"Whatever happened to the protest and the rage?": Deceased Artiste Gil Scott-Heron

One of the most significant deaths in the arts community this summer was the poet-singer-songwriter-activist Gil Scott-Heron. Scott-Heron died several weeks ago at this point, but I wanted to wait to pay tribute to him until I could get it right.

Gil’s death was not unexpected — he had battled drug addiction and various other health crises (including, most recently, HIV) for several decades, but to make matters more poignant, he left us after having a low-key but triumphant comeback in 2010 with the haunting album I’m New Here. His talent as a writer and a musician can’t be overstated — he remained true to his principles and brought a searing intelligence and deep passion for his fellow man to the world of “popular music.”

What strikes one when listening to all of his recorded work in a short span of time is not only how radical his poems and lyrics were, but also how he clung to the small joys found in daily life. Those who know him only from works like “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” will be surprised to hear the pretty and extremely serene jazz ballads he wrote and performed during the same period.

In addition to his writing and musical talent, he also was an engaging performer, as is evidenced by the films and videos of his concerts, where he did both poems and comedy routines in between songs.

So GSH was a “militant” artist who could also be extremely funny; a polemicist who also crafted mellow music that is relaxing and refreshing; and a gifted, literary (that is a compliment, not an insult) writer who never lost the common touch in his “voice.”

His obits celebrated his achievements, but also naturally focused on the tragedy of his drug use. It’s clear that, like many artists, he saw all too clearly what the world is like and needed to dull his senses so that he wouldn’t be sucked in too deeply. The fact that he produced precise and unsparing accounts of addiction (“Home is Where the Hatred Is,” “The Bottle”) when he himself was presumably only beginning to fall victim to it reflects how deeply he understood the mindset of the addict and the allure of the “escape hatch.”

The other aspect of Gil’s legacy that was spoken about in every obit and tribute on the Internet was his status as one of the principal “godfathers of rap.” The quote of his that was most repeated was “don’t blame me for that," but the more important statement he made about contemporary hiphop in general was his reminder that he had worked on becoming a honed musician before he became a performer.

His main collaborator, Brian Jackson, is rightly given credit for the sound of Gil’s best albums, up to and including 1980; in many cases the records were credited to both of them. But Gil was himself a musician who knew his craft and took no easy ways out — thus the fact that he cultivated a dedicated following in America and was widely appreciated in Europe and the UK, where jazz is much more warmly received.

How did Scott-Heron differ from the mainstream rap stars of today, many of who claim him as an influence?
—His compositions were always his own original material. He covered songs by Marvin Gaye and Bill Withers, among others, but he didn’t lay his lyrics on the “bed” of another artist’s melody.
—His looks. He was a good looking guy when he was younger, but was never a heartthrob.
—He was a poet, first and foremost. His concentration as a writer was not strictly on the rhymes (although he produced some gems), but on the message being communicated and the tone of the words.
—He was, above all, a moralist (a streetsmart one) who wrote with a sense of purpose and was, in fact, very hard on himself in his writing. No self-aggrandizing “gangsta” behavior for him.
-And, yes, the musicianship. Though they contain some topical lyrics, his best albums are evocative and timeless jazz records.

In the British TV series All Back to Mine (see below), when asked to pick his favorite music he made certain to put Chuck D/Public Enemy and Michael Franti in the company of John Coltrane (his hero) and Marvin Gaye. He definitely knew the good stuff when he heard it.

The details of his life and the geographical moves that shaped his worldview were also quickly reviewed in his obits. Born in Chicago to a librarian and a Jamaican soccer star who was a key player for a Scottish team (!), he was cared for as a child by his grandmother in Tennessee. In adolescence he was moved to the Bronx. He interrupted his college undergrad studies to write and publish a novel (The Vulture), then wound up getting a master’s in literature from John Hopkins when he was already a recording artist in the early Seventies.

He described himself as a “bluesologist,” since he remained fascinated by the roots of African-American popular music throughout his life. The drug addiction that wrecked his health apparently kicked in badly in the mid-Eighties, as his productivity as a singer-songwriter pretty much ceased at that point, with only two studio albums and certain select tours after that.

His last 25 years were fallow in terms of work, but the concentration of genius he betrayed in his prolific period, plus the brilliance of the two “comeback” albums, qualify him as a major artist who, true to the American way of entertainment, was better known and more beloved overseas than he was over here….

On a related note, Gil did live through two years of the Obama presidency (the two years squandered on the quest for “bipartisanship”), but I haven’t seen or read any comments from him about the President. Since Obama has kept America’s military commitment ramped up (while the country is falling apart at home), one can only assume that the artist whose motto was “Work for Peace” (see below) would not be pleased with another U.S. President with unnecessary blood on his hands.

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I can rhapsodize about Scott-Heron’s work, but he should always have the last word. Let me start off the clips with the best GSH interviews, all done by British fans/journalists. First an interview done for the BBC when he was preparing his last album, and then a really terrific documentary, a GSH “101” called The Revolution Will Not Televised:



Then the British show All Back to Mine in 2000. Gil speaks about his musical influences and those who followed him [RECOMMENDED]:



Scott-Heron’s first album is a potent collection of spoken word pieces with musical backing called Small Talk at 125th and Lenox (he does sing “Who’ll Pay Reparations on My Soul?”). This piece was resurrected by Kanye West and inserted into a new piece he called “Who Will Survive in America?” (which is basically Gil’s vocal with a new musical backing).



A song that wound up having a lot of personal meaning to Gil was “Home is Where the Hatred Is,” off his second album Pieces of a Man (1971). The song talks about drug addiction, and he later reworked it for his first comeback album in 1994, after he had had been having drug problems for a while. It’s a no-nonsense song that isn’t preachy, it just provides a first-person perspective:



The thing that impresses me about the most about GSH is his versatility. Above you have a political poem and a “cry from the heart” as they call it. And here, from some intrepid YT poster, are three of his most beautiful vocals, with the first two being particular favorites of mine, “Save the Children” and “I Think I’ll Call It Morning” (from Pieces…). The third song is “Peace Go With You, Brother” from his album with Brian Jackson, Winter in America [HIGHLY RECOMMENDED]:



Yet another truly mellow tune that reflected GSH’s upbeat side is his ode to two of his greatest influences, “Lady Day and John Coltrane.” I also love his spoken word piece “The Ghetto Code (Dot Dot Dit Dit Dot Dot Dash)” that functions as both a cautionary tale and a standup routine; the most interesting thing is his note that “there’s something wrong with February,” which, of course, was later chosen to be Black History month, despite its being the shortest month in the year.

