I am in an African village, staying with a local family. It is a Sunday (or similar day off) and family, relatives and friends have all assembled for a backyard get together. There is a large table with food, and people are in attractive local dress (instead of the Western stuff worn during the regular week).
After some festivities, I notice a high, mournful voice singing – not too far away. I follow the source of the singing, and just beyond the gathering I come upon a young African man, maybe 20 years old, at a keyboard singing Neil Young songs. He’s got the high, whiney voice down perfectly, and for a moment I am simply stunned. He sings one song, then goes on to the next one in the Neil Young songbook. I think to myself, “Some Peace Corps person must have left a Neil Young cassette behind, and this kid has taken it upon himself to learn all the songs.”
My hosts and some others appear and ask me if I am impressed with the young man’s talent. “Is he not great?” I tell them yes, I am impressed, he’s amazing, but I politely omit the fact that his talent is, to me, completely useless. My hosts press on, “Since you recognize this man’s talent and skills, don’t you think he could surely be a success in your country?” I am flummoxed, and try to explain nicely that his talent is astounding and surprising — if you close your eyes it really could be Neil Young — but to me, it is of no interest past the moment of initial shock. My hosts aren’t having it. They KNOW this man is talented — and they’re right — and are therefore absolutely certain that he could be huge outside of their village and surrounds. I again try to explain that in my country, a Neil Young already exists, and an African copy, however faithful, is simply unnecessary.
The discussion peters out in mutual misunderstanding and incomprehension.
We are staying in a large hotel that is very design-heavy — like a scene from 2001, the movie. We’ve stayed in boutique hotels before, and they typically feature dark hallways and clubby lounge music in the cafés and elevators, which are often also dimly lit. Philippe Starck and others have a lot to answer for, having been responsible for the top of the line and premier versions of this trend. This hotel puts the receptionists inside a kind of pod.
The pod is less substantial than it seems — on approaching it one notices that it is a plywood shell wrapped in translucent fabric, stretched over a wire frame. If you leaned on it you’d sink into it. There are curving walkways outside the lobby and some chairs and ottomans that are oversized and bulbous like some weird Matthew Barney props.
In the rooms, the built-in furniture is all white and a speckled shag rug completes the mid-century view of what the future will be like. The floors are padded rubber (!)… which is actually nice and cushiony on your feet, and practical in other ways we will eventually discover. A single black (!) moderne chair sits on the rug, and if you sat in it you’d find it would collapse on one side; we soon find out that like most things in this version of the future, a sleek, cool appearance belies a broken-down substance.
The window blinds open via small motors, and they squeak loudly. So far, it’s all hilarious. We’re reminded of the Jacques Tati movie Mr. Hulot’s Holiday, in which the eponymous lead character visits his relatives who are living in a modern house with all the mod cons — and they all squeak, clank and gurgle. The door in this room bleats like a lamb in pain, and after leaving the room, I return to find that after numerous failed attempts at opening the door normally, the electronic keys don’t work — or, to be precise, one has to heave oneself at the door, at exactly the precise moment, to achieve entry. I guess the latch mechanism is in disrepair.
The nice large bed floats in the middle of the room, and strangely, its wooden frame also encloses the bathtub! The frame is slim and must be made of teak or some other water-resistant wood as one is sure to splash water out of the tub occasionally. It is so slim, however, that there is nowhere to put bedside items like a book, newspaper or a glass of water… they have to be placed on the rubber floor or behind the bed, on the rim of the tub. A design that initially seems cool and inviting turns out to be somewhat ill considered and often impractical — besides being in disrepair. I don’t think the construction or maintenance here would pass muster with Mr. Starck.
I plan to check my email etc. as I usually do upon arrival… but there is nowhere to sit at the “desk,” which doubles as the mini bar and TV stand. I clear a space near the edge and pull out a cube-shaped cushion to use as a chair. It sort of works.
On the second day, the hot water turned brown. There are street works up the road, so maybe the ancient Roman plumbing was shaken, rust and sediment were loosened, and that explains the sudden brownness? No, that can’t be right, as it’s only the hot water that’s affected — so it must be something inside the hotel. It doesn’t stink — so it’s not sewage backing up, thank God… but it’s pretty disgusting. Here’s what a full tub of it looks like:
You think that is disgusting? Here’s what was left after the water drained:
It reminded me of one theory regarding the fall of the Roman Empire: that because their elaborate and innovative plumbing system was made of lead pipes, the entire population that lived within the exclusive precincts of the city therefore poisoned themselves and slowly went mad.
