Reading Barton Swaim’s review of John Mauceri’s “The War On Music” in the Wall Street Journal last week, I was particularly struck by Swaim’s noting the scorn that Mauceri “heaps on the idea of a perpetual, institutionalized avant-garde.”
I’ve long been struck by the notion that the supposed cutting edge of the arts (“avant-garde” is French for “advance guard”) are stuck in a dead-end, and have been for going on two generations now.
Up until about 50, 60 years ago, the avant-garde in the arts generally referred to the cutting edge that predicted what was coming next.
From impressionism to post-impressionism up through cubism through the abstract, each new style in the visual arts was made possible by those willing to reject the current norm and try something different.
In music and poetry, we see the same historic arcs: From the sonnets of Shakespeare through the postwar beats, to the rapid devolution to free verse. In classical music, we went from 17th century baroque through 18th century classical, the romantic styles of the 19th century and early 20th century, to the atonal postmodern symphonies being written today. (And yet, as “The War On Music” outlines, the abandonment of form and melody have coincided with a dramatic loss of audience.)
In jazz, we saw almost a Bell curve of ragtime and early jazz quickly giving way to more complex forms in the big band swing era, followed by postwar musicians rejecting the formality of swing for bop and then free jazz.
And so now all of the main forms of artistic expression have arrived at a similar spot: Their most socially advantaged proponents have utterly rejected any kind of formal structure or even expectation of form, and have embraced - at least among academics and cultural elites - an emphasis on the absolute free, unfettered expression of the artist. A complete absence of rules.
The staked out cultural position of the avant-garde also hasn’t changed since the late ’60s. It’s still this angry rebellion against the status quo - only now it’s kind of ridiculous, because, as mentioned, in most museums, most high-end galleries, on college campuses, the supposed vanguard of the arts IS the status quo!
Yoko Ono circa 1968 is practically indistinguishable from Yoko Ono circa 2022. Free jazz is still just unstructured improvisation. Free verse is still just stream of consciousness with random line breaks. And abstract art remains stuck in simply flicking a paint brush toward the canvas and selling whatever comes out. (We’re to the point that people now tape a paint brush to an elephant’s trunk, put a bucket of paint and a canvas in front of it, and then sell whatever it comes up with for ridiculous amounts of money.)
If the purpose of the avant-garde was, traditionally, to create possibilities for new forms of art, literature, poetry, theater, and music, the avant-garde long ago stopped fulfilling that role. While symphonic composer Béla Bartók presaged post-war atonality, those who followed failed to anticipate any of the actual developments in both serious and popular music that arose: Fusion grew out of a melding of jazz, rock and R&B: new age came out of electronica and African and Asian rhythms; hip hop and rap grew out of funk; acid jazz developed out of a fusion of hip hop and jazz.
While all of these major developments in music were occurring, the supposed “cutting edge” was stuck spinning its wheels - either presenting wholly improvised “free jazz” that remains unlistenable to the vast majority of jazz fans, or the kind of atonal opera that “Cold Sassy Tree” (2000) epitomizes: An aria with no melody.
All of which raises the question: What, exactly, is the point?
In his 1975 critique of arts criticism, “The Painted Word,” Tom Wolfe committed the unpardonable sin (in the eyes of our cultural sophisticates): He deconstructed deconstructionism.
Deconstructionism is an academic (definitely not intellectual) theory that holds that language is too complicated to be reduced to its components - and that, further, the meaning of any written language is constantly evolving and changing, that not only is there no set meaning to a piece of writing, but there cannot be.
As Wolfe pointed out, such ideas had spread from literature to also permeate the high-end world of art galleries and criticism.
The main effect of this theory wasn’t to further our understanding of literature, poetry, theater, or the visual arts or music - but to encourage the development of works so dense, so impenetrable, that even an educated lay person could only appreciate them through the intermediary of an expert; an arts priesthood, if you will.
While the sophisticates still hate Wolfe’s book, none has yet effectively refuted his central premise: that the entire purpose of the avant-garde today isn’t to create art, literature, poetry, music and theater that speaks to an audience - but rather to create a body work that is largely indecipherable, thus providing jobs and economic opportunity for the would be curators, docents and critics who can explain it all to the ignorant masses.
It’s a jobs program for liberal arts college graduates.
Unsurprisingly to anyone paying attention, the audiences have gravitated to works that they can actually comprehend without translation. Popular artist Thomas Kinkade’s idealistic landscape paintings inspired a chain of stores to sell reproductions of them - much to the very real horror of the art establishment.
Classical music sales slant heavily toward either reissues or new recordings of the recognized classics: Mozart, Bach, Beethoven. The 1975 death of Dmitri Shostakovich marked the end of an unbroken line of symphonic and operatic composers stretching back to the Renaissance whose works generated popular acclaim; those who followed have largely focused on dissonant works that sound to the average listener like nails on chalkboard.
