The Formula

The Bird. I've had the car now for almost 11 years. People tell me to get rid of it, to get something newer. To them, it's just an old, outdated car. To me, it's far more than that.

Transportation. For most people, a car is just a machine, a means of getting from point A to point B. It has as much charm, beauty, or soul as a blender, a refridgerator, or a toaster. They don't care how fast it goes, how it looks, how it handles - just so long as it works reliably and cheaply. Replace their Honda Civic with a Toyota Corolla or Nissan Sentra and they won't blink, much less complain - same with a Honda Accord vs. Toyota Camry vs. Nissan Stanza. It's just a car. So what? When it gets old you replace it with something new - whatever dealer is giving the best rate, or whoever Consumer Reports rates highest that year.

For me it's something else, something more. I bought this car - 1992 Pontiac Firebird Formula "350" - because I wanted this particular car. Last year of the 3rd generation (1982-92), a Formula vs. a Trans Am (much less a Z/28); and with the 5.7L (350) V8, not the anemic 5.0L (305) V8 most of these cars came with. The 350 is not just 45 (or .7L) more, not just a bigger engine - it's a much better engine, born in 1967 when the horsepower wars were in full swing. The 350 responds well to modification (unlike the 305) and this car is definitely modified: headers, 3" exhaust, aftermarket intake manifold and runners, chip, 3" driveshaft and 3.73 gears – among many other changes. And this engine certainly gets the job done, even with 200,000 miles on it.

Power and Torque. You step on the gas, and the car moves, NOW. No hesitation, no delay, no reluctance. Economy cars react like "hey, what's the big hurry? We'll get there...eventually." This car reacts, "SIR YES SIR!" on the double. Even when merging on the highway, or passing, the engine barely breaks up a sweat. It's up to 90 without even noticing. Again, this is even with 200k on the odometer. Some economy cars have some off-the-line oomph, but they run out of breath quickly. In this case the car just keeps pulling through the RPM band. The mid-range torque is incredible.

Style. This changes over the years. Some cars are going to look dated after 10-20 years - some after 5 years. But some cars have a unique style which transcends years. The classic VW Beetle. The 1968-70 Dodge Charger ("Dukes of Hazzard" body style). The '70-81 Trans Am. I think the Pontiac designers got the angles, style and curves dead on in 1982. They even beat the Camaro, which has a rounded nose and rear, not nearly as sharp and well-proportioned as the Firebird. The problem with economy and regular cars (as opposed to sporty cars) is that they LOOK like standard cars. You go out into the parking lot in the mall to find your Accord or Camry, and you’re looking for one car among many, that looks like all the others. Nothing special or different. Nothing to get excited about. These cars lack passion, soul, or character. Even the new GTO (2004-06) suffers the same fate: although it has a 400 HP 6.0L V8, its looks come nowhere close to matching its performance. This is not a problem the Firebird ever had. To the contrary, the Firebird looked fast even when it had a pathetically slow 4 or 6 cylinder engine under the hood. Of course, with a strong engine, the package works even better.

 Camaro vs. Firebird vs. Mustang. The Ford Mustang came out first, in April 1964 (as a 1965 model year). GM had nothing comparable (certainly the Corvair didn’t qualify) so they pushed out two of their own cars, two-door four-seater sporty cars, front-engine rear wheel drive. The Chevrolet Camaro came out in September 1966 (as a 1967 model year); the Pontiac Firebird was late, February 1967 (also 1967 model year). Each rapidly eclipsed the Mustang in performance, if not in sales. Up until 1982, Firebirds had Pontiac V8s and Camaros had Chevrolet V8s – from 1982 onward, both cars were only available with Chevrolet V8s, not much of a difference for the Camaro crowd, but a huge letdown for the Pontiac nuts.

 The Firebird dominated both the Camaro and the Mustang. In 1969 the Trans Am was introduced, which became the top performance model, available with the largest engine Pontiac made, the 455. The Camaro was not available with Chevy’s 454, and the top model, the Z/28, wasn’t even offered in 1975-76. And as for the Mustang: from 1974-78 it was the "Mustang II", a rinky-dink little car, which even tried to rip off the Trans Am with a "King Cobra" model. Combine "screaming chicken" hood bird (73-81), 455 (7.5L) V8 (71-76), 400 (6.6L) V8 (70-79), and WS6 performance suspension, and a back seat (unlike the Corvette) and the Trans Am (and Formula) were the best deal in town for performance in the 70s, bar none.

