Five stirring performances at Woodstock

I first saw "Woodstock" in the mid-'80s, when most rock and pop was weightless and overproduced, with all the shelf life of a stale fart.

As a teen bohemian-in-training trapped in what was in many ways a plastic, reactionary era, I found the movie fascinating. For over three hours I was transported to a time when personal growth and exploration didn't take a backseat to getting ahead, when brotherhood was more prevalent—and infinitely more hip—than greed, when the young men didn't look like frat boys and the women had long, straight, natural hair instead of those godawful '80s perms.   

Musically, Woodstock remains a rock festival without peer, a distinction which is likely to stick due to the scale of the event and the quality of the bands. The list of soulful, high-caliber acts that performed on those four days 45 years ago is staggering:  Jimi Hendrix; The Who; Santana; Sly & the Family Stone; The Band; Ravi Shankar; Janis Joplin; Johnny Winter; Creedence Clearwater Revival; Ten Years After; Crosby, Stills, & Nash; Jefferson Airplane; Blood, Sweat, & Tears; Joe Cocker; Joan Baez; Arlo Guthrie. 

Woodstock's high points could fill multiple posts, but I will focus on just five key moments. 

Richie Havens, one of the lesser-known acts at Woodstock, opened the festival. The first performance that appears in the documentary is Havens' closer, "Freedom." Never before have I seen a musician move an audience of 200,000 with just an acoustic guitar, his voice, and a lone conga player.

This turbo-charged rendition of Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues" features the Who early in their career, firing on all cylinders (see:  Pete Townshend's windmills, Keith Moon's kinetic drumming, Roger Daltrey's microphone lassoing). Added bonuses include Townshend's sonic performance art at the conclusion of this video and the heady split-screen footage spliced together from seven cameras positioned around the stage.

The backdrop to Woodstock was the United States' futile and bloody involvement in Vietnam. Country Joe, the relatively obscure leader of Country Joe & the Fish, captured the zeitgeist with an anti-war protest song, the "I Feel I'm Fixin' to Die Rag." Interesting historical footnote:  a young Martin Scorsese, serving as an editor of the documentary, came up with the bouncing ball-on-white lyrics effect that comes in at 1:42.

 

Ten Years After was one of my most potent Woodstock discoveries. Other than hearing "I'd Love to Change the World" every once in a while on classic rock radio, I had no familiarity with the band. After I saw this rousing clip, Ten Years After—and virtuoso lead guitarist Alvin Lee—became a permanent part of my musical landscape.

Alvin Lee was not the only bonafide guitar hero at Woodstock. Carlos Santana, then just 22 years old, led his band through an epic version of "Soul Sacrifice." From the sheer size of the crowd to the percussion orgy break (2:11) to the most bad-ass rock drum solo this side of "Moby Dick" (3:07) to the molten guitar solo that followed and the random shots of audience members caught in musical ecstasy, it doesn't get any better than this.

                                                 More music posts at "Truth and Beauty":

Angelic voices, #1: Ella sings "Summertime"

Angelic voices, #2: Marvin Gaye sings "The Star-Spangled Banner"

Angelic voices, #3: Janis Joplin sings "Cry Baby"

There must be something in the water: the magic of "Muscle Shoals"

The Second Coming: Stevie Ray Vaughan

"Otis Spann is the Blues"

Ray Manzarek (1939-2013)

"Searching for Sugar Man"

Great Guitar Solos, #2: Frank Zappa

40 years

Forty years ago, I was photographed on my first day of school. 

Shielding my eyes from the bright morning sun, I looked into the camera without the slightest idea of what the future held in store.

Recently I returned to the scene of that photo for a "half time" check-in:  if gene patterns held, half of that future had been lived and half remained. Again I covered my eyes, but now I looked up into a sky that held optimism and promise. 

Three years ago this fall, I took an inspiring writing workshop which redirected my energies from the non-fiction writing I'd done for many years to a then-moribund novel. 

85,000 words and countless re-writes later, I'm in the final stretch of edits, working on a book proposal, and diving into my next venture:  an MFA-Creative Writing program. 

Where will this path lead? 

I honestly don't know. 

Will I become a creative writing teacher? 

Ideally. 

A grant writer? 

Possibly.

An editor in a publishing house? 

Perhaps. 

Will there be opportunities that I can't foresee? 

Undoubtedly. 

What I do know is that I'm excited about the journey.