And the long-held practice of memorizing great poetry is dead, too: Why memorize the latest works of the current poet laureate when you can simply make up your own that are just as good?
As jazz saxophonist and composer Charles McPherson, a recognized master of bebop who played for many years in the band of Charles Mingus - a true avant-garde artist before the avant-garde fossilized - told the San Diego Troubadour in an interview 18 months ago: “It’s easy to be dissonant. It’s easy to be as dissonant as the universe can stand. It’s not easy to come up with a melodic theme that resonates in the human soul. That separates the genius from the journeyman.
“To improvise with form and structure being part of it, and you’re improvising within certain laws. To me, that’s what makes improvising fun, to have the freedom to express yourself within form and structure. ... The fact that you have to adhere to some kinds of laws—harmonic—and be free within that is the fun in it.”
Until the avant-garde find a way out of this dead end they’ve drawn themselves into, until they can find a way to inspire and encourage new works that appeal to a broad swath of the population, and to set the table for new developments to come, it’s going to be what Swaim described above: Perpetual and institutionalized.
Earlier this spring, a group of us who worked together at the Daily Aztec, the student newspaper at San Diego State University, got together for a mini-reunion to remember our late colleague and friend Brad Fikes.
Brad passed unexpectedly - and far too young - two and a half years ago. If not famous on the larger stage, he was both beloved and respected among his fellow journalists in San Diego, as well as by those he interviewed.
Our paths continued to intertwine throughout our careers following graduation from SDSU: Brad got me an interview, and recommendation, at the Chula Vista Star-News a few years after graduating; and in the early 2000s I got Brad an interview, with a recommendation, at the North County Times. Getting to work with him both times was a highlight of my newspaper career.
When Brad left the weekly Lemon Grove Review, where he was a stringer, for a full-time job at the twice-weekly Star-News, he tried to get me his slot there.
I don’t recall if Brad neglected to coach me for the interview, or if I was just dumb. It could certainly have been a combination of both.
Brad did put in a good word for me with Max Goodwin, the irascible editor and publisher. Max was a World War II vet who had bought the Review in 1952 - and when I showed up for my interview in the late ’80s, it was clear they hadn’t redecorated much in the intervening years, if at all. The Review, and its sister paper, the Spring Valley Bulletin, were still published each week on an old hot-type press: none of that fancy computer stuff. I felt like I was in a museum. (But then, I tend to really like museums ...)
If you read Helen Ofield’s profile of Max in Patch, the defining characteristic of him outside his devotion to honest, straight-forward reporting was that he hated hippies and the counterculture. I don’t recall knowing that coming in.
He was clearly older (he would have been in his late 70s at the time of my interview); I was 25 or 26, and post-ROTC had grown my hair out shoulder-length.
I had some clips from the Daily Aztec I showed him in a binder. We probably shared our Buckeye roots (Max was from Cincinnati; I’m from Dayton).
It was going pretty well, I thought.
Then Max - who, again, hated the counter-culture with a deep and abiding passion - asked me who I admired most in journalism, and I replied honestly: Hunter S. Thompson, he of “gonzo” journalism fame, the reporter who rode with the Hell’s Angels and covered the 1972 presidential campaign for Rolling Stone magazine.
A thousand emotions briefly illuminated Max’s face like a real-time movie projected on his mug; none of them were positive. He may have wondered if Brad was pranking him, sending me in there.
The interview was immediately over, and I was left to find my own way out.
It wasn’t the most disastrous job interview I ever had, but it was up there.
Last week, we visted the music of Joy of Cooking - a late ’60s San Francisco combo that got lost in all the hype surrounding Janis Joplin.
Where Joy of Cooking was a blend of folk, rock and jazz, Tracy Nelson came on the scene as a pure blues singer - like Joplin. But like Joy of Cooking, she never scored a breakthrough hit that would have made her reputation. Possessed of a soaring voice equally capable of getting down into the grit, and able to move seamlessly from blues to country, gospel to R&B - Nelson may be the best American singer of the late 20th century that most music fans have never heard of.
Born and raised in Madison, Wisconsin, Nelson issued her first album, a solo effort, on Prestige Records in 1965, when she was just 20 years old. (Playing harmonica on that session was an equally young Charlie Musselwhite - five years before his debut as leader.)
“Startin’ for Chicago” is from “Deep Are the Roots”:
Three years later, she had relocated to San Francisco and was fronting a blues-rock band named Mother Earth, which would release six albums before breaking up.
“Cry On,” by New Orleans composer and pianist Allen Toussaint, is from their 1968 debut:
(In 1992, Jeannie & Jimmy Cheatham were over for dinner at our little apartment in Ocean Beach. While Jimmy entertained the 14-month-old, I went in the other room and put side 2 of this album on the turntable. As Tracy Nelson’s vocals wafted out of the speakers on this track, Jeannie sat up straight, tapped Jimmy on the arm, and said, “Jimmy - listen to that - it’s that little white girl that used to sing at the Church Key in Madison.” Speaks volumes both to Jeannie’s outstanding ear, and Tracy’s distinctive singing.)
