Weasel's Luck by Michael Williams

    Fittingly, as it was written by one of the great American poets of the late 20th century, this is a book about the power of words: the way they're put together; the ways in which we interpret them, whether in wishful thinking and self-aggrandizement, in circular reasonings by which we repeat the same patterns (and mistakes) of the past, or in a spirit of openness whence we penetrate the obscure with childlike simplicity and break the spell of learned letters to speak the truth heart-to-heart; and the ways in which words themselves create the past, present and future, in every poem or prayer, book or song, every lively conservation and each silent meditation.

    This is a book about youth: the thrill of adventure longed for amidst the dull routine of neglected duty and resented lessons from quaint old fools who know not the first thing about what stirs our eager hearts to leave the sheep to stray and follow caprice with the goats. About generations entangled in sordid stories of love and woe, revenge and jealousy: yes, this is a book about jealousy and above all, a book about brothers, coming of age, hurting each other, coveting each other in envy that fails to see how we all possess a unique gift, something that makes us special and, indeed, worthy of the other's admiration and envy in turn, as the grass is always greener: from which may we arise and lay the curse aside.

    This is a story of three brothers, Alfric, Brithelm, and Galen (or "The Weasel" as his name means and as he is unflatteringly called by his eldest brother, Alfric) who vaguely reflect the same division of human character as the Brothers Karamazov: Alfric represents physical strength (which he uses primarily to pound his youngest brother for real or perceived offenses) and, aspirationally at least, courage, or at least ambition, to someday become a Solamnic knight and a hero like his father, if only he can find another knight willing to take his sorry hide on as squire. Brithelm, the middle brother, reminds me of Alyosha Karamazov in his spiritual purity, although his red robes can't help but make us think of Raistlin Majere; and if you read this book you may even get to see him do a few magic tricks of his own. Of course, the Weasel is the unlikely hero of this tale, and he takes his time burrowing into our hearts, through twisting tunnels, offending decency with his cowardice, dishonesty and resentment, but at least making the reader laugh out loud as he cleverly uses his wits (and his words) to outsmart his older brothers, representing the 'mind' so to speak, as they represent the body and the spirit.

    The adventure, the plot, the drama all take their time to develop as the outset of the book establishes, not only the characters themselves (which also include a washed-up schoolmaster turned tutor to the spoiled children of the castle, as well as a knight from the Brightblade family---perhaps you've heard of them?) but also the environment, the landscape and geography (I found myself flipping back to the map at the beginning of the book more than I do with most tales of Krynn) and most of all the mood and feel. And this book feels, and it feels different.

    To readers familiar with the DragonLance novels, undead warriors whose spectral breath chills the soul, dragons spewing flame and acid that melts flesh and stone, and oaken groves capable of frightening the bravest Kender this side of the Abyss, beyond which lies a tower inhabited by oozing shapeless things of dubious life and the evil mage who is their Master, along with the dark elf that serves him, are nothing new. And yet there is something sinister and malevolent in reading this book that I have rarely come across in fantasy literature. This book is darker in a way hard to define, but the darkness is not so much there on the page as crawling between the lines.

    Michael Williams displays a broad and deep familiarity with bardic lore, with midieval history, and with trees: clearly he has done his homework and familiarized himself with the Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth set out by Robert Graves in The White Goddess. A recurring theme as the story progresses is the struggle between philosophy and morality---again we are reminded of Raistlin, and of William Blake's adage, "The weak in courage is strong in cunning." 

    DragonLance has always been about unlikely, even reluctant heroes: flawed, human, transgressing, doubting...characters straight out of the Bible, or the Welsh and Irish tales...

    The problem was that the world couldn't take a pure best.

    "Don't look at things directly, little brother, for insight dwells in the corner of the eye"

    There is a conflict between law and grace that is reflected in Sturm Brightblade's struggle between the Oath and the Measure in Dragons of Winter Night, the darkest, most sorrowful DragonLance novel I had read prior to Weasel's Luck. If you were only to read one DragonLance novel, this should be it---which is not to say that it's the best or even, by any means, my favorite: I would tell you to start with Dragons of Autumn Twilight---but how could you stop there? You would become an Aesthetic for life. But if you were to dip your feet into the waters of the Blood Sea for just one week and only visit the land of Ansalon once, never to return, and go back to Dickens and Hesse and Stendhal, they would be in good company were you to choose this Estwilder jewel of a book by Michael Williams. 

