Revisit:
Johnny Cash
Sings the Ballads of the True West
1965
Revisit is a series of reviews highlighting past releases that now deserve a second look.
In 2010, we know the album title is just plain wrong. The equally romantic and tragic view of the American West that dominates Johnny Cash's Sings the Ballads of the True West is the stuff of old black and white TV shows and movie westerns, where the men were macho and the women were either virtuous (boring) or loose with their morals (preferable). Much like Gone with the Wind once did so much to shape the public's perception of the Civil War South as a time of honorable men, beautiful belles and contented slaves, True West offers a narrow interpretation of an American past that existed - still exists - only on Hollywood stages and in dimestore novels. The "other" West, that of early industrialization, transient workers and immigration, plays no part in Cash's work.
But True West remains among Cash's most consistent concept albums, even if some songs, particularly those with an excess of strings and background singers, sound campy. The album cover of a mustachioed Cash, reclining against a tree and gripping a gun, is also about as hokey as it gets. But what kind of world are we met with in True West? Primarily it is one of death. In the traditional "Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie," the dying youth with the "pallid lips" begs not to be buried in the middle of fucking nowhere. His wish isn't granted; Cash as narrator here is respectful but coldly matter-of-fact: "In a narrow grave, just six by three/ We buried him there on the lone prairie," he coolly sings. The similarly-themed traditional "Streets of Laredo" also takes as its subject a dying young man who's "done wrong"; what exactly he's done is never stated, but like the figure of "Prairie" he dies with his final request, cold water to drink, unfulfilled. Other songs chosen for True West fit this mold as well: in "A Letter from Home" yet another dying cowboy - already bummed because no one in his family writes to him - croaks with only a stranger and an unread Bible for company, while in Harlan Howard's "The Blizzard" a man traveling the plains is found frozen to death "just a hundred yards from Mary Anne."
Yet however limited its historical scope or understanding may be, history does inform much of the album. It's in these songs where Cash's familiar world of violence, criminals, outlaws and, ever so rarely, heroes is at its most prevalent. Cash performs Ramblin' Jack Elliott's "Mr. Garfield" - its subject the assassination in 1881 of the President by Charles J. "Charley" Guiteau - with no small amount of black humor, especially in the dialog between the two brothers who tell the story. Cash approaches Carl Perkins' "The Ballad of Boot Hill" rather differently, portraying Billy Clanton, shot dead in the famous Tombstone gunfight of 1881, as a purely innocent, and altogether tragic, figure (the actual events of what transpired are more ambiguous than Cash suggests). In a shade over four minutes Cash summarizes the bloody life and death of the infamous namesake outlaw of "Hardin Wouldn't Run," though the singer's version infuses the criminal with traces of nobility and bravery (or stupidity, as the fact that he "wouldn't run" is what gets Hardin killed, bullet to the back of the head). Hardin's killer, John Selman, would reportedly shoot him three more times after that head shot; Cash omits this rather brutal, and decidedly less folksy, detail from his narrative.
The accuracy of the Merle Kilgore-penned "Johnny Reb" is likewise dicey; desertion from the Confederate army was frequent, even at the war's early stages, and thus Cash's praise of Southern soldiers who "fought all the way" must be seen as idealized Southern mythmaking. But one gets the sense that Cash, regardless of his exhortations in "Reflections" to see "now and then the West as it really was," was primarily interested in that mythic version of the Old West as he saw it instead of historical objectivity. Throughout the album Cash conjures up a vision of the West that primarily resides only in the American imagination, an ethos that Cash also furthers in the album's liner notes. Some songs from True West would later succeed outside the album's context - most notably, "25 Minutes to Go," which Cash would include on At Folsom Prison - but most of the songs here work best when heard in an album context. True West often blurs that thin line between historical fact and poetic license, but folklore and music have always been intertwined. Few artists have managed to meld these two sometimes-contrasting aspects as well as Johnny Cash, and it's in his abilities as a storyteller that we are still able to appreciate True West as an example of how we remember, and in some cases idealize, our collective history.
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Monday, September 13, 2010
Hoboes: by Mark Wyman
Hoboes
by Mark Wyman
Rating: 2.5/5.0
Publisher: Hill and Wang
In Hoboes: Bindlestiffs, Fruit Tramps, and the Harvesting of the West, historian Mark Wyman attempts to define the role of the migrant worker in the expansion of the western United States. Centered on the years between the advent of the railroad and the rise of the automobile in the pre-Depression 1920s, the book offers a rather untraditional account of the West's settlement, abandoning the popular depiction of a rip-roarin' wild west of outlaws, cowboys, Indians and hokey Johnny Cash songs in favor of a narrative that places this mass of seasonal workers at the forefront.
At its best, Hoboes provides a mostly sympathetic and thoroughly researched picture of the transients whose grunt work in the fields, farms and orchards of the western United States played a major role in the country's economic growth. Wyman's hobo is not that of the stereotypically shiftless and potentially dangerous loner portrayed in various newspapers of the day. Instead, the author paints a revisionist portrait that is far more balanced, showing how laborers of various stripes - American, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Mexican - made the country's agricultural industries possible. With each chapter built around the story of a specific state's economic development, Wyman tells of these workers' hard, anonymous lives: those already below the poverty level and how they endured low pay, long hours, dangerous working and unsanitary living conditions; a public and government whose sympathy for immigrant laborers decreased as the isolationist xenophobia of post-World War I America increased; the physical and psychological tolls such a lifestyle exacted.
Nevertheless, Hoboes cannot be recommended to a general audience. Wyman is first and foremost a historian, exhibiting many of the negative connotations that come along with that. The author's writing style tends to be overly methodical (read: dry) and professorial (read: very dry): if a reader doesn't already have an interest in Western labor history, this book likely won't spark such an interest. Although the text is far less imposing than other labor histories, it too often reads like a textbook or dissertation written solely for the highly-educated and tenured-for-decades academia crowd. Certainly, Wyman again proves himself an authority on this topic, but his writing sometimes feels cold, clinical and occasionally repetitive; the book's final summary pages give a concise recap of Wyman's main arguments, but it could be a difficult task getting to that point for some readers. For a casual audience, the most interesting aspect of Hoboes may be its colorful title.
Hoboes does succeed as a study that asserts the migrant's importance in the development of the West and brings some dignity to the many whose lives and contributions to the United States mostly went unnoticed. Wyman also shows how some of the key features and moral questions of this westward expansion, particularly immigration, continue to remain relevant today. But it's a book best left to the scholars, as it assumes a familiarity with the subject that many readers simply won't have and is written without much flair or personality. Those scholars will have plenty to discuss and debate; the rest of us who tag along could find the ride fairly tedious.
by Mark Wyman
Rating: 2.5/5.0
Publisher: Hill and Wang
In Hoboes: Bindlestiffs, Fruit Tramps, and the Harvesting of the West, historian Mark Wyman attempts to define the role of the migrant worker in the expansion of the western United States. Centered on the years between the advent of the railroad and the rise of the automobile in the pre-Depression 1920s, the book offers a rather untraditional account of the West's settlement, abandoning the popular depiction of a rip-roarin' wild west of outlaws, cowboys, Indians and hokey Johnny Cash songs in favor of a narrative that places this mass of seasonal workers at the forefront.
At its best, Hoboes provides a mostly sympathetic and thoroughly researched picture of the transients whose grunt work in the fields, farms and orchards of the western United States played a major role in the country's economic growth. Wyman's hobo is not that of the stereotypically shiftless and potentially dangerous loner portrayed in various newspapers of the day. Instead, the author paints a revisionist portrait that is far more balanced, showing how laborers of various stripes - American, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Mexican - made the country's agricultural industries possible. With each chapter built around the story of a specific state's economic development, Wyman tells of these workers' hard, anonymous lives: those already below the poverty level and how they endured low pay, long hours, dangerous working and unsanitary living conditions; a public and government whose sympathy for immigrant laborers decreased as the isolationist xenophobia of post-World War I America increased; the physical and psychological tolls such a lifestyle exacted.
Nevertheless, Hoboes cannot be recommended to a general audience. Wyman is first and foremost a historian, exhibiting many of the negative connotations that come along with that. The author's writing style tends to be overly methodical (read: dry) and professorial (read: very dry): if a reader doesn't already have an interest in Western labor history, this book likely won't spark such an interest. Although the text is far less imposing than other labor histories, it too often reads like a textbook or dissertation written solely for the highly-educated and tenured-for-decades academia crowd. Certainly, Wyman again proves himself an authority on this topic, but his writing sometimes feels cold, clinical and occasionally repetitive; the book's final summary pages give a concise recap of Wyman's main arguments, but it could be a difficult task getting to that point for some readers. For a casual audience, the most interesting aspect of Hoboes may be its colorful title.