Formula vs. Trans Am. The Trans Am has always been the extroverted, flashy, ostentatious model. The Formula has been the sedate, subtle model - all business, all performance, no pretention. Always available with the top engine and suspension – it was even possible, some years, to order a Formula with a better engine than the standard Trans Am engine. And in 1987-92, the Formula lacked the ground effects which made the Trans Am look fat - the auto equivalent of cellulite. A neater, trimmer, svelte look. All the better.

Acceleration vs. Top Speed. People whine about performance cars: "you can't use all that power!" Sure, you're not going to use anything over 90 mph in this area. But they confuse acceleration with top speed. We don't need, and can't use, that extra 20 mph from 120 to 140. But we can use an extra second 0-60. From stoplight, to merging on the highway, acceleration does make a difference in day to day driving. It's a difference you can feel in normal driving, particularly when entering traffic and getting onto a highway from an onramp. And a car that accelerates well is far more fun to drive. Finally: you can drive a fast car slowly, but you can't drive a slow car fast.

No one is going to mistake me for David Hasselhoff. The car doesn't talk to me, doesn't have Turbo Boost, won't go 300 mph (no production car will), and the black paint has seen better days - and isn't bulletproof. One of these days I'll get a new paint job (the current one dates from 1998). But it still does the job well. That's what matters to me.

Unknown Guitar Heroes

Yet another installment on musical subjects, in this case, unknown guitar heroes. In this case, Huw Lloyd Langton and Andy Powell.

 Langton is best associated with the space-rock band Hawkwind. By now Hawkwind are most known, if at all, for being the band Lemmy – Motorhead bassist/singer and another of these Ozzy-like godfathers of metal – was in before forming Motorhead. Hawkwind made one of the most collossal mistakes of the history of mankind in dumping him following a drug bust in Canada on the Warrior on the Edge of Time tour in 1975. In addition to Lemmy, Hawkwind was also "home" to a curvacious stage dancer Stacia, the eccentric Bob Calvert, and British science fiction/fantasy author Michael Moorcock. They still record, still tour England, and remain on good terms with Lemmy. Hardly a Motorhead interview fails to mention Hawkwind.

 Anyhow, back to Langton. He played on several Hawkwind albums scatttered over their career, but the highlights are: the first album (simply titled Hawkwind) from 1969, Levitation (a fantastic comeback album of 1980 with, of all people, Cream’s Ginger Baker on drums), The Chronicle of the Black Sword concept album (1985), and lastly, a fantastic trip called The Xenon Codex (1989) – before returning to the same obscurity he enjoyed from 1969-79. (Unfortunately he’s not on any of the same albums as Lemmy).

 Langton has a heavy sound, but melodic – somewhat like Don Felder, Dave Murray, and David Gilmour. Like Gilmour does in Pink Floyd, he serves as a solid rock base amidst a chaos of psychedelia, somewhat standing outside of the mess, as opposed to Jerry Garcia, who is part OF the mess the Dead create in their extended jams.

 I say "unknown" with respect to him because he seems to be off the radar except to Hawkwind fans. Aside from Hawkwind he seems to only pursue a solo career; he has seven solo albums.

 Similarly, Andy Powell is only associated with Wishbone Ash. Indeed, at this point, he is the only original member of the band left. Neither Ted Turner (second guitarist), Martin Turner (no relation to Ted, bassist), nor Steve Upton (drums) have any apparent interest in remaining in Wishbone Ash, though they did reunite briefly between 1989 and 1992 for Nouveau Calls and Here to Hear. Formerly with long wavy hair and cleanshaven, now Powell effects the "bald w/goatee" gothic look, though keeping the glasses and trademark Gibson Flying V.

