Brian
Administrator
Posts: 3,802
|
Post by Brian on Feb 5, 2009 23:08:28 GMT -8
In June 1972, I parked my Schwinn in front of Here, There and After in Montrose and saw "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars" in the window. I was about to graduate ninth grade and had never heard of David Bowie. The store had the English import three months before the record was released in the U.S. Headphones became good, cheap and readily available when I was 14, thanks to Radio Shack, so I first heard Ken Scott's immaculate production and Mick Ronson's mind blowing guitar and arrangements at "maximum volume" as the album cover instructed. Because I got fooled by the slow fade in of the martial drumbeat, "Five Years" hit hard: Pushing through the market square, so many mothers sighing News had just come over, we had five years left to cry in News guy wept and told us, earth was really dying Cried so much his face was wet, then I knew he was not lyingPaperbacks like Hal Lindsey's "The Late Great Planet Earth" and Alvin Toffler's "Future Shock" were the first mega-bestsellers back then. I used to pray that I would have sex before the world ended and that I would enjoy it. Bowie is not only clear about his subject, the details are poetry. I heard telephones, opera house, favourite melodies I saw boys, toys, electric irons and T.V.'s My brain hurt like a warehouse, it had no room to spare I had to cram so many things to store, everything in there And all the fat-skinny people, and all the tall-short people And all the nobody people, and all the somebody people...After he sings the hell out of that verse, his voice drops to a confessional tone. I'm still capable of crying at this line: ...I never thought I'd need so many peopleBowie has set the scene and handed us his heart. Back to the market square: A girl my age went off her head, hit some tiny children If the black hadn't a-pulled her off, I think she would have killed them A soldier with a broken arm, fixed his stare to the wheels of a Cadillac A cop knelt and kissed the feet of a priest, and a queer threw up at the sight of thatVividly how people might react given such news, like so many of the human calamities we've witnessed since. In 1972, the British army was fighting in Northern Ireland -- in the last 37 years, a soldier could've been injured in the Falkland Islands, Iraq or Afghanistan. Also, note how the nomenclature of "queer" has been reclaimed today. I think I saw you in an ice cream parlour, drinking milk shakes cold and long Smiling and waving and looking so fine, don't think you knew you were in this songBack in Bowie's head with a self-referential line, another signal that we listeners are on new ground. And it was cold and it rained so I felt like an actor And I thought of Ma and I wanted to get back there Your face, your race, the way that you talk I kiss you, you're beautiful, I want you to walkOh my God, I need to kiss her too. We've been so enraptured, we haven't noticed there's been no chorus yet. We've got five years, stuck on my eyes Five years, what a surprise We've got five years, my brain hurts a lot Five years, that's all we've got We've got five years, what a surprise Five years, stuck on my eyes We've got five years, my brain hurts a lot Five years, that's all we've gotThen Mick Ronson's strings command and overwhelm us, appropriately. We've got five years, stuck on my eyes Five years, what a surprise We've got five years, my brain hurts a lot Five years, that's all we've got We've got five years, what a surprise We've got five years, stuck on my eyes We've got five years, my brain hurts a lot Five years, that's all we've got Five years Five years Five years Five yearsBy 2009, enough of us know that earth is really dying.
|
|
Brian
Administrator
Posts: 3,802
|
Post by Brian on Feb 15, 2009 2:39:44 GMT -8
That clip from D.A. Pennebaker's documentary of the final Ziggy Stardust concert in 1973 shows that some of the finest moments happened while Bowie was changing costumes. Look at the enraptured teenage girls in London, ten years after the Beatles owned that town.
I've been on a Mick Ronson binge every weekend since Anni and I went to Amoeba last month. I finally caved in and bought all three of his solo CD's. Yes, I already had them on reliable vinyl, but there were bonus tracks...and CD's are becoming extinct.
