Koby Israelite an Accordion Beast!

KOBY ISRAELITE

Blues from Elsewhere

Asphalt-Tango records 3513

* * * *

Koby Israelite—born in Israel and now based in London--is one part Jimmy Page, one part Bob Dylan, one part Johnny Cash, and one part John Zorn—except he plays the accordion, not a guitar or saxophone. His latest is the aptly named Blues from Elsewhere, and the eponymous track sounds like Sephardic honky tonk. I’m not exaggerating about any of the influences noted above. Check out how he squeezes out the notes atop crunching power chords in “Accordion is the New Guitar,” and then give a listen to his cover of “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” I can doubt even Dylan could imagine the jump jive/power rock instrumental treatment, or Annique’s keening vocals. Israelite is full of such surprises. “Johnny Has No Cash No More” is where Texas two-step meets barrelhouse accordion; “Crayfish Hora” unfolds as if gumbo-crazed Jews were belly-dancing down Bourbon Street; “Take My Brain and Sell it to the Night” is like string band for the Andrews Sisters; “My Way the Right Way” a blend of rock, hand jive, and surf guitar; “Just Clichés” sounds like the soundtrack for an experimental cartoon made in the 1930s; “Kashmir” has the trippy dreaminess of a lost Yes composition; and “East of Nashville” is really east—like Tel Aviv. My first thought was that only Sharon Shannon pushes the accordion to such innovative extremes. Upon further reflection, she’s a piker compared to Koby Israelite.—Rob Weir

Selig Right to Tell Olympics to Take a Walk

Five words I’ve never before written: I agree with Bud Selig. The MLB commissioner has taken a hard line on baseball as an Olympic sport and true fans should applaud his actions. The 2012 Olympics (in London) dropped baseball and softball as Olympic sports, a decision that has spawned a grassroots movement to force the International Olympics Committee to reverse that decision. The kicker is that the same advocates also want professional players to compete. This would entail suspending the MLB season for two weeks in August every four years, a contingency that Selig rejected outright. He’s right. August is when the pennant races really begin to heat up and there is absolutely no reason for the leagues to suspend play for the sake of what is little more than exhibition games that promote corporate advertising and muscular nationalism. I’ll go Selig one better and say that all team sports should be removed from the Olympics. That would give the games a chance to recoup what little is left of the elusive “spirit of the Olympics.”

I mean that. No ice hockey, field hockey, cricket, basketball, or soccer either. But isn’t Olympic ice hockey exciting, you ask? It used to be–back in the days when occasionally a bunch of feisty amateurs could take on the state-sponsored Ruskies and occasionally win. But not now; the National Hockey League is the de facto World Hockey League. Not only do players from 20 nations suit up, more than half of the players now come from outside of Canada and the United States. So stop shutting down the NHL in February for meaningless games between players that already compete. Besides, like soccer (men’s and women’s) there’s already a World Cup. And for heaven’s sake, enough with the farcical “Dream Teams” in basketball! The NBA is also international in makeup, plus it’s boring enough during the season; we don’t need to see it in August, and we surely don’t need to see a bunch of pampered pros beating up on amateurs. This sort of thing is a relic of the Cold War, when (once again) the Russians won gold a few times by defeating US college players. Ancient history.

Dump field hockey, cricket, and other such sports as well; they are only played in a few nations and they also have world championships. If we must keep any team sports at all, let’s return to the rules that say that a person who has signed a professional contract to play (at any level) is ineligible for the Olympics. I’d also love to see an end to the grotesquely expensive and tacky opening ceremonies where nationalism is on display, plus a ban on “medals count” columns. The very idea that a nation “wins” the Olympics makes mockery of the ideals behind the games. We are supposed to marvel over the individual achievements of stellar athletes. Local pride is one thing, but wallowing in the collective national loot gathered by pro athletes in made-for-corporate-sponsors moments is grotesque. Congratulations to Commissioner Selig for not adding baseball to this farce. For once, this Bud’s for you! --Rob Weir

Oli Rockberger Release Lacks Solid Focus

 OLI ROCKBERGER

Old Habits

Oli Road Records 0996

* *

Keyboardist Oli Rockberger has played with such contemporary music heavyweights as Jackie DeShannon, Levon Helm, John Mayer, and Oliver Mtukudzi. He’s also shared the stage with jazz luminaries the likes of Charlie Hunter and Les McCann, and with several hip-hop bands. As a sideman he’s eclectic, but his solo release Old Habits could really use some focus. It’s one of those albums that are so atmospheric that one longs for some grounding terra firma. It falls into no discernible genre, which wouldn’t be a bad thing if Rockberger were slicing some new grooves. Instead, the album feels more like an incompletely realized mélange. It has the cool detachment of smooth jazz, but lacks innovative breakouts or unifying musical themes. There are swells evocative of a rock anthem, but few identifying hooks; frenetic blended instrumentation the likes of a Loreena McKennitt composition, but they seem more like tack-ons than bridges; and quiet moments in which he comes off as a subdued Paul Simon, but without the melodic unity of folk music.  Rockberger’s keyboard work is solid and his vocals more than competent, but this is one of those unfortunate records that dissolve into the background as it’s playing. In short, it lacks “Ah ha!” moments that make it anything more than a backdrop against which life happens.

