Classic Rock Magazine

I recently picked up the October 2018 issue of Classic Rock Magazine (Issue #254), cover story on Led Zeppelin.  If the issue tally is any indication – 13 issues per year including the twelve months and a summer edition – the magazine has been around since 1999.  My earliest issue is #85, from October 2005, with the cover story on Hollywood Rocks.  I can’t say my collection is complete, I started diligently getting the issues in 2008.  My buddy Phil got me a gift subscription a few years ago, but at the moment I’m reliant upon Barnes & Noble.  It’s a British magazine so here in the US we’re about a month behind them.  

Last winter the parent company went out of business, and for a brief bit it seemed as though the magazine would stop publishing.  Fortunately Ben Ward (singer for Orange Goblin) rallied a campaign to seek a new owner and the magazine was saved.   So far as I can tell there are no missing issues.  Excellent.

The earliest rock magazines I recall are CREEM and Rolling Stone.   My only recollection of CREEM is a negative reference to Black Sabbath (Ozzy and “dark goons who flanked him” – Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler), and Rolling Stone struck me as too politically oriented and also hostile to Black Sabbath and other  heavier bands I preferred. 

Then came KERRANG!.   We started reading this in Paris, purchasing it at W.H. Smith on Rue de Rivoli off of the Place de la Concorde, just blocks away from the US Embassy.  Kerrang! loved Black Sabbath and the heavier bands.  They really loved Faith No More, giving The Real Thing a maximum 5K score, which led us to catch the band at the old 9:30 Club in DC in fall 1989, followed by an opening slot in 1992 at RFK (Angel Dust tour) for Metallica (Black Album Tour) and Guns N’Roses (Use Your Illusion Tour).   Then we moved back to the US and lost touch of Kerrang! for awhile.  When Classic Rock came around, we eagerly caught up that, and I recognized some names like Geoff Barton from Kerrang!. 

The magazine features obituaries, “look who’s back”, full length articles, and then the following:

The Hard Stuff: New Albums.   Guess what?  They review new albums.  Now they have a 1-10 rating.  I’ve yet to see anyone get a 1 rating, and a 10 rating is also rare, so consider an 8 or a 9 the effective maximum.  There are also Round-Ups on Melodic Rock, Sleaze and Blues, specific categories.

The Hard Stuff: Reissues.   By now bands are reissuing earlier material, generally remastered and with extra tracks.  Some are better than others.

Buyer’s Guide.  They’ll focus on a particular band (this issue: Todd Rundgren) giving two Essential (Classic) albums, Superior (reputation cementing), Good (worth exploring) and AVOID, which is what they consider the band’s worst album.  I find the latter to be fun to read.  Occasionally they concede that even the band's worst album is still worth listening to, the rating simply being relative. 

Live.  Big portions for music festivals like Download (today’s Donington Monsters of Rock) and lesser entries for regular shows, though I notice they’re seeing shows in the US and not just the UK. 

Heavy Load.  Tacked on at the very end. Here they ask rock stars some deep and heavy questions.  Not necessarily embarrassing, but they do give the star an opportunity to cop up to regrets and wrong choices.  Give them credit for tailoring the questions to the specific star.   Gene Simmons:  “There is no negative to being Gene Simmons.”

PROG.  Apparently they had enough material on bands like Pink Floyd, Genesis, Jethro Tull, Yes, King Crimson, etc. to warrant an entire spinoff magazine.  Rick Wakeman has a highly entertaining column, which itself could be argued is worth the price of the magazine.  Generally they review something like 30 albums of this genre alone, of which I might recognize 5 bands.  I used to buy this regularly, now I only do so if the cover story (Camel, Opeth, Pink Floyd) catches my attention. 

Bonus Disc.   Now they simply have a link for a download, but until recently you actually got a physical CD with material.  I’ve accumulated dozens of these, far more than I can actually listen to, and sadly 80% of the material are new bands slavishly copying the same bands we’ve known for years.  If you have the patience you might find one or two tracks from a CD which prompt further investigation.   By now I’ve stopped bothering.

