Kultur: Songs, Scenes and Sunday School
A Blog on Culture by C. Michael Bailey
Kultur
Why "Avatar" Did Not Deserve Best Picture
The 82nd Academy Awards are in the can. The only box scores that matter are those for James Cameron's Avatar and Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker. Avatar was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Achievement in Directing and Best Motion Picture of the Year, winning three for Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography and Best Sound. The Hurt Locker was also nominated for nine Academy Awards, winning Best Achievement in Sound Mixing; Best Achievement in Sound Editing; Best Achievement in Editing; Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen; Best Achievement in Directing, and Best Motion Picture of the Year. This is as it should be.A certain amount of grumbling has come from the geek gallery that Avatar should have won Best Picture. For sure, Avatar is the greatest technical motion picture accomplishment to date, costing conservatively some $400 million-plus in production and promotion costs, and completely redefining not only what is thought of as "special effects" but the entire concept of how movies will be made in the future, thus setting a very high production bar. Having said this, why did Avatar not deserve Best Picture? Because, in the end, it was just a cartoon, with a cartoon plot.
Motion pictures are vehicles for all genre of art employed in their production. Kiss of The Spider Woman (Island Alive, 1985) was a mediocre film that served as the vehicle for William Hurt's superb performance as Louis Molina, a homosexual pederast imprisoned for his proclivities. Amadeus (Orion Pictures, 1984) was a brilliant revisionist history whose whole in performance out-weighted the sum of its parts. The former won a Best Actor Academy Award for Hurt's grand performance and the latter won Best Picture (among others) for a compelling portrayal of period, character, and plot. The difference between Avatar and The Hurt Locker is one of the quality of the story and how it was told.
In the case of Avatar, director Cameron, as Hollywood oft does, crammed every utopia-conflict-resolution feel-good cliche into his film, recreating the story of Pocahontas for his lack of plot rendering effort. Like another Academy Award-nominated film, District 9 (Tristar, 2009), he beat the word viewer over the head with the fabled tolerance-anti-prejudice club until we were brain-damaged. Like guitarists Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, and their ilk, all of the technical ability in the world can't make up for the lack of a story.
Best Picture Oscar cannot be awarded for technological achievement alone, particularly when that technical achievement is applied to comic book plot, giving it, in effect, a technical blow job that might wow the Adderall-addled collective unconscious of a generation but not a more measured opinion.
(About) 100 Words on...Dean Koontz's "Odd Hours"
Odd HoursDean Koontz
Narrated by David Aaron baker
Bantam Books
2008
ISBN 0553807056
"...Can anything good come out of Nazareth?"
Dean Koontz's character Odd Thomas was presented as an Everyman St. Michael The Archangel casting Lucifer to Hell in Odd Thomas (Bantam, 2003), Forever Odd (Bantam, 2005), and Brother Odd (Bantam, 2006). After leaving St. Bartholomew's Abbey (and finally helping the spirit of Elvis to the other side) Thomas heads West toward Magic Beach, picking up the spirits of Frank Sinatra and the dog Boo in transit. In Magic Beach, the virginal, naive fry-cook from Pico Mundo meets the mysterious and pregnant Annamaria (a Madonna/Magdelena figure, anyone?) who is in danger of being harmed by some bad characters. She asks Thomas if he would die for her...well, you are beginning to get the picture. Odd Thomas descends into a rabid gumbo depiction of the Holy Family, where our intrepid protagonist plays all of the parts. Unlike the previous three novels, Odd Hours lacks a beginning, a sound plot, or an adequate end. Thomas can still turn a phrase, though.
A Final Word (for Now) on Elvis
It all started with the death of Michael Jackson June 25, 2009. The circumstances of the King of Pop's death were eerily close to those of the King of Rock some 30 years before. Like the Kennedy assassination (the first one) I remember exactly where I was: in the print shop of the National Investor's Life Building in downtown Little Rock, Arkansas. I had just graduated from Catholic High the previous May and was preparing to start Hendrix College in the Fall. On August 16, 1977, THE biggest news was Elvis dying on the crapper.I hadn't given a damn about Elvis since the mid-1960s, when the first song I ever knew all of the words to was "Return to Sender." No, the King was a Vegas leftover for me in the late '70s. Yes, the 1968 Comeback special had been cool and that song "Suspicious Minds" was memorable, but the Rolling Stones, Allman Brothers Band, and Little Feat were occupying my listening time. And I didn't think of Elvis much. But then Michael Jackson had to go and die from his own excesses and this led me to the library.
