“When I get into that studio, I’m in another world. I love it. When I’m performing, that’s the real me.” — Billy Lee Riley

Posted on October 5, 2024 by sheila

“Memphis 1955 on Union Avenue
Carl and Jerry and Charlie and Roy
And Billy Riley too…”
– Johnny Cash, “I Will Rock’n’Roll With You”

“and Billy Riley too” ….

Billy Lee Riley was always a little irritated to be an afterthought, an add-on. He had a great career, unexpectedly so, really. He definitely had hopes to go all the way, following in Elvis’ footsteps. I mean, why wouldn’t you have hopes for that? If you were recording at Sun Records in 1955? But by the time Elvis came along, it was already too late. The wave peaked with Elvis and also crashed with Elvis, with people like Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochran getting in just in time. In other words, there was only room for one. Johnny Cash was very frustrated at how distracted Sun founder Sam Phillips was by Elvis. There was very little left over for the other artists on the roster. And the black blues singers, the whole POINT of Sun Records in its initial mission, were completely left in the dust, causing a lot of bitter feelings. Jerry Lee Lewis became the next hot thing after Elvis, sucking up all of Phillips’ attention (until Lewis flamed out publicly almost immediately following his fame break-through).

Riley was no wannabe. He had a hit on Sun Records, “Red Hot” (a cover of Sonny Williamson’s song, also on Sun). The thing still SLAPS.

And then … nothing. Sun Records transformed itself overnight into a one-artist phenomenon, and Phillips struggled (and failed) to keep up with distribution demands. He couldn’t handle the demand for Elvis. Elvis had to go to a big national label like RCA. This would become a pattern, too. People got some success and then had to leave. Riley never got to the national-consciousness level, and he had a “but what about ME??” thing going on, in evidence late in his life during interviews. He was pissed at Sam Phillips, for basically forever, and honestly, I can’t blame him.

Handsome devil.

However. It’s not like Riley was some slacker with one hit record who sat around waiting for another one, and then 30 years later jumped on the nostalgic circuit. On the contrary: He worked. He was a session musician (in fact, he started out that way at Sun – perhaps one of the reasons why he wasn’t considered a contender to be the Next Big Thing? Just a thought). One of the people Riley initially hooked up musically was Jack Clement, who had his own label run out of his garage or something like that, and he was putting together a team of people and Riley was one of them. Eventually though, they landed at Sun. Jack Clement ended up being really important to Sun as a house musician there but also a sound engineer. Riley formed his own combo (The Little Green Men), and they became the official (as official as anything was in those wild days) house band at Sun. They weren’t exclusive though. They played backup for people at a lot of labels.

I can’t remember where I learned this little fact, but Riley played guitar on Jerry Lee Lewis’ “Crazy Arms”, his first single at Sun. Or, I think he was just in the room, and everyone was fucking around on the track, and Riley played a wrong chord at the very end. Phillips loved it and kept it on there. Wait for it:

Riley was multi-talented: he played the drums, bass, harmonica, guitar. No surprise he ended up as part of the legendary Los Angeles Wrecking Crew. He plays harmonica on “Help Me Rhonda”!

I get it that playing harmonica for “Help Me Rhonda” is not the same thing as being a star, and it’s understandable why he felt resentful, but it really wasn’t Sam Phillips’ fault “Red Hot” was a hit locally, but didn’t leave Memphis. After Elvis punched through the wall between country/western and rhythm/blues, a lot of people poured into the gap who had no sense really of the rich texture of cultural influences. The next wave weren’t influenced by old r&b singers, they were influenced by Elvis. This shows in the music, as fun as some of it is. Riley definitely tried to find a way to distinguish himself from the pack, latching onto the new UFO craze. See: his band name. See: the title of another of his most well-known tracks:

The lyrics are nonsensical, but part of a trend. If you Google something like “rockabilly songs flying saucers” you will get a lot of hits. Let’s not forget Sputnik. Plus Cold War. There was a lot in the air (so to speak. sorry.) It’s not “My Baby Left Me” but a great track, with the wild-man screams in the background: it has that spontaneous Sun feel: you feel they’re all in the same room, you can almost SEE THEM.

Incidentally: that’s Jerry Lee Lewis on piano. Nobody was famous yet. They were all just hanging around Sun playing on each others’ stuff.

