August 2004

Watchin' some TV

Filed under: Imported

I was watching an episode of American Masters that I tivoed from PBS, and it reminded me of something I put on my site about a year and a half ago. I highly recommend this episode if you can still catch it, otherwise order it on DVD or something. It's got some really great stuff from people who actually knew Hank Williams and played music with him. Plus all the music built into it is really rich. And finally, there's a couple of those spooky moments with Hank III I've talked about before (he narrates most of the show).

Posted by Jack Sparks at August 29, 2004 12:28 PM

They're called "Cob Dogs"

Filed under: Imported

Sprawling mewling puking masses of humanity. If you're unhappy at the Minnesota State Fair, you're an unhappy person, and there's no cure. The world in all its colors comes to you for free, and all you have to do is have the good goddamned sense to let it. Sure, a sage clan of Lutherans from the nether regions will figure on $100 per head...but, so many things are there for the takin', and you don't have to spend a damned dime. A solid half hour can be wasted taking "rock n' roll" pictures next to the "Big Pig." There they are, the drunken boys in their 20's who slap him once or twice...he's asleep...then the punch to the haunch which brings a slight flick of the ear...then the drunken team effort, hands through the fence to roll him over and onto his hooves. You see, every 400 square feet or so of the State Fair is patrolled by a farmboy...all shoulders and forearms...and for the past 6 months, his days and nights have been filled with the sweet image of whoopin' some dumbass cityboy ass. So roll that pig you fuckers, but keep your heads on a swivel for the crashing blow to the ear that is just around the corner.

Yes, that is Hubert Humphrey profiled in seeds. It's a miracle that A) people are still fascinated with this scumbag enough to "draw" him, and B) they'll go through the torturous process of creating him out of seeds. The entrance to the Arts building is a great "shotgun" moment. No booze allowed. Toss your cups and your cookies, because inside these hallowed walls is Good Art for Cheap.

There are 3 basic types of clothing...the unfortunate tank top, the ill advised shorts, and the what the hell halter top. The corollary is all the men who should be wearing bras. This is a family affair, and children shouldn't be exposed to such filth, no matter how indirectly sexual. We all know it's hot, we all know it's a lot of walking, we all know comfort is key...but if you're spilling out of your clothing in all directions, you've made a massive mistake. If the banjo picker with the missing chromosome tells you something different, well, discretion has always been the better part of valor.

I call to thee Minnesota, hankering and gross. I am you, and you are me.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Later in the day, a man I respect took me to task for the throw away comment above calling HHH a "scumbag."  Maybe I should choose my words more carefully, but I think the term and moment were more the result of a cross between a little too much "night air" and having been born after 1965.  There are a great many people in my generation who view ALL politicians with utter contempt and disdain, regardless of what good they may have done.  It's a pure, and maybe slightly misinformed brand of cynicism, but there it is nonetheless.  The point of this piece was my love for the fair, and if I called HHH a scumbag in the process, well it just happened.  I promise to call Nixon a scumbag in my next blog, just to "even things up."  Go to the Fair, see ya there.

Posted by Jack Sparks at August 27, 2004 12:21 AM

Luther & Jim

Filed under: Imported

Luther Wright & The Wrongs

There are two really good bands playing at Lee's Liquor Lounge on Wednesday night, August 18th. Headlining is Luther Wright & the Wrongs, a band that completely re-recorded Pink Floyd's "The Wall" in country time. It's a brilliant piece of twang recording and I've turned a lot of people onto it in the past couple of years. The thing is, even outside of this fine record, they're a really entertaining band, and I've been hoping for a while that they'd get a gig at Lee's, which seems a much more natural fit for their act and energy than the Cedar Cultural Center, where they've played most of their shows in the past. Their latest record "Guitar Pickin' Martyrs" is a really catchy disk and I listen to it myself pretty regularly. Opening will be a fairly eclectic act called JT & The Clouds that's kind of out of San Francisco and kind of out of Chicago. I've played their tune Hey Delilah off of their album "Delilah" a number of times on the show and there's a lot of craft put into the complex lyrics and homey feel of the melodies. This should be an extremely interesting show, and yes Virginia, there will be opportunities to dance, which is almost mandatory for a Lee's gig.