A legion of demons were born in print after the death of Elvis Presley. The most recent of these was Dr. George Nichopoulos's The King and Dr. Nick: What Really Happened to Elvis and Me (Thomas Nelson, 2010), where Dr. Nichopoulos attempts to vindicate himself and his treatment of Presley in the final years of the singer's life. One need not doubt that Dr. Nichopoulos and Presley were close and quite fond of each other and the doctor does partially exonerate himself as trying to "manage" Presley's ever increasing chemical dependency.
A legion of demons were born in print after the death of Elvis Presley. The most recent of these was Dr. George Nichopoulos's The King and Dr. Nick: What Really Happened to Elvis and Me (Thomas Nelson, 2010), where Dr. Nichopoulos attempts to vindicate himself and his treatment of Presley in the final years of the singer's life. One need not doubt that Dr. Nichopoulos and Presley were close and quite fond of each other and the doctor does partially exonerate himself as trying to "manage" Presley's ever increasing chemical dependency.
But as detailed in The Death of Elvis: What Really Happened (Robert Hale, 1992), authors Charles Thompson and James Cole reveal not only Nichopoulos' prescribing habits for Presley, but for his entourage also. Nichopoulos' over-prescribing of controlled substances is further verified by former bodyguard Marty Lacker's Elvis: Portrait of a Friend (Bantam, 1980) for whom Nichopoulos prescribed a mountain of Placidyl, as well as Steve Dunleavy's bone-smoking hack job with former shit-kicker bodyguards Dave Hebler, Red West and Sonny West, Elvis: What Happened - Three of His Closest Companions Tell A Shocking, Bizarre Story (Ballentine, 1977).
Every White Trash low-life that ever met Presley wrote a book. One must consider the motives of the authors before reading any of them. The vast majority are sappy remembrances that attempted to 1) maintain Elvis' supposed image or 2) even a perceived score. Those doing the latter exposed Presley's more profligate tendencies, of which he had many. Almost all of them claim that, "...had Elvis only listened to me [insert any of a million names], none of this would have happened." What moonshine! Presley was so far gone in his dependency that he would not have listened to anyone if he could.
There was no Celebrity Rehab or Intervention in the '70s and chemical dependency treatment had not yet become the money-making cottage industry it would in the '80s and '90s. But Imagine for a minute Dr. Drew Pinsky introducing his class of 1977: "Well we have the King, Chet Baker, and William Burroughs here at the Pasadena Recovery Center." All three would have told the prissy bastard to go fuck himself. No, at the time there was nothing anyone could have done for Elvis Presley. He had already unwittingly seal his chemical fate years before. That is why the question as to why no one helped Presley is so asinine: not only were they all beholden to him, Presley would not have listened anyway. Presley's death was the law of nature taking it course to the only conclusion it could.
Perhaps the most even and honest memoir was written by Presley's road manager Joe Esposito, Good Rockin' Tonight: Two Decades on the Road and on the Town with Elvis (Simon & Schuster, 1994). Esposito ends his account thusly,
Nearly two decades after his death, Elvis Presley still reigns unchallenged as the king of rock 'n' roll, the greatest superstar the world has ever known. All the crude jokes and ugly rumors can't change the fact that there was never anyone like him and there never will be another again. Elvis was the most extraordinary ordinary man.
That pretty well sums it up. A body of music that includes Presley's Sun Sides, his first RCA long-player, From Elvis in Memphis, and Elvis: From Memphis to Vegas/Vegas to Memphis could not have happened anywhere else, by anyone else.
(About) 100 Words on...Steve Dunleavy's Elvis: What Happened?
Elvis: What Happened?Sonny West, Red West, and Dave Hebler as told to Steve Dunleavy
Ballentine Books
1977
Elvis: What Happen?, a crude tell-all about Elvis Presley as dictated by his three recently fired bodyguards was published July 12, 1977, just days prior to Presley's August 16, 1977 death. The previous July, the singer’s father VernonPresley fired his son’s bodyguards, Red West, Sonny West, and David Hebler, reasoninga need to reduce operating expenses. Red West had been a friend of the singer's since the 1950s. The three were justifiably hurt by the snub and agreed narrate the book, ostensibly to give Presley a wake-up call that his behavior was damaging himself and others. The result was a poorly written series of loosely connected vignettes detailing some of Presley's more outrageous behavior.
