First published on Blogcritics.
When Keith Richards decides to write the story of his life you have to expect you're either going to get down and dirty sex, drugs and rock and roll or some innocuous sanitized version of life in the fast lane. But this is Keith Richards, and you've got to figure that if even half of his reputation is true, you're going to get the inside scoop. You're going to get the real story: Altamont, the brain surgery, the Canadian drug bust, the Jagger feud, you're going to get it all. And you do. From the very beginning, when he describes a 1975 arrest in Fordyce, Arkansas, Richards and his co-writer, James Fox give what appears to be a warts and all account of the life and times of the rollingest of stones. What you don't expect, is that the story of the Richards' life and times may not make for the most exciting read. I know I'm in the minority in this, but in all honesty, for this reader the book was often tedious going. Stones fans can stop reading right now, you sure as hell aren't going to agree with much of what's coming.
I'll give Richards credit this is not one of those look at the dumb things I've done and learn a lesson form it books. It isn't one of those I was lost and now I'm saved confessions. There are no apologies. He lived hard, but he worked at his craft with a passion. He knew what he wanted from his music and he made sure to get it. He is at his best when he talks about his music—about trying to figure out a guitar lick, about the unique sound he got using five string open tuning, about getting to play with the heroes of his youth, about discovering that he could write songs. He is serious about music. He has an aesthetic point of view unfortunately it is a point of view that may not always be easily articulated for the reader. It is almost a kind of mystical awareness which clearly controls everything he does.
There is a sound a band needs to strive for. You know it when you hear it; you know when it's missing. It comes from musicians working together, feeling what each is doing, knowing where they are going. It is an emotional connection: you either have it or you don't. The limited chord structure of rock music is an advantage not a drawback. It is the less is more paradox. Writing songs is less an intellectual process than it is a tossing about of bits and pieces to see what seems to come together. He likes to talk about the writer William Burroughs' cut and paste process. Although that is not quite the way he describes his song writing collaboration with Mick Jagger, their process seems almost equally haphazard. Indeed, one has to wonder if they were really as unstructured as Richards makes it seem. In general his aesthetic is a modern version of Romantic subjectivism.
There is passion when he writes about his music, not so much when he writes about other things. His descriptions of his relationships with women are fairly anemic. He is as happy cuddling, he says, as he is having sex. He is usually the chased rather than the chaser. Groupies are like mothers taking care of the band members, making sure they eat and have clean clothes (if you say so). There are, of course, stories of his relationships with Ronnie Spector, Uschi Obermaier,Lil Wergilis, and especially the mothers of his children, Anita Pallenberg and his wife Patti Hansen. But other than an anodyne anecdote here and there, there isn't really all that much in the way of titillating gossip
On the other hand there are more than enough stories about drugs and alcohol. The trouble is that after awhile they all begin to sound alike. We had smack hidden here and we got stopped by the cops. We were afraid they'd find it. They didn't find it. They did find it. We got away with it. We made a connection here. I went cold turkey. We made a connection there. I went back on. Cold turkey isn't so bad. Cold turkey is terrible. Everything gets jumbled together and after awhile loses its impact. Of course, at one point he does say that it was drugs that kept him alert and ready to work, and also he managed to get along so well on them because he only used the finest quality stuff. As far as insights into the culture of drugs and its effects on creativity, I'm not sure there is much here beyond the obvious.
His offhand remarks about some of the other celebrities he's come into contact with can at times be bitchy. Marlon Brando tries to seduce Anita. Allen Ginsberg is an "old gas bag pontificating on everything." Jean-Luc Godard looked like a French bank clerk. George C. Scott crashes into his white fence driving at ninety under the influence. On the other hand he rarely has a bad thing to say about musicians he works with and admires, at least as far as their playing goes. The one exception would be Mick. He has a lot to say about Jagger and "Lead Vocalist Syndrome." He has much to say about Jagger's need to control things. He has a lot to say about Jagger's pursuit of a solo career. In the end, however, they are like brothers. One moment they're at each other's throats, the next they kiss and make up.
All in all, I was disappointed. I didn't always find his narrative coherent. His prose style, which others have praised, I found off putting. Too often it seemed as though he were simply speaking out phrases for someone to copy down, much as he describes himself doing when writing songs. He seems as uninterested in conventional language as he is in conventional living. At times, especially at the beginning, he uses slang terms without bothering to define them. He favors unique figures of speech that defy easy comprehension. When he talks about music, it is sometimes a bit technical for the non-musician, sometimes so impressionistic as to mean little. The book could use a little shaping and editing. The in medias res beginning is effective, but the end just seems to peter out. Fewer repetitious digressions would be nice, at almost five hundred and fifty pages Life feels long.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Monday, January 10, 2011
Music Review: Sherman Ewing, Single Room Saloon
This article was first published at Blogcritics
If you are unfamiliar with the name Sherman Ewing, the digital release of his second album, Single Room Saloon on January 11 may well remedy that. This ten song rock, pop, county collection runs the gamut from haunting bluesy social commentary to introspective soul searching, from upbeat swinging melodies to anarchic cacophonies. His lyrics are personal and emblematic of a generation. Ewing is a singer-song writer with something to say and he says it with a raw honesty that will remind you of early Dylan. The world he describes is not particularly pretty. It is a place where people fall, sometimes to rise again, sometimes not. More often than not his music is as harsh as that world, and when it isn't, when it seems melodic and tuneful, the lilting melodies are in ironic contrast to the disturbing lyrics. This may be pop music, but it is pop music as art.