In case you're not on my email list, I've been doing this Friday bit around 5:15pm each week where I call the The Happy Hour with Jim Cunningham and shoot a few tips at his listeners about the best live gigs in town over the weekend and into the week. Naturally, being the polished professional radio amature that I am, I started listening to the show on my drive home to get a feel for what was going on. It'll be hard for you to take me objectively, but I'm hooked. I don't always want to listen to music, and I can't stand some of the self-righteous bastards who vomit their alleged wisdom into the cab of my pickup during drive-time on talk radio around here too much anymore. Cunningham's show is a barely scripted conversation between him, his reluctant sidekick "El Grande," otherwise known as James Matheson, and about 5 or 6 of the host's close friends, who carry on running conversations with him about inside jokes for what seem like 10 or 15 minute stretches. He has an occasional outside guest hawking a book, web-site, or cause, but these guests are invariably late calling the show, so he's always forced to fill time taking shots at Matheson, awkwardly exposing secrets about his marriage, and/or taking one of the aforementioned calls from one of his cronies. It's funny without being forced, and he keeps his politics and morals to a dull roar, regardless of the topic at hand, which is refreshing when some asshole in a Z3 Roadster is trying to recreate a chase scene from a James Bond movie in front of you on the Crosstown. People can typically only get our station in the car, so give it a shot on your next commute, can't hurt.

Posted by Jack Sparks at August 17, 2004 10:06 PM

Peter, I'm not in the habit of eatin' my steak off the floor...

Filed under: Imported

If there's one thing hillbillies enjoy, it's Westerns. Sheriffs, gunfighters, and town drunks are all part of our entertainment canon, and nobody likes it so much when the bad guy wins, although a lot of revisionist history and plain old reality have sort of turned around who the good and bad guys really were in some of our favorite flicks. No matter. I don't go to McDonald's to learn how to cook, I don't go to the liquor store to buy soda pop, and I don't go to the movies for a history lesson.

So, I was stopped dead in my tracks the other night by my friend Nick, who asked me what the greatest Westerns of all time were. My first reaction was to say, "isn't it obvious?" I mean if the question were phrased, "Hey Jack, what are some great Westerns I can rent?," I can easily rattle off about 40. But, what are the greatest, and what IS the greatest, are very different questions indeed.

For one, Westerns have the almost singular distinction of creating icons in what we think of as our American culture. When you say John Wayne, people think old west, cowboy hat, loaded gun. He made a lot of movies, but he made his "fuck you" money on Westerns. Even a piece of shit like "The Shootist" had all sorts of A-List types sign up because of the residual effects of being in a John Wayne Western. Then, there's the iconoclastic, counter-cultural hipness of Clint Eastwood and his no-name cowboy pictures, both spaghetti and non-spaghetti. His good guys were often the lesser of two evils, and reflected a lot of the social upheaval of the times in which they were made. If you go listing Top Westerns, you walk a fine line if you criticize or don't pick stars like this.

Another point is that a lot of people have seen Westerns, but most people haven't seen a lot of Westerns. That is to say, there are some Westerns out there that get a lot of Saturday afternoon airplay, but you have to be a fan of the genre to hunt down some of the best. You have to have a genuine taste for some of the storylines and imagery. I've tried to plop a few friends down in front of some old Westerns to no avail. Either there aren't enough liquid steel robots or there aren't enough women having round table discussions about faking orgasms; the essence of the thing just doesn't sink in with them.

Finally, the dress-up cowboy types will always take aim at your testicles if you pick some movie that isn't "realistic" enough for them. Or, the Genuine Cowboy Dan Repeater Rifle types will cause a big stink if you leave out all those horse-shit singing cowboy movies with the pressed shirts and fluffy white chaps. Nothing against either camp, I just don't dwell there too much. I like realism like anybody; and I like listening to Roy Rogers and Gene Autry sing; but I don't think either one of those, by themselves is enough to push something into "greatest" status.