 Powell’s style is similar to Langton’s, and similar to his erstwhile bandmate, Ted Turner. Though Powell, even today, always works with another guitarist, both sharing lead guitar duties in Wishbone Ash; and he has knack for finding excellent partners on lead guitar. As they are now, they’re no longer playing Merriweather Post Pavilion, as they did in the 70s – they play Jaxx, to sparse crowds. They come on the stage with the house lights on, plug into half-stacks or combos, and proceed to blow away the 20-30 people (in a venue that could probably accommodate 200) who had the extremely good judgment to show up and witness the show. The newest albums are OK, but the classics are definitely the starting point, particularly the original Powell-Turner-Turner-Upton lineup of the first four albums and live album: Wishbone Ash, Pilgrimage, Argus (their Dark Side of the Moon, and even BEAT that album in 1973 in a contest for best album of the year in the UK), Wishbone IV, and Live Dates.

The Sound of Music

About time for another movie review, this time: the Sound of Music, which I got some time ago on DVD. This is the Rodgers & Hammerstein movie musical from 1965. A great love story. Christopher Plummer is great as the "bug up his ass" uptight Captain. The kids – Liesel, Friedrich, Louisa, Kurt, Brigitta, Marta and Gretl – are all cute. The Baroness is pretty and jaded. Max Detweiler is clever and cynical. The nuns can’t stand "fraulein Maria". And Julie Andrews, of course, is beautiful and easy to fall in love with. As I probably noted earlier, the final parts of them escaping from the Nazis after the Anschluss are a letdown.

 I also watched the "extra features" on this (disc 2), which were moderately entertaining. I won’t vomit a river of useless information, but some points are worth making:

 1. The story was put into movie form before the R&H movie. The original movies were German, Die Trapp-Familie (The Trapp Family, 1956) and a sequel, Die Trapp-Familie in Amerika (1958). Then it was put into musical format in 1959 by R&H. In the musical, Maria von Trapp was played by Mary Martin.

 2. Fraulein Maria and Cap’n Von Trapp actually married in 1927. The Anschluss didn’t take place until 1938. So 11 years are suddenly compacted. They certainly didn’t return from their honeymoon to find a Nazi flag flying from their house. Moreover, as even I knew, Salzburg is across the river from... Germany! So they could not hike across the mountains to safety, as the nearest country is the one they’re trying to escape. In reality, they took a train to Italy and then went to the US. Heinrich Himmler took over the von Trapp’s house and used it as his headquarters. Of course that house was NOT the one used in the film.

 3. Von Trapp was a submarine captain in what must have been the Austro-Hungarian Navy in WWI. He was actually intrigued and tempted by the possibility of being a German U-Boat captain, but turned it down.  

 4. They interview the actors who portrayed the children, now 42 years older, of course. The girl who played Liesel, Charmian Carr, was actually 21, not 16. So she is now 63. She is still astonishingly attractive. Oddly, the little girl, Kym Karath, who played Gretl, the youngest girl, is now very attractive – almost like Morgan Fairchild. The actresses portraying Marta and Brigitta, Debbie Turner and Angela Cartwright, look very similar to each other. The guy who played Friedrich, Nicholas Hammond, now looks like Cliff Robertson. All the children actors are American.

 5. The only one of the actual von Trapp family they interview is Gregor von Trapp, who is a step-sibling to the others, as Maria von Trapp is his mother. He was a useful source of information.

 6. They interviewed Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer. Unlike "Gone With The Wind", dating from 1939 with lots of the main people now long dead, "The Sound of Music" is recent enough that practically everyone (except Hammerstein) is still alive, even the director.

 7. With any actor portraying a role, the essence is that they are..."acting", which is to say that the person they portray on screen is not necessarily anything like the actor, and in fact may not even resemble the person being portrayed, either, but some synthesis between the two. According to Plummer, the Fraulein Maria we saw portrayed by Julie Andrews, though, is very much Julie Andrews herself.

 8. The real Maria von Trapp was on the movie set, somewhat like the real Frank Serpico showed up to watch them make the movie about him. In both cases, the real person chafed at having no control over the portrayal. By all accounts, Maria von Trapp circa 1964 was very domineering and bossy.  People who visited their music camp in Vermont came back to report that the Captain and Maria had a relationship like the King and Queen of Hearts from "Alice in Wonderland":  "Who's been painting my roses red?!?"

 9. "Edelweiss" is not a real Austrian folk song, merely R&H’s extremely convincing appoximation of one, just as "New Cumberland Blues" (on Workingman’s Dead) was Robert Hunter & the Grateful Dead’s attempt at a West Virginia mountain country folk song, so well done that miners (!!!) have complimented the band on having discovered some long lost song, when they actually wrote it from scratch themselves. It was the last song they wrote together – for any musical – before Hammerstein died. Rodgers actually had to write two songs, "I Have Confidence" and "Something Good" by himself to wind up the film’s set.