I was told by some locals that when this hotel opened a couple of years ago, it was a sensation. The idea of a hip hotel/lounge hangout chic-spot was intriguing, and sure enough, on Sunday afternoon after we all arrive, the pool/bar on the roof is packed with handsome boys/men and lovely Italian beauties. It’s an Armani ad come to life, and we are scared off, as we are not familiar with the ways of their planet.
On a bike trip to the Vatican to purchase kitschy gift items (e.g. a Popener — a beer bottle opener with the Pope on it), I was surprised to see some very non-religious merchandise.
Here are the typical Davids as seen all over Firenze:
In Roma there were many mosaics, framed and for sale, of Jesus, Mary, and the Pope — but also of Al Pacino, Obama and The Gladiator, Russell Crowe.
Of course, there are ruins all over Roma — massive structures like the Coliseum or Hadrian’s tomb, walls, columns and bits of aqueducts. But there is a much larger number of minor ruins. If construction begins on a building and ruins are discovered while digging the foundation, one is by law obliged to stop and either revamp the building plans or somehow protect the ruins. Our 22nd century hotel has a glassed-in area, just to the left of the entrance, that looks like a diorama of a barely begun building site — there are wheelbarrows, plywood ramps and piles of dirt and rubble. They are, of course, ruins, so the hotel was built over them — and we never saw a single worker doing excavation in the time we were there. Like unopened time capsules, these things are all over the city, seen and unseen.
The venue we played — an outdoor theater in the center of a cluster of pod-shaped concert halls designed by Renzo Piano — had to be rethought while the foundations were being dug. Construction ceased, and the whole design was revamped. Eventually the halls ended up being built on raised platforms rather than sleekly laid out on a piazza as originally planned. So, tucked behind the central auditorium around which the pods loom is what looks like a vacant, abandoned lot — but one can see that the weeds and grass have grown over a grid of partial excavations. Another time capsule.
Most of the ruins around town are unremarkable, though plenty of tourists pose for photos in front of them, and they are rigorously protected. I wonder to myself what archaeologists and the rest of us hope to get out of these numerous crumbly bits. They’re everywhere — and while they might inform us of the size or hierarchy of former rooms, they can’t possibly offer us much else. The more substantial ruins of temples, sports palaces and circuses tell us quite a bit about how the Empire lived, governed, entertained and thought of itself — and how the more contemporary entertaining and infantile antics of Il Duce, Berlusconi and his ilk are therefore no surprise.
Here’s a temple Il Duce more or less built for himself — to align himself with the glory of the Empire. I suspect most tourists think that this Fascist monument is as old as the other Roman temples nearby.
But what about all this other stuff — the crumbly bits? Do we have to respect every piece of rubble? What can we really hope to learn from these pathetic foundations and remaining stumpy bits of wall? Have the Italians sacrificed some part of their future in honoring and maintaining their glorious past? Am I being cynical? (I would certainly rather see ruins than block after block of ugly, concrete apartments!) The Italians must, I imagine, feel hamstrung by their past, which must justify in their minds the escape from the past represented by the ugly apartment and office buildings that fill these cities outside their historic zones.
Love this city! Much of it is in remont (renovation), which calls to mind Berlin in the years right after the wall fell. In Berlin, and between West and East Germany, there was a huge financial surge meant to bring the East up to the functioning level of the shiny, capitalist West — so it all happened extremely quickly. Dumpy East Berlin apartments became squats became nice apartments became luxury goods stores within only a few years. Here the process is slower — there is less money — but there are squats that have transformed into funky lounges and cafés, little restaurants run by former actors and actresses, and crumbling buildings in the old Jewish and Roma (gypsy) ghettos that are fast being bought up. For now, everything is possible (sort of), and everything is in flux. Alternative arts spaces appear and disappear. Exhibitions and performances are held in former industrial spaces.
Thank You U2!
Mark E pointed out as we prepped for our show last night in Warsaw (at a not so big club/venue called Stodoła) that these undersized dates are in effect being subsidized by U2’s world tour. The promoter of these dates, and of much of the U2 stadium tour, is Live Nation, the global conglomerate. A venue like Stodoła could not possibly afford to pay for us, the catering, or even their local crew given the relatively small number of tickets to be sold here — and it’s not even an “exclusive” VIP-type venue. It’s not like they can charge $200 a seat and make up their losses that way — this is a standing room club… with a floor made of plywood. So in order to book our date, they must (we figure) be losing money now, then making it up with what they expect to earn on the upcoming U2 stadium dates.