Eddie Van Halen, Jan Hammer, and Tony Levin—on one stage

Many years ago my first guitar teacher loaned me a VHS recording of a concert tribute to Les Paul called "Les Paul & Friends."

Among the highlights were Les Paul's demonstration of his "little black box," a sweet, subtle rendition of "Georgia" with Paul on lead and jazz guitar phenom Stanley Jordan on rhythm, and a blues cutting contest between David Gilmour of Pink Floyd and Jan Hammer of the Mahavishnu Orchestra.

The high-energy peak of the show for me was the video below, featuring Eddie Van Halen—who was then the gold standard of rock guitar—with two highly esteemed musical collaborators. 

After giving the audience a taste of his vast sonic palette with the instrumental "Cathedral," Van Halen was joined by an all-star line-up for this instrumental version of "Hot for Teacher." On keys was Jan Hammer, a longstanding member of jazz fusion royalty. Tony Levin, a member of King Crimson with an astonishing catalog of side work, ably handled bass. 

The performance was novel on many levels. It was a rare opportunity to see Eddie Van Halen at the peak of his powers with world-class musicians whose chops were several notches above the average rock 'n' roller's. In his namesake band, Van Halen did the solos and emitted all of the fireworks, but here the virtuosic Jan Hammer held his own (and produced musical ecstasy faces to match). The Hammer-Van Halen point-counterpoint solos  and climactic low-to-high, guitar-and-keys unison run before the closing main theme all point up the singular potency of jazz finesse married to the raw power of amplified rock. 

***

                                               More Van Halen at "Truth and Beauty":

                                       Eddie Van Halen's "Fair Warning":  an appreciation

                                   Great Guitar Solos, #4:  Dweezil Zappa Nails "Eruption"

                                                   Avery Molek. Seven-year-old drummer. 
                                                  [includes performance video of Avery doing 
                                                     "Hot for Teacher" and "Girl Gone Bad"]

"Finding Vivian Maier"

"Finding Vivian Maier" is the story of an exceptional artist who chose obscurity. 

In the winter of 2007, Chicago real estate agent John Maloof bought a box of decades-old negatives at an auction.

After seeing the striking images that emerged from the dark room, Maloof (who wrote and directed this movie with a very sure hand) went on an obsessive quest to learn about the photographer—Vivian Maier—and gather up the rest of her output. In the process, he found "100,000 to 150,000 negatives, over 3,000 prints, hundreds of rolls of film, home movies, audio tape interviews, and various other items."

The first half of "Finding Vivian Maier" focuses on Maier's photography. Maier worked

All photos courtesy
of the Maloof Collection, Ltd.

primarily with a Rolleiflex camera which required her to look toward the ground as she framed her shots, even as the lens pointed forward. Though she was not facing her subjects eye-to-eye, Maier was able to capture them in intimate poses, often looking down at the camera, giving the subject an authority over the image. 

Maier specialized in street portraits and had an acute sense of human folly and human tragedy, particularly the savagery of poverty. While working as a nanny, she took her charges on field trips to slums, stockyards, and even a slaughterhouse. She had few outside friends and the families she worked for were unaware of either the caliber or volume of her work.

Maier was a pack rat. While she was alive, the vast majority of her negatives lay boxed and

buried in an ever-growing raft of belongings. After her death, John Maloof acquired Maier's possessions and combed through them like a detective. His findings inform the second half of "Finding Vivian Maier."

Once the movie has its hooks in the audience, Maloof tries to decode Vivian Maier the person. Maier was intensely private; on some level this pivot feels unseemly, voyeuristic, like secretly reading a shrinking violet's diary. But Maloof has so expertly built up Maier's exquisite photography and the mystery surrounding her being that curiosity trumps the viewer's sense of fair play.  

A picture of a loner with a crack visual eye forms. Maier's idiosyncrasies and rough edges are revealed and feed speculation about her past, which is by turns intriguing and futile (can we ever truly know what's in someone's heart, especially a loner's?). 

Observing the overflowing crowds that have filled art museums in Chicago, L.A., Manhattan,

and London to see Maier's photos years after her death, one could feel a sense of the tragic, as I did when I waited in line at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Here was a lonely artist who produced extraordinary work without validation in her lifetime. 

But in Maier's case, this sentiment might be misplaced. It appears that Maier lived the life she wanted to live and pursued photography from the purest of motives:  she found fulfillment—perhaps even joy—in the process of creating art. 