For a visual example of his comfortable stage presence, here is a great bit taken from the Robert Mugge’s terrific GSH documentary Black Wax (1983):



Three-quarters of Black Wax can be found on YT currently. The first section, in which Gil discusses his being a “bluesologist,” is here. A large, 40-minute chunk of the film, starting with Scott-Heron doing an awesome version of his poem “Whitey on the Moon,” is here [HIGHLY RECOMMENDED]:



A nod to Brian Jackson, Gil’s finest collaborator. Their albums together are among Scott-Heron’s best, and songs like “First Minute of a New Day” (1976) underscore Jackson’s terrific arranging and production. Their album Winter in America (1974) is considered the high point of their collaboration (along with their group, "the Midnight Band”):



Gil’s biggest hit on “the charts” was this awesome blend of a serious message and a very catchy melody, “The Bottle” [RECOMMENDED]:



The first time I saw Gil was on Saturday Night Live singing his anthemic "Johannesburg," which predated the whole Sun City by a decade. It’s still a killer song:



Scott-Heron was on the right side of a lot of issues in the Seventies and early Eighties. He opposed the use of nuclear energy with the unforgettable “We Almost Lost Detroit.” Here is a live version from 1990:



Gil’s satirical pieces on “the Great Communicator,” Ronald Raygun (as Scott-Heron called him), were nothing short of brilliant. Here is the first one, which serves as a great history lesson about what was really going on at the turn of the Eighties [RECOMMENDED]:



As if “B-Movie” wasn’t brutal enough, the funkified “Re-Ron” lays down the case for the danger and stupidity of Reagan in an even clearer fashion:



Gil’s personal problems consumed him after the early Eighties, but in 1994 he came back with his first dynamite “comeback” album, Spirits. He was profiled as “the godfather of rap” in interview segments like this one and crafted a brilliant “Message to the Messengers” to speak to the new generation of hiphop stars:



The Spirits album is terrific on the whole, but one of its spoken-word pieces still hits home today. “Work for Peace” is Gil’s recognition that the “military and the monetary” run America. Here he performs the piece on the MTV Unplugged poetry special. This piece, again, should be mandatory listening for the President. It probably wouldn’t change anything he’s currently thinking, but it would so sweet if it could [HIGHLY RECOMMENDED]:



Sadly, following Spirits, Gil’s drug problems increased. He did continue to do live gigs and expressed himself eloquently as always in interviews like this one. His second “comeback” occurred last year with the excellent album I’m New Here. The haunting and deeply menacing song “Me and the Devil” (which was perhaps his most deeply personal, most anguished composition) was illustrated by a suitably menacing menacing music video (check out the amazing spoken-word piece at the close).

The album has some great tunes, including the superb “New York Is Killing Me,” but the most valuable piece of video to emerge from the production was a live, acoustic version of the title tune. Here Gil finally did become a bluesman — he had spoken of his love for the blues since the early Seventies, but his music had never sounded as bluesy as here [RECOMMENDED]:



There is an undeniable majesty to Scott-Heron on the I’m New Here (his knowledge and experience seeps out of every track), but the song I have to close this entry out with is his most famous, the one that has been copied endlessly and still packs a punch 41 years after he first recorded it (as a spoken word piece on Small Talk…) and 40 years after he recorded this indelible musical version (the whole thing is perfect, but the flute has always made it for me).

Here is an interview in which Gil discusses the song. If you’re going to have one creation to be remembered by, this is one hell of an achievement. I wish all rap (and rock and even “fast folk”) sounded more like this, and betrayed this level of intelligence. Rest well, poet.

He’s still welcome here: MDA pitches from Jerry, 57 years apart

My last post about Jerry Lewis’s ouster from the MDA telethon summarizes my feelings about the event quite clearly, but I thought I’d share two of the clips that I showed last night on the Funhouse TV show in my annual Labor Day Jerry tribute episode. The first clip is from the second telethon Martin and Lewis hosted, and the first that was entirely devoted to MDA, on Thanksgiving Eve in 1953. The second clip is from the 2010 telethon, the last Jerry was ever to host (which of course we, and he, never knew was to be his swan song).

The interesting thing about contrasting the clips is noting Jerry’s approach — in the first he is mellow, and 57 years later he is frenzied (to the point of anger it seems) and sincerely impassioned about the cause. I present these as a sort of testament to a loooong time spent working for one charity.

Also, notice his emphasis on finding a cure. It’s seemed to me in the past few years that he is the one who has pushed that aspect of the MDA fund drive — he has spoken about a cure now for 57 years (note that back in 1953 he gave an amount of time, three months, in which the disease could be cured if the funds came in). Whereas the other spokespeople for the MDA seem to stress research and aid for those who are afflicted by the neuromuscular diseases.

Whatever the case may be, he certainly has given the organization a lotta his time and energy (discussions about his motivations can take place elsewhere — and already have). Since we are denied his company this evening as a host (and thus denied the last functional old-fashioned TV variety show), I thought I would share just a little of my Funhouse tribute here:

The Wham of Sham: Deceased Artiste Shammi Kapoor

I know very little about Bollywood cinema, but what I have seen I've loved. During the early years of the Funhouse TV show (which began in 1993 — comin’ up on 18 years, folks!) I showed and re-showed a small handful of B’wood musical numbers I taped off PBS, several of which involved the inimitable Mr. Shammi Kapoor, who died on Aug. 14 at the age of 79.

A four-part series about Indian cinema aired on PBS in the late 1980s, and the two episodes that melted my mind in wondrous ways were something called “Dance Invasion” and another that profiled Shammi. These programs have never been rerun since to my knowledge, but I believe “Dance Invasion” was seen by the folks who did Ghost World, as the Bye Bye Byrdie-ish rockin’ clip from the thriller Gumnaam (1965) that starts off that film also started off the “Dance Invasion” special (and was later reshown on a Manhattan access show, again from the DI special).

The carefully chosen B’wood clips in that series were a revelation to me, and the performer who simply blew me away was Kapoor. I was struck at first by how feverishly he danced around during the musical numbers.

In most of his best Sixties musicals he’s a somewhat chunky guy with a prominent pompadour, but he did dance moves that were, by turns, wildly funny and extremely cool. Without any ado, I give you the clip from Teesri Manzil (1966) that converted me to the cult of Kapoor. If you don’t smile when watching this, you’re officially dead. [HEAVILY RECOMMENDED]:



I watched and rewatched these clips with my friends on “video nights” back in the Eighties, and all of them were duly impressed by Shammi’s frenzied movements. The only possible way I can explain Kapoor’s dancing is to say he seemed like Dick Shawn’s long-lost Indian brother.

Shawn, of course, was a comedian-actor who danced wildly, and Kapoor was a leading man who played in dramas and comedies that were chockfull of musical numbers. Both men were far more uninhibited in their gyrations than Elvis — Kapoor in fact was dubbed “the Elvis of India” in the late Fifties. They both were also high-key performers who were unashamed of looking silly onscreen and were totally in control of the film frames they inhabited.