Riley played at Stax. He also played at American Sound for Chips Moman. Riley got discouraged eventually, said “Fuck it” and retired. But then the 80s came, rockabilly became a “thing” again (thanks Stray Cats), and Riley went on tour again. He toured nonstop for years. Bob Dylan always knew who Riley was. He needed no reminder. Bob Dylan was obsessed with Billy Lee Riley. Dylan was almost like a stalker, trying to find him, trying to get a hold of him. He wanted Riley to go on tour with him, which Riley eventually did do. There’s an audio-only track of Dylan and Riley playing “Red Hot” live in 1992. !!!

“Bob said I was his favorite singer and he had been looking for me since 1985. He’d even been to my old house in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, looking for me. He said he’s always admired two of my songs: ‘Trouble Bound’ & ‘One More Time.’ He knew more about me than I did!” — Billy Lee Riley

God, I love professional appreciation! Here’s Dylan in 1992, looking content as shit, listening to Riley play guitar on the tour bus.


Photo credit: Karen Pulfer Focht

Riley was still a handsome devil.

He died in 2009. In 2015, Dylan said in an interview:

[Billy Lee Riley] was a true original. He did it all: He played, he sang, he wrote. He would have been a bigger star but Jerry Lee came along. And you know what happens when someone like that comes along. You just don’t stand a chance. So Billy became what is known in the industry — a condescending term, by the way — as a one-hit wonder. But sometimes, just sometimes, once in a while, a one-hit wonder can make a more powerful impact than a recording star who’s got 20 or 30 hits behind him. He did it with style and grace. You won’t find him in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He’s not there. Metallica is. Abba is. Mamas and the Papas — I know they’re in there. Jefferson Airplane, Alice Cooper, Steely Dan — I’ve got nothing against them. Soft rock, hard rock, psychedelic pop. I got nothing against any of that stuff, but after all, it is called the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Billy Lee Riley is not there. Yet.

Tears are in my eyes. I love people who remember, who make sure their fans know who THEY revere.

Here are a couple of cool live performances I found on the Blessed YouTube:

 
 
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.

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“If someone spends his life writing the truth without caring for the consequences, he inevitably becomes a political authority in a totalitarian regime.” — Václav Havel

Posted on October 5, 2024 by sheila

“Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.” — Václav Havel

Václav Havel, whose birthday it is today, will always be relevant. His quotes float into my head as I read the news, as I watch the footage. He’s THERE. Like Orwell is THERE. In the fog of propaganda, these quotes help me shake off the illusion, and see what’s going on for what is going on. The quote above ^^ is with me always. It’s right there when I need it. And I often need it, the world being the awful place that it is.

First up: his essential and famous essay, “The Power of the Powerless“, written in 1978. For God’s sake, don’t skim. It’s important. In it, he lays out the features of tyranny: bureaucratic tyranny, ideological tyranny, and how tyranny operates: tyranny forces individuals to participate in it, until everything becomes empty ritual, empty words, all used to prop up an empty system. This essay is one of the most important things he wrote, and spread like wildfire through Eastern bloc countries at the time. I lean on it heavily, myself, especially as the propaganda in this country becomes ever more stifling, and I notice an alarming number of my fellow citizens seem to WANT a government like the one he describes. Václav Havel helps me stay sharp. Pay close attention to language. It’s all there.

Here’s a little bit about the about the Velvet Revolution of 1989 – so-called for its notable lack of violence. Czech novelist and playwright Ivan Klima wrote in his wonderful book The Spirit of Prague:

What happened in November 1989 is well known. As an eyewitness and a participant, I wish to emphasize that this revolution, which really was the outcome of a clash between culture and power, was the most non-violent revolution imaginable. In the mass meetings attended by up to three-quarters of a million people, no one was hurt, not a window was broken, not a car damaged. Many of the tens of thousands of pamphlets that flooded Prague and other cities and towns urged people to peaceful, tolerant action; not one called for violence. For those who still believe in the power of culture, the power of words, of good and of love, and their dominance over violence, who believe that neither the poet nor Archimedes, in their struggle against the man in uniform, are beaten before they begin, the Prague revolution must have been an inspiration.

The Velvet Revolution culminated in Havel’s election as president of Czechoslovakia after 40 years of Soviet Communist rule. In such perilous times as we live in now, it is important to remember heroes like Havel. Havel is a hero of mine for many reasons, but perhaps the main reason is his policy of living “as if” he were free.

More after the jump. Plus some thoughts on Iran, because it’s related.

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Posted in On This Day, Theatre, writers | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

“All my life I have been happiest when the folks watching me said to each other, `Look at the poor dope, wilya?” — Buster Keaton

Posted on October 4, 2024 by sheila

It’s Buster Keaton’s birthday today.