Hoboes does succeed as a study that asserts the migrant's importance in the development of the West and brings some dignity to the many whose lives and contributions to the United States mostly went unnoticed. Wyman also shows how some of the key features and moral questions of this westward expansion, particularly immigration, continue to remain relevant today. But it's a book best left to the scholars, as it assumes a familiarity with the subject that many readers simply won't have and is written without much flair or personality. Those scholars will have plenty to discuss and debate; the rest of us who tag along could find the ride fairly tedious.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Slavery's Constitution: From Revolution to Ratification
Slavery's Constitution: From Revolution to Ratification
by David Waldstreicher
Rating: 4.0/5.0
Publisher: Hill and Wang
spectrum culture = spectrumculture.com
David Waldstreicher's Slavery's Constitution: From Revolution to Ratification is that rare history book that offers an entirely new perspective on an exhaustively-documented period of American history. Waldstreicher, a professor of history at Temple University, is a reliably consistent writer in a crowded field; his previous books Runaway America: Benjamin Franklin, Slavery, and the American Revolution and In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American Nationalism, 1776-1820 both offered fresh insights into the colonial and post-revolutionary periods. His latest effort trumps both of these and is perhaps his finest work to date: thoroughly researched and forcefully argued, it is likely to become one of the key texts in any discussion of slavery's role in the early republic.
Waldstreicher's primary assertion is a controversial one: namely, that the Constitution as ratified in 1788 was a pro-slavery document that, with the concessions and compromises its creators made to increase the document's chances of ratification by the state conventions, protected Southern slaveholding interests while also ensuring that slavery became irreversibly linked to the economic and political structure of the United States in the years leading up to the Civil War. As uncomfortable as the book may make readers feel, Waldstreicher's argument is meticulously supported, as he offers ample evidence of how the slavery question was discussed, debated and, in some cases, avoided throughout the closed-door meetings that produced the Constitution in 1787.
He performs a delicate balancing act, acknowledging the difficulties the framers faced in drafting a document that could be palatable to North and South alike, but also showing how it enabled a powerful centralized government to embed slavery as part of a broader attempt to define the nature of sovereignty, property and political representation in the young country.
Waldstreicher also adeptly shows how slavery played a role in political discourse in the pre-revolution years as well as in the frequently contentious public debate that preceded ratification, offering an extensive overview of the cultural and political attitudes to slavery in the revolutionary period in a little over 150 pages. The book's final chapter is perhaps its best, as the author describes how objections over the Constitution fit within the broader tradition of political dissent in America. Though the framers eventually agreed to maintain a unified front in their support of the Constitution, especially as it was turned over to the states for ratification, Waldstreicher recounts how some leading politicians - some of whom can be seen as this country's earliest abolitionists - maintained significant reservations about how parts of the document contradicted the country's egalitarian ideals.
Slavery's Constitution isn't flawless, as it sometimes feels overly dense and at times excessively dry and professorial. Moreover, the author's final statement that "...slavery did not itself cause the Civil War. Slavery's Constitution did" is a loaded and overly-simplistic comment, with Waldstreicher ignoring later events that eventually led the country to war as well as reducing the complex question of the Civil War's inevitability to a statement seemingly designed to provoke readers. Still, in a deliberate, responsible manner, Waldstreicher demonstrates how slavery remained one of the primary obstacles for the framers and, ultimately, how their decision to couch the subject in evasive language ensured slavery's perpetuation.
by David Waldstreicher
Rating: 4.0/5.0
Publisher: Hill and Wang
spectrum culture = spectrumculture.com
David Waldstreicher's Slavery's Constitution: From Revolution to Ratification is that rare history book that offers an entirely new perspective on an exhaustively-documented period of American history. Waldstreicher, a professor of history at Temple University, is a reliably consistent writer in a crowded field; his previous books Runaway America: Benjamin Franklin, Slavery, and the American Revolution and In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American Nationalism, 1776-1820 both offered fresh insights into the colonial and post-revolutionary periods. His latest effort trumps both of these and is perhaps his finest work to date: thoroughly researched and forcefully argued, it is likely to become one of the key texts in any discussion of slavery's role in the early republic.
Waldstreicher's primary assertion is a controversial one: namely, that the Constitution as ratified in 1788 was a pro-slavery document that, with the concessions and compromises its creators made to increase the document's chances of ratification by the state conventions, protected Southern slaveholding interests while also ensuring that slavery became irreversibly linked to the economic and political structure of the United States in the years leading up to the Civil War. As uncomfortable as the book may make readers feel, Waldstreicher's argument is meticulously supported, as he offers ample evidence of how the slavery question was discussed, debated and, in some cases, avoided throughout the closed-door meetings that produced the Constitution in 1787.
He performs a delicate balancing act, acknowledging the difficulties the framers faced in drafting a document that could be palatable to North and South alike, but also showing how it enabled a powerful centralized government to embed slavery as part of a broader attempt to define the nature of sovereignty, property and political representation in the young country.
Waldstreicher also adeptly shows how slavery played a role in political discourse in the pre-revolution years as well as in the frequently contentious public debate that preceded ratification, offering an extensive overview of the cultural and political attitudes to slavery in the revolutionary period in a little over 150 pages. The book's final chapter is perhaps its best, as the author describes how objections over the Constitution fit within the broader tradition of political dissent in America. Though the framers eventually agreed to maintain a unified front in their support of the Constitution, especially as it was turned over to the states for ratification, Waldstreicher recounts how some leading politicians - some of whom can be seen as this country's earliest abolitionists - maintained significant reservations about how parts of the document contradicted the country's egalitarian ideals.
Slavery's Constitution isn't flawless, as it sometimes feels overly dense and at times excessively dry and professorial. Moreover, the author's final statement that "...slavery did not itself cause the Civil War. Slavery's Constitution did" is a loaded and overly-simplistic comment, with Waldstreicher ignoring later events that eventually led the country to war as well as reducing the complex question of the Civil War's inevitability to a statement seemingly designed to provoke readers. Still, in a deliberate, responsible manner, Waldstreicher demonstrates how slavery remained one of the primary obstacles for the framers and, ultimately, how their decision to couch the subject in evasive language ensured slavery's perpetuation.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Bitterly Divided: The South's Inner Civil War, by David Williams
go on now: spectrum culture spectrumculture.com
One of the most enduring images of the Civil War is that of the unified South, a tight-knit collection of ideologically like-minded citizens bound by a common cause and united in their political, economic and social beliefs. The only problem with this down-home, corn-pone, Old Virginny nostalgia that still holds sway in America is that it's total bullshit, as historian David Williams argues in far more academic terms in Bitterly Divided: The South's Inner Civil War.
Exhaustively researched, expertly written and drawing conclusions that challenge many conventionally accepted "truths" about the nature of the wartime South, Williams convincingly shows how the Confederacy essentially fought what he refers to as a "two-front" war: one against the Union army and another one against internal Southern anti-war activism. Each chapter systematically discusses a different form of this dissension, including soldiers refusing to enlist, deserting the Confederate army and, in numbers estimated at 500,000, actually fighting on the Union side; food riots and looting sparked by wealthy planters refusing to grow staple crops while soldiers and civilians starved; and the role both slaves and poor non-slaveholding whites played in challenging the Confederacy's slave-based economy and war effort. Central to Williams' depiction of a fractured South is class conflict, which he views as one of the key drivers that sparked such resistance from these states' have-nots. The author notes that the Southern delegates who voted for secession over the objections of the Southern majority came from the wealthy landowning and slave-holding class, while soldiers' letters frequently were filled with disillusion as they described the conflict as a "rich man's war and a poor man's fight."
Williams avoids the type of Great Man history that has long plagued Civil War research. What emerges is a portrait of the South that is more complex than previous scholarly accounts and pop culture have allowed, with the author suggesting that such sources have contributed to an overly simplistic and largely inaccurate image of the South during these war years. With the stories of social consciousness and opposition to minority rule it recounts and the staggering number of primary sources it utilizes, Bitterly Divided can be read as a study of how - to borrow a term Williams uses throughout the book - "common folk" shaped both the course of their daily lives as well as the war. It is similar to the method Williams followed in previous books A People's History of the Civil War and Plain Folk in a Rich Man's War, but more consistently revelatory and easily accessible for a general audience.
Some readers will undoubtedly view Williams' book as an attack on the South. It's not. Certainly it is a critique of the Confederacy - and, more specifically, the wealthy politicians and upper class that marched the South towards secession, with disastrous results - as well as the economic and social divisions that defined the South during the war and several decades after. If anything, Bitterly Divided is a repudiation of the lost cause mythology that reduces Civil War-era Southerners to racist caricatures and ignores the overwhelming evidence that the war remained unpopular among most Southerners. Along with Drew Gilpin Faust's This Republic of Suffering, it is one of the few recent Civil War books that places the war in a new context, offering readers with a view of the South that should dispel any remaining notions of a Confederacy whose policies enjoyed broad public support throughout the South.
One of the most enduring images of the Civil War is that of the unified South, a tight-knit collection of ideologically like-minded citizens bound by a common cause and united in their political, economic and social beliefs. The only problem with this down-home, corn-pone, Old Virginny nostalgia that still holds sway in America is that it's total bullshit, as historian David Williams argues in far more academic terms in Bitterly Divided: The South's Inner Civil War.
