Knock It Down!

Does this deserve to be preserved?

How many times does the public have to declare something a failure before self-proclaimed arbiters of taste get it? How come a small cadre gets to call itself “experts” while those who disagree get labeled as “Philistines?” I just finished reading the umpteenth apology for why buildings such as Boston’s City Hall and London’s Trellick Tower are actually “important” buildings that need to be appreciated. Rubbish! And that’s what these buildings should be. Mark Twain once gazed upon an offensive memorial and commented, “There’s nothing to recommend it. Except dynamite.” Exactly.

I’d be the first to agree that popular art is not the same as “good” art (and vice versa), but I’ve had it with experts trying to convince me that the architecture of the 1960s and 1970s is “misunderstood” and deserves to be “preserved.” Says who? Not the public, surely. The form-follows-function neo-brutalist buildings from that era have long been out of favor and it’s not because the public have been seduced into liking something else. Sixties and Seventies architecture evolved from another style more people hate than like: the International style of Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, and their ilk. We hated that for the same reason we hate neo-brutalism: the people who designed this stuff confused drafting exercises with human habitats.

Do architects and preservationists study history or psychology? I wonder why some of the earliest known artifacts are items of jewelry? Or why tools and tombs are decorated? Hell’s bells, even the caves of Lascaux were painted. Processed food and medicine are meant for the inside of sterile packages, not people. Human beings like color, line, angles, and (yes) frippery. Even if we live in dorm rooms or cold-water walkups, one of the first things we do is put up some artwork and gussy up the joint a bit. We hate neo-brutalism because it’s boring, and a Trellick Tower’s worth of equally boring dissertations isn’t going to change our minds. I say let’s take all the preservationists who love this stuff and make them work, live, and recreate in said edifices. And since they’re so hell-bent on simplicity, let’s add a few covenants: no gardens, no landscaping, no internal art, and no furniture that doesn’t have straight lines. Rip out the lawn and haul in the gravel. Form follows function, baby!

I work in a neobrutalist building. I hate it. I look out my window at what would easily be the most-hated building in all of Massachusetts if it weren’t for the fact that the UMass Amherst campus is too far from Boston to be known statewide. This would be the Fine Arts Center (see above), a gigantic nightmare of concrete slaps that look to have been salvaged from the Berlin Wall. It compensates for ugliness by also being leaky, drafty, damp, and soulless. Seeing a performance at the Fine Arts Center has all the intimacy of making love in Aisle Three of your local Wal-Mart, except that Wal-Mart has better lighting.

Preserve this junk? I think not.

Richard Julian CD More Sour than Sweet

Richard Julian
Girls Need Attention
Compass 7-4537-2
*

Whenever I hear someone whose voice is no better than mine, I listen hard to determine whether they’ve got something else going on that makes them unique, or if they’ve just got more chutzpah than I. Put Richard Julian in the second category. This is a record that tries very, very hard to be “cool.” We’ve got high-contrast international symbols on the cover and the inside art features Julian with his goatee and Homburg. The performance? At its best it’s Neil Young doing Punk Lite. (This is especially the case on the track titled “Words.”) There’s also some gravely acoustic folk-blues and lots of attitude-laden songs. (Some might even view the title track as offensive.) But here’s the deal about being cool—it’s a conferred status not a chosen one. Julian’s probably a nice guy, but this album sounds contrived and there’s simply not enough here to compensate for a very average voice that, like mine, is like a Chinese soup: sweet and sour.--LV

Vote Courageously in November

Make this your personal campaign song for 2010.

The primaries are over and indicators suggest that Americans are fed up with politics as usual. Polls show that roughly half of Americans distrust both major political parties. From where I sit, this is encouraging. The next step is to stop whining and actually do something to fix American politics.

First and foremost, you actually have to exercise your franchise rights. Is it just me, or are 100% of Americans bitching about everything when more than half can’t be bothered to vote? If you can’t get off your butt to vote, shut up!