"The Mission" has a lilting melody, but it is a song about the need for change in a society where people are on the streets dying from the heat, where people are fighting for the right of the road. The mission and what it stands for not only don't help; they stand in the way. "Angel," the chorus demands, "Burn this mission down." "Flatlands" has a sweet folk song vibe with a pulsating rhythm, but it describes 40,000 children wasted in the sand, with the vultures ready to pounce. The sweetness of the music morphs into the sadness of a dirge. "Heaven Waits" is a melodic old style folk rocker that looks at the idea of heavenly rewards with a somewhat jaundiced eye. Its opening guitar measures belie its message. Ewing has a way of using the music to lull the listener into a false sense of serenity, only to pull the rug away from anyone paying close attention to the lyric.
"Single Room Saloon," the title song, on the other hand uses a dissonant musical setting to echo the dissonance of the singer's relationship to a world that is like a single room saloon. He's still here, but he's "slightly out of tune," more than slightly in the light of some of the sonic distortion. It also features some rocking guitar work and a blasting trumpet solo. "Happiness" and "Right Behind the Scars" both seem to look at the chances for redemption after a misspent past. "I can hear the river calling," he says in "Right Behind the Scars," "will you let it take you out to sea?" In both, the music echoes the sense. "Walk On" is a classic anthem with a passionate guitar riff. "If you're lost in the night, you will find that there's love on the other side; walk on," directs the chorus. It ends with a gospel like coda featuring a guitar solo interspersed with chants of "walk on."
According to the bio on his website, Ewing is no new kid on the block. A 40 year old native of Minnesota, he went to boarding school in England. It was the time of the Punk revolution and as Ewing told Tipitina's John D'Aquila in an online interview, "Everyone was into the Sex Pistols." He came back to the States to go Columbia University, where he met "Jojo" Hermann of Widespread Panic. They began to play together in a band called Sherman and the Bureaucrats, and he continued playing around New York through the nineties. In 2002, he teamed with producer Godfrey Diamond on his first solo album, Blue Moon. Among the influences on his music he mentions in the D'Aquila interview are Neil Young, James Taylor, Jim Croce, Harry Chapin and Bruce Springsteen. Bob Dylan, he says, "started me getting into the guitar." While his music is truly an eclectic mix, these singer-songwriters are clearly there in spirit.
Ewing collaborates again with Diamond and Hermann on this new album. Others included on the CD are Ivan Neville, drummer, George Recile and bassist, Tony Garnier. Tom Marshall is on keyboards. Zak Soulam and Jimbo Walsh help out on guitar and Michael Ray handles the trumpet work. Ewing's core band is made up of guitarist Anthony Krizan, Rob Clores on keyboards and a rhythm section of John and Kevin Hummel.
If you are unfamiliar with the name Sherman Ewing, the digital release of his second album, Single Room Saloon on January 11 may well remedy that. This ten song rock, pop, county collection runs the gamut from haunting bluesy social commentary to introspective soul searching, from upbeat swinging melodies to anarchic cacophonies. His lyrics are personal and emblematic of a generation. Ewing is a singer-song writer with something to say and he says it with a raw honesty that will remind you of early Dylan. The world he describes is not particularly pretty. It is a place where people fall, sometimes to rise again, sometimes not. More often than not his music is as harsh as that world, and when it isn't, when it seems melodic and tuneful, the lilting melodies are in ironic contrast to the disturbing lyrics. This may be pop music, but it is pop music as art.
"The Mission" has a lilting melody, but it is a song about the need for change in a society where people are on the streets dying from the heat, where people are fighting for the right of the road. The mission and what it stands for not only don't help; they stand in the way. "Angel," the chorus demands, "Burn this mission down." "Flatlands" has a sweet folk song vibe with a pulsating rhythm, but it describes 40,000 children wasted in the sand, with the vultures ready to pounce. The sweetness of the music morphs into the sadness of a dirge. "Heaven Waits" is a melodic old style folk rocker that looks at the idea of heavenly rewards with a somewhat jaundiced eye. Its opening guitar measures belie its message. Ewing has a way of using the music to lull the listener into a false sense of serenity, only to pull the rug away from anyone paying close attention to the lyric.
"Single Room Saloon," the title song, on the other hand uses a dissonant musical setting to echo the dissonance of the singer's relationship to a world that is like a single room saloon. He's still here, but he's "slightly out of tune," more than slightly in the light of some of the sonic distortion. It also features some rocking guitar work and a blasting trumpet solo. "Happiness" and "Right Behind the Scars" both seem to look at the chances for redemption after a misspent past. "I can hear the river calling," he says in "Right Behind the Scars," "will you let it take you out to sea?" In both, the music echoes the sense. "Walk On" is a classic anthem with a passionate guitar riff. "If you're lost in the night, you will find that there's love on the other side; walk on," directs the chorus. It ends with a gospel like coda featuring a guitar solo interspersed with chants of "walk on."
