JUKEBOX AWARDS

2014

OBJECT LESSONS

As I returned home from shopping one morning, I noted a sign posted on a streetlamp. It announced an estate sale. Ordinarily I demur from any opportunity to add one more item to my inventory of possessions. Nonetheless, the location of the event was on my street and only six addresses down. I made my approach and slowly realized it was a two flat I had privately dubbed “the house with the Nazi gate,” due to its wrought iron entry containing a design element, which incorporated the swastika. (Though the quasi-Greek cross design preceded the twentieth century scourge of Nazism, the roots of the ideogram in South and East Asia which became a representation of the inexorable wheel of history vanish into the past.) I opened that gate and entered.

Inside I found a handful of people puttering amidst the belongings of a man who I had often seen on the front porch, engaged in the act of combing his dog’s fur. Snatches of overheard conversation revealed that the man had died and the proceeds from the sale of his home and belongings would be donated to an unnamed church.

I pawed through a handful of books and found nothing of interest. A selection of records provided no discernible unifying theme, genre or focus. Spotting a reggae 45-RPM single, I had the sudden insight that much of what I was seeing appeared to be souvenirs: a record from Jamaica, a wood carving of Lao-Tse from Taiwan, a dish from here and a figurine from there. In these rooms, the accumulated objects told a tale of restlessness—wandering and return—with a curio placed on a shelf in the manner of a convict’s slash mark on the wall of his cell to denote the passage of time.

The prices of these items, at least the few intriguing ones from exotic locales, were negotiable. Yet they were too rich for the market that day. I wandered out empty-handed, but with a mind full of thoughts about last things and an old man who passed the evidence of a life lived over to the custody of others for a kind of material reckoning.

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How is the seed of getting first planted within us? What is the tree from which it falls? Freudian psychologists speculate that our initial attachment to objects serve as a desperate substitute for maternal absence. Our mothers cannot be ever-present so the thumb becomes a substitute to simulate nourishment and contact. The blanket gives warmth and comfort. Soon, the favorite toy offers a complicated, nuanced combination of color, motion and sound. That initial plaything and our relationship with it begin our series of intimate interactions with the made-to-be- bought world.

The affection for the first toy is exhausted, and then renewed with a successor toy. The anxiety of irregular parental availability and the cyclical trading of one beloved object for another opens the gateway to the transitory pleasures of life provisional through our contact with the artificial. The nutritional and the material comforts offer satiety in their ongoing, repetitive fashion. This simple hedonism, the maximization of pleasure and avoidance of pain, is a learned habit. The animal nature of the infant becomes distraught when the expected pairings of stimulus and response are not presented—a kind of withdrawal symptom. After all, one synonym for addiction is habit.

This drive for the continued scheduling of nurturing stimulus is an intimation of order to the child. It could be argued that this is the genesis of the will to organize. The round peg goes into the round hole. Our introduction to numbers is to count in sequence. The children’s clothing brand Garanimals teaches the pairing of items of apparel so colors will match and be harmonious. The child will not dress as if blind or an elderly resident of Miami Beach. It also offers a glimpse of the social skills later needed to navigate high school, where the wrong pair of shoes invites social ostracism. One could even argue that the socially maladroit have bifurcated lives in which their family life organizational skills are at variance with the mores of their presumed peer group.

This search for pleasure, the craving for inanimate objects and the drive to organize can be said to intersect at the wish to collect. Among boys, the process of collecting may begin with baseball cards. The annual roster of professional teams was once organized by numbered cards purchased in packs of five. The random packaging of the cards contained within and a new annual team line-up guaranteed fresh sales. For the young collector, the secondary market of sales and trades, even if restricted to his neighborhood friends, allowed him to assemble a few continuous sequences. (The buying of card packages and their accompanying, sugar-saturated bubblegum is also good for dentists.) The sports card business eventually hit upon the idea of selling complete sets and turned young collectors into accumulators of product lines and brands. In short, it forced the collector into becoming a businessman, mirroring the more adult and genteel pursuits of the stamp and coin aficionado.

Trading cards as a collector niche exploded in the fad-saturated Sixties. James Bond cards offered black and white stills with plot synopses of the popular spy film series. Beatles cards provided photos and trivia concerning the Fab Four, an assault on an infrequently tapped market of pre-teen females. Their younger sisters soon ceded their affections to TV sitcom band the Monkees and their respective cards. Civil War cards presented a pop history chronicle of the conflict while depicting artistic renditions of the disasters of armed combat. Even more grisly was the set of Mars Attacks, a comic art presentation of horrific scenes from a fictional extraterrestrial invasion with visuals inspired by Fifties monster movies.

Readers feeling a mixture of nostalgia, a sense of lost innocence and a tremor in their aesthetic awareness at the comparative sophistication of these examples of children’s pop culture can be forgiven. One tends to feel loss for what were the trappings associated with simpler times, particularly when one cannot recall where the items went. It can be framed as a revisit to the infant’s anxiety when the pleasurable item was withdrawn. This can create a mild sense of post-traumatic stress disorder in adults, putting them on the trail of repurchasing the long-missing treasures of youth—preferably in their original packaging.

If the viewpoint of the card collector seems skewed to a masculine perspective of action and competition, recent research may reveal it as no surprise. Some physicians and mental health professionals, notably David J. Linden, a neurobiologist, and Simon Baron-Cohen, a professor of developmental psychopathology, have noted the increased incidence of autism in males-versus-females. By this line of thought, autism is a magnification of a male tendency to be oriented towards things instead of people, a lack of verbosity and a habit of shaping discussions to objects instead of emotions as a way to avoid intimacy. Initial research theorizes that the cause may be fetal overexposure to the hormone testosterone in the womb as Professor Baron-Cohen speculates.

(Wordsworth noted that the child is father to the man. I recall collecting rocks in my pre-teen years, the variegated examples kept in several boxes underneath my bed. I then collected matchbooks, a near-defunct niche collectible today as the population of smokers decreases and advertisers hesitate to be associated with unhealthy vices. My enthusiasm diminished when I noticed a propensity for pyromania best left unaddressed. Card collecting came and went, leaving a residual passion for order that bubbled up intermittently. I remember waiting for my mother to get off work at the department store, passing time in the book section by placing all the Hardy Boys juvenile detective novels in the publisher’s numerical sequence.

I cannot say I saw myself as being a collector of books. My father subscribed to a book club for young people, its offerings evenly divided into biographies and historical fiction starring young characters as witnesses to great events. He took me aside and said he had paid good money for these books and I was expected to read them. I responded as an obedient son. Books offered moments of private reverie in a three-bedroom ranch house populated by six people. Solitude. Reading served to interlock with the competencies of elementary school and its introduction to the world beyond suburbia. The last World War had happened only two decades before and its mark on the present was still apparent. I read military history often. There was an element of bravery in them and evidence of the human cost missing from the war movies and documentaries about the conflict, both of which seemed omnipresent on televised entertainment. Knowing how the story ended made them less harrowing.

And I read comic books. The first stack arrived courtesy of my mother’s uncle, a dentist having excess stock from his waiting room. The superhero comics, with their stories of the triumph of good over evil were predictable, but no less enjoyable for it. After all, we are conditioned to enjoy the fulfillment of our unreasonable expectations for a happy ending, if only in popular fiction and drama. The discovery of the atypical stories in the comic books under the Marvel banner proved a revelation. The imprint’s superhuman protagonists were saddled with all-too-human foibles. The limits of those having supreme skills foreshadowed many readers’ entry into adolescence with its cycles of capability, setbacks and straining against the parental leash. It was for similar reasons that monster movies proved fascinating to me. One could read fan magazines about horror cinema and there was even a series of collectible cards pairing still photographs from old monster movies with captions of juvenile humor as a means to dispel any anxiety. Their anti-heroes—Frankenstein’s creature, the Wolfman, Dracula—possessed a power freakish, evil or misguided; the result of a fate beyond their control. Their final punishment intertwined victimhood with their culpability. I understood because, on some level, I was a half-adult monster in the process of a biochemical transformation.

Amidst all the other pop culture distractions, youth music began to assume preeminence. Beatlemania gradually transformed world culture in terms of fashion, mores and lifestyle expectations. Of course, stripped of that impact, the Top 40 simply sounded exciting when discovered by a ten-year-old switching the radio dial. It became a shared social phenomenon in consensus, standing in contrast to the solitary, subjective transport of reading. I experienced it against a backdrop of pre-adolescent anxiety, an explosion of hormones and varying degrees of in- group/out-group ostracism. Within four years, the dust settled. Pop music had become staid and the youth dream of adult freedom had relocated to the underground rock enjoyed by the emerging hippie movement. It involved a commitment to a different complex of music and personal style, including assumption of a new personal identity after some deliberation. It added another clique to the high school caste system, a hierarchy with little crossover in terms of mobility. Music became central to the hippie ethos and it was considered a common language impenetrable to outsiders.

An era of seemingly endless possibilities and the music, which reflected this, could not help but be idealized. As the creative momentum of the rock underground faded and newly emerged genres gained the spotlight, I found myself buying 45-RPM records from the Sixties not long after leaving college. The singer-songwriters who seemed to dominate the record charts in the early Seventies could be seen as a kind of nostalgia for children’s records of its audience’s kindergarten days, for the commonalities between Seventies Cat Stevens and kiddies entertainer Raffi seem too staggering to be a coincidence. During my last years in elementary school, I owned but a handful of then-current records, many received as gifts. The nascent broadcast format of oldies radio at the dawn of the Seventies presented over a decade of past chart hits to choose from. At that time I could remember songs from my early school days, but not the people who performed them. As a young adult, I could digest them without the accompanying static of being a child with limited personal autonomy. It was not really a case of sentimentality. My memories of these songs were often tied to the act of washing dishes set to a radio accompaniment. Instead I kept finding an attitude ensconced in a broad range of musical styles, a searching quality that had yet to coalesce into a set of music industry expectations. I was a buyer of records, not a collector. I was motivated by an intellectual curiosity to find out about certain songs and to hear unfamiliar ones. There was no crying need to possess. On some level I had an understanding of what collecting meant and was instinctively leery of it.

Just what was I scared of?)

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The collector mentality has a long and varied history. Its beginnings in Western culture probably stems from the focus of power shifting from Greece to Rome in the Mediterranean over two thousand years in the past. Rome did not simply borrow the Greek pantheon of gods and goddesses; they adopted their idealized depictions in statuary. Roman literature was modeled on that of the Greeks, as were countless political and social adaptations. The Roman’s ethnocentrism grew as they matured into an empire, but a passion for the Greek ideal could not be entirely suppressed. The Roman senator and philosopher Cicero prosecuted the Sicilian governor Verres, in part, for the plunder of Greek antiquities for his collection. His methods included confiscation and murder. Verres carried much of his ill-gotten legacy with him into exile when he withdrew his defense under the future consul’s withering opening remarks.

As British author Samuel Butler once noted, “The history of art is the history of revivals.” The idealized models of the ancient world survived the fall of Rome with some examples preserved during the Dark Ages and re- emerging at the dawn of the Renaissance. Italy, then a collection of predominantly Catholic rival city-states, saw a new generation of artists; scholars and merchant princes look to a different reality in the example of the pagan Roman Empire. The study of that earlier civilization’s visible ruins and the uncovering of documents secreted in monasteries and private libraries offered a standard for literature, as well as the visual and plastic arts. A growing consensus held that the past was where knowledge had been hidden, and then forgotten. Therefore, an examination of the detritus of previous ages could lead to revelations to better inform the present. Parallel to this period of rebirth was an age of discovery wrought by ocean-going explorers. Even as the Roman worldview gained renewed credence, it proved limited in scope or contradicted by the bounty brought back from the New World and information about the lands beyond those previously mapped. The conventional doctrines of the Church were bumping up against new discoveries in astronomy, just as direct observations in human anatomy refuted the physicians of antiquity.

In northern Europe, royalty and the nobility received unusual gifts as tribute from their subjects or foreign visitors. They could also commission art and artifacts for their personal enjoyment. These were gathered in rooms devoted to their treasures and often contained in specially built furniture. In Italy, this model found its equivalent in the successive private galleries of Florence’s Medici family. Curiosity and accumulation inspired a new generation of scholar/collectors among the common people. These were amateur natural philosophers, a vocation existing before the scientist-specialists seen today. As such, the natural philosopher lacked the standard of the scientific method. Discoveries in the classical world had been made by observation, insight and analysis in the absence of accurate measurement and the recording of data. An unknown ancient genius noted the quality of any circle codified as pi. Archimedes dashed naked from a public bath with the sudden realization of the concept of specific gravity. A truth sufficed only until a better answer could replace it.

Ferrante Imperato of Naples was typical of these early scholar collectors. An apothecary, Imperato’s medical research still retained elements of alchemy and the received wisdom of myth and hearsay. The Church had relics of divine curative power. Apothecaries hunted unusual medicines and herbs. The collector trafficked in elements of both. For example, the bezoar—a calcium nugget from the stomach of a breed of Persian goat—was thought to be an antidote for poison. Imperato’s store attracted visitors as if it were a museum. It could not be called a laboratory. Artist renderings from the time show it festooned with dead fish and fowl, stuffed amphibians and reptiles, books and jars. Naples’ status as a seaport enabled Imperato to solicit sailors to bring him marine oddities and foreign exotica. A haphazard style of ergonomics informed the interior design chosen by these researchers. Books were on equal footing with jarred snakes preserved in liquid or dried plants. The close quarters gave it the workmanlike functionality of an office cubicle, yet it had the added dimension of pragmatically sorting the natural world in an era before the binomial classification of genus and species instituted by the botanist Carolus Linnaeus. The owner of what came to be called a cabinet of curiosities chose a method of organization which was largely intuitive. The latest oddity brought in the door might represent a link between animal and reptile. Ulisse Aldrovandi, the owner of one such cabinet in Bologna, left behind 360 volumes of notes when he died in 1605. In addition, there were over 7,000 artist renderings of plant and animal specimens and the notes for an unfinished encyclopedia of thirteen volumes. Aldrovandi spent as much time cataloging his holdings as collecting them, driven as he was to find a unifying principle.

By 1600, the collector cabinet as a storehouse of the valuable and unusual stood in contrast to those of the quasi-scientific researcher. However, a generational shift soon gave primacy to the freakish and bizarre. The animal born with a birth defect placed on display to shock visitors demonstrated the contrast between the mundane and the mutant. Between those two points, a school of thought held that some cosmic truth or naturalistic insight could be gained at every coordinate along the continuum. Magic was considered a valid explanation for things felt to exist, yet invisible or incomprehensible. Magnetism, gravity and static electricity all fell under this heading.

Awe eventually gave way to dismissive rejection. The owners of the cabinets, by placing the rare and abnormal in the context of a collection, redefined the items. The exhibits became metaphorical stars in a revue featuring refined and low entertainment, alienating them from the legitimate quest for knowledge by their oppositional friction. In some cases the grotesque offered its own justification. Holland’s Frederick Ruysch was an apothecary- turned-anatomist in a country experiencing an economic boom after gradually throwing off Spanish rule in the first quarter of the seventeenth century. An active commercial fleet and naval power to protect it gradually benefited every level of Dutch society and served to import any number of foreign anomalies. Ruysch pioneered new methods for the preservation of dissected subjects and diseased organs, an innovation that he took into a realm anticipating conceptual art. Visitors to his museum in Leiden could view fetal skeletons posed as statuary, art works made from kidney stones and plastinated organs repurposed as more mundane objects. The intent was to teach Protestant tenets concerning the transitory nature of life, but the reaction likely had more in common with a circus sideshow. Peter the Great, vacationing from his responsibilities as Russia’s tsar via a yearlong European tour, visited Ruysch’s emporium. The memory stayed with the ruler and he both began a collection and purchased Ruysch’s to augment his own twenty years later in 1717. The surviving exhibits of Peter’s holdings can be visited in his old palace today in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Another purchaser of some of Ruysch’s deaccessioned exhibits was Sir Hans Sloane, a physician whose interest in cataloging the plant and animal world was sparked while serving under the British governor of Jamaica. Sloane rose to become doctor to Queen Anne, the prestigious position allowing him to expand his collection and house it in a venue open to the public. Sloane’s early writings on the plants of Jamaica apparently exhausted any academic ambitions. Before his death in 1753, Sloane’s ongoing purchase of the holdings of fellow collectors came to obscure his institution’s core natural science focus. (An unintended consequence was that the aforementioned botanist Linnaeus, appalled at the slipshod organization of the Englishman’s holdings, conceived of the previously noted classification system, which won the Swede fame.) Sloane left his collection to the Royal Society of London and it formed the initial exhibits of the British Museum. However, there was yet to be a vocation called “museum methods” and Sloane’s legacy dwindled over the years. When elements became damaged, they were often discarded instead of being restored.

Collecting as a quest to increase human knowledge was still an amateur’s game. Critics of their methodology persisted as voices in the wilderness. Sir Francis Bacon, the Elizabethan philosopher and statesman, had laid the foundation for the scientific method by asserting that random inquiry and haphazard collection of data rarely led to new discoveries. Sir Thomas Browne, a seventeenth century author and collector of books, felt that wholesale accumulation of objects in the quest for universal knowledge was a fool’s errand. (Nonetheless, Browne maintained his own cabinet of curiosities and wrote a work enumerating the countless ways the number five resonated through nature.) British naturalist John Woodward, after visiting Sloane, noted that uninformed collecting without an organizing thread of inquiry that would expand human understanding was of no value—a lesson hard won by Woodward’s own collecting proclivities.

Yet undisciplined accumulation remained the province of those who could afford rare items in a competitive market. Rudolf II, King of Hungary, ignored his duties to devote more time to his encyclopedic collection. Like other royal holdings, it reflected the need for the world to be brought to a sedentary ruler. Rudolf’s spendthrift ways soon pushed his court to bankruptcy and invading Ottoman Turks were shortly knocking at his kingdom’s door. His brother Matthias compelled Rudolf to hand him the reins of power in 1608. (Rudolf is depicted in Arcimboldo’s famous portrait in which the ruler’s image is rendered in painted fruits, vegetables and flowers, itself a suitable addition to a wonder cabinet.)

However, the royal collections gradually became infiltrated by Enlightenment ideas and pre-industrial progress. Commissioning art and artifact by outside creators slowly led to these activities being brought under direct supervision in workshops located on the palace grounds. The invention of the lathe and its ability to plot and execute sophisticated cutting strategies on materials of wood or ivory gave birth to a craze. Kings and nobles competed to create complex sculptural items such as puzzle balls; hollowed spheres containing concentric, nested figural shapes. Use of these early power tools, primitive motors and the ability to grind lenses for telescopes and early microscopes reflected the rising commercial activities of the European kingdoms. A burgeoning national pride in these manufacturing arts would eventually see the progressive transformation of royal collections into public trusts.

One exemplar of this new viewpoint was Dominique Denon. Serving as a diplomat under France’s Louis XV, Denon survived the French Revolution while adapting royal collections for the edification of French citizens. When Napoleon took power, Denon became Director General of Museums and a pioneer in the presentation/staging of those holdings. With Bonaparte on the march, Denon went to Egypt to oversee the plunder of antiquities by French troops. He later prepared “wish lists” when Napoleon invaded the Low Countries and Germany.

Despite the increasing emphasis upon a methodical professionalism, a variety of manic pathology was never that far away in terms of the individual collector. Sir Thomas Phillips, a nineteenth century book lover offers a cautionary example. A suitable case study of obsessive-compulsive disorder, Phillips claimed to want “one copy of every book in the world.” He filled one home with volumes he purchased in successive bulk lots, and then bought a larger residence after outgrowing the first. Phillips was so extreme in pursuit of his quest that he bought waste paper, once finding an early translation of the poet Ovid while winnowing the chaff. Phillips took on massive debt to finance his goal, dying in 1872 while failing to negotiate the sale of his books to the British government. It should be noted that Phillips did not have a library because it was never organized. To this day, Sotheby’s auction house periodically sells off the remnants of his trove.

Wealth made collecting a crime of opportunity. America’s Gilded Age saw ambitious monopolists gain control of industrial markets and accumulate an excess of cash to deploy. J.P. Morgan spent most of his adult life building his wealth and did not start collecting until he was in his sixties. Then Morgan took it seriously. His Manhattan mansion is today the Pierpont Morgan Library, home to two Gutenberg Bibles, manuscript scores by Bach and Beethoven, Shakespeare folios and the only fragment of Paradise Lost in John Milton’s hand. Compared to today’s trophy homes, the Morgan Library seems small and makes its contents a monument to the founder’s clutter as evidenced by the tale of Morgan’s search for a statue of Hercules despite it being situated across from his usual desk. Morgan bought art he could not see, keeping it overseas to avoid paying taxes on the property. Like his fellow plutocrats, Morgan fought over a limited number of Old Master paintings since then-contemporary art was not considered worthy of purchase. Gallery owners and dealers played them off against each other. The foremost mark was likely William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper mogul who served as the model for the hero of the 1941 film Citizen Kane. Hearst bought items relentlessly to fill a New York apartment, an estate in California and a castle in Wales he hardly visited. Hearst placed the excess in storage, buying on credit until 1937 when his near-bankruptcy revealed him to be $126 million in the arrears. A fire sale of his art and antiques, then his press empire followed. Hearst was not busted, but badly bent, as an old song goes.

Economic prosperity raises the amount of disposable income and encourages the act of collecting among the non-wealthy. The American business boom of the Twenties saw reproductions of furniture from the colonial era and a corresponding interest in collecting the real thing. After World War II, the economic recovery and the resultant rise in wages made for more leisure time. Collecting emerged as a hobby, often focusing on mass-produced items less than 100 years old. Since the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act of 1930 defined antiques as items over 100 years old, those of more recent vintage were termed “collectibles.” The value of a collectible was subjective, often established by the consensus view of a community of fellow collectors. By the Sixties, the husband and wife team of Ralph and Terry Kovel began to offer price guidance to the hobbyist audience in a series of books spun off from their syndicated newspaper column. The zeitgeist gradually transformed. The introspection of the Sixties gave way to the materialism of the Seventies, then the excess of the Eighties—more was considered better. The Kovels slowly expanded into other collecting niches and soon had competition. Publishers printed price guides, both encyclopedic and for specific areas of interest. Annual guides issued by Schroeder’s and Warman’s continue to list hundreds of collecting areas in what is but a partial overview of collector interests.

Previously the accumulation of the uncommon was comparatively easy, at least in terms of limiting one’s potential inventory. Collecting the bounty of the age of mass production was less manageable. One byproduct was the act of hoarding, which entered popular culture with its tales of farmers having fields full of obsolete farm equipment and old women living in squalor in a house filled with dozens of cats and stacks of old newspapers.

The American Psychiatric Association’s 2013 edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders added “hoarding disorder” to its catalog of mental illness. It was defined as “a persistent difficulty in discarding possessions.” Though considered a part of the family of obsessive-compulsive disorders, a diagnosis of OCD, depression, psychosis or brain damage disqualifies one from being afflicted with hoarding disorder. Hoarding could be said to represent the retention of objects thought to be of future value or utility. The usual scene of this crime is the average woman’s closet, overflowing with shoes and apparel awaiting a return to fashionable status.

Might the mismanagement of one’s possessions simply be an aversion to housekeeping? Could one say it is a byproduct of consumer culture and the purchaser’s relation to his purchase? After all, a couple buys a house and must fill it. A living room wall cries out for a sofa and the wall opposite it a television. A bigger house requires more possessions, even as purchase and accumulation are seen as the path to lifestyle enhancement. If frugality was not a concern, there was no need to consider the practicality of the “outdoor room” and other frivolous home décor schemes. “Acquisition is progress” serves as an unwritten law, with some seeing it as a metaphor for personal growth. Planned obsolescence demands that the old gets swapped out for the new. Things were bought and then discarded. It is their fate. Thus what is cast away becomes collectible.

Industrial designer Karim Rashid has stated that his products for the home look best against spare backgrounds. He has gone so far as to state that nothing enters his own home unless something leaves. Here is the hinge upon which swings the current fad for de-cluttering and hired consultants to facilitate the same. It exists side-by- side with the industry of household organization epitomized by retailer the Container Store and the proliferation of walk-in closets with custom storage. More and less are in a wrestling match with the incipient hoarder’s soul on the line. It echoes Canto VII in Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, which places hoarders in the fourth circle of hell where misers share space with wasters. They push a boulder between themselves in reverse tug-of-war fashion, each cursing the other for their specific brand of excess.

The noun hoard is often defined as anything valuable hidden away for future use. Usually this meant money in the roots of the word’s origins in the Middle Ages as noted in the Oxford English Dictionary. In the days before paper currency, it meant gold, which has existed at the fringes of rational behavior for centuries. Today people buy gold as a kind of insurance against inflation. For example, gold prices jumped after the 2008 stock market collapse due to fears that the interest rate cuts of central banks would lead to catastrophic inflation in the style of Weimar Germany. Then, a wheelbarrow full of German marks bought one rutabaga. Therefore, to those distrustful of central banks and some survivalist types, owning gold seems like a good idea.

For the sake of argument, the more one knows about gold, the more complicated a decision becomes. All the gold mined in the world annually would make a cube measuring 65 feet each side. This is to satisfy all new orders for the global market’s needs for jewelry and industrial uses--in short, not that much. Yet gold does not tarnish or break down. It does not oxidize the way iron does. All the gold that has been mined since ancient times is still around. The metal’s price is a function of supply and demand. To that end, governments with stores of gold control how much of it enters the market. Similarly, mining companies regulate supply via futures contracts, selling in advance to lock in a price for stability purposes. Misguided pundits who postulated that the United States could erase the national debt by selling its gold stores would run into the supply proposition. As more of the metal enters the market, the fewer buyers there are and the more the price drops. The French find this out frequently. They hoard more gold than any other nation and usually discover that, when things get grim, they are in line with all their countrymen at the pawnshop for a rude awakening. Americans buying gold coins discover that holding onto them subjects the metal to taxation as a “collectible.” This same taxation principle extends to exchange traded funds, the quasi-mutual fund which trades in the style of a stock. Gold ETFs must back each share with physical gold. Hold onto those shares for at least a year and the collectible standard kicks in—a 28% tax rate minimum. Hold onto it for less than a year and the owner pays a 15% capital gains rate.

