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

A Guided Tour at the Museum of Human Folly (in the Year 2114)

Ladies and gentlemen, kindly come this way.  This is an adults-only institution, so no offspring under age sexteen are permitted.  Alright, we're all adults here?  Awesome.  Step carefully, folks - we haven't finished our renovations yet.  There may be a few slippery spots.  

Thank you all for visiting us here at the Museum of Human Folly.  I will serve as your guide today, my name is CharlesKultman.  Please feel free to call me Chuck!  I also happen to be the chief curator of the museum.  

We've had some staff cutbacks recently, so I'm pulling double duty.  Don't hesitate to ask any questions - I'm a font of trivia and a former professor.  You can tell by my Harris Tweed jacket that I'm a knowledge expert.  As you've undoubtedly noticed, last year's Pacific-Inland Sea tsunami did some serious damage to our hundred-year-old facility.  

You might've heard that the ultra-tech subterranean BobDylan Memorial Auditorium was ruined.  Sadly, I must confirm it for you.  So the MHF will be hosting no music-concerts, no art-performances, no pre-GoogleGoggle videoshows at the BDMA for the time being.  

We pray for your patience and understanding as we rebuild.  Berkeley as a whole will rebuild itself.  The UC alumni endowment has wisely ensured that the new Cal-Nike-Achilles Stadium will be located far from the Hayward fault.  As Saint WoodyGuthrie once sang:  "We been travelin' down a hard, dusty road / everyman is a refugee, Tom Joad."  

This odd museum of ours is too useful a treasure to waste, so we simply cannot close it down.  Fortunately, we're in the process of securing a grant from a generous benefactor - (in a stage whisper:) it's the GlobalOilFoundation.  So we'll probably be able to keep our doors open throughout the reconstruction.  

If any of you would care to make a tax-deductible gift to our non-profit organization - to remember the Museum of Human Folly in your estate plan, for example - then I urge you to talk to me after the tour.  As they say in OldMexico, pardon our dust!  

As you can tell, this ornate marble lobby has sustained some algae growth.  I try to think of it as an unplanned non-faux organic enhancement.  This, after all, is the anteroom to NorthAmerica's temple of cautionary tales.  Isn't she beautiful?  

It breaks my heart to admit it but, the fact is, this fine design-space has been sullied.  Violated by MotherNature, if you will.  And the building as a whole has incurred some minor structural damage.  But please don't fret - we're monitoring the entire building for ground-stability and air-quality.  And no localized earthquakes are expected in the next several weeks, the GeoForecasterGeneral says.  

Let's proceed to the display-galleries, shall we?  Be curious and be brave, that's my motto.  Or as it says on the 50-dross coin, "Always forward, NorthAmericans!"  

We're now entering the fragrant, subtropical Buffett Wing.  Watch out for falling coconuts - those palm trees are real!  The music audible on your AppleApps earbuds was created in the late 1970s by our multi-talented benefactor, JimmyBuffett.  Sounds pretty fresh, doesn't it?  If you're hungry later, we recommend a trip to BuffetsMargaritaville restaurant and brew-pub, just 5 miles from our door on Route 420.  

It's across the motorway from the HunterSThompson firing-range and chemical-pleasuredome, where there's never a shortage of bullets or an outage of fun.  The CarlosSantana Bay area is so blessed in the variety of its tourist attractions, isn't it?

Now, on your left, behind the bulletproof glass, you'll notice the SolarWave&WindEnergy Cabinet of Evolutionary Curiosities.  The labels explain where we obtained these odd items of genetic mutation impelled by industrial pollution.  I'm particularly proud to display our rare collection of Diablo Canyon mutant fish, bivalves and reptiles.  Getting that mothballed nuclear plant up and running didn't do the local fauna any favors!  

Scientists are still calculating the number of people who might have gotten either cancer or superpowers thanks to the explosion and radiation leak at DC in 2063.  That was a joke, folks.  Don't be afraid to laugh - it's the best medicine, and the cheapest! 