Some things are stronger than death.

    Above all, this is a book about redemption. Redemption from the past that haunts us in endless remorse and resentment. Redemption from the loneliness and isolation that harden our hearts to callousness and, in preserving us from the biting cold of a winter with no fire, prevent us from feeling the warmth of the sunrise when the chirping of birds heralds spring's return, as it must. Redemption, for this reader at least, from a rigid Seeking after the ways of the Measure and readiness to sacrifice all for the Oath, redemption in laughter that dissolves all such notions in a most unSolamnic smile, saved by the luck of the weasel or, as it were, the rat.  

May Paladine guide our actions,

Mishakal heal all wounds,

and Gilean reveal to us the meaning of life: one page at a time.

Thank you for reading my review of Weasel's Luck by Michael Williams. This has been a shortened version of the original blog, which you can read in all its fulness here. 

Better yet read my review of Dragons of Deceit by Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman, the originators of the DragonLance novels.

Summer of Our Discontent - Thomas Chatterton Williams

        

         There I was, just looking for another reason to cancel our subscription to Paramount+ (as if the cancellation of one of the conglomerate’s biggest stars & one of the longest-running, most iconic programs in the history of television in a naked concession to political pressure dovetailed w/ epic corporate greed wasn’t substantive enough) and almost daring The Daily Show to piss me off again with their holier-than-thy-neighbor rhetoric juxtaposed with wanton shameless indulgence in the lewdest, most disgraceful attempt at humor outside of the MAGA-sphere they so cleverly deride, when Jordan Klepper, that self-styled avatar for whiteness constantly name-dropping rap artists we all used to listen to as children, as if to segregate himself from the hand-picked morons he highlights at Trump rallies (not that he has to look that hard, to be sure) as diagnostic, rather than merely symptomatic, of America’s present and ongoing malady---pardon my tangent; when Mr. Klepper announced his guest, Thomas Chatterton Williams.

              Now, don’t get me wrong; the frequently insightful and intelligent guests TDS brings on is one of the primary reasons we DON’T cancel Prime Video/Paramount+; although most of the truly insightful ones are interviewed by legacy host Jon Stewart, who tends to talk over his guest, as well as the audience’s applause, but nevertheless brings a depth and breadth of political, social, historical, and just plain human understanding to the program that is far beyond the broadcasting norm, let alone whatever garbage keeps popping up on your feed…

              Mr. Williams, to my pleasant surprise (and what a breath of fresh air if a surprise should turn out to be pleasant in these days, eh?) exceeded even these distinguished experts and do-gooders with his acute, sustained, yet casually flexible insight into WTF is going on in America (and, indeed, the world) at this moment, tracing our present despair from the collapse of the Obama-era hope (which, I would argue, was not perhaps as complete and universal as he would have it; even outside the nascent reactionary movement that became ascendant and now appears perched for dominance) through the first Trump presidency, to climax in the violent orgy of performative, secular Holy War that filled the streets, and our screens, during the Pandemic, between the brutal videotaped police murder of George Floyd and the bizarre reality-TV spectacle of the first sustained assault on the Capitol since the War of 1812 (which is what our National Anthem is about, that once-loftily-inspiring hymn to liberty cacophonously butchered by the J6 Crew who, temporarily, were submitted to Law and Order for their role in the insurrection.) 

              I have forgotten all the details of the interview itself, but immediately I wanted to read the book. It’s been a while since I’ve had a good non-fiction read, in any case; and when I’m not frequenting my neighborhood dispensary, my mind craves stimulation. I had no real thought of being emotionally moved; I just wanted something to keep my interest on my days off from work, holed up in an air-conditioned room. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortuitously, the book was not out yet for a couple weeks, and did not appear to be on pre-order from my local library, or I could have requested it ahead of time; it was available to pre-order from the publisher, but I couldn’t get anyone to take the hint and get me a copy as a slightly late birthday gift, either. What the library did have available was an earlier, autobiographically framed, yet sociologically examinational work by the author, Losing My Cool. I slurped this one up like a well-mixed Arnold Palmer over the course of several hot summer days, and I’m glad I did as it gave me some profound insights, into myself, surprisingly; into epistemological phenomena I have pondered for decades; and of course, into the author himself, preparing me to some extent for the new book and the thinker from whose mind it sprang.

