october-1978-abba-is-going-to.html

Wikipedia notes this curious coincidence about a big 1975 ABBA single:  "'SOS' has a number of musical fans.  John Lennon declared that it was one of his favourite pop songs, and Pete Townshend in particular said it is probably his favourite pop song. Ray Davies also said that he was taken with the song after seeing the group perform it on the television show Seaside Special."

On Friday (April 4th) chicorymoonchick wrote from Honolulu:
I love this blog. I lived in Sweden when I was seventeen til I was 18 and a half.  I remember anytime we were lucky enough to get on a boat in Stockholm's archipelago people would drive the boat past the ABBA complex out on a little island in the archipelago:  "Look, look it is Bjorn and Benny from ABBA!" and we would squint to look throught the fence posts.  I was like ... WOW these people really love this band.  Every single disco and bar in that country used the song "Dancing Queen" as their signal to the young people that it was bar time.  It was ALWAYS in every place the last song of the night.  Like a uniform code across Sweden.  The last shot, last dance, last bit of public fun was to that ABBA song.  I also have often wondered what happened to her since it seemed like a pretty male-dominated band.  This was a great post. 

Happy 100th! Aloha from Hawaii!
- Meaghan Owens (singer-songwriter, originally from Wisconsin)

On Sunday (April 6th) michel.martens@telfort.nl wrote from the Netherlands:

Here in Holland, ABBA has been popular from the beginning of their career (the single ‘Ring Ring’ was a top 5 hit here, even one year before their victory in the Eurovision Song Contest) until the end (‘Under Attack’ went top 5 here a well, as far as I know it only reached the top 5 in Holland and Belgium).  Agnetha's and Frida’s solo records have been successful here as well.  Agnetha’s latest album ‘A’ (2013) reached number 14 on the Dutch charts with zero promotion.

Best regards,

- Michel Martens (whose blog posted the 1978 Hitkrant article about ABBA)

© 2014 by Joe Crawford Mrazek