If you dislike both parties, don’t vote for them. Enough with the Tea Party crap already. Let’s call that what it is—narcissism with a Republican face. The Tea Party is just a bunch of whining pampered white suburbanites wallowing in privilege and crying about their tax bills. If you think these people are going to change a damn thing you’re seriously deluded. The only difference between the Tea Party and the existing GOP is that the Palin crowd is more boorish. The GOP is the party that created the deficit and it’s also a party of Big Government that pretends to be anti-government. Who do you think authored bloated military budgets, sent us to war, gave handouts to Corporate America, and opened Fort Knox for the rich? If you really stand for self-reliance, want a smaller government, and want America to withdraw from the world, have the courage of your convictions. Come November the party for you is the Libertarian ticket.

But while I’m on the subject, liberals telling me I have to vote for Democrats to save the nation have sorely exhausted my patience. Let me put it even more bluntly—a party that depends on slime balls like Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson to stay in power isn’t going to induce any tears from me if they lose it. The Democrats have done a lousy job of governing, in part because they behave like the Republicans they desperately want to scare you into thinking are worse. If you call yourself a progressive and you’re still married to the Democrats, you’re just as deluded as those who think that the Tea Party is populist. Get some spine people and cast your vote where your principles lie. Go Green.

Before you vote for anyone, get educated not indoctrinated. Turn off the TV talking heads. You need to elect candidates, not soundbites. Haven’t you figured it out yet? The self-proclaimed pundits are in the entertainment business; they’re not political scientists. Rush Limbaugh is to politics what Jerry Springer is to serious sociology—a splashy circus spectacle utterly devoid of content. Enough with the soundbites! Find out what candidates actually stand for, not what some bloviating poltroon tells you.

After you vote, hold your elected officials accountable. Many states have recall rights that allow citizens to rid themselves of officials who defy the public will. This is a seldom-used privilege that ought to be trotted out more often. Engage in grassroots democracy. In addition to recall, many states also have initiative and referendum laws that allow the electorate to put items directly on the ballot and vote on them independently of what elected officials wish. Democracy was always meant to be about the people, not the pols. People Power is the surest route to creating responsible government.

Eric Clapton DVD Revealing

Eric Clapton

The 1960s Review

Sexy Intellectual 559, 2010, 120 minutes

* * * *

In 1963, Eric Clapton was little known outside of Surrey clubs; four years later “Clapton is God” graffiti was sprayed all over English walls. A fascinating new DVD tells the tale of Clapton’s meteoric rise through the 1960s groups he graced: The Yardbirds, John Mayall & the Bluesbfreakers, Cream, and Blind Faith. It is a portrait of a man with a wanderlust spirit obsessed to the point of intolerance by American-style blues. Clapton was such a purist that he left The Yardbirds after its monster hit “For Your Love” because he deemed it inauthentic and commercial. He made a big splash with The Yardbirds, which turned into a tidal wave when he joined forces with John Mayall. Indeed, the Clapton bandwagon was so mighty that Mayall—a man known for having an outsized ego—was forced to give Clapton equal billing. This did not prevent Clapton from leaving the Bluesbreakers in 1966 to form my personal favorite band of the 1960s: Cream. With drummer Ginger Baker and bass player/vocalist Jack Bruce, Cream singlehandedly defined the power-rock trio.

The film is earnest in showing Clapton coming to grips with his own white skin. Apparently Jimi Hendrix was the catalyst. When Hendrix came to England, Clapton was gobsmacked by his raw energy. Several of Clapton’s colleagues speculate that he and other British blues players came to understand the difference between playing black and being black. There is a stunning sequence in the film with Hendrix playing “Voodoo Child” with a passion that borders primal—Hendrix never rivaled Clapton for technique, but neither could Clapton hope to match Jimi’s emotion. Clapton moderated his obsession and broadened his repertoire, but he did not quell his restless spirit, quitting both Cream and Blind Faith when they topped the charts. The balance between interviews with colleagues and concert footage makes this a true portrait of an artist with heavenly talent. The only missing elements are more from Clapton himself—who is surprisingly little seen as a talking head—and a copy editor to get rid of that god-awful misplaced apostrophe on the box!

If It Wasn't for the Irish and Jews

MICK MOLONEY

If It Wasn’t for the Irish and the Jews

Compass 7-4525-2

* * * *

To all my Jewish friends, Happy Rosh Hashanah! And here’s an ecumenical offering for the holidays.