As a small boy with a talent for acrobatics (and a high tolerance for pain), Keaton performed with his parents in a family act (an act notorious for its wild violence) before launching off on his own. Getting into movies was not a natural leap (so to speak) for Keaton. He wasn’t sure what cinema would be all about and how he could fit into it. Well, he figured it out. Keaton grasped the possibilities of the new medium in a way many others didn’t, predicting (without even knowing it) where it would eventually go.

As a performer, no one can touch him. He’s on some weird almost inhuman plane: hilariously funny, unbelievably inventive, yet with that strange strain of sadness coursing through all of it, real sadness, not kitschy pantomime sadness.

In early 2022, I had the great pleasure of interviewing Dana Stevens about her marvelous book Camera Man for Ebert. Dana knows her stuff, and has been steeped in Buster-love for decades, and this really shines through in her book. Marc Maron had her on his podcast to talk about Buster. I love it when good things happen for good people. (Dana is a friend, colleague, and fellow NYFCC member.)

Keaton’s appeal crosses centuries, cultural lines, it appeals to all ages. I am thinking now of my nephew Cashel, age 10, watching a Buster Keaton movie on his laptop and laughing so loudly and so hard that I thought he would fall off of his chair.

James Agee’s four-part essay on silent comedy actors (“Comedy’s Greatest Era”) in Life magazine (included in James Agee: Film Writing and Selected Journalism (Library of America)) was a watershed moment for film criticism and American culture. The essay launched, almost single-handedly, a resurgence of interest in silent comedies which could not be easily rented or seen at that time in the days before private VCRs or even late-night television. Movie houses began running silent comedy festivals. Audiences packed into the galleries. Agee writes, on Keaton:

Very early in [Keaton’s] movie career friends asked him why he never smiled on the screen. He didn’t realize he didn’t. He had got the dead-pan habit in variety; on the screen he had merely been so hard at work it had never occurred to him there was anything to smile about. Now he tried it just once and never again. He was by his whole style and nature so much the most deeply “silent” of the silent comedians that even a smile was as deafeningly out of key as a yell. In a way his pictures are like a transcendent juggling act in which it seems that the whole universe is in exquisite flying motion and the one point of repose is the juggler’s effortless, uninterested face.

Keaton’s face ranked almost with Lincoln’s as an early American archetype; it was haunting, handsome, almost beautiful, yet it was irreducibly funny; he improved matters by topping it off with a deadly horizontal hat, as flat and thin as a phonograph record. One can never forget Keaton wearing it, standing erect at the prow as his little boat is being launched. The boat goes grandly down the skids and, just as grandly, straight on to the bottom. Keaton never budges. The last you see of him, the water lifts the hat off the stoic head and it floats away.

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Keaton read Agee’s essay and called out that Abraham Lincoln line, saying he wasn’t sure if Lincoln would like the comparison but he was very pleased with it!

People line up in Chaplin camps or Keaton camps (seems silly to me: life is not “either/or”. It is “both/and.” While personal preferences come into play, there is no need to take sides). True, though, that those who care for Keaton – to quote Agee again – “cannot care mildly”.

There are so many favorite and famous scenes, but I must point to the masterpiece in Spite Marriage, Keaton’s last silent comedy, where a newlywed Buster attempts to get his drunken new wife (Dorothy Sebastian) into bed on their honeymoon. The sequence gets funnier and funnier and funnier as it goes on. BOTH of them kill it. He, of course, is phenomenal – but watch HER work. (Keaton was known for using women as co-conspirators and partners in the action. See The General. Chaplin had a more sentimentalized Victorian view of women. Keaton, again, was modern. So watch this. This is a shared pantomime, created by the both of them, and it is absolutely brilliant.

The story of the filming of Spite Marriage is an interesting one. Stephen Winer wrote an in-depth essay for Criterion about it.

And let’s end with an avalanche. Yes, a papier mache avalanche, but no less real because of this. This sequence from Seven Chances is as funny the 50th time as the first:

No, let’s end with his influence, which reaches to the farthest end of the universe:

Johnny Knoxville. Carrying Buster’s torch into the 21st century.

