What easier target than John Denver, Henry John Deutschendorf Jr., Aspen’s poet laureate, that insipid 70s fauxkie whom if you turned on the radio you could not at the time avoid being made to hear or block from your sight on TV whether you tuned into the Grammys or the Muppets (and I know this, I was there), who would be singing about sunshine on his shoulders or being taken home along a country road, his senses filled up by his loving wife Annie (herself little more than a vehicle for the nature images Denver would summon to describe her, a night in a forest, a walk in the rain, a storm in the desert, a sleepy blue ocean—one heck of a relationship I guess), his “Rocky Mountain highs” presumably purer than Joe Walsh’s “Rocky Mountain Way,” spiritual elevations delivered through nature’s bounty and domestic bliss, Ralph Waldo Emerson by way of Werner Erhard, but who we always suspected to be and later learned was (in part from Denver’s own autobiography, called what else Take Me Home) a celebrity stoner and cokehead (not that there’s anything wrong with that) who at one point in a mid-divorce rage chainsawed his beloved Annie’s bed in half. Easy peasy, a little cultural studies, a little Hollywood Babylon, done and dusted. I think there are other reasons as well why the above story is too easy.
Eric Lott
Several Levels At High Decibels (Joni Mitchell sings “Coyote”)
“What do you think?” says Joni, an hour and a half into Martin Scorsese’s Rolling Thunder Revue. “I think you gotta come on the stage right now,” says Bob, sexy and imposing. “OK, I’m coming.”
Ode to Joy
The other week, deep summer, we went to see David Johansen in his persona as Buster Poindexter. For many years now, Johansen, former New York Dolls lead singer and front flounce, has in his cabaret act been one of the great American songbook curators (Jonathan Schwartz wishes), lurking in the brilliant corners of U.S. pop. (Without Johansen I’d never have heard Katie Lee’s late-1950s pop-Freudian homage, Songs of Couch and Consultation, lead song “Shrinker Man.”) At the end of this particular set at City Winery, he called to the stage his wife Mara Hennessey, who announced that she had a particular favorite she’d like David to sing, whereupon she started to intone the line, “that summer feeling, that summer feeling, that summer feeling,” and Johansen took off into the lyrics. It was so haunting! I knew that song! What was it again? When I got home I looked it up and of course: Jonathan Richman’s “That Summer Feeling.” Astonishing song.
Fly Girl
It was moving to read those final four pieces in First‘s tribute to Estrellita. Her writing (only one aspect of her work) seemed to just get better and better. At one point, stupidly, I thought the songy stuff was both contrived and oversimple, now it seems like the genius it was.
When I moved to a certain block in downtown Charlottesville with my ex in ‘93, Susan and I started noticing this Olds 88 (or was it a Cutlass Supreme? anyway something hilarious) always parallel-parked on the street. And it WAS old, beat out, gray. Across the back of the trunk was painted I BRAKE FOR OCD. This caught my attention since like Carmelita I was/am a sufferer. Side panels: TEXACO logo with that DO-NOT-ENTER circle painted over it, drops of blood dripping down. I could imagine talking to this person.
A Strange and Bitter Spectacle
The James Allen exhibit “Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America,” which opened in New York in 2000 and is now touring the country, deserves more than the pious attention it has received to date.