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the best songs con’t: from the b sides

August 24, 2015

Back in the day – way back – my friends and I spent a few winters hanging around the Margate beach bars: dancing, drinking, singing, playing pool, and generally whooping it up. We had a one particularly favorite place and though I can’t quite remember the joint’s name I do remember the juke box.imgres-3

Five plays for a quarter. Maybe… something like that. We dropped a lot of quarters there and how many ever it was was a good deal since there wasn’t one bad track on that machine.

We all had our favorites. My beau played Mott the Hoople’s “All the Young Dudes” and “One of the Boys” to death; me, I couldn’t get enough of the “Child of the Moon,” It wouldn’t make my top ten Stones songs list today and I don’t think I’ve listened to since but back then it made me happy to hear it. And it made me happy when it popped into my head again after all these years. It’s not country, but it sure sounds like a fan.

ChIld of the Moon” is the B side to “Jumping Jack Flash.”

Are there B sides these days? I guess not. No b sides, no double A sides, no sides period. No sitting pouring over the cover art, no liner notes. So many reasons to appreciate coming up when I did. Would have been a real shame to miss out on getting to listen to records. Which is not the same as not getting to listen to music. Having the whole record thing was good, A sides, B sides, etc. etc. etc., but it’s really about the music besides which just because there’s no sides today’s listening scene offers new delights of its own.

Another B side single was The Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows” “Wouldn’t it Be Nice” was A.  Back in the day you could hold the 45 in your hands and flip it over and over and over, but you couldn’t get a digital download of the BBC Music CGI music-video cover for any of your devices.

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the best songs

August 21, 2015

I was reading around in Nick Hornby’s “31 Songs” and it got me thinking about how some songs get into your head while some get into your soul. Then “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down”f rom Kristofferson shuffled up on my iPod reminding me that the best songs do both.

I first heard this recording in Marfa,Texas when I went down there with some good pals. We stayed at the Thunderbird where the rooms come equipped with turntables and the hotel makes its record collection available to guests. I took a few albums back to the room but l just couldn’t bring myself to listen to anything else.kriskristoffersonbeerforbreakfast1

Kristofferson’s voice: all reaching and gravely raspy, takes you straight down into the dark heart of “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down.” Listening to him you don’t doubt for a second that he’s been there done that more than one too many times. 

sunday-morning-coming-downMuch more so then the Ray Steven’s original 1969 release or even the John Cash recording which won him the Country Music Association Song of the Year Award in 1970. And that’s saying something.

I found a bittersweet and fitting Foo Fighters and Kris Kristofferson live performance from the 2005 Johnny Cash tribute on youtube noodling around on the internet.

There’s also some footage of a Sunday Mornin’ Kris Kristofferson and Johnny Cash duet from the Johnny Cash Christmas Show in 1978; this comes close but doesn’t quite get to the sobering bottom-hitting place of the “Kristofferson” track; it’s a visceral thing – through and through.

And yeah, it sounds country.

Cue it up. You’ll see.

the best songs to be continued….

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It don’t mean a thang if it ain’t got that twang.

April 24, 2014

greatest hits

Or what we think about when we think we’re thinking about country western music but wind up thinking about feminism instead.

 

Several times a day when I’m on my way to do this or that at my job, I pass by the MoMA gallery-hall installation of the Lynda Benglis video “Discrepancy.”  I’m not sure that I have a clear sense of the piece overall, but I’ve grown quite familiar with the foliage outside the apartment window, and familiar enough with the radio show soundtrack to have a favorite part: the part where there’s country western music playing on the radio.

And when I pass by during my favorite country western music spot, my first thought is what a grand old thing it is to hear country western music playing in the big house of modern art. house, and then that makes me think of something I seem to remember I heard or read in an interview with Twyla Tharp. In talking about the influence on her musical choices she mentions that growing up, her mother, a serious fan of western classical compositions – western meaning European, e.g. Beethoven, Mozart and co. – had a seriously dismissive attitude toward her father’s appreciation for country western – meaning Hank, Merle and singers of cowboy songs. That makes me think of something Louis Armstrong is said to have said when asked about what kind of music he played: “there’s only two kinds of music; good music and bad music, and I play the good kind.”

So you would think thinking about Louis Armstrong would be the ticket to a very different train of thought, and it’s true my mind is almost in the clear because I’m nearly out of earshot of the Benglis installation. But then I’m up on the Robert Heinecken exhibition. And that leads me to thinking what in the world am I supposed to make of the fact that a Benglis video (with good country western music) is installed in such close proximity to a gallery of Heinecken works? Because let’s face it, the nearness of these two – which is enough to blow a persons mind – can only lead to thinking about the Benglis Artforum ad. And thinking about how in some twisted alternate reality her add might have easily been one of his sampled or appropriated works.

And that would mean what exactly? I don’t know. I’ve never known what to make of the ad or his work. What I do know is that none of this goes through my mind; I don’t even spend a second thinking about any of it if I pass the video at any other point other than when George Jones and Tammy Wynette are singing “Let’s Build a World” Together on the radio.

 

To be continued……

 

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just can’t get no (art) connection

July 26, 2009

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A kid, a girl of ten or so, stood in front of the Aernout Mik video screening outside Cafe 2 at MoMA hollering over and over “What is this? Somebody tell me what this is.”

My guess is her family had already gone into the Café, but putting first things first, she needed to know what the deal was with this video before she would go in. When no one answered her I finally said, “It’s a video, kind of like a movie, of different people doing different stuff.” “ Oh,” she said, “okay.”

Apparently that was enough for her, but then I thought wait a minute, is that really it? And yes, it is. All right, maybe there’s a ton more curatorial like stuff to be said about his videos, but it really boils down to some people doing some stuff – no more no less. Which is fine, but where’s the way in, and how does it connect?

I had a Chemistry teacher who taught me to look for the connection between all things and all things. He loved to relate issues of chemistry to everyday events and even though the only one I remember is reaction rate related to urban travel (ie; walking and taking the subway) he gave me a new way of being in the world: the one of trusting in connections and believing that there is no such thing as a completely closed system .

So what would he relate to film/video art that goes no where, that seems to have the purpose of never to arrive anywhere but nevertheless insists on taking long unwinding, or hardly winding, roads? I wonder.

I’ve passed by that Mik video on a number of occasions and I find myself not caring if the current images relate to previous images, not caring if they add up to anything but forget Mik for a moment, and take instead Warhol’s “Sleep” , the king of art video/ films never going anywhere – the 5 plus hours film of John Giorno sleeping.

Where’s the connection there?  I dont’ know but I’ve got a digital projector and a dvd player and a courtyard with a big wall and wouldn’t it be great to screen “Sleep” out there? I could run it in short spurts (like this youtube exerpt) or let it run continuously for the full 321 minutes .

I do get the overall part of the sixties connection since that was a time of finding the way, when it was useful, if not required, to go down endlessly long roads if only to see what was or wasn’t there. But now that we know that there’s no water route to the Pacific where does that leave us? Is the connection only to a meditation on connections. Or it it that it simply frees us to leave the magic of arrival behind, free to let film art / video art be object art?

Maybe.

Which brings to mind  stuff like the John Gerrard’s  work recently exhibited at Knoedler Project Space ….

TO BE CONTINUED

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Hello world!

July 4, 2009

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!

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