Exhaustively researched, expertly written and drawing conclusions that challenge many conventionally accepted "truths" about the nature of the wartime South, Williams convincingly shows how the Confederacy essentially fought what he refers to as a "two-front" war: one against the Union army and another one against internal Southern anti-war activism. Each chapter systematically discusses a different form of this dissension, including soldiers refusing to enlist, deserting the Confederate army and, in numbers estimated at 500,000, actually fighting on the Union side; food riots and looting sparked by wealthy planters refusing to grow staple crops while soldiers and civilians starved; and the role both slaves and poor non-slaveholding whites played in challenging the Confederacy's slave-based economy and war effort. Central to Williams' depiction of a fractured South is class conflict, which he views as one of the key drivers that sparked such resistance from these states' have-nots. The author notes that the Southern delegates who voted for secession over the objections of the Southern majority came from the wealthy landowning and slave-holding class, while soldiers' letters frequently were filled with disillusion as they described the conflict as a "rich man's war and a poor man's fight."
Williams avoids the type of Great Man history that has long plagued Civil War research. What emerges is a portrait of the South that is more complex than previous scholarly accounts and pop culture have allowed, with the author suggesting that such sources have contributed to an overly simplistic and largely inaccurate image of the South during these war years. With the stories of social consciousness and opposition to minority rule it recounts and the staggering number of primary sources it utilizes, Bitterly Divided can be read as a study of how - to borrow a term Williams uses throughout the book - "common folk" shaped both the course of their daily lives as well as the war. It is similar to the method Williams followed in previous books A People's History of the Civil War and Plain Folk in a Rich Man's War, but more consistently revelatory and easily accessible for a general audience.
Some readers will undoubtedly view Williams' book as an attack on the South. It's not. Certainly it is a critique of the Confederacy - and, more specifically, the wealthy politicians and upper class that marched the South towards secession, with disastrous results - as well as the economic and social divisions that defined the South during the war and several decades after. If anything, Bitterly Divided is a repudiation of the lost cause mythology that reduces Civil War-era Southerners to racist caricatures and ignores the overwhelming evidence that the war remained unpopular among most Southerners. Along with Drew Gilpin Faust's This Republic of Suffering, it is one of the few recent Civil War books that places the war in a new context, offering readers with a view of the South that should dispel any remaining notions of a Confederacy whose policies enjoyed broad public support throughout the South.
Monday, April 05, 2010
Revisit: Cobb - by Al Stump
spectrum culture, spectrumculture.com, it's time you visited
Revisit is a series of reviews highlighting past releases that now deserve a second look.
An "absolute shit" was how Ernest Hemingway described him. "He had a screw loose...it was like his brain was miswired so that the least damned thing would set him off," the American writer remarked. To Harold Seymour, he was "temperamental, humorless, egocentric." "With Detroit he had no friends...they hated his guts," the historian once wrote. Philadelphia A's manager Connie Mack colorfully summarized him as a "back-alley artist" and a "no-good ruffian." Perhaps player Fred Haney said it best: "He had spells, fits. Unimportant things made him blow. Some of the boys thought it was a case of brain fever."
Such is the image of Ty Cobb that dominates Al Stump's stellar 1994 biography, now rightly regarded as one of the finest sports biographies ever penned. Expertly written and meticulously researched, Cobb is as close to legitimate historical writing as a sports-based biography can get. Stump, who previously acted as ghostwriter for Cobb's one-sided and deceptively titled autobiography My Life in Baseball: The True Record, produced the definitive and most objective examination of the ballplayer yet with this study. Written fluidly and with a flair for the both the mundane and dramatic aspect's of Cobb's life, it belongs on any serious list of the last century's best biographies.
The Ty Cobb that emerges from the pages of this biography was most often a bastard. Not in the literal sense - the ballplayer was the son of a teacher father and underage teenage bride mother - but in ways that such a term cannot possibly fully capture. Cobb was deeply flawed, both on and off the diamond; it's no wonder only three players attended his funeral in 1961. Despite his obvious admiration for Cobb as an athlete, Stump is brutally direct when examining Cobb as a person. The depiction is not pretty: short-tempered, excessively racist even by the standards of his time, negligent as a father and husband, frequently brawling with fans, teammates, opponents and even umpires upon the slightest perceived insult, Cobb comes across as a loose cannon and live wire rolled into one.
His sins were many and were almost so frequent as to border on the type of fisticuffs-infused excess usually reserved for a violent Hollywood blockbuster. Often his victims were black; in 1906 he choked a black woman, while in 1909 he somehow managed to escape serious jail time after an altercation with a hotel employee resulted in the employee being stabbed numerous times by Cobb. Whites weren't exempt from such outbursts either; in one infamous incident, Cobb climbed into the stands to rough up a crippled fan who had been jeering him during a game. The man, who only had two fingers on one hand and none on the other, was defenseless as Cobb pounded him. The crowd's cries for mercy were met with none. "I don't care if he has no legs" Cobb reportedly snarled during the attack.
But goddamn he was a fantastic player, as Stump demonstrates throughout this biography. Still today Cobb's stats - his career batting average, number of hits, stolen bases, batting titles, to mention but a few - defy believability, even though the outfielder played most of his career in the so-called deadball era. Stump convincingly shows that Cobb was essentially a scientific ballplayer, with an emphasis placed on precision hitting, sometimes-reckless base stealing and mental warfare waged against opponents and, in some cases, teammates, officials and club owners. Cobb mastered the art of antagonism on the diamond; trash talking was part of his repertoire long before it had a formal name, while his spikes-out slides frequently left opponents' legs bloodied or worse. To Stump's credit, he never gets bogged down in regurgitating Cobb's gaudy career numbers, instead carefully weaving specific plays and events into the broader narrative of the player's life.
Though Stump offers an unflinchingly honest summary of Cobb's often reprehensible actions, the author still manages to evoke some degree of sympathy for the baseball legend. The burden of coping with his father's death - shot to death by Cobb's mother under mysterious circumstances in 1905 - apparently weighed heavily on Cobb throughout his life. The degree to which that event influenced the player's actions in both his personal and professional life is of course open to conjecture, but Stump suggests the impact on Cobb's psyche was severe. Cobb in some ways was a forerunner to the modern athlete: he invested and endorsed wisely, becoming a millionaire in the process, challenged baseball's restrictive labor policies decades before free agency would become a reality, glad-handed with politicians and presidents and even established a college fund for underprivileged Georgia students. Essentially, Ty Cobb became a brand unto himself, with all the positive and negative connotations that brand evinced.
In his final years Cobb cut a pathetic figure; still prone to spasms of violence and unpredictability, his last days were spent battling the effects of cancer, diabetes and overconsumption of booze as his health - but apparently not his acerbic tongue - declined. He died with none of the fanfare and goodwill afforded his rival Babe Ruth - whose brawny, long-ball style of play Cobb loathed - and will likely be remembered as much for his sandpaper personality as his various baseball achievements. No one will ever truly know what made Cobb tick; maybe he was mentally tweaked as those who encountered him - or who otherwise felt his physical or mental wrath - him stated.
Though Cobb remains inscrutable in many ways over a century after his first professional game, Al Stump's biography offers the most complete understanding of the man that we are likely to ever have. As sports fans we sometimes tend to romanticize our sports giants and ignore any unsavory aspects that cloud such a mythical ideal. Al Stump's biography glosses over nothing; impartial as any such book should be yet written with an appreciation for Cobb's on-field accomplishments, Cobb is a brilliant, and often troubling, account of a man whose fame - and infamy - are still etched in both baseball's and America's history.
Revisit is a series of reviews highlighting past releases that now deserve a second look.
An "absolute shit" was how Ernest Hemingway described him. "He had a screw loose...it was like his brain was miswired so that the least damned thing would set him off," the American writer remarked. To Harold Seymour, he was "temperamental, humorless, egocentric." "With Detroit he had no friends...they hated his guts," the historian once wrote. Philadelphia A's manager Connie Mack colorfully summarized him as a "back-alley artist" and a "no-good ruffian." Perhaps player Fred Haney said it best: "He had spells, fits. Unimportant things made him blow. Some of the boys thought it was a case of brain fever."
Such is the image of Ty Cobb that dominates Al Stump's stellar 1994 biography, now rightly regarded as one of the finest sports biographies ever penned. Expertly written and meticulously researched, Cobb is as close to legitimate historical writing as a sports-based biography can get. Stump, who previously acted as ghostwriter for Cobb's one-sided and deceptively titled autobiography My Life in Baseball: The True Record, produced the definitive and most objective examination of the ballplayer yet with this study. Written fluidly and with a flair for the both the mundane and dramatic aspect's of Cobb's life, it belongs on any serious list of the last century's best biographies.
The Ty Cobb that emerges from the pages of this biography was most often a bastard. Not in the literal sense - the ballplayer was the son of a teacher father and underage teenage bride mother - but in ways that such a term cannot possibly fully capture. Cobb was deeply flawed, both on and off the diamond; it's no wonder only three players attended his funeral in 1961. Despite his obvious admiration for Cobb as an athlete, Stump is brutally direct when examining Cobb as a person. The depiction is not pretty: short-tempered, excessively racist even by the standards of his time, negligent as a father and husband, frequently brawling with fans, teammates, opponents and even umpires upon the slightest perceived insult, Cobb comes across as a loose cannon and live wire rolled into one.
