Parsonsfield afterparty Flirts Boundaries of Chaos

PARSONSFIELD

afterparty

Signature Sounds 2067

* * ½

How do you like your old-time (ish) music, straight up or mashed? Languid and melancholic, or caffeinated and raucous? Controlled or ragged? I generally get bored with stuff that hews too straight to tradition. In that spirit, Parsonsfield (formerly Pure Old Shine) ought to be just my shot of Old Red Eye. And so they are, but just one shot, not the whole jug. There is much to be admired about this young band, not the least of which is that everyone in it has a good voice and they know how to harmonize. They also sport a fine balance of whimsical songs (Mississippi John Hurt's "Let the Mermaids Flirt with Me"), funky (a cover of Bert Jansch's "Strollin' Down the Highway"), 50's style doowop rock ("Anita, Your Lovin'"), and some old-time mountain pathos ("Hang Me" and "Lay Some Flowers on My Grave.") Not only do these five lads sing well, they're also fine musicians on everything from the usual stringed instruments to things such as glockenspiel, trumpet, and musical saw.

So why a middling rating? Frankly, these guys exhaust me. afterparty is an EP and its seven tracks are pretty close to my limit. The reason lies in the execution, not the effort. These tracks involve the kind of involvement one puts into training a kitten–both the fun parts and the moments when you just want things to calm down. That is to say, Parsonsfield tends to arrange material that teeters on the brink of chaos. Usually they pull back just in the nick of time, but sometimes they don't. I get the idea that they wanted to make a spirited album evocative of evenings when the real party begins when the official one ends. I also get it that they wanted to keep the mood light and the music unrestrained. Oddly, though, all this full-tilt energy has the net effect of making seven really different songs feel the same. There's a reason why more experienced lineups spend a lot of time working on the pacing of their set lists. afterparty still makes it onto my personal playlist, but I like it a whole lot better when it's loaded on my iPod with other albums and the mode set to shuffle.  Rob Weir

Can Fracking Lead to Foreign Policy Shift?

They say you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, but maybe that's wrong. Consider two things that most reasonable people think are problematic: fracking and redeployment of military personnel into Iraq. If you think both are nightmares, you get no argument from me. Fracking is a public health and environmental disaster and I don't want to be within a hundred miles of a hydraulic fracturing site. Iraq is Arabic for Vietnam. But if a combination of the two makes the U.S. government radically rethink both its energy policy and foreign policy in the Middle East, history may look more kindly upon these dual follies.

Could this lead to...

Because of fracking the United States is now awash in oil. We've got so much that you don't hear much from the got-to-drill-in-the National Parks crowd anymore and those big companies that lined up for right to drill offshore and create the next Deepwater Horizon spill have deserted the queue. Even Texas wildcatters are complaining there's not enough profit to justify sinking new wells. They’ve had the gall to seek subsidies and price supports, but not even this Congress buys that sorry tale.

I don't give a damn about making the world safe for gas-guzzling SUVs, but it sure would be fun to see the US flip the bird to OPEC and it would be positively delicious to witness a radical shift in Middle East priorities. Step one would be to call Saudi Arabia what it is–the world's number one exporter of Islamic terrorism. The ruling Saud family has been a band of authoritarian thugs since 1902, and we've looked the other way since the 1973 oil boycott for fear the Saudis would turn off the petrol nozzle. Payback time, baby! Tell King Abdullah if he wants to keep his butt on the throne and his head on his neck, we have a few conditions: (1) Aggressive action by the Saudi secret service to ferret out and destroy terror cells, (2) Full civil rights for Saudi women. Don't want to play? I'm sure Egypt, Israel, and Jordan would love to some of that U.S. aid that won't be coming your way.

Speaking of Egypt, does anybody still believe in Arab Spring? The U.S. should stop pulling punches and get behind the el-Sisi government. The overthrow of Morsi was a good thing and saved Egypt from the loathsome Muslim Brotherhood that would have led to another war with Israel and occasioned the misery of any Egyptian with a desire to live in a century more advanced than the 7^th. A strong Egypt is crucial to U.S. interests in the region. What we don't need there is another Erdogan.

