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

Crisis over ISIS

I haven’t blogged about ISIS until now because I’m in a crisis over ISIS. My laptop bears a sticker with the slogan “War is Not the Answer.” I’ve been a lifelong pacifist, joined the Quakers, and freely quote Gandhi’s famed dictum “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” I don’t grow weepy when I hear the “Star Spangled Banner,” nor do I thank anyone in uniform for protecting my “freedom.” That hasn’t been objectively true since 1945, and the only soldiers I truly respect are those who know exactly what they’re signing up for—not the testosterone-poisoned crowd that thinks the military is a live action video game, or the selfish ones just looking for college money and hope all they have to do is wear camo to class and do some spirited marching.

Do we just shoot this dog?

These days, though, I more annoyed by the Hugs, Puppies, and Rainbows (HPR) crowd—the kind who insist that the U.S.A. helped create groups like ISIS so we need to “understand” them and “work toward dialogue” with them. ISIS, Hamas, Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and other such crazies have shaken my faith in my own pacifism. I find myself agreeing with military leaders who say we cannot talk with them, we must exterminate them. I also find myself agreeing with those who argue we are in the midst of a global culture war in which Western values are fundamentally at odds with radical Islam.

I know, of course, that American policy did help create many of the problems we now seek to redress. I know that we supported Osama bin Laden and channeled funds to him when his mujahedeen was fighting the Soviet Union. I know that Ronald Reagan and both Bushes sucked up to the Saudis—the world’s number one exporter of terrorism--like hungry orphan infants, and that Damned Old Fool Reagan supported Saddam Hussein as well. I realize that many of our problems stem from electing idiots as commanders-in-chief. And yet… I’m shocked by how quickly and glibly HPR Americans have come to accept the “It’s all our fault” thesis. Does anyone remember how Ward Churchill was crucified for saying that 9/11 victims deserved their fate? What cause or injustice, I must ask, justifies sending suicide bombers onto a Tel Aviv bus? What justifies trying to bring down passenger jets? Or beheading someone in the name of Allah (whom jihadists insult by assuming he would need someone as monstrous as they to mete out justice)?  

I also know, objectively, that the world contains 1.6 billion Muslims and that most are good folks. It sounds clichéd, but it’s true—I have Muslim friends. I know that there are Zionist warmongers and that Christianity looks pretty awful when refracted through the lens of anti-abortionist bombers or Westboro Baptist bigots. Yet… It was Muslims who pulled off 9/11, beheaded Daniel Pearl (remember him?), strapped bombs to Palestinian children, shot a 13-year-old girl who wanted to go to school, encase their women in hoods, bombed Buddhist holy sites, leave a trail of headless corpses across Syria and Iraq,  and speak of using metaphorical swords to force the world to kneel to their god.  Sure—these are zealots. But I can’t agree that that they are inconsequential. Revolutions do not need majorities to wreak havoc or succeed—they need only a “critical” mass. I fear that critical point is approaching, and that the views of most Muslims are being subsumed in the hegemonic madness of its zealots. Alas, the biggest difference between jihadists and other religious crazies is that the latter truly are marginal and troublesome only on an individual basis.

We must be clear about all of this. Maybe the USA did contribute to the monsters we now battle, but when one encounters a rabid dog, does one stop to ask how it acquired its sickness? Or does one just shoot it? The HPR crowd embarrasses me when they speak of reasoning with monsters such as ISIS, Hamas, Al Qaeda, or the Taliban; they also insult their victims and survivors. Invite the mad dog into the living room to see if loving kindness will cure him? I don’t think so.

I’m still conflicted about what to do. The only thing I know for sure is that, as bad as he is, Assad is preferable to any of the Syrian rebels. (So was Saddam in Iraq, by the way.)  Only the HPR still believe in Arab Spring or in “moderate” rebels, the latter an oxymoron if ever one was constructed. I’m conflicted as I can possibly be about what the US role should be, but there’s a side of me that thinks it’s all  well and good to quote Gandhi—unless you’re the last person with sight in a roomful of the blind and there’s someone coming at you with a pointed stick. I want to believe that reasonable people can solve problems in a reasonable way, or that one can bring down repression non-violently--­like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Vaclav Havel did. But I’m not sure anyone should try to reason with mad dogs. You cannot speak to me of justice whilst committing atrocities in its name.  

Right now my position is as hypocritical as it can possibly be. I still call myself a pacifist, but I shed no tears when the mad dogs are put down. And I silently root for whomever is doing it—Kurds, Israelis, the Indian government, Afghani tribesmen, or US bombers.

All the Light We Cannot See a Radiant Triumph

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All the Light We Cannot See (2104)

Anthony Doerr

Scribner's, 531 pp. ISBN: 1476746583

* * * * *

I am being neither glib nor histrionic when I proclaim Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See a transcendent novel. Any discussion of best novels of 2014 that does not include this book is that of the unenlightened conversing in the dark.