(*Click here for more of Vivian Maier's photos)

***

   Other "Truth and Beauty" film reviews:

"The Wolf of Wall Street"

"American Hustle"

"Nebraska"

                   "There must be something in the water: the magic of 'Muscle Shoals'"

                                                                        "Inequality for All"

                                                             "A spoiler-free review of 'Mud'"   

"Truth is in the Eye of the Interpreter:  a Review of 'Room 237'"

"No!"

"Searching for Sugar Man"

"Honest Abe Makes Sausage" (about "Lincoln")

"First Glance:  'The Master'"

"Errol Morris Strikes Again" (about "Tabloid")

"A Sunny* Monday in San Francisco," re-visited

This shot of the famous painted ladies appeared in "A Sunny* Monday in San Francisco," my first photo essay. 

"A Sunny* Monday" was posted in the early days of this blog, when readership was negligible, so it didn't get the attention it deserved. Thus I'm bringing it out for a second go-round.   

Since that first posting, I've put up a new photo series every 3-6 months as a nod to my love of visual art and a break from more arduous, cerebral fiction writing.  

Click here to take a tour of two years' worth of "Truth and Beauty" photo essays.

Brown v. Board and Three Dog Night's "Black and White"

I was first drawn to Three Dog Night's 1972 rendition of "Black and White" by the lyrics. Here is the opening verse: 

The ink is black
The page is white
Together we learn to read and write
The child is black
The child is white
The whole world looks upon the sight
The beautiful sight

The words spoke to my appreciation of ethnic diversity and reflected the truth that racism is learned behavior (and its corollary that bigotry would diminish as new generations of Americans transcended their parents' prejudices). 

The appeal to brotherhood was typical of the early '70s, a time of great social change when a soulful song with an important universal message could reach number one on the Billboard charts.

"Black and White" was written by David I. Arkin and Earl Robinson in 1954, spurred on by the Supreme Court's watershed Brown v. Board of Education ruling, which ended legal segregation in public education.

As we celebrate the 60th anniversary of Brown today, it's easy to be skeptical about the prospects for social and political evolution in America's near future. The election (and re-election) of a mild-mannered black president has spawned legions of white Tea Party faux patriots and an upsurge in militia membership. Fox News has a propaganda grip on a not-so-discerning one third of the country. And dirty corporate money continues to corrode our political system and block human progress. 

But underneath the plutocrats, reactionaries, and low-information voters is a tolerant, enlightened America which has the potential to live up to its ideals. As Brown showed, "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” 

***

Other civil rights writing by Dan Benbow:

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Road to the Mountaintop (about the speech King gave on the last night of his life)

Honest Abe Makes Sausage (a review of Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln")

Actions, Not Words (a life review of Ollie Matson, an Olympic medal winner, NFL Hall-of-Famer, civil rights trailblazer, and good citizen) 

Charles Bukowski's "The Laughing Heart"

This video combines two of my favorite artists:  

Charles Bukowski and Tom Waits. 

your life is your life

don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.

be on the watch.

there are ways out.

there is a light somewhere.

it may not be much light but

it beats the darkness.

be on the watch.

the gods will offer you chances.

know them.

take them.

you can’t beat death but

you can beat death in life, sometimes.

and the more often you learn to do it,

the more light there will be.

your life is your life.

know it while you have it.

you are marvelous

the gods wait to delight

in you.

***

 more Bukowski on "Truth and Beauty"

Charles Bukowski:  "Born into This" (full documentary)

Charles Bukowski: So You Want to Be a Writer?

Charles Bukowski gets life-affirming

"Deus ex Machina" and other elements in the Periodic Table of Storytelling

Earlier today I came across "'The Periodic Table of Storytelling' Reveals the Elements of Telling a Good Story" at openculture.com. 

According to the article, the table's creator, James Harris, "has taken all the tropes, archetypes and clichés found in movies (not to mention TV, comic books, literature, video and even professional wrestling) and synthesized them into an elegantly realized chart."

This interactive version of the table allows the reader to peruse 176 tropes in detail. For example, the "Magic A is Magic A" trope has a lengthy main entry, a three-sentence analysis ("This trope is one of the primary advantages some media types have [over] others. Anime and manga, literature, and webcomics usually decide how the magic system works before they even start, and move on from there. Live action are usually much worse about this, and end up fumbling and falling into New Powers as the Plot Demands more."), a "laconic" analysis ("Made-up elements behave consistently"), a "playing with" tab which demonstrates different applications of the trope, quotes about the trope, and last but not least, a discussion board. 

