The Endorser

Capturing the 'youth vote' via Rock Star endorsements is nothing new -- just ask Tommy James

By Steven Rosen

The presidential campaign shifts into super-high gear this week, as the Democratic National Convention begins in Denver.

And if presumptive nominee Barack Obama emerges from Denver as the party's standard-bearer, he will be able to count on active support from many Rock and Pop stars. Already, according to Wikipedia, such names as 50 Cent, Arcade Fire, Sheryl Crow, The Decemberists, Wyclef Jean, John Mellencamp, Pearl Jam, R.E.M., Bruce Springsteen, Rufus Wainwright, Kanye West -- even Bob Dylan -- have endorsed Obama.

While Obama is bringing it to a new level, support for Democratic presidential candidates by Rock stars (as well as other performers of youth-oriented or -originated music) is hardly new. But one man who could make a strong case for pioneering it, were he alive today, would be Hubert Horatio Humphrey.

In 1968, while serving as Vice President and running for President, Humphrey campaigned with Tommy James & the Shondells, whose Garage-Rock-tinged dance tunes like "Hanky Panky" and "Mony Mony" had brought them Top 40 fame at the time. The band played at numerous Humphrey campaign stops. (Humphrey also received an endorsement from James Brown that year.)

The year 1968 was when Boomer-generation young people made their voices heard in politics -- usually in protest, sometimes violently. Though a Democrat and mainstream liberal, then-57-year-old Humphrey was the target for a lot of that protest. Humphrey had trouble breaking with President Lyndon Johnson over the Vietnam War and was nominated amid the police riot against youthful demonstrators during the infamous Chicago Democratic convention. As a result, he couldn't quite unite his party and just barely lost to Richard Nixon.

As The Charlotte Observer reported when the Shondells opened for Humphrey in October, "For the first time, presidential candidates are catering to the growing bloc of young people just under 21, or over the 18-year-old voting age in some states." (This was before the 1971 federal law giving 18-year-olds the right to vote.)

Today, James -- a Dayton native -- is a youthful-looking 61 and on the oldies circuit. A few months ago, he played a sweaty, vigorous set at Grand Victoria Casino in Rising Sun, Ind., working loudly with a younger band -- to an older crowd -- through his late-1960s hits, which also included "I Think We're Alone Now," "Mirage" and "Sweet Cherry Wine."

Backstage before the show, dressed in a "Censorship Off/Free Speech On" T-shirt, James eagerly recalled his work for Humphrey in 1968. With him was an original Shondell, bassist Mike Vale, who had come to visit.

"We had been asked to play (in May) for the Democratic Party at a generic rally," he says. "We weren't endorsing any candidate. We played in the afternoon and there war protesters calling us sellouts." (James says he believes the Lovin' Spoonful also played.)

After Sen. Robert Kennedy was assassinated on the night of the June California Democratic primary, James says he went into a funk for several weeks. That was broken when Humphrey's secretary called his record label to see if he might be able to appear with the Vice President after the convention, assuming Humphrey won the nomination. James agreed, thinking anyone would be better than Nixon.

The Shondells first opened for Humphrey at a rally in Wheeling, W. Va., and met the candidate and his wife, Muriel. "We became his opening act," James says.

For Humphrey, James figured, his band was a way to attract young people and increase crowds. But, he now surmises, there was more to it than that.

"He wanted very much to be taken seriously by young people," James says. "He wanted to know how he was viewed, and I was 21 years old."

As a result, James says, a friendship developed that included late-night, post-rally talks on a variety of topics. At one point, he says, Humphrey asked his take on calling for a national referendum on ending the war. Another time, James says, he was asked to become Humphrey's advisor on youth affairs if he won the election.

"He wanted everything from Rock festivals to an open dialogue with young people," James says. "It really bothered him he was thought of in such a terrible way, as a warmonger."

After the election, the Shondells made a splash with a new sound, the neo-psychedelic Pop Rock of "Crimson and Clover" and "Crystal Blue Persuasion." Humphrey wrote the liner notes to the resulting album, Crimson & Clover.