Posted in Actors, Directors, Movies, On This Day | Tagged , | 10 Comments

Temporary

Posted on October 4, 2024 by sheila

There’s been a lot happening with Eminem lately, and with him “a lot” is relative, because he is basically Citizen Kane in terms of public appearances (well, Citizen Kane at the end of the movie), and you never hear a peep from him – not a picture, not a video, not even some rando’s cell phone footage – unless he has something he wants to share with the world. He is amazingly private. So when he DOES do something, it makes headlines. He came out with an album this year, The Death of Slim Shady, which I am still absorbing. Some of it he sounds like a cranky old guy – which is pretty funny, because it’s true – and listen, we’re both Gen X, so I get it – but at the same time, he’s so in touch with what is happening right-now-last-second – like who’s in, who’s out, what’s going on on Tik Tok – like, he’s aware of all of it. The album has that cranky “what are all these annoying kids even DOING” vibe, but then it has that shocking blasted-open vulnerability, which has always been a part of what he does. If you’re not aware of that, then all you need to do is listen to every single one of his albums back to the first. You can’t get more blasted-open than “Rock Bottom”. Or, dare I say (yes I dare say) “Kim”. Once he got sober, the vulnerability took a different tone. He was now more able to look at himself, and what he had been doing – not only to himself, but to his daughters (primarily) – by being such a mess, for overdosing, everything he put them through. He had distance. He could discuss it. The same with Proof (speaking of which …) Proof is still a part of his music, and – as anyone who has lost a loved one knows – the grief never ends, missing them never ends, but it changes, it takes different shapes as time passes. So those of us who love Eminem, who have been there with him from day one, have watched this transformation. This is one of the reasons why his fans are so loyal. (Some of his fans are … well, they’re Stans. They can be extremely obnoxious. I suppose that’s true of all fandoms but Eminem’s fan base is extreme.) But besides the stans, there’s a kind of emotional identification that comes when you have been a fan for 25 years. It’s like Joni Mitchell, or Bob Dylan … even better examples, because they’ve been around for half a century (longer). These artists are just a part of people’s lives. I’m a fan of people who are dead, and I am a fan of people who “hit” last year, or people I’ve just discovered (I just discovered Sierra Ferrell and am so INTO it and everything she’s about) … but when you’re a fan of someone who’s been around the entire time you’re an adult, it’s a different kind of thing. I feel that way about Robbie Williams. About Liz Phair. I feel like I freakin’ KNOW them. We all grew up together. We’re peers. There’s a commonality of reference points and experiences, even though they’re famous.

Eminem’s daughter Hailie was a baby when we first heard of her dad, and now she’s in her late 20s, and she got married this summer to her college sweetheart. (Eminem has three daughters. If you’re unaware: Hailie is the daughter he had with his two-time-ex-wife Kim. Hailie was born into poverty, which Eminem rapped a lot about in the beginning. “Because man these goddamn food stamps don’t buy diapers.” His second daughter Alaina is actually his niece – by marriage – Alaina’s mom was Kim’s twin sister, and they adopted Alaina when her mother overdosed. She and Hailie grew up together. He has a third daughter, originally named Whitney, but who renamed themselves Stevie when they “came out” as nonbinary/gender fluid. During one of the times Eminem and Kim split up, Kim got pregnant by another man, who dipped, leaving Kim and Stevie in the lurch. The guy eventually overdosed in 2019. Eminem adopted them too. Which is pretty wild, if you think about it. What man would adopt the child had by his ex-wife with another man during a break-up with him? You got all that?) Stevie is pretty private, although they do have an Instagram account. All three of his kids are in long-lasting relationships. Two of them are married. So despite all the craziness of their upbringing, Eminem did a good job. They seem to be stable. They’re close to each other. They aren’t out here getting DUIs or trying to be famous themselves. I have no idea how Eminem and Kim managed that. Kim has had her problems, a lifetime of addiction, and she recently tried to commit suicide (not the first time). I suspect Eminem has been financially supporting her this whole time. They got together when they were like 14 and 15. It’s unique. He also raised his younger half-brother who had been put into foster care when they were kids. As soon as Eminem had the “means”, he scooped up Nate, and brought him home. Nate himself came out great. Got married. Is a good uncle. You know. They’re all rich, obviously, but the overall impression is it’s very regular. A close family who came up through some SHIT and are grateful for each other and everything they have. Just think about how rare that is, especially for someone AS famous as Eminem. For a long time – early 2000s until the recluse era of the mid-2000s, Eminem was hugely public, having public flame outs, an arrest, controversial “relationships”, touring constantly … he DID the whole fame thing, living out there in public. Interesting to consider that his privacy coincided with 1. his sobriety and 2. the rise of social media. He rapped about this once, sounding harassed within an inch of his life: “It’s like these KIDS with their CELL PHONES, I CAN’T GO ANYWHERE.”