On this last point, it should be noted that Kapoor may have seemed like he was shakin’ out of control onscreen, but in that PBS profile I taped, he spoke at length about how he planned his wild, uninhibited dances. He discussed how he knew exactly when to quickly exit the frame on a beat and when to reappear in another set-up (thus putting him in the class of comedian-filmmakers from the silent era). This resulted in some kinetically edited musical sequences like this one (no I can’t explain why the schoolchildren get involved) or this playful number. This item, also from Teesri Manzil, is a delightful bit of song-seduction with a refrain that sounds like “peachy, peachy”:



For some seriously frenzied rockin’ out from Shammi, here is yet another scene from Teesri Manzil that seems modeled on the “What I Say” scene in Viva Las Vegas [RECOMMENDED]:



The most interesting thing to keep in mind when discussing the musical sequences in B’wood productions is that the actors rarely if ever sang their own songs, thus spawning an entire industry of Marni Nixon-like “playback singers.” Shammi’s primary playback singer was a legend in the annals of B’wood, Mohammed Rafi — who, according to various Internet sources, sang in 15 Indian languages and dialects, as well as English and several European languages, and recorded over 25,000 songs!

In his online vlog entry about Rafi, Kapoor maintained that he would talk to Rafi about what he was going to be doing physically during a given musical number. Rafi didn’t look like a rocker at all (see above), but he matched Shammi’s energy levels with his rockabilly-styled vocals.

Here is another of their collaborations, a low-key number from Kashmir Ki Kali (1964) that Shammi performs in an empty bar (Frank called ’em “saloon songs”) with a sax player in attendance:



Kapoor of course performed many low-key ballad-type songs in his movie career but, again, my focus here is on his upbeat moments. I still am blown away by his energy, particularly as he put on weight as the Sixties turned into the Seventies. I do occasionally laugh out loud at his dancing and gesticulations, but I think that would be okay with the man himself (especially given the impression of him one receives in his vlogs).

He was so into what he was doing onscreen that to laugh while watching him is to merely acknowledge that he was having a GREAT time performing a given number (and/or flirting with his delightfully pretty costars). Kapoor was unafraid of looking silly onscreen, which is a rare quality among film stars — unless they are comedians or actors who are known for musical-comedy performances (Zero Mostel, Bert Lahr).

Shammi was truly one of a kind and, although I know quite little about his personal life and the incredible cinematic legacy of his family (the Kapoors were/are indeed a “dynasty” that have been quite important in the history of Bollywood), I feel that I got to know him a little better by watching the aforementioned video blogs, called ”Shammi Kapoor Unplugged.” (He apparently came up with the name, as he says it on-camera proudly in each entry, further proving his Cool Old Guy status.)

Uploaded to YouTube by three separate posters, they constitute a very informal personal history of a performer’s career. Kapoor was a Net addict in his later years (he talks about it here), and he understood how to communicate with the average Net-surfer, who is not likely to read a bulky show-biz memoir, but will surely watch a superstar sharing his favorite anecdotes on camera. Here is one of my favorite entries, proving that Shammi definitely had a sense of humor about what he was doing:



You can see Shammi as a thin matinee idol in this 1962 clip. From the same film, Dil Tera Diwana, here is a classic Bollywood number in which both hero and heroine get soaking wet as they seduce/sing to each other:



Shammi does some more classic seduction with ebullient dance movements (in a boat, yet!), in Kashmir Ki Kali:



Perhaps the most energetic scene that Shammi took part in didn’t involve dancing — it was this number in which he hangs from a low-flying helicopter (in a bathrobe!) from the 1967 film An Evening in Paris.

The best part about rewatching these Kapoor musical numbers is being reminded of the catch-phrases that he had as wild choruses in his songs, as in this rockabilly number from China Town (1962) in which he repeatedly intones a phrase burnt into my brain, “Tally-ho!” [RECOMMENDED]:



A number that is blatantly comedic from Dil Tera Diwana, which includes the phrase “woof!” Yes, Shammi is singing to a man in drag:



One of the films that made him into a star was Junglee (1961). Here’s a killer number from that film in which the phrase “Yahoo!” is screamed (not by Shammi, or by the singer Rafi, according to Shammi, but by another actor who had a deeper voice). [RECOMMENDED]:



Another number in which Shammi is a bona fide wildman. I can’t tell what he’s screaming at the opening, but the song is another high-energy rouser. From Tumse Achha Kaun Hai (1969):



And a last unforgettable catchphrase, “Suku suku,” from Junglee again. This scene reflects the B’wood passion for Russian and Spanish dancing (I’m not sure why these two cultures fascinated the makers of B’wood pics, but they did). The female lead in the film, who gets more screen time here than Shammi does, is billed as “Shashi Kala”:



Next are two oddities: first, Shammi does an entire song/dance sequence holding two bags after having exited a store (they were just tryin’ ta slow him down, but the man could not be slowed down!). From Professor (1962):



And, yes, although he was called the “Elvis of India,” Shammi did do one Beatles number. It’s a Hindi version of “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” (!). The Nehru jacket comes home in this number, which was shot months before George discovered the sitar on the set of Help! From Janwar (1965); sung, of course, by Mohammed Rafi:



I have to close this tribute out with a another killer number. This one comes from Tumse Achha Kaun Hai. It has a Big Bopper-esque beginning, a heavily rockin’ sound, a sailor in blackface (or is it greenface — I can’t tell if this is racist or just insane), cute girls in brightly colored dresses, and Shammi providing a super-energetic performance of a hyperventilating vocal by Rafi. [HEAVILY RECOMMENDED]:



Thanks to Charles Frenkel for passing on the fact that Kapoor had died. One of the best comments I read about his passing was from one of his directors: “Don’t mourn Shammi, envy him!” The gent seemed to have had a very nice life, and continues to entertain his countrymen and those foreigners like myself who stumble across his work and are duly impressed. Mourning does seem beside the point. Tally-ho!!!

The MTA’s wet dream come true: the subway is shut down!

As I write this, an unprecedented event is taking place in New York City: the entire mass-transit system is closing down, in order to better “deal with” (read: not deal with, extreme weather has clearly never been prepared for or even taken into consideration!) the onset of Hurricane Irene. It may sound to those outside the city like we’ve finally become the kind of urban dystopia depicted in “near future” novels and movies, like The Warriors and Streets of Fire. A city where the subway doesn’t run, where the leaders are ineffectual or aren’t even present, where the police have graphic closed-circuit camera footage of people committing violent crimes, and they still can’t catch ’em to save their life. Oh wait, that last actually reflects several real news events in NYC in the last few months….

