Jim Armenti and the Glories of Local Rock

JIM ARMENTI

The Herd

jamesarmenti@hotmail.com

***

What sustains rock and roll? It sure as hell isn’t record companies, promoters, or the band of thieves posing as consumer servants called iTunes. Radio does it part, but what it really boils down to is local musicians who get bitten by the bug at an early age, have no desire to take the cure, and keep cranking it out for the townies. In Western Massachusetts, Jim Armenti is among the rock and roll warrior caste. He’s in numerous bands, teaches music at local music stores, hires himself out as rock and roll “coach,” and though you may not know his name, he’s penned songs for those you probably do know: Pam Tillis, Dar Williams, and Cry, Cry, Cry to name a few. Every now and then he does some solo gigs and The Herd is his second solo recording (though it enlists the help of old sidekicks such as Ray Mason.)

Also found on Armenti’s resume is a twenty-three-year teaching music at the local prison, and many of The Herd’s eleven tracks are based on the reflections, stories, and conversations of inmates. Like that material, much of what Armenti plays is raw and, to those accustomed to slick studio production, unpolished. To be sure, there’s a lot of mileage on Armenti’s voice and it can now be best described as “earnest.” But back to the sound and vibe of the album. If you find this recording a bit on the ragged side, it’s probably because you’ve become too accustomed to “American Idol”-like hype. Another thing that has sustained rock and roll through the decades has been its willingness to point a middle digit at ideals of homogeneity and conformity. Listen hard to Armenti’s guitar and you’ll waltz through some styles once (and now) thought scandalous among many: rockabilly, acid rock, reggae, R & B….

Is this a breakthrough recording? Nope; Armenti has no desire to join the washed-and-scrubbed crowd. Is it “art?” Probably not. Is it a piece of local rock and roll that reminds us of rock’s branch and roots? Now you’re talking.

Here's one of Jim's online guitar lessons.

Mad Agnes Swan Song

MAD AGNES

hush

www.madagnes.com

***

The cover photo of the latest release from the trio Mad Agnes (Margo Hennebach, Adrienne Jones, Mark Saunders) features an empty room bathed in pastels and white light, its paint peeling and plaster falling. I regret to inform, that’s a metaphor for the group—as of June 4, Mad Agnes will disband. Those who have come to love their gorgeous harmonies and quiet music will surely greet this as bad news indeed, though you can purchase hush as a balm and enjoy it for years to come.

The group’s third and final CD includes all that was wondrous about Mad Agnes and, perhaps, a few of the reasons why they never quite broke through. The music is (mostly) cerebral and either overtly or latently spiritual, and it often stretches categories to lie somewhere between folk, musical theater, and light classical. This suggests an interesting mash up, but it also means that much of it is melodically ambiguous. What’s lacking are memorable hooks; Mad Agnes’ music makes you muse more than hum. As for the song content, adjectives such as “sweet” and “tranquil” come to mind. That’s not a bad thing by any means, but in my view hush could have benefitted from some contrasting grit. Instead, the trio tries to find balance through retro arrangements and humor. I liked the song “Running in England” quite a bit, though its arrangement was reminiscent of The Association circa 1969. The splashes of humor didn’t work for me, perhaps because their version runs toward wholesomeness and I prefer it with more edge. “Julia,” a collection of silly rhymes inspired by Julia Child, is clever, but felt more like a novelty song that works better on stage with a chuckling audience. And, sorry, but white folks trying to rap—the trio’s cover of “Mother’s Planet”—just doesn’t work for me.

My critique notwithstanding, in a world consumed by anger and screaming heads, Mad Agnes was a needed calm in the storm. There is honesty, decency, and goodness in their music, qualities also found in abundance on hush. I think they used the lower case deliberately and not because they were trying to piggyback on e. e. cummings. Buy their swan song CD and enjoy moments of bliss and Zen. Good luck to all—you will be missed.

Here's a Mad Agnes sampler.