On The Death of Slim Shady is a song called “Temporary”, and it’s for Hailie. “Temporary” tells her everything he wants her to know for when he’s gone. A song for her to understand what she means to him. The song is peppered with actual audio clips of Hailie as a child, playing around with her dad. It’s extremely emotional. Like I said, Hailie got married this past summer, and – true to form – there were only one or two official pictures released. I am imagining that every guest had to surrender their phone before attending, lol.

Skylar Grey is a favorite Eminem collaborator. They’ve worked together so many times. She’s toured with him. She’s a phenomenal songwriter (and her voice is angelic): she has been partially responsible for some of his most memorable (and emotional) tracks. So here she is again, her beautiful voice, floating around and through his own lyrics, which have that stop-start jagged almost anti-rhythm thing he’s been experimenting with in the past ten years. They make such a beautiful combo, and of course he would tap Skylar to participate on this one, this one for Hailie. Important to note, too, that Eminem has had Skylar produce one of his songs, start to finish, making her one of the only female producers in hip hop, and certainly one of the only female producers producing such a massive male star.

The video for “Temporary” was released yesterday. It’s rather extraordinary. He’s actually giving us a glimpse into his precious very very private world, all the shit going on we never see. There’s a video clip, for example, of Eminem, circa 2004 or 5 maybe? reading to a class of grade schoolers, presumably Hailie’s class. But there’s also footage of Hailie’s wedding, Eminem crying as he hugs her, walking her down the aisle (thinking of “the aisle I’ll never walk you down” … from “Arose”, the song about his overdose experience), and then … there’s the moment where Hailie lets him know she’s pregnant, giving him a shirt with the word GRANDPA on it, and a sonogram picture. She basically announced her pregnancy via her dad’s music video.

In the era of the Kardashians, this all might seem a little TOO public. But because it’s Eminem it hits different. He never ever lets you see into his world. He doesn’t share family pics. He doesn’t post private stuff on his socials. He’s barely on social media. The only time he shares his world is in his music: he’s rare that way). We suspect things going on behind the scenes. We’re used to having no information, to not even SEEING him – not one casual glimpse – for months at a time, sometimes a year … and then suddenly he does an info-dump, with an album, a video, an interview.

I watched “Temporary” and got this wild feeling of the accordion of time, the tesseract of it all. It’s not just about him. It’s about me. About where I was back then, about where I am now. The bonds of family, being kids together, now being adults together. Making it through tremendous challenges. And … if you’re self-destructive … as he was, as I was … then feeling gratitude that you actually MADE it. You’re HERE. You can actually LIVE in a state of gratitude. You MADE it. What a miracle.

I actually cried watching that video. Then I watched it again. And I cried again. They were Happy tears of gratitude. For my own life. Or, for his, but mostly for mine. I can’t think of many artists who provide me THAT.

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“The problem with taking amps to a shop is that they come back sounding like another amp.” — Stevie Ray Vaughan

Posted on October 3, 2024 by sheila

It’s his birthday today.

It’s a bonus he came along in an era of TV specials, and televised performances, and video-taped blah blah blah, because there are tons of live performance clips – and you can’t really get the totality of who Stevie Ray Vaughan was as a performer without experiencing him live (even if it’s second-hand, watching concert footage). So there’s a lot of stuff out there. You can go down the YouTube rabbit hole and spend hours there (in a way you can’t with the guys from the previous generations, where live clips are rare and of poor quality). He is thrilling to watch.

I came to SRV because of This Fine Gentleman – I mean, I knew who SRV was, and probably knew some of his songs, but he wasn’t in my rotation of musicians I listened to. But Window-Boy was a fan and had actually attended Stevie Ray Vaughan’s final concert at the Alpine Valley Music Theatre (which is not, actually, Alpine in location OR a valley – but never mind). I do not know why I remember these things – seriously, these brain cells could be used for something else – but I remember where we were when he told me that story, of the concert, AND of his high-maintenance anorexic girlfriend at the time, who was with him, and was feeling faint due to zero food, and so he grumpily went to the concession stand to buy her hot dogs or whatever, and MISSED some of the concert (which he still seemed pissed about). He told me this story when we were sitting at Southport Lanes, that first summer we met. I paid very VERY close attention to him at the time (well, always) and so everything he said made some kind of impact. He was such an unknown, so … WEIRD. I couldn’t picture him going to a concert. This inability to imagine him in everyday situations was not just a quirk of mine. He took a flight to Los Angeles once, and my friend Ann Marie said, “I can’t imagine him boarding a plane.” “I know. Me neither. Like … how would that even GO?” Guys, I think he’d just show his ticket and walk on like any other human. hahahaha Something about him, though, seemed too wild and uncontrollable for anything as banal as handing over a plane ticket to be scanned.