His sins were many and were almost so frequent as to border on the type of fisticuffs-infused excess usually reserved for a violent Hollywood blockbuster. Often his victims were black; in 1906 he choked a black woman, while in 1909 he somehow managed to escape serious jail time after an altercation with a hotel employee resulted in the employee being stabbed numerous times by Cobb. Whites weren't exempt from such outbursts either; in one infamous incident, Cobb climbed into the stands to rough up a crippled fan who had been jeering him during a game. The man, who only had two fingers on one hand and none on the other, was defenseless as Cobb pounded him. The crowd's cries for mercy were met with none. "I don't care if he has no legs" Cobb reportedly snarled during the attack.
But goddamn he was a fantastic player, as Stump demonstrates throughout this biography. Still today Cobb's stats - his career batting average, number of hits, stolen bases, batting titles, to mention but a few - defy believability, even though the outfielder played most of his career in the so-called deadball era. Stump convincingly shows that Cobb was essentially a scientific ballplayer, with an emphasis placed on precision hitting, sometimes-reckless base stealing and mental warfare waged against opponents and, in some cases, teammates, officials and club owners. Cobb mastered the art of antagonism on the diamond; trash talking was part of his repertoire long before it had a formal name, while his spikes-out slides frequently left opponents' legs bloodied or worse. To Stump's credit, he never gets bogged down in regurgitating Cobb's gaudy career numbers, instead carefully weaving specific plays and events into the broader narrative of the player's life.
Though Stump offers an unflinchingly honest summary of Cobb's often reprehensible actions, the author still manages to evoke some degree of sympathy for the baseball legend. The burden of coping with his father's death - shot to death by Cobb's mother under mysterious circumstances in 1905 - apparently weighed heavily on Cobb throughout his life. The degree to which that event influenced the player's actions in both his personal and professional life is of course open to conjecture, but Stump suggests the impact on Cobb's psyche was severe. Cobb in some ways was a forerunner to the modern athlete: he invested and endorsed wisely, becoming a millionaire in the process, challenged baseball's restrictive labor policies decades before free agency would become a reality, glad-handed with politicians and presidents and even established a college fund for underprivileged Georgia students. Essentially, Ty Cobb became a brand unto himself, with all the positive and negative connotations that brand evinced.
In his final years Cobb cut a pathetic figure; still prone to spasms of violence and unpredictability, his last days were spent battling the effects of cancer, diabetes and overconsumption of booze as his health - but apparently not his acerbic tongue - declined. He died with none of the fanfare and goodwill afforded his rival Babe Ruth - whose brawny, long-ball style of play Cobb loathed - and will likely be remembered as much for his sandpaper personality as his various baseball achievements. No one will ever truly know what made Cobb tick; maybe he was mentally tweaked as those who encountered him - or who otherwise felt his physical or mental wrath - him stated.
Though Cobb remains inscrutable in many ways over a century after his first professional game, Al Stump's biography offers the most complete understanding of the man that we are likely to ever have. As sports fans we sometimes tend to romanticize our sports giants and ignore any unsavory aspects that cloud such a mythical ideal. Al Stump's biography glosses over nothing; impartial as any such book should be yet written with an appreciation for Cobb's on-field accomplishments, Cobb is a brilliant, and often troubling, account of a man whose fame - and infamy - are still etched in both baseball's and America's history.
Monday, March 08, 2010
Titus Andronicus: The Monitor
spectrumculture.com
Spectrum Culture
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Listening to The Monitor is like being shoved face-first into a musical blender, with large chunks of punk colliding with smaller fragments of horns, barroom piano, bombastic arena-ready group sing-alongs, strings, harmonicas and bagpipes. Whatever ambitious starting points its songs might have - Titus Andronicus frontman/howler Patrick Stickles describes the band's newest album as "sort of" a concept album about the Civil War - listeners shouldn't expect a song cycle about soldiers dying for nebulous causes or even South Carolinian thug Preston Brooks beating the abolitionist tar out of Charles Sumner. And that's for the best: The Monitor feels like a perfectly contemporary album that will remain relevant years from now. It is also, to borrow a term used on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line, pretty fucking amazing.
To be fair, there are scattered Civil War references throughout the 65-minute album. Several songs begin or end with musicians reciting quotes from famous dead politicians and writers immortalized in very large and professorially serious volumes about the war; the cover art, album title and 14-minute closing track "The Battle of Hampton Roads" invoke the famous ironclad; lyrics speak of "blue trampling over gray," the "terrible swift sword," white flags, gurneys, stretchers, ships heading back into port and other implements of war. Hell, opening track "A More Perfect Union" manages to incorporate parts of at least three different 19th century wartime tunes. But there are also mentions of various things Jersey - the Newark Bears, Fung Wah Bus, Garden State Parkway and a nihilistic Springsteen revision of "tramps like us/ Baby we were born to die" - as well as clever lyrical borrowings of Elvis Costello, the Velvet Underground and Bob Dylan ("I'm going back to New Jersey/ I do believe they've had enough of me"). Simply put, The Monitor might be inspired by America's bloodiest war, but its concerns are of the present time.
Throughout their debut The Airing of Grievances, Stickles raged like a sane man locked up in the basement of Ancora State Hospital. On The Monitor, his vocals are placed much higher in the mix, giving these songs the type of vocal clarity that was sometimes missing from Airing's murkier mix, without sacrificing any sense of urgency. There's still a ton of yelling and spitting - particularly in the revenge fantasy of "Richard II" and the vitriolic screed that punctuates "The Battle of Hampton Roads" - but there is also a range to Stickles' voice that the songs on Grievances only hinted at. He'll never be mistaken for a smooth crooner, but Stickles actually has an expressive, evocative voice, particularly on the slow-burn openings of "Four Score and Seven" and "To Old Friends and New." The songs' arrangements are likewise sprawling, whether it's in the two-minute claustrophobic outburst of "Titus Andronicus Forever," the sodden, sloppy honky-tonk of the appropriately boozy "Theme From 'Cheers,'" the rolling keyboards of "A Pot in Which to Piss," or the nearly-symphonic horns of "Four Score and Seven." Few albums have managed to incorporate so many different musical ideas this well; despite their lofty intentions, none of these songs ever sound bloated.
The Monitor plays like a pocket guide to existentialism without ever falling into the type of self-pity that makes emo so unbearable or the proselytizing that makes your garden variety punk band so exhausting. Coupled with the songs' furious arrangements, these sentiments are often cathartic as hell. There's death, frustration, rage - plenty of rage - thoughts of revenge ("There's only one dream that I keep close/ And it's the one of my hand at your throat") and a palpable anger that someone's been royally screwed over and isn't exactly happy with it. It's the same familiar territory as Grievances, but with a more finely-honed edge. A clear line is drawn in the sand; "it's still us against them/ And they're winning" Stickles screams at one point, repeating the line for anyone too attention-deficient to catch it the first or second time.
As on Grievances, there are also frequent bouts of self-loathing, small-town boredom, and sexual frustration - "a hand and a napkin/ When I'm looking for sex" Stickles laments at one point - which are only temporarily dulled, usually by booze or cigarettes or watching sitcoms in the basement with equally miserable friends. The album's fatalism can sometimes come on a bit thick, with a few clunky lyrics to match, but most of the time it works. Life as depicted on The Monitor may be absurd and pointless, but no one from Titus Andronicus is waving the white flag or ready to let the bastards win just yet. They'd much rather cling to their righteous pissed-off defiance and beat their instruments into submission, even if all they can ultimately do at the endgame is "urinate into the void."
Spectrum Culture
visit a lot
Listening to The Monitor is like being shoved face-first into a musical blender, with large chunks of punk colliding with smaller fragments of horns, barroom piano, bombastic arena-ready group sing-alongs, strings, harmonicas and bagpipes. Whatever ambitious starting points its songs might have - Titus Andronicus frontman/howler Patrick Stickles describes the band's newest album as "sort of" a concept album about the Civil War - listeners shouldn't expect a song cycle about soldiers dying for nebulous causes or even South Carolinian thug Preston Brooks beating the abolitionist tar out of Charles Sumner. And that's for the best: The Monitor feels like a perfectly contemporary album that will remain relevant years from now. It is also, to borrow a term used on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line, pretty fucking amazing.
To be fair, there are scattered Civil War references throughout the 65-minute album. Several songs begin or end with musicians reciting quotes from famous dead politicians and writers immortalized in very large and professorially serious volumes about the war; the cover art, album title and 14-minute closing track "The Battle of Hampton Roads" invoke the famous ironclad; lyrics speak of "blue trampling over gray," the "terrible swift sword," white flags, gurneys, stretchers, ships heading back into port and other implements of war. Hell, opening track "A More Perfect Union" manages to incorporate parts of at least three different 19th century wartime tunes. But there are also mentions of various things Jersey - the Newark Bears, Fung Wah Bus, Garden State Parkway and a nihilistic Springsteen revision of "tramps like us/ Baby we were born to die" - as well as clever lyrical borrowings of Elvis Costello, the Velvet Underground and Bob Dylan ("I'm going back to New Jersey/ I do believe they've had enough of me"). Simply put, The Monitor might be inspired by America's bloodiest war, but its concerns are of the present time.