—Rob Weir   

New Paula Cole Album An Unsuccessful Effort

PAULA COLE

Raven

Paulacole.com

*

I like Paula Cole’s voice, but I’ve got no love for her latest record. It’s an independent, Kickstarter-funded project billed as a return to her Americana roots, but it really shows how far she’s strayed. Take the song “Manitoba.” Is something’s amiss when it sounds more like a West Hollywood studio than a Western Canadian province? Yes, there is.  Cole has a glorious voice that moves across octaves and scales with the ease of a supple ten-year-old ascending and descending a set of monkey bars. But therein lies the problem. Cole sings like the Grammy Award winning pop artist she has been for the past decade. We expect to be blown away by big voices in pop songs. What else is there in compositions that seldom get much more sophisticated than “Oooh, baby, baby, I love you?” By contrast, we listen to folk songs for their narratives, causes, gorgeous melodies, and revelatory emotions. Cole has a powerful voice that she rockets from earthy whispers to Streisand-like crescendos at the bat of an eyelash. Okay, but she wants us to hear the lyrics, she doesn’t articulate well, and any message that might have been there gets lost in a welter of vocal pyrotechnics. Put another way, folk music has produced glorious voices–Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Joni Mitchell, Kate Rusby, Karine Polwart–but there are not diva voices. If Cole’s intention is to turn back the clock a bit, she’d do well to remember that there’s a world of difference between staging a song and interpreting one. If you like big voices, Cole’s theatrics on Raven are impressive; but if you really care about the content, they won’t leave much of an impression.   --Rob Weir

Tone Deaf Liberalism

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Why are so many liberals so damned tone deaf? The modern conservative movement consists mostly of gun-toting Neanderthal crazies and hate-mongers, the latest case in point being Professor Niall Ferguson, another reason why you should never send your kid to that overpriced, overrated den of egoism and mediocrity called Harvard. Nailhead Fergy recently said that Keynesian economics were bogus because Keynes was gay and never had children. (Keynes was a married bisexual; his wife had a miscarriage, which makes Ferguson both confused about sexual identity and cruel.) And Fergy isn’t even close to being the most pompous, loud-mouthed, fact-challenged idiot in the conservative movement. By all rights, liberals ought to be as common as pollen in spring. Instead, they’re as rare as truth on Fox News. Why? Because liberals are often as reckless with their good intentions as conservatives are with their greed. Two cases in point, both from Massachusetts:

The first involves the Boston Marathon bombing. In Cambridge—recently dubbed the best (and most liberal) place in the Commonwealth to live–there was a sucessful hue-and-cry to release Robel Phillipos on bail. If the name doesn’t ring a bell, he’s a 19-year-old UMass Dartmouth student arrested for lying and tampering with evidence. He and two others went to Dzokhar Tsarnaev’s room after the Marathon bombing and removed a backpack with emptied fireworks and a laptop. All three have admitted that when they saw images of the bombing suspects, they thought one of them was their friend, Dzokhar. That is to say, they were protecting a man accused of massacre.

Wait—it gets worse. Some good liberals in Cambridge are worried about Dzokhar himself. They think he fell under the Svengali-like spell of his deceased brother and just went along with the plot. Here’s the incredulous spiel coming from people’s mouths: Dzokhar is really a nice guy who loves video games, girls, and smoking pot. A couple of people—mostly in the Chechen community—even think both Tsarnaev brothers were framed! Dzokhar’s good buddy, Robel, is a “civic-minded” kid who worked several jobs, is a good son, and just got “confused” and “freaked out.” The charges against him are “refutable.”

Okay, I did things at 19 of which I am not proud. There is, however, a world of difference between being immature and having mass murder on your résumé. Or tampering with evidence related to mass murder. There’s also a difference between believing everyone deserves justice and being naïve, insensitive, and a sap. It is paranoia of the first order to see a conspiratorial frame-up of the Tsarnaevs. Framed people don’t steal cars, brag of their deeds, toss bombs at cops, or engage in shootouts on public streets. Sure it’s a shame that Dzokhar threw away his life but he did so, and if he ever leaves prison walls other than to go to his own grave, that would be an injustice. And if you take steps to assist such an inexcusable act in any way, shape or form, you deserve every day of the eight years Robel Phillipos faces. 