              And a thinker he is! I will attempt not to fawn excessively, for a variety of reasons which should be self-evident, not the least of which is that I fear I have already distracted the reader too much from the focus of this book report: but that is why I don’t call it a book review; though we are far from grammar school. I do want to say, before I move on to the work at hand, my ultimate assessment after reading the earlier publication, or rather my statement to whomever is listening, is this: Williams has arrived, a legitimate American 21^st Century philosopher.

 

Summer of Our Discontent

The Age of Certainty and the Demise of Discourse

Thomas Chatterton Williams

 

              Summer of our Discontent is a deep dive into the shifting waters of debate in America and abroad around race, progress, morality, and competing visions of the ideal society. Inseparable from this struggle between conflicting ends, is the argument over means: the tactics of activists, politicians, journalists and intellectuals; as well as a more spiritual war (for want of better term) over the narrative that frames past and present, human agency and social culpability. Not such a long time ago, in a presidency that seems farther, farther away with each day’s news cycle, Barack Obama’s administration, whatever we make of it substantively, symbolically seemed to enshrine the enlightened consensus we used to fancy was shared among most educated, intelligent, or simply decent people: the idea, to paraphrase Dr. King, that a person’s character was of more worth than accidental or arbitrary, superficial signs of identity, be they the color of our skin, the gender we were born with, or even, in that halcyon era, sexuality, which had only just recently gained a slight majority slant towards tolerance (and yet was immediately seized upon as a marker of enlightened versus reactionary attitudes, to demonize Americans not on board with the values currently trending, as well as foreign nations with whom we had a bone to pick---this last detail to be revisited briefly later in relation to Russia.) Less than a decade after the first Black First Family left the White House, this liberal-centrist orthodoxy has seemingly been replaced by two irreconcilable yet almost symmetrically mirrored dogmas of value-signaling, blame casting, performative shaming, cancellation, and a growing tolerance for not just character assassination but actual cold-blooded murder, kidnapping, and wanton destruction, coupled with a reflexive, martyr-like denunciation in-no-uncertain-terms of even the most dubious perceived slight, when it comes from the ‘other side’, all of Biblical proportions. This is less like the Civil War and more like the Thirty Years’ War which decimated Central Europe over theological dispute in the name of the Gospel of Love!

 

              The central theme of the book revolves around the erosion of intelligent discourse directed at the pursuit of “a more perfect union” which has engaged liberal pols, pundits and thinkers throughout the post-War era, and indeed has always been at the heart of our American form of the liberalism which has gained currency since at least the Enlightenment. This is, granted, only one mental construct of progress, which has faced intense scrutiny and critique all along, from convincing arguments on the left and the right, as well as more nuanced and lofty analysis by Nietzsche and other heterodox philosophers as well as powerfully moving religious leaders of all stripes and sects. Were Williams’ views to approach anything like mainstream acceptance, they would be well-deserving of similar qualifications and counter-argument. What saddens, angers, and frightens me, threatening to lull back into complacent despair those of us who still stubbornly insist on thinking in this fraught arena of outrage and conviction (as Nietzsche also wrote, “Convictions are greater enemies of truth than lies”) and what again touches on the core argument of the book, is not that nobody will agree with the author (dig Henry Louis Gates’ cheekily couched praise on the back cover) but that few will be very likely to read the book, at all the pessimist in me worries, let alone cover-to-cover, footnote-to-YouTube-link; and fewer still will understand or even engage in the meticulous exposition, let alone grapple with the dire consequences of not taking these questions seriously; indeed, at a time when we are being encouraged to take everything personally, how can anyone afford the intellectual luxury to take anything seriously anymore?