According to the bio on his website, Ewing is no new kid on the block. A 40 year old native of Minnesota, he went to boarding school in England. It was the time of the Punk revolution and as Ewing told Tipitina's John D'Aquila in an online interview, "Everyone was into the Sex Pistols." He came back to the States to go Columbia University, where he met "Jojo" Hermann of Widespread Panic. They began to play together in a band called Sherman and the Bureaucrats, and he continued playing around New York through the nineties. In 2002, he teamed with producer Godfrey Diamond on his first solo album, Blue Moon. Among the influences on his music he mentions in the D'Aquila interview are Neil Young, James Taylor, Jim Croce, Harry Chapin and Bruce Springsteen. Bob Dylan, he says, "started me getting into the guitar." While his music is truly an eclectic mix, these singer-songwriters are clearly there in spirit.
Ewing collaborates again with Diamond and Hermann on this new album. Others included on the CD are Ivan Neville, drummer, George Recile and bassist, Tony Garnier. Tom Marshall is on keyboards. Zak Soulam and Jimbo Walsh help out on guitar and Michael Ray handles the trumpet work. Ewing's core band is made up of guitarist Anthony Krizan, Rob Clores on keyboards and a rhythm section of John and Kevin Hummel.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
TV Review: Mordecai Richler: The Last of the Wild Jews
This article was first published at Blogcritics
On December 19 Bravo will premiere its original documentary on the life of controversial Canadian literary figure Mordecai Richler, The Last of the Wild Jews. Like most readers, I first came to Richler's work through his 1959 novel about Jewish life set in the Montreal neighborhood in which he grew up during the thirties and forties, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. While the novel was a considerable artistic success, even spawning an acclaimed film starring Richard Dreyfus in 1974, it was also responsible for some negative criticism from the Jewish community both in Canada and the United States. His portrayal of what many saw as the aggressive materialistic Duddy was seen as the work of what they saw as a "self hating Jew." Similar criticism had been leveled at novelists like Philip Roth for stories like "Defender of the Faith" and Portnoy's Complaint, Norman Mailer and Saul Bellow.
Nonetheless his work, like theirs, was a popular success. He was part of what seemed like a Jewish Renaissance in the arts. There were the writers of course, but there were also the comedians: Myron Cohen and Jackie Mason who brought the Yiddish sensibility into the cultural mainstream; Don Rickles, Lenny Bruce and Jackie Leonard, with their 'take no prisoners' attacking comedy. Like them Richler is seen as a provocateur—one of the wild Jews.
While it may be debatable whether he is the "last" of this wild bunch, there is no question but that he belongs. It is not only his willingness to look at the Jewish community critically, it is also his pugnacious attack on any and everything he finds unjust. Besides his satirical picture of aspects of Jewish life, the documentary focuses on two of his other crusades, his attacks on Canadian Nationalism and Quebec separatism. Richler is not shy about speaking his mind. From the beginning, the film makes that clear. "I don't trust television people," he tells one TV interviewer. Talking about the North American Continent, he says: "I wish it were one country." Why, he wants to know from an interviewer, is he always referred to as a Jewish writer, why not simply a writer. Even at a high school reunion, he finds it necessary to make a snide crack about the musical entertainment. This is not a man who tries to avoid controversy. It is not strange that he gets threatening phone calls. It is not strange that he has his share of detractors.
Although the film does include a good bit of biographical information, it is not essentially a biography. It talks about the school he attended, about the fact that he met the woman he loved as a soul mate a few days after he was married to another woman, about his move to England when he was nineteen. But what we are shown are really only highlights. We learn relatively little about his family. We hear nothing about the novels prior to Duddy Kravitz and little about anything he wrote after except forBarney's Version, a film version of which just happens to be due out in the near future. The focus of the documentary is on the man's penchant for controversy.
As with the typical documentary there are the talking heads, old friends talking about the man, literary figures talking about his work. Florence, his wife, talks about the difficulties of living with a man who put his work before everything else in his life. His friend Ted Kotcheff talks about being the first to read Duddy Kravitz and eventually getting funding to make the film. Margaret Atwood talks about the psychological crutches he depended on in social situations. Adam Gopnik of The New Yorker gives some insight into his significance as a writer and what it means to be a "wild Jew." There is archival footage of the Yiddish community in Montreal at the time Richler was growing up. There scenes from both the film of Duddy Kravitz as well as Barney's Version. Director Francine Pelletier's approach to her unconvenional subject is fairly conventional.
If Richler never quite achieved the reputation of some of the other "wild Jews" in the States, it may be less because of the quality of his major work, than it is because of his focus on Canadian issues in his later work. Even though much of his writing was published in American periodicals, more than likely, it makes a difference to parochial readers if your book deals with Jews in New Jersey or Chicago as opposed to Jews in Montreal. Still, it is clearly arguable that Mordecai Richler at his best is as good as they come, and this is a message that comes through loud and clear from this estimable documentary.