Maybe you are better off with Beanie Babies.

Modern hoarders are epitomized by the Collyers, a pair of eccentric brothers who were the product of old New York wealth in the early years of the twentieth century. Langley and Homer Collyer inherited a family home in Harlem, where they lived as recluses while the neighborhood changed. Regular sojourns from the house brought back junk discarded on city sidewalks; refuse of every description. A 1947 call to the police found blocked doorways. Investigators contacted the fire department, whose personnel used ladders and axes to cut their way in. Both brothers were dead. Homer, an invalid, had died of starvation when Langley was crushed by one of the numerous booby traps designed to topple their inventory onto intruders. Langley had suffocated. New York City eventually removed 136 tons of the house’s contents—30 years of newspapers, beds, stoves, statues, chandeliers and a Model T Ford to name a few.

What were they thinking?

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And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but perceiveth not the beam that is in thine own eye. --Luke 6:41

(The now-shuttered Penn-Dutchman antique shop operated in Chicago’s Lincoln Square neighborhood for a number of years. In a house sprouting from the back of a one-story storefront, visitors could ascend via staircase through room-after-room of clutter while viewing an overwhelming cornucopia of kitsch (derived from verkitschen a nineteenth century German word for mass-produced artwork sold to tourists). On my only visit there, as part of a quest for an oak office chair, I could only marvel at the owner’s belief that having even a small percentage of these items was justification for having them sit until someone walked in the door and felt they had to have it. The few price tags on the wares were likely placed there by the previous sellers since Penn-Dutchman’s Jim Mowery preferred to haggle with customers. It was disorienting to be confronted with so many things one could not imagine anybody else would want. I could not find the type of chair I was looking for and left with a mild feeling of vertigo.

A tenant who lived one floor below me abandoned her apartment several years ago, compelling the landlady to sell the belongings she had left behind. The fugitive occupant had been a hoarder. The one clue I could have picked up only made sense after the fact. Packages kept arriving from a company that sold wigs, the kind advertised in the coupon circulars in the Sunday newspapers. An “estate sale” was held to realize some proceeds from the breaking of the lease. The trove included six of those wigs mounted on Styrofoam “heads,” four backpacks mounted on trolleys, racks of clothes—all the more startling because I had seen a young couple cart off a small truck’s worth of the apartment’s contents weeks after the woman left. One bit of evidence filled me with unease. There was a “path” worn through the old wall-to-wall carpeting down to the hardwood floor beneath, winding its way through half the apartment.

And I recall going with a friend to help a college acquaintance whose van had broken down one night while running an errand for his employer’s husband. We pulled into the driveway of a home in a toney subdivision and entered to find a place where no one lived, but was nonetheless crammed with belongings. Contents varied from room- to-room. A bedroom contained camera equipment, including an automated film developer. Another bedroom had a professional eight-track reel-to-reel tape recorder. Boxes of unopened LP records were scattered across the living room rug and there was barely a path to navigate through it all. Our “host” said the owner was an inveterate hobbyist and had to put the stuff somewhere. Still, I wondered if any of it had “fallen off a truck.”

In contrast, I remember a walk on a summer night in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood. I paused to look into a home through glass French doors having open curtains. I saw bare hardwood floors, track lighting, and Mies van der Rohe chairs, but not a living creature. It was as desolate as an office-building lobby after hours. That apprehension of a kind of soullessness made me shudder.)

* * *

A gay man in Forties New York of insufficient income and dubious prospects, James McKune was an habitué of the Jazz Record Center on West 47th Street in Manhattan, a meeting place for misfit record hounds. They were drawn by the inventory of old jukebox distributor stock and a standing discount if they also bought new records. Proprietor Joe Clauberg sold rare 78-RPM sides for reasonable prices, a draw for McKune, who often groused to fellow collectors about paying too much for a find (or personally refusing to sell a record at a premium to gouge someone else). He wrote letters brimming with fastidious verbiage couched in a stilted politesse. His musical tastes were similarly discriminating. McKune’s written correspondence parsed certain jazz records and performances in a search for some ideal. Critical objectivity was often at war with his personal taste. Perhaps it was a means to strip away conventional wisdom and the accepted narrative. After all, the absence of a sales pitch or a kind of critical groupthink can allow you to decide if you actually like something for your own reasons.

McKune’s road to Damascus moment came in 1944 when he bought Charley Patton’s 1929 Paramount recording of “Some of These Days I’ll Be Gone.” McCone had a hunger to hear more and began to buy and sell, judiciously paring away his holdings as he went. He kept his collection around the 300-record mark, perhaps because he lived in a room at the YMCA. Still, his reputation as a tastemaker among the jazz fans who knew him made the Record Center regulars take notice. The blues had long been accepted as a thread running through the history of jazz, particularly in light of the established jazz musicians of the early Twenties backing female singers such as Bessie Smith. McKune’s promulgation of country blues as being equally valid must have seemed the revelation of a treasure hidden in plain sight.

As a consequence, McKune has been framed as single-handedly launching the blues revival through the testament of acquaintances and by author Marybeth Hamilton in her book In Search of the Blues. Perhaps. Though McKune’s word carried weight, it was his fellow collectors who later shaped the discussion and relative merits of performers in the absence of anyone else being interested. Harry Smith, compiler of the 1952 Folkways release The Anthology of American Folk Music found a Tommy McClennan blues record of then-recent vintage in 1940. This put Smith on the trail of other American vernacular music on commercial recordings in previous decades. Musicologist Alan Lomax published the 1940 “List of American Folk Songs on Commercial Records,” as a counterpart to his field recordings in the American South. It became a “want list” for the early collectors. John Hammond, the Columbia label jazz scout, tried to get Robert Johnson booked for his 1938 “Spirituals to Swing” concert at Carnegie Hall only to discover the bluesman had died. As a substitute, a Johnson record was played for the audience. Hammond later pushed for the bluesman’s sides to be compiled on LP during the peak of the folk boom. The rediscovery and elevation of the country blues may simply have been an idea whose time had come.

However, revisionists of late have come to posit the resurgence of country blues, in a curious inversion, as the product of aesthetic choices by now-old white guys—a variation on the “dead white men” argument for a multicultural alternative to the literary canon of the college reading list. Writer Elijah Wald in his Escaping the Delta has even suggested that the white blues fans, in valuing obscurity over commercial success, created a false hierarchy. However, commercial success does not translate to excellence. Both Nickelback and Bob Dylan have millions in sales and greatness becomes a matter of opinion. In refutation, the first Charley Patton and Blind Lemon Jefferson records sold in the hundreds of thousands, impressive numbers for a market clearly delineated along racial, lower socioeconomic and regional lines. This is the reason the Paramount label kept recording them. By Wald’s thesis, Patton should be held in contempt when the reality has him lauded by some as the true King of the Delta Blues. The appeal of the rough-hewn voice (Patton) over the smooth (say Josh White) is partially about ideas of coherence between form and content. The misapplication of refined technique to primitive music can be seen in the typical classical violinist who attempts a Cajun fiddle tune (or that tasteful soprano singing along with Leadbelly at a private party taped on 11/21/48). Picasso’s dictum ran, “The ugly may be good, the beautiful will never be.”

One can argue that there was a fannish obsession and nitpicking regarding the superiority of one artist over another among the blues cognoscenti, but that happens in classical music as well. One composer comes into vogue and then falls out of the repertoire for years. Blues radio host Steve Cushing titled his recent book Pioneers of the Blues Revival. The collectors interviewed blazed the trail, but the wilderness had more footpaths worth exploring. The original cultists may have dismissed Lonnie Johnson due to his commercial success, but his influence looms larger as the years pass. Part of this disdain stems from Johnson having a lengthy career—sporadically rewarding as it was— and even a rhythm and blues hit song. This is the roots music counterpart to today’s rock fans loving a band, but abandoning that group once they become popular. Still, the early blues enthusiasts should not be discredited. Would anybody reading these words drive from New York to Mississippi on a hunch to look for Son House, discover he was in Rochester, New York, then immediately drive off to upstate New York to meet him? The country blues surely bled into the music of the Chicago greats of the Fifties. Those first blues fans could sense the universality of this music, something that enabled it to last and still move listeners today. Those wishing an alternative canon can construct their own and try to mount a more convincing argument.

Music is a rumor that is passed down. Its meaning is often lost through repetition. Tracing the river’s source often leads to the discovery of a spring of pure water. The pain, despair and intensity of the blues spoke to McKune, a man who lived alone with his obsessions, even while making an uneasy peace with a part of his identity which society judged depraved. His attempts to rescue part of the musical past were more successful than his ability to save himself. He was found murdered in a Lower East Side welfare hotel in 1971. The disposition of his records is not known.

* * *

I keep making money. They keep making more of that stuff. --“Times Are Getting Tougher Than Tough”- Jimmy Witherspoon

(I have a problem with books. For years I have had a library containing a number of volumes I have not read that has hovered close to the 300 mark, not counting reference works infrequently consulted. It represents a kind of equilibrium achieved by books being finished and new ones being bought. I fear finding myself in the position of the aforementioned Sir Thomas Phillips with his country home overstuffed with books, guiding a guest through the piles on the floor and waving away their shocked expressions and saying they are simply not used to the sight. Then again, I rarely have guests. I often jump between three books perused sequentially, manageable if the subjects are distinct from one another. I know it would take years to finish them all. Some of the items were bought to help inform literary projects long abandoned for one reason or another. Spotting those titles, they offer up a rebuke. The project is still valid, but I do not feel adequate to the task. Perhaps the research possibilities allow the concrete achievement to be seen as theoretically possible and one that can be consummated in the realm of imagination.)

A dilettante is defined as one “who loves the fine arts or literature in a superficial way and without serious purpose,” as per the latest Chambers Dictionary. The term evolved from a more generous portrait of the amateur aesthete. It evokes the Chinese scholars, gentlemen connoisseurs of the Confucian model. Throughout Chinese history these men withdrew from the world to practice self-cultivation. They collected brush paintings, ritual bronzes and other articles seen in the “Hundred Antiquities,” a decorative artistic motif. Sharing an unstated aesthetic standard requiring no written codification, the scholars eventually came to represent a cultural stereotype. Yet, though existing outside the final eight centuries of Chinese dynastic history and its cyclical foreign subjugations, the scholars even came to influence the conquerors. The foreign emperors tended to adopt and romanticize the solitary contemplation and appreciation of the beautiful. The Confucian tradition of pursuing a profession is another way of pursuing an ideal.

Walter Benjamin’s essay “Unpacking My Library” offers poetic insights into the accumulation of books as a path to intellectual inquiry. This pioneering cultural critic has been derided for his view that the advent of the mass media represented a crucial change in the ability to effect revolutionary political change. Yet Benjamin’s description of the pleasure of handling an old book: a kind of contact high in which he communes with the previous owner and the book’s earlier “life,” is a way to live within the book. Understanding aids organization—what the book contains is less important than what it meant in the past and its rebirth in the hands of its present possessor and a fresh context. Some have also scoffed at Benjamin’s admission that he bought books without finding time to read them, even as others sigh that they wish they could buy time as easily as books. It offers yet another opportunity for thanatopsis, a reflection upon death. The academic with his literary research is like the ancient soothsayer, reading an animal’s entrails to determine a course of action. He searches the related literature to see if anyone has trod the same path.

The library as symbol offers its own opportunities for a multiplicity of meanings, observations and wit. There is Jorge Luis Borges’ “The Library of Babel,” a short piece of fiction about the universe of books contained in a structure seemingly designed as a collaboration between Orson Wells and the artist M.C. Escher. The library can present a bit of stagecraft as seen in a visit to Chicago’s Dreihaus Museum. This restored mansion of a nineteenth century tycoon features an array of shelves behind glass doors housing prop books. Titles repeat, presented in sumptuous leather bindings. Or is this, too, a simulation? The assumption is that few visitors will notice.

The aforementioned Sir Thomas Browne collected books cataloging the contents of various wonder cabinets, many of them privately printed by their owners to tout pride of possession. Browne’s own Musaeum Clausum or Biblioteca Abscondita is a catalog of books, events and antiquities largely existing in myth or the imagination. Browne understood the funhouse mirror aspect of the bibliophile/collector’s psyche. A tremor of delight can give pause when reading of a wealthy retiree’s first edition copy of one of Berkeley’s philosophical works, autographed in presentation to his contemporary Jonathan Swift as depicted in the novel Theophilus North by Thornton Wilder. To the average person, the preceding sentence is analogous to a joke requiring explanation. And as for humor designed for inappropriate laughter in the library, there was Thirties humorist Robert Benchley’s collection, a physical parody of the “five foot shelf” of literary classics—all of them having absurd titles such as In and Out with Mary Ann and Success with Small Fruits.

The collector of books carries on as if immortal. He cannot indulge in his passion, save one at a time. As such, the contradiction compels him to contemplate final things at some point. As Peter the Great’s wax effigy sits near the remnants of his wonder cabinet in St. Petersburg, so too does that of Charles Peale halfway around the world. A noted American portrait artist of the early nineteenth century, Peale’s wax figure presides over the leavings of the museum he founded in Philadelphia during his lifetime. Pride of place went to the bones of a mastodon, evidence of Peale’s yen for the morbid. He dreamed of a way to preserve the corpses of the famous, but had to settle for painted likenesses. (However, Peale did paint deceased members of his family on several occasions.) The utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham came closest to fulfilling Peale’s vision. Not content with a credible substitute, Bentham opted to become an exhibit. His skeleton within a taxidermic version of his body has resided in a cabinet at University College, London following his death in 1832.

The nineteenth century was more attuned to a contemplation of death than the present day. England’s Queen Victoria spent almost the last half of her life in “widow’s weeds” lamenting the death of her husband, Prince Albert. There was mourning jewelry and associated fashion statements as visible tokens of the death of loved ones—items now considered a niche collectible. (It finds its gruesome counterpart in the souvenirs the serial killer plucks from his victims.) A tour of Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris or any of the older graveyards in a large city will reveal the spires of a veritable necropolis consisting of memorial statuary and mausoleums. Death’s inevitability prompted some to commission these substantial tributes to their own perceived greatness; one to inspire awe at a time when paying periodic visits to the resting places of one’s dead relations was a matter of etiquette and an aspect of social life.

In England, Sir John Soane, a contemporary of the eighteenth century architect/printmaker Giovanni Piranesi, expressed a similar passion for the buildings of classical antiquity reduced to ruins. Soane’s style as an architect was distinguished by an interweaving of the ancient and the then-current in a kind of conscious, stylish anachronism. His residence likely evoked claustrophobia with its mélange of architectural styles tantamount to a warehouse of imported examples of weathered, historical architectural elements. At one point Soane bought the sarcophagus of Pharaoh Sethi I, a ruler of Egypt’s Nineteenth Dynasty, remodeling his home to incorporate it. (This when some still retained the view of the apothecary collectors that the ground up remains of a genuine mummy was a medicine contributing to human longevity.) The temptation is to contemplate a collector’s admiration for the Egyptian rulers and their view of the afterlife, refuting the expression, “You can’t take it with you.” Walled-up in pyramids with their belongings, pets and living servants prepared to suffocate in a sealed grave, these potentates went into eternity with no diminution of their lifestyle save their sentience.

As for what society thought at the beginning of the twentieth century, one can look at the robber barons—the Carnegies and Rockefellers—whose philanthropy in the second half of their lives was designed to rehabilitate an image of them crushing any opposition and dominating a population of wage slaves. The rare and the beautiful can become a legacy to one’s heirs or a gift to posterity housed in an edifice with your name over the door. Or, in the case of the Pierpont Morgan Library, a virtual Egyptian tomb in which the belongings of a dead collector give evidence of a corporeal existence after someone absconded with the body.

Museums today find themselves defending their ownership of items plundered by archaeologists in the nineteenth century, now claimed as the cultural heritage of the countries from which they were removed. Just as the Nazis confiscated art from Jewish owners, forcing their descendants to pursue restitution through the court system, museums now face-off with countries wanting their artifacts and statuary returned. Egypt and Greece are but two such nations demanding the reversion of items in British museums. The institutions are willing to screen potential acquisitions to spot stolen items but are less amenable to handing back those in their possession for over 100 years. The alternative is to go the modern Chinese route and buy on the open market the treasures looted by the Western powers and Japan when China was in decline.

The dark side of collecting can be familiar to anyone who has felt the more addictive drives of their obsessions. One reads the infrequent news story about someone (nearly always a man) caught smuggling rare books out of a college library or slicing pages out of illuminated manuscripts or collections of prints. Likewise there are those willing to cater to those collectors who will not ask inconvenient questions. Zoologist Walter Koelz was gathering specimens during the early Thirties in what is now the Indian state of Kashmir. Northern India was where Buddhism originated, experienced growth in the subcontinent, and then receded as missionaries took their message into East Asia. Koelz pursued a sideline buying Buddhist art and statuary. He exploited impoverished monks, often lowballing subordinates in deals negotiated with their superiors at a price already beneficial to Koelz. The booty was intended for the University of Michigan’s Museum of Anthropology, but the institution was dismayed when Koelz kept the best items for himself and later sale. A single thangka or religious painting was found among his papers after his death. It had no documentation or information, but could be interpreted as a souvenir of his hustling days, one to remind him of his victims. Or was it the proverbial ace in the hole, something priceless and only Koelz had knowledge of its value?

A contemporary of Koelz, one Giuseppe Tucci, extracted and exported the religious statuary and paintings of northern India and Tibet, often treating the roadside shrines and temples as abandoned. Yet Buddhist doctrine held that visual representations of the great teacher were tantamount to his actual presence. Tucci was both a scholar of Tibetan Buddhism and an Italian Fascist, an adherent of Mussolini who used his knowledge of the religion to present himself as a fellow devotee whenever convenient. Privately, Tucci viewed the locals as either superstitious or greedy, but knew they would be more agreeable to sell a religious object to someone who would venerate it. He rationalized his plunder with the view that the Tibetans had not properly cared for the sacred objects, so it was justifiable to remove them to where they would be appreciated. (Not surprisingly, Koelz and Tucci did a great deal of their haggling under cover of darkness.) A trio of trips to the area over a span of two decades yielded the 1949 comprehensive, Tucci-penned, Tibetan Painted Scrolls, the examples within comprising items from the collection of the author and his wife. Notably, he kept no record of where and how he obtained the specific examples in his possession. Tucci stripped and discarded inscriptions from the scrolls and reliquaries while retaining the corresponding images and vessels. This not only left them incomplete, but deconsecrated as well; sacrilege committed by a non-believer. The Taliban do it today with explosives.

Popular art is riddled with the odd portrait of the male collector. Underground cartoonist Robert Crumb, even today, plumbs his neuroses as a collector of old 78s. Crumb’s sometime collaborator, the late Harvey Pekar, is depicted in the 2003 film American Splendor with metal shelves sagging under the weight of jazz LPs. And there is cartoonist Chris Ware’s greasy-fingered, amoral collector of action figures, Rusty Brown. An awkward youth grown into an immature adult willing to cheat his only friend through elaborate schemes, Brown gradually slips into isolation and madness.

(I once used a photograph from the pages of record collector magazine Goldmine showing a collector of Annette Funicello recordings as an example of the quintessential record geek—a cautionary model of what not to be. I began to realize that my passion to hunt old records was fading when spying a stack of LPs in a thrift store would cause the energy to ebb within me. Perhaps it was due to a lack of space arising from an unwillingness to part with what I did have, even the items I did not want anymore. I could recoup some money at least, only I lacked a perfect means to do so. This was ultimately a manifestation of my own cheapness—a fear of leaving money on the table. Getting gouged seemed inescapable. Auction site eBay gets its cut, the record retailer barely pays wholesale prices and I end up with paralysis through analysis. At least this is the rational explanation.)

Then again, our possessions represent us. We cannot help but sentimentalize what we have accumulated. It yields a tug of war between the emotional and economic investment we have in objects and the realization that they have outgrown our ability to deal with them. The Communists used to say that personal property prevented us from being free. At some point our things own us, limiting our options and enjoyment of life in exchange for the transient pleasure of making a purchase. One can amass and organize, but this does not create in the manner of the God of Genesis, concluding His labors and proclaiming, “behold, it was very good.” The collector is more like Goethe’s Faust. He will die and his soul will be claimed once he proclaims, “Linger awhile. Thou art so fair.” Perhaps we cannot part with our belongings because we cannot accept the finality of death. Walter Benjamin noted, “Only in extinction is the collector comprehended.” Or maybe we just like the idea of our survivors cursing us for a few more days while they prepare the estate sale and look for the will.

By small steps it is possible to lose control. Items are left in plain sight in the hope they will be taken care of. It never happens. The dining room becomes colonized by bills, catalogs and magazines—metaphorical refugees from their proper place. Disorganization sets in. Experts in addiction medicine like to say losses rewrite the brain. The drug addict’s metabolism has been hijacked by a need for the related substance. The necessity of having the drug is more compelling than the negative consequences in terms of personal health, family, friendship or legal suasion. Gradually the realization grows of the burgeoning inventory of drawbacks for something that initially gave pleasure. It has instead become a complex of actions to obtain the substance, regardless of personal cost. The drug has become a minor player in the drama of getting.

How much of the hunt for records—and ultimately the music contained within—is about recreating the thrill music gave us when we were young? Poison Ivy Rorschach of the Cramps has recalled going absolutely mental whenever she heard “Martian Hop”-the Ran-Dells as a kid. (The memories of a onetime nine-year-old are in total concurrence.) How much of your record collection gives you a comparable intoxication? Or is it just a touchstone to spark the memory of pleasure? Holding the record and remembering the sounds contained within the grooves can often provide a scintilla of pleasure, whereas playing the item will be accompanied by distraction. When the collection is distilled to songs on a digital music player is some of the excitement lost in the transfer? One must forge a gradual peace between what we have collected and the harsh reality of what we need. The solitary male is a presence interwoven throughout the preceding pages. The fictional lone wolf killer-for-hire in Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1967 film Le Samourai lives in an apartment seemingly stocked with only bottled water and cigarettes. To the viewer, it is both funny and sad to behold the hero’s “collection.”

One might theorize that accumulation is the companion of the nesting instinct, a variation of comedian George Carlin’s bit about having a place for one’s “stuff.” A preceding generation’s stockpiling of possessions was made easier if one had a career or a job with a single company for most of one’s adult life. With today’s brand of job insecurity, coupled with an inventory of digital “stuff,” (photos, “home movie” videos, ebooks “and I really need a bigger hard drive”), the young adult of today travels light. It is a better choice for a gypsy lifestyle in pursuit of a livelihood. This leads to speculation on a future of smaller residences and keeping one’s personal digital storehouse in that elusive near-metaphor of the cloud. This will allow everyone to pay for someone else to stockpile their collections for them. The household expense of shelving and containers will diminish, as well as the businesses supplying them. It will mean fewer jobs available for some people, but the portrayal of empathy for someone else’s bad luck is already embedded in today’s social skills, requiring little in the way of adjustment. Owning fewer things has the potential of being better for the environment, but it would not be wise to bet against the manufacture of the next new thing framed as the solution to everyone’s problems.

In the meantime, our things watch us like a vulture waiting for the inevitable. Perhaps it is time to decide what to do about them. It is best we not leave a burden for those who lack our peculiar tastes. No one really listens to you. Don’t expect them to understand you.

* * *

There is a type of antique called a blackamoor. It consists of a life-sized carved wooden figure of a black man, often wearing a turban and garbed in a colorful robe or exotic costume of North African appearance. The blackamoor is posed in the act of holding a torch or a large candlestick. As a decorative object, it had a later counterpart in America by way of the lawn jockey, the base metal sculpture of a diminutive black man holding a lantern or a ring for tethering a horse.

The blackamoor had a basis in reality, the harsh one of slavery in continental Europe. In the seventeenth and eighteenth century black male adolescents served as the equivalent of fashionable lifestyle accessories to members of the aristocracy. To male aristocrats they often acted as a kind of aide, the equivalent of a mythological god’s cup bearer—not that much of a stretch during a time when educated men learned Greek and Roman and dubbed their slaves ancient names as a reference to enslavement’s ubiquity in the past. At Versailles, fashionable women of the nobility felt the contrast created by the presence of black skin in their entourage made them appear more pale and beautiful. Slaves are seen in some portrait paintings of the time as the equivalent of supporting players surrounding the central subject of the work.

During the age of exploration, what became known as the Third World existed solely to be plundered. Whatever its bounty, from precious metals to raw materials to people, was treated as a commodity. When human beings become treated as commodities, they become transferable property. When that concept becomes socially acceptable, humane treatment becomes an afterthought.

Angelo Soliman was a black slave in the eighteenth century. Brought to Marseilles, France while still a boy, he was sold to successive owners before ending up in the household of Prince Wenzel von Lichtenstein in what was then Austria. Soliman’s birth name is open to conjecture. Soliman is a variation on Sulaiman, the name of the greatest Turkish sultan of the sixteenth century, whose military adventures once threatened Eastern Europe. In Angelo’s case it was a likely token of exoticism bestowed when he was baptized as a Christian. The unwilling immigrant became educated and gained his freedom before he was employed as chief servant under the Prince. Soliman gradually met the leading lights of Austrian society and was accepted into the same Masonic lodge as his contemporaries, the composers Mozart and Haydn. Tradition holds that only a free man can become a Freemason and eventually Soliman rose to the position of Grand Master of the lodge. His contributions to Masonic teachings have been passed down in that brotherhood.

