12/7/18

Greg Hawks Hits it Right on Time

Greg Hawks, I Think It's Time

If you're fed up with redneck country music that wraps itself in flag-covered bigotry, Greg Hawks is your antidote. As befits an artist who grew up country music, embraced punk as a teen, and then turned back to country, Hawks knows the difference between phonies and the real deal and isn't afraid to call bullshit when he sees it. I Think It's Time is his response to our world of opinion as news, infotainment, and acting on belief rather than fact.

Hawks hits us right up front with "So Lonely," when he sings: Take a look at you, take a look at me/Nothing really is what it appears to be/Living in the land of make-believe/In the golden age of vanity. And he's surely no fan of Donald Trump. His "King of Hate" might be the best oppositional song yet written. In five pointed verses and two choruses Hawks systematizes all the angst you've been feeling. A sample lyric: Set the house on fire and then walked away/And then he found somebody else to blame/Sent out his sycophants to fan the flames/Is there anybody there with a sense of shame. Nor does he let anyone hide behind being duped masks. In "From One Extreme to the Other," Hawks calls out the unobservant: Another fool is stirring up a crowd that's hanging on his every word/And the one who screams the loudest seems to be the only voice that's heard/Another dog and pony show served to copycats and mockingbirds/No time for conversations, only shocking revelations are preferred.

Don't be put off if you're taking a sojourn from political confrontation. Hawks also sings about the sort of things all songwriters dive into: relationships coming apart ("Pretending Not to Know") and regret ("Things I Did Not Say"), for example. He also leaves us with plenty of hope. "It's Going to Be Okay" is self-explanatory; "One Light" is akin to an ecumenical prayer.

You can tell in an instance that Hawks is a gifted lyricist, but the other great joy of this record is that it's a showcase of musical styles past and present. "So Lonely" is country-style vocals as filtered through jangly bell-like guitar and Southern-friend rock. "I Hope I Never Know" is amped up folk with a hooky melody, and "On Light" is amped down and the sort of song Tom Rush might sing. 'I Think It's Time" is country twang, "Pretending Not to Know" is a big prairie Western song evocative of early '60s cowboy music, "It's Going to Be Okay" is crooner-like, "Another Possibility" catches Johnny Cash's cadences and groove, and "Things I Did Not Say" is classic tonk.

Hawks has the whole package: a sharp pen, a booming voice, the ability to mix things up, good values, thoughtful production, and strong musicianship. This is truly one of the better recordings of 2018. ★★★★★

Rob Weir

12/5/18

Provocative Monsters and Myths at Wadsworth



Monsters and Myths: Surrealism and War in the 1930s and 1940s
Bouke de Vries/Matrix 180: War and Pieces
Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford, Connecticut
Through January 13, 2019 (de Vries through January 6)

{Note: The only photos taken by me are from the Matrix 180 installation, as the Wadsworth does not allow photography in Monsters and Myths.}

Oelze, "Expectations"


In November, we commemorated the 100th anniversary of the end of World war I. What does this have to do with an art exhibit? In the case of the Wadsworth's current show Monsters and Myths, just about everything.
Max Ernst


Picasso
We often assume that artistic creativity flows forth from an inner wellspring. Some of it does, but we should also consider how art and society mirror one another. This is especially the case for surrealism, which frequently induces mixed reactions from viewers. Some find mirth in the works of artists such as Pablo Picasso, Yves Tanguy, Andre Masson, Joan Miro, Salvador Dali, and others. Still others avert their eyes, as they find surrealist images disturbing, even grotesque. Why, for example, does Picasso give us a frightful depiction of a monstrous but vaguely human figure tearing itself apart? Why would still other artists dehumanize the human body and reduce it to geometric shapes with hints of breasts or eyes peeking through? Why did Max Ernst produce nightmare scenarios that one up medieval depictions of hell? The tones of Richard Oelze painting that opens the exhibit are rightly described as "sulfuric." Why such unappealing colors? It might have something to do with the rise of fascism!

There are three reasons why surrealism looks as it does. First, modernism freed artists from the shackles of representationalism and unleashed perspectives that were impressionistic, expressionistic, metaphorical, and abstract. Second, artists were deeply influenced by Sigmund Freud. For the first time, Western thinkers considered the possibility that the human psyche had hidden recesses that could be glimpsed. Probing the unconscious was all the rage, as were explorations of darker human impulses. Psychoanalysts and artists also pondered dreams and their meanings.