So what makes a Greatest Western?

I wanted to throw out some basic things, but I think those are surface notes, frilly little things that appeal to cliché ideas of what should go on in Westerns. So, after giving it some thought, I think it really comes down to 3 things:

1. The main character(s), who sometimes is the hero or good guy, has to be up against it, making life altering decisions, ultimately leading to the conclusion that the "bad guy" has forced him to look inside himself and see or confirm who he really is.

2. The supporting cast has to be made up of some solid actors with wide-ranging talents, to give the movie some color and three dimensions, instead of good guy vs. bad guy, gunfight, good guy wins, happily ever after.

2a. That means that Ben Johnson or Strother Martin need to show up in the movie somewhere, usually. Just trust me on this, I'll explain later.

3. There has to be some humor, comic relief in the fine Shakespearean tradition, whether intentional or otherwise.

Now the list. I cut it down to ten. I numbered them for argument's sake, but all ten of them would stop me dead in my tracks if I ran across them on TV or at a local revival theatre. As always, email me to tell me what a dumbass I am.

Jack's Ten Greatest Westerns

1. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
Look at this, Jimmy Stewart's entire reputation is built on a failure and a lie...and he's the GOOD GUY. He whines and cries throughout the entire movie about law and order and non-violent alternatives, then walks out in the street with a gun, shoots a man (or so it seems), then rides his killing to fame and fortune, even AFTER John Wayne tells him, "You didn't shoot nobody Pilgrim." This movie is FULL of side stories, priceless one-liners, and colorful supporting cast members. Lee Marvin as Liberty Valance with the ubiqitous Strother Martin and Lee Van Cleef as his yes-man sidekicks. It's a rule of thumb, or maybe it's an actual Amendment to the United States' Constitution, that when you need a loud yet whiney, somewhat mean sidekick, gang member, or bit character, you cast Strother Martin first, then audition others only after he turns it down. Edmond O'Brien as the whiskey soaked editor of the Shinbone Star, Dutton Peabody, and Andy Devine as the cowardly Marshall Link Appleyard are unbelievable.

2. Shane
Alan Ladd as Shane: "You speakin' to me?"
Ben Johnson as Chris Calloway: "I don't see nobody else standin' there."
No, Robert DeNiro didn't make up those lines for "Taxi Driver." This is one of the few movies in Hollywood history that didn't completely destroy the book on which it's based, right down to the annoying little kid, Joey. The location scenes are stark and brutal, and the hero is fighting his own demons as much as, if not more than, the "bad guys" representing the cattleman. A young Jack Palance is sulphurically evil as the hired gunfighter, called in to take down Shane and run the sod busters off. It's a rule of thumb, or maybe it's an actual Amendment to the United States' Constitution, that when you need an actual cowboy in your Western, you cast Ben Johnson, and if he turns it down, you cast Harry Carey, Jr.

3. The Wild Bunch
You know what the best part of this movie is, besides well...all of it? The best part is when they realize they have to go back and get in an essentially suicidal gunfight to help their friend, and they all start laughing...hysterically. They're all in this because they love the action, this is just part of the life they lead, and if they fight that Great Magnet in the Sky, they might as well be dead anyway. Note, Ben Johnson is one of the Gorch brothers, and Strother Martin is Coffer, part of the gang of losers Deke Thornton's forced to use to run down William Holden's Pike Bishop and the Wild Bunch. Like I said, rule of thumb or Amendment to the Constitution, you decide.

4. Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid
"Who are those guys?"
The biggest question here is, is this a chick flick? That Newman/Redford thing was about putting chicks in the theatre, but this is a real-live Western that just happens to have a lot of modern touches on it. As near as anyone can tell, Butch Cassidy was possibly the most charming criminal in American history and really did not like to kill anybody, which makes Newman's portrayal of the essence of the man, dead spot-on perfect. And the beauty of this movie is that we never see who they're fighting in any corporeal form; they're fighting themselves, they're coming to grips with the dead end road they've chosen, and those people shooting at them are just people shooting at them. They're their own worst enemy. As their old pal Sheriff Ray Bledsoe shouts at them while they're on the run, "...but you're still nothing but two-bit outlaws on the dodge. It's over, don't you get that? Your times is over and you're gonna die bloody, and all you can do is choose where." The dialogue in this movie is outstanding, and Katharine Ross is in my all time Top 5 Most Beautiful Actresses Ever list. Strother Martin appears near the end of the movie as Percy Garris, the manager of a mine in Bolivia. He even literally describes himself as "colorful." The movie was guaranteed success.

5. The Searchers
Could John Wayne act? A lot of goofy, hipper-than-thou types often criticize the man's acting. It's hard to find a film buff, though, who doesn't like "The Searchers." There's a lot about the theme of this movie that bothers me a little, but it's very gritty, and Wayne's Ethan Edwards never lets up. He's home from the Civil War, he hates Indians, and he's pissed off that his brother got to marry the woman that HE loved, and then they all got wiped out. He's so tired of being hopeless and tired, that he'd rather see his niece Debbie dead than grown up in the Commanche tribes of West Texas. He's up against it, he's mad at life and the hand he's been dealt, more than he's mad at Scar or his "nephew" Martin or the United States' Government. The cinematography in this movie at times is absolutely breathtaking. No Ben Johnson or Strother Martin, but you get Harry Carey, Jr., as the Jorgensen boy, who gets killed when he finds out his childhood sweetheart Lucy has been raped and left for dead by the tribe who captured her.

6. High Noon
This movie just kills me. What IS Gary Cooper as Marshall Wil Kane up against? Sure Frank Miller is on that train; but it's the fear...it's the expectations...it's the perceptions. Frank Miller is not just a criminal, in this story and this town, he's a walking demon, and Wil Kane is the self-doubting hand of righteousness. This little wild west tiff is actually an epic battle of good and evil, but it's also a man's journey of self-assessment, and the realization that he has what it takes. There's Lee Van Cleef, standing at the station, waiting on Frank Miller.

7. The Good, The Bad, & the Ugly
When I was a kid, I was a huge Clint Eastwood fan...still am to some extent. Clint Eastwood's Westerns are weird, because he always insists on playing grey characters, guys that are only so good, and typically, most concerned with looking out for number one at the end of the day. If he happens to kill a few bad guys and help a few folks along the way, well, that's just part of the day's work. I like GB&U mostly because of Eli Wallach as Tuco. In 1966, Walter Matthau won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for "The Fortune Cookie." The Other nominees were: James Mason for "Georgy Girl," Robert Shaw for "A Man for All Seasons," Mako for "The Sand Pebbles," and George Segal for "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" Unfortunately, I've seen some of those other movies, and it's a goddamned crime that Wallach wasn't given consideration for GB&U. Not only did he help create one of the most interesting characters in the history of the Western genre, his acting was flawless. He's much rounder than Eastwood's no-name cowboy, and he adds life to every scene he's in. While Eastwood coldly kills Van Cleef's accomplices in the bombed out town, Tuco animatedly murders them, and then crosses himself, ever the good "Christian." There's Lee Van Cleef as Angel Eyes, Strother Martin and Ben Johnson would have been all wrong in this part.

8. Unforgiven
When a dinner is missing something, you add salt. When a movie is missing something, you add Gene Hackman...or Morgan Freeman...or Richard Harris...or all three. I would have given a million dollars to spend one day on this set. Eastwood's minimalist acting, Hackman's I'll-sleep-when-I'm-dead work ethic, Richard Harris' regalness, and Morgan Freeman...man oh man, I read voraciously as a kid BECAUSE of how cool Easy Reader was on Electric Company. Freeman's eyes look right through you from off of any movie screen, and he was the perfect conscience for Eastwood's Will Munny, retired cold blooded killer filling a revenge contract for a disfigured frontier whore. Here it is again, he's fighting himself, not Gene Hackman, not the shit-heels who slashed her up; it's obvious that with the proper motivation and anger, he could kill all these guys. The question is whether that part of him that contains that willingness will resurface and squelch the protestations of the failed hog farmer.