But anyway, he told me this whole story about Stevie Ray Vaughan and it got me curious, since I didn’t have any Stevie Ray Vaughan in my collection of CASSETTE TAPES. So I went to Tower Records and bought the first one I found, The Sky Is Crying. To this day, “Life By the Drop” reminds me of that summer…

… the summer of the fiery-hot-first-flames of that relationship (which would end up meaning so much more but at the time, I assumed it was Of the Moment and “Life By the Drop” spoke directly to that Of-The-Moment-Ness. It was the right song at the right time. It was a reminder: Live life by the drop. Stay in the moment. I really REALLY needed that reminder (still do). These aren’t even memories. They’re a part of my DNA)

While there’s so much to say about Stevie Ray Vaughan – and I am sure people commenting here will add invaluable insights into what this man did, and who he was as an artist – here is one of my favorite clips.

In the midst of playing “Look at Little Sister”, in the midst of his guitar “break” (which weren’t really “breaks” with him, they were the Whole Shebang), he breaks a string. Watch the smoothness of the hand-off, with the smooth-as-hell roadie, and SRV barely missing a chord in the transition. What I love about this is the sheer level of professionalism and competence (at such a high level) on display.

In 2019, I went to the “Play It Loud” exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum, to see all the guitars of the LEGENDS, and Vaughan’s Stratocaster was there. I didn’t get a picture of the whole thing – Sheila, get it together – but I did zoom in on his initials in the pickguard which I thought were particularly awesome. A battered well-worn instrument, this was SRV’s main guitar throughout his career, with Double Trouble and solo. The main body of the guitar dates to 1963, and of course SRV tweaked it to death to get all the effects he wanted.

“I mainly use Stratocasters. I like a lot of different kinds of guitars, but for what I do, it seems that a Stratocaster is the most versatile. I can pretty much get any sound out of it, and I use stock pickups.” — Stevie Ray Vaughan

And finally: My brother wrote about the time he went to see Stevie Ray Vaughan. As a punk-rock fan, SRV wasn’t on my brother’s radar. Bren walks you through his experience: getting to the concert, watching the opening act, and then SRV coming on, and what happened to my brother when watching this Maestro do his thing. It gives me goosebumps.

 
 
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.

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“That cat was royalty, man.” — Mick Jagger on Eddie Cochran

Posted on October 3, 2024 by sheila

It’s his birthday today.

Eddie Cochran’s songs still get play everywhere, all the time, on the radio no less! 1950s hits still in rotation. Elvis’ 1950s hits aren’t still in rotation. The only ones you hear on the radio for the most part are “Suspicious Minds” and maybe – MAYBE – “In the Ghetto”. But Cochran is still everywhere. (I just reviewed a movie in August which had Cochran’s “Summertime Blues” on the soundtrack. Obligatory, perhaps, but that song is a stone-cold classic.)

The deaths of Ritchie Valens, The Big Bopper and Buddy Holly in 1959 was, in retrospect, just the horrible jump-start to the exodus. When Cochran died the following year – just as suddenly only this time in a car crash – it had to have felt like a cruel joke to the kids. The only comparison I can think of for my generation was the one-two punch of Kurt Cobain and River Phoenix, their deaths six months apart. Cochran was only 21 years old when he died. Hard to believe. Eerily, after Buddy Holly’s plane went down, Cochran recorded a song about the Big Three (all of whom he knew personally) called “Three Stars” (three new stars in the sky. Sob.) Cochran’s performance is earnest and sorrowful, prayerful, solemn. He had just months left to live.

Listen to his performance. He means it.

People don’t talk about Eddie Cochran nearly enough.

People don’t talk about this smokin-hot picture of Cochran and Gene Vincent nearly enough.

You know who DOES talk about it? Brian Setzer!

I’m just kidding.

Those who were THERE at the time in the 50s, those who went on to become the superstars of the 60s and 70s, name-check Cochran as an influence all the time: he was the epitome of cool AND hot, he was handsome, he had a striking sense of style (those COATS), and he had that mix of rebellious/bad-boy/sexy that will never grow old and will always be “in”. So people like Mick Jagger (up above) were watching him and learning. Still, though, Cochran’s name doesn’t get the “play” it should. I know, I know, he’s in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, as well he should be. He’s not forgotten, but it’s almost like he’s become a niche interest to rockabilly fans, as opposed to understanding his importance to the wider culture.