Perhaps the most intriguing exhibit - at least to me - is medical in nature.  Over here on the bottom shelf of the CanadaHealthAssurance Cabinet of Surgical Miracles you'll see an amputated, preserved soldier's leg with a bionic knee-joint.  This crude artificial device was apparently implanted after the man's natural-knee was destroyed by mine-shrapnel in the third Afghan Campaign, around the year 2037.  Looks like that poor warrior had bad luck on the battlefield twice, eh?  

Without artifacts like this long-dead hero's leg, we'd have difficulty bearing  witness to the mystifying follies of our ancestors.  It makes you wonder, for example, what other desperate things people used to do just in order to walk?  Thank the Ford for SegWayWheels!  Ambulation is so much easier nowadays.  Who needs knees?

I'll say farewell to you here, my dear patrons.  But I'm leaving you in the capable hands - well, virtual hands, anyway - of my trusty cyber-doppelgänger, BotChuck2.  Thank you again for coming, ladies, gentlemen and nongenders!  And try to behave, BC2 - no more "Danger, Will Robinson" pranks, okay?  (stage whisper:) Please don't be put off by BC2's dark-lensed spectacles.

The future's looking so bright that BC2 has to wear RayBanShades.  We certainly don't want his EpicMicroCircuits to melt.  Have a good day, everyone - and better tomorrows!

NBC's Revamped Tonight Show & Late Night: Final Phase of the Canadian Comedy Conspiracy?

I'm ambivalent about the latest incarnations of NBC's long-running bedtime talkshows, the Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon & Late Night with Seth Meyers.  I yawn as much as I chuckle at the feel-good irony they purvey.  The mellow hosts fit the cool style that these revamped programs have in common, complete with soothing blue curtains & grainy wood furnishings on uncluttered, elegant sets.  

NBC seems content to target smart young adults with this blend of safe comedy, ingratiating conversation & frequent nods to the emergent social media.  These new & improved programs, however, still leave much to be desired.  

Like Prince in Purple Rain, maybe I'm just too demanding.  Then again I'm an exemplar of several less than desirable demographics:  late Baby-Boomers, freelance writers, failed lawyers, functioning depressives & amateur critics - dinosaurs all, according to most advertisers.  I apparently don't matter much to the ad-revenue bean-counters at NBC.  

Funny though they frequently are, Jimmy Fallon & Seth Meyers seem too narrow in their appeal, especially compared to the mass popularity that the more mature Johnny Carson enjoyed for three decades on Tonight.  Perhaps that makes sense in this era of media narrowcasting & niche marketing.  Even so, I can't help but resent my marginalization by mainstream networks.  

The shows share a similar aesthetic.  That's no coincidence, since they also share an executive producer:  Lorne Michaels, who created the groundbreaking Saturday Night Live (SNL) in 1975.  NBC's return of the Tonight Show to its New York roots represents an upgraded commitment to both the 69-year-old Canadian producer's tastes & the 39-year-old former SNL star Fallon's talents.  

Another sweet-natured SNL alumnus, Seth Meyers now anchors an equally whimsical and inoffensive product on NBC's later alternative vehicle, Late Night (produced since 1993 by Michaels).  The increasingly bland & happily pandering Jay Leno, host of Tonight from 1992 to February 2014 (with one notorious interruption), had long ago been neutered by Hollywood & betrayed by his own need to satisfy a lowbrow crowd.  

"Satire is what closes on Saturday night," goes the old show-biz saw.  So don't expect to see much biting humor on US commercial television's three legacy networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) anymore.  They're content to let Comedy Central do the heavy lifting on late nights with The Daily Show & The Colbert Report.  Meyers & Fallon give adequate opening monologues, but standup is clearly not their strong suit.  Carson, on the other hand, was a master of topical-joke storytelling, unmatched by any of his late-night successors.  

I pray that Fallon & Meyers prod their stable of writers into dreaming up a regular character as engaging in his angry mockery as the French-accented cigar-chomping Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, created by head writer Robert Smigel during Conan O'Brien's tenure on Late Night (1993-2009).  But I'm not holding my breath.

