I'm at Terra's house, but she's not here, man. She's in Mexico, playing to great acclaim with Drew Jurecka and Jesse Barksdale. So I'm mentally preparing to represent the Hogtown Syncopators at our regular Wednesday gig as a duo. Just me and James. I don't mind so much. James and I have this zzzt-zzzt chemistry thing when we play together. He busts out the Scott LaFaro melodic jazz bass vibe and I kind of go with it. We listen to each other and play off each other a lot.
I went with Katherine to the Lexiconjury poetry reading/extravaganza/pissup at Bar Italia. I was flummoxed as usual by my lack of literary graces but I did talk to some cool people, and briefly met Carl Wilson, he of Zoilus and other erudite rock crit leanings. He's writing a book about a Celine Dion album at the moment, and I've been thinking about "bad music" as a genre lately, so his work is of interest to me. I'll be watching for that book in print.
Why don't you stop what you're doing right now and watch Jimi Hendrix play "The Wind Cries Mary" on Sweden TV? Hmmm?
I'm doing alright, if a little too busy for my liking right now. I still haven't been able to get back into guitar practicing, and when I take a break from dissertation writing it's usually Playstation. The writing/revision is coming along very well. I put the slash there because I'm doing a tremendous amount of new research and writing for this revision of the first three chapters. I've completely rewritten Chapter Two, the literature survey, from scratch, and I've added a chapter which is a pretty detailed history of historically oriented rock and roll writing up to 1976. The goal is to have the first three chapters in to my advisors by March 1, and the rest by April 1. Defend in May and I'm OUTTA THERE. I think it's going to be pretty good, too. The lukewarm reception of my first draft has lit a little fire under me and I'm motivated to make it good.
And then what? Everybody asks me if I'll be applying for professor jobs in the fall. I'm not so sure. I really like playing this much music and I'd like to keep that up, maybe in tandem with some contract teaching. I would consider a 9-5 job if it was creative enough. In the meantime I might do some temp work to cover expenses once the TA money stops coming in. I'm a fine typist, after all of these years of graduate school. And I shuffle papers with aplomb.

np: fridge noise

I'm a bad bad blogger, because I barely blog. I do write, but just not for you so much. So here is some of what I wrote today. It's a bit of my dissertation.