Those stadium shows may possibly be the most extravagant and expensive (production-wise) ever: $40 million to build the stage and, having done the math, we estimate 200 semi trucks crisscrossing Europe for the duration. It could be professional envy speaking here, but it sure looks like, well, overkill, and just a wee bit out of balance given all the starving people in Africa and all. Or maybe it’s the fact that we were booted off our Letterman spot so U2 could keep their exclusive week-long run that’s making me less than charitable? Take your pick — but thanks, guys!
My office was tipped by a local named Eva that the thing to see in Ostrava is the Vítkovice Iron Works… a massive former steel foundry/coal mine complex that fed the needs of the Austro-Hungarian empire, the Nazis and later the Soviet Empire (the last “heat” from the blast furnaces was in 1998). With the fall of that symbiotic/parasitic organism, the giant complex was broken up, passed to various owners, and only parts of it still function (Vítkovice Heavy Machinery is one). Like Pittsburgh, Bethlehem Steel and the giant complexes in the Ruhr Valley — Essen and Bochum — this industrial dragon made the town and fucked it over at the same time.
This area was earlier referred to as Moravia, and the whole region was incredibly rich in mineral wealth. History was, like in those other towns, written in advance by the lucky confluence of resources — the iron was here, the coal was nearby, and there was a river to carry stuff (end products and effluvia) in and out. The Witkowitz Mines and Iron Works, as it was called, really got going in 1828… and was co-owned by the Rothschilds, who were based in Austria. Oddly, it was a Scotsman who had the initial idea to build the complex here. John Baildon started it in 1810; the Rothschilds and others came in later, having leased the business.
In the beginning, rails for future train lines were produced, enabling the expansion of the empire. By the mid-1800s the Rothschilds’ partners, the Gutmann brothers, also "supplied coal for all the railroads, for all the great factories throughout the empire, and for the cities of Vienna, Budapest, and Brünn." Here is one of the spots where the Earth gave up her riches — giving copiously so that other industries and empires could flourish. Although these areas were usually ugly and polluted, they made the glorious palaces and opera houses possible.
"In 1887, a new plant for cast steel was built and arms production was expanded", as it was in the Krupp-owned plants that dotted the German Ruhr Valley. All was not hunky dory. In the 1870s Engels and others were influenced in their revolutionary writings by the workers’ conditions here, and their strike movements. The strikes were long and widespread, and the workers movement was gaining traction. However, many of the strikes were violently suppressed, as they were in the US and elsewhere. "Interference by troops and police compelled them to end a strike that commenced in early 1882." [Source]
The ironworks became involved in the entire community.
Shortly after the construction of the works, the face of Vítkovice began to change dramatically. From the very beginning, the rapidly growing population was catered for by the construction of company housing in the immediate vicinity of the works. A plan for the construction of ‘New Vítkovice’ was drawn up and gradually implemented. The aim was to build a modern housing complex that would not only provide easy access to the works, but would also offer a high standard of architecture and civic amenities making it truly ahead of its time. The owners of the works soon realized that besides providing accommodation, the company would also benefit if it paid attention to the health, education and cultural life of its employees and their families. [Source]
From birth to death — the company owned you and “looked after” you. This “enlightened patronage” seemed to be going on at the same time as the strikes and their violent suppression… hmmm.
Dr. Plener, the leader of the German Opposition, traced a sinister
parallel between events and the initial stages of the French
Revolution. This by no means exaggerated the situation in the mining
and industrial districts of Bohemia and Silesia. At one place in the
latter province, the center of a section producing half of the total
output of coal in the empire, there were 40,000 strikers encamped in an
open stretch of fields flanked by thick woods, whence raiding parties
went out in force to pillage the surrounding country, bringing in
cattle and supplies, quite often after bloody encounters with the
military. The whole district was being filled with troops to protect
the mines and factories, and there had been fatal collisions in half a
dozen different villages. One of the most painful phases of this outbreak of disorder was that
the rabble of Czechs, Poles, and Socialist refugees from Germany who
were leading it were striving hard to turn it into an anti-Jewish
crusade. Many mill and mine owners in this locality were Jews, the
biggest iron and steel works at Witkowitz being the property of the
Rothschilds, which made it easy to mix up the Judenhetze with the
strikes. Throughout these provinces there was scarcely a town where, during the
last fortnight of April, Jewish shops had not been broken open and
looted, and on May Day there threatened to be a universal attack made
on the Hebrew.
[What can one say about this sad turn of events that presaged later horrors? Were the Rothschilds and others distant and heartless exploiters of the local workers? I suspect so, in which case they sadly may have set themselves up as inevitable targets, who became the “cause” of every injustice and misery. That the rising of the workers, a Romantic and noble cause as we view it from 100 years later, was also linked with anti-Semitism is a great tragedy.]