On December 19 Bravo will premiere its original documentary on the life of controversial Canadian literary figure Mordecai Richler, The Last of the Wild Jews. Like most readers, I first came to Richler's work through his 1959 novel about Jewish life set in the Montreal neighborhood in which he grew up during the thirties and forties, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. While the novel was a considerable artistic success, even spawning an acclaimed film starring Richard Dreyfus in 1974, it was also responsible for some negative criticism from the Jewish community both in Canada and the United States. His portrayal of what many saw as the aggressive materialistic Duddy was seen as the work of what they saw as a "self hating Jew." Similar criticism had been leveled at novelists like Philip Roth for stories like "Defender of the Faith" and Portnoy's Complaint, Norman Mailer and Saul Bellow.
Nonetheless his work, like theirs, was a popular success. He was part of what seemed like a Jewish Renaissance in the arts. There were the writers of course, but there were also the comedians: Myron Cohen and Jackie Mason who brought the Yiddish sensibility into the cultural mainstream; Don Rickles, Lenny Bruce and Jackie Leonard, with their 'take no prisoners' attacking comedy. Like them Richler is seen as a provocateur—one of the wild Jews.
While it may be debatable whether he is the "last" of this wild bunch, there is no question but that he belongs. It is not only his willingness to look at the Jewish community critically, it is also his pugnacious attack on any and everything he finds unjust. Besides his satirical picture of aspects of Jewish life, the documentary focuses on two of his other crusades, his attacks on Canadian Nationalism and Quebec separatism. Richler is not shy about speaking his mind. From the beginning, the film makes that clear. "I don't trust television people," he tells one TV interviewer. Talking about the North American Continent, he says: "I wish it were one country." Why, he wants to know from an interviewer, is he always referred to as a Jewish writer, why not simply a writer. Even at a high school reunion, he finds it necessary to make a snide crack about the musical entertainment. This is not a man who tries to avoid controversy. It is not strange that he gets threatening phone calls. It is not strange that he has his share of detractors.
Although the film does include a good bit of biographical information, it is not essentially a biography. It talks about the school he attended, about the fact that he met the woman he loved as a soul mate a few days after he was married to another woman, about his move to England when he was nineteen. But what we are shown are really only highlights. We learn relatively little about his family. We hear nothing about the novels prior to Duddy Kravitz and little about anything he wrote after except forBarney's Version, a film version of which just happens to be due out in the near future. The focus of the documentary is on the man's penchant for controversy.
As with the typical documentary there are the talking heads, old friends talking about the man, literary figures talking about his work. Florence, his wife, talks about the difficulties of living with a man who put his work before everything else in his life. His friend Ted Kotcheff talks about being the first to read Duddy Kravitz and eventually getting funding to make the film. Margaret Atwood talks about the psychological crutches he depended on in social situations. Adam Gopnik of The New Yorker gives some insight into his significance as a writer and what it means to be a "wild Jew." There is archival footage of the Yiddish community in Montreal at the time Richler was growing up. There scenes from both the film of Duddy Kravitz as well as Barney's Version. Director Francine Pelletier's approach to her unconvenional subject is fairly conventional.
If Richler never quite achieved the reputation of some of the other "wild Jews" in the States, it may be less because of the quality of his major work, than it is because of his focus on Canadian issues in his later work. Even though much of his writing was published in American periodicals, more than likely, it makes a difference to parochial readers if your book deals with Jews in New Jersey or Chicago as opposed to Jews in Montreal. Still, it is clearly arguable that Mordecai Richler at his best is as good as they come, and this is a message that comes through loud and clear from this estimable documentary.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Music Review: The Chocolate Soldier-Studio Cast Recording
This article was first published at Blogcritics
Masterworks Broadway's recent release of the 1958 studio cast recording of the classic 1908 operetta,The Chocolate Soldier, is a welcome opportunity for modern audiences to become reacquainted with one of the finer examples of an art form much neglected in this day and age. Sung through musicals like Les Miz and melodramatic extravaganzas like Phantom come close, and while one may argue that they are the contemporary heirs of the older genre, they are clearly the product of a different sensibility. The Chocolate Soldier belongs to another age: it smacks of evening dress, handle bar mustaches and horses and carriage. Still, if its form is of another time, its message at least is clearly of today.
Based on George Bernard Shaw's anti-war satire, Arms and the Man, The Chocolate Soldier ridicules the idea that war is a heroic endeavor, by creating as its hero a man who carries chocolates in his ammunition belt rather than bullets. He is escaping from the front lines when he sneaks into the bedroom of a beautiful young lady who is engaged to an enemy officer, with the obvious results. Shaw allowed his play to be used as the basis of the operetta, according to Stanley Green's program notes, on condition that the names of the characters are changed and none of his dialogue be used for fear that a popular musical would have a negative effect on productions of the original.
The operetta premiered in Vienna in 1908 with music by written by Oscar Straus and a libretto by Rudolph Bernauer and Leopold Jacobson. An English translation by Stanislaus Stange debuted on Broadway in 1909. The 1958 recording features Metropolitan Opera stars Rise Stevens as Nadina and Robert Merrill as Buneli, the eponymous chocolate soldier. Peter Palmer, who had starred as Li'l Abner on Broadway played Alexius, Nadina's fiancé and Jo Sullivan is Mascha, the maid he eventually marries.