Does that name ring any bells? Recep Tayyip Erdogan is the putative democratically elected president of Turkey. He's actually an Islamist in a Western-style business suit, and his band of cronies are as backward looking as the Saud family and ISIS. Did you catch his craven and cowardly non-response to the siege of Kobani? As Kurds died on his border, he lifted not a finger to help, refused to arm Turkish Kurds who wanted to help repel ISIS, and wouldn't allow US planes to use Turkish sites or airspace. He cried like a hungry toddler when we dropped weapons to Kurds on his border. Why? Because he and ISIS are on the same page and he's scared to death of the Kurds.

...this?

If there's anyone (big IF) we ought to arm in Middle East, it's the Kurds. If Syria and Iraq ever stabilize (an even bigger IF), an independent Kurdistan is a given. A U.S. backed (and militarily secured) Kurdistan could help a whole host of problems. Kurdish nationalists have long envisioned a homeland that embraces parts of modern-day Syria, Iraq, northern Turkey, and western Iran. Imagine what a presence it would be. Imagine how nervous it would make America’s enemies. And get this–Kurdistan would be a predominately Muslim country that has no historic hatred of Jews or modern grudge with the existence of Israel.

Turkey would drop out of NATO and good riddance. Along with that withdrawal would go any hope of joining the EU and all of Europe would breathe a sigh of relief. The Turkish economy makes those of Portugal and Greece seem like Saks Fifth Avenue by comparison. Should we mention human rights? Turkey has a deplorable human rights record internally, and ask the Macedonians, Greeks, Cypriotes, and Armenians about what good neighbors they've been. Turkey has yet to admit to its genocide against the Armenians in 1915 because it claims those 1.5 million women and children it slaughtered were really enemy combatants. That's their story and they're sticking to it.  But the West shouldn't stick with Turkey. The Cold War is over, Turkey isn't essential any more, modernizer Kemal Ataturk died in 1938, and Turkish democracy is an oxymoron. Turkey is in dire need of a makeover and Erdogan, the Turkish lira, and Sharia law can't be part of it.

Dare I dream of Lebanon without Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and Hamas? Or Palestine? Too much, you protest. Perhaps. Don’t even get me started on Cold War dinosaurs Pakistan and Afghanistan—short version, embrace India and dump those other two like the toxic bad dates they were. Fracking oil and the end of the Cold War means we don't have to deal with bastards who bankroll monsters. If we can shut off the money pipeline to Texas oil drillers, we can do it to tinhorn dictators. Open that sow’s ear silk purse and spend the lolly on dance partners with whom you’d not be ashamed to be seen.

Letter to Democrats: So Long, It's Been Bad to Know You

The Third Way's real agenda

We are weeks away from the 2014 election, one that appears destined to deliver a crushing blow to the Democrats and deliver the Senate and quite a few of the remaining governorships into GOP hands. Am I depressed? Nope. The sooner the Democratic Party is destroyed, the faster reform-minded Americans will be forced to assemble a coalition that actually stands for something. Look around the Democratic Party: John Kerry, Barack Obama, the Clintons, Joe Biden, Mary Landrieu, Harry Reid, Debbie Stabenow, Cory Booker, Jay Rockefeller…. A pulse, anyone, a pulse? Better yet, a spine?

Here in Massachusetts we have Martha Coakley running for governor against Republican Charles Baker. Let’s see, both are pro-choice, pro-business, and pro-casino gambling. Do I give a damn if Charlie beats Martha? Nope. In fact, I hope he does. Here in the Bay State we use the slam “Martha Chokely.” She’s the pathetic loser who squandered a 30-point lead in a month and allowed the detestable Scott Brown to fill out Ted Kennedy’s seat in the Senate. Brown got whupped good by Liz Warren and hightailed it to New Hampshire to run for a different Senate seat. If he defeats Jeanne Shaheen, a rare principled Democrat, in November, you can blame Martha Chokely for rescuing Scott from the obscurity he so richly deserves.