Ana Moura Dazzles with Live Album

ANA MOURA

Coliseu

World Village 468103

****

Those who have heard one of fadista Ana Moura’s three studio albums already know that she has an amazing voice. Just how good is abundantly clear on her latest release, Coliseu, a live album that features Moura, bass player Filipe Larsen, and guitar wizards José Manuel Neto and José Elmiro Nunes. Larsen sets jazzy scaffolding and Neto and Nunes dazzle on Portuguese acoustic guitar—and their faster-paced playing is evocative of Spanish flamenco, but also highlights some of the regional differences (fewer arpeggios, more attention to pauses and, always, framing for song rather than dance).But there is no question who’s the star of the ensemble. The album’s fifteen tracks—culled from two sold-out performance, one in Porto and one in Lisbon—capture Moura’s magic. Hers is the sort of voice that can move on to tears one moment and dancing across the room the next. It also packs the power of an earthquake. She seeks to be faithful to the fado tradition of Portuguese idol Amália Rodrigues in spirit, but does not seek to be crowned as her heir. Fado purists will note that Moura takes liberties with fado, though I’d describe her as an interpreter seeking to bring the music to a new generation. She captures the flair of fado—with all its Jewish and Moorish influences—but filters it through the sensibilities of Euro-jazz and pop-fused classical music. Whatever she’s doing, it’s working. You will hear her audiences burst into applause at her throaty virtuosity and by the time you’re done listening, you’ll join them.

Check out this YouTube clip.

Liberals Love of Palestine Baffling

The Hamas flag. Is this a banner you want flying at the U.N.?

Yesterday President Barack Obama visited Ireland and assured the citizens of Éire that the “United States stands with Ireland.” That’s in marked contrast to last week, when he told Israel that it needed to retreat to its 1967 borders as a precondition for peace talks with Palestine.

What is it about liberals and Palestine anyhow? At the University of Massachusetts you could set a truckload of babies and kittens afire and students would duck into the Student Union, grab a cup of coffee, and exit the back door. But mention Palestine and they weep, don red and white shumrags, and begin shouting anti-Israel slogans. That’s an awful lot of anguish for a group of people who danced in the street when the Twin Towers fell on September 11, 2001. How about this is a precondition for peace talks—peace? How about saying there is no discussion until Hamas stops lobbing missiles into Israel and sending bomb-wired adolescents onto Israeli busses? Better yet, how about saying that there are no talks until Hamas is disbanded?

Shall we begin to enumerate the ways in which current thinking on Palestine is wrong? Let’s do that! First of all, the parties involved need to broker a deal, not the United States. Imagine the outrage here if an Israeli politician said, in advance of a summit between the U.S. and Mexico, that the United States needs to retreat to pre-1846 borders with Mexico and abandon “settlements” in California, Texas, and the Southwest. Or what if the Balkan states were told they needed to respect pre-World War I borders, hence the Austro-Hungarian Empire was being revived? A fact of history is that lands change hands. Is that moral? Usually not; wars seldom are. At some point, though, a settlement must be made and everyone must move on. Borders can be arbitrated, but only when the principals involved request it; other than in the case of conquest, outsiders do not get to make the decision about how disputes are resolved.

Second, do we really want to support a United Nations resolution to create a new state that sanctions terrorism? Please spare me the crap about Hamas being the democratically elected representative of the Palestinian people. Americans wave the words “democracy” and “elections” as if they are cantrips that remove all curses and cure all ills. Write a constitution, hold an election, and democracy shall bloom like thousand flowers. We believe this, I suppose, because it worked so well in South Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, where elections put the kibosh to the Vietcong, Al Jihad, Al Qaeda, and the Taliban. Oh, wait….

Hamas exists for a single reason: the destruction of Israel. Okay; I’ll back off and be more charitable—it has yet to unveil its plan for state building or demonstrate a capacity for improving the lot of average Palestinians. More to the point, it has yet to practice civility, a factor that ought to be more of a precondition for statehood than constitutions and elections. For all of the handwringing about the aggressive actions of Israel, can anyone come up with an example of an Israeli troop incursion that was not preceded by direct attacks on Israel? (And that includes its ill-fated 1982 invasion of Lebanon, which came after relentless shelling from Hezbollah.) To return to the Mexico analogy, if Mexicans sent missiles and suicide bombers into the U.S. on a weekly basis, how much time would pass before we scrambled the jets, sent in the Marines, and declared Mexico null and void?