Soliman’s story would have had a happy ending had it not been undercut by its “afterword.” Upon his death, Soliman’s body was flayed, dried, mounted on a wooden frame and garbed in African attire as part of the collection of Franz II of Austria. In an annex near the palace, the Austrian emperor’s collection of dioramas soon added three more preserved African bodies to a tableau depicting an imagined American swamp. Soliman’s daughter, Josephine, petitioned to have her father’s remains returned for a decent burial, but her request was denied. On the last day of October in 1848, troops led by Prince Alfred Windischgratz fired artillery on the capital in order to suppress a revolt. An errant cannonball struck the building holding the dioramas, set it on fire and the bodies of all four Africans were destroyed.

Racism never seems to hesitate at the prospect of an available victim. One can draw a line from Angelo Soliman to Solomon Northup, the free black man kidnapped into Southern slavery, to the unknowing participants in the Tuskegee Experiment, diagnosed with venereal disease in the Thirties, but receiving no treatment until the case study concluded in 1972, when many were dead or incapacitated. In America we have a habit of choosing to believe whatever lesson we wish from the tragedies of history. Given a choice between the truth and the stories invented to explain or excuse, we choose the press release every time. If you do not believe this, here is a word for you: Vietnam. If Americans could understand complex issues and remember them, they would not happen again. Instead they treat it like high school trigonometry. They forget it because they assume they will not need it again.

So it was surprising to hear Pharrell Williams, recording artist/producer/co-star of NBC-TV’s talent show The Voice, tell Oprah Winfrey in May 2014 how he represents “the new black.” Williams spoke of a generation that “doesn’t blame other races for our issues.” Then, in August, Michael Brown was shot in Ferguson, Missouri and Mr. Williams’ statement seemed some gated community fantasy held by wealthy blacks in the entertainment business. Racism is less of an issue to Dr. Dre, Jay Z or Beyonce. They can shelter behind a tall security detail in an armored SUV. Otherwise they would be one case of mistaken identity away from being the recipient of a police bullet. Perhaps this explains the media overexposure of black celebrities. A continuous spotlight translates to “If you know me, you won’t shoot me.”

Young Mr. Brown did not have that advantage. He suffered the equivalent of the death penalty without benefit of a trial for a case of retail theft. In New York City, they strangled Eric Gardner without due process because he did not have the proper credentials for a street vendor. And when New York mayor Bill de Blasio did not heartily endorse police having an unfettered license to kill, they protested by turning their backs on him when he attended funerals for officers who died in the line of duty. For low paid New York police personnel, killing with impunity is apparently a perk worth defending.

The slogan in the Sixties went: BEWARE! YOUR POLICE ARE CONSIDERED ARMED AND DANGEROUS! This writer grew up in a town in which police officers were alleged to be accessories in a successful murder-for-hire plot. An undercover informant was allegedly killed during an entrapment scenario at a grade school burglary because he knew too much about that murder. The use of the A-word above is due to the fact that the officers suffered no punishment because the witnesses against them were convicted felons whose testimony the jury would not believe. As for this writer, police stops back then for equipment violations on my decrepit automobiles saw me keep my hands in plain sight and my motions slow and deliberate. Yet I knew I was still safer than any of the town’s black residents.

A high school teacher who made visits to Russia in the Sixties told this writer how she deflected her hosts’ questions about racism with the statement that the Russians would have to know American history to fully understand the problem. It was more than a bit disingenuous to imply that the legacy of the Civil War was simply a residue left on American society and an accident of history. Better to call it the product of unyielding white supremacy and willful neglect. The refusal in the South after the Civil War to admit that their superior status in relation to blacks had ended translated into a different kind of slavery for close to 100 more years. And had the Founding Fathers’ political skills matched their ideals they would not have compromised with what became the slave states to get all thirteen colonies on board for their revolution. Conceiving of slaves as property—things and not human beings—had much to do with that decision and what flowed after.

Racism does not intrude on white reality because white people can choose not to think about it. Black people do not have that choice. Pick the view closer to reality: Pharrell’s claims about a post-racial “new black” or the line comedian Chris Rock once told an audience, “There’s not a white person here tonight who would trade places with me. And I’m rich!”

There are parts of this country and people who live there that have drawn a different set of conclusions from the Civil War than most other Americans. A glaring example is the Confederate Medal of Honor. It has been awarded about 50 times since 1977. The citation is bestowed upon deceased members of the military of the Confederate States of America. Who awards it? A secessionist nation that has not existed for 150 years; one which enshrined slavery in its Constitution and further guaranteed slavery in new states joining the Confederacy, apparently through conquest.

To further ratchet up The Twilight Zone aspect of all this: the story of Mattie Clyburn Rice. Ms. Rice was buried in 2014 next to her father, Weary. A slave during the Civil War who accompanied his master into battle, Weary pulled his wounded owner from a battlefield at Hilton Head in South Carolina. Proud of his service, Weary was buried in a Confederate uniform. The state of North Carolina, which oversaw pensions to Confederate veterans, did not share Weary Clyburn’s enthusiasm. In a letter dated 6/18/30, they denied Clyburn payments noting, “negro pensioners are not classified as Confederate Soldiers.” This has not prevented certain Southern heritage revisionists from wanting to frame some slaves as black Confederates. Representatives of the United Daughters of the Confederacy’s Order of the Black Rose presided at Ms. Rice’s funeral. The women dress in black, cover their faces with a black veil and carry a single black rose.

The descendants of those who willingly supported the Confederacy speak of the “Lost Cause” and “pride in Southern traditions,” essentially rewriting history. They cast the struggle between North and South as a battle over states rights that play to the libertarian/Tea Party sentiments of today’s right wing opposition to big government. Karl Marx wrote of the specter haunting Europe, but the ghost of the Confederacy still haunts the South. The world’s largest piece of sculpture is at Stone Mountain in Georgia. It is the Confederate version of Mount Rushmore, depicting generals Robert E. Lee and T. J. “Stonewall” Jackson along with their commander-in-chief, Jefferson Davis. It was finished in 1970! (Stone Mountain was the site of frequent celebratory laser light shows until fairly recently.) Germany, responsible in World War II for the death of millions, bans the Nazi flag and the promulgation of Nazism. The Confederate flag waves without protest over much of the South, symbolic of the deaths of millions of enslaved and free black Americans.

It is hard not to conclude that the heart of political conservatism is the belief that, “All change is to be resisted if it diminishes my station.” In a 1960 Saturday Review piece, William F. Buckley (Imagine Rush Limbaugh with the voice of Gilligan’s Island’s Thurston Howell.) expressed the view that desegregation would not work, there was no solution to the problem and the government should not step in. Buckley was gracious enough to caution patience. Someday blacks would have equal rights, but not, he hoped, at a cost to the white man. Buckley’s double standard represented the viewpoint shared by the majority of newspaper editorial boards, both North and South, in 1960. Protest marches in favor of integration were almost universally condemned in the media.

Somebody else’s freedom is never anyone else’s concern.

* * * This writer attended the David Bowie Is show at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art. The only American stop of a career overview, which originated at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, it offered a retrospective of the pop star’s life and work. The raw material for the exhibits was culled from Bowie’s personal collection housed in Manhattan, which utilizes a full-time archivist overseeing a digital catalog of the holdings. The London-based curators of the show, Victoria Broackes and Geoffrey Marsh, were invited by the performer to examine the contents. They could pull any items they wished and arrange them as they saw fit for staging. Bowie would not participate. The English museum’s desire to get involved likely stemmed from a wish to increase foot traffic and as a recognition of how much the music business contributes to the country’s bottom line. A previous show had focused on the Eurhythmics’ Annie Lennox.

A surcharge of $25.00 over the MCA admission fee granted entry (prompting the memory that it cost70% less to see him live in 1973). An audio tour through headphones was part of the package. Linked to a network of proximity sensors, music and narrative would synch-up as one moved from room-to-room and stood before each exhibit. Performance videos, TV appearances and music videos were on equal footing with costumes, musical instruments and album covers. A room was devoted to Bowie’s work as an actor, including his film roles, while a grand finale in the largest room in the gallery played multiple concert excerpts simultaneously. (It should be noted that the overabundance of videos and their cumulative duration actually exceeded the MCA-estimated two hours required to take-in the show. This is now a common problem as more contemporary artists utilize multimedia. Some single artist retrospectives now demand multiple visits to view the complete show. However, return trips may be the point from the museum’s perspective.)

Notably absent from this encyclopedic overview of the performer was the question of influence. The narrative preferred to frame Bowie as an innovator. Fashion designers appeared in video interviews claiming that Bowie shaped the vision of their designs for him. The chronological arc of the show tended to show Bowie as a chameleon at the edge of the roiling swamp of the Sixties British music scene. Following stints as a child actor, Bowie fronted several mid-Sixties UK Mod era bands, then stints as a mime and a singer-songwriter out of the hippie/folk school—this last choice offering a startling parallel to the career of the pre-T. Rex Marc Bolan, Bowie’s rival in the glam era to come.

The show also failed to mention Jimi Hendrix, the guitar hero who some felt at the time was the inspiration for Ziggy Stardust, the persona that launched Bowie’s career in the United States. Bowie’s 1972 concept album, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, tells the tale of an extraterrestrial who plays guitar left- handed and forms a musical trio. The narrative is couched in other images culled from science fiction, a literary inspiration for much of Hendrix’s work. The Stardust songs “Five Years” and “Rock and Roll Suicide” in particular can be stretched to fit biographical aspects of the brief time in the spotlight of the American rock star.

However, the term “Five Years” aligns with Bowie’s tendency to abandon one style for another. His stint as Ziggy Stardust and its glam rock framing and presentation lasted only to the conclusion of a 1973 British tour. From the stage of the final gig in London, Bowie told the crowd he would no longer perform live. His next record was Pin- Ups in that same year. Consisting entirely of remade hits from Sixties UK Beat/Mod/Freakbeat performers, Bowie appeared on the album’s cover next to Sixties fashion model Twiggy, a poster child for that era’s androgyny. Twiggy’s brief arc as a stylish “It” Girl served as a useful stand-in for the metaphor implicit in the album’s title. The photo clipped from the fan magazine goes up on the teenager’s bedroom wall until it is replaced with the purveyor of a new style and new look. Sometimes the music is the same, but the wardrobe is different.

The omission thus far of any discussion of the gay aspect of the Ziggy Stardust stage persona has more to do with its minor role in the broad canvas of the David Bowie Is show. Heterosexual sex actually appears in the Ziggy concept album’s narrative more than any gay references. With the passage of time, the gay element associated with Bowie at the time had more to do with the shaping of his public image and stage act. In 1972, Bowie had told British music paper Melody Maker that he was gay, despite the fact that he was married and had an infant son. Bowie’s appearance in make-up, his transvestite album cover for the British version of the 1970 The Man Who Sold the World and a stage act which included a simulated act of fellatio helped sell the gay angle. Yet, when he moved on from glam, the gay trappings receded and became more of a hidden influence.

Consensual homosexual acts, in terms of both men and women, were not legal in Britain until 1967’s passage of an age of consent law. Gay males were a presence in the British entertainment industry as they also were in America. Beatles manager Brian Epstein’s homosexuality was an open secret and there was a long tradition of gay male talent managers in the UK music business. Though marginalized in mainstream society, gay people were prevalent in the arts community. The Stonewall Riots in New York in 1969 helped launch the gay liberation movement and started the march of gay people into the mainstream. That the Stonewall Inn was a combination bar and dance club highlighted such night spots as loci of community consciousness. Their entertainment was provided by deejays playing records, an initial indicator of the birth pangs of disco. In a sense, the gay community served as thought leaders in terms of entertainment trends. Bowie’s next incarnation on the 1975 Young Americans album saw a musical shift to disco and funk. The performer had likely been studying the gay community as an example of musical “early adopters.” When his “Fame” hit topped the charts and Bowie appeared on TV dance show Soul Train, it offered proof that he had timed an emerging trend perfectly.

Disco saturated the pop music market until it wore out its welcome. Bowie’s infatuation with the musical genre lasted about as long. His late Seventies sojourn in Berlin, Germany was framed in the museum show as a way to shed his manager and deal with a drug problem. The Berlin stint was strikingly coincidental with the punk rock explosion in England and likely offered Bowie a chance to sit out something he had not anticipated and did not understand. Bowie’s music during the punk and post-punk era had commonalities with the bands of that time retaining the experimentalism of progressive rock, but who expressed it with their own spin, such as Magazine. And when all else failed, there was always a new costume and make-up.

If this frames Bowie as superficial, it is not surprising that this attendee had wavered over even making the pilgrimage to contemplate the man’s career. It may have been the glam fad that was difficult to codify, a movement placing bands such as Slade, the Sweet and Bowie as marching under the same flag. It may have been the performer’s mannered vocals out of the Anthony Newley school. Most likely it was the image changes themselves. They made it seem as if David Bowie did not really represent anything. This was a profound switch from the acts of the Sixties and their stressing of relevance and sincerity. Recording artists whose music flowed from their presentation of self were certainly more acceptable to the critical establishment. In Bowie’s case, his early acting training may have inspired it. It was as if, between roles, there was no David Bowie.

Appropriately enough, Bowie’s was one of the faces featured as the popular music media began a new emphasis on the rock elite as celebrities. Rock stars were now framed as stylish. The old gossip and trivia of the Sixties pre-teen magazines such as 16 and Tiger Beat was recast to give a veneer of sophistication to entertainers’ activities. Suddenly they were Café Society jetsetters. Leading the way was the husband-and-wife rock journalism team of Richard and Lisa Robinson. The pair offered the type of public image/press release enthusiasm seen in old time Hollywood, which has reverberated to the present day celebrity culture of the supermarket magazine rack. Style masqueraded as substance here as well.

Reviewer Erin Toale wrote in Chicago’s New City that her visit to David Bowie Is sparked nostalgia for an era when brand and hype “evolved organically and sincerely.” Unfortunately, hype is still hype. The gradual accretion of objects in the show’s exhibits (his costume and stage set designs for his teenage band, a video interview of the performer explaining computer software that allows him to generate lyrics in the style of the party game Mad Libs, even a smudge of lipstick on a facial tissue from 40 years ago) serves as evidence that Bowie decided years ago that music was secondary to image. There may have once been an internal debate with Bowie’s music on equal footing with window dressing, but the refusal to stick with one thing suggests which side lost that argument. The former David Jones invented David Bowie and figured that, if he made his creation captivating enough, an audience would follow him wherever he went. The downside was that David Bowie was the equivalent of an automobile make. The badge stays the same from year-to-year, but planned obsolescence is built into the product cycle. His musical renewals captivated the faithful and drew in some neophytes, but looked desperate to a discerning few as time went on. (Exhibit A: “David Bowie Wants Ideas”-Bongwater, the title evoking a brainstorming meeting between staffers and a corporate executive.) A young Madonna was somewhere taking notes.

The David Bowie archive from which the show was assembled contains75, 000-plus objects. The sheer volume and range, from the significant to the trivial, recalls Andy Warhol’s “collection.” Warhol, the subject of a 1971 Bowie song, accumulated the products of consumer culture, seemingly to spark artistic inspiration in the manner of the elderly Picasso’s habit of pawing through his neighbors’ garbage. Bowie seems to have kept the leavings of his many incarnations as evidence of the people he had been. In a way, Bowie’s archive fuses hoarder and item hoarded. In one sense, to be self-made is to be an invention and not yourself. Surely it would be a curse, unless you did not like yourself in the first place.

Heart problems in recent years have kept Bowie from the lucrative touring circuit. Spying the MCA store erected just outside the show served to reveal that David Bowie Is allows the performer to mount a “greatest hits”/comeback tour without having to be physically present. The store represents his merchandise table. You could even say that David Bowie Is stands as his latest incarnation.

As I handed back my headset to the woman at the check-in desk, I remarked that one really needed more than two hours to take in everything.

“There is a lot of information,” she noted.

I responded, “But as someone once said, ’There is more information today, but not a lot of knowledge.’”

* * *

Pono is the Hawaiian word for “righteous.” It is also the name of Neil Young’s signature music ecosystem, consisting of a digital music player and the fodder within it. Young first spoke about the Pono player during a televised David Letterman interview in 2012, claiming that he was having trouble securing financing for the project. When Young appeared at the 2014 South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas, he announced a Kickstarter campaign for Pono. Young’s stated rationale to go the crowdfunding route was to pay the tech personnel who had been working on the project gratis. After 24 hours, on 3/13/14, the Kickstarter drive had raise $3 million.

Young’s premise was to offer the audience for digital music a higher quality alternative and to render his own music with improved fidelity. The ever-cranky Young has a long history of voicing his displeasure at the way his record company patrons have issued his music in the digital era. Young has groused about the sound proffered by the compact disc versus the analog vinyl record and the drop-off in quality from the studio master recording when the final product reaches the consumer. The introduction of the DVD-A in 2000, the audio version of the video entertainment format, spurred Young to master several releases of his music in the format. Young touted the DVD-A’s ability to contain more musical information than the CD, as well as options for 5.1-channel sound. However, the embrace of downloading by the pop music audience and the convenience of iTunes stunted the growth of DVD-A and Sony’s comparable SACD before they could gain a substantial footprint in the market. Young proceeds from the view that if one is to go digital, then go audiophile—or at least with more detailed musical info than the typical MP3 format or its equivalent. Pono delivers the sound using FLAC, its files rendered at 192 kilohertz/24 bit. Of course, the sales pitch of those statistics is directed at those who know what those numbers mean. And it should be noted that not every song available to Pono users will be offered in FLAC.

The question for Mr. Young is whether freeloading mooks will pay for digital music and if superior sound is an adequate incentive. After all, Pono will sell digital albums for anywhere from $15-$25.00, depending on the artist. For a test case, one can look to the audio streaming market. French service Deezer began its American launch in 2014. It has a high-resolution audio option for a subscription fee of $19.99 per month, but it also requires a special connection from Sonos, special hardware and special speakers—all adding to the price. Deezer CEO Tyler Goldman, commenting on their target market, made the point that these customers are perfectly willing to spend too much. This leads to the usual sales pitch that a premium product is sold at a premium price.

That is where marketing comes in. The Pono player has an SRP of $300.00 versus the cost of whatever smartphone the potential customer owns. However, the Pono also comes in limited edition Artist series models autographed via laser etching with names of the performers whose music is pre-loaded. (Acts include Pearl Jam, Tom Petty and Young.) As an incentive, Kickstarter contributors could pre-order these special items in addition to their pledges. Artist series versions go for $400.00.

Young hosted a series of infomercial/listening parties on the Pono Website. Guests in the video received a demonstration of the system in one of the performer’s restored Fifties automobiles, which Young had converted into a hybrid electric model. One might question why it is advantageous to tout audiophile sound in a car system regardless of the amplifier and speakers installed. After all, audio magazines are very specific about the accompanying equipment used so that their readers have a yardstick to measure the performance they might experience. (Your actual mileage may vary.) A simpler answer might be found in Special Deluxe, Young’s 2014 photo book with the author’s reminiscences about his love affair with these old “boats.” The volume thus becomes part of the sales pitch for Pono.

Kudos go to Stereophile magazine’s Art Dudley, who noted that the Pono player is manufactured by audiophile firm Ayre Acoustics in Shenzhen, China. Young has spent more than two decades standing for the preservation of the family farm in America, but apparently does not feel the same about the American worker.

Young recalls another hyperactive music entrepreneur with a love for value-added products, Jack White. So it comes as no surprise that the rock veteran collaborated with the scuzz blues/Third Man Records label honcho on A Letter Home (Reprise/Third Man), a collection consisting largely of old folk songs sung by Young. Home was recorded using White’s 1947 Voice-O-Graph recording booth. The VOG was an amusement arcade fixture in the postwar era allowing amateurs to perform songs or make spoken word “letters” to be mailed to loved ones. The booth records in monaural, so Young’s vocals and acoustic guitar were captured using one microphone and cut directly to VOG discs for later mastering. The sessions were then spun into retail limited edition dollar signs as per White’s modus operandi. A boxed set version of Letter featured the CD version of the album, a double LP version (one record standard and one audiophile pressing), 6 seven-inch 33-RPM vinyl singles of the same material (one of which contains an extra song backed by an alternate take), a download card to receive a hi-res audio version of the album online and a DVD documentary about the album’s recording. Needless to say, the buyer had best like A Letter Home because he will own it eight ways from Sunday. The only thing missing were the words, “price on request.”

The likelihood of this product being pitched to fans is not as significant as its apparent design as eBay fodder. Mr. White is an established purveyor of the manufactured collectible. The 2013 Jukebox Awards discussed his literally overwrought boxed set The Rise and Fall of Paramount Records, Volume One, 1917-1927. The complete 800-track programme came on a USB drive enclosed in a handmade wooden carrying case with selections from those tracks repeated on six vinyl LPs. Volume Two was issued in late 2014 to considerably less publicity and reviews. It repeated the concept of elaborate packaging(rendered in aluminum this time) and another USB drive accompanying six vinyl records-worth of highlights.

And White expended more of his energy with the 2014 solo LP Lazaretto. It was the bestselling vinyl release of 2014 with 79,000 units moved. (Woo!) Framed as an “ultra LP,” the album was touted in a White-hosted informational You Tube video to explain features such as side A playing from the trail-out dead wax to the record’s outer rim, i.e. backwards. Then there was side B’s “Just One Drink” offering the aural equivalent of a coin toss. Wherever the tone arm came down at the beginning of this opening cut, the listener would either get an acoustic or electric guitar intro (a gimmick some old timers may remember on a Sixties release from Mad magazine). White also included tracks under the record’s labels and an image etched onto the record designed not to have an impact on playability. Lazaretto takes the resurgence of the vinyl format and runs with it in the style of Willy Wonka.

White likes to boast that all his vinyl curios sell out; an easy feat with 45-RPM singles pressed in quantities of 300. It would not be a stretch to presume that they are snapped up by speculators in the grassroots investment community, the kind you find in line at Best Buy on Thanksgiving night anxious to turn Xmas bargains into profit via the secondary market online. White also has a subscription model to guarantee access to his company’s product line. The price is $60.00 per quarter. Talk about showing love to the fans. Give them more to buy and make them pay for the opportunity to buy it. Neil Young at least has an excuse. Can everyone basically concede that he is nuts? In contrast, White is a strange ranger who dresses funny and has a diabolical yen for a buck.

However, that does not mean we need to waste further time on them. In the immortal words of Nick the bartender in It’s a Wonderful Life, “Out you two pixies go! Through the door or out the window!”

* * *

Behind every great fortune there is a great crime. --anonymous

Never ask about the first million. --a current Russian saying

There’s nobody who still believes in those ideas of what America was supposed to be…. Either you’d need a president to redistribute wealth or rich people would need to grow hearts. --Rapper Open Mike Eagle (L.A. Weekly 12/26/14)

One percent of the population owns 42% of the wealth: 22% of U.S. children live in poverty; almost 40% of children of color live in poverty. And the richest nation in the history of the world is a moral disgrace beyond description. --Cornel West ( Interview 11/14)

If you or I did something like that—knowingly killing people—we’d get dragged into court. We’d get life or even the death penalty. --on General Motors and their faulty ignition switches which caused a total number of deaths yet to be determined (Adbusters 11/14)

The law once protected everyone. Or tried to. So the rich bought the law because, between an army of lawyers and a sequence of continuances and appeals, they could outlast whoever faced them. And they bought the men who made the laws, which allowed them to write the script. In Naomi Klein’s latest book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, the Canadian writer notes how governments and corporations are now extending the definition of terrorist to environmental activists. In America there is already the government’s view that, if they unilaterally decide you are a terrorist, you are one. You lose the right to due process and are guilty until proven innocent, an option made impossible ipso facto.

Canada has a commodity economy. For years it was a poor country of farmers and fisherman. All it had was land and ocean and not enough people to use it up. American industries having Canadian outposts benefited from favorable tax laws allowing them to transfer profits south of the border without being dunned. (Chicago’s Tribune Inc. owned a forest in Canada to guarantee it would always have newsprint.) Sending things out is the great flaw of the commodity model. When the raw material is exhausted, the exploiter of that commodity soon leaves. As the United States, flush from the oil glut wrought by fracking and the shale oil boom, talks about exporting oil, they should look to the example of Nigeria. That country shows what happens when you send out your natural resources and your people languish in poverty. And Islamist insurgency is just one of the things.

America decided to export the jobs first. The old saw goes, “It takes money to make money.” You never hear, “It takes people to make money.” The costs of raw materials and energy fluctuate with the vagaries of the market, but when it comes to the worker costs of benefits, employment taxes and wages at a full-time rate, that is something the employer can control. The way that is done is by having things made in China. Or Vietnam. Or Cambodia. Five days before writing these words, I heard an economist question the decline in new claims for unemployment. He said that the statistic has been in a downward trend due to the corresponding rise in the use of part-time labor and contract workers, not because fewer people are being fired. Part-timers and the self-employed are unable to claim unemployment benefits. What is behind the clamor for a rise in the minimum wage save the concept that part-time work in the fast food “industry” is now a de facto career for those either side of the poverty line. There are more people than jobs, though at some places there is more work than people. That is where the beauty of productivity comes in. The company squeezes more work out of fewer laborers. If they cannot keep up, there is never a shortage of desperate people to take their place. This is the reality behind the one-liner they tell in China, “The one thing we do not have a shortage of is people.”

The world economy never truly shook off the technology bust of the late Nineties and is still looking at online businesses that are ultimately nothing more than Pets.com revisited. Venture capitalists throw money at new ad platforms, a synonym for the apps and online destinations that are the fads of our modern age. Investment vehicles such as hedge funds often have billions of dollars to invest, but would rather back the near-gambling of derivatives strategies than fund enterprises trying to solve problems of food, energy and infrastructure—things at the heart of the commercial life of the country and even that “general welfare” mentioned in the Constitution.