I can hear some of you scream, “But what about Elizabeth Warren?” Love her! My God, the woman actually talks sense. A few days ago she lit into Obama with the blunt assessment that at every chance he had to come down on the side of ordinary Americans, he chose Wall Street. You go, Elizabeth! She’s right. Anyone looking at the Stock Market lately? It’s down over a thousand points this year. Thanks Barack. You delivered the market to the short-term profit makers who have now backed out, making even your tenuous claim to economic recovery look pathetic. So what’s the Democratic Party seeking to do to Liz Warren? Isolate her, of course.

Just when you think Dems can’t get any lamer, they manage. A Democratic think tank group calling itself The Third Way is out coaching candidates against what it calls “soak-the rich” advocates and “populists” like Warren. They tell everyone it’s the only way the party will win the “middle class.” Of please! Who wrote that crap, Ronald Reagan? It’s the same old tried bullshit about an “ownership society” that takes hard-pressed middle-income people, stuffs a few nostrums down their throat, and convinces them to believe that the middle class and the upper class are allies.

Let’s call The Third Way what it really is: Make Way for Hillary. Great. About the only thing America needs less than another Clinton is another Bush.  The Third Way is a business consortium and what it really wants is for Liz Warren to STFU. They don’t like the fact that she holds their feet to the fire and calls them the pirates they are. I mean, the woman talks banking regulations, for God’s sake! Can’t have that. So let’s get a Clinton in the Oval Office and some Third Way Democrats in with her so everyone can get a piece of the sweetheart action the Clintons cut for Wal-Mart. Remember Bonkin’ Bill? The guy who rewrote the Communications Act so that the same rightwing moguls could own more than one media outlet in the same market? The guy whose signature is on NAFTA? The one who signed the Defense of Marriage Act into law? The one who dismantled Great Society welfare benefits?

But wait—it gets worse. Still another group of Democrats wants to steer the party away from environmentalism. Not surprisingly, they are centered in West Virginia, where Republicans are poised to take Jay Rockefeller’s seat. “Clean coal,” they cry. “Fairies, elves, and unicorns,” I reply. There’s no such thing as clean coal. What this is really all about is the same thing The Third Way wants: a total dismantling of business regulations. Up in Vermont you find another Democrat of conscience, Pat Leahy. Guess what Leahy has had to defend since the day he stepped into the U.S. Senate? Vermont’s Act 250, its Land Use and Development Act that requires compliance with environmental impact study findings before a project can be green-lighted. Guess who always funds Leahy’s opponents? Big Box retailers and resort developers.

The Democrats are going to bleed in November. I hope it’s fatal. I want to see the Warrens, Shaheens, and Leahys of the world with stethoscopes around their necks, shaking their heads, and pulling the plug on the life-support machines. I want them to start over. And go ahead and hate me, but I’m writing in Dan Berwick’s name for Massachusetts governor. Of my candidates, I require a pulse and a spine.

  

A Trip to Vermont is Good for the Soul

Not everything that's good for your soul makes sense. That's why, yesterday, we found ourselves heading north through the predawn fog for a 3-½ hour drive to have breakfast at Klinger's, a South Burlington, Vermont bakery. That was followed by a hike in Red Rocks Park, a stroll down Burlington's Church Street Marketplace, a drive to Montpelier to have a late brunch at the New England Culinary Institute, then the southward journey home broken only by a brief peak into Queechee Gorge. That's about it–seven hours driving for a cinnamon meltaway, some lakeside exercise, window-shopping, and brunch. And it was the best thing we've done in months.