The dirty secret of Bloomberg’s New York is that we already are that kind of city. Class distinctions are getting sharper than ever, and the billionaire mayor-who-flies-to-Bermuda-every-weekend (yes, it’s true, it’s very true) has two things on his mind: making the city safer and more amenable to his rich brethren, and bringing in millions more rich tourists to drop cash. Oh, and to smooth over that rough patch that occurred when he was in Bermuda during the big weekend snow storm a few months back, and he didn’t move fast enough to plough the boroughs at all (not enough rich people living there!). Mustn’t give that kind of impression again….

So there he is, on my TV set, on the 24-hour news nets, “Mayor Mike” telling people in various districts in the five boroughs that they have to vacate where they live. He’s only trying to help them, isn’t he? Well, the ones who were journeying out to the Hamptons and Connecticut on the news reports I saw are his kind of people. And they have somewhere to go to. The other people, those who only have a primary residence, a rented apartment that constitutes the parameters of their existence, those who are elderly, (gasp) poor, in massive debt, where should they go? Well, it’s no matter of the “Fun City” mayor, he’ll be back in Bermuda next weekend when this mess is all cleaned up. (Even if it isn't, most likely.)

But Bloomberg didn’t order the full MTA shutdown for the dreaded hurricane that is headed our way (I get images of The Wizard of Oz as well as The Warriors — “it’s a twister, it’s a twister!”). Governor Cuomo did. Because he doesn’t live here, and most likely isn’t tethered to the subway as most of us are, has more than likely not taken it on a daily basis in a few decades (Bloomberg’s daily “show” of taking it is a pathetic spectacle that speaks to how sad the man really is, and how stupid he really thinks we can be).

The subway is the lifeline, the bloodline of the city, and you’ve got to keep it functioning for as long as you can, no matter what the circumstances — if the circumstances are indeed too extreme, you systematically shut the thing down, “zone” by “zone” (NYC is being discussed that way on local cable news today). As it stands, it runs very well during the two rush-hour periods every day, and wanes and rumbles along at very odd, completely unpredictable times the rest of the day. Those who have to get to and from their job on the weekends or in the late evening hours must deal with the fact that they will stand on the platform for close to forever.

Thus, the joke can be made that how could one even TELL if the NYC subway and bus system is closed down on weekends? The way the MTA has run mass-transit here, they rule with an iron fist, are massively (and I do mean massively, and have detailed it in past blog entries) corrupt, and are not confronted at any pass by any government official. They are a fiefdom that can easily paralyze the city, and in fact do on a regular basis. But those who are not either the rich brethren of Bloomberg or a wealthy tourist *need* the buses and subways, and need them bad.

But, surely, you say, everyone will be hiding indoors today and tomorrow, sequestering themselves to avoid the storm that could indeed “hit us more powerfully than we’ve ever been hit before”? That is the plan, yes. But there are the poor and elderly, those who will still have to get to work, there is the matter of the city actually functioning on a weekend (life can’t, and won’t stop, no matter the doom-ridden weather predictions).

As I currently look out my window, it is 1:00 p.m. on Saturday, there isn’t a single drop of rain falling, but our PANIC-stricken officials (their determined calm doesn’t hide the panic and fear-mongering in their words) have okayed the closing down of the subway system. There will be rain later, there will be a hurricane, but right now the subways and buses are taking their last fares, and there is not a drop of rain comin’ down, folks…

So, in a nutshell:
-The shutdown, if it is indeed necessary (and no one knows yet whether it is, or isn’t), could’ve been done systematically over the weekend, as events dictated. You can tell me otherwise, but precautions for “extreme weather” should have been considered at every step of the game. The MTA *has* the money, no matter what they say publicly.

-Again, the measured words being used by Bloomberg, Cuomo, the MTA head, and various others betray utter PANIC. Foreign powers who are none too thrilled with the U.S. must take major delight in seeing the way New Yorkers scramble in fear like scalded puppies when extreme situations are proposed. The words of Little Lord Fauntleroy… er, “Mayor Mike” must please them no end. What was that some commentators said when the U.S. assassinated bin Laden? Oh yeah, “given the state of fear and civil-rights privacy breaches in this country currently — he already won….”

-If Emperor Bloomie is grounded in this city that he likes to fly away from every single weekend, you have to be grounded too. Stay in your room, and do your homework!

-Class distinctions are definitely being further defined and reinforced by many of the decisions made by our lovely mayor and, yes, even by our liberal governor. One can see Blade Runner in the city already, as the homeless try to take the seats left empty in the “Bloomberg beach” areas that clog up Times Square and Herald Square. They are chased by the cops. The police are there to protect us — aren’t they?

-The real, true reason given for the subway shutdown in The New York Times is that the tunnels needed to be shut down so the trains could be store “indoors” in the tunnels in which the trains normally run on. This, of course, indicates that the MTA has never taken measures to deal with “extreme weather” (this comes up every fucking time it snows these days).

The question arises: since they run on two sets of books, and are constantly and unwaveringly allowed to increase the fare price, WHERE DOES ALL THE MONEY GO? Oh, into the pockets of the crook leaders and the overpaid union members who work for them. I forgot. Sorry.

-The MTA hasn’t noted when it would turn back *on* the mass transit system if the hurricane dies back down sometime on Sunday. Direct quote from The New York Times : “[The MTA] declined to speculate about whether the shutdown would be canceled if the threat diminished.” They don’t have to — I’ve already noted countless times that they answer to no one at all in the city.

Since this is occurring on a weekend, I can’t help but feel that rush hour on Monday morning will be an absolute mess. When you render an incredibly complicated system utterly inactive on what is a time off for most employees (or double time, if we’re talking union), it will most likely not be possible to smoothly and easily get it back to functioning by a given hour. Thus, no time at all has been stated, and the MTA will do what it wants to. Just like it always does.

-The last point, but the most important, in my mind: this sets a precedent. In “extreme weather” conditions, subway and bus service in all five boroughs can now be shut down completely. It’s the first time this has EVER happened in the history of the NYC mass-transit system, but I guarantee it will not be the last. If you are tethered to them by your low financial status, they run roughshod over your life and will continue to do, with opposition from no one.

Although it may not sound like it from the above, I still love this city and want to stay here. That is why I'm so concerned and frustrated when extreme decisions are made that will set a precedent for future life in this burg.

“Warriors, come out to play….”



UPDATE: At the end of the next day, I can report that it rained a lot, rained heavily at times, and there were heavy winds. There was flooding in a few parts of the five boroughs, and a few thousand people lost their electricity, as happens when any extreme weather hits NYC — no preparation is done for extreme weather in this town, it’s just to be accepted you’re losin’ power if there’s a heavy fucking rain or snowfall (especially in the boroughs, which Bloomberg does not care about, not one little bit).

