Remembering Suze Rotolo 1943-2011

For all the current readers of Critics at Large, we've resurrected the Luna Sea Notes website to publish previous C @ L posts. The idea is to introduce readers to pieces they may have missed from earlier in our incarnation. Since we now have a huge body of work to draw from, the goal is to post articles that may also have some relevance to events of the day.

When writing a remembrance about an important cultural figure, it's one thing to discuss the importance of their work in your life. It's quite another if you also had a personal relationship with the individual. One of the most moving and beautifully written eulogies we've done on Critics at Large was Susan Green's tribute to author Suze Rotolo.   

Fifty-Two Years and Countless Cats: Good-Bye, My Friend

http://www.criticsatlarge.ca/2011/03/fifty-two-years-and-countless-cats-good.html

Someone very close to me died last week. Suze Rotolo, whom I met in 1958, had been diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer shortly before publication of her book A Freewheelin’ Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties (Broadway, 2008). The autobiography includes details of her several years with Bob Dylan. She was known around the globe as the pretty girl on the iconic cover of his second album, 1963’s A Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. To me, Suze was a politically savvy, artistically inventive, thoroughly unpretentious, loyal, smart, warm, witty, whimsical, mischievous kindred spirit. And we shared an unbridled passion for kitties, many of which found homes with us over the decades.

           

Camp Kinderland. Suze next to Susan on the far right.

We met when she was 14 and, 11 months older, I already had turned 15, both of us counselors-in-training at the leftie Camp Kinderland in Upstate New York. Every Sunday afternoon in the fall, we would head for the Village together to rendezvous with our like-minded pals at Washington Square Park, where young bohemians gathered by the hundreds to sing and play folk music. As high school seniors in 1960, Suze and I spent our Saturdays picketing Woolworth stores in Manhattan to support the sit-ins by black college students at segregated lunch counters in North Carolina. We’d find sympathetic passersby willing to boycott the retail chain, take our leaflets and sign petitions provided by the Congress of Racial Equality. On May 19 that year, we volunteered as ushers at a Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy rally in Madison Square Garden. Before it even started, someone invited us backstage to shake hands with one of the speakers, Eleanor Roosevelt – a photo op and unforgettable moment of personal history.

All in the Family

For all the current readers of Critics at Large, we've resurrected the Luna Sea Notes website to publish previous C @ L posts. The idea is to introduce readers to pieces they may have missed from earlier in our incarnation. Since we now have a huge body of work to draw from, the goal is to post articles that may also have some relevance to events of the day.

It's rare that the children of great artists ever succeed in carrying on the family legacy. The Wilson daughters didn't eclipse the Beach Boys. Ziggy Marley for all his talents hasn't transcended the work of Bob. But Dweezil Zappa with his band Zappa Plays Zappa has both captured and made fresh the music of his father Frank Zappa. When Kevin Courrier and John Corcelli considered this legacy between father and son, they found a link in this joint review. 

Father and Son: The Zappa Legacy

http://www.criticsatlarge.ca/2010/08/father-and-son-zappa-legacy.html

In the mid-nineties, when American composer Frank Zappa's full catalogue finally became available on CD, it was a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it was fulfilling to finally see his vast body of work - at that time including over fifty albums that spanned his rock, jazz and classical material from 1959 to 1994 - available in a digital format. But it was also deeply disappointing that, in his preparation for these releases, he felt compelled to remix and recut albums (Freak Out! Hot Rats), or poorly remaster them (Weasels Ripped My Flesh, Chunga's Revenge, You Are What You Is, Tinsel Town Rebellion). In the case of We're Only in it For the Money (1967) and Cruising with Ruben & the Jets (1968), he even went so far as to erase the original rhythm section and re-record the backing tracks with contemporary musicians. The justified outcry of fans concerning We're Only in it For the Money had some impact in causing Zappa, before his tragic death from prostate cancer in 1993, to re-release the CD from an original vinyl recording. Since apparently there weren't as many fans of Crusing, his marvellous R&B doo-wop hybrid, that album didn't get the same treatment until now. Thanks to the Zappa family, who have been springing surprises from Frank's vault of tapes for the last number of years, the original recording of Cruising with Ruben & the Jets (along with alternate takes and mixes) is finally available under the new title Greasy Love Songs (just order from Zappa.com).