9. True Grit
You got the feeling with "True Grit" that John Wayne was finally playing himself. Glenn Campbell and Kim Darby are a little odd in this movie, but they don't ruin it. My brothers and I drove our little sister nuts when we were growing up, when she'd enter a room we'd say, "well, Baby Sister..." in that John Wayne voice. This is actually kind of an anti-Western because it shows a good deal of dirt, drunkeness, greed, and evil; and, while the bad guys are bad, the good guys aren't so different. If Wayne's Rooster Cogburn got killed on one of his missions into the wilds of the Territory, very few people would be sad or go looking for justice and revenge. In fact, Chen Lee would most likely be out of a job, and that would be the long and short of it. There's Strother Martin, as Colonel Stonehill trying to screw Baby Sister out of a good price for her dad's things. There's Jay Silverheels (yes Tonto) getting hung at the beginning of the picture. John Wayne won his only Oscar for this movie, that's gotta be worth something.

10. 3:10 to Yuma
I'll guarantee that at least half of you read that title and said, "huh?" Glenn Ford was a HUGE star in his own time, but a lot of his Westerns have gotten lost amid your John Waynes and Clint Eastwoods. In this movie he will absolutely make you doubt the existence of God and good in the world. His Ben Wade is a kind of Post World War II über villain, the smiling killer who you thought was your friend, but is just another fiend burped from hell...projected into the Old West. Van Heflin more or less reprises his role from "Shane" as uncorruptable family man and citizen, willing to do what it takes to make his dreams come true and keep his loved ones safe. This movie is oilier and darker than Shane though, much more modern, exactly what you would expect from Elmore Leonard banging out a Western on his typewriter.

Honorable Mention: Tombstone, Rio Grande/She Wore a Yellow Ribbon/Fort Apache, The Outlaw: Josey Wales, Blazing Saddles, Rustler's Rhapsody, The Electric Horseman, The Magnificent Seven

Posted by Jack Sparks at August 16, 2004 10:16 PM

Dej� mi rana en mi bolsillo antes de que la madre hiciera el lavadero

Filed under: Imported

It's hard to sit down and write during the Summer in Minnesota. Life respects the seasons here in God's country, and you best make hay while the sun shines. There are anywhere from four to six months--depending on your constitution--when there's not much point standing around outside admiring the landscape. So when that first southerly wind whips up from Albert Lea and tells Old Man Winter and the Spring slush to piss off, you better remove your socks and get about the serious business of getting dirty. A lot of good albums have been recorded, pressed, and distributed in recent months, but they're currently the soundtracks to the semi-lethal processes that characterize my June thru September and leave me a little too brain dead to put pen to paper. I gave it the old college try with Eleven Hundred Springs and The Old97's, but the results were spotty. So as the pilot of summer banks left on the final descent of the season to find the runway, I guess the best way to jumpstart my literary ambitions is to post some lists, or some random thoughts, or something. Writers write, bloggers blog, and hillbillies, well, hillbillies howl. So join me in a little dog days dalliance.

Jack's 8/10 Top 8 things of his Top Ten things on 8/10:

1. Taco Martin taking over booking Lee's Liquor Lounge
The club business is a lot more cut-throat than folks imagine, and sometimes there just needs to be new blood in a place, even if the essential nature, format, and genre don't change much. Taco has friends and enemies in this town like anybody, but no one can ever question his deep seated love of music, all music, and he has a keen sense of what Lee's was, is, and probably should be. Plus, his laid back demeanor belies a real P.T. Barnum heart beating in his chest. Viva Taco.

2. Bandwagon, by Eleven Hundred Springs
Spooky good country record. Now the trick is to get Taco to book them at Lee's.

3. Demko
When yer out in yer truck rolling around town catching live music and yer just standing there and you don't know anybody in particular and Demko comes stumblin' thru the front door looking for booze with all the latest soccer scores...well, it's like having a highwater mark at each bridge you pass on a long river trip. Demko gives you a good idea if yer boat is gonna make it under the bridge.