Up against Jimmy Kimmel on ABC & David Letterman on CBS (not to mention Conan O'Brien & Arsenio Hall on smaller networks), Fallon faces more viable talk-comedy competition than Carson ever had to cope with.  Internet options & DVR technology, of course, have reduced the pressure for immediate ratings.  Now that many viewers record their favorite shows or search the Web for later persusal, TV programs can succeed even when their broadcast-time audiences are minuscule by pre-Millenium industry standards.

Much of theTonight Show's rejuvenated hipness & artistic heft must be credited to its soulful hip-hop house band, The Roots.  A rambling posse of seven or more musicians, The Roots provide an excellent sonic atmosphere, exemplified by their vital contribution to the occasional feature called Slow Jamming the News.  Led by drummer Ahmir-Khalib "Questlove" Thompson, this group (originally from Philly) offers a reliable foil for Fallon's wit, reminiscent of Tonight's Doc Severinsen at his loopy '70s best interacting with a bemused Carson.  The Roots, in combination with trusty Fallon sidekick Steve Higgins, make Paul Shaffer (another Ontario native) of Letterman's Late Show seem like a dated show-biz phony - part of his well-worn shtick - by comparison.  

Fred Armisen's smaller, whiter 8G Band on Late Night similarly gives Meyers plenty to work with as he grinds out five hours of new material every week.  The effervescent Kimberly Thompson radiates sexiness & fun from behind her drum kit, offsetting the deadpan guitarist-bandleader Armisen, a seasoned SNL & improv pro.  Meyers will have to develop more skills as a performer as he transitions from head writer & Weekend Update host on SNL.  As it is, Meyers relies on a mediocre troupe of sketch comics for content that diverges from predictable talk-show gimmicks.  Some of those tricks, such as absurdist parodies, seemed revolutionary when invented by TV-comedy pioneers Sid Caesar, Steve Allen, Ernie Kovacs & Jack Paar back in the 1950s.

Fallon served a 5-year stint as host of Late Night before being promoted to Tonight.  Most of my favorite moments on all of Jimmy Fallon's shows were customized for legendary guest musicians.  Whether performing song parodies with Bruce Springsteen & Neil Young or his recent duet - as a geeky wannabe rockstar - with Billy Joel (on the infectious "You May Be Right"), Fallon excels at such musical bits.  He's a good guitar player who also does uncanny impersonations of voices, ranging from a whiny Bob Dylan to the staccato-falsetto crooner Barry Gibb.  Joined by Justin Timberlake as the late brother-tenor Robin Gibb in a recurring sketch ("The Barry Gibb Talk Show") on SNL, Fallon's disco-decadent homage to the Bee Gees is hilarious - albeit unsophisticated. 

As in a striptease performance, the invisible part of this broadcasting story may be more intriguing than the shows themselves.  How did executive producer Lorne Michaels, a trailblazer for subversive humor on North American television, become so damned powerful?  Creating the first five seasons of Saturday Night Live provided the perfect career launchpad.  Michaels had also paid his dues, having worked as a TV & film writer-producer since the late 1960s, in his native Toronto (Canada) as well as in Los Angeles (Laugh-In, Lily Tomlin specials, etc.) & New York.  And he displays loyal tenacity, having convinced NBC to stick with the gentle satire of his own empire, Tina Fey's sitcom 30 Rock, when audience numbers lagged well behind the critics' endorsement. 

Having a keen sense of self-deprecating Jewish-inflected humor certainly helped Michaels (pre-professional name:  Lorne Michael Lipowitz) succeed in show business.  Not content to ham it up as himself in cameos on SNL (he once offered the Beatles $3,000 - "Okay, $3,200!" - to reunite on the first season of SNL), Michaels also appeared in the 1985 HBO mockumentary The Canadian Conspiracy.  He plays himself as the anointed successor to Lorne Greene (supposed namesake of the much-coveted resident-alien "green card"), the figurehead of a cabal of Canucks determined to politely take over the US entertainment industry.  

That comic screen conceit has more or less come true, at least at NBC & in parts of Hollywood.  Lorne Michaels not only produces both Tonight & Late Night, he also continues to exec-produce SNL & to control its (mostly lame) spinoff films & television shows.  We couldn't have been conquered by a nicer goy - I mean, guy.  Michaels has apparently left acting to the pros, declining to appear on camera (so far) on his new late-night babies.  