              And yet, this is far from an impersonal work, for the writer nor, at least, this reader. How many indignant, well-intentioned young soldiers in the alt-Left social justice thought-bubble have experienced firsthand excessive police brutality inflicted on their flesh and blood kin in what should be the privacy of their own home, in a bald act of almost objectively-defined racial violence? And how many of the frustrated, alienated and left-behind voices of young men who have been seduced by pseudo-conservative ideology have actually come to terms with and reaped the rewards of this once-and-still (and, optimistically, still to be) Great America that emblazons their baseball caps, replacing the team spirit and rivalry of Red Sox and Yankees fans with a fictitious tribalism that makes a savage mockery of the now quaint-seeming notion of “no Red States or Blues States”?  Thomas Chatterton Williams has experienced firsthand both of these Americas, and likely others besides. Growing up as a modestly privileged white boy myself, I have no firsthand experience of many of the harsh challenges that Williams faced growing up; nor have I achieved any of the academic and career growth of which the author is duly proud, having worked to support my children in menial retail and grocery work since becoming a young father after goofing around as so many of us do when young and not impressed upon as to the inherent value of American meritocracy, scions of white hippies who could afford to indulge in a youthful cultural diversion from the rat race due to the confluence of post-War prosperity and white privilege, while Williams ultimately came to see his own black community as caught up in their own juvenile culture but without the luxury of pursuing it and still leading a comfortable life, as white millennials have finally had to come to terms with, to a lesser extent, since the Recession.

              Nevertheless, in Williams’ story I can’t help but see myself, and perhaps this is the crucial thing that, to me, informs him with true experience; that, while living in two worlds, he does not fully belong to either, not conforming to the cultural prejudice of his peers after Losing His Cool nor being fully welcomed by the (still almost exclusively white) gatekeepers of the intellectual zeitgeist as a black intellectual who draws from his life experience and perspective but does not fall into the neat category of the burn-the-house-down angry Black deconstructionist telling the aforementioned disaffected white liberals how to redirect their rage against the very system that has propped them up for generations and for just a moment in time really did seem ready willing and able to lift us all. How many of these white young (and sometimes not-so-young, the same generation of spoiled LBJ-haters that clearly have no wish to grow up intellectually) liberals with their vicarious outrage at newly-magnified, though in reality diminishing, injustice actually live in public housing with poor Black and immigrant families, as I do, or work alongside them for low-paying wages? Victimization is just as much a form of dehumanization as bigotry; more perniciously, while being downpressed can lead to a struggle to better oneself and one’s community, being made the token martyr for some privileged white academic’s pet project of catharsis degrades both the brown individual and the Black community; but why not fancy that was really the whole point all along? Since I’m clearly upset and venting these last two paragraphs, losing my own cool as it were, in the common sense of the phrase, and veering from what I meant to be a concise intellectual examination, why don’t I just get paranoid to boot and say that “They” want us weak, disunited, and confused, at odds with each other, scapegoating our neighbors, fighting our brothers and sisters in a disturbing, dystopian civil war. Whoever “they” are…oligarchs, technocrats, the crooked politicians and the corrupt media that props them up with one hand, ready to tear them down with the other, whatever it takes to get ratings or mollify whoever just bought out their parent company or approved the merger that made it happen? Sure; I always bought into a lot of these same identity politics of despair myself, long before it was so fashionable; I just prided myself that I married these outrageous assumptions to a more-than-healthy skepticism and never actually became moved to reject society in toto. In fact, looking back, it was Obama who directly called on me, not in the early era of Hope but during a State of the Union speech during his second term, which all those same early enthusiasts probably didn’t bother watching, to abandon cynicism, that it would get us, as a people, as a nation, nowhere. I tried to become more objective, to regain my cool in this context, to try to achieve a broader understanding of American politics (inspired by my wife’s college studies, pursued intermittently but successfully while raising three children under trying circumstances) and our history, and to convey some of that to our growing children as well, particularly during the precious time after my wife got her degree and stopped working full-time in order to be at the bus-stop, cook meals and read to them.

              But then when Donald Trump ran for president in 2016 everything seemed to change, almost like a climatological phenomenon. I remember as if it were yesterday how it hard it was to attempt to remain levelheaded and neutral during those days when the air seemed electrified with human anger and Puritanical judgement from all sides meeting in an explosive and unexpected, in not by any means unpredictable thunderclap on Election Day. We were accused of both-siderism or worse; misunderstood and practically disowned by friends and family, and fed algorithms that either forced us off of social media altogether or simply motivated our loved ones to “block” us, a cozy little new feature leaving us none the wiser and them all the more ignorant for insulating their bubble further and pretending other points of view did not exist. The funny thing is, I’ve always been to the radical lunatic left of most of these liberal lemmings that happen to be my social milieu, and yet all of a sudden the only people who were still my friends on Facebook were more conservative: not because they mistook my intellectual curiosity for MAGA enthusiasm (because, obviously, how could a rational person conflate such mutually exclusive positions?) but because they actually did love their country and care about their family and neighbors and wish for more discourse rather than value-shaming; because they were complex, normal people, maybe a little older and having lived through many changes themselves; maybe Williams and I are too young to remember all the seismic shifts and witch-hunts that predated this moment. I don’t really know. Read the book. Make your own conclusions. Talk to your friends and family and neighbors once again. I’ve got to hurry up and rush this onto my blog before my son steals the laptop, as I’ve been meaning to write this concluding paragraph for several days now. There is so much more I could say, if I haven’t said too much already. All I know for sure is this:

              That summer, too, was just another thing for the man who has turned out well to digest---

               

John Harvard's Ghost

 first wrote this piece about a month ago

        Harvard Square is dead.

    I know; it's always been shitty, these score of years I've known her--it's always been shitty,  & great at the same time. But lately, even before COVID they've been taking away everything great to make room for the mediocre--and still leave the shitty. But now, in whatever wave of the pandemic you'd call this, it's a ghost town. Not that nobody's around--the students are back in class, the hobos and addicts as numerous as the geese by the river (and leaving as much feces in their wake.) But there isn't any place to go.

    Today I have the day off from work, but the exterminator is coming to fumigate our apartment; so with the kids at school, my wife working, and the cat visiting my mom, I thought I would spend the late morning/early afternoon enjoying Harvard Square in some way like I once did, from high school daze of stoned summers till the Vitamin Shoppe finally closed in 2014, after I'd been working there for seven years.

    After stopping at the library to pick up some books and finish writing the second chapter of a novella I've been working on, I was hoping to go to the Harvard Art Museums to see some Edward Hopper, who just the other day became my favorite artist. I remember them opening at 10:30 before the pandemic, and had been told a week or two ago by some security guards outside on a cigarette break that the museum would be re-opening that Saturday. But when I climbed the stairs to the front entrance, a sign informed me that reservations were needed to enter.

    So I went straight through Harvard Yard where vain co-eds sit on the long staircase hoping someone will look up their skirts, learning less than a highschool drop-out drinking on the sidewalk with winos. My first stop was Citizens Bank, to get some quarters for laundry (we'll have to wash the sheets again I pulled before the pest guy came to spray the bedbugs) and a little cash to hit a pub, hopefully; but the teller wouldn't even process my transaction personally but directed me to the ATM and traded me two rolls of quarters for a $20 after I withdrew. Well! You can forget about me looking for the customer satisfaction survey in my inbox this time (as every time)!

    Now at least with some money in my pocket I thought I'd treat myself to a CD at Newbury Comics, but the 2nd floor of the Garage is closed until further (if any) notice. Leaving by the back door I came upon where John Harvard's used to be, gone a while now but supposedly replaced by some new brewery/bar, but it seems to be closed. Getting desperately thirsty, and feeling justified as it was already 11 AM, I thought to try Charlie's Kitchen next but it was dark and closed, with no sign to indicate their operating hours or whether they'd closed due to pandemic or just gone out of business altogether. The Xfinity contractor clipping cables on the side of the building tried but wasn't very helpful.

                    "Oh, yeah they're open.

                        For sure. I think

                        maybe at 12. But

                        they're definitely open --

                            should be, anyway."

    Then I went to sit by the river and read poetry and start writing this articles in my spiral-bound notebook, now almost used up. That's one thing they can't change. They'll never stop the river flowing, the ever-winding Quinobequin; or as the White Man calls it, the Charles.

    Eureka! I thought, Shay's will be open. Yes, good old Shay's -- now, the only problem is, should I have a pint of Guinness or a glass of Malbec? But when I get there, it's dark, the door's locked, and no sign or hours posted. Rats! Despairing of ever getting drunk before noon, I stopped into Pinocchio's for two slices of Sicilian pizza with veggies. My only successful experience so far. Inside the pizzeria I recognise a middle-aged woman I remember from back in the day, when she was selling flowers on the sidewalk, part of the street community. I eat outside on LGBTQ rainbow wooden Adirondack chairs in front of the Lutheran Church and throw the plate away in a trash bin in somebody's driveway, passing by a man I know to be the boyfriend of the woman in Pinocchio's, though I've never spoken to either of them. A truck stops on JFK Street, burly men unload kegs -- of course! Tasty Burger serves beer. But I walk in only to learn the bar doesn't open until 5.