Throughout their debut The Airing of Grievances, Stickles raged like a sane man locked up in the basement of Ancora State Hospital. On The Monitor, his vocals are placed much higher in the mix, giving these songs the type of vocal clarity that was sometimes missing from Airing's murkier mix, without sacrificing any sense of urgency. There's still a ton of yelling and spitting - particularly in the revenge fantasy of "Richard II" and the vitriolic screed that punctuates "The Battle of Hampton Roads" - but there is also a range to Stickles' voice that the songs on Grievances only hinted at. He'll never be mistaken for a smooth crooner, but Stickles actually has an expressive, evocative voice, particularly on the slow-burn openings of "Four Score and Seven" and "To Old Friends and New." The songs' arrangements are likewise sprawling, whether it's in the two-minute claustrophobic outburst of "Titus Andronicus Forever," the sodden, sloppy honky-tonk of the appropriately boozy "Theme From 'Cheers,'" the rolling keyboards of "A Pot in Which to Piss," or the nearly-symphonic horns of "Four Score and Seven." Few albums have managed to incorporate so many different musical ideas this well; despite their lofty intentions, none of these songs ever sound bloated.
The Monitor plays like a pocket guide to existentialism without ever falling into the type of self-pity that makes emo so unbearable or the proselytizing that makes your garden variety punk band so exhausting. Coupled with the songs' furious arrangements, these sentiments are often cathartic as hell. There's death, frustration, rage - plenty of rage - thoughts of revenge ("There's only one dream that I keep close/ And it's the one of my hand at your throat") and a palpable anger that someone's been royally screwed over and isn't exactly happy with it. It's the same familiar territory as Grievances, but with a more finely-honed edge. A clear line is drawn in the sand; "it's still us against them/ And they're winning" Stickles screams at one point, repeating the line for anyone too attention-deficient to catch it the first or second time.
As on Grievances, there are also frequent bouts of self-loathing, small-town boredom, and sexual frustration - "a hand and a napkin/ When I'm looking for sex" Stickles laments at one point - which are only temporarily dulled, usually by booze or cigarettes or watching sitcoms in the basement with equally miserable friends. The album's fatalism can sometimes come on a bit thick, with a few clunky lyrics to match, but most of the time it works. Life as depicted on The Monitor may be absurd and pointless, but no one from Titus Andronicus is waving the white flag or ready to let the bastards win just yet. They'd much rather cling to their righteous pissed-off defiance and beat their instruments into submission, even if all they can ultimately do at the endgame is "urinate into the void."
Monday, October 26, 2009
Revisit: The Rape of Nanking - by Iris Chang
spectrumculture.com
Revisit is a series of reviews highlighting past releases that now deserve a second look.
November 9, 2009 marks five years since author Iris Chang, after a long battle with depression, committed suicide by putting a bullet through her mouth. By all accounts Chang's mental health had been in decline in the months leading up to her death: she suffered from nervous breakdowns, sleep deprivation and mood swings that medication didn't correct, while research she was conducting for a study about the Bataan Death March reportedly increased her bouts of depression. All clichés aside, it was a tragic end to one of the most promising and polarizing writers of recent years.
Chang's legacy is primarily tied to The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II. Originally published in 1997 on the 60th anniversary of the Nanking Massacre during the second Sino-Japanese War, the book has the distinction of being the first English-language non-fiction account of one of the 20th century's darkest moments. While the massacre has long remained a source of intense debate and contention throughout Asia - much like the Holocaust and Armenian genocides, it has given birth to its own subculture of reactionaries who deny anything ever happened - Chang's study greatly contributed to raising its visibility in the States. Though for the most part the massacre remains on the outskirts of general knowledge in America, the book reached a wide audience and its lasting impact cannot be denied.
The book's greatest strengths stem from both Chang's direct writing style and the substantial number of Nanking survivors who contributed to her narrative. Chang never slips into a professorial mode - in a fit of academic snobbery, some critics would later attack the book because Chang wasn't a trained historian - and she avoids what's commonly referred to as the Goddamn Boring Approach to History. The author expertly conveys the atmosphere and political spirit of Asia as World War II approached, providing a detailed overview for readers whose knowledge of Nanking is cursory. Chang brings an obvious sense of compassion and pity for the Chinese victims of the massacre to this examination; it's worth mentioning that Chang's grandparents successfully fled the massacre and later shared their stories with the author when she was still a child. Survivor accounts are used throughout the book to devastating effect. Regardless of however faulty the human memory is, the stories recounted by the massacre's survivors go a long way in giving the reader a sense of the cultural tensions between Japan and China in the years leading up to World War II and how those tensions played out once Nanking was occupied. Journals written by two humanitarian aid workers in Nanking likewise give credibility to the massacre's scope and also offer a Western perspective on the slaughter.
Perhaps not surprisingly, few recent non-fiction books have evoked such visceral responses like The Rape of Nanking. As the book continued to sell in large numbers and inspire fierce debate, Chang's fame nearly rose to levels usually reserved for pop princesses and starlet actresses, with the author appearing on various talk shows and magazine covers. Gushing reviews poured in as Chang was given the A-list celebrity treatment, as respected newspapers, academic journals and bearded professors heaped praise upon the book's scope and the author's ability to vividly recount the horrible events that had largely been ignored by the Western world. Indeed, one of the most telling and memorable aspects of the book is how it ties the massacre into a century punctuated by similar atrocities, a trait that was identified and emphasized by the more perceptive of these reviews. With the backing of such high-profile reviews, the Nanking massacre became a cause célèbre of sorts: Chang embarked on a lengthy book tour and various speaking engagements, while some members of Congress - exhibiting the type of political savvy that's in big supply for such issues - advocated a resolution requesting an official apology from the Japanese government. It's easy to see why Chang's book evoked such responses from usually reserved and straight-laced critics, academics and politicians: The Rape of Nanking is a moving and thorough account that speaks to the violent side of human nature as well as the dignity and determination of Nanking's victims.
Yet it's impossible to consider the book above reproach. While some of its detractors clearly have political or ideological agendas that drive their criticism - most notoriously, there is a small but vocal minority who claim the entire Nanking story is fabricated - several concerns about the book's accuracy and research methods are valid. Chang sometimes lets her emotions and personal beliefs get in the way of objective historical reporting, while her amateur psychological analysis of the Japanese mindset comes precariously close to racial stereotyping. Chang's contention that Japan hasn't done enough to acknowledge Nanking is open to debate: she fails to acknowledge conciliatory steps like a 1995 government resolution and apologies from high-ranking Japanese officials, and also ignores the fact that Japanese-language works - including some memoirs by Japanese soldiers present at Nanking - continue to objectively examine the origins and impacts of the massacre. Chang's death toll numbers have likewise been called into question; the author's estimation of over 300,000 murders was challenged by both Nanking deniers and those who acknowledge the atrocities but consider such numbers grossly inflated.
Perhaps the true impact of The Rape of Nanking can be found beyond both the effusive praise and often-pointed criticism of the last 10-plus years. Chang's work unquestionably introduced many Western readers to these events for the first time, contributing to a better understanding and more complete picture of a world that would soon erupt into global warfare. The book speaks to how the past continues to shape relations between countries and how such tensions persist due to events from decades ago. Though Chang's methods can be questioned and her study sometimes tramples the fine line between reasoned argument and a writer's overzealousness, her book ranks among the most thought-provoking historical narratives ever penned. The success of The Rape of Nanking came at a cost to its author - death threats from extremists were common, while she too often viewed any criticism of the book as a personal attack - but the book has become one of those rare historical accounts that transcends academia and finds a broad audience among readers mostly unfamiliar with its story.
Revisit is a series of reviews highlighting past releases that now deserve a second look.
November 9, 2009 marks five years since author Iris Chang, after a long battle with depression, committed suicide by putting a bullet through her mouth. By all accounts Chang's mental health had been in decline in the months leading up to her death: she suffered from nervous breakdowns, sleep deprivation and mood swings that medication didn't correct, while research she was conducting for a study about the Bataan Death March reportedly increased her bouts of depression. All clichés aside, it was a tragic end to one of the most promising and polarizing writers of recent years.
Chang's legacy is primarily tied to The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II. Originally published in 1997 on the 60th anniversary of the Nanking Massacre during the second Sino-Japanese War, the book has the distinction of being the first English-language non-fiction account of one of the 20th century's darkest moments. While the massacre has long remained a source of intense debate and contention throughout Asia - much like the Holocaust and Armenian genocides, it has given birth to its own subculture of reactionaries who deny anything ever happened - Chang's study greatly contributed to raising its visibility in the States. Though for the most part the massacre remains on the outskirts of general knowledge in America, the book reached a wide audience and its lasting impact cannot be denied.
The book's greatest strengths stem from both Chang's direct writing style and the substantial number of Nanking survivors who contributed to her narrative. Chang never slips into a professorial mode - in a fit of academic snobbery, some critics would later attack the book because Chang wasn't a trained historian - and she avoids what's commonly referred to as the Goddamn Boring Approach to History. The author expertly conveys the atmosphere and political spirit of Asia as World War II approached, providing a detailed overview for readers whose knowledge of Nanking is cursory. Chang brings an obvious sense of compassion and pity for the Chinese victims of the massacre to this examination; it's worth mentioning that Chang's grandparents successfully fled the massacre and later shared their stories with the author when she was still a child. Survivor accounts are used throughout the book to devastating effect. Regardless of however faulty the human memory is, the stories recounted by the massacre's survivors go a long way in giving the reader a sense of the cultural tensions between Japan and China in the years leading up to World War II and how those tensions played out once Nanking was occupied. Journals written by two humanitarian aid workers in Nanking likewise give credibility to the massacre's scope and also offer a Western perspective on the slaughter.