It could just be middle-aged nostalgia, but I miss the days when the Tonight show lasted 90 minutes - as it did for most of the Carson Era (1962-92).  Back then, Johnny Carson had time - and, presumably, permission from network executives - to leisurely converse with his diverse guests.  More important, not all of those guests were over-exposed media celebrities trading superficial quips & hawking their latest money-making projects for a few minutes between endless commercials.  

The corporate look & feel of contemporary American late-night talk-variety programs, including the Tonight Show & Late Night, leave me cold - as though a polar vortex had descended from the Great White North.  Tonight I think I'll curl up with a warm eReader instead. 

[Thanks to Samara Kalk of Madison (Wisconsin, USA), a print-media reporter & UW alumna, for suggesting this subject.  Go, Badgers!]

The Pluck of the Irish: Christy Brown's Left Foot, The Pogues' Literary Songs & My Clever Gaelic Pun

Happy St. Patrick's Day to those of you who celebrate this sentimental business of Éirinn go Brách ("Ireland forever").  It reminds me of the time in 1993 that I delighted my female Irish housemates in Dublin with a pun involving the Gaelic language.  There's an Irish-Gaelic toast that goes bás in Éirinn ("Death in Ireland"), meaning that if you're lucky you'll get to die in the Old Sod.  I had traveled by bus that summer from Limerick to the capital with sojourns in Killarney, County Galway & Cork city.  Alas, despite generous European Union infrastructure subsidies, Ireland still has few train lines.  

Mine was a low-budget, yet gloriously romantic trip around the west & south of the Emerald Isle.  It included a few harrowing moments on the narrow roads that wind across the perpetually moist countryside.  The Gaelic name of Ireland's national bus line is Bus Éireann.  After safely arriving in Dublin, I told my affable new housemates that I - an American with a half-Irish matrilineal ancestry (the Crawfords of County Kerry) - sometimes felt that I would surely bás in Éirinn thanks to the fearless drivers of Bus Éireann.  Eileen, Siobhan & Mary laughed and congratulated me on my clever use of their ancient official tongue.

The Irish love to laugh as much as they enjoy a good pint of stout or a glass of whiskey - a word derived from the Scottish-Gaelic phrase uisge beatha ("water of life").  Laughter was a survival strategy throughout the centuries of British oppression in conquered Ireland.  Like diaspora Jews, the Irish both soothed their worried minds & mocked their oppressors by honing their wit into a deadly weapon. 

No wonder James Joyce made the main protagonist of his masterpiece, the Dublin-set novel Ulysses (1922), a Jew.  By giving the fictional Leopold Bloom this quasi-outsider status, the ex-Catholic expatriate Joyce could distance his character from the society that he was, in part at least, lampooning.

Joyce, of course, had plenty of company in his complaints about the strictures of Irish society.  Only recently have the Irish people circumvented the repressive dominance of the Roman Catholic Church & its political allies.  Condoms first became legally available to most adults in Ireland around 1992, while abortion remains practically unavailable in the Republic of Eire.  

Most good Irish writers rejected the provincial, patriarchal attitudes of their native culture.  While reading the semi-autobiographical 1970 novel Down All the Days by Christy Brown (1932-81) yesterday, for example, I spotted this irreverent paragraph of a sentence: 

"Hell was a place they often discussed, much more than they talked about heaven, for while one was supposedly full of the same sort of crowd and dense with holy monotony, the other place was a sort of melting-pot in every sense of the word, where kings and emperors and high priestesses rubbed burning shoulders with dissipated butchers, debauched politicians and gold-hearted little street girls who had relentlessly pursued a lifelong policy of no surrender; so of the two hell offered the more fruitful ground for fierce argufying back and forth; it was somehow more of a thrill to talk about being damned than being eternally saved, which sounded boring, like being locked up inside a chapel forever with a bag of liquorice all-sorts [p. 54]."    