[In the early 20th century] the boiler shop produced gas holders, equipment for coke cooling with
dry cooling towers, high pressure Löffler boilers and boiler units for
hydroelectric stations. The bridge building works realized deliveries
for high-rise constructions, bridges (in 1932, the largest European
bridge of that time was made, two stories tall over the Old Dnepr near Kiev, Ukraine) [who today could have imagined that Ukraine was leading the infrastructure of Europa under the Soviets!], an exhibition hall for the World Exhibition in Paris, as well as a railway station hall in Teheran.
Witkowitz was only 25 miles from the pre 1938 German/Czeck border. Marshal Göring had
advised State Secretary Weizsäcker that the territory beyond Teschen,
along the southeastern German Silesian frontier, should not go to
Poland unless Poland agreed to support the return of Danzig to Germany... It was decided to make
an effort to keep the Poles out of the industrial center of Witkowitz. While the Nazi officials were threatening and intimidating the
representatives of the Czech government, the Wehrmacht had in some
areas already crossed the Czech border. The Czech industrial centres of
Maehrisch-Ostrau and Witkowitz, close to the Silesian and Polish
borders, were occupied by German troops and SS units during the early
evening of 14 March 1939. At dawn on 15 March German troops poured into
Czechoslovakia from all sides.
The owner of this company was the Viennese banker Baron Louis Nathaniel Rothschild (1882-1955). After the annexation of Austria, he received a visit: The Nazis wanted Witkowitzer to sell his works. Although the Nazis held him for a year in detention, where he remained with the explanation that he could not sell, it must be reviewed by London's Rothschild family branch - Alliance Assurance Co., Ltd., a London insurance company.
At the end the Germans paid the price demanded: 2 million pounds in cash and the release of Louis Nathaniel Rothschild. [Why didn’t they just take it by force and kill the Jews? That’s what we would expect in this story. What bit of information is missing that made the Nazis pay a Jew for his steel works?]
When it was time for him to be released from prison, he asked for the time. "A little after 20 clock, Mr Baron." And he replied: "So! That's too late to disturb my friends. I go tomorrow. Good night, gentlemen."
After the end of the Second World War, the Baron Witkowitz did not return. The communists were in property matters rather less flexible than the Nazis… [Source]
Materials were then produced for the Soviet Empire — fulfilling their industrial, military and infrastructure needs — and in the ’70s, materials for the nuclear power industry were produced as well… and the wealth of this area was critical in keeping yet another bloated Empire afloat.
In 2002 the entire premises were declared a site of National Cultural Heritage. In Essen many of the foundries were dismantled in the last few decades and shipped to China. In that enterprise, the Chinese sent over thousands of workers, built a temporary town for them, numbered all the parts and then took the entire factory apart — all the massive machines and buildings — and reassembled it in China. Voila! Instant steel industry! For some reason that hasn’t happened here. The Germans saved one complex from the Chinese scavengers as a reminder of their past, but here it seems everything remains. [Link to Journal from 2006]
We biked over and were given a sort of “tour” — though our “guide” didn’t speak English and had little to say beyond “You can’t go in there!” There was a little bit of a holdup getting past the gatehouse. Our escort said, “Some elements of the communist era still persist — and this guard is one of them.” We were all issued hard hats and in we went. The place is awesome in its terrible beauty — similar to the works in Essen I visited a couple of years ago. Some of the turbine parts looked like aliens or the statues of Easter Island:
Now rusted and overgrown with vegetation, the site is the ruins of our own civilization — as emotional for us to wander through and take in as viewing the ruins of Roma and Athens must have been for the Romantics of the late 19th century. How the mighty have fallen; what glorious and monstrous things they built. What strange Gods they worshipped.
Not so far away is the Ostrava haunted house — the other side of the once mighty industrial region seen as in some weird distorted mirror — and another side of life and the local mindset floats into view like a strange dream. It’s a beautiful Mike Kelley-type installation — not scary in the intended way, but frightening in lots of other ways.
In Santa Fe we biked past what Robert Farris Thompson calls a “yard show” — and quite an amazing show it was. The part with naked figurines was hidden from the road/view by a hedge. I believe the street was called Agua Fria.
While in NYC on a couple of days off, I saw a work by a Chinese artist named Song Dong at MoMA. He had saved all the crap that his mom had hoarded in her house and then displayed it all on the floor (as well as the wooden supports of the house). If many of us are dismayed at our parents’ pack rat tendencies we can get a little perspective from viewing this trove of useless, worn out stuff that Granny collected. Truly horrific and strangely beautiful — she saved old toothpaste tubes, shopping bags (oops, I do that too), Styrofoam and cardboard containers… how did she stash it all??!!