Hubert Horatio "Skip" Humphrey III, 66, the vice president's son and a former Minnesota elected official himself, was eager to talk about James' relationship with his father.

"I know that Tommy James and his group were helpful in the 1968 campaign," he says in a phone interview from his Minnesota home. "My wife and I had an opportunity to be with them a couple of times. I don't recall the specifics, but I can assure you that Tommy James and his group were supportive of Dad and helpful."

Also eager to speak about the relationship was the late vice president himself -- courtesy of a tape of a post-election radio interview sent by James in a package of newspaper clips and other corroborative materials.

"We used to sit up late at night and discuss politics after they'd entertain for us," Humphrey says on the tape. "Gee, they're fine young men. At midnight, we'd sit around and have a visit and talk about what had happened during the day. These are bright young men that want to know a lot about their country."

Incidentally, James now favors Obama.

"What we need is a breath of fresh air," he says. "I really believe what we need most is somebody to make us feel good about ourselves."

From Cincinnati CityBeat
Week of Aug. 27, 2008

srosen@citybeat.com

Batman vs. Mad Men

Dissecting the big fictional dramas of the moment
By Steven Rosen
From Cincinnati CityBeat
08/17/2008

I can mark my life as a Baby Boomer -- and maybe, too, our changing society -- by the ongoing waves of cultural impact Batman has had. As Boomers have grown into adults, Batman has stayed with us as an icon worthy of discussion and analysis. But now, while the latest Caped Crusader juggernaut, the movie The Dark Knight, might just be his biggest ever, it seems time to move on.

As cultural impact goes, I -- and apparently a lot of other people -- have discovered something far more worthy than comic-book-derived movies for revealing the American way: The AMC cable television series Mad Men. Created by Matthew Weiner and set in the Kennedy-esque early 1960s, it is nuanced and sophisticated, full of specific references to its time yet also universal in what it says about conflicted ambitions. It also lays bare how pop culture is actually manufactured and manipulated.

It gets inside the lives and minds (and campaigns) of the kind of real people -- Madison Avenue advertising executives, thus its title -- who subtly and secretly shaped our societal tastes in that epochal era. In fact, it's set in a time when the DC comic book of Batman was first appealing to Boomers -- an accessible hero with exceptional but not superhuman strengths who lived a mysteriously secret life not all that removed from the kind a pre-teen could imagine for himself in fantasies.

Later came a different kind of comic book hero for Boomer teens -- the star of the 1966 tongue-in-cheek Batman television series. Its Batman became something new: Pop Art with a capital P. Because of that, we've subsequently tended to take Batman seriously as art.

So maybe the desire to treat Dark Night the same way is just an old habit. Yet I don't want to dismiss Christopher Nolan's film too flippantly. It has dominated the box office for four weekends now and has already eclipsed $400 million at the box office. It continues Nolan's updating of Tim Burton's popular 1989 Batman film, as well as of the 1985 comic The Dark Knight Returns.

Christian Bale's angst-ridden, unhappy Batman in The Dark Knight is a somber take on the hero -- he seems almost a gravel-voiced Angel of Death rather than an object of inspiration. There is complexity and tragedy in Aaron Eckhart's turn as prosecutor Harvey Dent. And the late Heath Ledger's neurotic, sadomasochistic turn as the uber-terrorist Joker is arresting, especially for making people wonder, as critic David Denby has noted, if the actor ruined his health to inhabit the Joker's manic, bizarre psyche.

Many see in The Dark Knight's exaggerated depiction of good and evil a grand artistic statement about the mood of post-9/11 America, especially life in its fearful big cities. But I find that it pushes its archetypes into stereotypes and in the end exploits the Joker's cruelty by repeating it over and over, continually using a Sophie's Choice-like plot point for cynical ends.

On the other hand, in Mad Men Jon Hamm's Don Draper -- creative director with Madison Avenue ad agency Sterling Cooper -- is one of the most complex characters ever created for television, right up there with Tony Soprano. He's also a sort of dark knight himself. Like Batman, he has a secret identity he's trying to hide -- he walked away from his past to re-create himself for the 1960s. A self-made man.