Perhaps not surprisingly, few recent non-fiction books have evoked such visceral responses like The Rape of Nanking. As the book continued to sell in large numbers and inspire fierce debate, Chang's fame nearly rose to levels usually reserved for pop princesses and starlet actresses, with the author appearing on various talk shows and magazine covers. Gushing reviews poured in as Chang was given the A-list celebrity treatment, as respected newspapers, academic journals and bearded professors heaped praise upon the book's scope and the author's ability to vividly recount the horrible events that had largely been ignored by the Western world. Indeed, one of the most telling and memorable aspects of the book is how it ties the massacre into a century punctuated by similar atrocities, a trait that was identified and emphasized by the more perceptive of these reviews. With the backing of such high-profile reviews, the Nanking massacre became a cause célèbre of sorts: Chang embarked on a lengthy book tour and various speaking engagements, while some members of Congress - exhibiting the type of political savvy that's in big supply for such issues - advocated a resolution requesting an official apology from the Japanese government. It's easy to see why Chang's book evoked such responses from usually reserved and straight-laced critics, academics and politicians: The Rape of Nanking is a moving and thorough account that speaks to the violent side of human nature as well as the dignity and determination of Nanking's victims.
Yet it's impossible to consider the book above reproach. While some of its detractors clearly have political or ideological agendas that drive their criticism - most notoriously, there is a small but vocal minority who claim the entire Nanking story is fabricated - several concerns about the book's accuracy and research methods are valid. Chang sometimes lets her emotions and personal beliefs get in the way of objective historical reporting, while her amateur psychological analysis of the Japanese mindset comes precariously close to racial stereotyping. Chang's contention that Japan hasn't done enough to acknowledge Nanking is open to debate: she fails to acknowledge conciliatory steps like a 1995 government resolution and apologies from high-ranking Japanese officials, and also ignores the fact that Japanese-language works - including some memoirs by Japanese soldiers present at Nanking - continue to objectively examine the origins and impacts of the massacre. Chang's death toll numbers have likewise been called into question; the author's estimation of over 300,000 murders was challenged by both Nanking deniers and those who acknowledge the atrocities but consider such numbers grossly inflated.
Perhaps the true impact of The Rape of Nanking can be found beyond both the effusive praise and often-pointed criticism of the last 10-plus years. Chang's work unquestionably introduced many Western readers to these events for the first time, contributing to a better understanding and more complete picture of a world that would soon erupt into global warfare. The book speaks to how the past continues to shape relations between countries and how such tensions persist due to events from decades ago. Though Chang's methods can be questioned and her study sometimes tramples the fine line between reasoned argument and a writer's overzealousness, her book ranks among the most thought-provoking historical narratives ever penned. The success of The Rape of Nanking came at a cost to its author - death threats from extremists were common, while she too often viewed any criticism of the book as a personal attack - but the book has become one of those rare historical accounts that transcends academia and finds a broad audience among readers mostly unfamiliar with its story.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Rediscover: C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America (2004)
if the Confederacy had won, there's wouldn't be a spectrumculture.com. so be thankful.
Rediscover is a series of reviews highlighting past releases that have flown under the radar and now deserve a second look.
"What if?" is perhaps the most common, if largely pointless and entirely speculative, question raised about the American Civil War (or, for those stuck in an antebellum mindset, "The War of Northern Aggression"). Despite its inherent absurdity, this question's bastard offspring - the alternative history genre - remains popular, as people of a certain persuasion will never tire of fantasized accounts of how Lee's rout of them foul Yankees at Gettysburg reshaped the course of American history for the better.
C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America begins with this familiar premise of a victorious Johnny Reb army but presents the aftermath in a far different light. Directed by Kevin Willmott, this 2004 mockumentary depicts America as a slave-owning and homogeneous Christian nation of the worst kind, its citizens convinced of their racial superiority and its government dominated by leaders singularly dedicated to maintaining the segregationist status quo. Cynical without being preachy and never prone to bouts of self-righteous proselytizing, C.S.A. is alternative history that is humorous, sobering and provocative.
C.S.A. is presented as a British Broadcasting Service documentary finally being aired on American television after a couple years of censorship; hinting at the prevalence of American xenophobia, the network warns that the documentary "is of foreign origin" and "may be unsuitable for children and servants." The film is presented from three different and usually contrasting perspectives. In his objective and detached tone, the British narrator actually advances the central theme of how racial prejudices become ingrained in a given society. Historian Sherman Hoyle, portrayed with just the right amount of exaggerated Southern mannerisms by Rupert Pate, advances the official party line and offers a window into how the Confederacy's legacy has been sanitized and white-washed for mass consumption. University of Montreal professor Patricia Johnson, convincingly played by Evamarii Johnson, is essentially the voice of dissent, her calm and matter-of-fact demeanor exposing the many social injustices that followed in the wake of the Union's surrender in 1864.
Willmott subtly inverts and reshapes the country's history based on actual events. In this way, the Great Depression is ended not by an increase in manufacturing brought on by World War II, but instead by a revived slave trade, while December 7, 1941 is marked by an American attack against Japan as part of the nation's "divinely ordained quest for world domination." Willmott mixes actual reel footage with doctored or invented footage to telling effect. Abraham Lincoln is shown as a frail and defeated old man in 1905, as the historian Hoyle describes the former president as a "lonely and bitter man...almost entirely forgotten by history." Viewers are shown clips of Adolf Hitler's visit to the Confederate States in 1935; the narrator later notes that the country opposed Hitler's eradication of the Jews, instead favoring their enslavement. Demonstrating a sardonic and pessimistic humor of the darkest kind, Willmott suggests that the Confederacy's brand of racial superiority was closely mirrored by that of Hitler's. Willmott's alternative world is also notable for what it excludes: there is no Civil Rights movement or cultural advancements to speak of, the obvious implication being that the systematic persecution of minority groups would have been inevitable had the South actually won the Civil War.
Equally suggestive are the commercials and PSAs that offer glimpses into contemporary Confederate life. Slavery drives the economy in various ways, with most of the products, services and advertisements being presented ironically with a nostalgic quaintness. Several commercials focus on the trappings of fine American living: a spot for Confederate Family Insurance, its logo a dignified image of Jefferson Davis, features a pretty wife, wide-eyed daughter and smiling slave, while viewers are later reminded to tune into the next episode of American Homes and Plantations. Others are more low brow: Sambo Motor Oil is the best way to keep your authentic "Dukes of Hazzard"-model General Lee running, while a law enforcement reality program called Runaway is accompanied by a bluegrass variation of Cops' well-known theme music. Astonishingly, not all these products are as far-fetched or exaggerated as one would think. As the movie closes, it's noted that Darkie Toothpaste and the Coon Chicken Inn actually existed; in the latter case, the restaurant's entrance was that of a wide-grinning train porter.
C.S.A. isn't just a study piece for academics, as this challenging gem is thoroughly compelling and manages to avoid becoming pedantic or dogmatic. It's a film about consolidation of power and how a country's history is framed by the victors. Regardless of whatever euphemisms Southern sympathizers have used over the years to justify the Confederacy's motives - "states rights," "Southern independence" - Willmott suggests this mythologizing has masked one of the defining features of the Civil War-era South: the institutionalized belief of Caucasian superiority and its possible impacts. Whether this forecasted vision of America is accurate - indeed, it presumes that the Confederacy had a realistic chance of winning the war and ignores the fact that slavery was already in decline as the war started - is irrelevant and of course impossible to prove or disprove; in his exaggerated depiction of a country segmented along racial lines, Willmott simply follows the Confederate philosophy to its logical conclusion. With a blend of satire and social commentary, C.S.A. ultimately concludes that America would have been a far less progressive, tolerant and culturally relevant nation had the South prevailed.
Rediscover is a series of reviews highlighting past releases that have flown under the radar and now deserve a second look.
"What if?" is perhaps the most common, if largely pointless and entirely speculative, question raised about the American Civil War (or, for those stuck in an antebellum mindset, "The War of Northern Aggression"). Despite its inherent absurdity, this question's bastard offspring - the alternative history genre - remains popular, as people of a certain persuasion will never tire of fantasized accounts of how Lee's rout of them foul Yankees at Gettysburg reshaped the course of American history for the better.
C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America begins with this familiar premise of a victorious Johnny Reb army but presents the aftermath in a far different light. Directed by Kevin Willmott, this 2004 mockumentary depicts America as a slave-owning and homogeneous Christian nation of the worst kind, its citizens convinced of their racial superiority and its government dominated by leaders singularly dedicated to maintaining the segregationist status quo. Cynical without being preachy and never prone to bouts of self-righteous proselytizing, C.S.A. is alternative history that is humorous, sobering and provocative.