The first press notices that dealt with rock and roll were, as would be expected, primary descriptions of current developments. Nonetheless, early writing on rock and roll did sometimes place this new phenomenon, threatening as it seemed to be, in a historical context.
The earliest newspaper articles about rock and roll did not generally discuss it as music, but rather as the context for youth gatherings. The New York Times, in its first mention of this new music, reported a ban on rock and roll teenage dance parties in Bridgeport, Connecticut on March 25, 1955 (n.a. 1955). Similar bans in New Jersey and Newport, Rhode Island were also reported (n.a. 1956b; n.a. 1956c). Dr. Francis J. Braceland famously called rock and roll a “communicable disease”, commenting on disturbances at a theatre in Hartford, Connecticut that led to eleven arrests (n.a. 1956). He did not mention the music, other than to call it “cannibalistic and tribalistic” (n.a. 1956). Forty-eight hours later, an article in the Times on Asa Carter’s campaign to ban rock and roll records from jukeboxes in North Alabama did refer obliquely to the African-American provenence of this “new rhythm” (n.a. 1956a). This is the earliest notice that I have seen that connects rock and roll stylistically to a rhythmic quality, a connection that would be repeated many times over the ensuing years. Carter’s comments were themselves historicized a month later by Times writer Howard Taubman, who compared Carter’s complaints of rock and roll’s “infiltration” of white teenagers to similar accusations in Nazi Germany and Communist Russia (Taubman 1956). Most interesting is the way that Taubman distances himself from Carter’s pronouncements, placing the rejection of rock and roll on racial criteria as an artifact of Southern racism, and commenting admiringly on the contributions of African-Americans to jazz.
Some commentators placed rock and roll in a historical context with earlier styles, making comparisons both favourable and unfavourable. In a 1955 interview with Paul Whiteman, the 65-year old bandleader responded to charges that rock and roll lyrics were negatively influencing youth. “After all, they’re very mild compared with the words in some of the old blues numbers – the sort of things Bessie Smith used to sing” (Shanley 1955: X9). An unnamed official of a group of British youth clubs, conflating rock and roll with its associated dance styles, commented that “rock ‘n’ roll did not seem any more dangerous to her than the ‘Charleston’ she had seen her brothers and sisters doing”(Ronan 1956). Alan Freed made the most explicit historicization of early rock and roll discourse when he argued in 1957 that “rock ‘n’ roll is really swing with a modern name. It began on the levees and plantations, took in folk songs, and features blues and rhythm. It’s the rhythm that gets the kids. They are starved for music they can dance to, after all those years of crooners” (Asbury 1957:1). In the same front-page New York Times article, amidst extensive reporting on a mob scene outside a Freed-presented rock and roll revue at the Paramount Theatre in Times Square, the author cited “experts” in describing rock and roll as “essentially a rolling two-beat rhythm with the accent coming on every second beat” (ibid.). This conspicuously musicological description, brief as it is, stands out as highly unusual in early accounts of rock and roll in the popular press. It also reinforces the prevalence of the contemporary idea of rock and roll as primarily rhythmic in its difference from other popular styles.
Other writers used a historical context to argue for rock and roll’s derivative nature; Jack Gould, in excoriating television producers for giving Elvis Presley a public forum, dismissively summarized Presley’s stage movements as “a routine that has always existed on the fringe of show business; in his gyrating figure and suggestive gestures the teen-agers have found something that for the moment seems exciting or important” (Gould 1956).
An important thread of 1950s press discourse on rock and roll, rarely mentioned in the recent surveys of this writing that fixate on the hysterical backlash (i.e. Szatmary 2004, Martin and Segrave 1994), is the interest in rock and roll as distinctly American music, and its effects on listeners in foreign countries, especially those in the Soviet bloc. Several articles recount the reactions of authorities in Russia, Cuba, Poland, Egypt, and West Germany to the spread of rock and roll (Salisbury 1956; n.a. 1957; n.a. 1957a; Caruthers 1957; n.a. 1957b). Riots occasioned by showings of “Rock Around The Clock” in Britain also found press coverage (Ronan 1956).
By late 1957, the death knell of rock and roll was already being sounded, even as discussion of this suddenly popular style became increasingly sophisticated. John S. Wilson, jazz and pop critic for the New York Times, heralded a return to balladry on the pop charts. “For the shattered ears of oppressed American parents”, he wrote, “surcease may be at hand”. But he followed this pronouncement with a brief history of popular music from the development of the microphone in the middle 1920s to the advent of rock and roll. Wilson’s survey may be the first truly historical writing about rock and roll to be published.
Wilson sees 1948 as the beginning of the decline of quality in popular music, with the incursion of country and western songwriters into the pop field, followed by the “gimmicky” productions of Mitch Miller (Wilson cites a multitracked Patti Page duetting with herself on “Tennessee Waltz” and Frankie Laine’s whipcrack sound effects on “Mule Train”). The “gimmick searchers” next stumble upon “the basic beat and lightheartedly bawdy lyrics of Rhythm and Blues, a specialized subsidiary channel of popular music aimed primarily at the Negro market”(Wilson 1957: 28), and this music becomes rock and roll. Wilson identifies the rock and roll audience as the “children who began life in the unsettled war and post-war years” – the baby boomers. After a brief dominance by Bill Haley and the Comets, the “current monarch of rock ‘n’ roll”, Elvis Presley, takes over. At that point Wilson’s historical narrative ends, and he begins to analyze the rock and roll trend, which he blames on the falling median age of the most influential sector of the listening audience and a self-perpetuating cycle of rock and roll marketing occasioned by the national urge towards conformity (ibid.).