The storm didn’t hit until a good 7-8 hours after the subway and buses were shut down. The entire weather incident was over on Sunday afternoon, but the MTA didn’t quite know how to start the system up again — it was reported on local cable news that they’d have to reshuffle the trains they had secreted away in various tunnels (“the Brooklyn trains will have to be brought back to Brooklyn…”). It was done for our own good, and various drone-like locals were seen on the news saying that they were glad the subway had been shut down, because “I mean… you never know…”

It was a miserable precedent to set for a system that is run incompetently, apathetically, and most important, in a wildly corrupt fashion. But hey, you never know….

ANOTHER UPDATE: We really ain't too far from Warriors turf. First time I've ever read this. Nostalgia for the Seventies, or just disintegration?

“Silence is death”: Hangin’ out with John Cassavetes

The clip below comes from a 1965 documentary included in the French TV series Cineastes de Notre Temps, since French and British critics were far more supportive of John Cassavetes’ filmmaking efforts than those here at home. It’s a wonderful little time capsule from the decade that truly qualifies as “the gift that keeps on giving” (and giving and giving….).

What comes across is that Cassavetes was one hell of a cool character. The contemporary idea of a “cool filmmaker” is someone like Quentin Tarantino who essays the part of the film geek and appears extremely enthusiastic and energetic. His hyper behavior contrasts completely with Cassavetes’ assuredness — what strikes you in watching interviews with him is that he was certain he was right about what he was doing, and the passage of time has indeed proven that he was creating groundbreaking and rough-edged, wholly original works.

Tarantino is a talented genre filmmaker who indulges the public’s (and his own) lust for crazy, imaginative violence. Cassavetes was pretty much a prude when it came to violence and sex on screen (he disliked Rosemary’s Baby and The Dirty Dozen, both of which he starred in for other directors). On a personal level, he appears to have had no indulgences but alcohol — how much he indulged in that is something that appears to be spoken of only in individual anecdotes (none of which are sanctioned by his family), but drink did bring about his premature death.

None of that diminishes what he accomplished during this lifetime, and what he was doing at the end of it (I am particularly fascinated by his last, “magical realist” works). He created a style that was then completely new and innovative, and wasn't the result of him stringing together citations from other pictures. (Of course, Godard and Scorsese strung together citations from other films in their groundbreaking works, but were creating something entirely new in cinema while doing so.)

Cassavetes also worked in commercial mainstream fodder to fund his independent films. He chose to make things the studios didn’t necessarily want (even with a then big-name star like Peter Falk) because he felt the films had to be made. On the way, he was slagged mercilessly by American critics and reviewers, while the critical establishment now prematurely hails as geniuses filmmakers like Tarantino, the Anderson guys (not related, but I always lump Wes and Paul Thomas in together), Sofia Coppola, whomever.

I believe that one of the many things that strengthened Cassavetes and Altman as filmmakers were the drubbings they received from the critics when many of their best works came out. It’s surely not a good thing for an artist to receive instant, unanimous praise for their early works and to have shrines built to them as they crank out solid but entirely un-exceptional work.

Cassavetes was indeed an extremely cool character, and watching him here one can only envy those who got to know and work with him. Take a little cruise in his car, and marvel at what comes on the AM radio:



The whole documentary can be found on YT here. Thanks to Rich Brown for leading me to this gem.

Dishin' it: DVD reviews

I should probably connect the dots here and direct readers of this blog to some of my other recent writing. I’ve been reviewing DVDs for Disc Dish since its inception; the site is the brainchild of two of the editors I worked with at the sorely missed trade mag Video Business, Laurence Lerman and Samantha Clark.

My writing for DD is a bit more formal than it is in the entries here, but I’m proud of the reviews, as they include a little background, a little historical context, and a note or two on the supplements that appear on the discs, as well as any missing elements or special marketing maneuvers made by the DVD companies.

I know lots and lots of folks are doing the streaming thing these days — I can’t even imagine having another reason to be tethered to my computer — but the little silver discs are still being produced on a weekly basis, and there are some wonders to be found thereupon. For example:

The 1980 new wave music pic Breaking Glass

The Ernie Kovacs Collection

Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune

Francois Ozon’s Potiche

One word: Skidoo

The box set of the Seventies TV show Celebrity Bowling

Fassbinder’s I Only Want You To Love Me

Ozon’s Hideaway (Francois has been a busy guy!)

On Jerry Lewis being booted from "the Jerry Lewis telethon"

Well, the expected event has occurred, but before we thought it would (a lousy month before): the MDA has announced that Jerry Lewis has “completed his run” (nice ex-employer wording!) as National Chairman and won’t be hosting this year’s Telethon. Clearly the crazy and idiosyncratic press conference Jerry held last week — recounted to best effect here — spelled the end of Jer’s tenure at the MDA.

He stated at that conference that he would explain his so-called “retirement” from the show at a press conference after the ’Thon was over, and inferred that this wouldn’t be his last year as the show’s host, by using a reference to what he referred to as the “The New York Times ‘Dewey Wins!’ headline” (that most likely went over the heads of the younger journalists in the room — and it was actually the Chicago Daily Tribune proclaiming “Dewey Beats Truman”).

Jerry has always been a loose cannon, and that’s been the delight of watching the telethon. In an era when nothing unpredictable ever happens on live television (even on the talking-head political shows that are theoretically “unpredictable”), watching Jerry be so blatantly arrogant, rude, giddy, sentimental, and emotionally overwhelmed provided one of the last pieces of genuine (and genuinely bizarre) TV entertainment to be found.

As I noted in my last post about Jerry’s leaving the telethon, it was pretty evident that he was being ousted by the MDA when the two press releases announcing the telethon being cut back to six hours and Jerry’s “retirement” as host of the show didn’t include a single quote from the man himself.

So, as I did in the last post, let me acknowledge that the MDA’s main goal is to raise money to pay for research and items to help those afflicted with the disease. (Jerry has always spoken about a cure, whereas I don’t know if the MDA ever goes near such a notion.) Jerry’s “pity-based” way of raising money is from another era, when it was okay to diminish those who suffer from the disease. The famous “half-a –person” quote comes into the argument here. Warning: this clip includes "Angry Jer":



But, then again, the central reason most folks have even heard of the MDA is because of Jerry’s work as the National Chairman for the past few decades. You can argue that he made the telethon the main focus of his career because his movie career died in the late Sixties (and his TV career never, ever took off after the breakup with Dean).

