BAD BOYS:

How Musicians Invented the Antihero: In this section from my new book ‘Music to Raise the Dead’, I probe the hidden musical origins of Hollywood protagonists (TED GIOIA, NOV 29, 2023, Honest Broker)

[T]he musical connections of the antihero are more than just a matter of origins. In a very real sense, musicians stand out as the most powerful representatives of the antihero concept in popular culture. Back in the 1950s, Elvis Presley was a far more influential (and controversial) antihero than James Dean. In the 1960s, Mick Jagger shook up more people with his moral ambivalence than Clint Eastwood. A few years later, Sid Vicious and Kurt Cobain lived the antihero contradictions in ways that make Johnny Depp and Harrison Ford look like pretenders to the throne.

Just listen to the defining songs of these artists, from “Jailhouse Rock” to “Sympathy for the Devil” to “Anarchy in the U.K.,” and all those other antihero tunes still in non-stop rotation on playlists worldwide decades later, and consider their impact on the modern psyche. And it’s not just rock. Every music genre needed to find its own antiheroes to maintain relevance in the marketplace.

Country music fans called them outlaws and although this genre is supposedly a bastion of traditional values, its greatest legends are bad boys like Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash—who famously sang of killing a man in Reno “just to watch him die.” Or what about reggae and Bob Marley, who announced, in a famous song, that “I shot the sheriff.” And you couldn’t even begin to count the songs boasting about murder and violence in hip-hop and blues.

Robert Johnson is an antihero. Tupac Shakur is an antihero. Billie Holiday is an antihero. Even Glenn Gould is an antihero. Their mythos is as big as their music.

As the last example suggests, the songs themselves don’t need to be violent, or even have lyrics, to convey this ethos. If I had to pick the biggest musical antihero of all, I’d opt for trumpeter Miles Davis. Miles may have been famous for cool jazz, but was hot and intemperate in almost every other sphere of his life.

Yet that’s the paradox that drives the whole antihero meme, those simmering, unpredictable interchanges between fire and ice, sympathy and rage, the raw and the cooked. It’s the most potent persona in contemporary narrative, and it’s never lost its ties to music, although on the surface the two concepts—songs and antiheroes—appear to have nothing in common.

A FAIRYTALE OF IRELAND

Shane MacGowan: a timeless voice for Ireland’s diaspora in England (Sean Campbell, 11/30/23, The Conversation)

MacGowan was born December 25 1957 in Kent, England (where his parents were visiting family), but spent his early years on a farm in County Tipperary. There, the youngster observed regular traditional Irish music sessions, which had – as his late mother Therese explained – “a tremendous influence on him”.

During the early 1960s, MacGowan relocated to London where his father had found work, precipitating what the singer called a “horrific change of life”. During this time, he would, he said, “cry [himself] to sleep” at night while “thinking about Ireland”.
He assuaged his homesickness by attending Irish social clubs and regularly visiting Ireland.

“Because there’s an Irish scene in London,” MacGowan later explained, “you never forget the fact that you originally came from Ireland. There are lots of Irish pubs, so there was always Irish music in bars and on jukeboxes. Then every summer I would spend my school holidays back in Tipperary.”

This experience of being raised in a migrant Irish environment would animate much of MacGowan’s work with The Pogues.

Despite securing a highly competed-for scholarship at Westminster (a prestigious private school), MacGowan was soon expelled for possessing drugs.
After a spell in London’s Bethlem Royal Hospital for alcohol and drug abuse, he took on work as a porter and barman. MacGowan’s interests became increasingly focused, though, on London’s emergent punk scene, at the centre of which was another second-generation Irish singer, John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten), the vocalist and lyricist for the Sex Pistols.

“I probably wouldn’t have been that interested if Johnny Rotten hadn’t been so bloody obviously Irish and made a big noise about it, and made such anti-English records,” Shane later observed.

MacGowan formed his own punk band, The Nips, who achieved moderate success before fragmenting in the early 1980s. During that period, Shane began to observe a turn towards “roots” music (later, “world music”) in London. This prompted him to take a radical change of direction. As the singer later explained: “I just thought … if people are being ‘ethnic’, I might as well be my own ‘ethnic’.”

With this in mind, MacGowan launched The Pogues in 1982, recruiting two other musicians of Irish descent, Cáit O’Riordan (bass) and Andrew Ranken (drums), alongside three non-Irish associates: Jem Finer (banjo), Spider Stacy (tin whistle) and James Fearnley (accordion).