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“I’ve been to every big city and many little towns in the USA. I really try to soak it in. I love all these little towns – the people and the places. I feel so lucky to see all these places and I truly have a hunger to see and experience them.” — G. Love

Posted on October 3, 2024 by sheila

G. Love

It’s G. Love’s birthday today.

Naturally, it was through my brother that I discovered G. Love and the Special Sauce. Bren has a way of discovering people not on my radar at all and then passing on the word. G. Love actually came out with an album last year! His fan base is hard-core and devoted.

“I was a complete product of the time I came of age and the city, Philadelphia, where I was born and raised. I think of it similar to the writings on Malcom Gladwell in his book “Outliers”. Twenty or forty blocks or so from where I grew up and graduated high school in 1991 there were Tariq and Ahmir – The Roots. Same class. Same city. Same era. We all grew up listening to Street Beat on Power 99 FM, the golden age of emerging Hip-Hop. These tracks were being made in our city. They found a niche playing with live instruments the Hip-Hop sound they loved when no one else was doing that. I was like a garage band rock and roller who grew up in Hip-Hop – graffiti, breakdancing, freestyling and hoops all finding its influence in my music. Pure Philly.” – G. Love

Because I am now into resurrecting pieces from my vast archive – because otherwise how else could people find them? There’s so much cool stuff in there – here’s the piece my brother wrote on how he discovered G. Love and the Special Sauce, how he was initially turned off (before even hearing them!) and how he was then blown away when he saw them, at random. My brother is evangelical on the music he loves. It’s a gift, especially since he writes so well.

 
 
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.

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R.I.P. Kris Kristofferson

Posted on October 2, 2024 by sheila

I paid tribute to this legend on my Substack.
 
 
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.

Posted in Actors, Music, RIP | Tagged | Leave a comment

“I put my soul through the ink.” — Proof

Posted on October 2, 2024 by sheila

DeShaun Dupree Holton, a.k.a. Proof, a.k.a. Big Proof, was a Detroit-area rapper, born on this day in 1973. He was killed in still-mysterious circumstances at a pool hall in Detroit in April 2006. The story of his death took some time to come out, and this piece in The Guardian did a good job of attempting to get at the real truth.

But let’s talk about his life. He’s probably most well-known for being “Eminem’s best friend” – the two met when they were teenagers – but that does him a disservice. Here’s the thing about Proof.

He was what Malcolm Gladwell called “a connector” in The Tipping Point. Gladwell writes:

My social circle is, in reality, not a circle. It is a pyramid. And at the top of the pyramid is a single person — Jacob — who is responsible for an overwhelming majority of the relationships that constitute my life. Not only is my social circle not a circle, but it’s not ‘mine’ either. It belongs to Jacob. It’s more like a club that he invited me to join.

These people who link us up with the world, who bridge Omaha and Sharon, who introduce us to our social circles — these people on whom we rely more heavily than we realize — are Connectors, people with a special gift for bringing the world together.

Proof was one of those people. Eminem is just the most famous person in his vast web of interconnectedness.

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“I don’t care what anybody says about me as long as it isn’t true.” — Truman Capote

Posted on September 30, 2024 by sheila

It’s his birthday today.

In Cold Blood put him on the map for all time. His journalism/literature hybrid told the terrifying story of a random murder in Holcomb, Kansas, where an entire family was annihilated in their own home, for absolutely no reason. Capote embedded himself so deeply in the story his entire life was on hold until the murderers (whom he “befriended”) were executed. This took years. His health was wrecked during the endless waiting process. He was shattered from witnessing the execution; he said he would never be the same again. And he really wasn’t. Something essential was lost, burnt out.

Capote’s entry into the literary scene wasn’t really an “entry” at all. Entry sounds gentle, socially acceptable. Capote was never socially acceptable. He BURST onto the scene, fully-formed. He may have been part of the new crop of Southern writers, writing in Southern voices, on Southern themes … a “trend” at the time … but other than that, Capote wasn’t “part of” anything. He was not a joiner. He did not play well with others. Down to the details: The publication of his first novel wasn’t an ordinary event. He wasn’t just a new author on the scene. It was more like: Truman Capote finally ARRIVED. There’s a difference. Much of this was not about his writing at all, but about his persona, his confidence/ego, his open homosexuality, AND – lest we forget – the provocative author photo printed on the back of his first novel Other Voices, Other Rooms:

I mean …

There’s no subtext there. It’s all text.

Capote’s work has meant so much to me over the years. My entryway was the short story “Children on Their Birthdays”, which I had to read in 8th grade English (this seems amazing to me now. I am thankful for an education that challenged me, as well as ushered me into the canon, not just the main paths, but the byways too. I could take it from there.) The short story haunted me. In high school I discovered In Cold Blood – as a matter of fact, I am 95% certain I saw the movie first. Maybe it was the other way around, I don’t know. Either way: In Cold Blood was what HOOKED me, for all time.