Still, as the National Chairman and host of the Telethon, he has raised millions (actually $2.6 billion cumulatively). Here is a great example of the aforementioned “pity-based” fundraising that I uploaded to YT several years ago. It seems very corny and clichéd these days, but it did raise big dough from the time that the Telethon became an annual occurence, back in 1966:



So should the MDA have ousted him so unceremoniously? On the pragmatic level, you can’t have the host of your annual telethon badmouthing the organization on national TV (or whatever remains of “the Love Network”). But when your official spokesman has been Jerry Lewis, you’ve already made a Faustian bargain (shades of Damn Yankees!) — since Jerry was never going to be a Danny Thomas-like, friendly “face of charity.”

The MDA has pitched Jerry out in order to “rebrand” the franchise, but it has made a perennially angry senior citizen FURIOUS. And, whatever they may’ve thought they were doing, they did indeed muddy the organization’s image (unless they go the limit and change the name from MDA), since those who have heard of it to this date would most likely identify it with “that all-night TV show with that old comedian” — who, as much as he may be hated by some, is respected, revered, and beloved by others.

Neither option benefits the MDA in the long run — for surely the Telethon will be gone in a year or two at most, as the very notion of a telethon is something that appeals only to older viewers. Younger viewers brought up on the Internet (and those clunky two-hour celeb-filled approximations of telethons) have no referent for it, nor should they — since, as Jerry pointed out in a far brusquer fashion at his press conference last week, “appointment television” no longer exists, except for sporting events, award shows, or the occasional news phenomenon (like the recent Casey Anthony trial).

Those who have followed Jerry’s career over the years (either as a function of worship or derision) are obviously waiting to see how long it takes him to address the situation publicly (he is not the kind of person who could be bribed to shut up). I expect that an “exclusive interview” (or two or three) will find him, if he’s wise, playing the injured senior whose pet charity (which he’s raised billions for!) has thrown him out with the trash. If he plays the role properly (and the “I raised billions for them” aspect is obviously true), Jerry could be viewed in the public eye in a way he’s rarely (if ever) been seen before: sympathetically.

******
Since the tradition of watching Jerry on Labor Day has now officially been killed by the forward-thinking types at the MDA (that tradition, by the way, *won’t* end on the Funhouse TV show), let’s take a little trip back to the earliest surviving record of a Martin and Lewis telethon-type show.

For trivia buffs, the very first M&L-hosted telethon occurred in March 1952 (they also guested on the very first telethon ever, for the Damon Runyon Foundation, hosted by Milton Berle). The 1952 show lasted from midnight until the afternoon of the following day, and the proceeds were split between a cardiac hospital and muscular dystrophy research.

The official start date for the telethon as we know it was 1966 — but Jerry apparently did local ones in between the early Fifties and then, if this piece of footage of a “1959 telethon” isn’t mislabeled. The first surviving footage we have of a TV show done by M&L to benefit muscular dystrophy comes, however, from a two-hour show that aired on November 25, 1953, and was called “The Television Party for Muscular Dystrophy” (!):



Labor Day just won’t be the same without ’im.

The urban neurotic Garbo: Barbara Harris

While I always enjoy celebrating the careers of performers and artists who’ve left this mortal coil, I also do want to salute those who are still with us. And this week, on the occasion of a very nice discovery (two very nice discoveries) on YouTube, and apropos of nothing at all (fortunately not a demise), I am happy to salute the work of an actress who has been forgotten by most folks, but who gave us a handful of wonderfully indelible performances.

This fascination began when I first saw one of my favorite films, A Thousand Clowns (1965). It's possible to "fall" for that film in several ways: devotions can be developed to the super-charismatic Jason Robards, the gorgeously epigrammatic writer Herb Gardner, the manic Gene Saks, or the the wonderful BH. Harris was cast in the film instead of Sandy Dennis (whom I also love, but that’s a story for another post), who had played the female lead onstage. Harris's performance in the film causes one to wonder, “who is this adorable woman, who can be cute but not cloying and impish but not off-putting?”

If you climb with me on the relatively small bandwagon of diehard Barbara Harris fans (not to be confused with the bandwagon for the lead singer of the girl group the Toys, or any of the many other Barbara Harrises who’ve worked in show biz in the last half-century), you’ll discover a small number (18) of terrific performances in both landmark movies and ones that only the true aficionado of late-night TV (or, these days, obscure old VHS tapes and the occasional TCM airing) knows about.

At various points in the Sixties and Seventies, Harris was perched on the brink of superstardom, but didn’t have much interest in it (in that regard, she is a “legit” theater, less sex-kittenish version of the wonderfully hesitant Tuesday Weld). The only trace of a recent interview with her on the Net, from 2002, finds her saying she didn’t have an impulse to keep acting, and she has in fact been an acting teacher for the past few decades — before, during, and after the final flourish in the Eighties and Nineties where she played a few moms onscreen.

So who is this “mystery” performer who was marvelously endearing onscreen, but deliberately forsook fame and wealth at just about every turn? The basic facts of her life are available in the usual places online. She was born in Evanston, Illinois in 1935, and found her first great foothold as a performer in a troupe called the Playwrights Theatre; other members of the troupe included Ed Asner, and Nichols and May. She graduated from there to the Compass, which is best known for serving as a springboard for both the aforementioned comedy team (whose three LPs never, ever go outta date) and Shelley Berman (whose wonderfully paranoid visions also never, ever date). The group was run by her first husband, Paul Sills, one of the true legends of American improv comedy.

The first cast of the Second City.

The Compass, in turn, grew into a troupe called “The Second City,” with Barbara being one of the two women in the initial ensemble (Mina Kolb was the other). The troupe brought its sketches to the Broadway stage in 1961 (in From the Second City), and Harris distinguished herself in a number of roles, including a housewife seduced by a beatnik (Alan Arkin) in a sketch called, simply enough, “Museum Piece.” A video exists of this sketch and appears in a CBC documentary about the history of the two Second City troupes (it is time for someone to get the full sketch online!).

The Second City's Broadway run was Barbara's ticket to fame in legit theater. She appeared in the off-Broadway hit Oh Dad, Poor Dad… in 1962, then costarred in Mother Courage on Broadway in ’63, and wound up having the distinction of Alan Jay Lerner and Burton Lane writing her a musical — On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (pictured) was written explicitly for her. Her big number later became an AM radio staple for singers like Eydie Gorme, “What Did I Have That I Don't Have?”

On a Clear Day You Can See Forever

Barbara repeated her off-B'way role in Oh Dad, Poor Dad... in the wildly uneven 1967 film adaptation (her sole overtly sexy role, with even a bikini scene thrown in, to wake the audience up) and won a Tony for her next musical, the critically hailed three-part show The Apple Tree ('66-'67) with Alan Alda and Larry Blyden.

At this point, the story gets a little fuzzy — I distinctly remember looking her up in the Lincoln Center Library to find out where she “went” after the big films of the Seventies and discovering an article in a theater magazine that mentioned that she had scuttled her Broadway career by having a night where she went “dry” onstage and abruptly left a show in mid-run (I believe the show was Apple Tree). I’m told by many people that “everything you need to know is available on the Net,” but the name of that particular show is mentioned nowhere online, nor is her supposed “nervous breakdown” confirmed or denied anywhere.