The band forged a remarkable fusion of Irish folk and English punk, becoming what critics called “an unlikely meeting point between The Clancy Brothers and The Clash”.

I’m not singing for the future

I’m not dreaming of the past

I’m not talking of the first times

I never think about the last

The Pogues – A Rainy Night In Soho g via @YouTube

GET CARTER:

THE WHITE PRIORY MURDERS, A CHRISTMAS MYSTERY THAT DESERVES TO BE REMEMBERED (Martin Edwards, 11/28/23, CrimeReads)

The White Priory Murders is an “impossible crime” novel by the master of the locked-room mystery, John Dickson Carr, masquerading as Carter Dickson, the name associated with his stories featuring Sir Henry Merrivale. Originally published in 1934, this was Merrivale’s second recorded case, written with youthful verve at a time when the author was still in his twenties.

This is a mystery set in the run-up to Christmas, and the presence of snow on the ground provides the scenario for the paradox at the heart of the book. How could someone be beaten to death in the Queen’s Mirror pavilion, when it is surrounded by snow, and there is just one set of footprints leading to the pavilion, and none leading away? […]

Sir Henry Merrivale, often called “H.M.” or “the old man,” had made his debut in a locked-room-mystery novel published earlier in 1934, The Plague Court Murders. When writing that book, Carr envisaged the official police detective Masters would take centre stage. Merrivale only enters the story half-way through. […]

Sir Henry Merrivale was a baronet and a man of varied accomplishments. A qualified physician, he was also a barrister, as we see to dramatic effect in The Judas Window (1938), widely acknowledged as one of the finest locked-room mysteries ever written. Initially characterized as “a fighting socialist,” he eventually shifts his political affiliations to fall in line with Carr’s conservative worldview. During the First World War he served as head of the British counter-espionage operations (earning the nickname “Mycroft”), and he continued to hold this post in the post-war era. Secret service work plays a part in three of his recorded adventures, The Unicorn Murders (1935), The Punch and Judy Murders (1936), and And So To Murder (1940), but his greatest gift is for detecting ingenious crimes and unravelling the puzzles which arise from what he calls “the blinkin’ awful cussedness of things in general.”

Carr took a great deal of care when constructing his intricate plots, but like most crime writers responsible for a long series, he proved fallible on matters of detail about his protagonist. He admitted in a letter to Smith that: “Errors or contradictions…abound in H.M.’s saga… During the nineteen-thirties, being young and full of beans, I was grinding out four novels a year.” As for bringing Merrivale back to life, he said: “Many readers seem fond of…the old gentleman… I also am fond of him. But that’s just the trouble. For many years certain critics…have been bewailing my ‘schoolboy’ sense of humour. H.M. usually enters the story with a rush and a crash, heels in the air. Once, in an unwise moment, I gave the date of his birth: February 6th, 1871. If he were alive today he would be ninety-six years old. His customary antics at so venerable an age would be as inadvisable for him to perform as for me to chronicle.”

The audio is available at Internet Archives.

WONDERFUL WORLD:

The Recovery of Wonder in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (Steve Soldi, 11/24/23, Voegelin View)

For Socrates and Aristotle, being a philosopher does not mean reading philosophy books or pursuing a career as a professional philosopher. Rather, a philosopher is someone who wonders and pursues truth “in order to know, and not for a utilitarian end.” On this view, schools should aim to produce philosophers. For example, John Senior, the renowned educator, cultivated in his students the idea that being culminated in wonder. His entire educational philosophy can be understood in terms of wonder. The motto of his self-designed Integrated Humanities Program at the University of Kansas in the 1970s speaks to this proposition: Nascantur in admiratione – “Let them be born in wonder.” Senior wanted his students to renew their gaze upon an enchanted reality and delight with young-eyed zeal in its mystery and intelligibility. For Senior, wonder is natural to everyone and calls us to pursue truth and wisdom. As we know, the word philosophy means “love of wisdom.”

Wisdom and knowledge are mutually supportive. If wisdom is the means by which we discern and acquire our highest good, knowledge of the true and the good in turn frees us to live well and lead a happy life. How, then, do we obtain knowledge that frees us? The answer is a liberal education. The liberal arts free us from thinking about knowledge in terms of mere utility or practice. In this way, they are superior. The humanities include the highest disciplines—philosophy, theology, history, literature, music, and art—because they are subordinated to nothing outside of themselves. They are endowed with intrinsic value and exist for their own sake. They are to be differentiated from the servile arts, which exist for the sake of something else, namely, to produce practical things.