I admit to being a total romantic about Vermont. It's little exaggeration to say that we spent the first quarter century of our lives in Pennsylvania, but that we "grew up" in the eight years we lived in northern Vermont. We were there when Ben & Jerry's made ice cream in a refurbished downtown Burlington gas station, when Bernie Sanders was mayor, when IBM ruled Essex Junction, when First Night debuted, when traffic was banned from Church Street, when baseball returned to the Queen City, when you tripped over downtown bookstores, and Woolworth's and Grand Union were the only chain stores in evidence. In Vermont we held the first professional jobs we actually enjoyed, helped run a folk club, ate the first fresh bagels that ever passed our lips, and both played like kids and took on our first adult responsibilities.

But nostalgia isn't why yesterday's back-numbing road trip felt so good. It's because a trip to Vermont is life affirming. There is, of course, its jaw-dropping beauty. If you've forgotten what awe feels like, drive through the Ascutney region as the sun is coming up and the mist is swirling round the base of its peaks like volcanoes being filled from the bottom. Watch patches of distant hillsides emerge from their veils of morning condensation illumined in October glory. Vermonters will tell you that this year hasn't been great for foliage, but they say that every year, and you can just nod your head whilst recalling that one shapely maple you saw–afire in red perfection, a prima donna strutting its stuff among its yellowed neighbors. And there's just not much in this world that compares to walking upon a Lake Champlain peninsula to behold the Green Mountains rising across the blue expanse to the east and the Adirondacks to the west.

Vermont also feels like a place where America still works. It's a state where they grade your civil service exam on the spot, and one where they don't refer problems to some damn city planning board when a road washes out–they just dump loads of gravel on it and complain about it at Town Meeting Day in March, like sensible people should do. You see young women wearing Sorrel boots, not Uggs, because the latter make no friggin' sense. Flannel is a matter of pragmatism, not affectation. You hear people talking politics, but without the self-righteous pretension and humorlessness of neighboring Massachusetts. Vermonters manage to be both crankily insular and civic-minded at the same time. Most of the Vermonters I know don't get lathered up about gay marriage, abortion, and other such nonsense because they think it's nobody's business what others do and that government ought to be there to remind busybodies to MYOB. Come 2016, Vermonters will give a Sorrel boot to both for-profit medicine and Obamacare when they put into place what the rest of America has needed for decades but doesn't have the guts to enact: single-payer health care.

I'm romantic about Vermont, but I'm not blind. It's not Utopia. No place with winters that long and that hard can be Utopia. I know there's way too much poverty up there, that the state has some serious drug problems, and that University of Vermont is one of the most expensive state universities in the nation because Vermont does a lousy job of raising and allocating money for public education. I've seen Corporate Generica erode Burlington's downtown uniqueness and witnessed plagues of Yuppies swarming at every hillside steep enough to support a ski lift. Green Mountain Coffee and Long Trail Beer are undrinkable.

For all its faults, though, I feel my tension levels drop and my spirits rise each time I cross the Vermont line. One bite of a Klinger's meltaway or glimpse of Champlain's cold waters replenishes me. Seven hours driving seems a small price to pay.

Retro Folk from Makem & Spain and Friends

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Makem & Spain

Sessions Vol. I

Red Biddy Records 2014

If the name Makem rings a bill it's because Rory is the offspring of Irish folk legends Tommy and Sarah Makem. He once had a trio with older brothers Shane and Conor, but when Shane left to pursue other things and Conor (alas!) got into legal difficulties, Rory joined forces with New Hampshire natives Liam and Mickey Spain to form the Makem & Spain Band. But if you're thinking the new generation is out blazing new trails, think again–the single newest thing about Sessions I is that it was funded by a Kickstarter campaign. This album's feel is that of the early Folk Revival–back in the days in which Pete Seeger's command to "Sing out!" was in full flower, genres were loose, and music was a group exercise.