Not Mick Ronson. He is still among us despite his death from liver cancer in 1993 -- forever age 46 at the latest on You Tube -- because of all the careers he inspired and furthered as a guitarist and arranger. Ignore all he did for Bowie. He established Ian Hunter as a solo artist. He was part of Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue. He co-produced the revivals of Mott the Hoople and Iggy and the Stooges. Lou Reed's "A Perfect Day" on the "Transformer" album was carried by Mick's piano and strings. (I just watched an interview of Lou talking about trying to understand Mick's Hull accent, asking him to repeat everything five times and letting him be a genius.)
I found videos posted by admirers around the world who are as nuts as I am about the man. One guy put up a wonderful nine-minute promo by his last record company with tributes by Bowie, Hunter and John Mellencamp, apologizing for the poor videotape. Another edited a fabulous but random photo gallery of Mick throughout his life to song "Angel No. 9."
Rolling Stone named him the 64th greatest guitarist on its all time list. On mine, he was the greatest, but so much more.
The softer side, then, of Mick on mandolin playing "I Wish I Was Your Mother" on German television, I'm saying early 1980:
|
|
Brian
Administrator
Posts: 3,802
|
Post by Brian on Mar 25, 2009 23:54:38 GMT -8
I knew that cassettes were dead in 1999, when I could no longer hear the new releases I wanted unless I bought a CD player. Last weekend I saw that even the zombies won't get up and walk when we visited the greatest record store in Southern California, Amoeba. The Hollywood store had three walls of cassettes when it opened eight years ago. Now they line the bottoms of cardboard boxes in the back. Inside them was much of my collection, including the best albums of the 1980's and 1990's by Crowded House, Elvis Costello and R.E.M. "Graceland" was there too. They were clean, often pristine. And each cassette had a price tag reading "$0.50." but the signs on the boxes said you could get four for a dollar. A quarter for "Infidels," if you bought "Purple Rain," "Rat in Me Kitchen" and "We Are the World" at the same time. I cast my lot with cassettes instead of CD's when records starting dying around 1983, so I have at least 1000 -- and I still play them, never bothered by their limitations because I don't mind tape hiss and I still listen to albums all the way through, having been raised on the Beatles and Bowie. Making a mix tape was more emotionally engaging and satisfying than burning a CD because you had to listen to each song while you recorded it. Someday, I know, I will probably have to digitize them, somehow. Or I could hook up the turntable again. At Amoeba, there was a bounty of new releases by young artists and high fidelity reissues from old poeple -- on shrink-wrapped, 33-1/3 rpm records inside 12-inch covers that I could read.
|
|
|
Post by Lindypoo on Mar 28, 2009 7:53:43 GMT -8
Hey Brian I still have my cassette tapes you made me. I still play them at night when there is nothing on TV or I cant sleep. Like you I have many still. Thanks for the memories
|
|
Brian
Administrator
Posts: 3,802
|
Post by Brian on Apr 14, 2009 23:04:02 GMT -8
I can't write about my job and I don't want to print too much personal information on the Internets. But after 39 years of preparing tax returns for money -- and 32 years of filing my own -- I must say we're not paying enough taxes. Until this year I took pride in filling out every form, schedule and worksheet by hand, but that became too much. I wish I'd had the professional software I use at work to calculate things like the tax on qualified dividends and capital gains along with the capital loss carryover, but I adapted to Turbo Tax -- and found out quicker that we made more last year yet paid significantly less, thanks to Bush's tax cuts for the rich. This year, we'll benefit from Obama's tax cuts for the middle class on top of that, despite having none of the typical deductions and credits because we rent and have no kids. But if we buy a house this year we'll get $8000 from the IRS. Throughout the day, I meet a lot of folks who earn much more. They complain bitterly about the alternative minimum tax and passive activity rules, and they suffer horrendously from phaseouts and exclusions based on their income. But they forget (and I can't) that their parents paid much higher marginal tax rates yet still somehow did O.K. Then left them all their money.