The cast of The Apple Tree.

Whatever troubles she had in the late Sixties were totally wiped away by her successes in the Seventies. She came back with a one-two punch, two roles in two very significant films, both of which feature finales that pivot entirely around her. The first is, of course, Robert Altman’s Nashville (1975), and the second is Alfred Hitchock’s Family Plot (1976). Hitch thought enough of Barbara to end the film (and thus, unwittingly, his career) with her winking at the camera. An adorable gesture in a very enjoyable but not perfect film.

Family Plot

It’s almost inconceivable that Harris didn’t go on to instant fame after those two films. Imagine — to have Altman’s critically-lauded tapestry end with a performer absolutely nailing a killer song by Keith Carradine (which pretty much sums up what Altman was trying to say about America and apathy in a few verses), and then for that same performer to be the very last person seen in the very last Hitchcock film, winking at the camera (Hitch himself winked at his audience in the Family Plot poster, meaning Barbara was most definitely his surrogate). And then the lady appears in one very popular film — the first (and much-too-copied) modern-era “body-switch” comedy Freaky Friday (1976). She follows this with a few more umemorable movies, withdraws to teach somewhere along the way, does a few more supporting "mom" roles (and a scene in the, again, wildly uneven, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988)), and is never heard from publicly again (unless you took her classes, of course).

Harris is indeed an enigma of sorts — the Garbo of adorable urban neurotic Sixties actresses. We don’t know anything about her private life, which is fine (I was intrigued, though, to see Robert Klein mention in his autobiography that he had a crush on her when they worked together in The Apple Tree). But we also don’t know much about her as a performer, except for the work that was preserved onscreen.

Nashville

The book The Nashville Chronicles by Jan Stuart reveals that, early on, she thought her performance in Altman's epic tapestry was terrible (she initially had another song in the film, one by Chicago friend Shel Silverstein). Altman told her she was wrong, but she begged him to let her buy and destroy the rushes of her initial scenes. He wouldn’t let her, and thus we still have her performance as Altman intended it — but the other song hit the cutting room floor, so that Altman could properly tease out the fact that her character indeed *could* sing….

So Harris is an actress who left us with some superb starring and supporting performances on film, some well-remembered but ephemeral theater and TV work (out of which only a jarringly disturbing and brilliant Naked City episode exists on DVD), and a bunch of unsubstantiated show-biz-style rumors (another one appears on the always-unreliable IMDB, but I will only refer to the ones I’ve actually read in print sources). Of course what it comes down to is that Harris’s personal reputation, whatever that may have been, has been washed away by the sands of time and what we’re left with are the performances, for which I am incredibly grateful.

Since A Thousand Clowns, Nashville, Family Plot, and Freaky Friday are all imminently available, let me just direct you to the nicest rarities that appear online. First, audio tracks of an ill-fated, off-B’way revival of Brecht’s Mahagonny starring Harris and Estelle Parsons. Then the underrated (okay, forgotten) Herb Gardner character masterwork Who is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? (1971). Harris has a bravura scene that earned her an Oscar nomination. She is utterly sublime.



Jerry Schatzberg’s The Seduction of Joe Tynan (1979) is remembered primarily for its early starring performance by Meryl Streep, but Harris is equally wonderful. The trailer can be seen here.

The only Harris film I’ve yet to see — and I'm certain it will appear on the Net in some fashion — is Hal Ashby’s 1981 picture Second Hand Hearts (originally called “The Hamster of Happiness” — I’m not kidding!). A fan of the film put up a clip here.

The Apple Tree

I close with the two clips that kicked off this whole musing on the wonderful Ms. Harris, two segments from her work in Broadway musicals, as captured for TV. I was surprised by these clips for two reasons: because I NEVER thought I’d see her work on Broadway on video; and because she worked in a quiet and nuanced fashion in the movies, but is definitely using what they call “heightened realism” in these clips (or, more apt, cartoonlike caricature for broadly cartoonish musicals).

She also played “split” characters in both shows, so she affects a very cute and somewhat silly voice for each introverted personality. Here she is on the Tony Awards performing a scene from The Apple Tree where she plays the Jules Feiffer character “Passionella,” who wants to be a “beautiful, glamorous, radiant, ravishing… movie star!” Check out the ultra-quick costume change:



And please let us not speak of forthcoming revivals with Harry Connick Jr., or overblown Minnelli movies with Streisand (was there a movie musical with Streisand that was not overblown?), Yves Montand, and a young (singing — yes, I’ve got the LP with the outtake) Jack Nicholson. Here are the original stars of On a Clear Day…, John Cullum and Barbara on The Bell Telephone Hour’s 1966 special “The Lyrics of Alan Jay Lerner.” On a Clear Day… is very much of its era (the lyrics get into very cutesy places, as when "bestir" is rhymed with "disinter"), and I have no idea how it will be packaged as a revival, and I don’t care, because I won’t see it. This is the real deal:



Wherever you are, Ms. Harris, thanks for the performances. You did turn out to be a very different sort of “radiant, ravishing movie star,” and are not forgotten.

Update: My Deceased Artiste tribute to Barbara Harris can be found here. RIP.

One favorite Amy Winehouse video… well, two

So much has been written in the last few days about Amy Winehouse’s premature but sadly unsurprising death at 27 that I can’t add anything new, except to note again, as I did in my Peter Falk entry, how downright jackal-like and ugly the tabloid press is when it comes to troubled celebs. (Of course, as disgusting as TMZ is, the British press has been expert for decades in digging up unnecessary dirt.)

The singing that is heavily vaunted these days in the American mainstream (where soulless pap reigns supreme) is the pitch-perfect kind of emotionless swill that wins on American Idol and fills Vegas arenas (Celine Dion). Winehouse, on the other hand (and her un-addicted — as far as we know — countrywomen Adele and Joss Stone), was definitely connected to the great soul and jazz vocalists who gave emotional performances of songs, rather than technically perfect renditions of them.

Her addictions clearly linked her to Billie and Janis, but she had much more money at her disposal than either of those songbirds ever had (thus the sheer volume of drugs she was taking). She was also covered by the press in a nonstop fashion; Holliday and Joplin never had paparazzi camping outside their houses. Thus, her disease was in the public view for as long as she had it — and, of course, the song that “broke” her in America was perhaps the anthem of contemporary addiction (“Rehab”).

You can find an enormous amount of detail about Amy on the Web (too much in fact — and, yes, a few of the commentaries since her death have been extremely mean). I’ll just direct you to two of my favorite clips of her in performance.