Sessions I mines folk's back archives and calls upon some of folk music's beloved road-warriors to take the lead: Gordon Bok, Jonathan Edwards, David Mallett, Roger McGuinn, Tom Paxton, Schooner Fare, The Shaw Brothers, Bill Staines, and Noel Paul Stookey. The flavor is that of hootenannies, basket clubs, and kitchen parties. There is, for instance, Tom Paxton leading the charge in a honky-tonk folk rendition of "My Creole Belle," David Mallett (with sons Luke and Will) giving a more homespun treatment to "Roll on Columbia," and Schooner Fare leading a Kingston Trio times two cover of "I Can't Help But Wonder Where I'm Bound." Most of this album is so retro that it sometimes comes–for good or ill–as a sort of a folk revue. Makem and Spain even dust off children's favorites such as "Skip to My Lou" and "Go tell Aunt Rhody." With the exception of "Run, Come See Jerusalem," which Gordon Bok arranges similarly to the way he performed it with Ann Mayo Muir and Ed Tricket; and Mallett's updated look at "The Ballad of St. Anne's Reel," with Eileen Ivers gracing the fiddle parts, Sessons I stays in the retro mode.

Your enjoyment of the record will depend entirely on whether you delight in a stroll down Memory Lane, or long to turn the calendar page. This reviewer felt a bit of both. I happen to think, for example, that "Four Strong Winds" is a sad song that ought to be enveloped in pathos not chorale singing, but that's surely a statement of preference, not artistic judgment. And, in an odd way, it's an endorsement of the project. The twelve songs on the album are such a part of the American DNA, that we're bound to hold views on how they should sound. Call it old meets new meets old. —Rob Weir

Brewster a Brutally Honest Run through Small Town Muck

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BREWSTER (2013)

By Mark Slouka

W. W. Norton, 288 pp.  ISBN: 978-039329756

* * * *

I was born about the same time as the characters in Mark Slouka's Brewster, and l too grew up in a fading blue-collar town analogous to the titular burg of this novel. Like its protagonists, Jon Mosher and Ray Cappicciano, the conversations between my friends and me were peppered with references to The Beatles, Woodstock, Nixon, Kent State, and girls. Like Jon and Ray's unlikely friendship, I too ran with a pack that my friends today would find hard to imagine. It was the times, to be sure, but it was also the place. Unless you grew up in a place in which optimism was seldom the first, best option, you can't really understand why people in those places make the decisions they do. But reading Brewster is a pretty good way to gain some insight.

 Jon Mosher is a lonely, hard-working Jewish kid who spends his non-school hours working in the shoe store owned by his immigrant father—the kind of kid years later everyone would have said, "Who?" when his name was mentioned, were it not for some memorable twists of fate. At home he lives in the shadow of his dead brother, Aaron, and in the gloom of his mother, who never quite got over it. Jon's life takes a public turn when a teacher/cross country coach practically forces him to be on the team. He meets the nerdy Frank, but life-changing events comes after Ray inexplicably befriends him. On the surface, he's Jon's polar opposite—a sort of delayed Fonz type known for being disheveled, smoking, getting into trouble, and for being the best fighter in the school. In fact, as Ray tells it, all the visible cuts and bruises come from periodic trips to Danbury, where he can duke it out with the real tough guys. Jon has a detached mother; Ray's ran away when he was a child. And eventually there is also Karen—pretty, smart, and sensitive. Jon falls for her hard, but her heart belongs to Ray. Again I say––if that makes little sense to you, it's because you didn't grow up in a place like Brewster in the late 60s and early 70s–places where you gravitated toward those who "got" you, not those who were like you.

What's it like? Remember the old Sam Cooke song with the line, "It's been a long, long time coming/But I know a change gon' come." You feel it coming, you know it must, but you have no idea what it will bring. Slouka is a master spinner of tales who immerses us in the simmering rage, the lurking violence, the adult betrayals, and the death of hope by a thousand small injustices that happen in places where what we see on the surface isn't what lurks in the mud. The book is just 288 pages, but it feels longer in a good way. It's a quick read but it's so intimate in its details and so personal on every level that its sweep feels magisterial. At times it's like a train wreck you see coming, but are powerless to stop. And, yes, if you're on the wrong end of a town like Brewster, the only hope is to get out. You know that reading this book, and you sit on the edge of your seat wondering who will make it and who won't.