In the conventional telling, Irish-Americans were xenophobes by the late nineteenth-century. Maybe that was true for the Lace Curtain crowd, but on the streets and in the music halls, plebeian Irish and Jews not only hobnobbed, they combined their creative talents. Musician and folklorist Mick Moloney explores their collaboration in this fascinating collection of vaudeville and Tin-Pan Alley offerings. Billy Murray popularized the title track, but William Jerome and Jean Schwartz penned it. It’s probably the least “Irish”-sounding track on the CD. It’s also one of the few direct references to Jews, but their fingerprints are all over the material. Who knew that the pre-World War I ditty “I Didn’t Raise My Son to be a Soldier”—popular in both America and Ireland—was composed by Al Piantodosi (which was probably an assumed name for Irving Berlin)? Who would suspect that songs such as “There’s a Typical Tipperary Over Here” had Jewish connections, or that famed vaudeville star Nora Bayes was Jewish? In all there are fourteen collaborations between Irish and Jewish songwriters, or Irish-themed songs originally sung by Jewish-Americans. Moloney’s mix of poignancy, sentimentality, defiance, and whimsy is ably backed by a cast of Irish- and English-American musical stalwarts such as John Doyle, Billy McComiskey, Joanie Madden, Susan McKeown, and Athena Tergis. If you know those names, you will very much appreciate how each departed from their usual patterns to capture the sound and feel of the music hall. Fun stuff, Mick, but one small gripe: Where’s the Gallagher and Shean?

Birdsong at Morning Vigil More of the Same

Birdsong at Morning
Vigil
Blue Gentia 3
* *

Some times ideas that seem and sound good just don’t pan out in application. Alas, this problem plagues a promising thought from the trio Birdsong at Morning. The concept was to offer musical meditations on solitude and the passing of time, and to draw inspiration from the enigmatic images of 19th-century photographer Julia Margaret Cameron. Instead of a single release, put our four EPs staggered every three months of so—a literal passing of time mirroring the contemplative core behind the concept.

I was mightily intrigued by the debut, Bound, and was still tuned in for part two, Heavens. Somewhere early in the third installment, Vigil, however, I stopped caring. I listened and nothing happened—no profound philosophical breakthroughs, no realizations of life’s ephemeral nature, and absolutely no hummable musical hooks. It lay on my desk for months before I cared enough to comment upon it. It’s not a bad album. Far from it—Alan Williams has a fine voice and the lyrics are thoughtful. The problem is that the album’s six tracks are basically sonic soundscaping. This makes the music remote in the way that an object behind glass can be—we can only admire from a distance and cannot touch. When we walk away and the image fades, what is left behind?

The other issue for me as a listener is that there have been no discernible mood shifts in the first three installments. On a cognitive level this makes no sense to me. The idea is to show the passage of time. Fine, but isn’t the only constant change? Even aesthetes, hermits, and cloistered mystics experience varying moods and physical change. If Birdsong wants us to feel time’s passing, shouldn’t the musical logic echo this?

I’ve listened and I’ve walked away. Not much lingers except the idea itself. That’s great if we’re studying ontology, but it’s not exactly a ringing musical endorsement. I think I’ll pass on the fourth volume.

Labor Day and Illegal Immigration

Want to stop this? Hold employers accountable.

Today is Labor Day and tomorrow I start teaching. Even though I’m at the very university from which I graduated and at which I’ve taught on and off for over twenty years—including the last five—I couldn’t sign a contract until my social security number was verified and I produced a passport and another photo ID. I also had to take an online ethics quiz. Ridiculous, right? Not really. It all took about ten minutes. I’ve no problem at all with needing to prove that I’m a legal citizen. In fact, the entire debate over illegal immigration could be solved if we had in place national laws like the procedure I just followed—employers should be required to verify the legal employment status of each employee and they should be held accountable for every one on the payroll who is undocumented.

This strikes me as a reasonable middle ground on the hotly contested immigration issue. Let’s start here: There is no reason whatsoever to respect the views of the GOP right on immigration. They would like you to see Arizona’s tough law as a model for the nation—when you go to the voting booth, that is. They are liars. They don’t want to curtail illegal immigration at all. God forbid they would cut off the supply of cheap grounds crews for their favorite golf courses, nannies to care for their spawn, or—most importantly—a secondary labor force for their corporate cronies. Suggest to the GOP that employers should be responsible for authenticating the documentation of workers and it will take all of three seconds before you hear the phrases “needless government regulations” and “unfunded mandates.”