We are now in a position to appreciate why Ray Bradbury advocates for liberal education in his 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451.

JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT INDIANA JONES WAS THE YEAR’S BIGGEST DISASTER:

Ridley Scott’s Napoleon: Accidentally a Comedy?: It’s a portrayal so undignified that I almost expected ABBA’s “Waterloo” to play over the credits. (David Klion, November 20, 2023, New Republic)

But then there are the dialogue and the performances, above all Phoenix’s, which suggest a different genre altogether: high camp. At the critics’ screening I attended, there were regular snickers at a film that isn’t being marketed as a comedy—and yet I suspect that laughter is the reaction Scott is going for. Napoleon doesn’t make a lot of historical arguments, but it does have a perspective on its title character: It sees him not as a genius or a modernizer or a meritocrat, but as an arrogant, vain, bratty, ultimately pitiful little autocrat whose zeal for greatness cost far too many men their lives.

Perhaps this is the perspective that Scott, an 85-year-old Englishman, learned in school; certainly the script (written by David Scarpa, who previously collaborated with Scott on All the Money in the World) seems to have more respect for the Duke of Wellington, the Anglo-Irish aristocrat who handed Bonaparte his final defeat, than it does for Bonaparte himself. Wellington, played by Rupert Everett, describes Bonaparte as ill-mannered “vermin” ahead of the Battle of Waterloo, and by that point the audience has every reason to agree, having watched Phoenix bumble his way through dozens of awkward and embarrassing set pieces.

Much of the awkwardness centers around Bonaparte’s relationship to Josephine (Vanessa Kirby), which provides most of the script’s dramatic heft. It’s no exaggeration to say that the film presents Josephine’s genitalia as the driver of a whole era of world history (10 minutes in, Kirby channels Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct, and from then on Bonaparte is under her spell). Phoenix’s Bonaparte is motivated entirely by overcompensation for sexual inadequacy, which is neither creative nor persuasive, but at least it scans in the context of the film. It’s far less clear what motivates Josephine—status? love? lust? money?—but she does make for a plausible object of desire, a haughty dominatrix who cuckolds Bonaparte into invading most of Europe.

Rather than Abba, the soundtrack should be Benny Hill. But the big problem is that when Mr. Scott realized he’d accidentally made a comedy he didn’t go all in on the slapstick. Instead of snickering at what he’s put on the screen we could be guffawing along with him.

PUTTING THE 70’S OUT OF OUR MISERY:

Historic Alliances Between Hip-Hop and Punk (Lemon Wire, 04/24/2017)

The earliest formation of what could be called a genuine punk movement (as opposed to earlier protopunk groups such as the MC5, New York Dolls, and the Stooges) began in Manhattan around 1974/75, revolving around a venue circuit of run-down bars like the CBGB. It came out of a working class movement of young people who were tired of the pretensions of arena rock and disco, a music culture that put music-making out of the hands of regular folk. So, when the Ramones, arguably the most influential punk band of all time, picked up their instruments and leather jackets in 1975, not a single one of them could really play their instruments.

Around the same time, DJ Kool Herc was spinning records at parties in the Bronx. He had been doing this for a bit already, his parties highly popular for his eclectic and niche taste in music- Herc would play the best dance music of the time, putting down records ranging from live James Brown records to Edgar Winter singles. After he started getting gigs DJ’ing Bronx clubs, he made a discovery that was potentially one of the most important in music history- he could set up the same record on two turntables, and loop the break-beat section of records. This process would be refined by Grandmaster Flash, who invented DJ’ing as we know it today, and by 1977, the Bronx had a holy trinity of DJ Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash, and Afrika Bambaataa spinning records in the underground. This early hip-hop scene mirrored the rebellious spirit and do-it-yourself attitude of the punk culture across the river.

By the late 70’s/early 80’s, after the Sugar Hill Gang had put out “Rapper’s Delight,” hip-hop groups were looking to expand out of the Bronx and into Manhattan, but the disco clubs wouldn’t have them. This was how first contact was made between the two genres- Grandmaster Flash had a friend who booked shows in Manhattan and was able to get Flash booked in the most unlikely of places- the punk bars. As it turned out, the punks were all about any music that was out of the norm and rebellious. Reportedly, Blondie was at this first show, and told Flash that she was going to write a song about him.

Not long after, in 1981, Blondie put out the single Rapture, which had the first video on MTV to ever feature rapping. One can see the influence on Flash and the Furious 5- in the video for “The Message,” released in 1982, Melle Mel can be seen sporting a very punk-esque outfit, complete with studded leather armbands.