The first is a beautiful version of the evergreen “Teach Me Tonight” done for the Jools Holland show (where she also performed “I Heard It Through the Grapevine”):



And the second is a live performance at the Mercury Prize ceremony in 2007 of one of her own songs, one that she seemed to always perform with a great deal of emotion — the final complete concert she performed in Belgrade (which is available on YT, but I’m not going to link to it) contained a sad and uncomfortable version of the tune. Here she’s in fine shape and excellent voice (again, I don’t give a shit about pitch-perfection, it’s the emotion in the delivery) singing “Love is a Losing Game” (an alternate great live version is here):

British humor 7: Bill Bailey

When I last wrote about the British musical comedian Bill Bailey on this blog, it was in the context of my discovery of a whole raft of brilliant English (and Irish) comics. At that time, there was very little of Bailey’s best work available on YouTube. But in the past few months the floodgates have opened, thanks to the appearance of an official Bailey channel. In honor of that fact, and also to salute the fact that Bill will be venturing back to these shores to play NYC (at the NYU Skirball Center, Sept. 14-17) with his show Dandelion Mind, I hereby offer this “update” of my tribute to him.

First, a little context for those in the U.S. who haven’t yet heard of the gent: Bailey is an expert musician who mixes music and absurdist observations — that’s the nearest I can come to putting a label on the kind of surreal verbal comedy he’s best known for. His act is, of course, better seen than described, but I will note that the best point of comparison for U.S. viewers is mid-period George Carlin, when George was doing an odd, trippy variant of standard observational humor. Add in the musical component, and you’ve got a very unique act indeed.

There are some rare clips of Bill before his act was honed here (check out those outfits!) and here. The single best quick intro to Bailey’s style is a clip from the special “We Are Most Amused,” where he’s introduced by some guy who looks very familiar:



Bailey has done quite a bit on British TV, but the first blossoming was probably his series Is It Bill Bailey? (1998). The show is not available on DVD over there, which is odd, since it not only is fondly remembered, but was directed by Edgar Wright and costarred Simon Pegg. The whole series is available on YT here, but here’s a sample of the sketch humor found in the show:



Bailey does not tell conventional jokes. Well, he does tell them, but a bit… differently. Here’s one of his many original takes on the old “three guys walk into a bar…” gag, from his Bewilderness (2001) performance DVD:



Bailey is a brilliant fellow and is unashamed to move his act into “higher” areas of speculation, while still keeping the tone extremely light. Here is his routine on Hawking’s Brief History of Time, where we get Bill’s take on the same notions that Carlin tackled in the link above:



Of all his DVDs, perhaps the best set of material is Part Troll (2003). He hits all the marks in that show, including more surreal flights of imagination…



musical absurdity…



and joyful musical parody (with Kevin Eldon, who does appear to be a through-line in all of the best recent-vintage British TV comedy):



Bill has done quite a lot of British TV, most notably the popular gameshow Never Mind the Buzzcocks. Here’s a talk show appearance, where he introduced host Jonathan Ross to the wonders of the theremin:



Perhaps Bailey’s most successful TV role was as accountant sidekick Manny in the Dylan Moran/Graham Linehan series Black Books (2000-2004). I have absolutely no idea why we have never seen this series in the U.S., since The IT Crowd crowd has proven to be such a success, and at its best Black Books is delightful. Here is our intro to Bailey’s initially uptight character:



Bill’s best work, though, is done on the stage. Here is a routine about the creation of the universe and Satan from his performance DVD Tinselworm (2008):



One of Bailey’s specialties are unconventional reworkings of old musical numbers. Here he adds an Indian flavor to “Dueling Banjos”:



His most ambitious undertaking to date in terms of live performance has been his Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra (2009). Here his rumination on the bassoon and its relation to Seventies pop:



A most recent creation, his ode to the intricacies of romance via Twitter:



Finally his Web-only videos, made from his “bunker” where he is planning to avoid the upcoming 2012 apocalypse. A few thoughts on the Mayans:



And the Bailey clip that has been ringing in my head in the last few days (in a good way): his discussion of the “devil’s chord” in heavy metal music and his brilliant take on a Metallica anthem. Spike Jones lives!

Surely, Dennis Potter would be smiling….

As I’ve been watching the developments in the Murdoch phone-hacking scandal grow in severity — from “merely” hacking the phones of celebs to those of politicians and murder victims — and have seen Rupert and his son James be called on the carpet by Parliament, I’ve been thinking a lot about Dennis Potter.

Now surely this “unraveling” won’t really harm Murdoch financially, since capitalist moguls are made of Teflon and never truly suffer for the crimes that were committed in their name. Yes, his responsibilities as the head of a dynasty of uncommonly sleazy “journalistic” enterprises is finally coming into question, but no doubt News Corp will continue on, with the old man perhaps retiring and putting one of his kids in charge. If the shit really hits the fan, an outsider (read: someone not named Murdoch) will take over and the sleaze will continue. The same business under a new name.

However, for the time being we can indeed take some small comfort in the fact that what everyone pretty much suspected is true: that Murdoch can, without blinking, simultaneously state that he is a “hands-on” mogul, and yet he knows nothing about the illegal activities carried on at the newspapers he so prizes.

There have been several media commentators who have spoken about the nature of Murdoch as both an omnivorous acquirer and despoiler of media, including Bill Moyers. However, I want to point you to the words of the exceptionally talented writer of brilliant teleplays, Mr. Dennis Potter.

Potter was the best British television writer ever and was certainly one of the world’s best as well. His creations were emotional, cerebral, and trailblazing — just look at how many people, including talents like Alain Resnais and Woody Allen, have made use of the “fantasy musical” construct that Potter pioneered in Pennies From Heaven.

When you reflect upon the contributions of the two men, perhaps the only entertaining thing that Murdoch has been involved with was the fashioning of the catchiest and sleaziest headlines ever (as with The New York Post’s memorable “Headlesss Man in Topless Bar”). He wasn't creatively involved with this at all, though — he was just the "wallet" behind the news.

What Potter created, on the other hand, are some of the finest television programs EVER. Full stop, no arguing about it. His work has a resonance for me and the millions of others who’ve seen it because he reflected upon both the darkest and the most hopeful parts of the mind and heart. This can be seen to best advantage in this scene from Pennies From Heaven, in which he uses for the first time the song that became a kind of signature piece for his “memory” plays, “The Clouds Will Soon Roll By.” Potter’s gift lives on long after his departure:



And yes, he despised Murdoch, and here is the clip I’ve been thinking about all week:



The gent who put this up at the Handwritten Theatre blogspot, notes that Dennis left us in 1994, and Murdoch is still prospering. But whose name will live on longer? I don’t think I even need to answer that. Just watch the plays.

“The song is over, but the melody lingers on.”