    I'm done now, say Hi to Jean riding by on his bicycle as I make my way out of the square, heading towards Porter (where, as it happens, all the bars are closed as well; so I settle for a pint-size can of hard kombucha which I sip walking around the block, admiring the garden of some highschool friends' parents') past lovers lying on the Common breathing in cuttings from the mounted lawnmower.

    I guess this all has little to do with John Harvard. But then neither do the University, or yonder olde pissed-on statue. 

Top Ten Most Overrated Albums

Number of the Beast

I’ve always loved Iron Maiden. Many have called them overrated, then as now. Certainly they got a little carried away with ego and image; they are the sole inspiration for parody in Spinal Tap.

            Whether this album best represents all of those things that were overblown about them, I don’t know. Certainly it’s a great album, one of their best. I just think that people focus on it too much. What’s disappointing is, it’s the first Maiden album that does not have an instrumental; and the first without Paul Di’Anno. Now, Bruce is a great singer but as he was still under previous contractual obligation he couldn’t even contribute his amazing songwriting abilities to the meager extent that Steve Harris would later permit. Also, as Nico has not yet joined on drums I must say, the chemistry between Bruce and

Clive Burr is less than stellar—‘Run to the Hills’ is the exception that proves the rule; overall that bouncy tom-tom sound worked much better with Paul’s sharp, angsty vocals, whereas the lineup that coalesced for Piece of Mind was their most sophisticated, and probably the most talented metal band of all time.

            The title track is worn-out; aforementioned ‘Run to the Hills’ is always fun to sing along to with friends, ‘Hallowed be Thy Name’ is of course their greatest song ever and ‘Total Eclipse’, co-written by Di’Anno is probably Maiden’s all-time heaviest song.

Some Girls

Some Girls has been quoted as being the last truly great Rolling Stones album—well, not quoted; but people have said that.

            And I get what they mean: it is the end of an era, the Stones finally letting youth and their earlier stardom go. The thing is, though, it just isn’t true. Tattoo You and Steel Wheels are far better albums—more mature, more heavy, more masculine—more consistent: there are really only a couple good tracks on Some Girls.

            Keith’s ‘Before They Make Me Run’ is the absolute highlight. ‘Shattered’ is cool. ‘Beast of Burden’, alright. But ‘Miss You’ is played out; I had a Puerto Rican coworker who found the breakdown rap mildly offensive and irritating—as far as disco they do a better job on ‘Emotional Rescue’, thanks of course to Bill Wyman.

            The title track is not just sexist and racist—it’s boring. And is it ‘Just My Imagination’ or is Mick getting too old to seem cute doing his little English covers of Motown songs?

Appetite for Destruction

OK, it’s probably one of the greatest rock debuts of all time. ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ and ‘Paradise City’, all great songs, still play on the radio daily. I’m just tired of hearing people talk about, “It’s their greatest album”! Use Your Illusion, anybody? If you wanna admit that the only thing that makes it “better” is the fact that Steven Adler’s on the drums, fine! at least you’re being honest; and maybe you’re right... but if it’s because your measly brain can only handle songs about sex and drugs and not contemplate war, social dislocation, megalomania, love and other more philosophical considerations just go back to your AC/DC!

The Doors

This, too is one of rock’s timeless debuts. ‘Light My Fire’ and ‘Whiskey Bar’ are staples of classic rock radio. ‘The End’ is iconic through its use in Apocalypse Now and as the inspiration for epic rock from ‘Dream On’ to ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. Above all this record captures the time (’67) place (Los Angeles) and feeling (duh!) better than any other.

            The problem is that by holding it up critics have asserted the band’s subsequent efforts fall short—and this is untrue. From the spaced-out perfection of Strange Days and the prog-rock experiments in the studio that led to the commercially successful Waiting for the Sun, to the brilliant orchestration and proto-hip-hop of Soft Parade and all-on rock of Morrison Hotel and L.A. Woman, not to mention the excellent live shows turned out on the occasions Jim wasn’t too messed up to perform, the Doors never looked back.

Kind of Blue

Kind of Blue truly is a great album. Perhaps the greatest. Still; it represents a certain whitening and stagnation of jazz taste, even if made by a predominantly black and forward-thinking ensemble. Miles himself hated being pigeonholed by this release, even as it helped him to reach a wider audience, whom he exploited to finance his expensive tastes.