4. "Too Bad That You're Gone," by The Two Dollar Pistols

it's too bad that yer gone
i woulda liked for you to see
everything goin' wrong
and the mess i made of me

5. Dara Moskowitz
Right after I have Dara's boyfriend whacked, me and her is gonna git hitched and spend our days eatin' the finest meats and cheeses in all the land. Seriously though, Summers for me are all about restaurant adventures and Dara is the best food writer in town; plus, like me, she enjoys going to places where your food is alive until you order it. Fresh kills taste best, especially with a peppery red or a crispy white.

6. State Fair anticipation
Pretty self explanatory isn't it?

7. Girls
You can talk all you want about homegrown tomatoes, sweet corn, baseball, and the lake; but the best thing about Summer is girls. The Winter overcoat is a highly overrated piece of clothing. And I don't care what kind of hyper-senstive, pony-tailed, James Taylor guy you might know, if he says anything differnt, he's lying.

8. The ol' pigskin
Let me just lay this out for you...on Thursday, September 9th, I'll be up somewhere around Hoffman, MN preparing for a weekend of guns, liquor, poker, and guns at an out-state bachelor party and ESPN is going to show me the Patriots versus the Colts...then on Sunday, when I come dragassing back to the Cities, Fox is going to show me the Vikings versus the Cowboys, followed by the Chiefs versus the no-good fucking Broncos on ESPN. Are you kidding?

Posted by Jack Sparks at August 9, 2004 5:24 PM

Jambalaya on Glenwood

Filed under: Imported

For those of you who aren't familiar with Zydeco or Acadian music--and by "those of you," i'm including me--there's a kind of driving, mosh pit intensity to it, that is only watered down by the fact that it's typically powered by accordions and fiddles. Oh, and, the best of it is sung in unintelligible pidgin French. To wit, here are some lyrics from a pretty popular song in the genre:

Jolie blonde, regardez donc quoi t'as fait,
Tu m'as quitte pour t'en aller,
Pour T'en aller avec un autre, oui, que moi,
Quel espoir et quel avenir, mais, moi, je vais avoir?

I'm not sure, but I think it roughly translates into English as this:

I won't kiss my sister
You can't make us marry
The children might be odd
Let's all go eat crawdads

Seriously though, there's some real Robert DeNiro as Louis Cipher energy to this music, and I just about had my heart cut out voodoo style last night by The Bluerunners from Lafayette, Louisiana down at Lee's Liquor Lounge. Never heard of 'em, never heard their stuff, never read anything about 'em, just went down there to see what it was all about.

A cadré of grey-beards warmed up the dance floor swinging their gals around the room in comfortable shoes to the local sounds of The Faux Playboys. Lee's is at its best when the bands aren't playing for crickets and the longnecks are being passed across the bar double-time, and the Faux Playboys started the engine nicely. The median age of the crowd was 40ish and it made me wonder if the whole gig might not be just a niche-clique thing, complete with its own costumes, dance moves, and fan clubs.

But things started to spread out a bit as the evening wore on, and as the headliners began setting up their gear, it was a slight surprise to see how young they were compared to the core of the evening's audience.

For the next TWO HOURS, it was all huckle-buck à gris-gris, as the band stepped on the gas and mashed the damn thing right through the floor. And here's one for ya: they barely said two words between songs. They just shut the hell up and kept the dancers moving. The floor was never bare. One hundred and twenty minutes of bouncing knees, bobbing heads, and sweaty hairlines. I myself spent a good portion of the evening being dragged out on the dance floor by a 40-something woman with atrocious rhythm, but boundless enthusiasm. You simply can't put a premium on a gig where the music forces you to have fun, speaking to your primordial need to tap your feet and clap your hands. Just crack me a Dixie and spoon me up some more gumbo cher'.

Posted by Jack Sparks at August 8, 2004 4:02 PM

« July 2004 | Main | September 2004 »