Also in NYC I popped in to see the Meth Lab at Deitch on Wooster St. A variation on this exhibition was shown previously in Marfa, Texas: Land O’Judd. I remember friends in Austin and elsewhere pointing out houses in their neighborhoods that were rumored to be meth labs — some of which would suddenly explode if the “chemists” weren’t careful, which they often aren’t.
In Athens I went to three museums on my bike, despite the heat. The Cycladic Museum has a lovely collection of those alien-looking, proto-modern figures. We were reminded that the link to modern Brancusi-like sculptures is deceptive, since like many ancient figures, these were originally brightly colored; maybe now, at least conceptually, they’re more closely linked to less austere, post-modern, colorful sensibilities.
Of course, at the new Acropolis Museum and the massive, overwhelming National Archaeological Museum there are hundreds of more classical Greek figures that had been polychromed — painted in bright colors and who knows what else. (Were they dressed? Oiled and anointed, as sculptures in shrines often are?)
I didn’t keep count, but it seemed like an awful lot of the male statues had had their penises whacked off… not that they were massive to begin with. One wonders if later cultures thought those appendices offensive — maybe the Christian and Orthodox went around whacking off dicks — and I wonder if somewhere on Mt. Athos some monk oversees a box full of “lost” classical penises. (Mt. Athos also maintains a significant seed bank, and houses the first photography archive of images taken in Greece and its surroundings.)
I loved seeing the rooms in these museums where only bits (heh) of sculptures survive — and the fragments are displayed on sticks and metal rods, effectively floating in space: a part of a face, an elbow or some toes are all that remain. I wish they’d go one step further in their reimagining of these classical works — that there might be just one or two re-creations painted and polychromed as they would have been. (There are still bits of paint on some of the statues indicating their original colors.) Of course, they might run the risk of looking tacky and bizarre — like a waxworks museum full of naked people.
Here is a fairly intact Siren — one of the creatures who almost lured Ulysses and his crew to his death with their strange and haunting singing. Freaky.
I loved many of the Jackson 5 tunes — Get It Together was an LP I listened to nonstop along with Michael Jackson’s Off The Wall record. Quincy Jones’s production on the latter LP was impeccably precise — it is as shiny a pop product as an aspiring superstar could wish for while still containing funky African-inspired grooves and textures. Significantly, though, the records that followed had fewer of these elements, but sold more copies. I didn’t like Thriller or Bad — they seemed to me like pure pandering to the mass (white) pop audience. But the coda of “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough” on Off The Wall is pure intersecting overlapping lilting Africa. (Later Michael would “quote” the great Manu Dibango song “Soul Makossa” and “forget” to give credit.) That same song’s reference to The Force was a corny “Hey I’ve got a great idea for a pop novelty song! Let’s reference Star Wars!” kind of idea that a 13-year-old boy might have — but the groove and Michael’s singing transcended much of that silliness.
At that point Jackson was still a young black man — he had yet to transform into the androgynous eccentric that he would become. He claimed his skin bleaching was the result of disease, but most of us who know about the lightening creams that sadly abound in black neighborhoods and throughout the Third World suspected differently.
The shock, to me, was that a young black man who was conquering the world of white pop (and video! He was the ONLY black man on MTV!) was simultaneously ashamed or very mixed up about his blackness. What kind of example does it set for black adolescents watching Michael get whiter and whiter every year? How’s a Brother supposed to get further with this shit going on?
The night that news of Mr. Jackson’s death came, Ingrid Deabreu, 49, a patient care and dialysis technician from Guyana who lives in Brooklyn, stayed up watching a marathon of his videos with her 7-year-old daughter Kimberly. When the video of Mr. Jackson’s “Black and White” came on, her daughter turned to Ms. Deabreu and asked: “Mommy, he said it doesn’t matter if you’re black or white. So why’s he trying to make his skin white?”
A life in the pill bottle tied Michael to Elvis, Marilyn Monroe and too many more. The surreal chemical universe these stars create for themselves is hard for me to fathom — when I have some success (at least recently), I’m very happy about it. Of course, my success is nowhere near what theirs was — I can live a normal life and buy toilet paper and OJ at the corner deli. In a way it seems a retreat to origins, to the womb of poor beginnings in Gary, Indiana or Tupelo, Mississippi — where, in a kind of weird link between distant galaxies, poor folks also pop painkillers like OxyContin if and when they can.