Note: Plummer and William Shatner are both from Montreal and both auditioned for the role of Captain Von Trapp, and also the role of Captain Kirk on Star Trek, which we know went to Plummer and Shatner, but the roles could have been reversed.  Shatner managed to get Plummer into the sixth Star Trek movie, the Undiscovered Country, as Klingon captain Chang.   

 What’s great about the film is watching Maria and the Captain fall in love with each other. There is that peak when the Baroness and the Captain are talking on the balcony, and the Baroness – a shrewd woman – can read the writing on the wall. Both of them can tell what’s going on. And finally the Captain goes down to the gazebo....and we know what happens next.

FBI Most Wanted - Osama Bin Laden

I was at the Fairfax County police station the other day getting an accident report, and noticed they have the FBI 10 Most Wanted Fugitives posted up in the entrance hallway. The idea is that people coming and going - including police officers and civilians - look at the pictures and remember in case they happen to run into these 10 dangerous persons.

 #1 of course is Osama Bin Laden. Some of the others are probably lurking around the US and are merely criminals and not international terrorists. Those guys we might actually meet somewhere here. But OBL? "Yeah, I thought that guy looked familiar! He's at the 7-11 around the corner. He sold me a Slurpee and a Big Bite, and told me 'Die, Yankee infidel....and thank you for shopping at 7-11!'" A bit unlikely. Though it would be ironic if we're looking for him in caves in Afghanistan when he's actually here selling "heavily salted snackfoods" in Springfield.

I looked to see what they have him charged with. Bombings in Africa. No mention of 9/11. Hmm... is he off the hook? Then I looked at the notice: dated 1999. He's been a bad guy for some time. They haven't even updated his sheet!

 Some people speculated he might be hiding in Somalia. One of the Somali warlords laughed at that. "With a $1 million bounty on his head, OBL would last 5 seconds here. We'd all be racing to turn him in for the bounty. We don't care that he's Muslim - we just want the money!"

Layne Staley, Alice in Chains, and Grunge

I thought about doing this as a homage to Layne Staley and Alice in Chains, then decided to go whole hog, stuff both Doc Martens-clad feet in my mouth, and go all out and make it a pithy review of grunge as a whole.

 The top 4 grunge bands are clearly Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Nirvana and Pearl Jam. The Stone Temple Pilots and Mind Funk are sometimes classified as grunge (depending on who you talk to), though neither are from Seattle (STP are from San Diego, and Mind Funk were from New Jersey). Of these, only Pearl Jam survived intact. Alice In Chains and Nirvana suffered the loss of their main inspirations, Layne Staley and Kurt Cobain respectively. Soundgarden broke up – Chris Cornell is now in Audioslave with Tom Morello of Rage Against The Machine.

 I’m not from Seattle. I’ve never even been there. I’ve seen "Singles." I won’t claim to have any familiarity with "grunge" prior to 1991, i.e. the whole Sub Pop proto-grunge scene which includes Andrew Wood and Mother Love Bone. I’ll stick to what I know:

 Pearl Jam. I didn’t mind Ten, the first album, but nothing I heard from then on impressed me. Eddie Vedder seems a little too wrapped up in his own angst. Not a bad singer, nor a bad band. Just overrated. I never saw them in concert.

 Nirvana. Crucify me, but I prefer Dave Grohl’s Foo Fighters. The band was wayyyy overrated, even beyond Kurt Cobain. Maybe he did have some serious mental and physical problems. Maybe things weren’t happy with Courtney Hole, I mean Courtney Love. If his life was as boring and pointless as "Gus Van Zant’s Last Days" makes it out to be, perhaps his suicide was a cry for help. Ayn Rand argued that Marilyn Monroe killed herself because she discovered, to her horror, that despite "making it" and reaching the top, she could not escape the SHIT you have to deal with in life and only trade one set of bullshit for another. It strikes me that Cobain came to a similar conclusion; in his case, success couldn’t cure his stomach pain or his heroin addiction. Somehow being at the top and the center of attention was as stressful as being anywhere else.