To be sure, the stories in Elvis: What Happen? are more than like true and not the victim of hyperbole. Recounting them is not necessary as Elvis stories have solidified into Urban Myth. While unflattering to Presley, the book does reveal him as an immature, selfish, egocentric personality, a personality profile since identified and associated with the chemically dependent. The three body guards were rightfully hurt and angry by Presley's apparent dismissal of them and they wanted to send the King a message. It was a poison one as validated by Sonny West and Marshall Terrill's 2008 Elvis: Still Taking Care of Business (Triumph Books). Elvis: What Happen? should be considered a part of the Elvis Presley Story rather than a description of it.
(Way more than) 100 Words on...The King and Dr. Nick: What Really Happened to Elvis and Me by Dr. George Nichopoulos and Rose Clayton Phillips
The King and Dr. Nick: What Really Happened to Elvis and MeDr. George Nichopoulos and Rose Clayton Phillips
Thomas Nelson Publishing
1595551719
2010
Writer's Note: A longer review will appear at All About Jazz.
The 1977 death of Elvis Presley and its inevitable aftermath led to the publication of several books, all one way or another related to Presley's flamboyant and often paranoid behavior as a vector of his well established drug use. The King and Dr. Nick: What Really Happened to Elvis and Me details Nichopoulos' attempt to manage Presley's drug use - a feat tantamount to directing the Titanic's sinking with the same inevitable outcome.
On a technical note (and not included in the All About Jazz article): By the time Dr. George Nichopoulos entered the picture in 1967, Presley already had an established abuse pattern of stimulants and depressant that, more than likely, led to the singer's infamous insomnia. This insomnia (and Presley's de facto dependency on sedative/hypnotics) is what what Nichopoulos was trying to manage at the end of Elvis' life. Presley's post-autopsy toxicology screen revealed multiple barbiturates, non-barbiturate sedative/hypnotics and benzodiazepines.
While not identical to, this scenario is chillingly similar to that of Michael Jackson 32-years later. Conrad Murray was attempting to manage Jackson's insomnia with his stepwise employment of sedative benzodiazepines, hypnotic benzodiazepines, and finally propofol. In The King and Dr. Nick, Nichopoulos inaccurately dismisses the apparent similarities between the two singers' deaths. Where he does get this right is in culpability.
Where Presley died while under the deliberate care of Nichopoulos of most likely a cardiac pathology, Jackson died while his physician was administering intravenously a powerful general anesthetic that led directly to his death. Murray was present when Jackson expired. And the central question in both cases is, "did drugs cause the deaths. In both cases this answer is yes. Did Elvis Presley die of a drug overdose? No. In the case of Presley, a life of immoderate consumption of everything, including drugs, led to the debilitation resulting in death.
Did Michael Jackson die of a drug overdose. Yes, and therein lies the biggest difference.
The similarities between the two artists are more striking than their differences. Both had humble upbringings were relatively suddenly thrust into fame, making a pile of money in the meantime. Both evolved from artists into industries, employing armies of people...armies of people beholden to a single figure for their livelihoods. This sets up a people-pleasing paradigm where the employees do what is necessary to keep their employer performing, always in the short term.
Both artists were eccentric, peculiar, if you will, with peccadillos and appetites that provided the media with years of water-cooler fodder. Both were lavish in there spending and indiscriminate in their generosity. Both changed popular music in ways in which they had and have no peers. Nichopoulos, for his part in the life of Presley and his associates, never adequately explains his prescribing practices. That Nichopoulos loved Presley is beyond doubt, but did the doctor act in Presley's best interest is less clear.
(About) 100 Words on...Eric Clapton - "Bottle Rockin'" Columbus, Ohio 07/04/1974
Eric ClaptonBottle Rockin'
Columbus, Ohio, 07/04/1974
Qualitybootz
The early 1970s found Eric Clapton a mess. Heroin addiction sidelined him between the demise of Derek and the Dominoes (with the death of Duane Allman October 29, 1971 and the release of 461 Ocean Boulevard (RSO, 1973) (though he did appear at George Harrison's Concert for Bangladesh (Apple, 1971) and Peter Townsend's Rainbow Concert (RSO, 1973)). Once off heroin, Clapton began drinking heavily as evidenced by his singing performance during this soundboard collected concert in Columbus, OH. Pleasantly hammered Clapton is not. He behaves in an arrogantly belligerent manner that can only be forgiven by his corrosive performance of Jimi Hendrix's "Little Wing" and his near supernatural guitar break in "Key to the Highway. This is Clapton in the '70s to be sure – bloated, lazy, and sloppy. But like Charlie Parker's Dial "Lover Man," Clapton summoned something special to this performance…or else he was just lucky.