We arrived here from the Denver area, where we played Red Rocks Amphitheatre the night before. DeVotchKa, who are a local band, opened for us and got an enthusiastic response. The setting is legendary, amazing — and the audience was immense and on their feet, even in the chilly Rocky Mountain Foothills evening.
[Photo: Tony Orlando]
After a brief shower in the morning I stayed on the bus, but soon the weather cleared and Steven and I were met by Jane, a friend of my friend Ford, who was happy to give us a super brief tour. We went to the Gilgal Sculpture Garden, where during the 40s Thomas Battersby Child, Jr. carved and erected some curious sculptures in his backyard that reference both Mormonism and Masonic imagery. Jane said when she was young it was just a run-down, weird place and she’d come here to get high. There was even a moment when it was going to be torn down, but some locals formed an organization to save it. Here is Joseph Smith’s (the Mormon visionary) head on a reduced size Sphinx.
Around the corner was a man with pants made of bricks — a tribute to man the builder, and the secret Masonic knowledge that enables man to create homes and temples. The Mormon Church of the Latter-day Saints (LDS) eventually disavowed Gilgal and his works, as they wanted to distance themselves from the more “magical” aspects of Masonry.
Much of the garden refers to the Book of Daniel, specifically Daniel’s interpretations of the dreams of Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian ruler who conquered Jerusalem and later went crazy.
We then visited the relatively new LDS Conference Center in Temple Square. The assembly hall inside is massive, like something out of a science fiction movie, and, as in Star Wars, there are instant simultaneous translations in dozens of languages when the LDS faithful from around the world congregate here. There are no columns blocking the views of the podium as a massive steel girder holds the ceiling up — which gives the effect that the roof is magically floating.
Outside there are other visitors blinking in the summer sun, and a few in fundamentalist LDS garb — ladies in long skirts or modest (some would say frumpy) dresses… not quite the more extreme pseudo-prairie attire, but getting there.
The Tabernacle across the way, where the famous choir performs and rehearses, now seems underwhelming compared to this new conference center, but its visitor center next door has dioramas and Bible paintings and a wonderful stairway to the stars.
Steven asks Jane and I what exactly Mormonism is, and I say it is a religion that has added additional chapters to the Bible — chapters in which Jesus visited the New World. Jane elaborated a little — this happened, according to the visions Joseph Smith had while reading the golden tablets he reportedly dug up in upstate New York, during the three days after Jesus “died,” and before he was resurrected. Jesus visited the New World and the Indian tribes that lived here. Smith’s version of New World pre-Columbian history is, again, like a science fiction novel — complex, dramatic and convoluted. I recommend a book I read as research when I was scoring a season of the HBO show Big Love — Under the Banner of Heaven, by Jon Krakauer (Into Thin Air and Into The Wild). In the book, which is definitely not loved by the Mormon faithful, a murder amongst the polygamist faction of the LDS (which the official church disavows) is used by Krakauer to thread together bits of Mormon history and belief. In order to “interpret” the golden tablets that he found and that no one ever saw, Joseph Smith put “peeping stones” in a hat, then put his face in the hat and magically the words of the extra chapters of the Bible came to him.
A winding ramp leads up to the stars where a giant white Jesus gazes out towards the tabernacle.
Very cool. I asked Jane about the drinking laws in Salt Lake City and in Utah, as I’d remembered when we played here many years ago we had to smuggle some beers into our dressing rooms. I also seem to remember half the audience being on uppers, as religious laws regarding those somehow slipped though the net.
Until recently you could get only get a drink if you were a member of a “social club.” Visitors to the area could instantly become members for a fee. Things have loosened up a bit recently.
I was told one could get a drink in a restaurant, but the sight of alcohol being poured was deemed to be dangerous and offensive, so pouring and preparation went on behind a glass partition referred to (by some) as the Zion Curtain. This year the Zion Curtain came down.
Polygamy was practiced by Smith and others, but due to pressure from the rest of the country it was eventually outlawed from LDS practice. Fundamentalist LDS faithful still practice it. There are houses in downtown Salt Lake City that have special basements where the “sisterwives” can be hidden when the man comes around. I suspect that polygamy was actually a common practice in the Middle East 2000 years ago, so it might not be made up like much of the rest of Mormonism — though it sure must have met some of Joseph Smith’s “needs” at the time.