He broods, usually with mixed drinks and cigarettes, but occasionally wonders what the truth of life is like. Not the ad agency version, but the kind depicted in books like Frank O'Hara's poetry collection Meditations in an Emergency, which he reads in his more private moments.

Three episodes into this second season, Mad Men already has delineated the shadings between good and evil -- between a sense of fairness and callousness -- in a way far more profound than anything in The Dark Knight.

It comes when the agency's staff, like the nation, is shocked by an American Airlines crash just outside New York City. While the rest of the staff listens to the radio, Draper -- unsentimental man that he is -- whips into action, ordering the radio off and canceling his company's ad for Mohawk Airlines that had been ready to run. He then orders his junior executives to devise a new campaign for Mohawk.

But Draper is actually this firm's moral compass, conflicted as he is. Partner Roger Sterling (John Slattery) cynically sees the crash as an opportunity to dump regional Mohawk and pursue American as a new "crisis" client. When Draper resists, asking, "What kind of agency are we," Sterling answers, "The kind where everyone has summer homes." Ledger's Joker couldn't say anything more devastating.

Against Mad Men, The Dark Knight is teen/young adult stuff. This time around, I'm not going to treat it like culture-defining art. Things have changed.

srosen@citybeat.com

How's This for a Campaign Issue? Blogs for Everyone!

By Steven Rosen

(adapted from Cincinnati CityBeat)

A friend of mine, a Democrat who believes "free trade" has been a giveaway of American jobs with little to nothing in return, scoffs at those who say the solution is to retrain all those who have lost their blue-collar livelihoods to cheaper, overseas sources.

"What are we going to do," he says. "Give them all a computer and tell them to start their own Web site?"

He was being bitterly facetious. But to sidestep the "free trade" debate for a minute -- though I do worry we've lost much more than we've gained from this as a nation -- perhaps he has a point. Maybe the best way, the most artistically creative and environmentally sensitive way, out of our current economic mess (especially in Rust Belt states) is for the government to offer financial incentives for people to start up and operate blogs.

Not a fortune, but enough to pay their monthly mortgages. Or medical insurance. Or gas bills. And it can be funded by raising the taxes on the rich, excessive oil-company profits, and maybe by imposing a levy on junk e-mail. I realize some people might not like this, but they can then apply for a subsidy to start a blog complaining about it. (There ought to be, however, an income cut-off for support; Bill Gates or Courtney Love can blog on their own dime.)

That's right. Blogs for everyone!

It's such a good idea that I'll bet whoever would support it first, Obama or McCain, could clinch the election. My guess, however, is that Obama would be far more likely to propose it than McCain. By putting tens of millions of Americans to work in the new information economy, it could stimulate the economy. Those who create demand for their blogs might find themselves in demand as experts of one sort or another, or even literary/cultural figures of influence. Yahoo and Microsoft -- or Hollywood -- might even offer big bucks for a piece.

There are already 112 million blogs worldwide, according to search engine Technorati, and these diary-like Internet web-logs provide 112 million running commentaries -- sometimes with video footage and sound -- on every aspect of politics, the arts, religion, sports, sex ... even daily updates on flying-saucer sightings. They comprise a genuine populist, democratic communications network. They're a public service and a worldwide and nationwide civic asset.

But many need money to keep going. One Cincinnati-based blogger, fantasy-film cinephile Tim Lucas, recently wondered on his Video WatchBlog site (www.videowatchdog.blogspot.com) whether to give it all up. "... Blogging typically invigorates a writer's productivity; it has encouraged me to produce writing that I wouldn't have produced otherwise, for lack of an outlet or market -- but I wasn't paid for any of it," he wrote.

So far he hasn't, but why not let the government help him out? He helps popular culture out tremendously by researching, for instance, actress Mimsy Farmer's earliest TV appearance or defending a film like Speed Racer.

There is a precedent: During the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's administration funded a Federal Writers' Project as part of the New Deal. During its existence, it employed some who went on to become our most important writers once the Depression passed: John Cheever, Ralph Ellison, Studs Terkel, John Steinbeck and more.

