SONGWRITERS AND THE TRUTH

I don't usually write much about music here, though it is music that has run through my life in so many ways and saved me in so many ways.
Last night I learned that an old friend of mine whom I have not seen in years has died.
Today I learned that Dolores O'Riordan, lead singer and songwriter for The Cranberries, has died at 46. Too young.
On this day, 89 years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr was born. Today we observe the only American holiday that honors an African American. A holiday that took over 15 years to be approved by our government. I find it fitting that it is celebrated on or near the day of his birth rather than his death. What is important is that he was born, he lived, he fought for justice and freedom.
 On Twitter last night I found a tweet from Margaret Atwood saying she was taking a time out from Twitter due to all the attacks against her for a piece she wrote in The Guardian. You can look it up.
The world is so harsh with people who fight for freedom, justice and rights for all human beings.

As I was writing in my journal this morning I felt stunned, sad, beaten down, and words were hard to find. I found the lyrics of a song running through my mind. So I give you those lyrics, written by Stephen Stills when he was in Buffalo Springfield:

For What It Is Worth

Buffalo Springfield

There's something happening here
What it is ain't exactly clear
There's a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware

I think it's time we stop, children, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

There's battle lines being drawn
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind

It's time we stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly say, hooray for our side

It's s time we stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
You step out of line, the man come and take you away

We better stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, now, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, children, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

Songwriters: Stephen Stills

For What It Is Worth lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc

 (How appropriate that our much vaunted technology had to garble my copying and pasting. At least the copyright is there.)

JOAN BAEZ: HOW SWEET THE SOUND

MOVIE REVIEW: Joan Baez: How Sweet the Sound, DVD, 2009

 I watched this last night and it was so special. I was in high school when Joan's first two albums were released.  By the time I started junior year I had been to music camp where I met a real live teenage folksinger from Philadelphia who showed me how to play three guitar chords, after which I went home, got a guitar of my own and started learning Joan Baez songs. I still have The Joan Baez Songbook published in 1964 by Ryerson Music Publishers, which amazingly is still in print.

  The DVD is a documentary covering her life with guests like Bob Dylan, David Crosby, Jesse Jackson and David Harris (who I once met at an anti-draft rally in Ann Arbor; got to shake both Joan and David's hands.) It is beautifully done with Joan in her gorgeous 60s telling stories, looking back on her life and lots of incredibly good footage of her back in the day.

 Those were the days when women like us were being great women and bad mothers. I never got famous but I could never leave the music alone for long. Folksinger in high school and college; Top 40 band lead singer in the 70s; indie singer/songwriter in the 90s. My life is more together now and like Joan, I am good with my kids but all the music days were and will always be the best part.

 Joan is still so beautiful and still maintains her commitment to non-violence and ending war. But I have to say that my favorite song, which I used to perform for years, is her grand dis to Bob Dylan, "Diamonds and Rust." 

 I don't believe in any such thing as the "good old days," but it does seem like we were at least trying back then. Oh well, as the other Joan said, "It was just a dream some of us had."

MOVIES FROM BOOKS

Welcome to another new feature on Keep the Wisdom. I find it interesting to watch movies made from books I have read. Usually they disappoint me but I have decided that in this visual age, it is probably good for authors that their stories get made as movies. It might, just might, promote reading. Not since the 1940s have so many books, even literary novels, been made into movies.

I do hate it when the mental pictures I already have for a story are trashed by the movie, but lately I think even that has been less a problem for me. The trick for the screenwriter and the director is staying true to the ideas that underlie the story, which is my main criterion for whether or not the movie is a success.

Here are the ones I watched this month:



SNOW ANGELS is from the 1994 first novel by Stewart O'Nan. While it was extremely sad and dark, I liked the book and always intended to read more by that author, though I haven't yet. I liked the movie because it brought the story back for me with all of the considerable emotion I felt while reading the book. A teenage boy is getting through the first months of his parents' separation. Looking perhaps for a mother figure, he gets involved with the babysitter he had as a young child, but tragedy strikes her life. The characters are dysfunctional, small-town people, similar to those in Richard Russo's books, though without the hope. The movie came out in 2006, from an indie studio (Warner Independent.) Kate Beckinsale, who plays the baby sitter, gives a stunning performance. Not recommended if you are prone to depression.




MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY was saved by Frances McDormand as Miss Pettigrew. If this book had not been made into a movie, I would not have had to read the book for a reading group. I was not as charmed by it as most readers seem to have been. Amy Adams drove me completely crazy and the story was changed (unnecessarily, I thought) to the point where it lost what charm it may have had. But Frances: there is nothing she can't do as an actress. And the clothes were fabulous.




ELECTION: The book was OK. The movie was entertaining but poor Reese Witherspoon, whom I love, had to play that horrible Tracy Flick. I realize that it is something of a cult flick, it is a great spoof on high school life, but it just did not do it for me.




What movies made from books have you seen lately and how did they match up to your reading experience?

ASK THE DUST

Ask the Dust, John Fante, Stackpole Sons, 1939, 165 pp

(According to Dan Fante, John's son, Stackpole Sons folded shortly after publishing Ask the Dust, because they were sued by Adolf Hitler for publishing Mein Kampf. Ha.)

Last year the movie version of Ask the Dust came out with big hoopla, though the reviews were terrible. I got interested in John Fante then and finally read the book. It is not great, but it is good. I was trying to put my finger on the style and decided that it reminds me of early John Steinbeck, such as Grapes of Wrath, The Wayward Bus, Cannery Row.

It is a story about a young writer struggling in Los Angeles in the 1930s. He is impassioned, poor, conflicted. Fante evokes the mood swings and the young man's breathless ventures into women and love. Camilla, the woman he falls for, is of Mexican descent, loves another man and really is quite a messed up girl.

What I liked was the contrast as Arturo Bandini, the writer, begins to have success but lives in an agony of unrequited love and unreleased sexual tension, amidst a seedy Los Angeles setting. Wow, I could just feel it and see it due to the writing and also thanks to having read lots of Raymond Chandler.

Then I saw the movie and although the plot was altered somewhat, it was a great film and for once did not violate the pictures I already had in my head from the book.

AKEELAH AND THE BEE

Because I watch my movies on the Netflix plan, I am always hopelessly behind, often seeing movies that were hot two years ago. My method is to read the Movie Guide in the LA Times every Sunday morning and note down movies that sound good, then put them into a notebook as a list of movies I'd like to see. Finally they make it onto the Netflix queue. It is a good system for me, better than going to Blockbuster, where my husband and I used to end up watching all the action/adventure guy flicks because he would shoot down most of my choices. I won't bore you with our silly Netflix arguments except to say that we alternate on picks and sort of keep track on whose picks were good or bad.

So last night we saw "Akeelah and the Bee" and it was unbelievably great. I pick all flicks which have anything to do with writers, books or words, not to mention movies made from books I have read. This was the second in the Spelling Bee genre, the first being "Bee Season" from the book by Myla Goldberg.

Akeelah is an eleven year old girl growing up in a fatherless African American home in South Central LA. She is already a champion speller but more concerned with being cool with her girlfriends and hanging out than in going to school. Crenshaw Middle School is underfunded and in no way challenges her high intelligence. Along comes the spelling bee, the Principal's hope of gaining recognition (translation: funds) for his school and a challenge for Akeelah.

It is an oft told tale of the rise of an African American due to intelligence and education, directed by and also starring Laurence Fishburne who plays Akeelah's tutor. But the whole thing: the screenplay, the casting, the dialogue, are just perfectly put together. The movie could be called heartwarming and it is, bringing tears to both our eyes many times, but it is so much more. Akeelah is a righteous heroine; a combination of tough, hip, and smart with a loving nature. Angela Bassett plays Akeelah's totally stressed out urban Mom and is equally powerful in her role.

If you haven't seen it and love words, word origins, education and all that, just rent it and see it.

RECENT MOVIES AND MUSIC

First the music:

If you know me, you know I am also a singer/songwriter in the contemporary folk genre. Naturally I am a fan of female singer/songwriters and I have a new love. Kasey Chambers' CD, "Wayward Angel" is the kind of new record I just don't want to stop playing. Remember when you were young and you would get a new album and you would listen to it everyday, over and over, until you knew all the words and could sing along with every song? That is what happened to me with this CD. Then my husband stole it out of my car and I had to fight to get it back.

