Living in More Than One World

I recently wrote a post about the intersection of two of my favorite subjects, music and literature. Now I have discovered a series of posts on the Los Angeles Times’ Jacket Copy blog about rock music books and related topics, capped by The 46 essential rock reads, on Sept. 1. Obviously a list of this sort is going to be not only incomplete but controversial, as shown by the comments. But it does provide interesting food for thought. Among the 46 books is Get in the Van, by Henry Rollins, an account of his early ‘80s days as lead singer of Black Flag. Right before he moved to California to join that band in 1981, he and I were neighbors in the same apartment building in Arlington, Va. I knew him even before that, having first met him around 1979 or 1980, when I was working a part time job at the late, lamented Olsson’s Books and Records. Henry has been highly successful for many years, and he’s an intriguing example of living in more than one world: as a singer, poet, actor, DJ, entrepreneur, public speaker, etc. I met him at the same time as his friend Ian MacKaye, who has also been a longtime, huge success both in music (with Minor Threat, Fugazi and The Evens) and in business (starting and leading Dischord Records). I know from experience how hard it is to start and run an independent record label – I didn’t last long — and his success over nearly 30 years is well-earned. Among the best LA Times posts is Robin Benway’s Favorite Storytelling Songs. I was unfamiliar with her before this, but Benway is an interesting writer, and has done well with her novel, Audrey, Wait! Let’s hope that Jacket Copy returns to rock themes before a year from now.

Justin Jacobs, in Paste magazine, combines two of my favorite topics in the August 24th article Ten Fantastic Songs Brought To You by Books. Numbers one (“Song for Myla Goldberg”, inspired by the Bee Season author) and nine, “The Tain,” on Jacobs’ list are from a great band, The Decemberists. (I also remember the ‘70s album The Tain by the Irish band Horslips.) The only other female writer to be serenaded in a title is “Sylvia Plath,” #4 by Ryan Adams. Another writer name-checked in a title is “Saul Bellow,” #8 by Sufjan Stevens. The source for #3, Radiohead’s “2+2=5,” says Jacobs, is George Orwell’s 1984. #10 is several Led Zeppelin songs (“Misty Mountain Hop,” “Ramble On,” and “The Battle of Evermore”) which Jacobs says were inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. “Although his long, blonde locks,” Jacobs writes, “and groupie-baiting ways may have suggested otherwise, Robert Plant was a big nerd.” As a lead-in to his list, Jacobs references Catherine Prewitt’s August 13th Paste interview with Jay Farrar (of Son Volt) and Ben Gibbard (of Death Cab for Cutie) about their upcoming Jack Kerouac-inspired album, One Fast Move or I’m Gone, and a related film of the same name. The Farrar-Gibbard project grew out of a documentary produced by Jim Sampas, Kerouac’s nephew, about the years when Kerouac wrote the autobiographically-based novel Big Sur, published in 1962. Gibbard portrays the book’s Kerouac-like character Jack Duluoz as a cautionary, anti-role model: “After all of the wild nights, he’s become just a fat drunk man at a bar who is now not drinking because he wants to, but drinking because he has to.” The Kerouac theme continues at #2 in the above list, The Hold Steady’s “Stuck Between Stations,” which has a line from On the Road.

The past weekend was not only notable as the 40th anniversary of Woodstock. It was also the weekend that one of my favorite bands, Fairport Convention, held its annual Fairport’s Cropredy Convention festival, in Britain. The long-running event regularly draws around 20,000 people. Besides the band itself – which has had countless members over the years — it attracts an eclectic lineup of performers, including former members of Fairport, especially Richard Thompson. For more background, see this Reuters blog posting. I’ve never been to the festival, but I’d love to attend one day. Fairport traditionally does a three hour closing set on the final evening, and this year their special guest during the set was Yusuf [Islam], formerly Cat Stevens. He is an old friend, and former Island Records label-mate of the band’s. See the account of the final set, including his quotes, in the local paper, the Oxford Mail.  Richard Thompson also did a solo set, and other performers included Steve Winwood, punk pioneers The Buzzcocks and a number of acts that are probably well-known to British audiences but not to most American fans. It sounds like a good-natured, sweet-spirited event. I have seen Fairport a number of times over the years, though not recently. I’ve written about them in my music days, though never interviewed them. Ditto for Thompson, whom I have seen perform in various incarnations (with Fairport, solo, with his own band, as part of Richard and Linda Thompson and even as a trio, with Andy Roberts, backing ex-Fairport singer Ian Matthews, in 1971). I interviewed Matthews a couple of times, in the ’70s. Thompson’s second four-CD career retrospective box set, Walking on a Wire, is released this week.  Saul Austerlitz of the Boston Globe has an interesting August 16 Q&A with Thompson about it, A troubadour of timeless songs. And to learn more about Fairport’s festival, consult virtualfestivals.com.