Spare me the confused college “boy” crap. We say that college students are adults. Those of us associated with colleges are bound by scores of privacy acts that prevent us from giving out information of these young “adults.” (Laws prevent me from even telling a student’s parents what his/her grades are.) The abolition of parietals is among the many ways in which colleges no longer act in loco parentis. The age of sexual consent is 16; legal contracts 18. We can’t call college students “adults” when it comes to cultural practices and student preferences, but wail that they are still impressionable children when they commit antisocial acts.

Let’s go the other side of the state for another example of dumb liberalism. Northampton—merely the 15^th best place to live—had a series of fires in 2009, the second of which caused the death of a father and his developmentally disabled son. Arrested was (then) 23-year-old Anthony Baye, who admitted he set that fire and 19 others. The State Police may have botched the overall arson case, but they appear to have the goods on Baye for the fatal fire. Baye has subsequently secured a lawyer—his right, of course—who has systematically bombarded the public with protestations of his client’s innocence. That’s precisely what a lawyer should do in such a high-profile case. But that doesn’t mean we have to buy the line and don symbolic sackcloth and ashes to sympathize with Baye.He did, after all, confess to the crime, though that confession has been quashed.

Much as in the case of Dzokhar Tsarnaev, scarcely a day goes by in which we don’t hear some local remark on how “tragic” Baye’s life turned out to be. Believe it or not, there are actually a few people in Northampton that argue—you guessed it—that Baye was framed. Those folks are (mercifully) rare, and the Baye case isn't a replay of Ken Burns' "The Central Park Five." It is, however, a sad example of what I call Birkenstock Liberalism. Some from that group say Baye should not remain in prison because “he needs help.” We hear that his acts were a desperate cry for that help. (If you send the same message, arson, a dozen times and no one listens, shouldn’t you try a different tactic?) I’m willing to believe that Anthony Baye did not intend to kill anyone–maybe even that he has psychological demons stoked and stroked by fires. But all indications are that he knows right from wrong. If that’s the case, shouldn’t we replace the “tragic” label with another: murderer? One can hope that Baye gets some help, but if the evidence against him holds up, one cannot morally justify his actions. Being sympathetic should never be an exercise in excusing the inexcusable.

Why do so many liberals become animated about “rights,” but shrink from the word “responsibility?” Surely there has to be some middle ground between the sin-infused Protestant determinism of the Heartless Right and the “he’s a good kid and couldn’t have done this” naivety of Kumbaya liberals. The latter serve only as anecdotal fodder for the Heartless Right, relegates well-intentioned people to minority status, and elevates idiots such as Ferguson to the status of public intellectuals.

Step one in isolating the Right is for liberals to admit that sometimes people disappoint and go bad. If liberals want to rebuild American civic ideals, they must also be willing to call out those who undermine it—not just their political foes on the right, but also the rotten apples in their own barrels.

Annie and the Beekeepers My Bonneville

ANNIE AND THE BEEKEEPERS

My Bonneville

Self Produced (annieandthebeekeepers.com)

* * * ½

Annie Lynch has an angelic voice often rendered in soft, whispery tones, but put her in the same category as singers such as Alison Krauss and Aoife O’Donovan who can also air it out when the song demands. The latest from Annie and the Beekeepers–a band name she adopted when she was a student at the Berklee School of Music–is a  ten-track production (funded by Kickstarter) of Lynch originals on an album she named for her first car! Lynch’s music is generally classified as “folk,” though as this album attests, that’s probably as much due to her delicate vocals as the instrumental treatment. The title track, for instance, feels like country pop grafted onto The Beatles’ “On My Way Back Home,” and “Wake Up Mama” is an eerie little dream sequence draped in some spooky bass, jangly surf guitar, banjo, and improvised slap percussion. Still, it’s Lynch’s gorgeous vocals that most people remember. Listen to a song such as “A Light at the End” and hear her voice in all its glories–clear, emotional, a hint of husk, and just the right amount of force–on one of those songs that sticks in your brain long after the last note and leaves you unsure if it’s one of the prettiest or saddest songs you’ve heard in ages. She can also leave you sashaying around the room, as in the waltz tempo “WrongDarling” where she sounds like Patsy Cline’s long lost younger sister. (Yeah, I know Patsy had sister, but you get the point!) Not every one of the songs on the homespun My Bonneville sounds album-ready, but I doubt you’ll tire of listening to Ms. Lynch sing. --Rob Weir