The same exhaustive treatment exists for 175 other tropes, including "Deus ex Machina," "Obstructive Bureaucrat," and "Star-Crossed Lovers." Whatever your favored format(s), The Periodic Table of Storytelling is both a great resource and a window into the rich variety of narratives available to 21st Century storytellers. 

Great guitar solos, #7: Buckethead meets Bernie Worrell and Les Claypool

Buckethead turns 45 today. 

Though perhaps best known to the general public for his mask and unique headgear, Bucket is an exceptionally versatile musician with sizzling guitar chops. 

In two decades on the music scene, he has collaborated with Mike Patton (Faith No More), Iggy Pop, and Bootsy Collins, and ably manned the lead guitar post in a Guns 'n' Roses re-boot. He has created a sprawling catalog of experimental solo releases which incorporate multiple genres, from metal to funk to hip-hop to electronica to moody instrumental ballads to jam rock and even hints of new age music. And when the moment is right, Bucket can transform himself into a robotic dancer.

The video below from Bonnaroo features Buckethead in big company:  the fearsome Primus rhythm section (Les Claypool on bass, Brain on drums) and Bernie Worrell, the emeritus keyboardist from Parliament-Funkadelic. Buckethead is capable of dizzyingly fast shred guitar, but here he lays down a molten, blues-based jam over a deep pocket, an example of the heady blend of technique and feeling Buckethead can draw on. In whatever context(s) he chooses to pursue, Buckethead will continue to generate original music and wicked fretboard work for many years to come.    

      

***

Other Truth and Beauty guitar hero essays:

Click here for "Eddie Van Halen's 'Fair Warning':  an Appreciation"

                                    here for "The Second Coming:  Stevie Ray Vaughan," a first-hand                                                                  account of Vaughan's final concert

here for "It was 70 years ago today:  an appreciation of Jimi Hendrix"

                       
  here for "Link Wray's 'Rumble'"     
                  

here for "Great Guitar Solos, #1:  Eddie Hazel (Funkadelic)"

here for "Great Guitar Solos, #2:  Frank Zappa"

here for "Great Guitar Solos, #3:  Hiram Bullock" 

here for "Great Guitar Solos, #4: Dweezil Zappa Nails 'Eruption'"

here for "Great Guitar Solos, #5:  Alvin Lee"

 here for "Great Guitar Solos, #6: Neil Young's 'Hey Hey, My My'"

and here for "Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar - The Six-String Wizardry of Frank Zappa, Part II"

21st Century Republicans, Part IV

"Even as science, technology, and the human race evolve, vocal sectors of the GOP remain stuck in reverse—and proud of it. To capture this bizarre phenomena in real time, I am christening a semi-regular new series—'21st Century Republicans'—where I will share surreal GOP episodes of bigotry, misogyny, or hostility to science and reason."

-21st Century Republicans, the mission statement





Since Part III of "21st Century Republicans" came out three weeks ago, the crazy has continued apace. While the civilized world embraces the strides made by our gay, lesbian, and transgender brothers and sisters these past few momentous years, GOP reactionaries (including Governor Rick Perry, pictured above) maintain an unhealthy fixation on the things other people do with their genitals.

"Franklin Graham Is The Latest American Social Conservative To Praise Putin" [for signing anti-gay legislation] 

"Susanne Atanus, Who Blames Gay Rights For Tornadoes, Wins GOP Nomination For Congress"

"Pat Robertson: Jesus more likely to stone gays to death than bake them a wedding cake"

"Oregon GOP candidate for governor: Same-sex marriage is 'a sin, just the same as murder'"

"NC GOP candidate tells 6th grader: Gay marriage is like 'man marrying a dog'"

"Watch: 'Obama May Well Be A Homosexual' Says GOP Candidate For Governor"

"Eric Metaxas Points To Gay-Inclusive Churches As Proof America Is Turning Into Nazi Germany"

"Gordon Klingenschmitt Poised To Clinch GOP Nomination In Colorado Race"
"As ColoradoPols.com reports, Williams also has a long history of making extremist statements and promoting discrimination.
"Klingenschmitt has made anti-LGBT activism the cornerstone of his political life. Here are just a few of his shocking statements..."
"South Dakota GOP lawmaker: KKK business owners deserve right to ban blacks and gays"

While South Dakota's Phil Jensen openly advocated for legalizing discrimination, Republican State Senator Dale Schultz attacked Wisconsin Republicans for discriminating against minorities on the sly:

"Wisconsin Republican Legislator Tears Into His Own Party For Voter Suppression"

"As his own party pushed through the Wisconsin Senate the latest in a series of measures to make it harder to vote in the state, Sen. Dale Schultz (R) blasted the efforts as 'trying to suppress the vote' last week."