Doerr's masterful tale is set in Saint-Malo during the 1944 D-Day invasion of France. Through flashback and fast forward techniques we relive the fall of France to the Nazis, the inner workings of the French Resistance, how children lost their innocence, liberation, and the myriad cruelties and acts of small kindness that take place in a land under siege. Above all, it is true to its title–it's about ways of seeing and not seeing. The book is populated by colorful characters, but it settles upon two major ones: Werner Pfenning, a German orphan boy whose technical brilliance saves him from toiling in the Essen coal mines, but sucks him into the Wermacht; and Marie-Laure LeBlanc, a blind French teen.

Werner's facility with radios frees him from an orphanage, a facility from which he hopes also to redeem his younger sister, Jutta. In the Germany of the late 1930s, such hopes mean obedience to the State. Werner observes the cruelty of the Nazi regime, but must remain silent and choose not to see its immoral implications if he hopes to save Jutta. He must also bit his lip during Hitler Youth training in which his best friend, Frederick, is brutalized. What he can see its circuits, schematics, and electrical currents. At his special school he dutifully studies theory and trigonometry, but he's good at triangulating radio signals and uncovering hidden transmitters because he sees in his mind how everything connects. He also envisions enemy antennae before physically observing them.

Marie-Laure–as beautifully realized a character as one can imagine–sees in other ways. He father and caretaker, Daniel, is a locksmith for the Natural History Museum in Paris. He's also a master woodworker who constructs scale models of Marie-Laure's neighborhood that she "reads" through her fingers with the facility with which she reads Braille. Daniel also constructs elaborate wooden puzzles that Marie-Laure must solve and soon she is so good at cracking his mechanical conundrums that her fingers move with the grace of a concert pianist and the speed of a safecracker. When Daniel is entrusted with being one of four couriers for what might be a precious gem or might be one of three fakes designed to lead Nazi looters astray, he and Marie-Laure leave Paris for her Uncle Etienne's home in Saint-Malo. Marie-Laure must learn anew how to negotiate her way through streets–this time the maze-like warren of walled Saint-Malo.

One by one those close to her disappear until she begins to feel her kinship with a creature she "sees" on the beach, a blind snail species whose shell and chamber she knows as well as her own room, her well-fingered copy of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and her Uncle Etienne's hidden garret chamber with its transmitter. Trips to the Madame Ruelle's bakery to buy "an ordinary loaf" of bread come with coded numbers baked into the loaf. When all other couriers are removed, Saint-Malo's fate depends upon a blind girl wending her way through the city streets. And why not? In her darkness Marie-Laure sees things the sighted can never behold.

Intricate subplots overlay the inner struggles of Werner and Marie-Laure, such as the Inspector Girard-like pursuit of the missing gem by the sadistic Reinhold von Rumpel, Marie-Laure's relationship with her uncle's maternal housekeeper, Werner's moral crises and redemption, and small acts of rebellion by Occupied French women the likes of which seldom make the history books (but should). Doerr also gets an essential fact about war– fairy tale endings are the stuff of bad novels, not actual conflict. The resolution of this novel will both satisfy and leave you shattered; it both soars and scars. If I may, this book makes us see in a different light. –Rob Weir

Grace & Tony Making Beautiful Music Together

GRACE & TONY

November

Rock Ridge Music 2-61397

* * * *

It's an old story–two people from different genres meet, fall in love, marry, and decide to make beautiful music together literally as well as figuratively. Grace Shultz was a bluegrass musician; Tony White was a punk rocker. Together they're making folk-styled Country music with all sorts of other stuff thrown in. November wasn't a huge jump for White, whose brother was one half of The Civil Wars. But don't expect a Civil Wars clone from Grace & Tony–his voice is much grittier than his brother's, and Grace eschews the fragility and angelic tone of Joy Williams in favor of twang and verve. As befits a former punk rocker like White, though, some of the material veers toward darker subjects–murder, addiction, and love gone wrong. That said, their love duet to each other, "Hey Grace, HeyTony" is joyful place where honky tonk intersects with sunny pop. "From Me to You" is another one on the sweet side. The rest is a mélange. "Grassphemy" is one of several songs in which old-time music sashays to the edge of grunge cacophony and makes its way home through better harmonies than most punk bands ever managed. There are also several selections–"Chameleon" and "La Carrera"– that blend the sensibilities of 1930s cowboy/Western music with what the duo calls "punkgrass." Think a meeting between Buck Page's Riders of the Purple Sage and The Ramones. There's even a splash of politics, "Electricity Bomb," a post-global warming ditty as it might have been sung during the 1950s Folk Revival. If you like your music eclectic, non-electric, and a little bit eccentric, November will warm your autumn soul. –Rob Weir

PS--Gotta love the bowtie/ear plugs combo on Tony in the above video link. That's a new one for me. 