I haven’t thought much in recent years about the rock singer Willy DeVille and his band Mink DeVille, names out of my music writing/selling days in the ‘70s and ‘80s. But I was still surprised and saddened to read of his death, at 58, of pancreatic cancer. As with so many rock passings, it came after years of living on the edge. But a little bit of your heart breaks when even a small part of your past goes away. DeVille was one of the pioneers of the New York ’70s punk rock scene, playing the legendary, now-defunct CBGB in the same era as bands that became considerably more popular, such as Blondie, Talking Heads and The Ramones. The latter became more popular in retrospect, but had a shocking mortality rate among its band members. And DeVille’s music was not straight punk rock, but in the words of the AP obit, a “blend of R&B, blues, Dixieland and traditional French Cajun ballads.” The official bio mentions his admiration for Edith Piaf. He worked with some stellar producers, such as the late Jack Nitzsche and Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits.  DeVille’s song “Storybook Love” from the film The Princess Bride was nominated for an Academy award. He was also prolific, recording a number of band and solo albums between 1977 and 2005.  For a personal, evocative appreciation of DeVille and his music, read Neil McCormick’s Willy DeVille: death of an icon, on Telegraph.co.uk. McCormick observes that DeVille drew on some of the same musical sources as Bruce Springsteen, who also began his recording career in the ‘70s. “Springsteen sounded like he was your friend in desperate times,” McCormick writes. “DeVille sounded like he couldn’t quite decide whether to serenade you or pull a knife on you.”

I’m back on the festival beat with last week’s WOMAD (World of Music, Arts and Dance) festival in the UK. This is yet another event that most of us can’t attend, but can learn a lot about online. It’s one of the premier world music festivals, and was the 27th time it has been held in the UK, where the WOMAD organization is based. They also produce festivals around the world, and I was fortunate to have attended two in the early ‘90s, in Toronto. Peter Gabriel is one of the co-founders of WOMAD, and though he doesn’t often play the festival, he was the headliner on July 25th. Check out the full lineup on the festival’s site to get an idea of the worldwide scope of the music on offer. Click on the artists’ names for brief bios and video clips from pre-festival performances. As with Glastonbury and Latitude, earlier festivals I wrote about, there were a number of stages and more on offer than you could have taken in at one time. Robin Denselow’s review on Guardian.co.uk notes the continued importance of African music to the event, especially this year with Youssou N’Dour and Rokia Traoré. On the BBC Radio 3 stage, one of the events I would have particularly liked to have seen and heard was Charlie Gillett with Special Guests, in which the BBC DJ and author was both playing some of his current favorite records and sharing the stage with various world musicians. I knew Charlie back in my music days in the ‘70s and ‘80s, and he is one of the most iconic figures in British music. Mark Hudson ends his review on Telegraph.co.uk with an interesting observation: “In an environment in which the bracingly unfamiliar quickly became the norm, the jangly guitar-rock of fresh-faced British indie band Black Swan Effect stood out as by far the most exotic fare of the day.”

I’ve written about a variety of festivals (music and otherwise) that I would have liked to have attended, but found that following on the web was the next best thing: the Aspen Ideas Festival, Glastonbury and The Guardian Hay Festival. Now there is another British entry, the Latitude Festival, which I had not heard of until now, but is four years old. It’s already over, having run from July 16-19. Check out Mark Savage’s Latitude festival is a class act and other BBC coverage. NME.com and others covered the solo set by Thom Yorke of Radiohead, in which he gave the debut of a new song, “The Present Tense.” (I used to read NME, then in its pre-online, weekly print-only days, as often as possible back in my music days of the ‘70s and ‘80s. Especially at first, it wasn’t easy to find in the States, so it’s a sign of the times how readily available it is on the web.) Check out the complete list of acts appearing on multiple stages; including four music stages, with the Pet Shop Boys, Regina Spektor, the Pretenders, Grace Jones, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds along with many others. There was also literature (including Orwell: A Celebration, billed as “an unprecedented theatrical tribute to the work of George Orwell”; Geoff Dyer, Blake Morrison and many others), plus films, comedy, cabaret and more. For additional media coverage, see The Guardian, The Independent and other UK media outlets.