I don't know anything about the artist and I almost don't want to, because now I have my own idea about her from the songs. She has one of those voices which can go from thin, little girl to soulful to rockin' to warm and sensitive. The styles are contemporary, country, bluegrass, folk and even a hot, sexy blues. Lots of angel imagery, some angst, love, family and just fun. Hot musicians, including the incredible Steuart Smith on electric guitar. Kasey wrote all the songs and the recording was done in Australia.

I don't care. It is just great music.

Rodney Crowell: one of my songwriting heros. I even mention him in my song, "Solstice". Last night we saw him live at The Mint in Los Angeles. His band was amazing with Will Kimbrough and Jed Hughes on guitars. They did a bunch of songs from his new CD, "the outsider" plus many of my favorites from earlier albums. The sound was the usual atrocious mix that The Mint is infamous for. Rodney even stopped the second song and tried to communicate with the soundman. Then he accepted what he obviously had to work with and rocked on.

I haven't seen a band have so much fun performing in a long time. He also did Dylan's "Like A Rolling Stone", complete with singalong and we all knew all the words and lost our voices. In between verses he introduced the band, they did blistering solos and oh my god. It was fabulous. Then I bought the new CD and got him to autograph it. What a night!

On to the movies: Two weekends ago we saw "The Four Brothers"; me, my husband and my son. It is set in Detroit, where we are all from, so that was great right there. The "brothers" are foster kids who were adopted by their foster mom. Two are black, two are white, they are now grown and pretty much hoodlums but as their mom says, you should have seen them before she got them. They reunite at their mom's home after she is shot to death in a convenience store in the neighborhood and decide to avenge her death.

Naturally a whole can of worms is opened and it gets to be a crime thriller with plenty of gratuitous violence and blood, but these brothers are so fearless and cool with each other and it is so exciting right up to the end, that I wasn't bothered by it. Plus these boys just really love their mom. Under all that bravado and toughness they are softhearted mama's boys. Charming really. If you aren't afraid of blood, I highly recommend it.

"Word Wars" is an amazing documentary about Scrabble. Made in 2004, it follows four obsessed Scrabble players on the way to and participating in the ultimate Scrabble tournament in San Diego, CA, sponsored by Hasbro who makes the board game. I mean, we play Scrabble fairly often and feel good if we get over 100 points. These guys study the official Scrabble dictionary and memorize hundreds of words (using flash cards!) and get over 400 points regularly. Each one is a special kind of geek. I wouldn't want to be one of them, but I could appreciate the obsession, because I am like that about reading. If I was offered a hugely paying job that would take away my reading time, I would no way take that job.

I've been working my way through all the movies in which Jessica Lange plays a part, from earliest to current. (What would I do without Netflix?) Finally got to 1995 and saw "Losing Isaiah". It has a very young Halle Berry, who was a great actress even then. I thought the screenplay was weak and somewhat unrealistic. Halle plays a crack-addicted teen who has a baby and leaves him in a trash can, finds a fix, passes out, etc. Isaiah is the baby. Jessica Lange plays a social worker who adopts him. The druggie Mom goes through rehab and wants her baby back. Big drama.

Finally I saw "Spanglish" with Adam Sandler and an actress who is famous in Mexico and who reminded me of Penelope Cruz. It is a look at a Mexican single mom in LA, who takes a job as a maid with a rich family and almost loses her daughter to them. Hm. Similar theme to "Losing Isaiah" in a way. The acting is really very good and the daughter gets the best of both worlds because of her mother's commitment to her values and the exposure to the American Way which speeds up her assimilation. Probably not very realistic, in fact very idealistic, but entertaining and not bad, as movies go.

A WEEKEND OF MUSIC

This past Friday night I was taken by my son to see Beck at Universal Ampitheatre here in Los Angeles. It has been a while since I've been to a concert with that many people. Usually it is a coffee-house or bookstore venue. I was glad to have my son as an escort, but really it was a fine crowd of people. Even though there was a mosh pit, we had seats, though no one sat in them. We just all boogied where we stood.

I thought it was a great show. I don't really know his songs except for "Loser" and "Two Turntables and a Microphone" (which he did perform) and yet it all sounded familiar somehow. In the middle of the show, he did an acoustic set while the rest of the band sat at a table on stage and ate a meal. Whatever. But then I realized that actually the guy is a folk based singer/songwriter just like me, except he can scratch on those turntables and rap and he rocks. It was fun. The best part was the next day, when my son called to say that he didn't know too many Moms you could take to a Beck show and have such a good time. I was honored.