C.S.A. is presented as a British Broadcasting Service documentary finally being aired on American television after a couple years of censorship; hinting at the prevalence of American xenophobia, the network warns that the documentary "is of foreign origin" and "may be unsuitable for children and servants." The film is presented from three different and usually contrasting perspectives. In his objective and detached tone, the British narrator actually advances the central theme of how racial prejudices become ingrained in a given society. Historian Sherman Hoyle, portrayed with just the right amount of exaggerated Southern mannerisms by Rupert Pate, advances the official party line and offers a window into how the Confederacy's legacy has been sanitized and white-washed for mass consumption. University of Montreal professor Patricia Johnson, convincingly played by Evamarii Johnson, is essentially the voice of dissent, her calm and matter-of-fact demeanor exposing the many social injustices that followed in the wake of the Union's surrender in 1864.
Willmott subtly inverts and reshapes the country's history based on actual events. In this way, the Great Depression is ended not by an increase in manufacturing brought on by World War II, but instead by a revived slave trade, while December 7, 1941 is marked by an American attack against Japan as part of the nation's "divinely ordained quest for world domination." Willmott mixes actual reel footage with doctored or invented footage to telling effect. Abraham Lincoln is shown as a frail and defeated old man in 1905, as the historian Hoyle describes the former president as a "lonely and bitter man...almost entirely forgotten by history." Viewers are shown clips of Adolf Hitler's visit to the Confederate States in 1935; the narrator later notes that the country opposed Hitler's eradication of the Jews, instead favoring their enslavement. Demonstrating a sardonic and pessimistic humor of the darkest kind, Willmott suggests that the Confederacy's brand of racial superiority was closely mirrored by that of Hitler's. Willmott's alternative world is also notable for what it excludes: there is no Civil Rights movement or cultural advancements to speak of, the obvious implication being that the systematic persecution of minority groups would have been inevitable had the South actually won the Civil War.
Equally suggestive are the commercials and PSAs that offer glimpses into contemporary Confederate life. Slavery drives the economy in various ways, with most of the products, services and advertisements being presented ironically with a nostalgic quaintness. Several commercials focus on the trappings of fine American living: a spot for Confederate Family Insurance, its logo a dignified image of Jefferson Davis, features a pretty wife, wide-eyed daughter and smiling slave, while viewers are later reminded to tune into the next episode of American Homes and Plantations. Others are more low brow: Sambo Motor Oil is the best way to keep your authentic "Dukes of Hazzard"-model General Lee running, while a law enforcement reality program called Runaway is accompanied by a bluegrass variation of Cops' well-known theme music. Astonishingly, not all these products are as far-fetched or exaggerated as one would think. As the movie closes, it's noted that Darkie Toothpaste and the Coon Chicken Inn actually existed; in the latter case, the restaurant's entrance was that of a wide-grinning train porter.
C.S.A. isn't just a study piece for academics, as this challenging gem is thoroughly compelling and manages to avoid becoming pedantic or dogmatic. It's a film about consolidation of power and how a country's history is framed by the victors. Regardless of whatever euphemisms Southern sympathizers have used over the years to justify the Confederacy's motives - "states rights," "Southern independence" - Willmott suggests this mythologizing has masked one of the defining features of the Civil War-era South: the institutionalized belief of Caucasian superiority and its possible impacts. Whether this forecasted vision of America is accurate - indeed, it presumes that the Confederacy had a realistic chance of winning the war and ignores the fact that slavery was already in decline as the war started - is irrelevant and of course impossible to prove or disprove; in his exaggerated depiction of a country segmented along racial lines, Willmott simply follows the Confederate philosophy to its logical conclusion. With a blend of satire and social commentary, C.S.A. ultimately concludes that America would have been a far less progressive, tolerant and culturally relevant nation had the South prevailed.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Music Review - Various - 100 Greatest
An ambitious release from the Shout Factory label, 100 Greatest is a collection of, um, 500 audio clips of some of the most memorable and culturally-impacting speeches, events, pop culture figures, sports moments, and sleazy scandals of the last 100-plus years. With a primary focus on Western (i.e., American) history, and featuring an impressive amount of primary source material, it’s an outstanding and nearly exhaustive overview of the highs, lows, and in-betweens of the last century.
Organized thematically across five discs (with each disc also available individually), this set is certainly a true niche market item; it’s highly doubtful those crazy kids who are busy listening to Jonas Brothers bootlegs or watching reruns of The Hills for the show’s subtle plot nuances will have much interest in this release. Of course, their teachers will, as will history dweebs (er, fans), pop culture buffs, and those hapless guys everywhere trying to convince their skeptical dates that they are true intellectuals.
Disc 1 focuses on speeches and is perhaps the most engaging piece of this box set. The oratorical masterpieces or otherwise noteworthy speeches one would expect to find are included here – Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, FDR’s “Day of Infamy” address after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the 1968 eulogy for Robert Kennedy, and Bill Clinton’s 1992 speech at the Democratic National Convention – and are still both emotionally moving and good primers of what it takes to be a persuasive public speaker. Taken as a whole, this disc offers insights into both the art of public speaking and the impact these speeches had on a specific era.
News stories that gripped the world (many before the days of 24-hour news channels) make up disc 2; equal parts uplifting and sobering, this disc alternates between euphoric moments of human achievement and triumph over scumbags and examples of abject horror and tragedy that suggest Darwin might have been wrong. In most cases, the selections chosen paint a vivid picture of how the event was viewed in its immediate aftermath. A palpable sense of joy runs through the entries that recount the fall of the Berlin Wall and VE Day in World War II. Shock and sorrow are apparent when the various broadcasts and reports address tragedies like the 1999 Columbine shootings, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and the many assassinations that are recounted here. As an audio record of such events this disc is indispensable, though it frequently makes for unsettling, and emotional, listening.
Disc 3 is a bit dodgier. Billed as the 100 greatest personalities, the disc includes many of the usual suspects – Albert Einstein, Bob Dylan, Winston Churchill, and, er, Wernher von Braun, among others – but still excludes many historical figures. Perhaps this is inevitable; nevertheless, some the inclusions are fairly questionable – for example, cycling superman Lance Armstrong seems a much better fit on the disc 5. The exclusions could spark some serious debate; pick your favorite historical, musical, or cultural period and you will be able to name several people that “should” have been included.
Disc 4 tackles the 100 greatest scandals, itself a tough task given the seemingly endless nefarious plots, dirty deals, and shady shysters that have dotted the political and cultural landscape of the last 100 years. Undoubtedly there are enough scandals here to make a shady hedge fund manager or crooked politician proud, including the Clarence Thomas affair, the fall of Enron, and perhaps the gold standard of political scandals, the Watergate affair. Yet some of the inclusions are marginal at best, and the focus of the disc is weighted a bit too heavily on recent history; I suppose Alec Baldwin’s now infamous rant to his daughter is included for comedic relief. Other entries aren’t true scandals in the narrowest sense of the word and seem out of place here, such as Kurt Cobain’s suicide. Still, the disc is an enlightening, and in some ways perversely entertaining, look back at the parade of cons, crooks, and cheats that has marched through history.
Disc 5 includes audio clips from that most holy of sacred institutions: sports. Much of the attention is on baseball, including its dramatic highs (Willie Mays’ over-the-shoulder catch in 1954 and gimpy Kirk Gibson’s 1988 World Series home run), lows (strikes in both 1981 and 1994), and several events that for some steroidal reason have clearly lost the luster they once had (Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa’s historic 1998 seasons). Taken as a whole, this disc shows that some sports events have had a lasting cultural impact, outside of just being fodder for fantasy geeks. One doesn’t need to be a sports fanatic to enjoy this disc.
100 Greatest is a fascinating audio chronicle and is well worth the time it takes to listen to it. Although there are some shortcomings in this release – some of the inclusions and exclusions are debatable, the booklet is somewhat lacking in details, and the clips on each disc aren’t in any sort of chronological order – it is nevertheless a great snapshot of the key events and figures that have shaped modern history.
Organized thematically across five discs (with each disc also available individually), this set is certainly a true niche market item; it’s highly doubtful those crazy kids who are busy listening to Jonas Brothers bootlegs or watching reruns of The Hills for the show’s subtle plot nuances will have much interest in this release. Of course, their teachers will, as will history dweebs (er, fans), pop culture buffs, and those hapless guys everywhere trying to convince their skeptical dates that they are true intellectuals.
Disc 1 focuses on speeches and is perhaps the most engaging piece of this box set. The oratorical masterpieces or otherwise noteworthy speeches one would expect to find are included here – Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, FDR’s “Day of Infamy” address after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the 1968 eulogy for Robert Kennedy, and Bill Clinton’s 1992 speech at the Democratic National Convention – and are still both emotionally moving and good primers of what it takes to be a persuasive public speaker. Taken as a whole, this disc offers insights into both the art of public speaking and the impact these speeches had on a specific era.
News stories that gripped the world (many before the days of 24-hour news channels) make up disc 2; equal parts uplifting and sobering, this disc alternates between euphoric moments of human achievement and triumph over scumbags and examples of abject horror and tragedy that suggest Darwin might have been wrong. In most cases, the selections chosen paint a vivid picture of how the event was viewed in its immediate aftermath. A palpable sense of joy runs through the entries that recount the fall of the Berlin Wall and VE Day in World War II. Shock and sorrow are apparent when the various broadcasts and reports address tragedies like the 1999 Columbine shootings, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and the many assassinations that are recounted here. As an audio record of such events this disc is indispensable, though it frequently makes for unsettling, and emotional, listening.
