Taking the Jerry out of Jerrrrrrry

No, I don't mean Jerry Lewis, although I certainly love the man. Especially serious Jerry, the Jerry of "The King of Comedy."

No, friends, I mean Mr. Garcia and co. I'm listening to "Workingman's Dead" right at this moment and trying to not visualize old rich Marin hippies in their tie-dye shirts or those little hippie rats panhandling for change on Haight St. It's not fair, ya know. Can't I just enjoy "W.M.'s D." as a fine American roots rock album (that's my musical genre!) and forget all about the Deadhead cult? I know, I'm being a snob. It was a lovely community for many. And, "Man, if you were at the Acid Tests or Winterland in '76 when they did 'Dire Wolf,' etc." Yeah, maybe so. I dig the Pigpen years and don't care about the rest, really.

Anyway, my prejudices are planted firmly in my hippie childhood (never listened to the Dead in those days, that I can recall) and my dislike of crowds of smelly, stoned people. Which is to say, you won't see me at Burning Man. And I'm definitely not doing Deadhead dancing while listening to this record.

I think I was going to move on to the point that the late sixties, early seventies era of pop music is my time and nothing's ever going to replace it in my heart. Post punk and early hip hop (first ten years, say) were my last gasps of being musically current. I didn't fall in love with music from downloading it, ya know? I guess I'm about fit to be sent to the bone yard, which somehow ties in nicely with the Grateful Dead skeleton. Pigpen lives!

No Shit, Sherlock!

Am I an Anglophile? Of a sort. Of the sort who picks and chooses his vision of England as seen through books and films, and heard through music. About as real as my Reggaefied vision of Jamaica.

I suppose I've always had an affinity for certain cliches of "Englishness" as I've (mis?)interpreted through the abovementioned books, film and music. The cliches: reserve, repression, desire to while away the hours in the old study at home with a book, a hot drink and a pet at one's feet. Oh yeah, I know, that's the privileged white man's vision of peace and security. Likely as not, in reality, it could be an old Englishman in front of the TV lobbing homophobic comments at the screen (a sad scene depicted in Zadie Smith's "On Beauty"). But anyway, I cherish my fantasy vision of Sherlock Holmes's study or Bertie Wooster's bachelor pad.

I've been rereading the Sherlock Holmes novel, "The Hound of the Baskervilles" after watching a BBC adaption of it on Masterpiece Theatre (I've been watching that program, on and off, since I was eight. Sorry, Russell Baker, you're no Alistair Cooke (sp?)). Anyhoo, reading that book while also reading PG Wodehouse's "Very Good, Jeeves," makes me wonder if Bertie and Jeeves are a kind of inversion of Holmes and Watson? Both are bachelor teams. The Sherlock Holmes stories are narrated by Watson, who is always in awe of his friend's crime-solving genius but is also irritated and at times alarmed by his friend's eccentricities and bad habits (cocaine, morphine,etc.). Watson has his feet firmly planted on the ground; Holmes is focused on the matter at hand and is oblivious of all other practical manners. Until Watson gets married, the two are roommates.

As a bizarro parallel, consider the Wooster and Jeeves stories, which are narrated by the brainless Bertie (except for one early story narrated by Jeeves). Bertie has his feet firmly planted in the air, is shallow but good-hearted and depends on his brainy "gentleman's personal gentleman" Jeeves to bail him out of whatever trouble he's gotten into. They live together. Occasionally Bertie gets engaged to a woman, but it never lasts for long. You might say that whatever crazy scheme Bertie gets involved in is a sort of comic mystery for Jeeves to solve in his Sherlockian fashion. The plots of these stories are ingenious at times but always incredibly silly, just like A Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories and novels. And, it goes without saying, slightly homoerotic, or homo-not erotic.

I write all this nonsense while listening to that super English eccentric Robyn Hitchcock—"Black Snake Diamond Role" and "I Often Dream of Trains." Two early solo records that, I think, he's never bettered.

Wear Your Love Like Heaven

After listening to an NPR interview with the man, I've been listening to a lot of Donavan lately. Two things occur to me when I listen to Mr. Leitch: Are all those Belle and Sebastian fans aware of the obvious similarities (I like the band, by the way)? Also, "Atlantis." Not D's best song, but just about his hippiedippiest, and it reminds me so much of my young hippie days. Other things occur to me also, as well, such as the Bert Jansch influence and wondering if D influenced Nick Drake. I guess they all listened to the same English and Celtic folk music...

For those that wonder about my "progress" in the alphabetical listening project. I'm currently on an Earl Hines two-fer that covers sessions from the mid-sixties. These days I find myself less attracted to the far out , energy jazz stuff and more intrigued by melodic versions of the music, such as Mr. Hines's output. I guess I'm just getting old...

Which brings up this thought from the novel I'm currently reading: Zadie Smith's "On Beauty." It's as if E.M. Forster wrote a multicultural campus novel of manners. Such wisdom and wry insight from a twenty nine year-old. I don't know why I resisted reading her first two books. Jealousy? Probably.

My bus reading has been alternating between P.G. Wodehouse's Wooster and Jeeves books and crime novels. I recently finished Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye in a cool 1964 paperback edition that fell apart as I read it. It's hard for me not to filter that novel through the lense of Robert Altman's 1973 adaption starring Elliot Gould. I love that movie (so much that I own it). It's definitely in my top ten.

Speaking of favorite movies I own, last night I watched the second half of "Prince of the City." I could watch that thing at any point. I love the way that Treat Williams uses his body in that film. As the investigation of police corruption gets deeper and deeper, he slumps down so far, he practically crawls.

After that I had to watch Jesus' Son. Check out the way that Billy Crudup uses his body in that film, his beaten, bent at the waist pigeon-toed walk, how he half-gazes at the camera (suggesting his half consciousness?).

Netflix has recently brought me the first seasons of "Barney Miller" and "NYPD Blue," a double-barrelled dose of televised New York cops.