If you've seen the film My Left Foot (1989), based on Christy Brown's memoir of the same title, then you've witnessed one of Daniel Day-Lewis's most impressive performances.  Portraying Brown from adolescence into middle age, Day-Lewis inhabits the difficult role of this nearly unintelligible "cripple" who became a widely admired artist & writer.

Afflicted with cerebral palsy & an alcoholic father, Brown was raised in poverty in a Dublin slum along with the dozen siblings who survived childbirth & infancy.  He overcame his severe physical limitations by tapping into a vast reservoir of grit & determination, aided by a loving mother, a devoted lady therapist & a literary doctor.  Famously, Brown could only draw, paint, write & type with the toes of his left foot.

Brown was also granted a musical honor by the London-based Celtic folk-punk band the Pogues.  Renowned for their raucous celebration of all things Irish - including aspects of the nearly global Irish Diaspora, the Pogues bore a shortened name due to BBC censorship.  Their original moniker, Pogue Mahone ("kiss my arse" in anglicized Gaelic), was unacceptably scatological to some Scottish listeners.  

The Pogues tipped their woolen caps to Christy Brown by recording the song "Down All the Days" (on Peace and Love, 1989).  Opening with the clatter of typewriter keys, the record features the compelling voice of the Pogues' ingenious songwriter Shane MacGowan posing as Brown:  "I can type with me toes / Suck stout through me nose /  And where it's gonna end / God only knows." 

Sadly, for Christy Brown it ended rather ignominiously.  According to the Wikipedia entry about him, Brown died in Somerset (England) at age 49 after "choking during a lamb chop dinner."  The autopsy revealed significant bruising, allegedly caused by his abusive alcoholic English wife, Mary Carr.  Brown might have appreciated the dark irony of his own demise.

Perhaps the most literate group in pop-music history, the Pogues recorded MacGowan's irresistible tribute to the controversial Irish republican writer Brendan Behan ("Streams of Whiskey") on their 1984 debut album Red Roses for Me.  In 1987 the Pogues released the brilliant If I Should Fall from Grace with God, featuring a photo of the fedora-sporting bespectacled James Joyce on the cover.  One of its best tracks, the emigrant ballad "Thousands Are Sailing," was the first Pogues song I ever heard - thanks to a DJ on WWOZ, the non-profit radio station & community treasure in New Orleans, in early 1989.  

The Pogues also recorded MacGowan's homage to the gay Spanish poet/playwright Federico Garcia Lorca.  "Lorca's Novena" is a religious-themed protest against the outspoken liberal writer's murder by a fascist death squad in 1936.  It appears on the Pogues' last great album Hell's Ditch (1990), produced by Joe Strummer - who replaced MacGowan as frontman for one tour after Shane got sacked for alcoholic unreliability in 1991.  Another Pogues' song ("Hell's Ditch") was based on the prison novels of Jean Genet.  Early on, the band covered the classic Irish prison lament "The Auld Triangle" by Dominic & Brendan Behan.

The intersection of music & literature is a fertile place for artistic expression.  The Irish have occupied it with aplomb, producing songs & stories that have inspired their proud nation & entertained millions of foreign admirers like me.  Curious about Irish history, I wrote a research paper on early Christian Ireland (circa 400-900 A.D./C.E.) for a medieval history course at UW-Madison in the spring semester of 1981.  

I learned that, while most of Europe had fallen into barbarism following the collapse of the Roman Empire, lonely Irish monks & missionaries kept the fires of Western civilization burning.  These mostly anonymous scribes & sages produced sublime illuminated manuscripts (e.g. the Book of Kells) & spread their nominally forgiving faith among the often hostile "pagan" tribes then roaming the continent.  

That seems like reason enough to hoist a glass of Guinness - "It's so healthy that doctors prescribe it to pregnant women," a Spiddal barman claimed, apparently without blarney, during my 1980 visit to the partially Gaelic-speaking region of Connacht. 

Please join me in toasting the Irish:  May the road rise to meet you, may the wind be always at your back & may you arrive in heaven a half hour before the devil knows you're dead!  If you don't drink, don't believe in an afterlife, or if you'd simply prefer to dwell in hell instead, well - as Pope Francis recently said about gay people:  Who am I to judge?