|
|
Roberta
Member
Vigil founding member
Posts: 1,031
|
Post by Roberta on Apr 15, 2009 16:13:08 GMT -8
You must have seen Marc Cooper's column in today's Times, in total agreement with you. "The truth is that the U.S. is a relatively low-tax country no matter how you slice the data." The irony/idiocy to me is that the folks at the Faux News-fomented anti-tax tea parties today are those who would benefit both from the Obama middle class tax cuts AND the social programs his tiny increase on the taxes of the truly rich would fund.
|
|
Brian
Administrator
Posts: 3,802
|
Post by Brian on Apr 15, 2009 23:00:32 GMT -8
I didn't read anything worthwhile Wednesday until I got home and saw Roberta's post. I'll catch up with Cooper's Times column tomorrow.
Instead, I spent more than an hour inching my car from a point about a quarter-mile from the westbound Sherman Way offramp of the northbound 405 to the front of the big Van Nuys post office. I passed my stack of extensions through the passenger window to a postal worker on the sidewalk around 9:30. A few people with signs stood along the street, which felt weird, being on the other side of signs, but these were about greed and exclusion through some notion of liberty I don't get. Once I got home, I saw a mini-rally at the main entrance on the Channel 4 news -- a guy on a megaphone, more sign carriers and a lot of folks who were just waiting outside the packed lobby. More people in there, actually.
At least I got to hear several innings of the Dodger game on the radio.
By the way, the message board had a guest from Montreal, site of the second Bed-In by John and Yoko almost 40 years ago.
|
|
|
Post by Nancy on Apr 16, 2009 15:56:22 GMT -8
Brian - Bed in- Montreal - Yeah? Woohooo! Sorry about your car trouble & the homeless terrorist "with limitations." Good writing though. See you tommarow. Love & Peace, Nancy
|
|
Brian
Administrator
Posts: 3,802
|
Post by Brian on May 26, 2009 0:06:52 GMT -8
I managed to escape jury duty for three whole decades until just a few years ago, when the economic hardship excuse was no longer accepted. Luckily, I only had to serve five hours in the waiting room downtown before they set me free.
If you haven't gotten a summons lately, you'll be as surprised as I was about all the changes the county has automated into the registration process. They cover everything now. My employer actually pays for one day, so I had to be honest when answering the prompts on the phone recording. Then I opted for an online 60-minute orientation course consisting of three videos and questionnaires to prove you watched them, just so I could print a certificate that would allow me to show up an hour later if I was chosen.
I feared that my behavior made me a lock for Tuesday but -- hooray! -- I wasn't called in. Maybe the holiday week helped.
Yeah, I know I should want to serve on a jury like those articulate and earnest people in the video. Be a citizen. It's in the Constitution. I set things up at my job just in case and I've got the vacation time available. Now I have to keep checking each night to see if I'm included the next day. I have yet to be tested.
|
|
Brian
Administrator
Posts: 3,802
|
Post by Brian on Jun 1, 2009 23:42:54 GMT -8
Sometime in the late 1980's I became Officially Old when I started watching Johnny Carson on "The Tonight Show" at 11:30 regularly, just like my Dad. It didn't matter that I stayed up until 5 in the morning, I had to watch the monologue, always masterful even when Johnny bombed, and stick around if the guest was good. I cried at the end of his last show in 1992, along with most of America.
Jay Leno earned my loyalty with his work ethic and blue collar values. He paid his staff and crew during the writers strike out of his own pocket. Mostly, I just turned on the TV while I piddled around here, read the news or talked to the cat, dipping into the monologue while waiting for "Headlines" or a must-see guest. But I was seated for the whole hour last Friday, marveling at Jay's class when he closed the show with the 68 children born and unborn to his employees, from age 17 to in utero, assembled onstage.
But no tears this time, knowing he'll be back every night at 10, an hour better suited to men our age.
|
|