Two things:
1. I had a great weekend with the girls in Toronto
2. I got a new cell phone, with a camera.

I've been watching the DVD of The Kids Are Alright, the late 70s (?) documentary about the Who. I kind of missed the Who in my tour of 60s rock growing up. My sister didn't listen to them, and that contributed, but she didn't listen to Dylan or the Beatles either, and I found them. I learned about music from the LPs that DD's boyfriends would lend to her, and she would leave around the family stereo. So the only Who album that I heard was the one with "Squeezebox" on it, which I gather is quite late. I wasn't completely transported, and it always seemed to me that they were kind of gimmicky, what with the guitar smashing and rock operas. But playing in Classic ALbums Live is filling the holes in my classic rock canon, that's for sure. I played the Who show, covering the album "Who's Next", a few months ago in Atlantic City. This time around, we're playing it in Orlando (which we did last weekend) and Connecticut (which is coming up). The band is a little different and it now includes Rob Phillips on second guitar, who is I gather a big Who fan. He even has the mod long coat with a Who logo on it. Watching the documentary, I see similarities in mannerism and speech cadence between Rob and Pete Townshend. And he knows how to do the windmill. Rob is really enthusiastic about playing the album - it's kind of a shame that I have the first guitar chair, through seniority mostly. I felt like Rob had his Who eyes on me sometimes, checking to see that I was doing Pete's licks justice.
So I rented the Who DVD, along with a Bireli Lagrene Django tribute thing. What's interesting to me about the documentary is the lack of a central authorial voice - not only do they include clips from the entire career of the Who in no particular order, but the interview clips are also from different eras, with no one period dominating. There is no narrator. I guess some would see this film as a mishmash for this reason - there is little sense of narrative, and there are a wide variety of tones. The members of the Who contradict themselves in different interviews at different times. By way of contrast, No Direction Home was a similarly retrospective doc on Bob Dylan. There was lots of old footage, but the recent interview with Dylan was given a privileged position of final commentator. There were no other post-66 interviews, or even views, of Dylan.
I'm only about an hour in (it's a double DVD with tons of extra features, this will take a while), but that's my take. Pete Townshend is incredibly self-conscious, sometimes painfully honest, and usually high.

Mad-as-Hell Modernist Merrily Mauls Mozart's Music

I note with pleasure that Carl Wilson, the most excellent music critic and Zoilus blogger, has been slated to write a book in the 33 1/3 series for Continuum. It's on Celine Dion's Let's Talk About Love, which has caused some cluck-clucking over at Continuum series editors David Barker's blog. I'm looking forward to it, myself. I've had mixed feelings about the books in the series that I've read so far. The OK Computer book I thought was OK but a bit formalistic. The Dusty in Memphis book was not formalistic enough - it barely talked about the record at all in favour of an endless, repetitive riff on the mythic South. The Forever Changes book was readable but seemed to veer off into the paranoia that it so doggedly described around the writing and making of the album. So I've been kind of disappointed so far. I'm looking forward to Carl's book and I'm dying to see how he deals with such a seemingly perverse choice of album.
I considered proposing a book on Fleetwood Mac's Rumours for this last round. I even wrote to Barker and he shortlisted the idea. I never did send in the final treatment, though. Something about a dissertation that needs finishing. And how I'm not going to write anything for about thirty years once I've finished it.