Happy Birthday, Jack Kerouac

If he hadn't lapsed into fatal alcoholism at age 47, Jack Kerouac might've turned 92 today.  To have outlived his junkie buddy & fellow Beat writer William S. Burroughs (who made it to the grandfatherly age of 83) would've been an impressive accomplishment indeed.

According to a story on the Boston-based public radio program Here & Now today, people still leave tokens of esteem & little gifts on his grave in Lowell, Massachusetts.  Ti Jean (Little John), as his French-Canadian mama always called him, wasn't even fluent in English until his teens, yet he wrote some of the bestselling novels (On The Road, The Dharma Bums, The Subterraneans) ever written in American English in the last century.

Kerouac's staying power as a novelist, poet & mythical literary hero was brought home to me in Nashville, where I spent some time in 2010 with a Danish medical student named Andreas.  He left town with a bag full of Kerouac & other Beat books. Jack would've dug our trip to a small airfield in Lebanon (TN):  Andreas spent the day with a medevac helicopter crew as part of his internship at Vanderbilt University Hospital, a real airborne adventure, while I explored nearby Cedars of Lebanon State Park.

Rest in peace, Jack.  At least you're no longer haunted by the deaths of your brother Gerard (in childhood) & your Lowell pals Sammy & Billy (in WWII).  And Ten Thousand Maniacs wrote a cool tribute song to you ("Hey, Jack Kerouac") in the late 1980's.

Neko Case on Sound Opinions & other Chicago radio gems (past & present)

One of the few advantages of living in the cultural wasteland of post-industrial Racine (Wisconsin, USA) is that it lies on the northern edge of receptivity for Chicago FM radio.  On a recent Saturday morning I got to hear a special broadcast of WBEZ's syndicated Sound Opinions program, featuring a frank & funny interview plus acoustic mini-concert with Neko Case, who's currently on tour with her own backing band (including vocalist Kelly Hogan, a Wisconsinite).  It was recorded in January at The Hideout, the Chicago alt-country/indie-rock club where Neko tended bar in the early 2000s.  

Still living on her Vermont farm, Neko released her sixth solo album this autumn, featuring her first batch of truly confessional songs.  I have attached a link to the podcast below for those of you who can only access this weekly program about popular music, hosted by eminent Chicago rock critics Greg Kot & Jim DeRogatis, via the World Wide Web.  Be sure to catch the desert island jukebox feature, a Harry Nilsson song produced by John Lennon circa 1976.  And stick around for the closing voicemail messages from listeners around the USA, one of my favorite parts of this excellent syndicated show.   

WBEZ (91.5 FM), of course, is the same public radio station that gave us Ira Glass's brilliant NPR storytelling program This American Life.  You can occasionally hear the always charming & insightful Michael Phillips (a Racine native & fellow alumnus of St. Cat's Class of '78), chief film critic for the Chicago Tribune, on WBEZ's Filmspotting program.  

Years before I discovered public radio (in Madison, 1980), I enjoyed listening to legendary Chicago disc jockeys Larry Lujack & John "Records" Landecker on WLS, a 50,000-watt monster audible at 890 AM across much of North America in those days.  Their sardonic comments on Top 40 music, its shrinking AM audience & current events (e.g. Mayor Jane Byrne's ill-advised 1979 stay in the Cabrini Green housing project) made all those obnoxious commercial-radio ads bearable.  I still remember fondly the sly leer in Landecker's voice when, introducing a song by Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show, he recited its sophomoric double-entendre lyric:  "When you're in love with a beautiful woman, it's hard..."  

Around 1975, on the soothing blue dial of my wood-encased Marantz stereo receiver, I discovered Chicago's WFMT (98.7 FM).  That early stereo station, mainly a staid classical & jazz outlet, blessed Chicagoland for decades with author/raconteur Studs Terkel's incomparable daily talk show.  Studs interviewed all manner of artists, musicians, intellectuals & social rebels, from Bob Dylan (c. 1963 - "No, it's not an atomic rain.  It's a hard rain.") to Mahalia Jackson to Gloria Steinem.  The program always closed with Studs's exuberant nod to Woody Guthrie:  "Take it easy, but take it!"  WFMT also loosened up late on Saturdays when it broadcast a mix of folk music and hip humor called The Midnight Special, where I first heard the quirky comic dialogues of Mike Nichols & Elaine May as well as Arlo Guthrie's 1967 satirical counter-cultural masterpiece of a song, "Alice's Restaurant Massacree."  