Consequently, we often consider surrealistic artists in Freudian terms. The adjective "nightmarish" is often described to their work. What on earth, we wonder, led Dali to create "Apparition of Face and Fruit?" What's up with Ernst's bird-like figures? Surely, we imagine, such images must have come from disturbed psychosexual impulses.
Dali (Actually a visual mind-bender and reflection of his friend Lorca's murder by Franco)


Yes. And no. Society often gets the art it deserves. Artists are often less inventive than we think; theirs is often an expressive form of sociology. The third factor in producing surrealism is war. If you have traveled in Europe, you know that there is scarcely a village or town of consequence that lacks a monument to the Great War (WW I), a conflict that shattered the continent and destroyed all vestiges of old regimes based upon hierarchies of birth and illusions of noblesse oblige. The Great War should have been called the Great Obscenity. The conflict cost 40 million casualties, unleashed diseases that killed even more, and robbed the world of an entire generation of young men. Thousands who managed to make it home were walking monsters troubled by shell shock and marred by unspeakable disfigurement. Surrealists did not need to imagine fragmented bodies, skeletons robed in decaying flesh, horses blown to smithereens, putrefaction, ruin, or horror. It was literally all around them.

World War I ended on November 11, 1918. Except it didn't. The bones were scarcely stacked into charnel houses before fascism arose, the Spanish Civil War erupted, and then World War II. In the shadow of such obscenity, what were artists to do? Dadaists embraced the fundamental absurdity of life in a world in which, as Scott Fitzgerald famously put it, "All gods are dead… all faiths in mankind shaken."  Surrealists created monstrous imagery that makes us wish to avert our eyes, lest we are ultimately forced to conclude that we are the monsters upon which we gaze. Isamu Noguchi used real bones in one of his sculptures. As well he should have. 


Bouke de Vries

World War II ended in 1945 and many of the Surrealists visited or immigrated to the United States. There they continued to create provocative images because, of course, World War II never really ended either. The Wadsworth puts a sly exclamation point to this in a seemingly unrelated exhibit titled War and Pieces. Bouke de Vries invites/forces us to imagine nuclear war. His installation is constructed of white porcelain, but de Vries smashes its purity into shards. We also see body parts and mutations. Sound familiar?

Masson
The two exhibits are akin to passing a gruesome accident. We are disturbed; we are fascinated. We look away from artists such as Andre Masson, and then we look again. We hate this sort of painting, yet we secretly love it. Sometimes we laugh about it and call it whimsical. Then we shudder. There is a reason why so many surrealistic monsters look vaguely human even when the parts are severed, distorted, and randomly strewn.

Have you ever noticed that surrealistic monsters and grotesques generally roam over open spaces, or occupy private worlds within public places? Freud has gone out of fashion, but few have better explained how difficult it is to keep our monsters contained in the unconscious. Nothing bespeaks the truth of this louder than the detritus and utter devastation of war. We may externalize monsters all we wish, but there is but one species on the planet that engages in blood lust for its own sake. We create war memorials, but there is no glory. There is no honor. Just horror. In its own coded and oblique way, surrealism is the world's greatest antiwar art.

Rob Weir

12/4/18

Get to Know Lowest of the Low


Lowest of the Low
This Morning
NoiseTrade
★★★★


Lowest of the Low is a beloved Toronto band that's been around since the early 1990s, though they are woefully underappreciated south of the border. When I say beloved, consider that their 1991 album Shakespeare My Butt often shows up on lists of the top 20 Canadian rock albums of all time. To celebrate a recent appearance on the Canadian Broadcasting System show "This Morning," the band has released an eponymous and free five-track sampling of back catalogue material on the Website NoiseTrade.

Lowest of the Low is frequently billed as an indie rock post-punk band, whatever that might mean. I think that's possibly because lead singer Ron Hawkins has a voice that has a touch of Billy Bragg roughness to it, though that's intentional and mainly his is just a very strong one. The fact that the band's most famous record is puckishly but politely titled Shakespeare My Butt is a pretty good indication that Lowest of the Low isn't really a punk band of any sort: pre, present, or post. Theirs is actually a very melodic sound and Hawkins' vocals are clear and tuneful, not snarly or off-key.

Two of the selections come from Shakespeare, including "Bleed a Little While Tonight," which did well on the Canadian pop charts. The only blood split in the song is that of yearning. It is catchy and has an easy dance feel that's more sashay than body slam. "Rosy and Grey" has crystalline clear electric guitar lines the likes of which someone like Jerry Garcia used to lay down (when he wasn't being sloppy). This too is a love song of sorts, though there is a (possibly) naughty double entendre embedded within. 

The other three tracks are from the band's 2017 release Do the Right Now. My favorite is "Something to Believe In," which opens with Hawkins issuing an earnest plea in a voice controlled and slightly louder than his guitar. This is the kind of song I really like: small opening, slow build, and go big, yet remain controlled and tuneful. The video for "Powerlines" is a pretty neat aerial tour of The Six (a Toronto nickname referencing the six "cities" that make up Toronto). The vid is actually a bit out of character, as the eagle's eye view is usually high above the streets and features that make our unnamed observer dream of a woman named Caroline. It's a great tune, so I'll overlook that and a few forced rhymes. "California Gothic" rounds off the EP.