At times the music tends toward what used to be called the schmaltzy; at other times there are touches of Gilbert and Sullivan. The best known piece in the operetta is "My Hero" from the first of the three acts. The "Come, come, I love you truly" section is custom made for the gorgeous soprano of Rise Stevens. It is reprised in a duet with Merrill as part of the finale to Act II. It is an iconic piece in the operetta canon, the kind of song that is the glory of the genre for those that like it and probably the object of derision for those that don't. The lyrics may be a bit clunky for modern taste, but the lush melody makes up for that in spades. "Never Was There Such a Lover" is a clever falling out of love duet between Stevens and Palmer. "The Chocolate Soldier" could have been a witty duet for Stevens and Merrill, but it loses a lot with some of the phrasing in the chorus.
Gilbert and Sullivan echoes begin with the first act Introduction both with the marching male ensemble and the young maiden trio. "Seek the Spy," a piece for the ensemble, could have come right out of any of the Gilbert and Sullivan opus. The same is true for "Alexius the Heroic," a set piece for Palmer along with the ensemble. The cutesy "Letter Song" in the third act, on the other hand seems less of an echo; it is also less compelling musically. I guess if you are going to be channeling anyone, you can't do better than Gilbert and Sullivan.
The Chocolate Soldier is not for everyone. It is a period piece for a period that has long gone, but for many it will bring back fond memories. For those of you, cancel that. For those of us who loved The Student Prince, this album is a treasure. For those of us who remember Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald, this album is a must. For those of us who look forward to the New Year's Eve productions of Die Fledermaus, this is an album that belongs in our music libraries.
Masterworks Broadway's recent release of the 1958 studio cast recording of the classic 1908 operetta,The Chocolate Soldier, is a welcome opportunity for modern audiences to become reacquainted with one of the finer examples of an art form much neglected in this day and age. Sung through musicals like Les Miz and melodramatic extravaganzas like Phantom come close, and while one may argue that they are the contemporary heirs of the older genre, they are clearly the product of a different sensibility. The Chocolate Soldier belongs to another age: it smacks of evening dress, handle bar mustaches and horses and carriage. Still, if its form is of another time, its message at least is clearly of today.
Based on George Bernard Shaw's anti-war satire, Arms and the Man, The Chocolate Soldier ridicules the idea that war is a heroic endeavor, by creating as its hero a man who carries chocolates in his ammunition belt rather than bullets. He is escaping from the front lines when he sneaks into the bedroom of a beautiful young lady who is engaged to an enemy officer, with the obvious results. Shaw allowed his play to be used as the basis of the operetta, according to Stanley Green's program notes, on condition that the names of the characters are changed and none of his dialogue be used for fear that a popular musical would have a negative effect on productions of the original.
The operetta premiered in Vienna in 1908 with music by written by Oscar Straus and a libretto by Rudolph Bernauer and Leopold Jacobson. An English translation by Stanislaus Stange debuted on Broadway in 1909. The 1958 recording features Metropolitan Opera stars Rise Stevens as Nadina and Robert Merrill as Buneli, the eponymous chocolate soldier. Peter Palmer, who had starred as Li'l Abner on Broadway played Alexius, Nadina's fiancé and Jo Sullivan is Mascha, the maid he eventually marries.
At times the music tends toward what used to be called the schmaltzy; at other times there are touches of Gilbert and Sullivan. The best known piece in the operetta is "My Hero" from the first of the three acts. The "Come, come, I love you truly" section is custom made for the gorgeous soprano of Rise Stevens. It is reprised in a duet with Merrill as part of the finale to Act II. It is an iconic piece in the operetta canon, the kind of song that is the glory of the genre for those that like it and probably the object of derision for those that don't. The lyrics may be a bit clunky for modern taste, but the lush melody makes up for that in spades. "Never Was There Such a Lover" is a clever falling out of love duet between Stevens and Palmer. "The Chocolate Soldier" could have been a witty duet for Stevens and Merrill, but it loses a lot with some of the phrasing in the chorus.
Gilbert and Sullivan echoes begin with the first act Introduction both with the marching male ensemble and the young maiden trio. "Seek the Spy," a piece for the ensemble, could have come right out of any of the Gilbert and Sullivan opus. The same is true for "Alexius the Heroic," a set piece for Palmer along with the ensemble. The cutesy "Letter Song" in the third act, on the other hand seems less of an echo; it is also less compelling musically. I guess if you are going to be channeling anyone, you can't do better than Gilbert and Sullivan.
The Chocolate Soldier is not for everyone. It is a period piece for a period that has long gone, but for many it will bring back fond memories. For those of you, cancel that. For those of us who loved The Student Prince, this album is a treasure. For those of us who remember Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald, this album is a must. For those of us who look forward to the New Year's Eve productions of Die Fledermaus, this is an album that belongs in our music libraries.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Sherlock Holmes on Screen and Off
This article was first published at Blogcritics
Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes made it to HBO Saturday Night, and although I had managed to avoid it when it was in the theaters and certainly wasn't going to buy it when it came out on DVD, I gave in and watched. After all, everything I had heard or read about the film had inspired little incentive to run out to the local Cineplex. While I am not quite a fanatic about Holmes, not one of those Baker St. Irregulars or anything like that, I do fancy myself something of an aficionado, and the idea of Sherlock Holmes as a kind of 19th century action hero was more than I was willing to stomach. Holmes was a master detective who dealt with crime by using what another iconic sleuth would call his "little gray cells." My Holmes wore a deer stalker, played mournfully on his violin and had the lean and hungry look of Basil Rathbone. He had nothing in common with a bemused, 'bemuscled' Robert Downey, Jr. He didn't jump out of windows and engage in bare knuckle brawling. His sidekick wasn't a handsome youthful Jude Law, but Nigel Bruce, a harrumphing gray haired bumbler that never seemed to have a clue what was going on.
