Category: You Have Got to Check This Out

Song composed by Gunnar Madsen and Richard Greene
Performed by The Bobs

One of the greatest concerts I have been privileged to attend was a day long folk festival on the outskirts of Boston some twenty five years ago. Thinking back on the list of performers, I think they were using the looser definition of folk music that extended the boundaries well beyond what one might have heard in Greenwich Village in the early sixties. Each performer took to the main stage starting in late morning. Many also circulated through two smaller tents during the course of the afternoon. As with all such scheduling, the choices were difficult, but we made it to the small tent for what may well be the most incredible musical confluence that I have experienced. The Bobs came out and introduced their new friends, Mahlatini and the Mahotella Queens. Amazing artists separately, they then proceeded to work out an improvisation that turned into a riff on the music of the Who and then ventured off into realms undiscovered. Honestly, the content is gone from memory, but watching the members of each group defy their inability to find a shared spoken language and still create beautiful music… the communication beyond words.

Finally though, The Bobs were alone on the stage as Mahlatini and the Mahotella Queens had places to be. Gunnar Bob took the small audience into their confidence and announced that he was leaving the group, but that they already had new member Joe Bob on board (no real surprise since he was standing right there). Then Gunnar introduced this new song that he had written after seeing Hare Krishna walk past his house one morning.

Few groups have a backlog as amazing as The Bobs, including Grammys, cover tunes, originals, and stunning arrangements. So, why this song? I love virtually everything they have done, but there is something about that mix of cynicism and empathy that I sense here that is a rarity in all art forms. Dramas succeed sometimes, but songs are so brief, so gone in a moment. Clearly, the Krishna in the song is messing up on the expected vow of poverty, but isn’t poverty our expectation and not necessarily his? Even the Janet mentioned in the song- well, we thought he was celibate. Perhaps he still is. Once again, the song is about expectations as much as human failings. Why must Krishna be only one thing? Art that gives us a minute or an hour to see ourselves in the other, be it that joy of driving the fast car or meditating quietly in the corner- that is art that can be remembered three decades later.

Now, A Capella is a beautiful thing, but there is nothing like the experience of hearing the walls shake from a single bass voice- the story of Jericho seems it might be plausible in that moment. The Bobs have just such a bass in Richard Bob Greene. For a bonus for those aficionados of a little humor in their music, Greene occasionally produces other groups- check out Davinci’s Notebook. The album that he worked on with them is head and shoulders above much of the rest of the competition.

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. 284 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out are released regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry are posted irregularly. Notifications are posted on Facebook which you can receive by friending or following Craig.

Movie directed by Jafar Panahi

The Magnificent Ambersons begins with one of the original famous continuous shots, where the editor never cuts. Obviously, this puts tremendous pressure on the cast and crew to get everything right, or at least what the director (and producer and whoever else gets a say) deems close enough. The Russian Ark carries the idea of the continuous shot to an extreme by encompassing the entire film in a single take. The Five Obstructions places a series of, well, restrictions on the making of a film. The latter two examples seem to believe that art can be made better by increasing the level of difficulty. Perhaps that is so, but the end results are as much about the process as about the end result. Much of modern art comments on the making of art, but the works often become a gimmick. I like gimmicks, but they connect to my brain and not my heart.

Taxi is most definitely dealing with innumerable obstructions, none of which were imposed by one artist on another, or the artist on his own work. Panahi drives a taxi around Tehran and the film chronicles his interactions with his passengers, who run the gamut from desperate old ladies to his young niece. An adventure or two occurs, but pretty much that covers it.