            John Coltrane is neither at his worst nor his best. There are definitely Miles records where Trane’s solos are simply embarrassing. But here, he is the least remarkable of the group.

            Bill Evans, despite adding so much to the texture and atmosphere of the record (his intro to ‘All Blues’ is a highlight) is shown up by Wynton Kelly, who only plays on one track, the bluesy ‘Freddie Freeloader’. And the closer, ‘Flamenco Sketches’, which is given two takes on modern Cd releases, is boring, and disappointing next to the full realization of the incomparably superior record, Sketches of Spain.

            This album helped to kick off the modal jazz craze, but for all that, despite its authentic jazz elements, where are the drum, the bass solos?

Exile on Main Street

Yes, another Stones album on the list…maybe I’m trying to say something? What if we listed the most overrated bands?

            Anyhow, Exile is a sprawling mess. And why do we romanticize the fact some rich English chaps don’t wanna pay their taxes? There are two good songs on this heroin-soaked-cotton-ball of an album: ‘Tumbling Dice’ and ‘Happy’

pretty much everything by Bach

other than the Organ Works

Why are classical listeners so obsessed with Bach? As if he were the apotheosis of Baroque, rather than its contrapuntal decadence?

            The answer, I think, lies in the eugenic, anti-Catholic bias of Anglo-Teutonic protestant tastemakers in the English-speaking world. The Italians, even the least of them, were vastly superior to this uptight Lutheran, and the early Baroque far more pure than the late. At the same time I’d rather hear J.S.’s son C.P.E. Bach most days than his father.

            To be fair, there are a few choral masterpieces and, again, the organ works are divine, incomparable and in a class of their own, though I’d throw in Wagner’s arrangement of the Wedding March from Lohengrin.

The Ring Cycle

Speaking of Wagner, he only followed through in finishing this quartet of nonsense at the unremitting prodding of his benefactor, mad King Ludwig of Bavaria. Wagner at one point wanted to produce the piece annually at no charge for the benefit of the common man, socialist that he was, in a wooden theatre constructed specially for the occasion and burned to the ground after the third night. Rather, at his wife’s insistence and, ultimately, direction, he got Bayreuth with high ticket prices exclusive for the well-t-do whom Wagner despised.

            Siegfried has its moments; the rest of it is boring. The overture to Das Fliegende Holländer has all that is great about The Ring, condensed into actual music.

            Lohengrin is divine. Tristan und Isolde heavenly as well.

            No doubt The Ring has helped to inspire more cultural works in the last century than any other musical composition, from Tolkien to Star Wars. Nonetheless; it is far from Herr Kapellmeister’s finest.

Led Zeppelin IV

or ‘Zoso’

I take it back, then—the Stones are not the most overrated band. This scrawny, effeminate shrieker and the drunken buffoon of a drummer who only knows one beat utterly ruin the ingenious creations of the studio musicians: bassist/keyboardist/mandolin master and junkie/sex-pervert guitar player; except perhaps on ‘The Battle of Evermore’, the only good track on this absolutely (and literally) God-forsaken album.

The horrible, overrated ‘Stairway to Heaven’ is probably only so popular because Bonham doesn’t play for most of the song—and yet, paradoxically, the song only gets good at the end, when the drums come in.

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

The rest of this list is meaningless. Great music enjoyed by sensible individuals.

Here we have something of another order altogether. How the greatest rock band, under the obvious and indiscreet influence of the most wonderful drug churned out this garbage is beyond me.

There are precisely 1.5 good songs on this record: the incomparable harmonic joy of ‘Lovely Rita’ and Lennon’s part of ‘A Day in the Life’.

            

Raymond Daniel Manczarek

         “Raymond Daniel Manczarek. Born 2/12/39. Musician: organist.” These were Ray Manzarek’s answers to a film crew’s questions “Name, Age, Occupation” on the Doors’ ’68 European tour. His singer’s response couldn’t have been more different. Name: “Uh, Jim” Occupation: “Umm..?”

         The stoic, Apollonian, business-minded father figure and the inspired, prodigal Dionysian child were like Yin/Yang; that tension was the embryo of a band that would change the world and, for a brief moment, be on top of it.