Saturday morning my husband and I drove up to Paso Robles, just north of San Luis Obispo, in the heart of the new wine country. (Apparently the Sonoma area was struck by a grapevine worm some years back and growers went to this area south of San Francisco to escape the worm.) At the Castoro Vineyard, we saw Laurence Juber play under the setting sun and then the stars. He played a varied selection of his original pieces, some Beatles and Wings tunes, some blues and standards. Domenic Genova on bass and Steve Forman on percussion were the perfect back up musicians for Mr Juber's virtuoso finger-style guitar. Somehow we missed dinner that night and also decided to pass on the wine, but my hunger was filled by the scenery and the music.

It was fitting for this musical weekend that I had just finished reading Bob Dylan's memoir, Chronicles, Volume I. I think you might have to be a Dylan fan to fully enjoy the book. I have been a fan for a long time, ever since I performed and knew all the words to some of his ten minute songs, such as "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue." Also, I've read at least three biographies of the man, so it was almost a relief to get Bob's side of the story. He writes prose the way he writes lyrics. In fact, I could really hear the Woody Guthrie influence. The writing rambles and lurches along in the same way Guthrie does in Bound For Glory.

Movies: A Study in Contrasts

I saw two movies last weekend, which couldn't have been more different from each other.

Sideways, 2004, was an Oscar nominee. Two guys go on a California wine country weekend. They were best friends in college; now they are at least 10 years older. One is a fading actor about to get married to a rich girl. The other is an aspiring novelist waiting to hear if his novel has been picked up by a publisher. They are very different personalities and the only thing between them is that old college relationship.

They meet women, shit happens. In fact, they are both so male! Completely opposite viewpoint from a chick flick. I wanted to hate these guys, especially the actor character who is so shallow. But the acting was great and I was entertained in spite of myself. My husband did not fall asleep this time.

Next we go to Africa for Hotel Rwanda. Intense, gruesome, moving. Don Cheadle is stunning in his role as an African working in a white man's world who must then become the leader of his countrymen as they try to survive civil and tribal war. Heaviest of all was the message that the white world deserted this country in its time of trouble. I found a similarity to the way we turn our backs on the killing and gang wars in the slums of this country.

A Good Week at the Movies

Saw two good movies this week. I picked P.S. because of a write up in the Los Angeles Sunday Times Calendar section. It was released in 2004 and I got the idea it was about a writer. It is not but was still a fine movie. Laura Linney plays Louise, a college admissions officer in Columbia University's Art School. She is divorced, 39 years old and lonely.

One day she sees an application from someone with the same name as her boyfriend of 20 years ago. She calls this person in for an interview and you learn that the boyfriend died tragically way back then. The current guy shows up and looks and talks just like the original Scott. She immediately takes him home and they have eager, passionate sex, which is done really well and is convincing but also funny.

Well the plot thickens, of course. Louise has a girlfriend and back in the day, this "friend" stole Scott from Louise. Also the ex-husband turns out to be a pervert doing a 12 step program to stop being a pervert. Poor Louise.

But here is what is great about this movie: First of all, Topher Grace who plays the current Scott is an amazing actor. I am a bit older than Louise, but if (big if) I were to seduce a younger man I would want him to be just like the Topher Grace character. Second, the relationship between Louise and her girlfriend is so real, so way beyond anything I've found in a chick lit book, so much like the way women friends actually are with each other.

P.S. is probably not a guy movie. My husband fell asleep during it, but he had had a margarita earlier. My theory on chick flicks though is that guys should watch them if they are really serious about understanding women. Unfortunately, most of them aren't.

Last night we watched The Incredibles, which I found to be incredible. I generally am not a fan of animated movies. (I never liked comic books either, which is so not with it these days, but oh well.) However, to be totally not consistent, I do like superheros. The Incredibles is about an entire family of superheros, who have been put out of work and into obscurity by some bone-headed government program, but who come back to save the world from a psychopathic madman.

Everything is great in this movie; the plot, the dialogue, the animation, the humor, the exactly right hipness of it all and especially the superhero kids.