But there is so much else to discover. I love his novella The Grass Harp passionately. Mitchell and I both love that book, we read it together. In The Grass Harp, a bunch of misfits in a little town end up living in a treehouse, hiding out from the larger and mostly cruel world. The world, however, does not look kindly upon people who “opt out” of the accepted rules and regulations, and set out – with tiki torches, no shit – to shake those people out of the damn tree. It’s a gorgeous piece of work, romantic and yearning, beautifully written, with a highly tuned sense of the tragic, reminiscent of some of Tennessee Williams’ more tender moments. “Blow out the candle, Laura”, and etc. When Capote got nostalgic (that final chapter of In Cold Blood!), he was often at his very best. See also his beautiful and heartbreaking memoir-style piece about his beloved elderly cousin called A Christmas Memory. He ACHES with love for this eccentric under-estimated woman who loved him unconditionally.

Truman Capote was as famous as you can be as a writer. More so. Very few authors reach this level of fame, Johnny Carson Tonight Show fame. He “came up” in an era when (male) authors were celebrated in a way they aren’t now – people like Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer – these guys weren’t just writers. They were personalities. Of course Capote was friends with many writers, but he was rivals with many more (see: Vidal AND Mailer.) In many cases, other writers stayed far far away from Capote. He was ferocious in his criticisms. Capote mostly palled around with the international elite, the Onassis’, the Paley’s, sailing the Mediterranean in various yachts, etc. It was heady stuff, high-altitude society. He ate it up. But he didn’t seem to realize that his presence on those yachts was conditional. So he made his great error: he published a chapter from his new novel, Le Cote Basque, in Esquire magazine. Capote had been talking for YEARS about his new book: it was going to be about the rich gossipy set in New York, i.e. his friends. He hyped up the book, he got everyone excited, he would insinuate, “You’re in it, darling” or “You make a cameo, don’t you worry.” Everyone not only wanted to read it, they wanted to be IN it. (Only three chapters of this book were discovered after his death. Either he destroyed the rest of it, OR – more likely, in my opinion – he was struggling with writer’s block after the marathon of In Cold Blood, and bragged about a nonexistent manuscript as a way to pump himself up, wish it into reality.)

At any rate: when the chapter from “Le Cote Basque” appeared in Esquire, a BOMB exploded in the New York socialite scene.

“Le Cote Basque” SKEWERED his rich friends. He told all their secrets, including really nasty rumors and speculations. He lampooned them. He made them grotesque. He sneered at them. He mocked them. How on earth he thought they might have been flattered by any of this is baffling. He clearly harbored an ocean of hostility towards these super-rich powerful people, who had him around as a sycophantish playmate. He probably was like, “They will regret EVER having trusted me. I really SAW them.” They did not forgive him for SEEING them. He broke the rules. His entire circle of friends dropped him overnight. He never regained his confidence, and he never wrote anything of note again. The final chapters of Gerald Clarke’s biography of Capote (which you should read), are devastating. Capote is so isolated, desolate. He missed his friends, those friends he went after in “Le Cote Basque.” He felt it was unfair: what did they THINK he was going to say? He was a WRITER, not a gossip columnist!

Still, though: you read “Le Cote Basque” and if you’re a Truman fan, it’s impossible to not think … Truman, what on earth are you doing?

Publishing that chapter was an act of supreme self-destruction and you try to read between the lines to figure out why he did it. Why, Truman, WHY. i.e. “Truman, what are you DOING.”

And finally: I treasure his notorious profile of Marlon Brando. Capote was very very tricky. He wasn’t even supposed to be there. He wheedled his way into an invitation to the “set”, and even though Brando was warned to not go anywhere near Capote, Capote insinuated himself into Brando’s apartment, took no notes, and just observed and listened. He scribbled down notes later. Brando assumed they were just hanging out. Capote, though, was on the clock. In secret. One understands Brando’s irritation at being tricked on revealing so much, but as someone far removed from all of this, I treasure the revelations of that cuh-ray-zee profile, particularly Brando’s comment on what it felt like to become so famous. You rarely hear someone state it so plainly.

While Capote’s ending years are painful to contemplate, he soared as high as it was possible to soar in American letters, and he shot there right out of the gate. A fascinating treacherous man and a wonderful writer.

Posted in Books, On This Day, writers | Tagged , | 13 Comments