Sometime in the 1990s I grew to love WXRT (93.1 FM), "Chicago's finest rock" - and one of the few commercial radio stations in the country that still plays blues records from time to time.  It happened to be on 'XRT that I first heard Neko Case's catchy 2009 singles "This Tornado Loves You" & "People Gotta Lotta Nerve," a fierce animal-rights themed vengeance ballad ("You know they call them killer whales / still you're surprised...").  

And so, finally, I come full circle back to Ms. Case, who began her music career as an art student in Vancouver (BC, Canada), a woman brave & sensible enough to discuss her mood funks & love troubles on global radio without sounding self-indulgent.  I'm grateful to her & to the best of Chicago radio.  Although I only lived in the Windy City for 2 months (in the year 2000, in a friend's high-rise condo on Lake Shore Drive, with a view of Wrigley Field a mile to the west), it holds a special place in my memory thanks to some of its gifted broadcasters.

Well, that's enough nostalgia for now.  Good radio will never die because radio is the most intimate medium humans have yet devised.  The Internet, that insatiable digital behemoth gobbling up most analog media, might co-opt it, but it can't kill radio broadcasting entirely. 

Picture the World Wide Web as a raging robot Godzilla:  having arisen from the contaminated Pacific waves, he approaches Fukushima wielding a bullet-train car in one paw while stomping on an ancient Buddhist temple.  Suddenly he hears an abandoned radio playing Sinead O'Connor's eerie soprano rendition of "Nothing Compares 2 U."  The techno-lizard pauses to listen.  A silicon tear wells up & drops.  The beast retreats into the ocean.  Sublime radio strikes again!

LINK:  http://www.soundopinions.org/

Back from the USSR: Lee Harvey Oswald, Antihero (a Conspiracy-free Theory)

Don't worry:  I'm not one of those Kennedy-assassination conspiracy theorists.  I acknowledge that diligent investigators (including the 1964 Warren Commission's) and credible forensic scientists have established beyond a reasonable doubt that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in murdering the president on that sad, sunny Dallas day in November 1963.  Yet I admit that there was a string of pretty weird coincidences in this case. 

A new book has satisfactorily answered most of my lingering questions about the killer.  Oliver Stone, perpetrator of the 1991 paranoid fantasy film JFK, might be disappointed by what its author discovered about that homicidal nudnik named Oswald.  Jacob Rubenstein, a nightclub owner who preferred to be called Jack Ruby, may have sincerely meant to avenge the dead president by firing a bullet into his assassin.  Unfortunately, by killing that smirking self-proclaimed "patsy," Ruby - the hotheaded agent of retribution - merely enhanced Oswald's mystique.

In his brief but meticulously researched study, The Interloper:  Lee Harvey Oswald Inside the Soviet Union (NY:  Basic Books, 2013), journalist Peter Savodnik presents a convincing account of the damaging circumstances of Oswald's life, as well as the dangerous quirks of his alienated psyche, that led the ex-marine to take such violent action.  

Ironically, within a month of moving back to Dallas in March 1963, the confused "Marxist" attempted to murder ex-general Edwin Walker, who'd been forced into early retirement by JFK.  Oswald just missed the right-wing extremist Walker, using the same Carcano 6.5-mm bolt-action rifle that he later used to fatally shoot Kennedy, simultaneously wounding Governor Connally.  Then, in a futile attempt to evade arrest, the cowardly Oswald shot Officer J. D. Tippit dead with a handgun.   

A reporter formerly based in Moscow, Savodnik pays particular attention to the two and a half years that the future assassin spent in the Soviet Socialist Republic of Byelorussia (since 1991, the independent state of Belarus, still a de facto dictatorship).  By all eyewitness accounts, Oswald was a lazy, disgruntled metal lathe operator at the Minsk Radio Factory to which the Soviets assigned him in January 1960.  