On July 11th, the day of my book signing at the American Library Association annual conference in Chicago, I met three highly interesting people who were also either signing or performing: Amy Krouse Rosenthal, George Watsky and Mieka Pauley. I had never met them before, and had not even heard of George or Mieka. When I found out that Amy would be at the Chronicle Books booth that morning, I knew that I wanted to meet her, as I had enjoyed her book Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life. I had a nice conversation with her after she finished a signing for one of her children’s books. Be sure to check out her compelling short video, The Beckoning of Lovely, shot last summer in Chicago’s Millennium Park. I discovered George and Mieka in a providential way. A friend had told me earlier in the day that I should meet a friend of hers, an editor at a library-related publication that had a booth at the conference. When I went to find her soon after I finished my signing, I was told she would be at the LIVE! @ your library Reading Stage. When I arrived, she was not there, but I quickly became mesmerized by George’s poetry performance, in which Mieka accompanied him at times on guitar and vocals. Although I only caught the tail-end, they continued with an impromptu performance (separately) at the booth of their representatives, the Auburn Moon Agency. They also talked with those of us who assembled. What was amazing was that neither had performed together before George’s appearance on stage. Check out the material on each of their websites. I would gladly pay to see either of them perform again. And yes, I did find the editor later on. Amy, George and Mieka are each cool, super-creative people I could have easily missed out on meeting if circumstances had been only slightly different. If anyone at the conference (or perhaps any similar recent gathering) has had similar experiences, please let me know so I can share them with other readers of this blog!

Most of us will not be able to attend Britain’s annual Glastonbury Festival, which starts Thursday. But we can live vicariously by checking out the festival’s extensive website, and the media coverage that’s already begun.  Today, The Independent has Elisa Bray’s The guide to Glastonbury. She notes that there will be 177,000 people and 300 bands, playing on 10 main stages and a dozen smaller ones. Guardian.co.uk has a page with news, blogs, videos and weather updates. The full lineup on the festival’s site is pretty amazing; there will be so many choices that it seems like it would be hard to decide which artists to see and which ones you’d have to miss. The Pyramid Stage has some of the biggest names, such as Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Neil Young, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Madness, Fleet Foxes, Lily Allen and many more. The Acoustic Stage sounds particularly appealing, with the likes of Roger McGuinn, Fairport Convention, Ray Davies and the duo of Gary Louris and Mark Olson. I particularly like the fact that there is a John Peel Stage, in honor of the late BBC DJ. It has Echo and the Bunnymen, Jarvis Cocker and many more. The official site has a history page going back to the first festival, in 1970. More media coverage: The BBC has a page on the festival and Ian Youngs’ The secrets of Glastonbury’s line-up, in which he notes that festival organizer Michael Eavis, who has run it since the beginning, “may be one of the coolest 73-year-olds around…” He was named one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People this year, complete with an essay about him by Chris Martin of Coldplay. Eavis’ daughter Emily now also organizes the festival. The Glastonbury coverage is a reminder about what a wonderful place Britain is for music and pop culture.

In an earlier post, I wrote about Ry Cooder and Nick Lowe’s upcoming European tour, and about the standard of musical excellence maintained over many years by both musicians, as well as their ability to work outside of their comfort zones. I had interviewed and written extensively about Lowe in my music writing days, though I never interviewed or met Cooder. Now comes word from Cooder’s record label, Nonesuch, that he has a collection of fiction, Los Angeles Stories, that will be made available only on the tour. This follows a novella that came with his recent album I, Flathead. Cooder is an embodiment of living in more than one world; as a musician working in many genres, record producer (including the eight million-selling Cuban music album Buena Vista Social Club and the subsequent documentary), soundtrack composer, musicologist and now author. The Nonesuch page links to Ry, Flathead; an extensive, unabridged interview of Cooder by Tony Scherman, in stopsmilingonline.com, the wide-ranging website of Stop Smiling magazine. It’s a fascinating conversation about Cooder’s life and work; especially how Buena Vista Social Club changed his life. One area I found particularly interesting was the crucial role of research in his work as a writer and musician. And be sure to read his comments at the end of the interview about the importance of learning and continually advancing your abilities.

There can be fascinating results when two seemingly disparate worlds combine in the same person. A case in point is Kate Linthicum’s feature story in the Los Angeles Times, In the stillness, space for a rebellious spirit, about Noah Levine, who teaches Buddhist meditation infused with punk rock values. He’s the leader of the Against the Stream Buddhist Meditation Society, and author of the 2003 book Dharma Punx. The latter is the name of the Society’s members, and there are meditation groups across the USA and Canada. Levine appears to be an intriguing embodiment of living in more than one world, as a psychologist (which, according to the article, is how he earns his living), teacher, organization leader, author and family man. But it took him a long time of  suffering and searching to get to his current place in life, all detailed well by Linthicum.  Levine’s father is the poet and author Stephen Levine.