The Voice of Schmilsson

For all the current readers of Critics at Large, we've resurrected the Luna Sea Notes website to publish previous C @ L posts. The idea is to introduce readers to pieces they may have missed from earlier in our incarnation. Since we now have a huge body of work to draw from, the goal is to post articles that may also have some relevance to events of the day. 

One of the great things a documentary, good or bad, can do for a writer is to give him also an opportunity to delve in the life and work. It's even more enjoyable when it gets to be an artist whose work has never been fully appreciated like pop singer Harry Nilsson.

  

Dreams Are Nothing More Than Wishes: Who is Harry 

Nilsson (And Why is Everybody Talkin’ About Him)?

http://www.criticsatlarge.ca/2011/01/dreams-are-nothing-more-than-wishes-who.html

There couldn't be a more apt title for John Scheinfeld’s engaging documentary on the late singer/songwriter Harry Nilsson than Who is Harry Nilsson (And Why is Everybody Talkin’ About Him)? Despite the fact that Nilsson was both a prolific pop songwriter and a gifted tenor, perhaps what made Nilsson less than a household name was that he didn't comfortably fit into the niche of a traditional pop crooner. It also took Scheinfeld almost four years to get a distributor for his movie about him. But it’s definitely worth the wait.

Who is Harry Nilsson (And Why is Everybody Talkin’ About Him)? examines with both insight and empathy the life of a pop artist whose pining voice cast a larger shadow on a tragic life. While he wrote songs that became hits for The Monkees (“Cuddly Toy”), Three Dog Night (“One”) and Blood, Sweat and Tears (“Without Her”), his only chart successes were other people’s tunes. “Everybody’s Talkin’” (made famous in Midnight Cowboy) was written by Fred Neil, while the Grammy-winning “Without You” was originally a track by the British rock group Badfinger. Nilsson never performed concert tours to promote his albums and his studio work itself became unique in that he did all his own overdubbed harmony vocals. With the help of top-notch players (from Little Feat’s Lowell George to keyboardist Nicky Hopkins), Nilsson became an insolated pop force, someone hidden away in the imagined world of a recording studio. From there, his lovely and quirky ballads and anthems could bring a youthful longing to unrequited wishes.

Lennonology

For all the current readers of Critics at Large, we've resurrected the Luna Sea Notes website to publish previous C @ L posts. The idea is to introduce readers to pieces they may have missed from earlier in our incarnation. Since we now have a huge body of work to draw from, the goal is to post articles that may also have some relevance to events of the day.

Usually when John Corcelli reviews music he sticks to one album per review. But when the John Lennon signature box set came out, he made it his mission to take a crash course on the ex-Beatle to write this fine overview of Lennon's solo work. 

Borrowed Time: Listening to John Lennon's Signature Box 

Set

http://www.criticsatlarge.ca/2010/11/borrowed-time-listening-to-john-lennons.html

“I’ve always been slightly jealous of the world for having had more time with my father than I did” – Sean Lennon

Sean Lennon makes a valid point considering that he was just 5 years old when his father died. Consequently, our own memories of John Lennon resonate differently. But, in considering the music, we have to take into account Lennon’s relationship with his family and his openly political activities. This is especially true when you examine his entire body of work, as collected in the recently released Signature Box Set. Remastered by the same team that did the excellent work on The Beatles’ mono and stereo box sets from last year, this collection reflects the same standard of audio excellence. The set features Lennon’s singles, demos and completed albums, including a brochure of essays from Yoko Ono, Julian Lennon and his half-brother, Sean. The set also includes a book examining Lennon’s short life and a print of one of his ink illustrations. I took the time to listen to these albums once again in chronological order just as they were intended.