The Arizona law should be resisted for what it is—a draconian crackdown on desperate individuals that is more in keeping with the Gestapo than with democratic institutions. Still, the liberal point of view is hopelessly muddled. Indulge me in another story. A few years back I was a paid researcher in New Zealand. I had to get a special work visa in order to earn money there—something akin to the “green card” we’re supposed to require in the United States (and which dozens of my academic friends have obtained). During a break I took a trip to Australia. When I tried to check in to fly back to New Zealand I was detained because I wasn’t carrying my return ticket to the United States! In what was surely the most convoluted logic I’ve ever heard, the Aussies feared that if I didn’t have a return ticket to the USA I might attempt to smuggle myself into Australia and take a job there. Huh!? I was already in Australia and was trying to leave it, but I still had to get Air New Zealand to fax a copy of my return ticket four months hence before the Aussies would allow me to depart.

Australia’s law is stupid, but the greater point is that the United States is practically alone in fostering a large group of citizens who somehow think that immigration laws should not be enforced. There are discussions worth having. If capital can cross borders freely, shouldn’t labor be allowed to do so? If immigrants need to get green cards, shouldn’t employers have to secure permits to move jobs? Should the U.S. do more to help impoverished neighbors to our south? Should citizenship be global? Let’s have those discussions. I’d love to have one on free trade, which I think is the biggest fraud ever perpetuated upon working people. But until the current laws are changed, the liberal position that we should not deport illegal immigrants is fruitless and mushy-headed. (Why not give them each an achievement ribbon while we’re at it?) More to the point, it’s also politically untenable. The vast majority of Americans oppose illegal immigration and it’s really, really bad electoral strategy for Democrats to take a contrary view in the belief that they will make up in Latino votes what they’ll lose elsewhere. (Hello—part of the constituency you’re trying to capture can’t vote!)

The automatic liberal position is to assert that “rights” are legally enshrined and that we cannot allow popular will to set these aside. If people could have voted, after all, the 1964 Civil Rights Act would not have passed, nor would gay rights be respected. That’s absolutely right, which is exactly why liberals who would turn their backs to existing immigration law are embarked upon a dangerous course. The very notion of “rights” is embedded within the larger of “citizenship.” Take this away and you open the door for allowing global capital to impose its own standards of human (and environmental) rights—the very reason why left progressives (a group much more realistic than most liberals) do battle with the World Trade Organization and other such bodies.

Illegal immigrants do not have the same rights of American citizens—that’s the whole damn point of citizenship! Illegal immigrants cannot be treated as disposable objects, but the rights they hold are enshrined in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, not the US Bill of Rights. Read it. It says many inspiring things, including the fact that people should be treated with dignity and cannot be subjected to cruelty or illegal detention—reasons enough for opposing Arizona’s harsh law. It also outlaws slavery, sanctifies property rights, and upholds freedom of conscience. But check out Articles 13-15. They guarantee freedom of movement “within the borders of each state,” not between them. They also guarantee the “right to seek” political asylum, but there is not a word about seeking employment; in fact, the article is mostly limited to political asylum. Article 15 is especially instructive as it upholds “the right to a nationality” as well as the right to “change” nationality. It does not uphold the right to go underground and pretend to hold nationality for the purpose of getting a job. None of the clauses on work and standards of living say a word about setting aside nationality.

I am in no way advocating that the United States should ignore world problems, but open borders is a non-starter under current law (and current weak economic conditions). We’ve no need to adopt heatless laws like those in Arizona, but there’s not a damn thing wrong with making every employee jump through the same hoops I did. Can’t we at least agree that the real problem here is one of supply and demand? It’s time to end the debate by putting responsibility where it belongs. How about a million-dollar fine for every undocumented employee on the payroll and mandatory jail time for employers who do not seek documentation? And, yes, we’d need to impose harsh sentences for those falsifying documents as well. As long as we countenance employers willing to hire illegal immigrants we’re going to have them. Call it the National Dignity Law—one that would make everyone assume that those with an accent or dark skin are green card holders, not a job-stealers.