SCHLOCK, THE MONKEY - cultural claptrap

What You'll Find Here: Music, Movies and Me

Since May 1976, I have written in journals. When I have nothing particularly resonant to say about my own inner turmoil, philosophic ramblings, sexual peccadillos or whining on about the state of the world around me...I have always fallen back on reporting the cultural time consumption that takes up in inordinate portion of my daily goings on.

In the 40+ years since my first concerts seeing Children's Symphony presentations on Sundays at the Pasadena Civic or The Hot Jazz Society's monthly Dixieland romps in an old meeting hall on the edge of the L.A. "River" across from Griffith Park, I have been sold heavily on the magic of live music. As Neil Young so aptly put it, "Live music is better bumper stickers should be issued."

Growing up a few orange groves and canyons length away from Hollywood also contributed greatly to my family's addiction to movie going. From the time I was a small there were weekly trips to the drive-in theaters that dotted the landscape, or the local Temple theater for the Saturday matinees. Once in a while we'd drive the 12 miles into Hollywood and see something in one of the magnificent old movie palaces like Grauman's Chinese, the Egyptian, The Pantages or later the Cinerama Dome. My dad loved Westerns and War movies, as if he didn't get enough shoot-'em-up as an L.A. County Sheriff in his day gig, my mom adored musicals and comedies. My brother and I loved them all.

At SDSU, I played in my first gigging band and began booking concerts on campus as part of the well-funded Cultural Arts Board, kindling for my future life in and around music.

So it's not surprising that my first jobs out of college were working in local video rental places (which were all the rage) or managing a couple of Sam Goody record stores in Mall's on the East Coast where we marveled at the new CD format and sold the first home computers and video games (yes Commodore and Pong and Atari).

So these are really just extensions of all of those journal entries talking about the great new movies I was seeing and LPs/CDs I was listening to.

Though iPODS/iPADs, apps, smart phones and downloads now make music and movies accessible in your own pocket, there is still nothing like sitting in front of a stack of speakers with a room full of people swaying to music created before your eyes. Nor is there anything that works quite so well for me to escape the real world and all of it's pressures just outside than two hours in a dark theater, absorbing the stories flickering across that wide screen as they pull you into their world.

But a really good taco runs a close third...

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

QUOTES OF THE DAY

"Teach me to live that I may dread
The grave as little as my bed."

- Bishop Thomas Ken, "Morning and Evening Hymn"

"It ain't why, why, why...it just is."

- Van Morrison, "Summertime In England"

Monday, August 13, 2012

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses, for art establishes the basic human truths which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment." - John F. Kennedy

Check out my poetry blog at POETRY FROM THE PORCH

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

NEW DYLAN COMING

Now that may sound like a headline from the golden days of New Dylan sightings...Donovan, Joni Mitchell, John Prine, Bruce Springsteen, even Elliot Murphy all got the nod at one point or another. Then there was the band THE NEW DYLANS who had a brief run-in with critical acclaim in the mid-80s.

But, as always, the only new Dylan we need is whatever new-fangled Dylan, Bob himself gives us. There have been rumblings in Dylan's camp about a new record coming this fall and today there is some concrete news. His new album will be called TEMPEST and will be released on September 11.
Featuring Dylan's touring band as well as David Hidalgo from Los Lobos, this is Bob's 35th studio album and comes on the heels of four strong and critically acclaimed studio albums since 1997.

Bob talks about TEMPEST from the 8/16 issue of ROLLING STONE
Here is the track listing of TEMPEST:

http://www.bobdylanisis.com/contents/en-uk/d19.html

1. Duquesne Whistle
2. Soon After Midnight
3. Narrow Way
4. Long and Wasted Years
5. Pay In Blood
6. Scarlet Town
7. Early Roman Kings
8. Tin Angel
9. Tempest
10. Roll On John

So the final song, "Roll On, John" is proported to be a new song by Bob about John Lennon and features lines from various Beatles songs according to a variety of sources in the various Dylan forums online. It is NOT the traditional song of the same name that Dylan performed on Cynthia Goodin's radio program in 1962 (hear it below) which has been widely bootlegged over the years. Below also is a version by the Greenbriar Boys from 1970 which just illustrates how much more authentic Dylan sounded then the average folk artists when he sprang on the folk music scene in NYC in the early 60s. The polish exhibited by so much of the music of the early 60s folk music revival was not Dylan's forte or his mode of expression. His individual style was based more on the organic folk process of taking your own stylistic idiosyncrasies and adapting existing folk material and references from a variety of sources that not only pay tribute to the original songs and performances but apply one's own intent and interpretation upon them to put forward a newer perspective on an older theme. He does this to this day with his "appropriations" of titles, grooves, imagery and melody. The Great Assimilator.

Here is the official press release from www.bobdylan.com:

July 17, 2012
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NEW BOB DYLAN ALBUM – TEMPEST - SET FOR SEPTEMBER RELEASE
COLLECTION OF TEN NEW BOB DYLAN SONGS
MARKS MUSICIAN’S 50TH ANNIVERSARY AS A RECORDING ARTIST

Columbia Records announced today that Bob Dylan’s new studio album, Tempest, will be released on September 11, 2012. Featuring ten new and original Bob Dylan songs, the release of Tempest coincides with the 50th Anniversary of the artist’s eponymous debut album, which was released by Columbia in 1962.

Tempest is available for pre-order now on iTunes and Amazon. The new album, produced by Jack Frost, is the 35thth studio set from Bob Dylan, and follows 2009’s worldwide best-seller, Together Through Life.

Bob Dylan’s four previous studio albums have been universally hailed as among the best of his storied career, achieving new levels of commercial success and critical acclaim for the artist. The Platinum-selling Time Out Of Mind from 1997 earned multiple Grammy Awards, including Album Of The Year, while “Love and Theft” continued Dylan’s Platinum streak and earned several Grammy nominations and a statue for Best Contemporary Folk album.

Modern Times, released in 2006, became one of the artist’s most popular albums, selling more than 2.5 million copies worldwide and earning Dylan two more Grammys. Together Through Life became the artist’s first album to debut at #1 in both the U.S. and the UK, as well as in five other countries, on its way to surpassing sales of one million copies.

Those four releases fell within a 12-year creative span that also included the recording of an Oscar- and Golden Globe-winning composition, “Things Have Changed,” from the film Wonder Boys, in 2001; a worldwide best-selling memoir, Chronicles Vol. 1, which spent 19 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller List, in 2004, and a Martin Scorsese-directed documentary, No Direction Home, in 2005. Bob Dylan also released his first collection of holiday standards, Christmas In The Heart, in 2009, with all of the artist’s royalties from that album being donated to hunger charities around the world.

This year, Bob Dylan was the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor. He was awarded a special Pulitzer Prize in 2008 for “his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power.” He was also the recipient of the French Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres in 1990, Sweden’s Polar Music Award in 2000 and several Doctorates including the University of St. Andrews and Princeton
University as well as numerous other honors.

Tempest is available for pre-order now on iTunes and Amazon.

Here's a segment of one of the new tunes as debuted in the trailer for the Cinemax show, Strike Back...courtesy of RollingStone.com:

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/listen-bob-dylans-new-song-early-roman-kings-20120801