This could do the same, at the same time helping the current almost-Recession pass. Let the government step in now with incentives to create a nation of bloggers. And next, maybe, pay us an hourly wage to read them.

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CONTACT STEVEN ROSEN: srosen@citybeat.com
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A Concert and CDs Worthy of Attention

By Steven Rosen

Ponderosa Stomp
House of Blues, New Orleans, LA
April, 2008

If you could stop dancing to the sinewy, organ-pumping, garage-rock rhythms of Question Mark & the Mysterians' "I Can't Get Enough of You, Baby," "Girl (You Captivate Me)" and "96 Tears" long enough to stare at 62-year-old Mr. Mark himself, you might want to ask him directions to the Fountain of Youth. His ageless, creaseless face hidden behind shades and a giant cowboy hat, he brought the seventh annual Ponderosa Stomp in New Orleans to a thrilling and very late-night conclusion. Once again, this festival organized by anesthesiologist/record-collector Ira Padnos and dedicated to "unsung heroes of rock 'n' roll" proved its point—musicians over 50 (heck, over 80!) can still rock.

Rockabilly dominated the first night: an exuberant Dale Hawkins tackled his classic "Suzie Q"; Roy Head powered through "Treat Her Right"; the Collins Kids' Larry Collins played the fastest double-neck guitar this side of Les Paul while sister Lorrie beamed as she sang "Hoy, Hoy." On the second night, Ronnie Spector belted out Ronettes' classics with a tight, large band. "Isn't she beautiful," one lady cried, standing on a staircase to see 65-year-old Ronnie sing the Students' immortal "I'm So Young" in a voice full of youthful, melancholy longing. Yet another of the endless highlights was Austin garage-rock god Roky Erickson, his mental instability under control, playing ragingly with the Explosives.

Honoring Louisianans, the Stomp featured Dr. John on piano, reprising his earliest songs, while the now-blind old man who produced/arranged him, Wardell Quezergue, ecstatically conducted an accompanying band. Bluesman Lazy Lester showed up to play his "Ponderosa Stomp," the instrumental that gave the event its name. There was so much excellence that the exhilaration could be exhausting—except everybody felt too young to get tired.

From Elmore Magazina

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Neil Diamond
Home Before Dark
Columbia Records

Neil Diamond’s Second Coming on his Rick Rubin-produced albums, first 12 Songs and now Home Before Dark, owes as much to Diamond as to the producer’s ability to coax sensitive, subtle musical approaches from his older artists. Diamond toned down his own earnest (and sometimes bombastic) overemoting in favor of real singing, with real warmth, and also started writing less obtuse lyrics that address his maturity in a positive but not vacuous way.

“The Power of Two” is upbeat and engaging; “Another Day” (a duet with Natalie Maines) exudes shadowy, dreamlike mystery. On Home, Diamond and Rubin favor fairly sophisticated arrangements – strings, horns and woodwinds – but also welcome a bedrock, folk-rock-values band that includes Benmont Tench on keyboards and Mike Campbell and Smokey Hormel on guitar and bass. Diamond’s own acoustic guitar allows you to hear the connection between this work and his Bang Records hits of the 1960s– the urgent, sometimes-foreboding romanticism of “Cherry Cherry” or “You Got to Me” creeps through in the gorgeous “If I Don’t See You Again” or “Don’t Go There.”

Diamond could have been content to remain the Jimmy Buffet of wealthy older romantics; instead he’s stretching for musical relevance.

Standout Tracks: “Another Day (That Time Forgot),” “Home Before Dark”

From Blurt Online

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Jonathan Richman
Because Her Beauty Is Raw and Wild
Vapor Records

When a friend learned Jonathan Richman does Leonard Cohen’s “Here It Is” on his new Because Her Beauty Is Raw and Wild, he said that was perfect – the man who never grows up covers the man who never was young. And there is something about Richman’s goofy wide-eyed innocence – and the openhearted earnestness of his singing – that makes him eternally childlike. But that doesn’t mean his subject matter is juvenile. Or that at age 57 he isn’t a perceptive man of sensitivity and conscience.