Third, why the rush to create a non-viable state? Palestine lacks water, arable land, mineral resources, and infrastructure. Create it tomorrow and what do you have? Bangladesh in the desert. For all of the hatred of Israel, the salient economic reality of Palestine is that it has been a welfare client of Israel for decades. That’s why 1.5 million Palestinians live in Israel, not the West Bank, and why tens of thousands commute to Israel for work—when the borders aren’t closed due to terrorism. Want to create a Palestinian state that works? There already is one: Jordan! Half of its population is Palestinian. The most logical solution is to append the West Bank to Jordan, whose Hashemite dynasty gained power in 1946, the same year Palestine rejected statehood, by the way. Jordan has one of the highest standards of living in the Middle East, but I guess liberals can’t support this plan because it’s a monarchy. If only they’d hold an election…. (Sigh!)

Fourth, and the cincher in my view, Barack Obama’s hard line on Israel works against everything the United States says it wants. Democracy? There is a single democratic state in the entire region: Israel. Security? There is one power that consistently fights terrorism: Israel. Improved standards of living? The region’s highest standard of living is found in Israel. Elections? That would be Israel. Human rights? There’s room for improvement everywhere, but the region’s best record is in Israel. Stability? Israel by a landslide. Reliability as a U.S. ally? Well it sure as hell isn’t Palestine! Or Syria. Or Iraq. Or Lebanon. Or anyone else not named Israel.

Liberals need to wise up on the Middle East. They’re like children trying to wish their fantasies into reality. We’re already seeing the democracy fantasy unravel. Anyone want to place bets on how long it is before the Muslim Brotherhood forces its way into Egyptian politics, or Al Qaeda takes over Yemen? There is, at present, a single road to peace and stability in the Middle East. It runs through Israel. The hard line Barack Obama should be taking it is this: the preconditions for U.S. aid, arbitration of disputes, and diplomatic relations is repudiation of violence and acceptance of Israel’s right to exist.

Video Review: Workers Win in Made in Dagenham

MADE IN DAGENHAM (2010)

Directed by Nigel Cole

113 mins.

* * *

Depressed by what happened in Wisconsin? Feeling sick by the nationwide union-bashing steamroller effect that’s flattening working people? Think there’s no hope? Maybe you could use a reminder that sometimes the bastards go too far and that common people do, on occasion, stand up for themselves. Let us recommend a modest British movie, Made in Dagenham. It’s now on DVD, about the only way to see it as it sped out of U.S. theaters faster than a Ford goes down the assembly line. Like a lot of “small” films, this one’s meager budget isn’t hard to spot, but watch it one for inspiration, not path-breaking filmmaking.

Made in Dagenham is the British Norma Rae. Dagenham is a section of East London that was, until 2005, the site of a massive Ford assembly plant. In 1968, it was the site of an impromptu strike by 187 women sewing machine operators who were responsible for all of the upholstery that went inside Fords. That 187 women walked out in defiance of Ford U.K, the American parent firm, and their own union was remarkable enough. That they won was little short of miraculous, and a signal event in helping a working-class version of feminism take hold in England. Rita O’Grady, a married woman who simply got fed up with being ignored, spearheaded the strike. The women of Dagenham were abused by management, made the butt of sexist jokes by the thousands of male autoworkers, and were taken for granted by a union that insisted that men’s issues were more important. This film shows how the women of Dagenham turned everyone’s assumptions upside down.

O’Grady is played by Sally Hawkins with a deft and steely resolve. This comes as a surprise, because we last saw her in Happy-Go-Lucky playing a motor-mouthed ditz who flitted across the screen like a Republican fleeing a tax collector. We walked out of that film, as we found Hawkins’s performance so over-the-top and annoying that she could have been Jim Carrey in drag. Not in this film! Hawkins is a spark plug analogous to Sally Field in Norma Rae, and she is superb at walking the line between past and present. Her performance allows us to see the ways in which the 1960s belatedly but inexorably transformed working-class life. Bob Hoskins turns in a very credible performance as the one union official who believes that women need to be seen as comrades, not cupcakes. Another intriguing performance is that of Jaime Winstone (daughter of veteran actor Ray Winstone) as Sandra, a young woman torn between using her slutty sexuality to get ahead, or to decry her exploitation and castigate the sexist pigs that objectify her. Miranda Richardson gets to kick chauvinist keister as the first woman to hold the office of British Secretary of State.

This is an inspiring film, even if it is often heavy handed and predictable. The story is, essentially, David-versus-Goliath with David sporting a Ronettes’ hairstyle and wearing a gathered skirt. In like fashion, some of the characters are cartoon cutouts rather than recognizable people. For all of that, the film nicely captures the sense of a culture in transition. We also see that which so many men tried hard not to see. There could be no turning back; the page hadn’t turned, it had been ripped from its binder and burned.