Disc 3 is a bit dodgier. Billed as the 100 greatest personalities, the disc includes many of the usual suspects – Albert Einstein, Bob Dylan, Winston Churchill, and, er, Wernher von Braun, among others – but still excludes many historical figures. Perhaps this is inevitable; nevertheless, some the inclusions are fairly questionable – for example, cycling superman Lance Armstrong seems a much better fit on the disc 5. The exclusions could spark some serious debate; pick your favorite historical, musical, or cultural period and you will be able to name several people that “should” have been included.
Disc 4 tackles the 100 greatest scandals, itself a tough task given the seemingly endless nefarious plots, dirty deals, and shady shysters that have dotted the political and cultural landscape of the last 100 years. Undoubtedly there are enough scandals here to make a shady hedge fund manager or crooked politician proud, including the Clarence Thomas affair, the fall of Enron, and perhaps the gold standard of political scandals, the Watergate affair. Yet some of the inclusions are marginal at best, and the focus of the disc is weighted a bit too heavily on recent history; I suppose Alec Baldwin’s now infamous rant to his daughter is included for comedic relief. Other entries aren’t true scandals in the narrowest sense of the word and seem out of place here, such as Kurt Cobain’s suicide. Still, the disc is an enlightening, and in some ways perversely entertaining, look back at the parade of cons, crooks, and cheats that has marched through history.
Disc 5 includes audio clips from that most holy of sacred institutions: sports. Much of the attention is on baseball, including its dramatic highs (Willie Mays’ over-the-shoulder catch in 1954 and gimpy Kirk Gibson’s 1988 World Series home run), lows (strikes in both 1981 and 1994), and several events that for some steroidal reason have clearly lost the luster they once had (Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa’s historic 1998 seasons). Taken as a whole, this disc shows that some sports events have had a lasting cultural impact, outside of just being fodder for fantasy geeks. One doesn’t need to be a sports fanatic to enjoy this disc.
100 Greatest is a fascinating audio chronicle and is well worth the time it takes to listen to it. Although there are some shortcomings in this release – some of the inclusions and exclusions are debatable, the booklet is somewhat lacking in details, and the clips on each disc aren’t in any sort of chronological order – it is nevertheless a great snapshot of the key events and figures that have shaped modern history.
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Book Review: The Replacements - All Over But the Shouting: An Oral History by Jim Walsh
Jim Walsh’s The Replacements: All Over But the Shouting marks the first full-length book covering the musical misadventures of the Minneapolis band. If there ever was a band perfect for such a study, it’s the ‘Mats. Alternative before the term had yet to be co-opted and applied to everyone from Nirvana to, ugh, Better Than Ezra, the band’s reputation for inebriated concert performances that could be either transcendent or the equivalent of drunken karaoke, erratic off-stage behavior, and occasional flashes of studio brilliance is every music journalist’s wet dream. With the ‘Mats, there’s enough internal band dysfunction and tall tales to fill a Minneapolis dive bar. The trick is separating the fact from the fiction to arrive at an understanding of the band that is more than just VH-1 Behind the Music caricature. Although Walsh’s book is always engaging and often interesting, with plenty of “the fish was this big” stories, it doesn’t really add any new understanding to either the band or its place in music history.
The book does have some strong qualities to make it a worthwhile read. First, Walsh has managed to get contributions from many participants and unwitting bystanders in the ‘Mats madness, including Twin/Tone co-founder Peter Jesperson, R.E.M. guitarist and bane to flight attendants Peter Buck, and Husker Du-er Grant Hart. Hold Steady singer/indie darling Craig Finn, and purveyor of everything that is soulless and wrong with third-generation punk, Green Day singer Bill Joe Armstrong, are called in to show how the ‘Mats influenced later generations of musicians. For whatever reason, Kurt Cobain was unavailable for comment (what’s that… he did what?)
The contributors’ comments and recollections help the reader understand what the Minneapolis music scene was like in the ‘Mats heyday, and how the band was both influenced by, and helped shape, this scene. As expected, there are enough stories of the ‘Mats in-fighting, on-stage and backstage antics, and drunken exploits to satisfy those who like their musical anecdotes with a twist of self-induced implosion. Some of the stories show that the ‘Mats’ drunken hijinks have been exaggerated over time, and were, in some cases, carefully orchestrated to maintain an image.
Despite this, the book is ultimately disappointing; there are far too many gaps, holes, and missing plotlines in the ‘Mats history to ignore. Of course this is the potential drawback of any oral history; the author is ultimately dependent on his interviewees to provide good and complete details. In this case, the result is an incomplete ‘Mats history; Michael Azerrad’s chapter on the band in Our Band Could Be Your Life gives a better overview of the band in fewer pages.The book’s shortcomings include:
There are little-to-no discussions about the (potential) inspirations or origins of the ‘Mats songs, with only a few exceptions. Plenty of contributors spend pages wetting themselves over how good “Unsatisfied” is, but most other songs are ignored.
There are few actual dates given in the book; album releases and concert performances blend from one to the next as the years roll by. If you don’t know your ‘Mats history, this book isn’t a good starting point.
With the exception of one new quote from Chris Mars, all the quotes from the original band members are taken from previous interviews and news features. These quotes don’t add much to the book, especially since it’s mostly accepted that the ‘Mats tended to portray specific personas in interviews. In Walsh’s defense, it is difficult to create a complete oral history when the main players decline to comment.
With the exception of Bob Stinson, whose chemically-addled life is addressed in brutal detail, the reader gets very little sense of what the ‘Mats were like as people. Instead, the band members remain little more than musical stereotypes: Tommy Stinson comes across as nothing more than a naïve and inexperienced boy, Chris Mars is the silent member, and Paul Westerberg remains the truculent/troubled/occasionally cruel/sometimes caring singer-poet.
Overall I expected more from this book, especially given the number of people interviewed and Walsh’s extensive personal experience with the band. Like a drunkenly sloppy ‘Mats live performance or Pleased To Meet Me, the book has some high points, a few drunken low points, and a few broken bottles scattered along the way. At the end of the day the reader is left a little underwhelmed.
The book does have some strong qualities to make it a worthwhile read. First, Walsh has managed to get contributions from many participants and unwitting bystanders in the ‘Mats madness, including Twin/Tone co-founder Peter Jesperson, R.E.M. guitarist and bane to flight attendants Peter Buck, and Husker Du-er Grant Hart. Hold Steady singer/indie darling Craig Finn, and purveyor of everything that is soulless and wrong with third-generation punk, Green Day singer Bill Joe Armstrong, are called in to show how the ‘Mats influenced later generations of musicians. For whatever reason, Kurt Cobain was unavailable for comment (what’s that… he did what?)
The contributors’ comments and recollections help the reader understand what the Minneapolis music scene was like in the ‘Mats heyday, and how the band was both influenced by, and helped shape, this scene. As expected, there are enough stories of the ‘Mats in-fighting, on-stage and backstage antics, and drunken exploits to satisfy those who like their musical anecdotes with a twist of self-induced implosion. Some of the stories show that the ‘Mats’ drunken hijinks have been exaggerated over time, and were, in some cases, carefully orchestrated to maintain an image.
Despite this, the book is ultimately disappointing; there are far too many gaps, holes, and missing plotlines in the ‘Mats history to ignore. Of course this is the potential drawback of any oral history; the author is ultimately dependent on his interviewees to provide good and complete details. In this case, the result is an incomplete ‘Mats history; Michael Azerrad’s chapter on the band in Our Band Could Be Your Life gives a better overview of the band in fewer pages.The book’s shortcomings include:
There are little-to-no discussions about the (potential) inspirations or origins of the ‘Mats songs, with only a few exceptions. Plenty of contributors spend pages wetting themselves over how good “Unsatisfied” is, but most other songs are ignored.
There are few actual dates given in the book; album releases and concert performances blend from one to the next as the years roll by. If you don’t know your ‘Mats history, this book isn’t a good starting point.
With the exception of one new quote from Chris Mars, all the quotes from the original band members are taken from previous interviews and news features. These quotes don’t add much to the book, especially since it’s mostly accepted that the ‘Mats tended to portray specific personas in interviews. In Walsh’s defense, it is difficult to create a complete oral history when the main players decline to comment.
With the exception of Bob Stinson, whose chemically-addled life is addressed in brutal detail, the reader gets very little sense of what the ‘Mats were like as people. Instead, the band members remain little more than musical stereotypes: Tommy Stinson comes across as nothing more than a naïve and inexperienced boy, Chris Mars is the silent member, and Paul Westerberg remains the truculent/troubled/occasionally cruel/sometimes caring singer-poet.
Overall I expected more from this book, especially given the number of people interviewed and Walsh’s extensive personal experience with the band. Like a drunkenly sloppy ‘Mats live performance or Pleased To Meet Me, the book has some high points, a few drunken low points, and a few broken bottles scattered along the way. At the end of the day the reader is left a little underwhelmed.
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