Proving that point is his album’s extraordinary closing song, so sad and wise. “As My Mother Lay Lying” is a gentle ballad about spending time with his dying mother. There’s not a touch of maudlin sentimentality or false witness to it, just honest observations uncorrupted by clichés or adult self-consciousness. It’s hard to take; yet it’s also – in its humanistic profession of love – sweet. I can’t think of another songwriter who could face this subject so frankly, yet remain so optimistic about life.

Elsewhere, while there is some filler and the overall sound is familiar to Richman’s fans – nylon-stringed acoustic guitar accompanied by Tommy Larkin’s drums – the songwriting is deeper than usual. Richman seems preoccupied with confronting darkness and life’s disappointments without giving in. “Our Party Will Be on the Beach Tonight” flirts with a muted but scarily discordant arrangement and “Our Drab Ways” and “Time Has Been Going By So Fast” are Richman’s way of pleading for us to stop to appreciate pleasure. Richman thinks so much of “When We Refuse to Suffer” he has recorded two versions – acoustic and a rare electric take. It’s his philosophy of living with eyes (and heart) wide open, and it rocks.

But I have to quarrel with a point he makes: People don’t necessarily take anti-depressants because they “refuse to suffer.” Sometimes they do it because they suffer too much. By the way, his take on “Here It Is” is straightforward but melancholy, featuring his musical simplicity applied to Cohen’s lyrical complexity. And it works – it becomes a slightly unusual folk singer’s Kaddish-like tribute to family. Jonathan Richman is growing up, indeed, in a way that could serve as a role model for his generation.

Standout Tracks: “Our Drab Ways,” “As My Mother Lay Lying”

From Blurt Online

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Emmylou Harris: All I Intended to Be
[Nonesuch]

The 1995 album Wrecking Ball towers as the Mount Everest of Emmylou Harris’ recording career. Before that, she was a very hip country neo-traditionalist—like Dwight Yoakam—with a connoisseur’s taste in folk music and rock ‘n’ roll, thanks to her internship with Gram Parsons. Following it, she was a white-haired pop goddess.

Surrounded by Daniel Lanois’ cosmic wash of a rock production, singing ethereally as if wandering through a David Lynch-directed dream, she established a hierarchy of our greatest living singer-songwriters (plus Jimi Hendrix) by whom she chose to cover.

Harris has been amazingly prolific since Wrecking Ball, especially singing with others or as part of multi-artist projects. But she’s been cautious about solo albums with new studio material; All I Intended To Be is just her third major-label effort in that vein, following Red Dirt Girl and Stumble Into Grace.

It’s been hard telling where she wanted to go on her last two records, which were nevertheless musically strong. Would she continue with Lanois-style sonic mysticism, develop her own voice as a songwriter, or step back a few steps into being a more traditional-sounding interpreter? Turns out she gets the balance just right on All I Intended. Produced by Brian Ahern, the record recalls doesn't try to recreate Wrecking Ball, while also being earthy and more direct.

There is still the sense of nature-inspired awe that carries a spiritual dimension, as on Jack Wesley Routh’s “Shores of White Sand” and Patty Griffin’s “Moon Song.” But there are also songs (like Harris’ own “Broken Man’s Lament,” about a lonely auto mechanic whose wife left him to sing like Patsy Cline) that simply exhibit strong Americana storytelling in the John Prine tradition. Elsewhere, she opts for the soulfully spare, like a duet with John Starling on Billy Joe Shaver’s “Old Five and Dimers Like Me.”

For a while now, Harris has been moving toward the rock-tinged folk aesthetic of Montreal’s Anna and Kate McGarrigle, whose songs seem somehow both ancient and contemporary. Here, Harris becomes an honorary third McGarrigle sister on “How She Could Sing the Wildwood Flower” and “Sailing Round the Room,” which the trio co-wrote and on which the McGarrigles provide enchanting harmonies.

It’s hard to imagine better compatriots for Harris. Both songs are melodically gorgeous and lyrically substantive, with singing that is wistfully romantic but never sweet. Here's hoping they continue working together, and that Harris continues her intriguing evolution as an iconic artist.

From Paste Online