I watched¸ and sure enough what we've got here is Sherlock Holmes as a 19th century superhero minus mask and spandex. True, there are traces of Holmes. He is fond of disguises. He is subject to depression. He fiddles with a violin, but never as sweetly as Basil. He is a keen observer with remarkable deductive powers, both of which are emphasized by directorial film tricks. Nonetheless, this is not Sherlock Holmes; this is somebody else using his name. But the odd thing is that it didn't really matter. This was a fairly entertaining movie: farfetched plot certainly, but entertaining enough. If only they had called the hero something else.
On the other hand, people have been taking liberties with Sir Arthur's creation for quite some time. Ritchie's Holmes at least lives in the 19th century unlike the latest avatar that somehow managed to show up to some critical acclaim on that venerable purveyor of all things British, Masterpiece Mystery. Benedict Cumberbatch is no superhero, and while he may sport a Dickensian name he is very much a modern denizen of the 21st century. Watson turns up as a veteran of the war in Afghanistan. One would think the one thing you couldn't do with Sherlock Holmes is pry him out of the 19th century. But then it occurs to me—and I have to check Wikipedia—that my beloved Basil Rathbone spent some time dealing with the Nazis back in the day. Indeed, it is more than likely that the first time I saw him on the big screen he was my contemporary. One forgets so easily. Holmes, it seems, can transcend time.
Come to think of it, back almost fifty years ago I remember getting half price tickets to a Broadway musical called Baker Street. I don't remember much about the production. Fritz Weaver played Holmes. Whether he sang and danced escapes me, I have to assume he did, and somehow the idea of Sherlock Holmes the song and dance man is as strange as that of the super hero Holmes. Yet the show ran long enough to start selling half price tickets (311 performances according to Wikipedia), so there must have been an audience that didn't find it offensive. Myself, I can't remember anything about it. Wikipedia says that the show was "loosely based" on Conan Doyle's story, "A Scandal in Bohemia," and that interestingly takes a liberty in creating a romance for Holmes with Irene Adler, a liberty which it turns out Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes also takes."
If there is a lesson in all this, the lesson is that when you create an iconic figure, it isn't always easy to control what future generations will do with it. Think of Count Chocula. Think of Frankenberry cereal and Young Frankenstein. Think of all the incarnations of Robin Hood from Errol Flynn to Russell Crowe, by way of Kevin Costner. Think of what's happing to our friend Spiderman on the Great White Way, as we speak. If they can do it with Sherlock Holmes, is anyone safe?
Back when I was thirteen years old the first book I ever bought with my own money was the Modern Library edition of two collections of Holmes stories, The Adventures and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. I still have it. I think I'll go get it and read a few of those stories once again. Robert Downey, Jr., Benedict Cumberbatch, Fritz Weaver and even my beloved Basil Rathbone may be well enough as they go, but in the end, I guess there's no substitute for the real thing.
Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes made it to HBO Saturday Night, and although I had managed to avoid it when it was in the theaters and certainly wasn't going to buy it when it came out on DVD, I gave in and watched. After all, everything I had heard or read about the film had inspired little incentive to run out to the local Cineplex. While I am not quite a fanatic about Holmes, not one of those Baker St. Irregulars or anything like that, I do fancy myself something of an aficionado, and the idea of Sherlock Holmes as a kind of 19th century action hero was more than I was willing to stomach. Holmes was a master detective who dealt with crime by using what another iconic sleuth would call his "little gray cells." My Holmes wore a deer stalker, played mournfully on his violin and had the lean and hungry look of Basil Rathbone. He had nothing in common with a bemused, 'bemuscled' Robert Downey, Jr. He didn't jump out of windows and engage in bare knuckle brawling. His sidekick wasn't a handsome youthful Jude Law, but Nigel Bruce, a harrumphing gray haired bumbler that never seemed to have a clue what was going on.
I watched¸ and sure enough what we've got here is Sherlock Holmes as a 19th century superhero minus mask and spandex. True, there are traces of Holmes. He is fond of disguises. He is subject to depression. He fiddles with a violin, but never as sweetly as Basil. He is a keen observer with remarkable deductive powers, both of which are emphasized by directorial film tricks. Nonetheless, this is not Sherlock Holmes; this is somebody else using his name. But the odd thing is that it didn't really matter. This was a fairly entertaining movie: farfetched plot certainly, but entertaining enough. If only they had called the hero something else.