All the talk of “the Internet of things” is simply a mask for automation’s gradual erosion of the supply of available jobs with nothing for the excessed workers to do that will pay them the same amount of money. Higher education costs have outstripped inflation and the so-called jobs of the future, once requiring degrees or post-graduate study, are now looking to be grunt work. Computer programmers are now in such demand that there is an explosion of “code boot camps.” They teach via a total immersion method in a tech school setting and promise a job at the end of sixteen weeks. Just remember, numbers have no language. That is why the guy on the other end of the help line speaks with an Indian accent. Then there is the “maker lab” in Chicago’s Harold Washington Library. It offers classes in 3-D printing. Walk past it and your nostrils are filled with what smells like petrochemicals laced with carcinogens. Enthusiasts claim that 3-D printing will deliver the promise of the replicator from television science fiction franchise Star Trek. (“Make shoes for your kids at home instead of buying them!”) It more likely offers the first exposure to the next all-pervasive industrial disease. The present threat is probably a variation on black lung courtesy of the microscopic mist from ink jet printers. If someone was more concerned about telling the truth than selling books, they could start with the title: The Next Shit Jobs. It would write itself.

The hedge fund manager and the tech mogul are part of the moneyed elite. If there is a class struggle, they are the ones who are winning it. Every Friday in the Wall Street Journal, the section titled “Mansion” offers house porn. Features spotlight a Manhattan penthouse for $70 million or Pacific Ocean vistas from a Santa Barbara compound for $35 million. Paradise if you can pay for it. San Francisco and its suburbs are home to the haves and have-nots of Silicon Valley. The janitors, food service workers and security guards who work at the Googles and Facebooks are not their employees. Those companies contract out jobs not essential to their core business. Most of these workers cannot afford to live in the areas in which they work because real estate prices have risen so dramatically. A nonprofit funded by the tech companies provides cellphones to the homeless. (Think about that one for a moment.) That same outfit provides job training—so the homeless can find work as barristas. The contrasts of income disparity grow more profound in a country where 46 million people rely on food pantries or related programs. Not meaning to burst any bubbles here, but 43% of that number is white.

Meanwhile Amazon’s Jeff Bezos is worth $30 billion. He spends most of his time away from his corporate headquarters, preferring Blue Origin, a site in Texas where he has his own space program. (For that matter, Virgin’s Richard Branson and Tesla’s Elon Musk own programs as well.) Meanwhile Amazon is pushing ahead with technological advances in small, pilotless drone aircraft to deliver packages from the company to customers. In short, Bezos will have his own air force. Urbanites will find themselves dodging model aircraft the way they once had to evade bike messengers. Or food deliverymen. Or mail carriers.

Some would be tempted to frame Jeff Bezos’ personal mission statement as “the Internet’s retailer” Actually his job is the elimination of jobs. Amazon was first envisioned as an Internet version of Costco, but Bezos saw the book market as a strategic entry point. Viewing Apple as a competitor already having a footprint in music, Amazon beat Apple to the digital book with the Kindle and pushed the $9.99 price point to shape the book buyer’s idea of how much to pay for reading matter. Between the sale of physical and digital books, Amazon controlled 70% of the book market by the halfway point of 2014. The net result can be seen in the bankruptcy of retailer Borders and hundreds of small book merchants, putting their employees on the street. Charity begins at home. Amazon once had a cadre of staffers recommending books to customers. They were replaced by Amabot, an algorithm parsing customer data and purchases in order to make recommendations. If Bezos is so cavalier in his treatment of the “creatives” working in- house, it is no surprise that the personnel picking orders at Amazon’s warehouse/fulfillment centers are contract employees.

Bezos is married to a novelist, but his relationship with the publishing industry is akin to Walmart’s affinity to suppliers. They exist to be squeezed. Apple cut a deal with five major publishers to prop up the price of digital books as a way to defend the perceived value of the merchandise. This did not fit Amazon’s price strategy and the corporation, alleging price-fixing and related charges, sought government action. Amazon won out and Apple was still appealing the government’s decision at the end of 2014. July 2014 saw The Authors Guild rebuff an Amazon offer to give Hatchette Book Group authors a larger cut of digital book revenue. Some framed it as a foray in a divide-and- conquer strategy. This would not be surprising. Amazon has gained notoriety for making it difficult for customers to obtain books by authors expressing views hostile to their corporate philosophy. Talk show host/comedian Stephen Colbert’s calls for a boycott of Amazon in June 2014, due to their pressure on Hatchette (the publisher of Colbert’s books), led to any mention of his work on their Website to evaporate. Likewise, Brad Stone’s 2014 book The Everything Store, critical of Amazon and raising antitrust arguments along the way, was similarly buried. However, the courts will likely give Amazon a pass on any monopolistic activities since the legal precedent of the past two decades leans to the view that low prices to the consumer trump all other considerations. Bezos bought the Washington Post in 2013, but the purchase seemed intended to give him a smidgen of cultural credibility within the Beltway. And it recalls the joke about freedom of the press belonging to those who own the printing press.

And let us not forget convenience. Amazon has gained its ubiquity in the modern age because it allows people to buy crap with all the effort of pushing buttons. It may be time to consider how much power customers are giving one man through all that furious tapping. Getting back to the drones. They can carry packages. How about guns or small bombs or rockets? The government has been agonizingly slow about regulating pilotless aircraft in domestic airspace. The military and intelligence community are using the airborne vehicles to carry out assassinations and executions in the world’s hot spots. Citizens unhappy with trigger-happy minions of the law might not be comfortable with the layer of deniability added by the employment of law enforcement drones. It is a short hop to automated private security services. As for Amazon, personal information is already crucial to their marketing plans— as it is to all the technology giants. Corporations were not satisfied enough with tracking your credit information and purchases, they had to know where you were by pinpointing your smartphone use. (Google was not happy with spotting your house from the air; they had to have pictures of your front porch and yard. The only people upset by this were the Germans. They seem to remember the lessons of authoritarianism more than Americans.) The drone needs a camera to navigate. Better close the curtains. It will suffice until they mount thermographic imaging devices to see through walls.

One is compelled to return to the fact that incredible wealth in fewer pockets and the power it buys creates fewer opportunities for the mass of humanity and a decline in quality of life. The best solution would be a tax policy to subsidize more job creation and related training. Appropriations to rebuild infrastructure would help employ those who presently possess the skills of digging holes and hammering nails. That is not going to happen with the political class now in place. The scenarios of violent revolt, friendly fascism and economic collapse with the evacuation of the moneyed elite to a safe haven—well, none of them are pleasant to contemplate. Maybe that is why Microsoft co- founder Paul Allen has a submarine; not a little Jacques Cousteau-style personal watercraft, but an ocean-going vessel with a crew. Jack Nicholson’s detective character in the 1974 film Chinatown asked the villain why he was doing the things he was doing. He could not eat any better or live any better. The answer was vague and made little sense coming from a man guilty of incest. Whether someone pursues power for its own sake or out of a boundless selfishness, the reasons do not matter to the people who get crushed along the way. It recalls Alfred Hitchcock’s describing the worst evil as the man who begs your pardon before he kills you.

What more do the rich need? They are on the road to building an aristocracy within a presumed democracy. How about immortality? Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari studies, in part, the development of man’s solutions to various problems through history. Harari’s talks with certain biologists have led to his being convinced that the gradual cellular disorganization in a human body as it ages is a puzzle that will soon be solved. Periodic treatments--Harari posits an injection every decade--would cause cells to regenerate and hold off the aging process indefinitely. The historian admits that the price of such treatments would be prohibitively expensive, so the clientele would be limited to the wealthy. They could still die catastrophically—say, a plane crash or a terrorist bombing—but death would become the province of everyone else. (It may already be here. Such therapy would certainly explain the continued survival of that cockroach Dick Cheney.) Of course, readers of the true crime genre can imagine it might lead to increased employment for certain “drifters” hired by anxious heirs.

The world economy is built on the accumulation of things. The consumer society flogs more things for more people—bought now, thrown away later. It makes us all participants in the plunder of the planet’s resources. Those actions are on a path to a reckoning. The potable water in the world is 10% of the world’s supply, the amount of farmland is limited and the end product of industrial waste leads to the reduction in the quantity of both. Genetic engineers offer us farmed salmon the size of a St. Bernard and a chicken the size of an ostrich, but man’s attempts to tamper with the natural world seem to end with nature having the last laugh. Finite resources exploited to foster unsustainable growth have an odd parallel with the many varieties of cancer. The malignancy hijacks the host’s metabolism so it can keep reproducing until the host’s death. Oops. The cancer has killed itself because it lacked cognition to know any better, unlike humanity. We can still make a choice and opt to address income disparity, not out of a drive for economic equality but for the preservation of the only planet we have. A redistribution of resources is dismissed out of hand and pundits point to the failure of Communism. Well, better an underperforming utopia than the dystopia we now face.

And we do not want Jeff Bezos waving from the window of the last rocket ship out as he blasts off to a planet called Amazon Prime, where he will rule as absolute monarch.

BIBILIOGRAPHY OF SORTS

Pioneers of the Blues Revival-Steve Cushing (University of Illinois: Urbana, 2014) Interviews with the record collectors and researchers who rediscovered and championed the pre-war blues musicians and their music. The interviewees are exclusively white males, most of whom survived their personal excesses and established responsible careers.

Do Not Sell at Any Price-Amanda Petrusich (Scribner: New York, 2014) The author’s reaction to music-as-product and its increasing use a tool to leverage celebrity, leads her to meetings with collectors of 78-RPM records. Soon she is scuba diving into the Milwaukee River in a futile search for Paramount label artifacts dumped there by that company’s workers. The susceptible author begins to feel she can find scarce recordings while competing with those who have had a 50-year head start and more money. Petrusich concludes regretfully that her book project may act to mainstream a niche interest and it will be, “There goes the neighborhood.” (The work of David J. Linden and Simon Baron-Cohen is briefly discussed here.)

Hole in Our Soul-Martha Bayles (University of Chicago: 1996) Your editor refers to books that are a struggle to read—whether out of blatant aesthetic offense, matters of style or their challenge to credulity—as “character-builders.” Behold the present example. It is hard to imagine an examination of the historical arc of popular music getting more things wrong. Much that is criticized evinces an ignorance of the target in question (e.g. describing Eighties act Gang of Four as “synth-pop”) and suggests many of the subjects of Bayles’ ire were not gifted with any kind of listening. And it exudes the odor of a politically conservative agenda befitting a onetime contributing critic to the Wall Street Journal. As a public service, here is the real answer to Bayles’ musical question, “Why is popular music no longer as beautiful and profound as that of Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington?” Answer: They are both dead. Now you need not waste your time the way I did.

Escaping the Delta-Elijah Wald (Amistad: New York, 2004) Robert Johnson’s life and recordings become a hook on which to hang an examination of the commercial exploitation of the blues. Wald has turned a flair for pop music revisionist history into several books, most notably the 2009 How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ‘N’ Roll: An Alternative History of Popular Music.

In Search of the Blues-Marybeth Hamilton (Basic Books: New York, 2008) Historian Hamilton takes on the cultural anthropology side of the study of black American music in the South. The field recordings of John Lomax came along at a time when folklorists studying academic stepchildren such as blues and folk had to create their own standards on the fly. And one could argue the earliest white blues fans had to do the same. Reading Hamilton’s extensive account of the book’s “hero,” record collector James McKune, one is reminded at times of Ignatius Reilly, the fictional protagonist of the 1980 novel A Confederacy of Dunces.

“Letters from McKune” by Henry Renard in 78 Quarterly #3, 1988 The irregularly published fanzine of the ten-inch record cult offers a sampling of the correspondence of James McKune.

The Fan Who Knew Too Much-Anthony Heilbut (Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 2013) The author of the pioneering 1971The Gospel Sound offers a collection of essays on literary and musical topics. “The Children and Their Secret Closet” develops a half-hidden theme in the earlier book, that of gay men and their contribution to gospel music’s development and innovation. Heilbut traces the origination of “closet” as a slang term for a hidden lifestyle to Matthew 6:6 and its reference to a “secret closet,” while discussing how the black church relied on its gay membership even as it held them in contempt. That institution’s vicious abandonment of gay men during the AIDS epidemic compels Heilbut to call out the hypocrisy of church leadership. There is also an extended overview of Aretha Franklin’s religious and secular career arguing strongly against critical dismissal of her Sixties Columbia sides.

Oxford American “Southern Music Issue 2014” (Little Rock, AR) Texas in the spotlight, with an accompanying CD of cowboys, cowgirls, senors, senoritas, outlaws and outcasts. Articles on Guy Clark, Charlie Sexton and Daniel Johnston sketch a spectrum of Texas individualism, Above all, the story of Willie Nelson’s drummer and enforcer Paul English, who once pulled a gun on Bill Graham because English did not like the promoter’s body language.

“Subjunctive Pleasure: The Odd Hour in the Boermusiek Museum”-Willemien Froneman In Popular Music January, 2014 (Oxford, England) The folk music of white Afrikaaners in South Africa during the apartheid era created a strange social tension. It was enjoyed because it signified the dominant white culture and ethnic solidarity for the minority in power. However, this superiority was rooted in an interpretation of the Bible by the Dutch Reform church, which found dancing frivolous and bordering on the immoral. It sets up the joke, “Why don’t Baptists have sex standing up? Because they are afraid it will turn into dancing.”

The Hoarders: Material Deviance in Modern American Culture-Scott Herring (University of Chicago, 2014) Herring is an associate professor of English at Indiana University, where he has published two books in what is referred to in the academic world as “queer studies.” This niche focuses on the act of making the conventional strange and creating a fissure in what is commonly accepted—whether gender expectations or socially approved behavior. Herring focuses on the queering of what is the proper way to relate to one’s possessions. In Herring’s view, the Collyer brothers were shocking to polite society because they “went native” in Harlem. Likewise Andy Warhol’s vast collection--cookie jars, Navajo blankets and dated boxes with miscellaneous contents labeled with the date of their arrival—became a way to upend the normality of collecting. The hostility to hoarding, the rise of “de-cluttering” businesses and the quest for neatness as a moral crusade all come under the microscope; though not to very rewarding ends in this reader’s view.

In Flagrante Collecto-Marilyn Gelfman Karp (Abrams: New York, 2006) The pun in the title is the pinnacle of the discussion in what is largely a photo and art book examining esoteric collecting niches such as dice, paper ephemera and fire grenades. Karp is an artist/educator who works in mixed media collages, often with found objects. The book’s digressions into barely-related subjects are often the most interesting parts here.

Collections of Nothing-William Davies King (University of Chicago, 2008) Memoir trumps analysis in King’s recollection of his lifetime obsessive gathering of items that have meaning to him: product labels from bottled water, liners from security envelopes in different patterns and other oddities. For this glimpse into his eccentricity and domestic disorder, the reader is rewarded with atrocious puns and not much in the way of insight. A book about nothing.

To Have and to Hold: An Intimate History of Collectors and Collecting-Philipp Blom (Overlook: New York, 2004) A history of accumulation through accounts of exceptional men who allowed curiosity and a drive for acquisition to begin a quest for the discovery of an organizing principle. Spectacular failures in this effort are summarized in cautionary tales. Notable for the story of Angelo Soliman.

Cabinets of Curiosities-Patrick Mauries (Thames and Hudson: New York, 2002) A large format art book chronicling the wonder cabinets; the furniture and rooms which served as repositories for the strange and unusual objects of the ancient world and the age of exploration. Mauries traces the subject from the seventeenth century to those in the arts community creating their own spin on these ideas, such as the late Joseph Cornell.

Curiosity and Enlightenment: Collectors and Collections from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century-Arthur MacGregor (Yale University Press: New Haven, 2007) On the transformation of private collecting into nationally endowed museums and the evolution of those institutions. Its discussion of the industrial arts amusements of royalty is revelatory for those looking for a minor insight into Tolstoy’s Prince Nikolai in War and Peace. Like a collection, the product of a life’s work for MacGregor.

Collecting: An Unruly Passion—Psychological Perspectives-Warren Muensterberger (Princeton University Press: Princeton, 1994) A psychoanalyst views collecting through a Freudian lens as neuroses of varying intensity. Famous collectors of the past with their early childhood traumas provide evidence of a need to compensate for issues of abandonment or inadequacy. The collectors of the Renaissance, with their artificial and natural oddities mirrored the Catholic Church’s hunger for relics of presumed divine origin—a search for a kind of life force raising the exceptional item above all others. Muensterberger covers much of the same ground as Philipp Blom (above) only with a clinical slant. His observations on infant need and the substitution of objects for nurturing helped shape the preceding essay.

Illuminations-Walter Benjamin (Schocken: New York, 2007) A collection of essays including “Unpacking My Library,” in which that title action creates a flood of memory and pleasure as Benjamin admits with pride that he is a “real collector.”

The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon-Brad Stone (Little Brown: New York, 2014) Useful for another portrait of a tyrannical tech nerd who thinks the people working for him should be devoted to his complete happiness.

Collecting Paradise: Buddhist Art of Kashmir and Its Legacies-Rob Linrothe (Rubin Museum of Art: New York/Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art: Northwestern University, 2014) Exhibition catalog with special attention devoted to the acquisition of antiquities via ethically suspect methods. The strategies of Walter Koelz and Giuseppe Tucci to obtain Buddhist artifacts are presented in the book’s introduction.

REISSUES

Reissue Event of the Year (Domestic): The Beatles in Mono-the Beatles (Apple) Fourteen LPs of remixed versions of the original Sixties UK albums—collectively and separately. If you need them, you already have them.

Reissue Event of the Year (Foreign): Rock and Roll Music Any Old Way You Choose It—The Complete Recordings Plus-Chuck Berry (Bear Family German import) Every track from every label, including pre-fame work as a supporting player. Alternates, audio interviews, ephemera and two books cap off this 16-CD boxed set.

Other Reissues of Note: * Comme a la Radio-Brigitte Fontane (Superior Viaduct) American issue of legendary collaboration of Sixties French pop singer with exiled Chicago free jazzers, the AACM. A remastered improvement over previous European editions of these sides. * UK label Cherry Red launches a Bevis Frond reissue program. A lone voice in Eighties England, Nick Saloman brought back the sound of the Sixties underground and gave it a vibe like an eight-track recording from the period. * S/T-Plasticland (Cherry Red UK import) Debut from mid-Eighties American psychedelic revivalists hewing to a Sixties Freakbeat model of concise pop songs. * The Cold of the Morning-Sid Selvidge (Omnivore Recordings) Memphis singer-songwriter’s 1976 album augmented with eight additional songs from the same sessions. Selvidge was part of producer Jim Dickinson’s circle of Memphis oddballs and these sides are a touching souvenir of two deceased Tennessee treasures. * S/T-Lavender Country (Paradise of Bachelors) Groundbreaking 1973 album of country music having gay subject matter released locally in Seattle, WA. Ahead of its time and lacking a marketing plan then, the group has since reunited with the addition of new personnel. * The Giant Is Awakened-Horace Tapscott Quintet (International Phonograph) Sixties jazz label Flying Dutchman has seen its more high profile releases from the time return to print. This 1969 album from the avant-garde pianist’s Los Angeles combo spotlights an underground West Coast scene. A band with two bassists and alto man Arthur Blythe levitate the proceedings. * Sun Zoom Spark: 1970-1972-Captain Beefheart (Rhino) One disc of unissued material is reason enough to justify this 4-CD boxed set, but the presence of the 1970 Lick My Decals Off Baby, out-of-print for 25 years helps seal the deal. And these Seventies albums are good entry points for those who still think the amazing Trout Mask Replica is too weird. * The Complete Dial Modern Jazz Sessions-Various (Mosaic) The influential be bop label was only in business for two years, but captured the early work of Charlie Parker and the jazz style’s emergence. A 9-CD boxed set containing alternate takes. * Shake Down-Savoy Brown Blues Band (Back to Black/Decca UK import LP) Vinyl-only reissue of the band’s debut with original vocalist Bryce Portius and guest guitar from the always-amazing Martin Stone. * The Complete Atlantic Recordings-Bettye Swann (Real Gone Music/Soul Music) Known for her Sixties hit “Make Me Yours,” Swann’s material here lacks some of the grit of the late Sixties Atlantic style. However, there is a glossy uptown feel and this collection includes interpretations of a number of country hits. Unreleased tracks of high quality fill out the release. * Face the Music-Nils Lofgren (Fantasy) A career retrospective of the singer-guitarist whose hired gun work for Neil Young (while still in his teens) led to the band Grin, a solo career and stints with Ringo Starr and Bruce Springsteen. A 9-CD boxed set with accompanying DVD in an autographed, limited edition. * Goin’ Back to Miami-Wayne Cochran (Ace UK import) Those of a certain age may recall a late Sixties episode of The Jackie Gleason Show which set tongues wagging around the junior high version of the water cooler with exclamations of, “Did you see that guy!?” Wayne Cochran (he of the platinum blond pompadour) was that guy, a pioneer of “white soul.” Offering proof that the genre today had predecessors, this 2-CD set compiles his singles for various labels on half the set and a separate live-in-the-studio version of his stage act. That said, Cochran’s tonsil-shredding vocals and “get down” stagecraft may be too much hard sell these days, so this is recommended with reservations.

* Tales of Old Grand Daddy -Marcus Hook Roll Band (Rhino/Parlophone) Intended as the sequel to the career of Australian Sixties rockers the Easybeats; the MHRB featured the songwriting talents of Harry Vanda and George Young. Recruiting Young’s brothers Angus and Malcolm, the composer duo opted to work behind the scenes. These 1973 sides for Capitol in America offer a preview of the collaborative core of AC/DC. Curious fans are directed here. *Songs for Rounders/At the Golden Nugget-Hank Thompson (Omni UK import) The Fifties hard country singer captured on two of his best Capitol albums from either side of 1960. Rounders features lyrics worthy of Fifties rhythm and blues acts, while Nugget is a live shot from the Las Vegas gambling den with labelmate Merle Travis sitting in. Thompson, like Ray Price, fought to preserve the Western Swing sound prevalent in his youth, heard here in stripped-down form. Five additional studio sides from the same period give the buyer his money’s worth. * Blaze of Glory-Game Theory (Omnivore) Debut album from the Scott Miller aggregation preceding his Nineties Loud Family project. Brainy indie rock with art pop ambitions. This update of a 1993 version of Glory casts aside the remixes and studio tampering of that release, presenting the album “as is” with the addition of fifteen bonus tracks. (Miller was discussed in the 2013 Jukebox Awards essay.) * Black and Blue: The Laff Records Box-Various (Rock Beat) Low budget “party records” sold under the counter in black neighborhoods made stars out of comedians who trafficked in racy material, mild by today’s standards. This 4-CD boxed set serves as a qualified “best of” for acts such as Redd Foxx, Slappy White and LaWanda Page, who went onto fame playing Aunt Esther on TV’s Sanford and Son. * Spain in My Heart—Songs of the Spanish Civil War-Various (Bear Family German import) Another in Bear Family’s documentary-style projects centering on historic events. This 7-CD boxed set collects songs of the 1936-1939 conflict that offered an horrific preview of the global battle against fascism to come. A DVD tells the story of Palestinian Jewish volunteers’ fight against Hitler’s Spanish ally Franco and an LP-sized book gives an overview of the material. * Skeets McDonald (Real Gone Music) So bare bones it does not even have a title, this 4-CD package lacks any notes save the track listing, yet offers a survey of the country performer’s career from 1950-1962. The big highlight is the entire genre-crossing Going Steady with the Blues album. A bonus is his work for Detroit’s Fortune label, the Motor City’s version of the Sun imprint in its signing of country and doo wop acts. Best of all, the price is modest in light of Bear Family’s comprehensive 5-CD set, which costs four times as much.

Reissue Oddity: Grayfolded-John Oswald (Important Records) Triple LP version of a 1994 2-CD set of this remix pioneer’s two hour-plus version of the Grateful Dead’s “Dark Star.” Assembled from over ten thousand snippets from the band’s live concert tape archive, this should be listened to in an uninterrupted session. You cannot do it with six LP sides.

Rhino Tin Horn for Redundancy in Reissues: Capitol reissues the Sixties American versions of the Beatles albums with original covers after deleting them over two decades ago and remastering the UK versions of the albums in 2007.

Unchained Reissue Parodies: Tinmine Soul Supply-Various (Numero UK import) is conceived as a tribute to Goldmine Soul Supply, a series of Northern Soul compilations issued in England. Numero stocked Tinmine with uptempo material from the American label’s previously issued albums.

Breaking-up Is Hard to Do (Reunions): Christine McVie rejoins Fleetwood Mac, UK act the Libertines reunite for a 7/5/14 London concert and a reunion tour, the Afghan Whigs for the 2014 Do the Beast (Sub Pop), Bickering brothers Dave and Phil Alvin of the Blasters and their duet album Common Ground (YepRoc), Death From Above 1979, and Veruca Salt

Breaking-up Is Not So Hard to Do: Chris Walla leaves Death Cab for Cutie, Kurt Dahle leaves drum throne of the New Pornographers, Guitarist Gwil Sainsbury leaves British act Alt-J, Kris Trindl forced out of dance act Krewella, the 10/28/14 final show for the Allman Brothers Band, dance duo Darkside, the Jim Jones Revue, Alice Glass leaves Crystal Castles, Television tours without Richard Lloyd, Aundrea Fimbre leaves Danity Kane on the first date of their May tour, Chicago’s Smith Westerns, and the Dictators tour without Adny Shernoff

Question Mark: AC/DC drummer Paul Rudd, arrested in New Zealand in a murder threat investigation, complicated the release and tour for the band’s Xmas release Rock or Bust

Conditional Retirement: Motley Crue announced a farewell outing underscored by a signed legal agreement that none of them would tour under that name ever again—unless they all agreed to do it.

Oh, the Irony: Rapper-turned-actor Ice-T (He plays Odafin Tutuola on NBC’s Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.) reconvened his late-Eighties rap-metal band Body Count—the survivors anyway. The only other original member is guitarist Ernest Cunnigan. The rest of the band died during the group’s hiatus.

Delayed Reaction: Folk duo the Civil Wars announced their split in August 2014, two years after canceling a 2012 European tour. A long silence ensued until Joy Williams and John Paul White issued their joint statement.