Source of Inspiration.   With Facebook around these days, Classic Rock might as easily be a source for me to put down more albums on my Amazon.com wishlist, as be reviewing albums I already purchased on my own.  I’ve noticed that the UK and Europe are more widespread in their attention to different forms of music.  In the US the mainstream only focuses on bands which would play the Grammys.   But in Paris, Brant Bjork’s new album was front and center in the vinyl racks at FNAC, and Hawkwind get a review in Classic Rock magazine, even if they’re not nearly as big as they were during the 70s when Lemmy was still in the band.   Hell, Clutch get strong attention from CRM, though as yet no cover story.  

Wes Anderson

I caught director/filmmaker Wes Anderson’s most recent film, “The Isle of Dogs”, animated with an all-star cast.   By now I’ve seen all the films he directed, which all have a similar whimsical quality like Tim Burton, though much more mundane than supernatural.  And of course, no one beats David Lynch for weird, right?  Here’s a subject where most of my assessments will be negative, so bear with me if you’re a big Wes-head. 

Bottle Rocket.  First film.   A pair of friends, Dignan (Owen Wilson) and Anthony (Luke Wilson), playing friends rather than brothers, engage in a series of incompetent thefts and robberies, with James Caan as a mentor and some Hispanic maid as a love interest.  It wasn’t particularly memorable, interesting, funny or exciting.  I watched it once and then promptly forgot almost all of it.

Rushmore.  Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman) is an improbably versatile student at Rushmore, a private school in Houston, Texas.   Actually he puts all his energy into extra-curricular activities instead of, not in addition to, his studies, so his success doesn’t match his ambition.  He vies with a wealthy businessman, Blume (Bill Murray) for the affections of a teacher, Rosemary (Olivia Williams) who eventually falls in love with Blume.   Max and Blume fight, then make up.  Again, somewhat dull.

The Royal Tenenbaums.   The story of three NYC kids of a powerful but corrupt father Royal (Gene Hackman): Chas (Ben Stiller), Richie (Luke Wilson), and Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow).  The kids started out talented and ambitious as youngsters but seem to bottom out as adults.  There’s crap going on with Owen Wilson and Bill Murray’s characters, Royal fakes cancer to win back his wife (Angelica Huston), and other stuff happens.  Confusing and only borderline funny.  Watch once and that’s it.  See a pattern?

The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou.   Sea shit with Bill Murray, Jeff Goldblum, and other people, Murray’s character being somewhat like Jacques Cousteau.   Watch it once and sink it deep.  Bye bye. 

The Darjeeling Limited.  Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, and Jason Schwartzman on a train in India.  It’s Wes Anderson, so of course Bill Murray is in here somewhere.   Dull adventures on a train in India.  That’s it.  NEXT.

The Fantastic Mr. Fox.  Stop-action animation about a thieving fox played by George Clooney.   Actually fairly entertaining as Wes Anderson films go, but only marginally less forgettable.  Bill Murray?  Check.  Jason Schwartzman?  Check.  Owen Wilson?  Need you ask?   Possibly made more endurable with herbal enhancement.

Moonrise Kingdom.  Scouting in New England in the 1960s.   Bruce Willis is here for a change, giving a good account of himself.  Edward Norton, Bill Murray (yes, again), and Jason Schwartzman (yes, again).  More dull than amusing, but by now we know what to expect from Wes Anderson.  Herbal enhancement may induce earlier slumber before finishing this one.    

The Grand Budapest Hotel.  Some hotel in what looks like Austria or Hungary.  Ralph Fiennes is the main guy but the usual suspects including BILL MURRAY are back in yet more idiosyncratic yet forgettable roles.

 

The Isle of Dogs.   A weird animated film about dogs banished from mainland Japan to an island of trash.  Mayor Takayashi, who orchestrated the ban by falsifying evidence of a health crisis surrounding the dogs (created by himself, in fact) finds that his adopted son Atari has gone to the island in search of his own dog, voiced by Liev Shreiber.  The main dog, a stray (Bryan Cranston, a dog version of bad-ass Walter White minus the meth) finds out stuff.  Scarlett Johansson voices a show dog, Nutmeg.  The humans all speak Japanese and are voiced by Japanese actors, Ken Watanabe and Yoko Ono being the only notable ones.  The dogs get the A list of actors including the usual suspects (yes, Bill Murray).  Some good action and adventure and a likable outcome.  Another movie I’ll watch once and never again.