On the other hand, people have been taking liberties with Sir Arthur's creation for quite some time. Ritchie's Holmes at least lives in the 19th century unlike the latest avatar that somehow managed to show up to some critical acclaim on that venerable purveyor of all things British, Masterpiece Mystery. Benedict Cumberbatch is no superhero, and while he may sport a Dickensian name he is very much a modern denizen of the 21st century. Watson turns up as a veteran of the war in Afghanistan. One would think the one thing you couldn't do with Sherlock Holmes is pry him out of the 19th century. But then it occurs to me—and I have to check Wikipedia—that my beloved Basil Rathbone spent some time dealing with the Nazis back in the day. Indeed, it is more than likely that the first time I saw him on the big screen he was my contemporary. One forgets so easily. Holmes, it seems, can transcend time.
Come to think of it, back almost fifty years ago I remember getting half price tickets to a Broadway musical called Baker Street. I don't remember much about the production. Fritz Weaver played Holmes. Whether he sang and danced escapes me, I have to assume he did, and somehow the idea of Sherlock Holmes the song and dance man is as strange as that of the super hero Holmes. Yet the show ran long enough to start selling half price tickets (311 performances according to Wikipedia), so there must have been an audience that didn't find it offensive. Myself, I can't remember anything about it. Wikipedia says that the show was "loosely based" on Conan Doyle's story, "A Scandal in Bohemia," and that interestingly takes a liberty in creating a romance for Holmes with Irene Adler, a liberty which it turns out Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes also takes."
If there is a lesson in all this, the lesson is that when you create an iconic figure, it isn't always easy to control what future generations will do with it. Think of Count Chocula. Think of Frankenberry cereal and Young Frankenstein. Think of all the incarnations of Robin Hood from Errol Flynn to Russell Crowe, by way of Kevin Costner. Think of what's happing to our friend Spiderman on the Great White Way, as we speak. If they can do it with Sherlock Holmes, is anyone safe?
Back when I was thirteen years old the first book I ever bought with my own money was the Modern Library edition of two collections of Holmes stories, The Adventures and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. I still have it. I think I'll go get it and read a few of those stories once again. Robert Downey, Jr., Benedict Cumberbatch, Fritz Weaver and even my beloved Basil Rathbone may be well enough as they go, but in the end, I guess there's no substitute for the real thing.
Monday, December 6, 2010
The Dante Club by Matthew PearlMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
Although there is some historical research about the period and the authors, the character's motivations are absurd.
View all my reviews
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Book Review: All the Devils Are Here, by Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera
This article was first published at Blogcritics
A better title for Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera's comprehensive history of the recent financial crisis All the Devils Are Here would be All Here Are Devils. If there is one undeniable truth their book seems to document, it is that there is no one involved in the debacle, be they Wall St. moguls, Washington polls, government regulators, rating agencies, unscrupulous lenders or unqualified borrowers, who is free from blame. There were those who were outright crooks. There were those who failed to do due diligence. There were those who were simply greedy. There were those that were too dumb to see what was going on. What McLean and Nocera Have written is an indictment of all the devils involved, and everyone involved smells of the sulfurous pit.
Certainly books on the financial crisis in the past few years have not been lacking. More often than not they have been books devoted to one particular aspect or company. Michael Lewis tells the story of the men that managed to read the tea leaves and make a fortune from the crisis. William Cohan describes the collapse of Bear Stearns. Gillian Tett describes the creation of credit default swaps. All the Devils Are Here looks at the whole picture and tries to provide a coherent explanation of what happened, how it happened and most importantly why it happened. If there is only time to read one book on the subject, this should probably be it.
It goes back to the beginnings—to the creation of mortgage backed securities thirty odd years ago. "In the simplest of terms, it allowed Wall Street to scoop up loans made to people who were buying homes, bundle them together by the thousands, and then resell the bundle, in bits and pieces, to investors." In the past, if a bank had made a loan to a home buyer, that bank would hold and service the mortgage. Repayment of the loan would be to the bank. With securitization, the bank or whichever company made the loan would no longer have any interest in the repayment. That would be the concern of the buyer of the new securities. Suddenly it wasn't so important to worry about the credit worthiness of the home buyer; repayment wasn't your problem. On the other hand there were hefty fees to be made from making loans, the more loans, the more fees.
Of course, it gets more complicated with innovations on the basic theme and innovations on the innovations, but the underlying principle is the same. Loans could be made without any consideration for whether they could be paid back. As long as the real estate market was hot and prices on housing kept rising, home owners could refinance loans to meet their obligations. But, and there is always a but, prices don't always rise. Bubbles burst.
McLean and Nocera's explanations of the different financial instruments and the way they were used are as clear and concise as any I've read. This is not to say that I didn't have to read some of them two or three times to try to make sense of them. As with any profession, financiers and those who write about them have their own jargon, and it is difficult for them to avoid that jargon. Terms are defined, but it is easy for the casual reader to forget the definition. The alphabet soup of initials is confusing (even given the authors' acronym key at the beginning of the book which lists twenty nine different acronyms). Moreover, it isn't always easy to distinguish who owes who what when a short seller borrows securities and prices change. If the authors are correct, and I would suspect they are, even these people who were dealing with them on a daily basis didn't really understand them.