Live Shows of the Year: 1. Sir Richard Bishop/Tashi Dorji/Ryley Walker 9/2 the Empty Bottle 2. J.D. McPherson/Cactus Blossom 5/30 the Subterranean 3. J.C. Brooks and the Uptown Sound/Barrence Whitfield and the Savages 10/3 Mayne Stage 4. Eels/Chelsea Wolfe 5/24 the Vic 5. Blowfly/Baby Brutha/the Untold Dirty 9/20 the Red Line Tap 6. Flamin’ Groovies 5/9 the House of Blues

Great Moments on Stage: * Sir Richard Bishop’s solo guitar version of “She Loves You”-the Beatles, part jazz/part power chords, exceeded only by his climactic rendition of an Indian raga for solo guitar * Blowfly improvising a “signifying” rap targeting a friend in the audience

Things I Mumbled After the Flamin’ Groovies Show: * “I left the crib for this?!” * “Worst show since Steppenwolf at the Civic Opera House.” * “You can’t build a set off two songs.” * “Cyril Jordan, you owe me money!”

Say Hello to the King: Phil Everly (the Everly Brothers) Tabby Thomas (Louisiana bluesman) Pete Seeger (legendary folksinger) Bob Casale (Devo guitarist) Steven Fromholz (Texas singer-songwriter) Jerry Vale (Sixties adult pop singer) Tommie Wright (c. “FSU Fight Song”) Gerry Goffin (Carole King lyricist) Joan Rivers (comedian/recording act) Tim Hauser (founder Manhattan Transfer) Charlie Haden (famed jazz bassist) Jimi Jamison (sang “High on You”-Survivor) Glenn Cornick (founding bassist Jethro Tull) Jack Bruce (ex-Cream bassist/vocalist) Patrick Lundborg (Sixties music historian) Jerry Corbitt (Youngbloods guitarist) Johnny Rebb (Fifties Australian rocker) Rosetta Hightower (lead the Orlons) Irwin Steinberg (co-founder Mercury label) Dave Diamond (L.A. Sixties deejay) Idris Muhammad (jazz pianist) Al Jacobs (Fifties Coasters guitarist) Larry Henley (Newbeats lead singer) Chip Young (country session guitarist) Alan Bown (Sixties UK white soul act) Wendy Rene (Sixties Stax label act) Iola Brubeck (jazz lyricist) Poonanny (“the blues comedian”) Carolina Slim (NYC street bluesman) Floyd Taylor (Malaco label soul act) Alberta Adams (Detroit blueswoman) Rudy Richard (Slim Harpo guitarist) Mark Leventhal (Miami club DJ) Speaker Knockerz (So. Carolina rapper) Casey Kasem (veteran Top 40 deejay) Carlo Bergonzi (veteran operatic tenor) Charles M. Young (rock journalist) Peret (“king of Catalan rhumba”) Simone Battle (girl group G.R.L.) Wayne Static (frontman Static X) Rashad Harden (Chicago dance DJ) Paul Horn (jazz multi-instrumentalist) Lorin Maazel (famed symphonic conductor) Roy Leonard (Chicago radio personality) Derek Reith (drummer Pink Martini) Jackie Cain (jazz duo Jackie and Roy) Nati Cano (mariachi bandleader) Robert A. Gorny (custom luthier) Sabah (Lebanese singer/actress) Claudio Abbado (symphonic conductor) Sheila MacRae (actress/recording act) Reather Turner (the Bobettes) Finis Tasby (California blues singer) Charles Goodman (veteran zydeco bassist)

William “Bunny Rugs” Clarke (reggae’s Third World) Anna Gordy Gaye (co-owned Motown subsidiary label Anna) Richard Hayman (veteran arranger Boston Pops Orchestra) Gerd Albrecht (Nineties classical music conductor) Maria von Trapp (last of original von Trapp Family Singers) Simon Diaz (noted Venezuelan folksinger) Oliver Withoft (co-owner Century Media label) Malik Benjelloul (film director Searching for Sugar Man) H.R. Geiger (album cover artist (Brain Salad Surgery-ELP a.o.) Juan Formell (founder Cuban orchestra Los Van Van) Kevin Sharp (contemporary country singer) Cheo Feliciano (vocalist salsa’s Fania All Stars) Paul Sallamunovich (director Los Angeles Master Chorale) Lawrence Hamilton (Broadway musical performer) Jimmy C. Newman (Cajun country music star) “Little” Jimmy Scott (Fifties jazz vocalist) Don Davis (R ‘n’ B producer/musician) David Weiss (classical oboist/musical saw virtuoso) Herb Jeffries (Ellington vocalist/black singing film cowboy) Lionel Ferbos (New Orleans jazz trumpeter) Johnny Winter (Texas blues guitarist/vocalist) Tamas “Tommy Ramone” Erdelyi (founding Ramones drummer) Bobby Womack (soul singer/guitarist/songwriter) Mabon “Teenie” Hodges (Memphis soul session guitarist) Dick Wagner (Frost/Ursa Major/session guitarist) Henry Stone (R ‘n’ B exec/founder TK disco label) Steve Post (veteran NYC radio personality) Manny Roth (opened Sixties NYC club Café Wha?) Rufus McKay (vocalist Mississippi’s the Red Tops) Ken Thorne (wrote musical score to Beatles film Help!) Felix Dennis (co-editor Sixties UK underground magazine Oz) Michael Johns (ex-American Idol contestant) Bob Crewe (Four Seasons Sixties producer/collaborator) Joe Sample (songwriter/Jazz Crusaders pianist) Cosimo Matassa (Fifties/Sixties New Orleans producer/engineer) Gerald Wilson (jazz big band composer/arranger) Paul Revere (Paul Revere and the Raiders) Paul Craft (c. 1976 C & W #2 hit “Hank Williams, You Wrote My Life”) Cecil Myrie (Saratoga Springs, NY street musician) Isaiah “Ikey” Owens (ex-Mars Volta keyboardist) Polly Bergen (film/Broadway musical actress) George Hamilton IV (1963 C & W #1 “Abilene”) Christopher Hogwood (pioneering period instruments classical conductor) Geoffrey Holder (actor/Broadway director The Wiz) Alfred Wertheimer (photojournalist covering early Elvis career) Raphael Ravenscroft (saxophonist 1978 #2 hit “Baker Street”) Glen A. Larson (Four Preps singer/TV theme composer) Henry “Big Bank Hank” Jackson (rapper the Sugarhill Gang) Jonathan Athon (bassist metal act Black Tusk) Bernard “Acker” Bilk (1961 #1 “Stranger on the Shore”) Dawn Sears (vocalist Nashville’s the Time Jumpers) Bob Montgomery (wrote C & W classic “Misty Blue”) Ian McLagan (founding Small Faces keyboardist/ session man) Bobby Keys (Rolling Stones tenor saxophonist/session man) Jimmy Ruffin (1966 hit “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted”) Mary Ann Mobley Collins (co-star Elvis films Harum Scarum/Girl Happy) Mike Nichols (film director/comedian/recording act) Bernard “Alvin Stardust” Jewry (Seventies UK glam rocker) Jim Keays (Masters Apprentice singer/guitarist) Tommy Blom (Swedish Sixties act the Tages) Rod De’Ath (drums Killing Floor/Rory Gallagher) Billy Rath (bassist Johnny Thunders’ Heartbreakers) Jan Groth (Seventies Swedish prog rockers Aunt Mary) Bobbie Clarke (drummer for early UK rocker Vince Taylor) Mark Loomis (guitarist the Chocolate Watchband) Leonard Delaney (drummer surf band the Tornadoes) Marcia Strassman (Seventies TV actress/pop singer) Joe Cocker (1982 #1 “Up Where We Belong”) Buddy DeFranco (renowned jazz clarinetist) Melvin Jackson (trumpeter/saxophonist for B.B. King/Bobby Bland) Richard “Dick” Dale (saxophonist/vocalist with Lawrence Welk) Kenny Kerner (co-produced Kiss/Stories debut albums) Daniel “Riff” West (Eighties Molly Hatchet bassist) Frances Nero (early Motown female solo act) “Johnny Toobad” Elichaoff (Eighties drummer the League of Gentlemen) Velma Williams Smith (Fifties Nashville session guitarist) Clive Palmer (co-founder the Incredible String Band) Dave Appel (Applejacks/principal songwriter for Cameo/Parkway labels) Robb “The Kid” Skipper (fiddler Urban Voodoo Machine) Amiri (LeRoi Jones) Baraka (author Blues People) Paco de Lucia (noted flamenco guitarist) Porky Chedwick (beloved Pittsburgh oldies deejay) James “Mighty Hannibal” Shaw (1966 R ‘n’ B hit “Hymn No. 5”) Hoshal Lee Wright (blues guitarist for Katie Lambert) Willie Lee “Rip” Butler (Mississippi blues bassist/vocalist) Janice Scroggins (Oregon blues pianist) Peter Amft (Seventies Chicago blues photographer) Sista Monica Parker (California blues/gospel singer) John Cacavas (TV/film composer Kojak a.o.) Paul Ash (president of the Sam Ash music store chain) Ian Cuttler Sala (album art director recent Johnny Cash boxed sets) Rozzano Zamorano (bassist the Fondue Monks) Robert Ashley (influential electronic music composer) Wayne Smith (Eighties Jamaican hit “Under Mi Sleng Teng”) Ray Kennedy (co-wrote “Sail on Sailor”-Beach Boys) Johnny Dyer (blues guitarist/harmonica man) Steve Gannon (West Coast blues guitarist) Tim Kaihatsu (San Francisco blues guitarist) Art Browning (co-founder Mississippi John Hurt Museum) Paul Colby (owned NYC club The Bitter End) Marty Thau (founded Red Star label) George Donaldson (frontman Celtic Thunder) David “Oderus Urungus” Brockie (frontman Gwar) Eddie Lawrence (1956 novelty hit “The Old Philosopher”) Raymond “Mundo” Earwood (Seventies country singer) DJ E-Z Rock (1988 hit “It Takes Two”) Mildred “Mickey Champion” Sallier (Los Angeles blues singer) Little Joe Washington (Houston blues guitarist) Curley Bridges (Fifties pianist/vocalist with Frank Motley) Bill Hickey (ran Chicago club B.L.U.E.S. Etcetera) Steve Backer (headed jazz divisions at Impulse and Arista labels) Alan Wills (Shack drummer/founder Deltasonic label) Prince Rupert Loewenstein (veteran Rolling Stones business manager) Maya Angelou (poet/author/ex-calypso singer) Richard Nichols (Roots manager/R ‘n’ B producer) Bob Hine (founder UK Music Producers Guild) Luis Fernando Munoz Castro (Bando los Recoditos) Robin Williams (actor/comedian/recording artist) Jolly “Little Whitt” Wells (Alabama country bluesman) Little Melvin Underwood (New York blues veteran) Don “Cadillac” Henry (Mississippi “chitlin’ circuit” promoter) Rick Parashar (producer Ten-Pearl Jam) David Anderle (veteran soundtrack producer A & M label) Nicky Da B (New Orleans bounce act) Go Eun-Bi (Korean group Ladies Code) Kwon Ri-Se (Korean group Ladies Code) Tom Skeeter (founder Sound City Studios) Lonnie Lynn Sr. (Chicago rapper/political activist) Rob Skipper (founding guitarist the Holloways) Ann Ruckert (veteran studio singer) John Holt (c. 1980 #1 “The Tide Is High”) Big Paybacc (rapper “Gangsta Luv 2011”) Rick Rosas (Neil Young bassist) Duffy Power (Fifties UK rocker-turned-bluesman) Chip Damiani (drummer Barry and the Remains) Leee Black Childers (managed the New York Dolls) Jesse Winchester (Seventies singer-songwriter) Antonio “Junior” Morales (Spanish Sixties rockers Los Brincos) Mike Atta (Seventies punks Middle Class) Pedro Wyant (guitarist Sixties act Titians) Joe Lala (Blues Image/rock conguero) Frankie Knuckles (veteran Chicago house music DJ) Walter “King” Fleming (Chicago jazz pianist) Mario “Blood Money” Hess (Chicago rapper) Rubin “Hurricane” Carter (boxer subject of “Hurricane”-Bob Dylan) Armanda Peraza (conguero for Carlos Santana) George Christie (owned UK’s Glyndebourne opera venue) Margery Mayer Voutsas (operatic contralto/radio performer) David Weiss (veteran oboist Los Angeles Philharmonic) Dave Herman (longtime New York FM rock deejay) Alexander Shulgin (introduced clinical version of street drug Ecstasy) Rafael Fruehbeck de Burgos (noted symphonic conductor) Horace Silver (celebrated hard bop pianist) Steve Rossi (half of comedic recording duo Allen and Rossi) Pete Special (co-founder Big Twist & the Mellow Fellows) Philip “Skip” Meyer (original Shoes drummer) Elaine Stritch (veteran Broadway musical actress) Bob Abrahamian (Chicago soul music historian/deejay) Earl Calloway (Chicago opera singer/arts journalist) Rosamond Campbell (dulcimer performer/pedagogue) Gustavo Cerati (guitarist/vocalist Argentina’s Soda Stereo) Howard Paine (helmed design of the Elvis postage stamp) Jonathan Hicks (frontman gospel act Manifest) Manitas de Plata (renowned flamenco guitarist) Ian Fraser (oversaw the TV Bing Crosby/David Bowie Xmas duet) Joseph Dooley (Chicago Irish folk act Dooley Bros.) Tutty Gadson (Los Angeles blues guitarist) Mel Solomon (vocalist Hank Ballard & the Midnighters) Floyd Murphy (Fifties Memphis blues guitarist) Odell Harris (Mississippi hill country blues guitarist) Max Cooperstein (Fifties Chess label promo man) Funky Larry Jones (Mississippi blues radio deejay) Gwendolyn Pippin (Chicago cabaret singer/voice coach) Nick Charles (blues bassist with Billy Branch) Michael Coleman (Chicago blues guitarist/frontman) Sam Green (Chicago blues bassist) Harry Rohalla (founder Chicago’s Rolling Stones record store) Charalambos “Bob Popp” Papadopoulos (Eighties Chicago punk guitarist) “Brother Mike” Hawkins (Chicago poet/hip-hop mentor) Richard “Lynwood Slim” Duran (Los Angeles blues singer) James Kinds (Chicago blues guitarist) Eric “Guitar” Davis (Chicago blues guitarist) Saul Zaentz (subject “Vanz Kant Danz”-John Fogerty) Barbara Trent Balin (ran Chicago Sixties club the Peppermint Lounge) John McClure (Leonard Bernstein’s Columbia label producer) Pip Harvey (harmonica player the Downliners Sect) Lee McBee (Kansas City, KS blues vocalist) Gene Brouchet (veteran zydeco drummer/songwriter) Roy Campbell (avant-garde jazz trumpeter) Fergie Fredericksen (vocalist Trillion/Toto) Freddie “Fingers” Lee (veteran UK pianist for Lord Sutch a.o.) Fred Ho (jazz baritone saxophonist/composer) Duncan Scheidt (Indiana jazz historian/photographer) Joe Wilder (Fifties jazz trumpeter/flugelhornist) Jerry La Croix (vocalist Edgar Winter’s White Trash) Riz Ortolani (wrote the melody to 1963 hit “More”) Gary Lane (bassist the Standells) Geoff Nugent (guitarist Merseybeat group the Undertakers) Graeme Goodall (co-founder Island label) Mat Fox (leader UK band The Happy End) John Fry (produced first two Big Star albums)

The Body Isn’t Even Cold: Edgar Winter was on the road with a tribute tour to his late brother Johnny within weeks of the guitarist’s death.

Songs That Helped Me Survive 2014: * “It Ain’t Necessarily So”-Grant Green: From the out of print Nigeria, an odd, unreleased Blue Note session from 1962, which the label sat on until 1980, just after Green’s death. A rare guest date for drummer Art Blakey and he is having a ball here, grunting encouragement to Green’s bluesy spatters of guitar. * “Would You Mind”-Hank Snow: The country classicist goes Cajun. Yay-Hee! Another example of how Snow could sing tongue-twisting lyrics at a furious pace and still enunciate perfectly. * “Mercy Now”-Mike Farris: From his 2014 Shine for All the People (Compass Records) on which the former leader of the Screamin’ Cheetah Wheelies sings the Mary Gauthier song with a fervor equal parts Dan Penn and Steve Winwood. Wow!

How Did I Ever Get Along Without?: Grateful Dead live shows—as long as they are from the Sixties. They lost me with the country stuff and harmonies, which is the entry point for most folks. Generally, if “Dark Star” is part of the set, count me in.

R.I.P.: New York’s Roseland Ballroom, site of numerous rock and salsa shows closes 4/7/14 (More condos, please.)

A Blank Tombstone?: J & R Music World, the music and electronics retail stalwart of New York’s downtown, closed on 4/9/14 with a promise to reopen. However, no date or location specified thus far.

Back from the Dead: * On 9/29/14, Panasonic Corporation announced it was relaunching the Technics brand (renowned for their turntables), which it had discontinued in 2010. * Sony brings back the Okeh label as a contemporary jazz imprint. Sony had been treating jazz as a catalog project with no new signings.

Vanity Project: Former child actor Macaulay Culkin has a joke band called Pizza Underground. They perform parodies of Velvet Underground songs with pizza-slanted lyrics. They played Chicago’s Riot fest on 9/13/14.

Quotes of the Year:

I’m very “me, me, me” these days. --Melissa Etheridge on her newly- launched ME label

The third wives are not ready. The husbands are not ready either. --Stevie Nicks postponing her tell-all book

Two million cigarettes later and I finally sound like a black guy. --John Mellencamp on the benefits of smoking

I do things because I want to do them. Listen, what you eat doesn’t make me shit. --Pharrell Williams joining the judge panel on NBC-TV’s The Voice

I want to have tampons as merch that say, “Periods are punk.” --Pop singer Charli XCX

She can’t just have her producers come up with a techno jam for her to gyrate to and pretend she’s twenty. --Ariel Pink on the offer to work with Madonna

We’ve all been guilty of kind of chuckling when one of the sisterhood poops on her Jimmy Choos. --Tori Amos on estrogen- fueled schadenfreude

I sweat like a hooker in church when I’m onstage. --Usher

Justin Bieber acts “black-ish,” but he doesn’t get shot by the police. He gets a police escort home. --Lawrence Fishburne during an appearance on ABC-TV’s The View

Go to plumbing school. --Al Kooper’s advice to young musicians It’s time to commit career suicide again and go more Sun Ra, more Sonny Sharrock, and take the hamster out of his cage. --Carlos Santana predicting new directions in his 2014 memoir, The Universal Tone

The only things that guns do is make the gun manufacturers rich and the mortuaries richer. --Stevie Wonder to a Madison Square Garden audience

It’s kind of a cool thing to show fashion assholes who think I’m a joke. --Seth Bogart of Hunx & His Punx on his line of apparel for fashion house Saint Laurent

Charley Patton was the greatest guitar player who ever lived. You may have a different opinion, but you’d be wrong. --British blues act Ian Siegal

The last studio I cut in, the vocal booth was in the bathroom. Now if somebody had been in there before you, you were in trouble. --Soul veteran Bobby Patterson

You’re spending far too much money to watch an actor sing. --Jeff Daniels greets the audience at NYC club 54 Below

So I will stay free, and they will decide how tolerant they are. --Ivan Fischer, conductor of the Budapest Festival Orchestra on pressure from the right wing Fidesz party

It’s citrusy—it smells almost like Lemon Pledge. --Maroon 5’s Adam Levine on the celebrity scent bearing his name

…if they see me as some sea witch with penis tentacles that are always prodding and poking and looking to convert the Muggles—well here she comes. --Gay performer Perfume Genius (Mike Hadreas) on his song “Queen” I’d like to hear Segovia try to play like Robert Johnson. --jazz guitarist Bill Frisell summing- up his own eclecticism

Ten gallons of shit in a five gallon bucket. --Don Pitts, manager of the Austin, Texas Music & Entertainment Division on the party scene in Austin at the annual SXSW confab

You must be, like, the youngest guy in the group. --President Obama meeting 62-year- old Chuck Leavell, pianist with the Rolling Stones

I suddenly realized I was waking up in pools of other people’s vomit and I had no recollection of them. --Motorhead’s Lemmy Kilmister on his recent sobriety

I don’t think any group of people that treats women somewhere between people and cattle is on my good list. --David Crosby hating on the Arab world

God knows where that tongue has been. --Katy Perry’s second thoughts about an onstage kiss from Miley Cyrus

Go dig through your mom’s record collection. You’ll hear it over and over and over again. --Mac DeMarco dismissing fan praise of his originality

You think it’s like truth serum, but it’s like asshole serum. --Julian Casablancas of the Strokes on quitting drinking

But I’m 69. What the heck can they do to me now? --Bob Seger on his climate change song, “It’s Your World”

And it was so cute. I looked at it and thought, “I’d fuck me.” --Actor William H. Macy on strapping a ukulele to his motorcycle

We air guitarists like to keep it real. They were faking. --Air guitar champ Dan Crane on the Red Hot Chili Peppers miming to tracks at the 2014 Super Bowl

Find your own voice and be proud of it. Sing your butt off. Or work your butt off. Or whatever you do, do it until your butt comes off. --Michelle Obama at the 3/6/14 “I’m Every Woman: The History of Women in Soul” event

When people get stuck, I’m all for helping them out of the mud. But if someone is comfortable in the mud, I’ve got to leave them there. --Greg Dulli on Rick McCollum declining to join the Afghan Whig’s reunion

…an overpaid, untalented, cake- throwing, performing monkey --DJ Seth Troxler on celebrity DJ Steve Aoki

I love coffee. I sometimes get excited at night thinking of the coffee I’ll get to drink in the morning. --Performer St. Vincent on her signature brew, Bring Me Your Mugs, from Intelligentsia Coffee

It’s like a bad Harold Pinter play. --Ray Davies on how the animosity between his brother Dave and Kinks drummer Mick Avory exceeds the Davies’ own sibling rivalry

It’s a commitment to excellence. --Sam Beam (Iron and Wine) on maintaining a beard in Texas heat consciously uncoupling --from the announcement of the divorce of Gwyneth Paltrow and Coldplay frontman Chris Martin

I should remind Sophie Doucet that building and maintaining the concentration camps of Auschwitz also provided livelihoods. --Morrissey rebuts a Canadian official’s position on the economic benefits of seal hunting

I have a skeletal muscle injury on my left shoulder from excessive masturbation. --Rapper 50 Cent on his poor performance throwing out the first pitch at a New York Mets game

That was subversive for 2012. It’s not anymore. --Mykki Blanco on being a rapping drag queen

We’d go shopping. Lay on the carpet. Listen to Mott the Hoople records. Eat snacks. --Chuck Prophet on working with Alejandro Escovedo

You’ll be more happy trying to be successful at something you love than being successful at something you don’t care about. --Rapper El-P (Jaime Meline)

To me, he was a guy who played in a band who liked my band, and people liked his band an awful lot. But he’s not my personal Jesus. --Black Francis of the Pixies on Kurt Cobain

If you made one mistake, it’s in your obituary. --Opera star Renee Fleming on preparations to sing the national anthem at the 2014 Super Bowl

“God, I can’t take this campfire bullshit…. Put an E minor in there.” --Jenny Lewis recalling songwriting advice from producer Ryan Adams

How Tweet It Is:

I’d rather be fat than be shallow. --Lady Gaga on those criticizing her weight

You are my favorite rapper, but dude “Shady XV” is fucking ASS…why won’t someone who loves him tell him NO. --Rapper Tyler the Creator on an Eminem Shady label compilation

All jokes aside, Justin Bieber is a piece of shit. --Comedian Seth Rogen on the teen idol’s early 2014 low-grade crime spree

…a natural pair. Like peanut butter & space jelly from the year 2036 --Bette Midler on Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga’s duet project

And for any haters reading this, have yourself a nice, warm plate of scrotum. --Country singer Blake Shelton says howdy

The Critics Raved: * “Just when I thought I’d erased Ultravox from my memory, Interpol (AKA Joyless Division) had to go and make a comeback.” (Ken Tucker pans the band’s appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman in Billboard 9/27/14) * “As far as Chicago collaborations go, this one is below ‘Italian beef and my mouth’ and just above ‘CTA and that pee smell.’” (Ernest Wilkins on Robin Thicke backed by the band Chicago on the Grammy telecast in Redeye 1/27/14) * “It’s the same with the rest of the poorly written tracks—they made me feel absolutely nothing, except a desire to go listen to Fiona Apple…” (Dana Moran reviewing Louder-Lea Michele in Redeye 3/4/14) * “…among Young’s worst—humorless and gaudy, full of cheap sentiment and reactionary politics.” (Tal Rosenberg on Storytone-Neil Young in Chicago’s Reader 11/6/14) * “Congratulations, Tim Burton. You’re now only the second worst thing to befall Wonka.” (Shawn Macomber slams the Primus reunion album Primus & the Chocolate Factory, an interpretation of the 1971 film soundtrack to Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory in Magnet #114) * “I fancy that I saw stink lines radiating off it, like you’d get in Pepe Le Pew cartoons.” (Marco Rossi begins a hatchet job on Tales of Winter: Selections From TSO Rock Operas-Trans-Siberian Orchestra in Shindig #37)

Critical Amateur Hour: * “I just wanted to spank them—they should be ashamed of themselves.” (Actor William H. Macy on the lack of professionalism exhibited by boy band One Direction at a show he attended, later related in Billboard 11/1/14) * “It just kind of sounds like a fart any way you listen to it.” (Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins on Songs of Innocence-U2 in an interview on Themusic.com.av) * “She’s proven to better than Lil Kim, but she’s not quite Salt-N-Pepa yet.” (Comedian Chris Rock rates Nicki Minaj in Billboard 12/13/14) * “’I’ve got a full time job; I’ve got three kids. I don’ know what this song means. I don’t have time for this.’” (Rennie Sparks of the Handsome Family recalls one man’s reaction to the song “Drunk at Noon” in Chicago’s Reader 8/14/14)