I realize this is an unconventional review–as befits an unconventional book. By setting his book in a real place, not a contrived composite, Slouka merges physical verisimilitude with psychological truth. If you want a literary analogy, call it a Tobias Wolf-like coming-of-age novel as a master narrator of blue-collar America such as Richard Russo might imagine it. It left me shattered in the way that only nostalgia leavened by dredged up unpleasant memory can. –Rob Weir

Love is Strange Misfires on All Cylinders

LOVE IS STRANGE  (2014)

Directed by Ira Sachs

Sony Classics, 94 minutes, R (for pathetic and idiotic reasons)

* ½

Actually, in this film it's distressingly ordinary!

Love Is Strange is a movie with its heart in the right place. Alas, every other part is as misplaced as a storage cube packed by drunken movers. It is, simply, a lousy movie poorly directed by Ira Sachs and badly written by he and Mauricio Zacharias.

The setup is that Ben (John Lithgow) and George (Alfred Molina) decide to tie the matrimonial knot after 39 years of cohabitation. A crisis emerges when their marriage catches the attention of the bishop who oversees the tony private Catholic school where George teaches music and demands George's dismissal. This means that he and George must sell the condo in which they've lived for decades. Script problem # 1: In what has to be the fastest real estate closing in history, they have to move out immediately and have nowhere to go. Script problem # 2: Who knew that private school music teachers made enough bread to afford such a lovely apartment in Manhattan?

With no income other than George's pension, the couple is temporarily homeless and the only place in which they could live together is with dippy New Age friend Mindy (Christina Kirk in a cringe-worthy dumb role) in Poughkeepsie. That's not happening because, well don't you know, gay men just don't live outside of New York. Call that script problem # 3. Instead, the newlyweds must separate. Ben moves in with his nephew, Elliot (Darren Barrows), who does something or other in film;  his uptight novelist wife Kate (Marissa Tomei); and their son, Joey (CharlieTahan). While Ben snoozes in the bottom bunk of Joey's room, George crashes on the couch of two gay cop friends, Ted (Cheyenne Jackson) and Roberto (Manny Perez), whose cramped apartment is filled with partiers and voguers. Script problem # 4: Gay cops? What is this, The Village People?

I think you begin to see the problems. Script problem # 5: Lithgow and Molina are older actors who are better known for their work on the boards than on the screen. Few young people know who they are and fewer still will want to see this film. Fine. Lord knows we need more adult entertainment, but if you're going this route, don't write a light rom-com-meets-lame farce for 20-somethings. Give us something frothier than a frappuccino with extra cool whip. And don't telegraph what will/must happen with set-ups so obvious Inspector Clouseau wouldn't need to bumble upon the solutions. Don't pad the movie with subplots that go nowhere, and for heaven's sake don't try to imbue Marisa Tomei with anything resembling gravitas. Script problem # 6: While you're at it, if George must be a music teacher, have him love something other than Chopin. Chopin was a great composer, but with a script this leaden you don't want dreamy music suggestive of naptime.

Some critics have called the performances of Lithgow and Molina "courageous." Really? Did I miss something? Did the calendar roll back to 1984? Each is perfectly competent, but nothing more. In life they are great friends and these roles seemed little more taxing than a walk through for each. They are, however, head and shoulders above the rest of the cast who, with the exception of young Tahan, seems to have been chosen because they fit the bill for character cutouts devoid of depth.

Need further proof of this film's shopworn nature? It's rated R. For gay snogging? Nope. Lithgow and Molina share about half a dozen chaste kisses and there are a few F-bombs, but that's as salacious as things get. All of which is to say, this film got an R simply because it's about a gay couple. Script problem # 7 through infinity: If you want to promote inclusivity, don't make a film that perpetuates every idiotic stereotype in the book. Were it not for the fact that Lithgow and Molina are so talented that their walk-throughs are better than the histrionics of most, this would be one of the worst dogs of 2014. As is, it's just a bad move that deserves to be quickly forgotten. –Rob Weir