Some of us might roll our eyes at the science fiction religions of Mormonism and Scientology — their preposterous myths and stories and references to cosmic apocalyptic events. Mormons believe that when all have had a chance to hear the word of God the apocalypse will commence… hence the rush to conversion. L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology, wrote that 75 million years ago, the head of the Galactic Federation, made up of 76 planets, was a being named Xenu. Faced with an overpopulation problem, he brought beings to this planet, blew them up with hydrogen bombs, and packaged them. Their spirits now infest our bodies. [from Scientology Lies]
We scoff at religions clearly “made up” by men just like ourselves within the last couple of centuries. Peeping stones? Xenu? But what makes the more established religions any less preposterous? Weren’t they also mostly “made up” by men like ourselves? Yes, some have been augmented by other men — additional rules and imagery added over the millennia — but isn’t it just time that gives them more credence or respect? If we’re going to roll our eyes at only the new religions then we are, in my opinion, being very unfair.
Salt Lake City had a progressive mayor, Rocky Anderson, until recently — now he is President of High Road for Human Rights. He instituted green programs, mass transit improvements, bike friendly policies, supported gay marriage and more. When Bush visited Salt Lake City Anderson helped organize a protest! Although we might think of Utah as a red state and a bastion of religious-based conservatism, Salt Lake City went blue.
Woke up on the bus and looked out the lounge window onto a parking lot with a few cars evenly spread out, like birds on a wire. Despite the heat I went for a bike ride later with C. There were almost no people on the streets — at a major downtown intersection I counted two. We rode past towering banks and oil company headquarters, offices and empty plazas, with no one about except for the poor and little clumps of smokers, huddled in the shadow of massive corporate towers.
This was the home of Enron, and other now-defunct entities have skyscrapers here as well. Some of the names and logos have been swapped out, but not all. We pass a residential neighborhood with lovely oak trees shading the street, and then, without any major landmark to let us know we’ve crossed a line, we’re in the ghetto, with shotgun shacks and old black men sitting on stoops in the withering heat. Boarded up houses, and vacant lots with cars on blocks.
From here one can see “downtown” a few blocks away.
“Downtown” is in quotes because Houston has hub cities further out that are almost as big.
A block or so past the run-down shacks — this is Houston where there is NO zoning — is the new Federal Reserve Bank. It’s a weird, almost surreal post-modern edifice.
The mind turns to Alan Greenspan, former head of the Fed, who helped via deregulation to get us into the mess we’re in today — the whole Goddamn world is fucked, Alan! This very out of place structure somehow lingers, like a fart left by someone no longer in an elevator. Alan was recently quoted as saying “I made a mistake.”
A few blocks further away is a bayou — a stagnant body of water in the shape of a river, with a bike/jogging path running alongside it. In this heat (100 ºF) the path is all but unusable, though we pass a few joggers who are possibly more insane than us. Looming over a grassy knoll is Houston’s AIG headquarters. If I were them I’d come up with a new name or logo ASAP.
The town is crisscrossed by massive elevated freeways, and as a result the sprawl here is immense. Though there is a center to the town, there are also myriad mini-cities — or, more properly, clusters of towers, splattered here and there, linked by the freeways. I imagine that if oil companies could control more cities they’d all look like this.
We’re playing at Jones Hall, a lovely symphony hall named after Jesse Jones, an entrepreneur and philanthropist who at one time was head of the US Department of Commerce and a large bank, owned the newspaper and was a major developer— all at the same time! You could say Jesse had this town locked up and could basically do whatever he wanted — for better and for worse.
Right after the turn of the century Jones owned almost 100 buildings in Houston, and he then
began to concentrate on real estate and banking. In 1908 he bought part of the Houston Chronicle. Between 1908 and 1918 he organized and became chairman of the Texas Trust Company and was active in most of the banking and real estate activities of the city. By 1912 he was president of the National Bank of Commerce (later Texas Commerce Bank, and by 2008, part of JPMorgan Chase & Co.). During this period he made one of his few ventures into oil as an original stockholder in Humble Oil and Refining Company (now Exxon).
President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Jones chairman of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation — an entity created to help banks and businesses survive the Depression. He held that position from 1933 until 1939, and as a result, became one of the most powerful men in America. He helped prevent the nationwide failure of farms, banks, railroads, and many other businesses. [Link]
Some folks referred to Jones as "the fourth branch of government.” [Source]
As the first chairman of the Houston Harbor Board he raised money for the Houston Ship Channel’s completion. A shallow waterway was dredged, and the city became a viable port… and he built this concert hall, as oligarchs do, to both enhance his reputation and “improve” the cultural life of Houston — and as a byproduct, provide a place where the upper crust could mingle. In a backstage hallway leading to the symphony players’ locker rooms are some 8x10 glossies of retired classical musicians. A happy bunch of misfits and one photo of a stern-looking Eastern European conductor.
The stage sound is possibly the best of any hall we’ve played in. Extremely dry (not echoey) for a symphony hall… so we can hear ourselves and each other clearly.
