Black Sheep Boy

Song written and performed by Tim Hardin

I must have been around twelve years old when I fell in love. Her name was Brandy. She was a fine girl. I stumbled upon the song on a cassette tape owned by my brother. I probably wore it out rewinding back to the beginning of the song.

I’m sure you have favorite songs that probably found greater favor on a downmarket pop collection than in the history books. Unless you have an unusual fondness for 70s pop music, then you had completely forgotten Looking Glass. You probably also forgot that Exile got their start as a pop band before they went country.

And now you have two songs haunting your thoughts over the next few days. My apologies, but they really could create a decent hook. But that’s the thing- I have not gone six months in the last forty years without thinking about those songs. I’m okay with that.

When I think about Tim Hardin and David Ackles, I feel that same mix of wonder, thrill, and loneliness. I am certain that no one reading this gets me on those pop songs. You might, but more people probably think that I’m a little bit off. They might be right. That’s okay. As an artist, one significant connection justifies a lot of work.

Tim Hardin

is written about with unending praise, which is truly merited. His songs and recordings are truly a thing of joy. But then the rub arises. Most of the people raving about Tim Hardin are writing in books or on critic sites or such. In a lot of ways, they come across as experts in singer/songwriters. You know, the sort of person who can tell you all about the recordings of Joni Mitchell while wondering if you truly appreciate Elton John’s early output. Once again, my apologies. It can be difficult to make a real connection over a work of art that touches us. Critical writing helps us think, but it doesn’t always help us feel. So, I am surprised when a voice reaches out of the darkness and nods their head.

If you go here, then you can hear one of those beautiful moments of connection for me. Down at the bottom of the page, skip ahead to about 4:15 on episode 1, part 1. (If you’ve been following along this blog, then I would give a lot to hear Joe Strummer on Steve Allen’s Meeting of the Minds.)

What a stunning song… Who hasn’t felt like an outcast? The tale of the prodigal son still carries weight wherever it is told. The pairing of that voice with those words… I don’t think it is any accident that Hardin recorded a beautiful ode to Hank Williams on the same album. As much as anyone, I hear the beauty of Hank Williams in Tim Hardin, as well as the edge of tragedy- joy in the face of hard days. Sometimes, I wonder if Hardin was just looking for another person who could connect with him about ole’ Hank.

What’s it all about?

You’ve Got to Check This Out is a blog series about music, words, and all sorts of artistic matters. It started with an explanation. 188 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out release regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry post irregularly. Receive notifications on Facebook by friending or following Craig.

Images may be subject to copyright.

Raising Arizona

Film directed, written, and produced by the Coen brothers

Maybe I was involved in more discussion after 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Last Picture Show. When we saw Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List, and Pulp Fiction all around the same time, we took to stopping for drinks afterwards. But really, the Coen brothers have probably inspired most of my film-related conversations in the last thirty years.

I can’t explain it. The films sometimes walk along the precipice that leads to instant Mystery Science Theater 3000 readiness without actually plummeting. Without exception, they defy personal investment while managing to absorb our hearts and minds. Images sear into our brain- remember the baby on the road in Raising Arizona?

If somebody asked me to point to post-modern Hollywood movie-making, I’d eventually come up with the Coens, after I decided what they meant.

Postmodernism (according to pbs.org): A general and wide-ranging term which is applied to literature, art, philosophy, architecture, fiction, and cultural and literary criticism, among others. Postmodernism is largely a reaction to the assumed certainty of scientific, or objective, efforts to explain reality.
According to . A longer discussion is here.

Anyone willing to use the term is already interested in digging into the meaning below the surface. But that’s the thing. The Coens wear their commentary on their sleeve. They skate through genres and stories practically with a wink and a wave.

And that’s really the art we have now.

If you live anywhere near a television set, a tablet, a computer, a smart phone, a magazine, a newspaper, or a book, you spend ten percent or more of your day actively consuming art. You are an expert. You have chosen to expose yourself to more art in this life than all your ancestors ever had the chance to experience.

Storytellers in time immemorial won over listeners by promising the warmth of the fire and a tale that is new. We might like the repeats of favorites. Yet, we also need something that sets those neurons firing. The Coens are talking to an audience who has seen detectives movies out the wazoo. We have seen gangsters and comedies. We know the story of Ulysses from a hundred different viewpoints.

So, people end up with opinions about Coen movies. Most everybody has favorites and most everybody intensely dislikes some of them. Maybe Hitchcock ran the gamut almost as much, but we have forgiven him his wackiness by now. I think that the effort to chase something new must be inherent in the artist’s makeup. That something may not always be great or even all that good. Missteps are good because they mean that steps are being taken.

What’s it all about?

You’ve Got to Check This Out is a blog series about music, words, and all sorts of artistic matters. It started with an explanation. 189 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out release regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry post irregularly. Receive notifications on Facebook by friending or following Craig.

Images may be subject to copyright.

Vanity Fair

Book by William Makepeace Thackeray

William Makepeace Thackeray- what a marvelous name, eh? So much to think about with him, too- early success, rivalries, settling into comfort, etc. But first- the book!

I finally broke down and read Vanity Fair a few years ago, but it was probably a good thing that I had waited. Maybe I have a tin ear, but the humor might not have worked as well for me when I was younger. Also, I might have lost myself in that collegiate discussion of heroes and anti-heroes.

In short, Amelia Sedley and Becky Sharp are meant to be polar opposites in wit, innate goodness, purity, pride, upbringing, and all those important things to readers in 1847. Amelia is the proper young lady. Becky is the striver, justified by having had to make her own way in the world from a young age. As a rather unreliable narrator, Thackeray vacillates between whether either is much of a heroine and whether the story simply is doing without one. From our vantage point, Becky might have her good points, making her way in the world. Then again, she probably represents everything people fear about feminism.

Early on as a writer,

Thackeray went to a lot of trouble to write books without the sort of protagonists that people expected. His second best known work is Barry Lyndon. If you’ve seen Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation, then you know what I mean when I say that’s another story without a hero.

If nothing else, reading Thackeray is a pleasant reminder that iconoclasts like him were already sick and tired of the standard plots. As much as I love Charles Dickens, I wonder how much Thackeray moved literature forward so that Dickens and Trollope could truly run with it. Speaking of Dickens, he was something of a rival to Dickens. They tended to make rude witticisms at each other’s expense, given the chance.

But let’s move on to the part that should really reach out and grab the modern reader in Vanity Fair. Along the way of the tale, we find ourselves in continental Europe with the British forces fighting the French. I can’t think of any earlier book that so blatantly and darkly satirizes the horror of war. The outcome of battles is pointless. Men expect glory and find fear. Families are routed. The bystanders prey on one another for everything as they run for their lives. Believe me, I could go on. Thackeray does. He was in his mid-30s when he called out his world for the sheer idiocy of waging a war that ended in nothing gained and so much lost.

What’s it all about?

You’ve Got to Check This Out is a blog series about music, words, and all sorts of artistic matters. It started with an explanation. 190 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out release regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry post irregularly. Receive notifications on Facebook by friending or following Craig.

Images may be subject to copyright.