I hope I don't offend anyone in saying this, but to me Lowest of the Low ought to be labeled an indie/folk rock ensemble. But it doesn't matter what tag you spray, Lowest of the Low is a fine band that deserves attention on both sides of Lake Ontario.

Rob Weir

12/3/18

Nuts! Great Subject, Failed Filmmaking


Nuts! (2016)
Directed by Penny Lane
Amazon Studios, 79 minutes, Not Rated.
★★

P. T. Barnum perhaps never said, "There's a sucker born every minute," but the career of Dr. John Romulus Brinkley verifies that the slogan is true. From the moment Brinkley (1885-1942) came into his adulthood, he ran scams that would have made even Barnum blush. 

After a few minor flimflams, Brinkley obtained a license to practice medicine from the Eclectic Medical University, a diploma mill, and after a shaky (perhaps illegal) divorce, remarriage, and a short stint in the Army, he put out his shingle in Milford, Kansas in 1918. Brinkley actually did some good work during the 1919 influenza epidemic, but in the 1920s he began to treat male infertility by inserting slices of goat glands into the scrotums of men who shelled out the modern equivalent of thousands of dollars in the hope of procuring Pan-like virility. As all hucksters do, he advertised miracle results and backed them up with "testimonials," many of them faked. Whenever challenged, he struck back and called his accusers old-fashioned cranks and fanatics.

There was something to that charge. Brinkley was a complete fraud, but his tale is also one of obsession. Morris Fishbein, the editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association pursued Brinkley with Lt. Gerrard-like mania, but the AMA was not entirely dedicated to protecting the public. During the 1920s and 1930s, the AMA sought to monopolize medical care by making it synonymous with only AMA sanctioned practitioners. This meant driving out competition, be it from quacks like Brinkley or herbalists, midwives, and chiropractors. Director Penny Lane, however, exaggerates Fishbein's eccentricities—and postpones discussion of dozens of wrongful death lawsuits against Brinkley—to build sympathy for Brinkley. She's right, though, that our story is more nuanced than good guy versus bad guy.

Nuts! is a triple entendre title referencing the slang for testicles and Brinkley's harebrained schemes, but also the gullibility of the public. The oddest thing of all about Brinkley is that his chicanery made him a wealthy man who lived in mansions, owned what is probably the first superstation radio broadcasting studio, and was probably the rightful winner of the 1930 Kansas gubernatorial election. (More than 50,000 write-in ballots were disqualified for misspelling.) His radio stations helped make stars of the Carter Family, Patsy Montana, Jimmie Rodgers, and numerous other country music legends. They also ran ads for Brinkley come-ons so incredible it leaves one speechless, my favorite being an autographed picture of Jesus! That's only slightly more head-scratching than the fact that Brinkley got away with this stuff for nearly 20 years—despite Fishbein's pursuit, battles with radio regulatory boards, unflattering exposés, lawsuits, increasingly insane medical claims, problems with the IRS, and relocation to first Texas and then Arkansas. He might have lasted longer had not megalomania led him to sue Fishbein for slander. This resulted in a public trial in which Brinkley's house of cards collapsed and took his fortune with it.

All of this is great stuff; too bad Penny Lane's documentary isn't. She and screenplay writer Thom Stylinski chose to riff on Brinkley's life rather than rely on the truism that life is stranger than fiction. One applauds her attempt to break away from the Ken Burns technique of spinning one still photo after another before the camera, but this means that about 90% of the film is animated. The animation is terrible. Lane and her crew use crude cartoon figures—Brinkley looks a bit like Colonel Sanders—and apply shake frame techniques that make you feel like you're having a seizure. It cheapens the storyline—not that Lane actually pays all that much attention to the one biography handed her. There are invented characters throughout, and she alters chronology to manipulate viewers into thinking maybe Fishbein, not Brinkley, was the fraud. This is so she can employ a very tired cliché: the dramatic final trial in which all deception is revealed. If that's not bad enough, Lane also relied heavily upon Clement Wood's commissioned book on Brinkley (1934) rather Pope Brock's Charlatan (2008), even though Brock was a talking head in the film. It should also be noted that Lane's wrap-up on the characteristics of a quack isn't exactly ready for Psychology Today.

This film attracted some good reviews. This baffles me almost as much as why it's classified as a documentary. A feature film on Brinkley is in development and for once, there is hope Hollywood will do a better job. In the interim, if you want to delve more in Brinkley's strange career, read Brock's book. If you wish, you can view Lane's film for free on YouTube. That's about what it's worth.

Rob Weir