The public's fascination with Oswald partly stems from the fact that he was one of only eleven Americans who defected to the USSR between 1958 and 1964, perhaps the tensest period of the Cold War.  After a meandering journey - by freighter from New Orleans to France, followed by a flight from London to Helsinki - Oswald entered Russia from Finland by train on October 15, 1959.  

He was carrying a one-week tourist visa in his passport and not much else.  After the Soviet authorities denied his immediate request to stay and seek citizenship, Oswald made a suicidal gesture at the Moscow hotel where his puzzled handlers were keeping him.  Ultimately, after giving interviews to American and Soviet reporters, Oswald was granted a residence permit.  

It was either an impressive accomplishment or a stroke of luck, considering that the KGB had already determined he had zero intelligence value.  Despite a stint as a radar operator at Atsugi Air Base, which controlled U-2 spy-plane flights to and from Japan, Oswald offered no information unknown to the Soviet military.

So how did this traitorous, failed Communist interloper gain re-entry to the USA without facing criminal charges?  After all, Oswald had tried to renounce his American citizenship at the US embassy in Moscow.  He had eagerly cooperated with his disappointed KGB interrogators.  Although the Soviet government was glad to see this unstable foreigner finally leave in mid-1962, his defection had initially given them a propaganda coup.  

In an absurd twist of fate, the superpowers' public-relations battle allowed Oswald to escape punishment by either side.  His sudden marriage to Marina Prusakova in 1961, and the subsequent birth of their first daughter in Minsk, probably helped expedite his reverse-exodus.  After several months of bureaucratic delay (the main obstacle was posed by the Immigration & Naturalization Service, which understandably questioned Oswald's loyalty), American authorities reluctantly granted entrance visas to Mr. and Mrs. Oswald in May 1962. 

Apparently afraid of appearing to be less hospitable and forgiving than the Soviets had been to him, US officials also gave Oswald a $435.71 repatriation loan, documents show.  The State Department's generosity allowed him to travel with his new family - albeit modestly, by train and ship - from Moscow to New Jersey via the Netherlands.  

Savodnik asserts that the solution to the now 50-year-long Oswald enigma (i.e. why did he kill JFK?) is rooted in his having been, essentially, a delusional Cold War antihero.  It's as good an explanation as any I've come across.  "Oswald was an ordinary man," the author notes, "but he was also exceptional, and not just because he killed a president."  

"Once [the USSR government] capitulated to his demand that he be allowed to stay in the Soviet Union, he was elevated, almost magically, with a great and sudden force," Savodnik writes.  "For the first time, he had done something that most other men could not have imagined doing:  he had convinced the KGB to let him stay in their country. . . He was not a sympathetic character, but he had admirable traits - perseverance, concentration. . . He had done something profound."  

"In any event," Savodnik concludes, "it is hard to imagine any other type of American besides the would-be antihero venturing to the Soviet Union in 1959 and mustering the will to stay there for as long as Oswald did.  This was the quintessential antiheroic experience of the period, the bridge that the loner or rebel would have had to cross in order to detach himself fully from his beginnings. [. . .]  Ironically, Oswald's antiheroism appears to have contributed to his feelings of estrangement not only from America but also, eventually, from the Soviet Union."

Case closed?  Don't count on it.  Conspiracy theorizing is an insidious hobby, a hard habit for obsessive types to break.  Especially when it involves the slight, miserable 24-year-old murderer who sealed the myth of Kennedy's Camelot on the Potomac.  In retrospect, the US government should not have been so welcoming to that ungrateful un-defector.  With a few shots from his cheap rifle, sent by mail-order from Klein's Sporting Goods in Chicago, Oswald changed history. 

All the available evidence, including the now unclassified KGB files, indicates that Oswald was not serving the USSR - or Castro, the Mafia, the CIA, some military-industrial cabal, LBJ, or anyone but himself - when he aimed a powerful weapon through the open sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository.  He certainly wasn't doing his fellow Americans any favors.