Album Titles: * Minimum Rock N Roll-Chain & the Gang * Baby I’m Off Drugs and I’m Ready to Marry You-Starfoxxx * I Love You, But I Must Drive Off This Cliff Now-Got a Girl * World Peace Is None of Your Business-Morrissey * Bathtub Love Killings-Olivia Jean * Money Sucks Friends Rule-Dillon Francis * This Is a Long Drive for Someone With Nothing to Think About-Modest Mouse * Wig Out at Jagbags-Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks * This Machine Kills Artists-King Buzzo * Modern Hymns for the Gentleman Loafer-Johnny No * Old Man Reverb-the Jigsaw Scene * Home, Like No Place Is There-Hotelier * And Then You Shoot Your Cousin-the Roots * Let’s Cry and Do Pushups at the Same Time-Torn Hawk * False Memory Lane-Galileo 7

Album and Artist Combination: *From the Cradle to the Rave-Shit Robot * Bad Self-Portraits-Lake Street Dive * We Are Violent People by Nature-I Declare War. * Punk Rock Menopause-the Boys * A Taste of Puke-the Fuck Knights

Compilation Title: Red Scare Industries: Ten Years of Your Dumb Bullshit-Various

EP Titles: * “Bodies and Control and Money and Power”-Priests * ”Super Fake Nice”-Self

Song Titles: * “I Can’t Stop Drinking About You”-Bebe Rexha * “My Next Ex-Wife” Rick Estrin and the Nightcats * “Quit Me on a Voice Mail”-Liz Mandville * “The Museum of Broken Relationships”-Veruca Salt * “The South’s Too Fat to Rise Again”-Nashville Pussy * ”Scientology Airplane Conversations”-Peter Matthew Bauer * “Godzillionaire”-Brooke Candy * “Big Bloody Booger on the Bathroom Wall”-Meatmen * “Your Corrupt Ways Sour the Hymn”-Witch Mountain * “Disposable Outcomes”-Schnauser * “Puerto Rican Judo”-Ratking

Song and Artist Combination: “This Party Took a Turn for the Douche”-Garfunkel and Oates

Special Album Award: All You Can Eat by joke retro-metal band Steel Panther featuring the songs “Bukkake Tears,” “Fucking My Heart in the Ass” and “Gang Bang at the Old Folks Home”

Special Award for Title/Group/Label: Golden Showers May Bring Flowers-Yellow Tears (Septic World International)

Group Names: BADBADNOTGOOD Tits of Clay The Arsonist Gets All the Girls The Grizzled Mighty Menage Hippie Sabotage Fat White Family Downtown Charlie Brown Bad Teenage Mustache Cassettes on Tape Knifed at Gunpoint L. Ron Drunkard Albino Black Dude Hongry Bogart Georgia O’Queef Omelet of Disease That Lying Bitch the Evangenitals Georgio Murderer Buster Beef’s Big Bad Alliteration

Tribute Band Name: All-female Guns N’ Roses copy band Guns N’ Hoses

Side Project Name: Jon Langford added another group to distract him from his job in the Mekons. Bad Luck Jonathan serves as a backhanded tribute to Nigerian (now ex-) president Goodluck Jonathan

Label Names: * Iron Bonehead * Rubber Vomit * Radical Elite

Classical Label Name: Irritable Hedgehog

Label Motto: Ape Records—Fornicating in your ear hole since 2004

Cool Rock Guy Name: Dennis Deuterium of Nuclear Magick

Merchandise Item: Metal act Mastodon sells shorts for the ladies emblazoned “Asstodon”

Where Are They Now?: *John Lurie, whose Lounge Lizards were a fixture in the Eighties NYC downtown scene, released The Invention of Animals (Amulet Records). The compilation of 1993 studio sides and unreleased live tracks from his John Lurie National Orchestra captures the later, more professional side of the Lizards. Lurie has spent the last decade as a visual artist, a career switch necessitated by his contracting Lyme disease. * Salsa singer Ruben Blades, who served as Minister of Tourism for Panama from 2004-2009, issued Tangos (Sunnyside). The album takes material from the performer’s back catalog and reconfigures them in the Argentinean musical style. This switch from the renowned Afro-Cuban work of Blades’ early adulthood reflects an experimental attitude he hopes to carry into retirement. * Nuno Bettencourt, the guitar hero of Nineties hard rock act Extreme, served as the touring guitarist for pop act Rihanna. * Danielle Brisebois, who played Stephanie Mills on the sitcom Archie Bunker’s Place, has maintained a career as a songwriter. She collaborated with ex-New Radical Greg Alexander on songs for the 2014 film Begin Again. Alexander wrote his only chart hit, the 1999 “You Get What You Give,” before abandoning performance to work behind the scenes. * Scott Stapp, the former lead singer of Creed, with 27 million album sales to their credit since the dawn of the new century, was said to be bankrupt, homeless and living in Florida at the close of the year. * Joanna Newsom, whose last release was the triple-LP Have One on Me in 2010, appears as the character Sortilege in the 2014 film Inherent Vice. Newsom claims to be continuing work on a new album. * Eighties Boston rock scene stalwarts John Felice of the Real Kids and Rick Harte of the Ace of Hearts label teamed to offer Shake…Outta Control, collecting cover songs, live shots and older Real Kids material given fresh studio recordings for Harte’s label. A 2015 Real Kids album of new songs is in the offing. * Basement Jaxx, the UK dance act who combine sampling with hints of psychedelia, issued Junto (Atlantic Jaxx/PIAS). The duo of Simon Ratcliffe and Felix Burton undertook a club tour, spinning records and spotlighting live musical guests. * Billy Branch, Chicago blues harmonica ace and co-founder of second-generation blues act the Sons of the Blues, returned with Blues Shock (Blind Pig). Branch had not released a recording under his own name since the 1991 Satisfy Me (House of Blues), though he filled the gap playing on other acts’ records and live gigs. The new album features “Going to See Ms. Gerri,” a nod to Gerri Oliver, ex-owner of Gerri’s Palm Tavern, a South Side blues fixture. Ms. Oliver now resides in a Jackson, MS nursing home after losing her establishment to the forces of gentrification. * Cicero (CDS Records) marks the return to the studio of Chicago West Side soul man Cicero Blake. The singer survived a cancer bout several years back and the album is a return to the soul blues style of his celebrated Seventies track, “Dip My Dipper.” * Quinton Claunch, the Memphis record man who co-founded the Hi label and owned the Goldwax imprint, re-entered the business with Soultrax records. Claunch contributed lyrics to Born With Nothin’-Alonzo Pennington, an admirable achievement for a music industry veteran in his nineties. * Shirley Jones, who played the performing mom in the Seventies television pop group The Partridge Family, returned to a film and stage career after the show was canceled. Jones added cabaret artiste to her resume with a 3/4-3/15/14 stint at the Café Carlyle in NYC. * Northern Soul legend Pat Lewis, whose 1967 “No One to Love” is a big money record to collectors of the genre, made an appearance at Brooklyn’s Littlefield on 11/18/14. Lewis spent a number of years penning material with Isaac Hayes. * Tony Rice, onetime guitarist for the Seventies David Grisman Quintet, has been absent from the scene for well over a year after being hit with a trio of physical ailments. A bout with dysphonia has stilled his singing voice, while osteoarthritis and epicondylitis in his right arm have combined to prevent him from playing his instrument. To raise money to pay his medical bills, a Tony Rice Foundation was established on Facebook under the rubric letshelpTonyRiceplayagain. * Rick Hall, whose Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals was the site of Aretha Franklin’s initial Atlantic session, sat down with co-producer Marcus Williams for Life Happens-Candi Staton (Beracah). Ms. Staton had a 1976 R ‘n’ B #1 with “Young Hearts Run Free,” but she also made numerous deep soul and gospel recordings on either side of that milestone. These sides will hopefully shine a new light on her skills. * Tim Fite’s latest album, iBeenHACKED, lampoons the 24-7 connectivity of today’s world via tracks such as “Like,” “Viral,” “Followers” and others. Fite’s self-released project received a leg up through a Kickstarter campaign. The performer has established a reputation for satirical efforts such as his 2006 Over the Counter Culture, which ridiculed the consumer society. Fite’s Kickstarter patrons were able to purchase his artworks, including the Phoney—a glass rectangular object with no inner workings, but designed to resemble the ubiquitous smartphone. * Sixties white soul singer Dean Parrish (renowned among Northern Soul fans for tracks such as “I’m on My Way” and “Determination”) made the short trip from his Staten Island home to Brooklyn’s Littlefield on 10/17/14 for another installment of the venue’s Dig Deeper series. * Richard D. James, whose Nineties work under the Aphex Twin alias helped define the era of so-called “intelligent dance music,” returned with Syro (Warp Records). James had not released anything since the 2001 Drukqs (Warp) performing and recording music for his own pleasure in the hinterlands of Scotland. * Steve Perry, the former Journey lead singer, was the surprise onstage guest at an Eels show on 5/25/14 in St. Paul, MN. Perry had not performed live for over nineteen years. Apparently he enjoyed the experience because he trailed the band to Washington, D.C. and made a second appearance on 5/31/14. * Stewart Copeland, former drummer of the Police, has reinvented himself as a composer of orchestral works. On 4/19/14, the Virginia Arts Festival Orchestra premiered Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ, a piece designed to accompany an edited version of that 1925 silent film starring Ramon Novarro. * Peter Frampton composed Hummingbird in a Box, an instrumental piece for the Cincinnati Ballet. The platinum-selling solo act of the Seventies tours three months out of the year, playing a mixture of his hits and newer material. * The South Side Big Band is a group of Chicago jazz musicians and ex-session men who are veterans of the Chicago soul music scene in the Sixties and Seventies. Standouts in their roster include saxophonist Gene Barge, onetime Brunswick artist Willie (“Funky Chicken”) Henderson and arranger Tom Tom Washington, whose work graced hits by the Chi-Lites, the Dells, Tyrone Davis and others. * Carlene Carter, the daughter of June Carter and her first husband, country balladeer Carl Smith, returned to performing following a bout with substance abuse. Ms. Carter had several Eighties country hits with a captivating hint of rockabilly in the mix, inspired by then-husband Nick Lowe. The 2014 Carter Girl (Rounder) gathers songs associated with her legendary forebears in the Carter Family alongside Ms. Carter’s originals. * Ron Modell, the ex-director of Northern Illinois University’s NIU Jazz Ensemble, published the musical autobiography Loved Being Here With You (Molo). Modell stopped playing trumpet in 2007 amid fears he was losing his stamina, but undertook a stand-up comedy career near his winter residence in Bradenton, FL.

* David Yow, former frontman of punk rockers the Jesus Lizard, took up an artistic sideline. His Copycat (And a Litter of Other Cats) (Akashik Books: New York, 2014) collects 70 drawings of felines depicted in comedic settings with abundant visual puns. * The Rentals, a side project of Weezer bassist Matt Sharp, returned with the 2014 Lost in Alphaville (Polyvinyl), representing a stylistic revisit to the retro-new wave sounds of their 1995 debut, which was confusedly titled Return of the Rentals. Lost marks fifteen years since their last album Seven More Minutes (Warner Bros). * Bluegrass superstars Hot Rize ended a 24-year hiatus with When I’m Free (Thirty Tigers) and began a reunion tour. During the band’s absence, banjoist Pete Wernick launched a solo career, fiddler Tim O’Brien wrote songs for Nashville acts and bassist Nick Forster juggled several interests including a stint as a radio host. Guitarist Charles Sawtell died in 1999 and his post is taken up today by Bryan Sutton. * The Buzzcocks, the virtual inventors of punk pop in the Seventies, returned with The Way (1-2-3-4 Go Records). The high-energy (Big surprise!) album marks the end of an eight-year break. * Kim Shattuck, frontwoman of the Muffs, spent the tail-end of the band’s decade-long break from recording with a brief stint as a “replacement player.” Shattuck’s job as bassist for the Pixies (subbing for the ousted Kim Deal) was over almost as soon as it began. Back at her regular job, Whoop Dee Doo (Burger Records) marked a 2014 Muffs comeback. * Glen Lockett, who produced seminal West Coast hardcore punk albums from Black Flag and the Minutemen, undertook an extra interest as a photographer. The photo book, Sounds of Two Eyes Opening: Southern California Life: Skate/Beach/Punk 1969-1982 (Sinecure: New York, 2014), captures the delineated era of youth rebellion spawned as a reaction to the laid back West Coast mood. * Ruthann Friedman, composer of the 1967 Association hit “Windy,” issued Chinatown (Wolfgang). The record is a return to her folk club roots with several arrangements contributed by guest musician Van Dyke Parks. * Jerry Dammers, co-founder of UK ska revivalists the Specials, has been shut out of the group’s reunions and corresponding tours. In response, he has formed the Spatial AKA Orchestra, which fuses ska, global sounds and the music of jazz outlier Sun Ra. Evidence of their jazz inspiration manifests through wearing futuristic attire and the Orchestra establishing a reputation for marathon performances. There are no plans for commercial recordings as yet. YouTube videos of live shows are helping to spread the word. * Dan Witz, onetime keyboardist with Eighties No Wave performer-turned-composer Glenn Branca, veered into fine art. A show of his paintings, “NY Hardcore,” appeared at the Jonathan LaVine Gallery in New York’s Chelsea. Witz depicts mosh pit scrums in full fury with photorealistic immediacy. The artist claims the effect is intended to evoke the crowd scenes frequently appearing in the work of sixteenth century Dutch painter Pieter Brueghel (the Elder). * Vincent “Mad Dog” Lopez appeared at the 4/10/14 induction ceremony for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the E Street Band’s celebration as new inductees. Lopez was the band’s drummer on Bruce Springsteen’s first two albums, but was fired by the Boss before Born to Run made him a household name. The drummer assaulted then-manager Mike Appel’s brother in an argument over money. Notably, Springsteen still sends Lopez a cut of the royalties for contributing to those first two albums. * Those who have not followed the post-Faith No More career of Mike Patton might be surprised at his creative evolution. The singer of Faith’s 1990 hit “Epic” went on to get involved with the downtown New York circle of John Zorn, where he matched the saxophonist skronk-for-skronk, Patton now does wordless performance art pieces; a bit like early Yoko Ono, but hitting notes in a range evoking memories of Captain Beefheart and Klaus Nomi. YouTube videos of Patton performing with Zorn give an inkling of the former rap rocker’s new home in the avant-garde. * Seventies British progressive rock band Curved Air issued their first album of new studio recordings since 1976. The core of the band on North Star (Curved Air Records) remains Sonja Kristina on vocals, guitarist Kirby Gregory and drummer Florian Pilkington-Miksa. * I Got More Soul is a virtual guarantee when speaking of Dallas soul veteran Bobby Patterson. An appearance at the 2014 SXSW confab in Austin, TX heralded a release of new material on the Omnivore label. Patterson has been sporadically active since his Sixties heyday, though mostly offering up his old repertoire. * Caravan, a rare Seventies progressive rock band having a sense of humor, returned with Paradise Filter (Caravan Records). Part of the same Sixties Canterbury, England scene yielding the Soft Machine, the band is now down to sole original member Pye Hastings. The record followed a 2013 UK tour. * Walter Egan, whose 1978 hit “Magnet and Steel” benefited from his association with Fleetwood Mac, issued Myth America (ClassicMusicVault). The release offers new material with a surprising tilt in favor of today’s raw garage rockers. * Krautrock predecessor Amon Duul II reconvened for Duulirium in 2010, solely as a digital release for fans. A physical release on CD and LP courtesy of the Cleopatra label arrived in 2014. Founding members Chris Karrer, John Weinzier and Renate Knaup serve as keepers of the flame. The band’s previous release was the 1997 UK-only Flawless. * Jeremy Clyde, who gained fame as half of the British invasion duo Chad and Jeremy, assembled his solo debut. The Bottom Drawer Sessions Vol. 1 (Electric Paintbox) is a joint effort with David M. Pierce and showcases an eclectic mix of styles. The recording marks a vacation from his partner Chad Stuart, with whom he has maintained the act in the UK through the years, in-between Clyde’s work as an actor. * UK performer Chris Wade has a thing for the ladies. Doing business as Dodson and Fog, his 2014 album After the Fall (Wisdom Tree) features contributions from the distaff side, including former Rolling Thunder Revue violinist Scarlet Rivera. Guest star vocal duties are handled by Celia Humphris and Alison O’Donnell, who sang respectively with Sixties UK folk rock acts Trees and Mellow Candle. * Bob Stanley, co-founder of Nineties UK act St.Etienne, turned author with Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! The Story of Pop Music from Bill Haley to Beyonce (W.W. Norton: New York, 2014). The book frames music on a parallel track with youth culture. * Nic Jones, the British folk singer whose burgeoning career was cut short by a near-fatal car accident at the dawn of the Eighties, saw reissue of two songs from a 1980 album. “Canadee-I-O” b/w “The Flandyke Shore” appear on 45-RPM record as part of influential English folk label Topic’s 75th anniversary. Jones has recovered sufficiently for a limited schedule of public appearances in previous years, but there were no indications of an outing to support this early effort. * Paul Roland, whose Eighties psyche folk stylings drew favorable comparisons to Robyn Hitchcock, has pursued a parallel (though not surprising) literary interest. The singer-songwriter has written at least 40 books, most of which deal with psychic phenomenon and the paranormal. A slight detour manifests in Roland’s The Curious Case of H.P. Lovecraft (Plexus: London, 2014), a biography of the twentieth century horror writer. * Brooks Headley, veteran drummer for hardcore acts Born Against, Universal Order of Armageddon, Skull Control and others, has established a career as an executive pastry chef at high end New York restaurant Del Posto. He now drums less frequently Fun Facts: * A listening party at a spinning class? Aerobics classes utilizing music have been a mainstay at health clubs, so why not make it part of a marketing plan? Ex-Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger hosted a listening party for an audience seated on stationary bikes at SoulCycle in NYC on 10/2/14. The chain has begun holding similar events at its other outlets. * To commemorate the anniversary of the 1994 album Bee Thousand-Guided by Voices, microbrewer Dogfish Head released Beer Thousand. A 1,000-case run included a ten-inch LP of a rare 1994 Guided by Voices concert for purchasers of a case. * The Woojer is an electronic device that plugs in-between a digital music player and a pair of earbuds. As the music plays, the plug-in vibrates along with the bass line to recreate the auditory and physical experience of a subwoofer. The item retails for $99.00 from woojer.com. * Marianne Faithful claims one casualty of a drug overdose and subsequent coma during her days of heroin addiction was the ability to speak French. * Nuci’s Space, an Athens, GA nonprofit, instituted a campaign via crowdfunding site Indiegogo to raise $250 thousand. The money was intended to prevent the demolition of St. Mary’s Steeple, a local landmark and architectural remnant of a church, which was the location of rock group R.E.M.’s first gig. * Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine recalls that he once passed on hiring future Pantera guitarist “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott because Abbott insisted that his brother Paul be Megadeth’s drummer. Mustaine remembers scoffing, “Is it like Rain Man or something?” * Canadian rocker Bryan Adams has a parallel career as a professional photographer, providing pictures for fashion houses and ad agencies, as well as personal projects. A November 2014 exhibit at London’s Somerset House featured a collection of portraits Adams took of maimed military veterans from the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. * A late 2014 London crowdfunding effort took as its goal the raising of enough money to prevent Canadian rockers Nickelback from playing in England’s capital. * Jason Flom, founder/CEO of the Lava label has a nameplate on his desk identifying him as “Fucker in charge of you fucking fucks.” * Neophyte guitar “gear queers” have been puzzled by photos of an instrument played by Fred “Sonic” Smith of the MC5 during the band’s glory days. It resembles a Fender Stratocaster with the stock Fender pick-ups replaced by a trio of Gibson double-pole humbucking ones. It turns out the guitar is the obscure Epiphone Crestwood model, given new life when Smith sold it to Denis Tek, who used it to spice the MC5-derived sound of his Radio Birdman aggregation. * New York’s Village Voice newspaper has historically presented columnists with unique insight, from Robert Christgau to Nat Hentoff. Added to the list (with some incredulity) is Andrew W. K. The performer, who has long-extolled his personal brand of “party rock,” began 2014 with an advice column in the Voice. The frontman offers troubled correspondents counsel spiced with copious amounts of positive mental attitude.

* Howling Wolf biographer Mark Hoffman revealed a previously undiscovered photo of the famous bluesman dated 9/12/41. Private Chester Burnett is shown cleaning a horse’s hoof while on maneuvers in Louisiana with a black cavalry unit of the U.S. Army. * Harmonica players stumbling across the Seventies tutorial records series Music Minus One and wanting a modern day equivalent can now experience the opportunity to test their chops as the CD era fades. Your Name Here-The Nighthawks Minus Mark (EllerSoul Records) features blues stalwarts the Nighthawks with harmonica player Mark Wenner’s musical contributions edited out. Ads for the release noted, “Only someone with Mark Wenner’s compassion, sensitivity and skill to make a buck could come up with this concept.” * King Biscuit Time, a radio program on KFFA-AM in Helena, AR, began in 1941 and featured the music of Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller) and guitarist Robert Lockwood, Jr. Both those performers have long passed-on, but the show has aired to the present day. In May 2014, King Biscuit Time celebrated its 17, 000th broadcast. * James Johnson, onetime backing guitarist for Slim Harpo, claims credit for the “chicken scratch” lick on his boss’s 1966 Top 40 hit “Scratch My Back.” Johnson recalls the road-tested song was finished in one studio take. * Music-oriented ocean cruises are now common, but the only dedicated blues club on such a ship is Fat Cat’s Jazz & Blues Club, which is located on the Norwegian Cruise Line vessel Breakaway. Guitarist Slam Allen leads the house band. * Country singer Willie Nelson earned a fifth degree black belt in an obscure Korean martial art Gongkwon Yusul in 2014. The combat discipline is less than two decades old and combines the strikes of the established Korean style of hapkido with the grappling of Japanese judo. * The estate of Duke Ellington had a deal dating to 1961 with EMI Music Publishing. It gave the jazz composer 50% of net receipts earned by foreign sales of his work. When EMI hired a foreign publisher to distribute Ellington’s music, the foreign entity was allowed to keep 50% of the net receipts before paying EMI. It came to light that EMI owned the foreign subsidiary, allowing it to increase its cut to 75% of the net receipts. Duke Ellington’s grandson Paul filed a 2010 lawsuit to address this issue, but a fall 2014 appeals court ruling sided with EMI. * Arthur B. Lintgen has an unusual talent. By looking at a vinyl LP of classical music he can determine the title of the piece even though the label information is totally obscured. Lintgen’s deep familiarity with the classical music repertoire allows him to study the grooves and determine which instruments are playing and at what volume by observing shifts in the shading across the record’s surface. Lintgen has shown off this skill on live television shows and attempts to fool him have failed thus far. * Blues great Robert Johnson’s novelty blues “They’re Red Hot” extols the Mexican tamale (among other things). Though considered a bit of an oddity in his discography, it serves to indicate the popularity of that culinary staple in his native Mississippi. Not only has Greenville, MS launched an annual Delta Hot Tamale Festival in 2013, the magazine Living Blues listed a number of tamale restaurants in the 2014 edition of its annual list of blues festivals. * Those who caught a glimpse of the Brill Building in the Clint Eastwood-directed film musical Jersey Boys (or were aware of the allusion inherent in the 2014 New Pornographers album Brill Bruisers) should know that the structure has new owners, a limited liability corporation. Reflecting the land rush on Manhattan, the small offices at 1619 N. Broadway (once the unlikely home of Hill and Range and other music publishers) have been removed in favor of an open floor plan and new tenants. * Some actors seem to cope with the downtime between roles via bouts of binge drinking and drug abuse. However, add to the list of actors with the first name Jeff having parallel musical careers (Jeff Daniels and Jeff Bridges being the most prominent), Mr. Jeff Goldblum. One of the breakout actors of the late Seventies, Goldblum cultivated a niche as a mainstream jazz pianist/vocalist in Los Angeles. For decades his group has done business as the Mildred Snitzer Orchestra, which headlined a stint at the Café Carlyle in NYC from 9/16-9/20/14. * The album Hungry Ghosts-OK Go was released on CD, vinyl and a new format, DNA. The rock group renowned for their elaborately choreographed music videos, conceived of taking the digital musical information commonly rendered into zeros and ones and having it translated into strings of nucleotides instead—chemicals instead of computer programming language. The DNA sample would then be suspended in drops of water in a vial. The microscopic “file” would nonetheless contain roughly 100 thousand copies of the album. Analyzing the DNA at the consumer end would involve translating the molecules back into zeros and ones. Now if there was only a DNA player… * Michael Cumella, a freelance television editor/producer has a second career as a DJ, though he uses 78-RPM records exclusively. Cumella goes so far as to utilize a classic model Victrola having a horn, mounting a microphone therein and running the music through a public address system. The musical host primarily plays records from the pre-1925 acoustic recording era for audiences in the metro New York area, many of whom wear vintage clothing and perform dances appropriate to the music. (Insert your rude comments here.) * Annie Clark, who performs as St. Vincent, has all the books in her NYC apartment with the spines facing into the shelves. The choice is not part of an actual quirky interior design trend, but stems from Ms. Clark’s wish to eliminate visual distraction. She told Rolling Stone in their summer 2014 issue that the mixture of fonts used in the titles was visually repellant. * Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous: Singer-guitarist John Mayer sued jeweler Robert Maron to the tune of $5 million in early 2014, accusing him of selling fake Rolexes. Mayer brought watches purchased from Maron to a Rolex dealer to be cleaned only to be told they were counterfeits of the luxury brand. * British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro is also a songwriter, penning material for American-born UK jazz singer Stacey Kent. Ishiguro has provided songs for Kent since 2007. * Label Rise Records decided in 2014 that they would no longer include download cards, which provide purchasers of vinyl releases with the information needed to obtain a digital version of the album from the company Website. Rise determined that the cards cost one cent more than a CD. Now a CD is bundled with the record as a matter of course. * Bjork’s Biophilia app, associated with her 2011 album of the same name, became the first one to be accepted into the collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. The MOMA has also scheduled an overview of the Icelandic performer’s work for early 2015. * Tinnitus, the chronic ringing in the years common among rock musicians and industrial workers, may find its remedy via a controversial therapy. In 2011, a U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved Study showed MDMA, the clinical version of the street drug Ecstasy, could alleviate post-traumatic stress disorder. Since tinnitus and PTSD share certain neurotransmitters, Dr. Grant Searchfield at the University of Auckland in New Zealand is researching the drug’s efficacy in treating the hearing disorder. * Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy claims he once had a pierced penis. (Truth be told, once pierced, one remains perforated after the jewelry is removed.) It likely had the bonus of allowing him to evacuate his bladder faster. * The 2014 documentary Jobriath A.D. offers the story of the mid-Seventies gay glam rocker who positioned himself as the American answer to David Bowie. Born Bruce Campbell, the singer adopted the Jobriath Salisbury/Jobriath Boone stage names interchangeably. A 1973 Elektra album and its follow-up were critically panned, leading to a career switch to cabaret and a new identity as Cole Berlin. The performer succumbed to AIDS in 1983. * Disney’s animated blockbuster Frozen went out to the global market dubbed in 41 languages. Since the feature is a musical, this requires hiring singers who can perform the songs with conviction in the local dialect. Among the more esoteric languages employed were Catalan, Malay and Bengali. * Mamoru Samurogochi, a Japanese symphonic composer acclaimed in that country for his continuing to work after his hearing began to deteriorate, found himself the focus of controversy. Prior to figure skater Daisuke Takahashi using Samurogochi’s “Sonatina for Violin” in his routine at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, accusations of musical fraud were made public. On 2/6/14, a live television news conference in Japan saw Takashi Niigaki announce that he had written over twenty pieces credited to Samurogochi over the course of almost two decades. The shocked reaction in Japan seemed destined to overturn Samurogochi’s public image as a “modern-day Beethoven.” * An unlikely presence at a 3/18/14 White House ceremony to award the Congressional Medal of Honor (the nation’s highest military decoration) was rocker Lenny Kravitz. His uncle, Leonard, was a posthumous recipient for action during the Korean War that saved his platoon at the cost of his own life. The White House event was the culmination of a review of past battlefield actions in which military personnel were denied recognition due to racial, religious or ethnic prejudice. * The resurgence of the vinyl record has brought a corresponding comeback to the vinyl bootleg album. These are often contemporary rarities, such as Unreleased Misc.-Frank Ocean, a collection of mixtape tracks only available online. This aspect is telling because hip-hop fans are inclined to digital formats, so the premium price point of bootlegs seems to draw collectors and fans with deep pockets. The quantity of the items may be limited in light of the small number of record pressing plants and their dependence on the major labels for business. If a bootleg was traced to a particular plant, it could alienate its best customers. * According to producer/engineer Eddie Kramer, the faint “preview” of Robert Plant’s upfront rendering of the line “Way down inside…” about halfway through the 1969 release “Whole Lotta Love” is not tape print-through (caused by sound recorded on tape transferring to a blank neighboring section on the reel). Kramer notes that a separate Plant vocal attempt had been left unnoticed on another part of the multi-track tape and discovered during the song’s mixing. Since it could not be removed without damaging the main vocal, it was left in and given emphasis.