The book details the problems with the pseudo-governmental enterprises Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac. It deals with the subprime mortgages spun out by predatory lenders like Countrywide and Ameriquest. It describes the machinations of financial giants like Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch. It documents the role of AIG. The failures of ratings agencies like Moody's are documented as are those of governmental regulators. If the authors don't go into quite the detail on any one of the problems that the book length treatments of the problems do, they make up in breadth what they may lack in depth. Besides, there is more than enough depth here for any but the most professional of academics.
It is interesting that there is really no one in this book that comes out of this mess with anything approaching honor. Some seem less culpable than others; some seem smarter at least when it came to seeing their own self interest. Individual characters emerge as vain, obstinate, jealous, power hungry and self centered. These are men and women who are used to having their own way. They measure success by the size of their bonuses. The cast of characters is large, and sometimes for the uninitiated it is easy to forget which name goes with which company. Who works for AIG? Who is the CEO of Lehman Brothers? Roland Arnall is the head of what company? Again, there is a list of players at the beginning of the book, but like end notes, too often it is too much trouble to turn back to it.
With the country still suffering from the effects of this financial meltdown, while the movers and shakers responsible seem to have come out of it unscathed, the indictment in All the Devils Are Here ought to be required reading for us all. You know what they say about history and repetition.
A better title for Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera's comprehensive history of the recent financial crisis All the Devils Are Here would be All Here Are Devils. If there is one undeniable truth their book seems to document, it is that there is no one involved in the debacle, be they Wall St. moguls, Washington polls, government regulators, rating agencies, unscrupulous lenders or unqualified borrowers, who is free from blame. There were those who were outright crooks. There were those who failed to do due diligence. There were those who were simply greedy. There were those that were too dumb to see what was going on. What McLean and Nocera Have written is an indictment of all the devils involved, and everyone involved smells of the sulfurous pit.
Certainly books on the financial crisis in the past few years have not been lacking. More often than not they have been books devoted to one particular aspect or company. Michael Lewis tells the story of the men that managed to read the tea leaves and make a fortune from the crisis. William Cohan describes the collapse of Bear Stearns. Gillian Tett describes the creation of credit default swaps. All the Devils Are Here looks at the whole picture and tries to provide a coherent explanation of what happened, how it happened and most importantly why it happened. If there is only time to read one book on the subject, this should probably be it.
It goes back to the beginnings—to the creation of mortgage backed securities thirty odd years ago. "In the simplest of terms, it allowed Wall Street to scoop up loans made to people who were buying homes, bundle them together by the thousands, and then resell the bundle, in bits and pieces, to investors." In the past, if a bank had made a loan to a home buyer, that bank would hold and service the mortgage. Repayment of the loan would be to the bank. With securitization, the bank or whichever company made the loan would no longer have any interest in the repayment. That would be the concern of the buyer of the new securities. Suddenly it wasn't so important to worry about the credit worthiness of the home buyer; repayment wasn't your problem. On the other hand there were hefty fees to be made from making loans, the more loans, the more fees.
Of course, it gets more complicated with innovations on the basic theme and innovations on the innovations, but the underlying principle is the same. Loans could be made without any consideration for whether they could be paid back. As long as the real estate market was hot and prices on housing kept rising, home owners could refinance loans to meet their obligations. But, and there is always a but, prices don't always rise. Bubbles burst.
McLean and Nocera's explanations of the different financial instruments and the way they were used are as clear and concise as any I've read. This is not to say that I didn't have to read some of them two or three times to try to make sense of them. As with any profession, financiers and those who write about them have their own jargon, and it is difficult for them to avoid that jargon. Terms are defined, but it is easy for the casual reader to forget the definition. The alphabet soup of initials is confusing (even given the authors' acronym key at the beginning of the book which lists twenty nine different acronyms). Moreover, it isn't always easy to distinguish who owes who what when a short seller borrows securities and prices change. If the authors are correct, and I would suspect they are, even these people who were dealing with them on a daily basis didn't really understand them.
The book details the problems with the pseudo-governmental enterprises Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac. It deals with the subprime mortgages spun out by predatory lenders like Countrywide and Ameriquest. It describes the machinations of financial giants like Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch. It documents the role of AIG. The failures of ratings agencies like Moody's are documented as are those of governmental regulators. If the authors don't go into quite the detail on any one of the problems that the book length treatments of the problems do, they make up in breadth what they may lack in depth. Besides, there is more than enough depth here for any but the most professional of academics.
It is interesting that there is really no one in this book that comes out of this mess with anything approaching honor. Some seem less culpable than others; some seem smarter at least when it came to seeing their own self interest. Individual characters emerge as vain, obstinate, jealous, power hungry and self centered. These are men and women who are used to having their own way. They measure success by the size of their bonuses. The cast of characters is large, and sometimes for the uninitiated it is easy to forget which name goes with which company. Who works for AIG? Who is the CEO of Lehman Brothers? Roland Arnall is the head of what company? Again, there is a list of players at the beginning of the book, but like end notes, too often it is too much trouble to turn back to it.
With the country still suffering from the effects of this financial meltdown, while the movers and shakers responsible seem to have come out of it unscathed, the indictment in All the Devils Are Here ought to be required reading for us all. You know what they say about history and repetition.
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