Mystery Achievement

Song written by Chrissie Hynde; performed by The Pretenders

By the time 1979 rolled around, it was clear that I was not going to be a musician. I was much more wired to write for Rolling Stone magazine than to ever be featured in it. Perhaps it was that tendency to ignore the melodic line or that inability to keep a beat… We will never know…

But I loved the music that filled the air. I absorbed everything that people played on the radio or on the stereo. From the Who to Bachman-Turner Overdrive, the Guess Who to the Archies, from… ohh, it is just fun to reel off names. Yet, every one of them predated that moment. And we all have that moment in our early teens where we want to synchronize with the culture so that something in the wider world is ours.

Devo and the Talking Heads were just a little odd. And I was a year or two away from punk. Let’s leave it at I was a bit behind on the current cool thing. Some of that was geography, but also inclination. I was in a period of deep fondness for rock and roll. Like all teen phases, it probably lasted months or weeks, but it mattered at the time.

So, I was ripe for the birth of the greatest rock band of the time.

Perhaps Blondie

could make an argument here, but they were too New York for me. Chrissy Hynde was from Akron, for heaven’s sake. Maybe there was hope for a kid from Youngstown. I had never heard anything so incredible as their first album. I figured out how much I liked the Kinks because the Pretenders covered Stop Your Sobbing and I realized that sentiment wasn’t just crap because of Kid. And girls were all right as people because Chrissy Hynde was a person that maybe I would want to talk to. She seemed angry, like a lot of girls that I knew, but she also had something to say. Maybe angry people had more to them below the surface.

Then it all went to hell in a handbag. Half the band died much too young. Jimi Hendrix and all the rest of tragic rock deaths were old news by the time I learned about them. Or they happened to ancient people like Elvis (that’s a perspective that changes, ain’t it?). But this was bad news on a massive scale happening now to people close enough in age. Talk about a loss of innocence. I lost a lot of patience with friends who made casual remarks about suicide.

I still remember the review when 2000 Miles was released. It said something like Hynde was really learning how to sing. Now, I’ve always been a little too close on The Pretenders to really comment on that. But I learned another lesson- I’m probably not going to be much of a music critic. I can live with that.

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. 155 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.

3 Godfathers

Movie directed by John Ford; written by Laurence Stallings, Frank S. Nugent and Peter B. Kyne

Genre is not plot, though you might think otherwise considering how we dismiss certain works of art out of hand. Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Star Wars couldn’t be more different, but we’re happy to say, “Oy, not another sci-fi flick.” We know what the tropes are and dismiss it out of hand. Whether it’s a costume drama or a thriller, if we’re not in the mood, it isn’t going to fly.

More than that, we know people, perhaps even have friends, who refuse to indulge in some particular genre of entertainment. “I never do horror.” Most of us learn not to indulge in the follow-up discussion about their reasons. I have poked that bear before and it leads nowhere.

The flip side of the coin is the aficionado. “Of course, Sean Connery is the ideal Bond, but if you want a truly great spy film then you need to watch Carlos. Some might say it’s not a spy film, but more a straight thriller. I would have to disagree and here’s why…” There’s nothing quite like it to put you right off a genre for a month or two.

I was raised by a lover of Westerns, which probably should have pointed me away from them, but my Dad was not much of a proselytizer. He liked what he liked and you were welcome to join him or do something else. On top of that, before cable television, you watched whatever was on the idiot box with a fascinating choice between PBS talking heads, Mannix, Happy Days, and Gunsmoke. Sometimes the Western won.

But it takes

some time on your own to discern quality from the alternative. Along the way, you develop prejudices: Audie Murphy movies can feel a little odd; John Wayne sure was in a lot of stuff; any gunfight that involves a shot villain plummeting from at least two stories is a winner- bonus points for bouncing off stuff on the way down.

So, it’s interesting to visit old movies that were mostly unavailable in those formative years. That cultivated affinity for Westerns never left, but Hollywood stopped making so many. That means a regular dipping into the classics, sometimes to the dismay of those who had other plans for viewing.

No director stands above John Ford and few of his films offered as much opportunity to portray his beloved outdoors quite like 3 Godfathers. Other movies have made a hash of the story of three men on their own with one or more child, but nothing has ever succeeded at making such brilliant drama. Genre is setting, not plot. Here, that setting allows the story to sear us with the power of the desert. This is a Western because of the time and place and set dressing, but no description of genre can prepare you for the plot. If you have seen other settings of similar tales, then you don’t appreciate what that one change can do, especially in the hands of a master.

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. 156 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.

Waking the Moon

Book written by Elizabeth Hand

It seems longer ago, but it must have been 1994. We were vacationing in Toronto, seeing the sights easily reached by the downtown subway. Shopping meant Queen Street West for us. You didn’t have to go far for it to get funky back then. Nowadays, things feel a little more foodie and upscale, though I probably just miss old favorites.

After searching the telephone book in the hotel room (ask someone older if those words made no sense), I knew that we were in a city filled with bookstores. Even more miraculous, at least one specialized in science fiction: Bakka Phoenix on Queen Street West. This was when the science fiction shelves at Borders were a revelation, so a whole store… “My God, it’s full of stars.”

I don’t remember the time, but we were alone with the only clerk on duty. He approached and asked about our interests. I must have looked lost. As if in a library, I mentioned a fondness for Howard Waldrop and Jonathan Carroll. I may have mentioned that they did not publish frequently enough for my desires.

The clerk appeared pleased with my query. My tastes presented a challenge while also matching his own refined interests. He had some thoughts and led me around the shop. Pausing here and there, he tugged a book off the shelves, creating a pile in the middle of the store.

He vastly overestimated our finances as well as what we could carry. To be honest, he selected a lot of dense prose and I was not totally against escapism. But, hey, you make somebody work for the sale like that and you want to live up to their expectations.

One book from that excursion remains with me. You can see the copy pictured here.

I devoured that book.

Even after my exposure to Carroll and others, Hand made me reconsider the genre that had saved me. Her book moved me along the path to being a more thoughtful and better person.

So, of course, I wanted more. Naturally, not being in Toronto, I couldn’t find any more books by Elizabeth hand. I didn’t even have a good way to find out how many books by her existed. But… we had family in Boston and reason to visit there.

Cambridge was home to Pandemonium Books (at least I think that was their name). Elizabeth Hand had just visited the shop for a signing when we made our visit. But… there were more books!

We’ve all heard a hundred old guys talk about the good old days and I can’t pretend that I would not have been so much happier with Amazon when I was younger. The virtual shelves are worthy of Jorge Luis Borges, far outshining the paperback exchanges that I most often visited.

But I can’t help thinking of that nameless clerk in Toronto who spent a few minutes escorting me around his shop. More than anything, he gave me a sense of community. He passed books to me and we weighed them together.

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. 157 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.