Check out her stripped down “In the Water” 

No Tells a Fascinating Story (But not Well)

NO (2102)

Directed by Pablo Larraín

Fabla/Participant Media, 118 minutes, R (language)

Spanish with English subtitles

* * 1/2

No documents a fascinating event from the late 20^th century. In 1970, Salvador Allende Gossens became the world’s first freely elected Marxist leader, when he assumed the presidency of Chile. Allende proceeded to do things such as nationalize the Chilean copper industry, raise the minimum wage, subsidize the arts, and launch anti-poverty programs—all of which were anathema to investors, international bankers, and Chile’s upper class. Three years later he was toppled by a military junta headed by General Augusto Pinochet, possibly with the direct aid of the CIA and definitely with indirect aid. (There is little doubt that Henry Kissinger had conversations about overthrowing Allende.) Pinochet’s rule was among the most brutal in the Western hemisphere, and his death in 2006 was probably all that stood between him and convictions for crimes against humanity.

Pinochet was, however, long out of power by the time of his death, thanks to the campaign dramatized in No. In 1988, Pinochet’s rule ended through an unlikely means—he lost a plebiscite that would have approved a new eight-year term for his regime. For those unfamiliar with plebiscites, it is a political maneuver invented in ancient Rome in which citizens are asked to vote yes or no on a single issue. Its intent is largely to give the gloss of public approval for actions favored by those currently in power; put another way, it’s exceedingly rare to lose a plebiscite as those in power control the question and voting procedures. In Chile’s case, Pinochet opponents had just 27 days to make 15-minute-per day TV pitches for the “No” campaign. That’s it—just 6 hours and 45 minutes of total campaign time, or Pinochet stays in power.

No tells the remarkable story of how Pinochet was undone. The basic premise is one that should be distressingly familiar to Americans—that freedom and democracy could be sold to Chileans the same way that one sells cola drinks and fashion. We see the “No” campaign unfold through the eyes of the advertising agent who created it, René Saaverda (Gael Garcia Bernal). Saaverda was a mile wide and an inch deep, but he understood that people live in perceived realities that are often divorced from sociological data and human rights abstractions. He also had a grasp of how to construct 80s-style glitzy videos. In essence, Pinochet lost to a jingle themed on the slogan “Happiness is Coming.” Saaverda proved to be correct, though he first had to convince leftist ideologues to set aside principles in favor of frothy, trite imagery. He also had to battle his own boss, “Lucho” Guzmán (Alfredo Castro), who was spying for the “Yes” campaign, deal with the stress of being estranged from his wife, Verónica Carrajal (Antonio Zegers), and elude state-sponsored campaigns of intimidation that held the possibility of making him one of the “disappeared.”

It’s hard to know which is scarier, the Pinochet regime or the ease with which the masses can be led one way or the other. No is an interesting portrait of an entire nation existing in a liminal state in which it’s never clear whether it’s time to move beyond tyranny and fear, or whether the autocratic grip remains so tight that all who oppose it are martyrs in the making. (The presence of scores of high-profile international observers is probably what prevented a bloodbath.)

All of this makes for a potentially fascinating story, though director Larraín falls considerably short of making the film as compelling as it should be. This film was nominated for a Best Foreign Language Oscar, but that’s based on the subject matter, not the direction or performances. Larraín seeks to add verisimilitude by filming No as if it’s a documentary. He bathed the stock with light sepia undercoating to give it an “old” feel, and used hand-held cameras, lens flares, and episodic storytelling to give the illusion of being in the moment. Often, though, the narrative feels disjointed, story lines turn down dead-end alleys, and the action feels more like a bad dress rehearsal than a vote on a nation’s future.

Bernal has limited range as an actor and in No he doesn’t do much more than lumber about with puppy-dog eyes and a hang-down face. We suspect that Saaverda is a huckster for whom freedom is just another product to flog, but Bernal doesn’t do more than make us think he’s just an actor walking through a part. He’s not sharp enough to be conniving, not articulate enough to be ideological, or proactive enough to make us suspect evil. He is, simply, on screen, and about half the time we wonder why. The superior actor Alfredo Castro does his best to engage Bernal, but his part is too underwritten to pull it off.

View No for the history lesson, not its filmmaking or performances. If it inspires you to dig into Chile’s troubled past, ask questions about the persistence of fascism, and contemplate ways of countering it, your two hours will be well spent. But it was no injustice that this film didn’t taste Oscar victory.—Rob Weir