* Landlubbers disinclined to book passage on one of the countless music cruises in which passengers share an ocean vessel with bands and solo acts now have an alternative. Roots on the Rails is one of several companies booking train trips featuring musical performances before, during and after the journey. A July 2014 excursion followed the round trip of the old Chicago-to-New Orleans Illinois Central route immortalized in Steve Goodman’s 1973 song “City of New Orleans.” Featured acts on previous treks have included ex-Blaster Dave Alvin and frequent Flatlander Butch Hancock. * According to Adele’s sometime co-writer Dan Wilson, the British singer will often act as her own crew of background singers in the studio. She is said to render a bit of character acting to have each “vocalist” be a distinct creation in an imaginary girl group contributing to a harmony track. * Major league baseball teams have to dream up numerous promotions to fill out a long season, as do minor league teams. The Charleston, SC RiverDogs held “Disco Demolition: You Better Belieb It” on 7/19/14 in a tribute to a similar 1979 event at Chicago’s Comiskey Park. The attraction centered on the blowing-up of a pile of Justin Beiber and Miley Cyrus items. (Times change, but bad taste is timeless.) * How do you get to be a billionaire? Beyonce sold a back-to-school package on her Website during summer 2014. It included a branded set of pencils, pencil pouch, notebook, tote bag, poster and a t-shirt for $75.00. (Targeted at pre-adolescents, bought by parents and probably made by ten-year-olds in Bangladesh.) * A 9/9/14 concert at Brooklyn’s Academy of Music marked a reunion performance of minimalist composers Steve Reich and Philip Glass. The men feuded over composer credit following a1971 European tour and did not play together or otherwise communicate for 42 years. * The 2014 Jimi Hendrix biopic, Jimi: All Is By My Side, contains none of the guitarist’s compositions. Rights for the material could not be ironed-out with the Hendrix estate. The film featured Hendrix versions of songs written by other acts. * Blue-Mostly Other People Do the Killing (Hot Cup Records) is a note-for-note recreation of the 1959 Kind of Blue-Miles Davis. A 10/10/14 Wall Street Journal article about the “new” sides noted that Jimmy Cobb, the only survivor of the Davis band on the original release, was briefly stumped when hearing the 2014 release. (Anything worth doing is worth doing again by someone else.) * Alan Freed, the influential Fifties rock ‘n’ roll deejay, had his ashes removed from Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for conventional burial. (This is likely the last time Freed will have his ashes hauled.) * In another example of the wide world of tribute bands, German modern classical music ensemble Musikfabrik prepared a performance of twentieth century composer Harry Partch’s formidable Delusion of the Fury. A fusion of orchestral work and theatrical setting, Fury not only uses Partch’s unique 43-tone “octaves,” but incorporates an array of instruments built by the composer. (These include the Spoils of War, a rack of chiming percussion made from spent artillery shells in different sizes, and the Diamond Marimba among others.) The suite of instruments had a dual purpose as set design and sonic environment with actors, dancers and musicians sharing the stage. Partch’s original instruments are in a collection at Montclair State University in New Jersey, compelling Musikfabrik to recreate them over a three-year period. The German ensemble took Fury to the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland in 2014 and were scheduled to bring a performance to New York’s Lincoln Center in 2015. * Canadian iTunes mistakenly listed “Track 3”-Taylor Swift in its online store. A technical glitch, it consisted of an eight-second burst of static. Curious fans apparently mistook it for a camouflaged new song and pushed it to #1 in sales on 10/21/14. * The Killer Blues Headstone Project is a nonprofit organization that raises money to install grave markers at the burial sites of blues musicians. Far too many of the music’s performers died indigent and their survivors (if any) could not afford even a modest monument. Project founder Steve Salter works to correct this problem. Funds for the headstones are raised through private donations, an annual benefit concert in Whitehall, MI, a blues “book of days” and a blues calendar. The organization hopes to have reached a total of 40 graves marked by the end of 2014. Those wishing to help the cause can visit their site at www.killerblues.net/index.html. * Readers who still own their old Atlantic/Atco albums from the early Seventies may recall the inner sleeve depicting other label releases, including South Atlantic Blues-Scott Fagan. Starting with an early peak via a Doc Pomus co-write for soul vocalist Lorraine Ellison (“I’m Gonna Cry Til My Tears Run Dry”), Fagan’s thwarted ambitions led to substance abuse problems and later recovery. Fagan’s erratic romantic life saw him sire five children with four women. One of those children is Stephin Merritt of Magnetic Fields. * The late Casey Kasem’s ethnicity was Lebanese, but his ancestors were members of the Druze sect. Non- Muslims in a country shared with Islamic and Christian devotees, the Druze do not evangelize and try to maintain a low profile as a way to keep their more esoteric beliefs from drawing undue attention. Reincarnation figures prominently in their dogma and is considered by the faithful to be commonplace, so Mr. Kasem might yet stage a comeback.

* Guardians of the Galaxy: The Awesome Mix Vol. 1-Various (Hollywood/Disney Music Group), one of the bestselling soundtrack albums of 2014, was also issued on cassette. The format choice was designed to mirror a plot point in the film, a tape of Seventies hits owned by the hero as a souvenir of his childhood on Earth. * Justin Bieber’s vandalizing of a neighbor’s home and his investigation for street racing in Florida led to a petition at whitehouse.gov to have the singer deported to his native Canada. Over 135 thousand signatures had been gathered by close of business on 1/29/14. * Bobby Whitlock, the singer/keyboardist for Derek and the Dominos, claims it was Domingo Samudio (commonly known as Sam the Sham) who suggested recording “Key to the Highway” and “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out” at the sessions for the 1971 Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. Samudio was recording in the same building. * Merle Haggard’s 1982 C & W #1 “Big City” was inspired by a conversation outside the recording studio during a break in the session. Haggard listened as Dean Holloway, his boyhood pal-turned-tour bus driver, complained about Los Angeles. Haggard went back inside, turned their talk into lyrics, taught the song to the musicians and started recording. Haggard brought a cassette of the finished product to the bus the same day and played it over the sound system, telling Holloway he would get a co-writer credit on the song. * The 1977 Wings single “Mull of Kintyre” refers to a promontory on the Scottish peninsula of Kintyre. It also became a supposed standard of the British film industry in the Nineties. It was said that any filmed male nudity could not depict a man’s penis having an angle of erection greater than the slant of the Mull of Kintyre. * Rockers are back to writing children’s books. Keith Richards penned Gus & Me (Little Brown: New York, 2014), a memoir of the grandfather who bought the Rolling Stone his first guitar. It features illustrations from his daughter Theodora. Meanwhile Bruce Springsteen’s 2014 Outlaw Pete (Simon & Schuster: New York, 2014) is based upon his 2009 song about an infant’s dream of becoming like his cowboy hero. * Gone to the Dogs? The Chicago Park District announced in November 2014 that it would open a new dog park in a one-acre area named after deceased free jazz saxophonist Fred Anderson. The site is a stone’s throw from 1611 S. Wabash, the address of the Anderson-owned Velvet Lounge, his onetime musical HQ. * Laser turntables are available which can “read” a vinyl record and translate the grooves into music— similar to the way a laser scans the pits on an aluminum and polycarbonate CD. Now there is IRENE (Image Reconstruction Eliminate Noise Etc.). Developed by scientists using the SmartScope, a device for photographing and analyzing an object over and over at the CERN collider in Switzerland, the IRENE precisely aligns silicon detectors in the chamber of this massive successor to the cyclotron of old. Adapting the device to analyze antiquated sound carriers such as Edison cylinders or 78-RPM records, physicist Carl Haber’s IRENE makes three-dimensional scans of a record’s grooves and feeds them into a computer, which then translates the data into sound. The IRENE was even able to extract sound from a phonautogram, an 1860 recording medium that captured sound via patterns of soot on paper. Until the IRENE, there was no way to listen to a phonautogram due to its inventor, Edouard-Leon Scott, not having invented a playback device. Two IRENEs at the Library of Congress are used to create digital sound files of works too fragile to play on analog devices. * Bert Williams, the celebrated black comedian of the vaudeville era, left behind a number of his most popular songs and routines on the recorded media of the day. However, Williams nearly became a film star. Recently discovered takes of the earliest known silent film with an all-black cast were assembled for a special showing at New York’s Museum of Modern Art on 11/8/14. The untitled 1913 film remained unfinished and starred Williams in his usual stage role as an enterprising, but hapless, huckster. Williams’ character tries to charm a young woman at a carnival, where much of the action takes place. Notably, Williams appears in blackface, as per his onstage persona. No one else in the cast does. * Mary Love, a singer much-beloved by the Northern Soul crowd, took a detour into the film business in the Seventies. While performing in the Los Angeles scene of the time, Love met Rudy Ray Moore, the salacious black comedian better known as Dolemite. She soon appeared in his 1975 blaxploitation feature Dolemite, in which she sings two numbers. Love went on to co-write five songs for Moore’s 1977 film Petey Wheatstraw (also going by the title, The Devil’s Son-in-Law).

Fans Only: Label Numero Group released a limited edition version of an album in its Wayfaring Strangers series titled Darkscorch Canticles. The release gathers bands who revive the hard rock, early metal style of the Seventies and sing of witches, warlocks and related themes. The May 2014 package contained a role- playing game similar to Dungeons and Dragons.

Adult Video Fans Only: Understanding and Appreciating Classical Music with Ron Jeremy (Black Country Rock/Thirty Tigers) A 45-RPM single of the veteran adult film star playing bits of Bach and Beethoven

Trends-A-Poppin’: “stems”—Internet remixes of popular songs using the constituent parts of the hits (bass, drums or rhythm guitar tracks) manipulated by amateur producers. The source material can be legitimately posted by acts such as Nine Inch Nails, but often appear without permission through the actions of disgruntled ex-employees or bored gamers swiping from old versions of electronic game Guitar Hero. Many are posted without permission of the original artist or the act’s label, making them equivalent to samples that have not been cleared. Baron Von Luxxury (born Blake Robin) has parlayed his stems into publicity via free streaming on SoundCloud and subsequent paid DJ gigs.

No More Fat Jokes: * SPECIAL MEGHAN TRAINOR EDITION! (Nah, too easy…) * A photo of guitarist Steve Stevens with Billy Idol in the 10/25/14 Billboard looks as if Stevens is going for a Robert Smith-in-a-caftan look.

What a Night at the Theatre!: * Holler If Ya Hear Me, a musical based around the songs of Nineties rapper Tupac Shakur served to illuminate life in the ‘hood. It shut down after a month on Broadway in July 2014. * Sting’s musical The Last Ship dramatized the decline of shipbuilding in Thatcher era England. After Chicago previews, the show opened on Broadway, where the wind began to leave its sails by year’s end. * Rocky, a musical based on the 1976 film hit, utilized all-original music—not the hits “Eye of the Tiger” or “Gonna Fly Now”-Bill Conti (”…a spectacle of waste,” noted Hilton Als in the New Yorker 3/31/14). * Jonatha Brooke, who was one of the featured singers in Nineties act the Story, performed the one- woman Broadway musical My Mother Has Four Noses. The show recalled her mother’s slow decline from a variety of facial cancer and had a brief run in March 2014. * Revolution in the Elbow of Ragnar Agnarsson, Furniture Painter, a rock musical concerning a miniature world located in the elbow of the titular craftsman, opened at the Minetta Lane Theater in New York. Ivar Pall Jonsson, former frontman of Icelandic rock group Blome, wrote the show. * Here’s Hoover! The Historic Herbert Hoover 2014 Comeback Special, a musical modeled on the 1968 Elvis Presley TV special, which imagines the president during the first years of the Great Depression returning to the spotlight. The show had a late fall run at the Abrons Art Center in New York. * Mighty Real: A Fabulous Sylvester Musical had a limited run at the Theatre at St. Clements in midtown Manhattan. The show dramatized the brief life of Sylvester Jones, who went from transvestite roles with Sixties San Francisco gay theater troupe the Cockettes to singing stardom in the disco era. * The one-man show Lennon: Through a Glass Onion featured actor/singer John R. Waters singing the Beatle’s songs to solo piano accompaniment interspersed with monologues about Lennon’s life, loves and issues he supported. Lennon ran through the tail end of the year. * Dee Snider’s Rock & Roll Christmas Tale had its premiere on 11/4/14 in Chicago at the Broadway Playhouse. The Twisted Sister frontman’s stage musical centers on an unsuccessful heavy metal band who sell their soul to the devil for commercial success only to discover that every song they play turns into Christmas music. The show includes “The Magic of Christmas (God Bless Us Everyone),” a Snider composition whose placement on a Celine Dion album got him a healthy payday.

Spare Change: In Mono-the Beatles (Apple/Capitol) Five years after the mono CD box of all the Beatles recordings comes the LP version and they have been remastered yet again. A 14-LP boxed set with an SRP of $374.98. (Alan Douglas lives.)

Collectables Update: * “Caustic Window,” a 1994 side project from Richard D. James (better known as Aphex Twin), remained unreleased until an April 2014 Kickstarter campaign sought pledges to have it made available to the public. Meanwhile, a test pressing of the song was put up for bid on eBay and was hammered for over $46 thousand. The buyer was Marcus Persson, creator of the electronic game Minecraft. * Rap act Wu-Tang Clan last released a record in 2007. The upcoming The Wu: Once Upon a Time in Shaolin was announced as coming out in a limited edition of one copy. Nestled in a silver and metal box, the album will supposedly go on a museum tour to allow paying customers to hear the album after they have been frisked for recording devices. The Wu will then be put up for auction. Initial informal bids have come in, with one at $5 million. (Some may recall Jean Michel Jarre sold the only copy of his Musique per Supermarche in 1983 for over $13 thousand at then-current exchange rates.) * A handwritten working draft of “Like a Rolling Stone”-Bob Dylan was hammered at auction house Sotheby’s in New York on 6/24/14 for $2.045 million, including buyer’s premium. The four sheets included revisions and doodles.

Just in Time for the Holidays: *Coal Again-TriBeCaStan (Evergreene Records) with Xmas classics given oddball settings * Americana Christmas-Various (New West) All-star cast gets rootsy and weird, including Bob Dylan’s polka “Must Be Santa” * On 11/15/14 Bob Geldof recorded an updated version of his 1984 famine relief single “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” to help raise money to combat the Ebola virus. * Holiday for Swing-Seth MacFarlane (Republic Records) has the creator of TV’s Family Guy returning with more big band stylings, this time having a Xmas slant.

Unchained Xmas Parodies: Santa Is Real-Xmas Men (Rosetta) Texas country act Robert Earl Keen’s band adopts a holiday guise to perform Western Swing versions of Yuletide standards. The cover art and title refers to the 1960 Satan Is Real-the Louvin Brothers.

Random Thoughts: * Taylor Swift goes pop. Isn’t one Katy Perry enough? (I’ll bet Perry thinks so.) * When I see the photo of Paddington Bear from that kiddie film, I keep thinking he looks like he just ate Pharrell, (And brother man, it’s hard to look credible in a Dudley Do-Right hat.) * Ex-My Chemical Romance frontman Gerald Way’s solo career is likely the result of no longer being able to convince his old band to go along with his wardrobe ideas. * The cover of Xscape-Michael Jackson makes the singer look like he’s wearing one of those collars they apply at the vet so Fido won’t bite himself. * Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page received an honorary doctorate at Boston’s Berklee College of Music on 5/10/14—on behalf of all the old bluesmen he ripped off.

Generation Gap: * Elle King, pop singer daughter of comedian Rob Schneider * Willie Nelson’s grandaughter’s Raelyn Nelson Band * Curtis McMurtry, son of singer-songwriter James McMurtry, follows in his dad’s footsteps with the solo Respectable Enemy (Berkalin Records) * Kongos, consisting of brothers Dylan, Daniel, Jesse and Johnny, sons of John Kongos, who had two Top Ten hits in the UK in 1971. Their “Come With Me Now” was a Hot 100 hit in 2014. * Hannah Bronfman, dance DJ daughter of ex-Warner and Universal exec Edgar Bronfman. * Domino Kirke, vocalist daughter of Bad Company’s Simon Kirke * Jacques Schwarz-Bart, jazz tenor saxophonist son of late novelist Andre Schwarz-Bart

Ozzy’s a Boob: “I don’t know where they got this icon shit from, but it’s good to be here.” (Ozzy Osbourne accepting the Global Icon trophy at the MTV Europe Music Awards on 11/9/14 in Glasgow, Scotland

Updates: * Chief Keef announced he had been dropped by his label Interscope via Twitter complaining, “ Jimmy n Dre what I signed up for not this new staff!” The October rant capped a year in which the Chicago rapper had been in and out of drug rehab, gotten behind in his rent for a Highand Park, Illinois mansion, had a rapper cousin die in a shooting and saw his self-released Nobody (Glo Gang) at year’s end greeted with indifference. (Chief Keef’s signing and trouble with the law was discussed in the essay portion of the 2012 Jukebox Awards.) * Beck, whose 2012 Song Reader album existed as sheet music rather than any recorded medium, saw the project executed by guest stars. The album Warby Parker Presents Song Reader: 20 Songs by Beck-Various Artists (Warby Parker/Capitol) is a sponsored release from the optometry retail chain. (Beck’s Song Reader was discussed in Fun Facts in the 2012 Jukebox Awards.) * Gary Glitter was charged on 6/6/14 in London with eight sexual offenses committed against two teenaged girls during the Seventies. (Glitter’s sexual misadventures in Southeast Asia were detailed In the 2005 Jukebox Awards) * Nineties country singer Ty Herndon announced he was gay in an 11/18/14 People magazine interview. (Herndon’s arrest for possession of methamphetamine and indecent exposure was mentioned in Good Morning Judge in the 1995 Jukebox Awards.)

* Following their appearance at an Amnesty International concert in Brooklyn on 2/5/14, members of Russia’s Pussy Riot collective issued an open letter denouncing Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina for claiming to have left Pussy Riot, even as the name was invoked at every stop the pair made while touring the United States. Furthermore, the duo were berated for selling concert tickets, contrary to the radical group’s method of staging illegal performances for free. The letter was signed using six aliases since Pussy Riot still performs in Russia while wearing balaclavas covering their faces…. Separately, Comradely Greetings: The Prison Letters of Nadya and Slavoj (Verso: New York, 2014) collects the correspondence between Ms. Tolokonnikova and philosopher Slavoj Zizek as they discuss politics and the “Elvis of cultural theory” drops his calculated bluster to encourage the young revolutionary. (Pussy Riot’s arrest was discussed in the essay section of the 2012 Jukebox Awards.) * Marion “Suge” Knight, the head of Nineties label Death Row, popped-up briefly as co-producer of a biopic about rapper Tupac Shakur. Morgan Creek, the studio overseeing the project, asked that his name be removed from the list of contributors to the film. Rumors that Knight was responsible for the murder of the rapper in 1996 have persisted for years. Knight served five years in prison for an assault committed on the evening Shakur was killed and trouble continues to follow him. Knight took six bullets on 8/24/14 at a pre-MTV Video Music Awards party at Los Angeles nightspot 10AK. Surprisingly, he left the scene without medical assistance. (Knight’s legal problems and a nine-year prison sentence were discussed in Good Morning Judge in the 1997 Jukebox Awards.)

Courtney Love Superstar: Ms. Love appeared at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony for Nirvana, representing the deceased Kurt Cobain, her late husband. She embraced Nirvana drummer and longtime enemy Dave Grohl. However, she persisted in her skills as rude guest with the line “My Springsteen problem is just that saxophones don’t belong in rock and roll.”

The Further Adventures of Billy “The Brain” Corgan: * On 2/28/14, Corgan’s Highland Park, IL tea shop Madame ZuZu’s hosted the guitarist’s eight-hour-plus musical interpretation of Herman Hesse’s novel Siddhartha. * A March announcement gave details of a Smashing Pumpkins recording project designed to yield two separate 2015 albums. The manifesto yielded the following quote: “Additionally, this stands as the initial post on a new nexus: The Panopticon, which through its simplicity should better address the speed of modern life. A continuing feature, items regarding each day’s recording will be shared that same evening with song titles, lyrics, poetic impressions, pictures, sound clips, studio gear and the like offered for a continuous bird’s eye view of the process as it unfolds.” (For those unfamiliar with the history of the American penal system, the panopticon was a variety of prison with cells radiating from a central axis thereby enabling guards to observe prisoners constantly. The original panopticon built in Pennsylvania housed each prisoner in solitary confinement with industrial labor done in the same cell. The prisoner never left that cell unless he had a visitor.) * Corgan played a solo acoustic show (backed by guitarist Jeff Schroeder) at Chicago suburban outdoor venue Ravinia on 8/30/14, his debut at the site. Billed as “Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins,” the performer spoke to the Chicago Tribune’s Mark Caro, “ I never thought that you could have the pedigree that I had through one particular period of my life, and then when I stepped out of it, it didn’t follow me.” Corgan added, “How does one of my contemporaries get treated like a contemporary artist, and how do I get treated like I’m supposed to play (Pumpkins bestselling album) Siamese Dream the rest of my life?” The performer said he would evaluate his career after the release of his next two albums. * Corgan starred in a reality series for cable network AMC that began shooting in fall 2014. Focusing on the rock musician’s sideline as creative director of Resistance Pro, a professional wrestling league, scenes were lensed at the Firehouse in Highland Park, IL. The shooting schedule displaced local youth services at the Firehouse, where participants’ parents had been told that the attendees would take their activities to the Community House across town. Parents cried foul after a stairway was repaired at the Firehouse prior to the show crew’s arrival—work that had been repeatedly postponed while the youth programs were in residence. * The Music Theatre Co. of Highland Park, IL announced on 10/16/14 that Corgan would pen a twenty- minute musical theatre piece for the troupe. Titled Pretty Persephone, it would be based on the ancient Greek Eleusinian mysteries and was slotted for a December premiere. * After Corgan appeared on the cover of the summer issue of PAWS Chicago magazine (an animal shelter and rescue publication) holding two cats, the Smashing Pumpkins frontman found himself the butt of jokes from the cable TV host of Anderson Cooper 360 in November. Cooper framed the musician as “edgier than ever” adding “I want to see neither Stephen Malkmus nor Thom Yorke on the cover of AARP Magazine.” Corgan snapped via Twitter, “I realize you’re too busy being a globalist shill to know the difference, but there are those of us who do as we like.” (Don’t worry, this writer does not know what Corgan means either.) * At an 11/30/14 concert at Chicago’s Thalia Hall, the Smashing Pumpkins merchandise table included t-shirts emblazoned “F U Cooper,” apparently to show that Corgan does not hold a grudge.