How to Fix the Yankees

Derek Jeter just played his final home game and after three in Boston, Jeter-Haters can crawl back in their holes for five years and emerge to argue that the man with the sixth most hits in MLB history doesn't deserve to be in the Hall of Fame.

The New York Yankees have a much bigger problem than replacing Jeter in 2015. This is the second straight year the Yankees won't be playing into October and Yankees' fans should chill as it's going to take some time to fix a team a tune-up won't fix–it needs an overhaul.

What to Keep:

1. Joe Girardi:  It is a testament to his managerial skills that the Yankees remained in the thick of things in both 2013 and 2014. A lesser manager–Bobby Valentine anyone?–would be looking up from the basement. Girardi is goofy looking and unassuming, but he gets a lot of mileage out of Yugos.

2. Dellin Betances: He looks to be the next coming of Mariano. Maybe he won't be, but he's good enough that the Yankees won't have to overpay David Robertson.

3. Shane Greene was a pleasant surprise and is just 25. He won't be an ace, but he'll be superb as a number 3 or 4. Michael Pineda is your #2 and even though he's been injury-prone he's still just 25 years-old.

4. Masashiro Tanaka is worth every dime the Yankees paid to get him if stays healthy. If not, he's unmoveable, so pencil him in every five days.  

5. The pitching was much better than anyone predicted when four of the top five went on the DL. Brandon McCarthy should be retained–if he'll sign for #4 money. If his agent talks like he's a #2, say thanks for the memories. I'd also throw another contract at Hiroki Kuroda, though word has it he's retiring. If that happens, pray Ivan Nova recovers from Tommy John surgery quickly and that C. C. Sabathia can at least pitch like a #3.

6. The everyday lineup flat-out sucks. Brett Gardner deserves to stay; Mark Teixeira will because no one is going to take on his contract given his injury history. I still think Brian McCann will end up being a good signing and figure out the AL. If they don't ask for the moon and half the solar system, both Chase Headley and Martin Prado are useful.  There are some young outfielders in the minors, but I'd pencil in Chris Young as the backup.

What to Dump:

1. Brian Cashman has been a great GM, but he's an old-style thinker has simply overstayed his welcome. The primary thing the Yankees need to do is sign players who will be good, not ones that once were. Not all of the bad contracts have been Cashman's fault, but he's been lousy at getting top players to come to New York and has overpaid over-the-hill talent out of desperation. And we must ask: who'd you rather overpay, Robbie Cano for ten years or Jacoby Ellsbury for seven?

2. The minor league system needs a complete remake. David Robertson was the last proven player to come through the ranks and that's unacceptable.

3. I don't care how highly regarded he is, when a team hits as poorly as the Yankees, hitting coach Kevin Long has to go.

4. Just cut A-Rod. Let him take his sorry steroid-pumped butt elsewhere. The Yankees will end up paying for him one way or the other, so make it far from clubhouse harm.

5. Aside from perhaps Preston Claiborne, who pitches well though the scouts don't like him, every bullpen role player is expendable–especially the lefties. Enough with the friggin' "lefty specialists;" a southpaw that can't get out right-handers as well is a roster clogger. I think we've seen Adam Warren's best. Trade him when his value is highest. Say goodbye to Chris Capuano–please!

6. Move Frankie Cervelli and make J. R. Murphy the backup catcher. Cervelli is the backstop version of Nick Johnson, so get some low-level prospects for him so he be on someone else's DL.

7. Now the hard part. We need to see if these guys can play: Jose Pirela and Rob Refsnyder. We know these guys can't: Stephen Drew (who ought to sue Scott Boras) and Brendan Ryan. All you UZR guys can go to hell–Ryan's glove isn't good enough to compensate for a sub .200 batting average.  

8. Even harder: Even if you have to eat some of his contract, move Carlos Beltran and get prospects for him. He's yesterday's news and was a horrible (and desperate) signing.

9. Controversial: I am not a Jacoby Ellsbury fan. He's Gardner with more power, but a worse arm. If the Yankees can move him and get value back, sayonara. I'd rather see the Yankees throw dumb money at Nelson Cruz or Cuban prospect Yasman Tomas.  

10. More controversial still: Stay away from free agency, admit that 2015 will be challenging, and wait for the kids on the verge: pitchers Luis Severino, Ian Clarkin, and Jacob Lindgren; catcher Gary Sanchez; and position players Aaron Judge, Eric Jagielo, and Jake Cave. Accept that attendance will drop 20%, shave payroll, and do that most un-Yankee thing: wait.