This expansion of Hip-Hop into Manhattan led one punk to fall in love with hip-hop- Rick Rubin, founder of Def Jam records. Rubin produced several of Hip-Hop’s early records, and signed monolithic artists such as LL Cool J and Public Enemy. He was also responsible for pushing the Beastie Boys away from hardcore punk and into the realm of Hip-Hop.

THE DUDE ABIDES:

The World Spins On: “The Value of Herman Melville” (Daniel Ross Goodman, November 13th, 2023, Imaginative Conservative)

The quest to write the Great American Novel has long been the American literary equivalent of the mythical and historical quest for the Holy Grail. Writers ranging from Mark Twain to John Updike to many in between (Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, Roth, Morrison) have all staked their claim to this elusive prize. Among the perennial roster of contenders for this legendary status, there is a strong case to be made for Moby-Dick. No other novel captures the massive scale of monomaniacal ambition—and the all-too-frequent futility and frustration with which our ambitions ultimately meet—than Melville’s masterpiece about futility and frustration. The hunt for the elusive, uncatchable great White Whale is as American as the pursuit of fame, wealth, and happiness—goals which we will probably never achieve, but which something about our indomitable American idealism never allows us to desist from pursuing. But if the never-ending pursuit of the great white whales of fame, wealth, and happiness is particularly American, so is the multiethnic, multiracial, and multinational nature of the cosmopolitan crew of the Pequod. And so is the camaraderie and close male friendship of Queequeg and Ishmael. And so too is the perennial hopefulness symbolized by Ishmael’s having survived the wreckage of the Pequod and being rescued by the providential arrival of the Rachel. Melville’s great fictional anti-hero Ahab may fail in his pursuit of his Holy Grail, but Melville himself may have ultimately—albeit twenty-five years after his death—succeeded in the pursuit of his: the writing of, if not the Great American novel, at the very least the creation of the King Lear of American literature: our existentially bleak, yet preternaturally hopeful, grand American masterwork. As Dr. Sanborn, regarding the meaning of Moby-Dick, so powerfully puts it, even though “the ongoingness of the world can seem terrifying in its stolidity, its unresponsiveness to human concerns,” Ishmael survives. “The whale swims away. The world—which is, as it turns out, capable of bearing our psychic investments in it—spins on.”

IN CASE YOU WONDERED WHY BRITS SPIED FOR THE USSR:

A Great Film That Wasn’t: Master and Commander: Far Side of the World is slavish to reality in trivialities, and pure fantasy in much greater, more complicated matters. (Peter Hitchens, Nov 14, 2023, American Conservative)

But my deeper objection is to a grave and mistaken attempt to alter a major element of the books. The title of the 2003 film is Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. And The Far Side of the World is the title of a book to which a lot of the film is closely related—except for one thing. It pits Aubrey in a conflict with the United States Navy, which is harrying British whalers. This important moment in British and American Naval History is also dealt with in an earlier book, The Fortune of War, in which Aubrey takes a slight role in the great 1813 duel off Boston between the USS Chesapeake and HMS Shannon.

These two ships, beautiful, evenly-matched, both with brave and chivalrous captains, fought briefly and savagely and the Americans lost. The War of 1812 might easily have been the first of many between America and Englnd. The soppy view of permanent Anglo-American brotherhood is entirely wrong, ignoring as it does Washington’s stinging fury when Britain built commerce raiders for the Confederacy, and their growing naval rivalry before and after the 1914–18 war. During a voyage to London in December 1918, Woodrow Wilson told his aides that if Britain did not come to terms over sea power, America would “build the biggest Navy in the world, matching theirs and exceeding it…and if they would not limit it, there would come another and more terrible and bloody war and England would be wiped off the face of the map.”

The historian Adam Tooze revealed recently that growing naval confrontation between these two supposed shoulder-to-shoulder eternal friends was so bitter that “by the end of March 1919 relations between the naval officers of the two sides had degenerated to such an extent that the admirals threatened war and had to be restrained from assaulting each other.” My father’s attitude towards the U.S. Navy was never especially generous (I used to wonder why) and he perhaps recalled the Suez crisis during which the then head of the USN, Admiral Arleigh Burke, discussed open warfare between the two nations with the Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles.

There’s a strong spirit here of Bill Haydon’s rant at the end of Tinker, Tailor, where he explains to Smiley that he hates America because Britain exists only in its shadow.