All of these films are somewhat lighthearted and humorous in a very subtle, passive-aggressive way.  It’s so dry as to be like dirt and sand.  Is this supposed to be ironic or cynical?   Whatever else it might be, it’s so low-key as to be extremely dull – at least to me.   Enjoy or not at your own risk. 

Gettysburg

My visits up to New Jersey, by way of Pennsylvania to avoid tolls, sometimes took me up Route 15 from Frederick, Maryland to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a route which led close by to Gettysburg, which is roughly a half hour northeast of Frederick and close by Route 15.   On those occasions I had no time to stop by the battlefield, but with a more recent surplus of weekend time, I made it a point to visit.  No one else cared, so I went by myself.

Background.  From 1861-1865 our country, the USA, was embroiled in a costly Civil War which cost the lives of 620,000 men, more than our WWI and WWII casualties combined.  The war started well for the Confederates, led by mostly capable men such as Lee, Longstreet and Samuel L. “Stonewall” Jackson, but in 1863 a pair of major battles at Vicksburg in Mississippi and Gettysburg in Pennsylvania smacked the rebels down and put them on the defensive.  Within the next two years the Union, its armies now finally led by competent men like Grant & Sherman, battered down the CSA armies, capturing Atlanta and Richmond and driving them to surrender at Appomattox, Virginia in April 1865, almost four years to the date of the firing on Fort Sumter, South Carolina which started the war.

The battle itself took three days, July 1-3, 1863.  Confederate forces, led by Lee himself, collided with Union forces led by Meade.  On the first day the rebels succeeded at pushing back the Union forces south of the town itself, which eventually solidified into a “fishhook” mainly centered on the tactically superior higher ground. 

On the second day, Union forces on Little Round Top, the far southern flank of the fishhook, successfully fought off a heavy Confederate assault on the hill.  It reached the point where the Union commander, Colonel Chamberlain, realizing his men were almost out of ammunition and would be overrun by the next wave of Confederate attackers, decided to switch things around and ordered his men to fix bayonets and attack down the hill, a gutsy move which surprised the Confederates and overwhelmed them, defeating the rebel attempt to capture the high ground and saving the day. 

By the following day Pickett’s units finally showed up (well after he did) and Lee ordered a full frontal assault against the well-fortified Union lines on Cemetery Ridge.  Over open ground the rebels suffered heavy casualties from rifle and cannon fire, and only reached the Union lines at one point: the Angle, and all those rebel forces were killed.  Some of the artillery plaques noted that the guns fired canister against the rebels at point blank range.   

After the failure of Pickett’s Charge, the battle was over and the respective armies returned south.  The Union forces weren’t quick enough to capture Lee’s retreating armies, so the war had to go on for almost another two years.  However, the rebels were no longer strong enough to venture north again and were permanently on the defensive at this point, thus the battle represents a turning point in the war.

  

Four months later, Lincoln came and gave his famous Gettysburg Address.  I was a little late to witness it, but there’s a cemetery there now. 

1970s.  Back when I was living in the USA as a kid, my father and I, accompanied by three other father-son pairs, all of us Cub Scout or Webelos boys, visited Gettysburg on a camping trip.  Since this was around 1977 or 1978 my memories are hazy, except for a few details.  First off, the Visitor Center back then was much smaller; second, we toured the battlefield including Little Round Top and Devil’s Den; and third, we actually marched across the field from Pickett’s starting point all the way to the Union lines on Cemetery Ridge.   I enjoyed it but as noted above haven’t had the opportunity to revisit since then, notwithstanding passing close by several times.