         Someone born on today’s date is an Aquarius. The water bearer. The visionary. But as the 3^rd decanate* of Aquarius he is ruled by Venus; therefore drawn to the finer things, the luxury of L.A. “We’re gonna make a million dollars” Ray said to Jim when he first heard Morrison sing some of his songs on Venice Beach in 1965. Maybe Jim didn’t want to be a rock star; but Ray made it happen. No one did more to push the myth, not only of the band but of Morrison as incarnation of Dionysus. From the 80s till his death, not ten years ago, Ray promoted the image of the band and their departed singer to new generations of youth, encouraging them to venerate the cult of personality that Jim himself so despised and distrusted. Thanks Ray; you kept the door open all these years.

         A Polish kid from Chicago drawn to the blues at a young age, the only white boy sneaking in to those sweaty clubs, but also a classically-trained pianist influenced by his countryman Chopin, by Bach, Kurt Veil and the suggestive expansiveness of cinema, Ray Manczarek was truly a one-of-a-kind keyboardist. Funky yet avant-garde, no white rock band at the time had anything like him; he is to a great extent what set the Doors apart from the common two-guitar lineup of the day, not to mention his left hand replaced the bass player most groups relied on to hold things down. “There will never be another one like you”, Ray; without him one can’t imagine a group like Santana, Deep Purple or Blue Öyster Cult, or a host of prog rock bands—even the melodic death metal of Amorphis plainly owes a debt.

*A decanate is a ten-degree division of the zodiacal circle. Therefore each sign has three decanates which last approximately ten days each.

John Densmore - Let Me Say This About That

         John Densmore may be the greatest drummer in rock n’ roll history. He’s certainly one of the most underappreciated—okay, Lars Ulrich and Ringo get hated on a lot more; but John could actually play, man*…for one thing, and this is the most important, his timing was impeccable, I mean he was so deep in the pocket his nails scratched lint, but as a jazz musician he knew when to ride behind the beat to add drama or come in ahead to build tension, when to accent an unexpected syncopation with a well-placed rimshot. I know Jim Morrison sometimes complained about John’s drumming, and part of this was Jim’s egotism and musical ignorance but I think a major point of contention was sometimes he played a little faster onstage than Jim wanted and Jim, with hand gestures and sometimes verbal cues, would try to get John to slow the band down. Of course it’s normal for a band to be nervous or excited and play faster live than they do on record, and usually after the first number or two this would even out, for the Doors at least, more so than other bands. In any case John had perfect rhythm and tempo in the studio and set the atmosphere on many tracks, much as bop great Art Blakey did with his Jazz Messengers or sidelining for legends like Miles Davis.

         John’s favorite jazz drummer was Elvin Jones (as were Mitch Mitchell’s of the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Ginger Baker’s, of Cream), famous among other things as John Coltrane’s drummer for years. As a performer Jim Morrison had much in common with Coltrane; they were both spontaneous and unpredictable, yet repetitive to the point of obsession, capable of transcendent lyrical beauty or profound philosophic depths but also prone to loud obnoxious shrieks of rage and unquenchable pain and searching. They both had a sympathetic soul in their drummer, who responded intuitively through the highs and lows of every performance, matching each note or word with its exact percussive complement. 

         Densmore had his own distinctive beat with tom-tom eighth-notes on ‘2 &’ and a clipped snare on the ‘4’, used on songs such as ‘The Crystal Ship’ and ‘When the Music’s Over’. I cannot be sure where he got it but nearest I can tell the earliest example of this particular beat was on Mary Wells’ ‘You Beat Me to the Punch’. The real amazing thing about John in the Doors was not how he set such a great beat for the musicians but how he could incorporate an almost extra-metrical sense of dynamics to emphasize, not only the cadence but the feel of Jim’s poetry, its sonance and meaning. In this he is wholly unique and I do not think Morrison could have conveyed his voice so authentically with any other drummer.

         From the opening number of their first album, ‘Break On Through (to the Other Side)’ which Densmore kicks off with a jazzy bossa nova for the verse, switching into a straight backbeat in the chorus, to the structural development and emotional emphasis he builds with cymbals during the last verse of ‘Summer’s Almost Gone’, from marching beats and 12/8 flamenco rhythms to the pulse with which the Doors helped lay the foundations for prog, punk, heavy metal and even proto-hip-hop, John Densmore shall be heard as long as there is rock.

*Actually I love Ringo and Lars; I don’t think the Beatles or Metallica could be what they were without them and in fact I had started writing a piece about them several years ago, but never finished it.