"....It’s just, I think, sad when a political party — my political party — has so lost faith in its ideas that it’s pouring all of its energy into election mechanics...it ought to be abundantly clear to everybody in this state that there is no massive voter fraud. The only thing that we do have in this state is we have long lines of people who want to vote. And it seems to me that we should be doing everything we can to make it easier, to help these people get their votes counted. And that we should be pitching as political parties our ideas for improving things in the future, rather than mucking around in the mechanics and making it more confrontational at the voting sites and trying to suppress the vote."

While Dale Schultz was being a responsible legislator, his Republican colleague Scott Fitzgerald was engaged in crass cronyism: 

"Wisc. lawmaker blocks cancer treatment bill after insurance lobbyist brother opposes it"

"In a Sunday editorial, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel noted that the connection between Fitzgerald and his brother’s insurance lobbying 'looks suspicious and smacks of special interest politics.'

"'This is a matter of fairness for people facing grave illness,' the editorial added. 'Whatever his motivations, Fitzgerald is singlehandedly blocking a bill that most of his colleagues support and that could help people — probably some of his own constituents. He should allow the bill to come to the floor.'"

Idaho Republicans endangered air and water quality in a fit of ideological pique:

"Idaho House Committee Passes Bill To Get Rid Of All EPA Regulations"

Despite rhetorical efforts from Republican GOP puppetmasters to pretend otherwise, the GOP's hostility to women continued to leak out. 

"[Republican Senator Mitch] McConnell fundraiser: Wives owe their husbands sex even if they're not in the mood"

"'Dirty Old Man' Judge Wants To Tell Women Lawyers What To Wear"

"A [Republican] male federal judge in Nebraska is getting attention for writing a blog post Tuesday about 'how young women lawyers dress.'

"'I have three rules that young women lawyers should follow when considering how to dress for court,' U.S. District Court Richard Kopf wrote on his personal blog. '1. You can’t win. Men are both pigs and prudes. Get over it. 2. It is not about you. That goes double when you are appearing in front of a jury. 3. Think about the female law clerks. If they are likely to label you, like Jane Curtin, an ignorant slut behind your back, tone it down.'"

"Pat Robertson Says Woman’s Atheism Caused by Rape or Demonic Possession"

"Lamar Alexander Wants To Know What Equal Pay Bill Does For Men"

"Female GOP Senate Candidate Said Women Want Job Flexibility More Than Equal Pay"

"A 2010 video of Michigan's likely Republican Senate candidate surfaced on Equal Pay Day on Tuesday. The video shows Land, then Michigan's secretary of state, telling an audience that women aren’t actually interested in fighting for equal pay."

"....'Well, we all like to be paid more and that's great, but the reality is that women have a different lifestyle,' Land said at the 2010 Senior Women's Club event. 'They have kids. They have to take them to get dentist appointments, doctors appointments, all those kinds of things. And they're more interested in flexibility in a job than pay.'"

"Adviser to Texas GOP’s Greg Abbott: No 'evidence' that women are 'significant thinkers'"

To be continued.  

p.s. email GOP episodes of bigotry, misogyny, or hostility to science and reason to benbowdan@gmail.com 

***

Other political writing by Dan Benbow:

The 21st Century Republican series

"Reasonable Doubt: 50 questions for lone gunman theorists"

"Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Road to the Mountaintop"

"Basking in the Afterglow: Scenes from the 2012 Campaign"

"Romney-Ryan's Road to Perdition"

"The Affordable Care Act, demystified"

"The Master of Low Expectations: 666 Reasons Sentient Citizens are Still Celebrating the Long Overdue Departure of George W. Bush"

"Off the Books: The Outsourcing of American Foreign Policy, Part I -- A Roll of the Dice" features an interview with powerhouse historian Peter Dale Scott, in reference to his book "The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America"

"Off the Books: The Outsourcing of American Foreign Policy, Part II -- Operation Blowback"