Where One Day The Twain Shall Meet

For all the current readers of Critics at Large, we've resurrected the Luna Sea Notes website to publish previous C @ L posts. The idea is to introduce readers to pieces they may have missed from earlier in our incarnation. Since we now have a huge body of work to draw from, the goal is to post articles that may also have some relevance to events of the day.


Around this time last year, both Mark Twain of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Mark Knopfler of Dire Strait's "Money For Nothing," came under attack by cultural commissars who felt both works to contain offensive language and views. During their efforts to censor both works, many writers came out to challenge them including Kevin Courrier.

The Two Marks: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn & Money For Nothing

Brian Gable/The Globe and Mail (Jan. 14, 2010)

If we needed further proof that the standards of literacy and education in North America have diminished rapidly, the recent decisions to censor both Mark Twain's classic novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Dire Strait's satirical song "Money For Nothing" now takes us to pretty embarrassing new depths. That these two events should bookend the current heated debate over the contribution of political rhetoric to the tragic Arizona shootings is hardly accidental. We seem to have lost touch with the true meaning of speech, so much so, that we can no longer tell the difference between what's morally offensive and what isn't.

Just the Facts

For all the current readers of Critics at Large, we've resurrected the Luna Sea Notes website to publish previous C @ L posts. The idea is to introduce readers to pieces they may have missed from earlier in our incarnation. Since we now have a huge body of work to draw from, the goal is to post articles that may also have some relevance to events of the day.

Sadly, it's becoming more and more rare that we get good critical biographies. Instead of making sense of an artist's work, many books today simply lay out the facts, as if the details of an artist's life tells us everything we need to know about the subject. (In many ways, it's no different than a film critic who spends most of his time summarizing the plot rather than explaining what works and what doesn't and why.) John Corcelli wisely seized on this issue when he took on Robin D.G. Kelley's exhaustive and celebrated book on jazz pianist Thelonious Monk.

Enigma: Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (Free Press, 2009)

http://www.criticsatlarge.ca/2010/09/enigma-thelonious-monk-life-and-times.html

After spending 14 years researching and writing Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (coming out in paperback in November 2010), Robin D. G. Kelley was probably surprised that the book received limited acclaim. As an academic whose written many books about the African-American experience (Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics and the Black Working Class), I believe Kelley wanted to get this story right by working hard at researching the details of Monk’s life from the time he was born until he died. But I think he would have been more successful if he approached the life of this groundbreaking jazz pianist through his art rather than as a subject for biographical study. Consequently, Kelley fails to generate enough critical ideas of his own other than what he learned from all of the facts, interviews and tapes that he accessed. Kelley’s impressions of Monk and his music become stifled in sluggish linguistics with only a few bright lights of analysis and opinion.

While Monk is one of the most important composers in jazz, most people today would be more familiar with the name Louis Armstrong than they would with the equally profound Thelonious Monk. Because without Monk, jazz wouldn’t have evolved from the swing sounds of the Big Band era into the post-war style of the so-called, be-bop generation. Monk was its originator even if the most famous be-bop musician, Charlie Parker, popularized the form. In his book, Kelley explains that this lack of recognition as the founder of the music plagued Monk for his entire life. It was only after Monk’s death in 1982 that he finally got his due and was given the accolades he so rightfully earned. Monk’s unique approach to the music still offers the listener a wide emotional range: from humour to pathos; an impressionistic musical canvass that continues today to reward our ears.

Oh, Contrarian!

For all the current readers of Critics at Large, we've resurrected the Luna Sea Notes website to publish previous C & L posts. The idea is to introduce readers to pieces they may have missed from earlier in our incarnation. Since we now have a huge body of work to draw from, the goal is to post articles that may also have some relevance to events of the day.