Disc 1: Easy Now; Smile;Let it Grow;Can't Find My Way Home; Key to the Highway; Willie and the Hand Jive / Get Ready; Little Wing. Disc 2: Mainline Florida; Layla; Presence of the Lord; Badge; Little Queenie; Crossroads.
(About) 100 Words on...Joe Cocker and Mad Dogs and Englishmen, Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA 04/26/1970
Joe Cocker and Mad Dogs and EnglishmenFillmore West, San Francisco, CA 04/26/1970
This concert took place about one month after Cocker and company stormed the Fillmore East in New York City for the recording of what would become the two-LP release Joe Cocker and Mad Dogs and Englishmen. That collection has gone through several evolutions finally releasing the performances in their entirety on Mad Dogs and Englishmen - The Complete Fillmore Concerts. The set lists changed little during this short tour but these soundboard recordings from Cocker's concerts wrapping up his MDAE tour did sport the welcome inclusion of "The Weight" in better performance than the released extended MDAE. Cocker proves to be the best of interpreters of other's music. He slays John Sebastian's "Darling Be Home Soon" and Leon Russell's "Delta Lady." Largely absent from these soundboards is Leon Russell, who contributed no sotto voce asides as he did on the official release. Cocker sounds tired but anything but defeated. A little piece of history.
(About) 100 Words on...Elton John at the Hammersmith Odeon, London, 12/22/1973
Elton JohnHammersmith Odeon, London, 12/22/1973
I saw Sir Reginald Dwight in concert in Memphis, Tennessee while he was promoting Peach Tree Road (2004). It was a splendidly performed concert, geared directly for the nostalgic sod such as myself. But 30 years prior, in both our salad days, Elton John was at the top of his game, having just released Goodbye Yellowbrick Road, whose contents were well represented at the Hammersmith Odeon that December evening in 1973. Recorded from Pre-FM reels, this Elton John concert is near perfect save for no material from Tumbleweed or Madman. But that is okay, Honky Chateau is well represented, with "Hercules" and "Rocket Man" being exceptional. Davey Johnstone performs searingly with Nigel Olsson registering as an earthquake.
(About) 100 Words on...Lowell George Live at Hard Rock Cafe, New York City, 06/22/1979
Lowell GeorgeLive at Hard Rock Cafe, New York City, 06/22/1979
In the same way that Little Feat is not, part and parcel, Lowell George; Lowell George is not Little Feat. This June 1979 concert was part of George's last tour, one he undertook after leaving the band. George was to die of cardiac arrest a week after this show. George is in fine voice and slide guitar, but on the Feat material he sorely misses his band, particularly drummer Richie Wayward and guitarist Paul Barrere. The performances of "Fat Man in the Bathtub," and "Spanish Moon" are spirited, but "Dixie Chicken" and "Willin'" do not quite work, in spite of a capable horn section. Selections from George's 1979 Thanks I'll Eat it Here are are uniformly fabulous. "Honest Man," "What Do You Want a Girl to Do," and Ann Peebles' "Can't Stand the Rain" rock while Rickie Lee Jones' "Easy Money" serves as "Dixie Chicken's" introduction. Where the Feat were heading in a jazz-rock fusion direction, George was choosing to address R&B. I fine and sad coda.
(About) 100 Words on...Howlin' Wolf Live at Key Largo, Chicago, IL 02/23/1969
Howlin' WolfLive at Key Largo, Chicago, IL 02/23/1969
Complements of Qualitybootz
Chester Burnett, AKA Howlin' Wolf's life spanned the breadth of blues history from Charlie Patton to the decline of Chess Records. Like Skip James, he was a singular talent not willing to be creatively pigeonholed. This live set captures Wolf at the height of his considerable powers in his adopted home of Chicago. Wolf's blues were not sophisticated like Muddy Waters and Walter Jacobs. They were Mississippi Delta dirt bona fide, electrified and Southern fried. "A Million Miles Away" and "Killing Floor" kill with a ferocity unmatched before or since. Wolf's harmonica and guitar are well represented and Hubert Sumlin shines throughout.