After the show we have drinks at the oldest bar in town, La Carafe, and a man tells Steven that there are now a series of bike lanes here that enable people living in neighborhoods within the freeway ring road zone to commute to work. Hard to believe anyone would ride regularly in the Texas summer heat… but in the mornings (around 7:30) it is actually quite cool… so I guess if one gets an early start it might be OK.
Walked along the just opened, not quite finished High Line elevated park last night after taking my daughter and her pals to a birthday dinner. It's extraordinary... postmodern zen... the feeling of strolling on an elevated walkway is pretty special. Romantic but industrial. Slick but free.
Here are some black metal (and related genres) album covers.
I think they're beautiful. They've gone beyond the cartoon horror of traditional metal graphics, and have arrived at something sublime, something almost peaceful in their apocalyptic moodiness. I've heard only some of these bands, so I can't claim to be knowledgeable about all of the music these covers represent — but my imagination can fill in some of the blanks.
We’re three shows into this NA leg. By last night’s show in Montclair, NJ we felt like we had clawed our way back to the level of performance we reached at the end of the previous legs. We were fine at the first two shows, but some of us, not just me, had to think now and then about what we were doing — which didn’t really affect the show, but was a little bit of a reminder that there’s a lot going on.
Jon Pollak, our LD for this whole tour, has left for I don’t know where. We’ll miss him — his lighting was wonderful — but our new LD, David A, will be up to speed soon.
On the night bus ride from Canandaigua, NY (near Rochester) to Montclair the crew bus broke down — a radiator pipe problem, I was told. In the middle of the night (5 AM?) the band and dancer buses circled back around and picked up the survivors. Crew members groggily piled on and slept the rest of the night in the empty bunks and on lounge sofas as we continued on to NJ.
Amazingly, I slept though the whole thing, as did Mauro, Paul and some others. I woke up in a parking lot in Fairfield, NJ to find Victor (guitar tech) and Bruce (FOH mixer) sitting in our bus lounge, surrounded by luggage, drinking coffee.
The abandoned bus was repaired, and showed up in Montclair mid-afternoon with Arlene, the driver, behind the wheel.
Mauro and I decided to bike from the hotel in Fairfield to the Edison house and lab, a National Historic site in nearby West Orange (about 9 miles away). Rolling hills along the route, through Verona and some other hamlets, made for a bit more of a workout than we anticipated. We passed by pleasant wooded suburbs and some pretty big houses. No bike paths (no surprise there) and not even sidewalks in some areas. If you don’t have a car in NJ you really are a second-class citizen. When we got there — a gatehouse to a private community marked the entrance — we were told that it was open only on weekends, and the lab was under renovation. My fault for not double-checking opening hours.
I’d read in a new book about recorded sound (Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music by Greg Milner) that Edison arranged demonstrations of his “perfected” wax cylinder recorders at various theaters around the continent. He’d have a known singer sing along with their own recorded voice, and then at some point the singer would stop and the recording took over. Testimonials claimed that the audience gasped and couldn’t tell the difference between the live singer and the recording (like “Is it real or is it Memorex?” for those who remember those cassette tape ads).
This seems a little far-fetched, though it’s true that we do hear what we want to hear to a large extent, and the amount of hype Edison was capable of generating was considerable — and hype can affect what we see and hear. There was indeed some information that surfaced alleging that Edison had “trained” the singers to imitate the quality and sound of the recordings — slightly pinched and not very loud — to make the gag work. This seems likely, as any decent singer could sing far louder than the volume of those old machines.
Although this may make Edison out to be a bit of a three-card Monte showman (as, like that game, the demonstration was rigged), it also shows what a talent he had for marketing and promoting his inventions. Coming up with an amazing idea and even patenting it was only half the battle… at least as far as getting it out there goes.
The rigged demonstration also gives an early hint at how performance is influenced by technology. Technology feigns neutrality — to simply record and capture (photography, audio, digitizing) — but not only does each technology skew the copy in some direction, the copy soon becomes the gold standard against which performance is measured. Even if the copy is not 100% faithful, in a weird backwards turn it becomes the “real” thing. While this seems almost comic — early singers imitating wax recordings or photographers imitating Impressionist paintings — with multi-track and now digital recording the worlds of recorded (and manipulated) sound and live performance drift ever further apart.
Our show in NJ went great — the crowd was up on their feet for a good part of the evening.
I’ve been in contact with some of the Extra Action Marching Band crew about doing more songs together when we reconnect in Portland, Seattle and Berkeley. Emails have been exchanged about brass arrangements and stage attire.