One of the more difficult tasks for a critic today is just to be one. So much of arts criticism now has turned into a form of consumer reporting making it more difficult to find contrary views that are intelligent and nuanced. Consumer reporting is the easy road for a number of reasons. First of all, the critic doesn't have to be smart, have any ideas, or thoughts, just provide a thumb that can go up or down. Editors and producers are therefore relieved housing a consumer reporter because their reviewer won't say anything that will draw heat from above and threatening everybody's job security. They also won't say anything that will offend advertisers who perhaps pay the publication's bills. Over the years, the line between criticism and consumer reporting has blurred to the point that when someone does go against the grain of popular wisdom, it stirs up discussion.

Hence, we have this wonderful specimen of criticism from Laura Warner on singer Jill Barber's latest CD. Barber being a huge favourite at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (where Laura Warner works) made the task at hand a little delicate for the writer. Nevertheless, with some encouragement from her editors, she wrote one of our best pieces which did indeed start a lively debate. Which is exactly what criticism is supposed to do.  

Not Mischievous Enough For Me: Jill Barber's Mischievous 

Moon

http://www.criticsatlarge.ca/2011/04/not-mischievous-enough-for-me-jill.html

By the time you read this, chances are I will have been clubbed over the head with a Vinyl Café mug, my hands and feet bound and my unconscious body stuffed into a trunk. When I come to, I’ll find myself in a seemingly abandoned warehouse, which serves as a re-education facility funded by the Canada Council for the Arts. What I’m about to declare is extremely dangerous, contentious, and down-right scandalous: I just don’t understand the appeal of Jill Barber. For this sweet, beautiful, and talented singer has converted everybody to her quivering coos. Everyone but me. Unfortunately her latest album, Mischievous Moon, has failed to change my mind.

Originally based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, the popular singer-songwriter now calls Vancouver, B.C. home. Barber first broke into the music scene in 2002 with her debut album A Note To Follow So. An EP, Oh Heart, was then released in 2004. For All Time followed in 2006. Her folksy sound, her signature warbly voice, and (very) mellow acoustics caught the attention of the industry, which nominated her for both the East Coast Music Awards – she took home two in 2007 including Female Artist of the Year - and the Juno Awards. In 2008, Jill released her prolific endeavor, Chances, abandoning the coffee shop folk scene and replacing it with old-fashioned, jazz tinged, romantic melodies. Mischievous Moon (like Chances) also includes collaborations with its producer, Les Cooper, as well as a track co-written with legend Ron Sexsmith.

The Mono Variations

For all the current readers of Critics at Large, we've resurrected the Luna Sea Notes website to publish previous posts. The idea is to introduce readers to pieces they may have missed from earlier in our incarnation. Since we now have a huge body of work to draw from, the goal is to post articles that may also have some relevance to events of the day.

In the last few years, the release of The Beatles catalogue in its original mono, as well as Bob Dylan's first eight albums, encouraged John Corcelli to enter into the discussion which his usual candid clarity.

One Brain, Two Ears: Stereo vs Mono

http://www.criticsatlarge.ca/2010/11/one-brain-two-ears-stereo-vs-mono.html

There's a rather humorous video on YouTube making the cyber-rounds as of late. It's called "Bob Dylan Wants You to Embrace Mono" put out by Columbia Records to promote their new release of the box-set Bob Dylan: The Original Mono Recordings, which contains the first 8 albums by Bob Dylan in mono. The movie is presented as an educational film from the 1960s using a ton of archival footage of teenagers at play. In between, a pseudo-professor talks about recorded sound and how the brain is tricked into hearing things in mono as opposed to stereo, which, it is suggested, is bad for your brain (click here for the video). The argument is good one as we come to terms with technology and the ever-changing marketing of music around the world. But what appears to be a commercial, corporate gimmick to sell more CDs has real value when assessing how we hear music and what the new technology has granted us regarding the quality of those sounds.