The next year, the band came out with their sophomore effort, “Make a Joyful Noise” - including a definitive version of “I Need Your Love So Bad”:
In 1970, after a move from the Bay Area to Nashville, the band issued its third album, “Mother Earth Presents Tracy Nelson Country.” It was as straight-up country as the first two had been blues, with covers of classic country tunes like “I Fall to Pieces,” “Stand By Your Man,” and “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.” But her interpretation of “That’s Alright” - the blues song by Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup that Elvis turned into his first rock ‘n’ roll hit - illustrates even more clearly than Elvis’ version the melding of blues and country that created the new style of rock, albeit 15 years after the fact:
The fourth and final LP for Mercury came out in 1970, “Satisfied,” which represented a return to the blues, but was a bit more polished than their earlier releases - including the addition of strings, as on “Andy’s Song”:
Two more releases came out on Reprise in 1970 and ’71 (bands tended to record more frequently back then!), then a final album on Columbia in 1973. The 1971 release included a cover of an obscure single by Steve Young from 1969 titled “Seven Bridges Road” that the Eagles would later make into a hit:
In 1974, Nelson left Mother Earth and struck out solo, with her second solo album coming out in 1974, nine years after her Prestige debut. In addition to the covers of Dylan, Bill Withers and Irma Thomas (with whom she would later record) were two standout tracks: A cover of the bluegrass chestnut “After the Fire Is Gone” with Willie Nelson and Linda Ronstadt sharing vocals:
And then Nelson’s own composition, “Down So Low” (which would be covered by Ronstadt two years later on her album, “Hasten Down the Wind”) and which sounded as if it was lifted from the first Mother Earth sessions:
Nelson closed out the ’70s bouncing from label to label, style to style. Two albums were issued by MCA, followed by a move to the folk imprint Flying Fish in 1978, plus a release for an even smaller label, Audio Directions, the same year, titled “Doin’ It My Way.” In 1980, she recorded a second set for Flying Fish - but it could have been on Motown or Stax given that it was all songs written by Isaac Hayes, Don Covoy, Percy Mayfield, Booker T. Jones, and other giants of R&B.
Then we didn’t hear from Nelson until she signed to Rounder Records in 1993 - which rejuvenated her career just as the blues renaissance was peaking.
“Every Night of the Week” from her 1993 release “In the Here and Now” announced her return to form:
She would record three solo albums for Rounder in the 1990s, plus participate in a summit album with Marcia Ball and Irma Thomas, 1998's “Sing It!” On “In Tears,” Tracy takes the lead vocal while the other two provide heavenly harmony:
She also became a fixture on the blues circuit once again - reclaiming her rightful place as one of the top blues singers.
After leaving Rounder, she issued a series of albums for various blues labels: Evangeline, Memphis International, Delta Groove.
It looks like her most recent record was in 2011, for Delta Groove, “Victim of the Blues.” The song “Lead A Horse To Water” is a soul-infused blues:
Nelson is now 78, and her website doesn’t indicate any upcoming shows.
“Apollo 8," by Jeffrey Kluger
Just published in 2017, I recently picked this up at Helen’s Book Mark in Escondido.
The author co-wrote “Apollo 13,” the best-seller that was made into the Tom Hanks film a few years ago.
This book is much shorter than the earlier one, but the Apollo 8 mission was not nearly as fraught as the Apollo 13 one, obviously.
The Apollo 8 mission has been largely forgotten behind the thrill of Apollo 11 reaching the moon, and then the near-disaster of Apollo 13 and the three astronauts doing everything they could to get safely home.
But Apollo 8 was the proof-of-concept mission: The ship left Earth orbit, and inserted into lunar orbit before returning home.
Following the fatal fire in the Apollo I capsule that killed astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee, NASA was scrambling to fulfill President Kennedy’s promise to the American people to land a man on the moon - and bring him home - before the end of the 1960s.
After Apollo 7 (Apollo 2-6 did not carry humans) successfully inserted into orbit before returning, the decision was made to accelerate the process: Rather than another orbital test, Apollo 8 would circle the moon.
Kluger recaptures the sense of excitement surrounding that time, as well as the pressure on those who worked at NASA. The focus is on the three men who flew Apollo 8: Frank Borman, for whom this would be his final space trip; Jim Lovell (who would later command Apollo 13); and Bill Anders, who had trained to pilot the lunar module in orbit but would instead become a science mission specialist since no lunar lander was even carried on Apollo 8.
The pace of the story is perfect, the men’s back stories let us identify with them before they are even assigned the mission, and Kluger’s telling builds to a satisfying peak.
This is as good a book about the Apollo program as exists; it’s not comprehensive, of course, but it tells an important part of the story of how our species first left our home planet to go exploring in space.
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