 I don’t have a problem with Cobain himself – hell, in a Rolling Stone interview he surprised the knee-jerk liberal interviewer by expressing pro-gun political views ("no, you’re a rock star, you’re supposed to adopt the whole liberal viewpoint without thinking differently! Ask Dave Mustaine if you have any doubts!"). Again, my problem was that the band itself was overrated. "Smells Like the Teen Spirit" and Nevermind got far too much coverage and exposure. There was never much point in buying any Nirvana albums or seeing them in concert: you couldn’t turn on the radio or MTV without being buried in them 24/7. They were supposed to open up for Metallica on the Black Album tour (1991) but that turned out to be a rumor.

 I recall when Cobain killed himself: I was going up to New Jersey to visit my friend Ken, who at the time was the lead guitarist for a goth band, Coven of Hate, and the center idol figure for the band and its clique of Montclair State college kids. They were all majorly bummed out. I somehow wasn’t surprised, but nor was I jumping up and down with glee. One of the gang had to open his mouth about "what’s the big deal??" For me, I felt it best to let them wallow in agony. What better source of inspiration for a goth band, than the suicide of their favorite singer? It all fits together – life, even its abrupt and untimely end, works in strange ways.

 Soundgarden. At the time they first came to my attention, Badmotorfinger was the current album. Neither "Outshined" nor "Rusty Cage" impressed me, but I listened to Louder Than Love and got hooked; Ultramega OK was fine, but not as good. Then Superunknown came out, and all hell broke loose. I liked it much better than Badmotorfinger, and apparently everyone else agreed. Phil and I saw this tour at the Bender Arena at American University in 1994. They followed this up with Down on the Upside (doomed to be a letdown after Superunknown) and then broke up. Chris Cornell has one of the best voices in music, let alone grunge. Soundgarden are definitely the heaviest of the four and most reminiscent of Black Sabbath. They even covered "Into the Void" on an "Outshined" EP, albeit with different lyrics. An interviewer once suggested to Kim Thayil, the guitarist, that Soundgarden owes some royalties to Tony Iommi (Black Sabbath guitarist), to which Thayil simply replied, "maybe."

 Alice in Chains. I remember buying the Facelift album back in 1991 or so on the advice of my friend Ken. My buddy Jean and I went to Tower Records at Tysons Corner and bought the album. I loved it immediately. They followed it up with two studio albums, Dirt and Alice in Chains (either green or purple plastic jewel case with the B&W pic of a three-legged, sad-looking dog), two acoustic EPs, SAP and Jar of Flies, a live album Unplugged, and a boxed set.

 Listening to the AIC Unplugged album, I’m amazed at how well they pull it off, even better than the other bands who jumped on the acoustic bandwagon after Tesla (damn them!!!) started this nonsense with their Five Man Acoustical Jam. ("Signs" was fine, but the rest of their songs work better as electric pieces – and wasn’t that the point of a band named after Nikola Tesla?) Usually I can’t stand acoustic crap, but both Sap and Jar of Flies, the two acoustic EPs Alice in Chains put out, are fantastic. Three killer studio electric albums, Facelift, Dirt, and Alice in Chains; and adding in Above, the Mad Season side project album of Layne Staley’s, I’ve come to the conclusion that Staley and AIC have put out NOTHING, absolutely NOTHING of less than stellar quality.

 When Cobain killed himself, it didn’t hit me that much. But when Staley was found dead, on April 19, 2002 – estimated death on April 5, two weeks before (the same date as Cobain’s death, ironically enough) – it hurt me much more. And he died the worst way: alone, body found two weeks later, badly decomposed.

 Looking at his pics, Staley often appeared to be a freak. Even worse, he had that annoying appearance of being freakish for the sake of being so, very much like Perry Farrell (Jane’s Addiction and Porno for Pyros). Arrghh! But somehow Staley pulled it off. His voice was great; the lyrics, even if they were often bizarre, seemed to work (similar to Blue Oyster Cult). I was fortunate enough to see them twice live, both times as opening acts: the Clash of the Titans Show (Anthrax, Megadeth and Slayer) and Van Halen (For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge Tour) in 1991.

 If I had to pick a current successor to the grunge scene, aside from Pearl Jam themselves, I’d pick Queens of the Stone Age. Check them out.