My paternal grandmother was responsible for some of the great adventures of my tiniest childhood. We lived in the Midwest in the suburbs where we rode everywhere in cars. When we visited the extended family back on the East Coast, I was occasionally left with my grandmother while my parents and older brothers pursued activities for which I was deemed ill suited. On one of those dates, my grandma decided that we should have an outing to that pantheon of childhood delights: the five and dime store. They had plastic army men and other penny delights in bins and didn’t hassle you for pawing through them. Then there was the lunch counter, where the soda pop tasted better than real life. To get there, this sainted woman hailed a cab. I had never ridden in a cab, which I announced to everyone within earshot. It was fantastic- you sat in the back and told someone where you wanted to go. Then they drove however they wanted along roads that looked different through their windows and suddenly you were at your destination. I have never gotten over that little bit of joy when I enter a cab, an experience I have enjoyed in big cities where they do drive like maniacs, but the sightseeing alone…

So, I liked just peering out the windows in Panahi’s Taxi. You can imagine what an accomplishment it was to get me to focus on the activities within the vehicle. The lingering mystery of how Panahi obtained such fantastic performances from his cast haunts the Internet surfer in me. On top of the magic of making the cab seem large as life, he accomplishes the miracle of making you forget how oppressive the regime is that forced these obstructions on him, until neither the filmmaker or the viewer is able to maintain the illusion.

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. 285 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out are released regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry are posted irregularly. Notifications are posted on Facebook which you can receive by friending or following Craig.

Play by August Strindberg

Henrik Ibsen was a mighty good playwright
For someone where there wasn’t much daylight
Scandinavians can be pessimistic
So they needed someone expressionistic
And I don’t mean crazy Edgar Swedenborg
Instead they gave birth to August Strindberg
Who put their ghosts in a dream
That mummy lady was a scream
Would’ve lived longer if you’d had an occasional laugh- ha!
Then you could’ve met your number one fan, Franz Kafka

Doggerel, claptrap, and falderol… Where does the nonsense become wisdom? Late in his life, Strindberg gave birth to expressionism in the theatre, initially using dreams as the guiding structure. At times, A Dream Play reads like a Monty Python sketch with all the riotous wordplay and potential for physical comedy. Then, it jumps to another sequence and we skirt issues of indigents and conflict between the sexes.

Where Strindberg’s art may not be seen on the stage so much anymore, the content of his plays remains a touch point for political discussions, particularly for his apparent misogyny. Throughout his long career, he repeatedly raised concerns about disloyal women and female inferiority. He further complicated easy pigeon-holing by publicly supporting women’s rights in late 19th century Sweden, for which he was prosecuted. So dismayed by the behavior of strict religious leaders, Strindberg went into self-imposed exile. His personal life was convoluted and he clearly was working that out in his writing. In the end, his plays read like someone who never imposed a filter. I am not talking about politics alone, either. No one bogged down in structural rules would have written A Dream Play.

Miss Julie is his most famous work because it appeals to college professors looking for something short that would get most of their students arguing, so it remains a staple to this day. Strindberg had a penchant for the sensational and Miss Julie covers class and sex with a small cast and is bound to pack them in on a cold night. We’ve got a sure profit maker here. Did I mention that it is more intelligent than all those rich woman/poor man stories that have followed in its footsteps?

Easter remains Strindberg’s best play for me. Someone ought to do it in pairing with Merchant of Venice, as it feels like something of a rebuke. The dread that looms over the first two acts is relieved on the titular holiday by the least expected source. Youthful obstinacy ends up providing the roadblock to resolution. Oddly enough, Strindberg keeps setting up villains (notably lawyers) only to humanize them later. He seems far more content to jest than to to destroy. Through all the absurdity, the sadness, the losses, Strindberg’s major characters seem modern and three dimensional if only because he judges everyone as having motivations beyond the obvious (and life is no more absurd than we imagine). The stage thrives on the unexpected turn and Strindberg consistently found new paths.

Apropos of nothing, Strindberg had a talent for painting. Between the marriages, the multitudinous plays, the memoirs, the travel, the novels, the theatre management, and the angst, it is difficult not to feel lazy. Oh, and he posed for Edvard Munch.

Oh, and Strindberg helped drag novels into the modern era with his satirical classic The Red Room, exploring the hypocrisy inherent across human society. The book remains a touchpoint- you can see it providing the backbone for Gentlemen & Gangsters, currently streaming on Netflix.

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. 286 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out are released regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry are posted irregularly. Notifications are posted on Facebook which you can receive by friending or following Craig.