Current visit.  The current visitor center is much larger and dates from the 2000s.   On Saturday, October 6, I saw the weather was overcast but not rainy.  I stopped by the visitor center and purchased a t-shirt, pint glass and fridge magnet, and then walked over to where the Union lines were on Cemetery Ridge.   I visited the Pennsylvania memorial which has a second story.  I walked down to Devil’s Den and up Little Round Top.  Then I walked back to my car in lot 3.  One of the guides at the visitor center warned that walking the entire battlefield area is a bit much, and he was right – all this walking, on its own, took over 2 hours.  I finished off the day by driving up into Gettysburg itself and then taking York Road back up northeast to Route 15.  Gettysburg features a small college and tons of stores, so it’s well worth visiting in its own right.  It’s another small US town which has succeeded at keeping its small town charm intact.   Maybe this has something to do with the battle.

The next day was sunny, so I decided to go back again.  This time I drove around the auto-tour route, going northwest and then down Confederate Road, a western path which runs through where Confederate lines were.  There’s a huge statute of General Bruce E. Lee up on his horse facing the Union lines, and back at Little Round Top the view with an afternoon sun is breathtakingly beautiful to the west.   I also checked out the visitor center’s museum, which had extensive s**t and nice narratives of each day’s battles. 

I remarked to one guy that if General Meade was as large as his statue, no wonder “we” won.  He laughed and replied, “y’all won.”  I observed other tourists wearing Stars & Bars insignia clearly showing their loyalties.  But everyone was in good spirits.  I couldn’t find any Broughtons listed on the New York memorials, although Ancestry.com lists multiple Broughtons from New York as having fought in the Civil War.  New York sent more troops to the Union than any other state, and of my relatives, the Broughtons were in New York at the time of the war.  I’ll keep looking.  [My uncle told me our direct ancestor was in the NY fire department during the war, suggesting that he was exempt from the draft as an essential worker back home in Brooklyn.]

Movie.  As noted in one of my prior blogs, they did make a movie of the battle (1993), with an A list cast:  Martin Sheen (Lee), Tom Berenger (Longstreet), Jeff Daniels (Joshua Chamberlain),  Oscar Goldman from the “Six Million Dollar Man” (Richard Anderson) as Union general Meade, George Lazenby from “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” as CSA General Pettigrew, Sam Elliott as Union cavalry general Buford, and even Ken Burns as a Union soldier.  It narrows its focus to the three days of the battle, its day two focus to Chamberlain’s heroic defense of Little Round Top and its day three focus to the ill-fated Pickett’s Charge, Pickett himself flamboyantly portrayed by Stephen Lang.  I also enjoyed Longstreet (Berenger)  having a candid chat with British observer Freemantle, correctly referring to England’s own civil war (1642-51) and accurately predicting that the British, who abolished slavery in 1833 and were very active in shutting down the slave trade, would be ill-inclined to support the Confederate cause.

Books.   The movie mentioned above is based on Michael Shaara’s 1976 book The Killer Angels, which I have not read.  I have read the trilogy by Newt Gingrich (yes, the former Republican congressman from Georgia), Gettysburg: A Novel of the Civil War, Grant Comes East, and Never Call Retreat: Lee And Grant: The Final Victory.  This is actually an alternative history narrative.  Unlike Harry Turtledove’s Timeline, beginning with How Few Remain and continuing for 10 more books beginning in 1914 and ending in 1945, Gingrich’s narrative doesn’t assume Antietam didn’t happen (1862 Union victory which dissuaded the British and French from supporting the CSA) but instead speculates on what might have happened if Meade and Lee didn’t stick around to do battle at Gettysburg, i.e. the battle itself never happened (no victory for either side).  I found the ultimate outcome surprising, which made reading the books actually fairly interesting.  

I strongly recommend a visit to Gettysburg, which should be de rigeur for Civil War buffs of either side (as noted above) and should be interesting enough even for those who don’t bleed blue (as I do) or grey.

Chick-Fil-A & the Man Upstairs

Another departure from stoner rock, marijuana, rock bands, concerts, guitars, and politics, Firebirds & Chargers, or books, movies or TV shows, back to something more mundane, FOOD and RELIGION. 