So watch this film and remind yourself that some times the good gals win.

Postscript: The Dagenham Ford plant closed on 2005, not because of union problems, but because the sixty-year-old plant was no longer economically viable. Wind turbines are now made in Dagenham.

Michael Miles Takes the Banjo to Unexpected Places

MICHAEL J. MILES

Collage

www.milesmusic.org

****

Just what you’ve all been waiting for: a solo banjo album. You scoff? Be gone, unbeliever. The subtitle of Michael Miles’s fifth release is “Timbres of Unlikely Juxtaposition,” and it doesn’t even begin to describe what’s in store on this recording. It’s just like every other banjo recording you’ve ever heard, assuming the ones you’ve heard have tracks arranged for the banjo to share aural space with trumpet, flugehorn, the vibes, Brazilian hand percussion, a string quartet, and vocals from the Sons of the Never Wrong! This CD is more Dave Brubeck Quartet than Blue Ridge Mountains and more Robert Johnson than “Rocky Top.” Miles, who teaches at Chicago’s Old School of Folk Music, is often compared to Bela Fleck, but even that parallel falls short. Know any other banjo players who have covered Bach’s “Gavotte en Rondeau” and “Sleepers Awake?” Remember “All That You Dream” by Little Feat? Miles covers that one too, as well as Robert Johnson’s “Crossroads.” Okay—Eric Clapton has covered that classic, as has Alvin Lee, Jimi Hendrix, Duane Allman, Alex Van Halen, Trey Anastacio, and a host of other guitar heroes. But “Crossroads” on the banjo? Hell, yes! Miles also busts out four originals, and they too break the mold as each is played in conjunction with Chicago’s Chamber Blues String Quartet. When he finally slips in a mountain standard, “The Cuckoo,” you almost have to pinch yourself to realize that it’s on the same record as the rest. This album is a triumph of boldness, panache, and genius.

Check out his "New Century Suite."

The Unaccountable Monstrousness of Catholic Bishops Report

Need further proof that it would take Dan Brown to unearth the Roman Catholic Church’s moral compass? Catholic bishops released their five-year study on clerical abuse yesterday and named what caused priests to abuse hundreds of children: the sexual revolution. In the therapeutic language of apology and faux concern that now passes for “justice” these days, the report portrays priests as the victims. It seems the poor pedophiles were ill prepared for the sexually frank and libertine ways of Flower Children. The report admits that the Church erred in not monitoring priests better during this sexually open time, but if you believe this load of whitened hogwash--and you should not--what happened was akin to round-eyed unsupervised children let loose in a candy shop: alas, some of them overindulged.

Let’s not mince words. This report is an abomination. If the Rapture does happen this weekend, no one associated it with it, the US Conference of Bishops, the Vatican, or BishopAccountability.org will be heavenly bound. Are we to applaud because the report oh-so-carefully did not blame homosexuality? Or should we laugh because it so definitely asserted that celibacy vows had nothing to do with the spike in gay priests and sexual abuse? Perhaps we should demand an investigation of the investigators. After all, most of the money for the $1.8 million study conducted by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice came from--you guessed it--Catholic organizations. What next, a major research project on the health benefits of tobacco underwritten by R.J. Reynolds? (Can we at least have a list of the John Jay researchers so we can make sure to toss their applications, should they apply for jobs at universiies with ethical standards?)

People of faith should react with outrage to this. It is, simply put, one of the most monstrous lies ever put forth in the name of religion. At least rightwing evangelicals have the grace to blame Satan when they get caught in sexual scandals. But hippies? Jesus, Mary, and the love beads! “Next up on The Jerry Springer Show--How the Merry Pranksters Primed Priestly Pedophilia.” I am reminded of Joseph Welch’s 1954 attack on Senator Joseph McCarthy when he blurted out, “Have you no sense of decency… at long last?” Later in the exchange an exasperated Welch turned away from McCarthy and said to him, “I will not discuss this with you further…. If there is a God in heaven, it will do neither you nor your cause any good. I will not discuss it further.”

That sums up how I feel about the Catholic Church these days. The Church continues to behave as if this is the Middle Ages and it can use its wealth and power to sweep scandal under a brocaded tapestry. But I note another thing here in my town--three of the city’s four Catholic churches are closing and being consolidated into one. Some parishioners call this tragic; I call it “justice.”