It's a quiet Saturday after one of the busiest gig weeks for me in a while. Most significant in terms of frequency was McVeigh's, the all-too-authentic Irish pub where I have been rousing my dormant Irish blood with Danny Williams, a most excellent singer whom I met on the Classic ALbums Live trail. My dad would love Danny's voice - he's got that Irish tenor thing down, as well as a thousand other voices. Aside from everything else, he's one of the best vocal mimics I've yet heard.
Last night was the second debut of my little drumless trio, with Les Cooper (guitar) and James Thomson (standup bass) at Tranzac, opening a triple bill with Edgar Breau and Hunter Eves. Great to get back to the Tranzac, one of my favourite places in all of Hogtown and my hangout back when I lived in the neighbourhood. We did a 45 minute set of originals, blues and old country songs. Everything is on the fly, so we tend to do simple songs that everybody can pick up on the spot. But there's a strange magic about this trio, much more than the sum of its parts. And it's contained, on accounta the instrumentation. I knew that Les and I had the psychic connection, going back to the Hess Village salad days, but with James it seems to be even more of that zoot-zoot-zoot electrical psychic impulses thing. Les says that he and I have the musical chemistry because we both have a Middle Eastern ancestry. I don't know about that. Les, not so much with the musical theorizing.
Last night was also a chance to rediscover the estimable Edgar Breau, late of Simply Saucer. I played in Edgar's band for a while there, but this is the first chance I've had to really sit down and hear him. It was the first date of a tour for them, Edgar's first. Pretty cool and long overdue.
How do you like that disturbing image, above? Need more?

It could have been worse. It could have been a Conservative majority. At least Peggy Nash (NDP) won in my riding. This doesn't upset me nearly as much as the re-election of Bush, which practically rendered me bedridden. All I have is a cold, which I had before the election. So I don't think there's a connection. Zoilus is so messed up by it that he's not even bloggin'.
Me, I'm just learning Who songs for a rehearsal tonight. The CAL boys are just getting back from a triumphant East Coast tour of Dark Side of the Moon. I know it's triumphant because I've been reading the fan reviews at ClassicAlbumsLive.com. I expect to see some tanned and buff rockers tonight as I stumble into "Eminence Front". Speaking of "Eminence Front", there's Les Cooper, at least there he was on a stage with me Saturday night. We did a nice duo gig at the Tempo Restobar in the Junction. It's a great venue - nice PA, good acoustics, very tastefully decorated, no pools of beer or piles of peanut shells on the floor, but it's in a weird location - on Keele north of Dundas, which by that point has crossed over Bloor. It all seems very askew, if you ask me. I didn't askew.
Richard Keelan, erstwhile Uncle Violet bassist and now known as "Poppa K", was there, hooting, jeering, etc. along with Laura Cattari, AKA Ms. L, whose radio play is airing on CBC soon, I happily found out.
And now I'm off to Poor John's Cafe, my new Parkdale haunt. I will be notating all things historiographical today.

The months of January and February are traditionally met with rolled eyes and groans of derision by working musicians. Yes, these are the salad months, when we acquaint ourselves with the current cast of Saturday Night Live because we have no gigs. It's a wasteland.
But hark. I said "traditionally" because this is not the case for me at the moment. It may be global warming, but my calendar is looking pretty healthy right up to April. It's a nice variety of things, too. Sensitive singer-songwriter shows, jazz noodlings, rock star posing, and Irish drinking and also music.
I also had a meeting yesterday with the mandarins at Living and Learning in Retirement, an organization that puts together courses for retirees. I did a course for them last year on jazz, blues and swing and in winter 2007 I'm doing one on "The Great Singers" - Al Jolson, Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, the Boswell Sisters(!), Billie Holiday, etc. I had a great time lecturing for them last year - probably my favourite class to teach.
And of course I'm back to work on my recalcitrant thesis. I spent a few hours yesterday painstakingly putting together a history of rock writing from 1961 to 1969. It's kind of cool how things clump into years - for example, anti-rock tirades were big in 1964. Sociological studies were all the rage in '66. I'll need to get used to the slower pace of this kind of work. When I wrote my first draft I kind of raced through; Katherine would come home and I'd crow about the fifteen pages I wrote or whatever. It's not about the number of pages, people! But then you knew that.
I swear, the longer I'm in school the dumber I get. And I'm not talking in that Zen "the farther one travels, the less one knows" way. I really seem to be getting to be more of a dullard as time goes on.

Speaking of Zen, somebody found a way to make Garfield funny.