U2 Inc.: * Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark, the trouble-plagued Broadway extravaganza with music provided by U2’s Bono and the Edge, closed in January 2014. The financial losses to the show’s backers were estimated at $60 million. * On 9/9/14 Apple and U2 announced they would offer the band’s latest release, Songs of Innocence, free to iTunes users exclusively for an initial five weeks. Under the conditions of the deal, Songs would appear on streaming sites and at physical retail on 10/14/14. To appease the offended sensibilities of retail chains, the physical release would contain four bonus tracks. Apple would not have access to those cuts until an unspecified date in November. Recalling the Samsung/Jay Z deal in 2012, the pact was said to be worth $100 million, with the digital music retailer paying an undisclosed amount to the U2’s Island label while using the bulk of the money to buy TV time and media outlet exposure to promote the video for the track “The Miracle (of Joey Ramone).” U2’s new manager, Guy Oseary, noted that some of the payment went directly to the Irish band, but did not go into specifics. (Of note was the fact that the free download did not bypass the copyright royalty provisions relating to publishing and digital content. The band’s recording home Island would make an estimated $52 million before the dust settled.) * The execution of that 9/9/14 announcement became the big story. The mass download automatically appeared on the iTunes library of 500 million iTunes customers on that day. The sudden presence of the album aroused suspicions in the iTunes ecosystem when it did not spark annoyance. Those who did not consider themselves fans of the group reacted as if they were victims of a corporate hack—an invasion of privacy coupled with “spam” and “malware,” two words used by irate recipients. Others ground their teeth. Retailer Trans World’s VP of music and new media Ish Cuebas told Billboard in its 9/20/14 issue, “It’s embarrassing that they had to give the album away.” Others, disinclined to provide their names, framed a desperate attempt by the band to remain relevant, while others said it would kill demand (and corresponding chart placement for the album). Industry observers trotted out the view that it promoted the album without the necessity of having a hit single, but no one spoke of the phenomenon of what used to be considered platinum-level acts no longer actually selling music. If sales transactions and airplay were no longer the goal, why did the charts exist? * U2 singer Bono took upon himself the role of class clown. “If you don’t want it , delete it,” he flippantly noted to Rolling Stone on 10/9/14. In the 11/6/14 issue, he dropped the nugget, “I take some pride in being divisive…. I might have an extra, special annoying gene.” The singer needed that sense of humor. Songs debuted in the album charts of the 11/1/14 issue of Billboard at #9 with 28 thousand sold (using the magazine’s elaborate chart placement calculation compiling physical and digital sales). This led one wag to snap, “An album so bad they had to give it away.” At a mid-November Web Summit in Dublin, Ireland, an unrepentant Bono told the audience, “We got people who were uninterested in U2 to be mad with U2. I would call that an improvement.” * To add injury to insult, a bicycling accident on 11/6/14 left Bono with a broken left elbow, a broken left humerus in one leg and superficial damage from a “face plant.” The injury delayed a tour to promote the album, including a residency on NBC-TV’s Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. * The arrival of an11/6/14 Rolling Stone cover story suggested a press campaign for Songs of Innocence, but contained odd snippets about the group’s inner dynamic. Bono claimed that the band sought tech firm Blackberry’s sponsorship of their 360-Degree Tour because the singer’s contrariness at a meeting with Apple’s Steve Jobs, killed their deal. Former producer and Beats Music honcho Jimmy Iovine said that working with the Irish band had been such an exhausting experience that he would never do it again. A hint at the whys and wherefores came from American Recordings exec and producer Rick Rubin, whose efforts with the group led to no finished products. Rubin remembered telling them that they add the equivalent of sonic smoke and mirrors “to disguise the fact that you don’t have a song.” The stories accumulated to suggest a “group mind,” which leads U2 to second-guess their work and assume that their success is the result of the standards set by an active group dynamic. This manifests itself in paranoia if they even seem to be phoning it in. Then too, with a history of forty years, U2’s membership apparently feels they can upbraid each other with impunity. * Rolling Stone’s year-end issue listed Songs of Innocence as its Album of the Year. It recalled certain magazine insiders’ experiences with publisher Jann Wenner’s “love” of hit records and certain artists— going so far as to personally pen positive reviews to rebut trashings of records by his own staff. In this case, it raised the question, is an album a hit if it is an event without accompanying sales? * Meanwhile, on 9/20/14, the California Coastal Commission gave approval to U2 guitarist the Edge’s plan to construct five ocean front homes in Malibu. It was the conclusion of an eight-year legal fight. There was no indication as to what would be done with the finished residences.

She Lives Off Dead Beatles: * Yoko Ono provided the introduction to the book The Topless Cellist: The Improbable Life of Charlotte Moorman-Joan Rothfuss (MIT Press: Cambridge, MA, 2014). Moorman was a colleague of Ono’s in the Sixties Fluxus movement whose preferred mode of performance art involved playing the cello in as little clothing as the law allowed—often a translucent plastic poncho. Moorman also espoused a populist art, which once won her a G-rated appearance on the syndicated television talk show hosted by Mike Douglas.

Madonna—Equal Opportunity Offender: * Madonna apologized for a 1/8/14 Instagram photo caption of her teenaged son containing the N-word pleading, “It was not meant as a racial slur. I am not a racist…. It was all about intention.” * On the 1/26/14 Grammy Awards telecast, Madonna took the stage with Macklemore and Lewis to perform their song “Same Love” while heterosexual and homosexual couples had a mass wedding in the live audience. * Meeting Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina of the Pussy Riot collective at the 2/5/14 Amnesty International concert at the Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn, Madge told the duo, “Thanks for making ‘pussy’ a sayable word in my household. My eight-year-old says it all the time.” * Photos of Madonna at the taping of a Miley Cyrus episode of MTV’s Unplugged showed her sporting novelty store-grade fake “hillbilly teeth.” * Madonna contacted the offices of HBO cable series Game of Thrones and asked to borrow the costume of character Daenerys Targaryen. Surprisingly, the show complied, allowing the singer to wear the attire as part of the celebratory observances of the Jewish holiday Purim. (The entertainer is not Jewish, but identifies with the religion through her devotion to the mystical traditions of the Kabbalah.) * A photo on Instagram in late March 2014 showed Madge in a pose evocative of the cover of the 1978 album Easter-Patti Smith and its prominent display of armpit hair. This raised the question from more than one quipster if Madonna dyed that hair too.

Bob Marley Inc.: * An 11/18/14 announcement revealed that the estate of reggae giant Bob Marley had signed a deal with Privateer Holdings to use the performer’s image to help market a global brand of marijuana to be called Marley Natural. Privateer is one of the biggest names in medial marijuana in Canada, where the drug is legal. Marley Natural will also market a brand of topical crèmes infused with the herb. * Summer 2014 saw the launch of Marley Apparel, designed by Bob’s daughter Cedella. Fabrics used include cotton and hemp. (Surprise cubed!)

The Story So Far: Both Forbes and USA Today reported in October 2014 that the National Football League wants musical acts to pay for the privilege of performing in the halftime show at the annual Super Bowl. The NFL either wants money upfront or a cut of future tour income. For fans old enough to remember halftime entertainment from the likes of everyone from morbidly obese jazz trumpeter Maynard Ferguson to “moral rearmament” troupe Up With People, the wish may be for the music business to tell the NFL to piss up a rope. If money is that big an issue to the NFL, whose business model keeps its profitability a secret (an estimated $7 billion-plus), they can simply fill up the time with a fifteen-minute commercial slot. Split into segments or sold as one mini-infomercial block to one corporation in need of a major image fix (BP anyone?), the only barricade might be a contract between the NFL and the various networks that makes the sale of commercial time the sole province of those broadcasters.

Lyrics to Live By: Woke up this morning from a long night in a storm. Looked up this morning saw the roses full of thorns Mountains are falling they don’t have nowhere to go The ocean’s a diamond that only shines when you’re alone. --“Morning”- Beck

I would listen to the radio if I liked songs produced By 40-year-olds in high-tech studios --Spoon Out My Eyeballs”- Benjamin Booker

I come from the land of slaves. Let’s go Redskins! Let’s go Braves! --“Real Thing”- Tune Yards

We want something more, not just nasty and bitter. We want something real, not just Facebook and Twitter --“Scare Away the Dark”- Passenger

There’s a plan to abandon the planet One VIP at a time --“Cannons”- Kaiser Chiefs

The point of forgiving is so you forget that being forgiven is all in your mind. The point of forgetting is so you connect. The purpose of living is harder to find. --“Animal of One”- the Fresh and Onlys

Don’t send me an email! Send me a female! --“Old School”- Elvin Bishop

Being with you kills my IQ. --“Number One Crush”- the Vaselines

How I wish somebody’d make these voices go away. Seems they’re always talkin’, but they don’t have much to say. A picture’s worth a thousand words, but a word ain’t worth a dime. And we all know they’ll go on talkin’ ‘til the end of time. --“Voices- Sturgill Simpson

NOT A REISSUE

Riding Your Way: The Lost Transcriptions for Tiffany Music (1946-1947)-Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys (Real Gone Music) The Tiffany transcription discs, originally intended for radio broadcast at the time of their recording, capture the foremost name in Western Swing music in a snapshot of his live act. The 50 tracks on this 2-CD set remained undiscovered at the time of the original vinyl appearance of the Tiffany Company’s sides in the Eighties. For Bob Wills completists they are a must and would serve as a good entry point for those unfamiliar with this country music innovator.

The Garden Spot Program, 1950-Hank Williams (Omnivore) The spigot has definitely been left open for previously unheard performances by the country legend. Recorded in Creston, Iowa, these 24 songs revisit the intimacy of Williams’ other radio shows with their between-songs banter and revelatory moments.

The Basement Tapes-Bob Dylan and the Band (Sony Legacy) The latest entry in Sony’s “Bootleg” series of Dylan archival material recasts the 1975 Columbia double LP issued under this title, which Band guitarist Robbie Robertson polished for release. This is the original “music from Big Pink,” the site of a basement rehearsal space used for the recording of demos and band practice. The present iteration is available as either a 2-CD undoctored version to match the track list of that Seventies record or a 6-CD boxed set containing the 138 surviving tracks. Future classics next to half-baked attempts and covers reveal the obvious—Dylan screwing around is more interesting than most acts’ best efforts.

RECENT DISCOVERIES

The Only Truth-Morley Grey (Sundazed) This Ohio power trio prove exemplary of the self-released, post-underground rock bands hanging out their own label shingles in the absence of record industry interest in the early Seventies. In addition to the complete Truth album, there are singles and unissued tracks. One highlight is the seventeen-minute title cut, which takes the listener on a figurative journey in the way music of that period often did.

Parish Hall-Parish Hall (Pilot) Originally released on the Fantasy label in 1970, the music of this San Francisco-area power trio fell through the cracks. (Maybe label execs were too busy promoting the successive hits of their A-list band, Creedence Clearwater Revival, though the lame cover art of the original release may have been a factor.) Gary Wagner is a forgotten guitar hero, with an ability to intensify a song’s momentum. He does it, not by flashy chops, but by judicious use of distortion and an arranger’s sense of where to put it. Blues-rooted songs, a hallmark of many of the San Francisco bands, are the prevailing style on display here.

Fairyport-Wigwam (Siboney) 2003 reissue of a 1971 album on Finland’s Love Records by progressive rockers from that country. Their flair for the early stylings of Traffic mark these gentleman as not-your-typical taciturn noodlers, though the live track “Rave-Up for the Roadies” clocks in at 17:20. They have a yen for the tonal colors of left field woodwinds such as the bassoon, oboe and bass clarinet—putting them one sackbut away from Gryphon territory. (Sorry, prog rock humor.) British expatriate Jim Pembroke’s English language vocals remove one roadblock to listener enjoyment and guest solos from Finnish guitar god Jukka Tolonen help seal the deal.

TOP TWENTY

1. SUN STRUCTURES-Temples 2. FOR THOSE RECENTLY FOUND INNOCENT-White Fence 3. SOLO ACOUSTIC VOL. EIGHT-Sir Richard Bishop 4. THE SOUL OF ALL NATURAL THINGS-Linda Perhacs 5. COMMUNE-Goat 6. MORNING PHASE-Beck 7. ANOTHER GENERATION OF SLAVES-Greg Ashley 8. META MODERN SOUNDS IN COUNTRY AND WESTERN MUSIC-Sturgill Simpson 9. MANIPULATOR-Ty Segall 10. V FOR VASELINES-the Vaselines 11. ALL KINDS OF YOU-Ryley Walker 12. HELD IN SPLENDOR-Quilt 13. LOST IN THE DREAM-the War on Drugs 14. SPIN-O-RAMA-the Primitives 15. BRILL BRUISERS-the New Pornographers 16. SUNBATHING ANIMAL-Parquet Courts 17. SUPERNOVA-Ray LaMontagne 18. LOUSY WITH SYLVANBRIAR- Of Montreal 19. …AND STAR POWER-Foxygen 20. MODERN VICES-Modern Vices

Bubbling Under: TROUBLE-Hospitality

CAPSULE REVIEWS

1. SUN STRUCTURES-Temples (Fat Possum Records) Temples frontman/songwriter/producer James Bagshaw makes records, not albums—a distinction worth explaining. Most bands use the recording studio to capture their repertoire at a moment in time. Temples draws its inspiration from late Sixties psychedelic pop, the product of an era during which making a stellar single enabled a band to make an album. For the one-hit wonder, it created a unique fracture in the pop continuum. (I once told someone who claimed “Liar Liar”-the Castaways was not a good song, “Yes, but it’s a great record.”) Here, this emphasis on the song creates its own type of flow through a sense of renewal with each track. Temples restores forgotten violations of formula from a time when the search for something to dramatically distinguish one radio hit from another was its own justification. Unlike most albums on this list, the high quality of each of these tracks is uniformly excellent.

2. FOR THOSE RECENTLY FOUND INNOCENT-White Fence (Drag City) Tim Presley’s long break from Darker My Love continues, as does his association with West Coast garage rock workaholic Ty Segall. Previous White Fence releases (including a self-titled 2011 Jukebox Awards Top Twenty entry) were ramshackle home recording affairs, but capturing the material in a proper studio for this album appears to have elevated Presley’s game. In the way the second Darker My Love album (2008 Jukebox Awards #1) revisited the rave rock of early Nineties Britain, the present effort turns to Mod and Freakbeat sounds of the last half of the Sixties, replete with English accents on the vocals. Enjoyable more for its concept than its execution, this effort is a “grower,” though not at the level of the similarly Anglophilic Better Won’t Make Your Life Better-the Lilys (1996 Jukebox Awards Top Twenty). If you know and love “Painter Man”-the Creation, you will enjoy the sonic allusion during “Paranoid Beat” here.

3. SOLO ACOUSTIC VOL. EIGHT-Sir Richard Bishop (Vin du Select Qualite Records) The former Sun City Girls guitarist improvises three extended instrumental pieces on a borrowed instrument. Like much impromptu music, it is a bit of a roll of the dice and lacks the overarching plan of the typical album. That said, this recording has its own rewards by showcasing the more musical half of his stage personality. For his humorous and edgy song material, catch his live act.

4. THE SOUL OF ALL NATURAL THINGS-Linda Perhacs (Asthmatic Kitty Records) A singer-songwriter, whose 1970 LP Parallelograms built a cult following over the years, Perhacs declined a tour to promote the album and began a career as a dental hygenist . Her combination of female solo act with production techniques borrowed from electronic music came to influence latter-day, folk-inspired weirdoes such as Devendra Banhart and Sufjan Stevens. Asthmatic Kitty is Stevens’ label and his beginnings in the Christian music ghetto find a link in Ms. Perhacs’ penchant for cosmic spirituality and a wish for a restoration of values she sees stemming from the presence of God in the natural world. It should be noted that Perhacs soft-peddles these sentiments and that they are achieved with sympathetic backing and moving vocal harmonies, creating a vibe that may make you want to stop and smell the roses. Quite a comeback.

5. COMMUNE-Goat (Sub Pop) It depends on how you pronounce that title and where you place the accent, in case you did not notice. Swedish collective of costumed ethnic rockers raise a tribal ruckus. Strident gal vocals do the high priestess bit. (I await a foldout photo spread in masked rocker-centric fanzine Rocktober any day now.) A borrowed description seems apt: the Funkadelic of World Beat. And without the kiddie music influence of that Seventies band. To some it might seem a put-on, but the liberal addition of fuzz guitar and wah-wah carries the day. These particular hippies will not go quietly.

6. MORNING PHASE-Beck (Capitol) A new album and new label, following a six-year career gap due to a back injury sustained during a video shoot, sees the performer revisiting the downbeat stylings of his 2002 Sea Change. Some see that record as Beck’s best, but I’m an Odelay man (1996 Jukebox Awards #1). The leisurely pace and meditative vibe will not be enough for fans of the psychedelicized hip-hop that this artist is so good at delivering. Phase is a different strain of adult pop, competently executed without many surprises. Sunday afternoon music for a week having seven days.

7. ANOTHER GENERATION OF SLAVES-Greg Ashley (Trouble in Mind) A previous visitor to the Top Twenty in recent years, the former singer of Gris Gris offers a low key blend of pre-Seventies solo folk with hints of the old timey feel of certain Lovin’ Spoonful album tracks. There is also a more-than-passing resemblance to those duet performances on the third Velvet Underground album. Ashley’s approach is casually experimental and shows a willingness to see if he can get away with pushing the envelope without compromising the material, including singing at the edge of his range. And that title is worthy of the Roman historian Tacitus.

8. META MODERN SOUNDS IN COUNTRY AND WESTERN MUSIC-Sturgill Simpson (High Top Mountain Records/Thirty Tigers) Lauded in the press (I suspect by writers tired of current country music and those who do not listen to much older country music), Simpson represents a reimagining of the Seventies Outlaw movement along with the cosmic cowboy country of Jerry Jeff Walker and Doug Sahm. Or he could be considered the Zen Buddhist counterpart to Jimmie Dale Gilmore’s stoner Sufi. The eccentric perspective of the lyrics is underserved by the production with its muffled drums and erratic mix on the vocals. There is more promise here than payoff, but an audience is already embracing Simpson’s less-calculated take on the genre.

9. MANIPULATOR-Ty Segall (Drag City) Like the line about the monkey given a typewriter and enough time, the prolific home studio rat/performer/collaborator has come up with something this writer finds a little more substantial than his previous fare. Segall is said to have taken more time with this record and availed himself of a proper recording studio this time out. His signature garage retroisms are here, but combined with hints of T. Rex, Bowie and fellow travelers of the glam rock Seventies. Surprisingly, the double-LP length does not cause the record to wear out its welcome. Distorted guitar crankage certainly helps.

10. V FOR VASELINES-the Vaselines (Rosary Music) Scottish band, which was a turntable favorite in the Kurt Cobain household back in the day, issue new sides following a reunion tour. The material recalls similar bands during the group’s heyday such as Talulah Gosh and the Pastels. Offering an ingratiating uptempo style that is cheery in its bitterness, they sing mostly about sex and busted romance. Fans of recent Jukebox Awards Top Twenty denizens Veronica Falls may find kindred spirits here.

11. ALL KINDS OF YOU-Ryley Walker (Tompkins Square) Young Chicago performer’s initial forays as a solo act were rooted in the American Primitive guitar instrumental stylings of John Fahey and his followers. Walker has since assembled a band and now trafficks in a trippy late Sixties vibe which features his vocals and contributions from guest musicians. Having seen Mr. Walker perform, his growth as a musician and ability to execute this new direction is richer than the evidence on this album. Here Walker sounds like a guitar major who minors on vocals. There is a halting quality to his phrasing which recalls ill-fated Sixties global fusion music progenitor Pat Kilroy. Or it could be those American Spirit cigarettes mentioned in the liner notes. Still, there are numerous enjoyable moments here and the promise of better things to come. However, free advice is hereby tendered to next time provide the listener with more than 35 minutes of music for their hard-earned money.

12. HELD IN SPLENDOR-Quilt (Kemado/Mexican Summer) Opener “Arctic Shark” sets the listener up to expect the happening wyrd folk sound from a decade back. Instead, the Boston trio presents a folk rock vibe with plenty of electric twelve-string guitar. Liner note shout-outs to Ram Dass, Satchadananda, Alan Watts and other cosmic fellow travelers reflect the psychedelic tinge of the proceedings. The execution is not quite the level of frequent Top Twenty visitors Espers, but Quilt is on the right track. Produced in Brooklyn for the kids.

13. LOST IN THE DREAM-The War on Drugs (Secretly Canadian) This ongoing project of Adam Granduciel is often framed in neo-psychedelic colors, but translates here as an Eighties throwback. Plenty of vintage synthesizer washes and a keyboard riff from Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark” makes an appearance, as does that familiar echoey drum sound. Effects boxes borrowed from old U2 records and a tendency to pause the material for what could be called a “drone break” make for a radio-friendly stealth strategy, I suspect. The guitar work and songwriting bring to mind some of Richard Lloyd’s post-Television solo records, but you will come back for Mr. Granduciel’s vocal phrasing out of middle Dylan and his frequent self-encouragement via a hearty “Woo!”

14. SPIN-O-RAMA-the Primitives (Elefant Spanish import) Too-brief album of new material from comeback Eighties UK rockers. It is a bit of a letdown from the energy of the 2012 Echoes and Rhymes (a Jukebox Awards Top Twenty entry). Still, there is hidden depth here. The tension comes from the hard lessons of adulthood concealed within the group’s Ramones-styled bubblegum as delivered by the fabulous Tracy and the laconically cynical Paul Court. Now if they had only left you wanting more by filling out this release instead of a programme at a little over the length of an EP.

15. BRILL BRUISERS-the New Pornographers (Matador) Not having followed the band that closely since their 2000 debut, catching-up here means revisiting what can be called “the ELO problem.” Glossy production out of the late Seventies British school, excessive use of sequencers (Can we call them “wind-up keyboards?”) and staccato riffing can translate as either one man’s nostalgia or another’s memories of dinosaur rock. The various vocalists, including solo act Neko Case, certainly sell the material. However, one wonders if these songs are about anything other than in- jokes to the band. Then again, I have been fifteen years trying to figure out what a “Letter from an Occupant” is. Incidentally, the album title is a misnomer. This may be pop music, but not the variety made during the early-to-mid- Sixties boom for uptown rhythm and blues in New York. This is as technically precise as a Russian gymnast, but the smile is only there for show.

16. SUNBATHING ANIMAL-Parquet Courts (What’s Your Rupture?/Mom & Pop) A band with an aversion to rhyme schemes finds an apt stylistic foundation for it in the early punk era and acts with a similar preference for testimony/transcripts. Moments here recall Pink Flag-Wire, “Little Johnny Jewel”-Television and Crazy Rhythms-the Feelies. (Did I forget early Devo?) The tempos are usually frantic and singing the words must be a challenge.

17. SUPERNOVA-Ray LaMontagne (RCA) This singer-songwriter, big on adult alternative FM radio formats, is known for his “incredibly beautiful man” vocal stylings. In a change of direction, LaMontagne sought out the production expertise of the workaholic half of duo the Black Keys, Dan Auerbach. Since the Keys purvey a raw garage/blues style, advance word was that this would be an exercise in retro-psychedelia. Not really. Layering on sporadic fuzz guitar and reverb is a start, but the end result rocks insufficiently for this listener. LaMontagne is still making music for the ladies, though why this involves sometimes phrasing like comedian Adam Sandler is a mystery. Not a “Champagne Supernova.”

18. LOUSY WITH SYLVANBRIAR-Of Montreal (Polyvinyl Record Co.) Having fallen off the Of Montreal bandwagon some time back (after bizarre threw whimsy beneath the wheels), checking-in seemed advisable. Reviews claiming this is a country-folk side trip are misleading. Though it tends to use steel guitar and acoustic instrumentation at times, this continues frontman and constant presence Kevin Barnes’ attempts to generate money from wackiness. The lyrics meander with sporadic rhyming abetted by the odd hook in search of a genuine song. “Obsidian Currents” combines early Seventies rhythm and blues with T. Rex glam when it is not shooting for that deracinated production sound of British studio soul of the same period. This is not my kind of eccentricity and frequently annoying in the bargain.

19. …AND STAR POWER-Foxygen (Jagjaguwar) One unfortunate byproduct of the home studio’s ascendancy is the view that offerings of demo quality can be considered finished products by their creators. Foxygen, the duo of Sam France and Jonathan Rado, has received praise for a their flair for musical experimentation having a psychedelic feel, but this often comes off here as a succession of trial runs and rough drafts. The album sprawls over two CDs and there is possibly a good single CD once the dust settles. Some bands get praise because listeners do not understand what they are doing, but give them the benefit of the doubt. Somehow weirder translates as better. Notably, when Foxygen needs to crank up the reading on the oddball meter, they call upon Of Montreal (see above) and the Flaming Lips. However, the record gets bumped up a notch for an assumed allusion to comedian Dom Irrera’s “ink pen” joke.

20. MODERN VICES-Modern Vices (Autumn Tone) This Chicago group sounds like the collision of post-punk and early gothic musical styles in a quadrant once typified by Bauhaus, especially those Peter Murphyesque vocals. The cut “Smoke Rings” veers into psychobilly, that brief mirage of glam nostalgia sketched in eyeliner. By the end of the album, all I could think of was the Rock-A-Teens (the late Nineties Georgia band, not the “Woo-Hoo” Fifties one-hit wonders).

Bubbling Under: TROUBLE-Hospitality (Merge) Abstract guitar and non-linear solos bring to mind Television, but it is more accurately an outgrowth of vocalist Amber Papini’s reflections on casual relationships and alienation. Those fearing more “angry women” stuff need not worry, but those wanting more than a midtempo pace should look elsewhere. “Sunship” brings to mind the mid-Nineties orchestral pop of Eric Matthews. Ms. Papini sings a great deal like the epitome of the Sixties talented amateur, Astrud Gilberto of “The Girl from Ipanema.” And “Last Words” has a guitar solo out of the Lindsey Buckingham school.