Those who know me well, know my preference for fast food.   Lately Chipotle has been a preference, along with Roy Rogers and Jersey Mike’s.   But there’s a new preference emerging:  CHICK-FIL-A.

I’d known about it for some time and ignored it.  I don’t consider myself chicken-preferred, though at McDonald’s I ignore their Quarter Pounder and Big Mac in favor of McNuggets and Select Strips.  At Wendy’s I likewise avoid the burgers they’re famous for and stick with the nuggets.  However, my Mom & Sister recently converted me to the CFA cult, and it’s two major items which do so:

1.         Waffle Fries.  I love these.   Not to the exclusion of the thick fries from Roy’s or the steak juice flavored small things from McDonald’s.  But these are definitely awesome.  I dip them in ketchup.

2.         Grilled chicken bites.  More awesomeness, dipped in barbecue sauce.   I’m not a fan of chicken sandwiches, so yet again I’m avoiding the chain’s signature food for something less common.  About as close you can get chicken to taste like steak, this is it.  Love them.

Sunday.   Everyone goes on about how the place is closed on Sunday, and how the owner S. Truett Cathy and his family are devout Southern Baptists and believe in keeping the (Black) Sabbath sacred.  Just like how McGoldberg’s – you know, all that traditional Jewish fast food everyone loves - is closed on Saturday and Habib’s – are they Sunni or Shi’ite?  No clue - is closed on Friday.  But the funny thing is that this Sunday closing is the only religious thing I can tell about it.  I don’t see Jesus Burgers, Mary Fries, Moses McNuggets, or any other indications that the Cathy family are surreptitiously trying to get us to worship God and go to church on Sunday because damn it, we can’t eat our beloved chicken on that day so we might as well default to going to mass instead – which I’d find plausible if any church served waffle fries and Coke for communion, and of course we know otherwise.   And that’s fine. 

Ned Flanders.  Consider the Simpsons character:  a devout Christian (what IS his denomination??) who tries his best to live a good life and raise his two clueless sons accordingly notwithstanding the absence of anyone else in the entire town of Springfield who shares his devotion, even Reverend Lovejoy himself.  And of course his next door neighbor is far away from him in behavior, even if – remarkably enough – they attend the same church.  This leaves Krusty (Jewish) and Apu (Hindu) as the only ones out of the mix, so it seems literally the entire town is the SAME Christian denomination, apparently a Protestant one as Lovejoy has a wife. 

But as flabbergasted and frustrated as Flanders is with Homer, you never see him trying to convert anyone or judge anyone.  He minds his own business and does his best to keep his family in line. 

I’m Catholic.   I was baptized and confirmed and my Dad was a Catholic priest who got an honorable discharge from the Vatican back in the mid-60s and was allowed – fortunately for my mom, myself and my brother and sister – to start a family.  I go to church every Sunday and except for a brief time of my life when I’d drunk the Ayn Rand Objectivist Kool-Aid and wasn’t so devout, continue to do so.   Whether other people do or do not, is their own business and not mine.  Whether whichever church I happen to be in on Sunday is cram packed (unlikely) or only half full (more plausible) doesn’t matter much to me. 

I’m also American.  And I believe our religious beliefs, or lack thereof, are our own particular business. While the majority of Americans are Christian, not all of them are (the much-feared Muslims are 1% of the population, well below Jews and atheists).  The Founding Fathers themselves were Christians, but they were deists:  they believed God created the Universe way back when but set it on its way and is content to allow us to live our lives.  They expressly rejected any idea of making this a theocracy even to the point of insisting on the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment.  If you want to live in a theocracy your choices are the Vatican City or Iran – even Israel isn’t a theocracy.  If you want your kids educated in religion, send them to private school AND/OR bring them to church on Sunday, but in public schools religion is off limits.  

  

 I like that Chick-Fil-A limits its religiousness to closing on Sunday and is otherwise content to allow Catholics, atheists, Jews and Muslims to eat there, no questions asked.  So AMEN to Chick-Fil-A and God Bless America.