Pentagram & Ghost

Here are two bands that take Black Sabbath as a starting point and each do something “completely different”.

Pentagram.  This band has been around since 1971, loosely based in the Washington, DC area, and essentially our equivalent of Black Sabbath.   For a band that’s been on-again, off-again for all that time without ever making it big – and only getting an album released in 1985 – they’ve had as much inconsistency and turnover on lineups as you might imagine.  The only consistent member is singer Bobby Liebling.  The band has several albums, and a recent studio album, Last Rites.  The music is close enough to Sabbath that it’s borderline a de facto tribute band, although Liebling sounds nothing like Ozzy, Dio, or any other singer for that matter.  I caught them recently in concert at American University in DC; from what I can gather, Liebling’s eccentric and unreliable personality may have made his band persona non grata at the established DC clubs like the Black Cat or 9:30 Club.  Hopefully if Liebling can stay clean - more likely now that he and his wife Hallie have a child, so he's settled down to a normal life as a responsible adult - the band may finally get its act together and start playing better venues.

    As of 2014, however, they remain a cult band.  The closest they got to the big time were a failed audition – in a band member’s basement – in front of Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley (who were NOT impressed) in December 1975, and earlier that year, a Liebling scuttled demo session in NYC with Murray Krugman, who worked with Sandy Pearlman in Blue Oyster Cult. 

    “Last Days Here” is a recent documentary about the band, which for obvious reasons focuses heavily on Liebling.  Until recently he was living for the past few decades in his parents’ basement in Germantown, Maryland, a virtually hopeless drug addict with zero marketable skills.  Eventually he moved up to Philadelphia, found a girlfriend (who is now his wife), and got the band going, with some of the inevitable hiccups along the way.  His persistence in sticking with the band is somewhat admirable, although it’s not like he has much of a choice.  Steve “Lips” Kudlow of Anvil – subject of a very similar documentary on that 80s metal band – at least has a catering business for elementary schools to fall back on. 

    Concert.  At American University, most concerts seem to be at the Bender Arena, a small basketball stadium, in between Richie Coliseum (1500) and Baltimore Arena (14000) in capacity – as indeed it is (4500).  I guess the AU student activities group couldn’t get that many, because this Mary Graydon Center Tavern can fit maybe… 300 people.  I don’t know if that many people were even there.  The “Tavern” was nothing more than a huge empty room with no seats.  Even the “stage” wasn’t even above the floor, so if you weren’t in the front row what you saw were the tops of the band member’s heads and not much more. 

    Liebling is a very strange person, visually:  he looks like an old woman, in fact a witch (!!!), with a beard.  His vocal style is distinctive.  His “stage presence”, as it is, seems to be his oddity.  The guitarist, Victor Griffin, reminds me a bit of Duck McDonald (Blue Cheer) but plays a Les Paul.  I know that Les Pauls can definitely give a heavy sound, but shouldn’t there be an unwritten rule that if you’re going for a Black Sabbath sound you should play an SG?  Anyhow.   The band doesn’t jam, and plays its own material fairly faithfully.  If you like their studio recordings, the live show should do just fine, and if you like Black Sabbath, chances are you’ll like Pentagram.

GHOST.   Also known as Ghost BC, this particular band is from Sweden and formed just a few years ago.  Aside from the singer, Papa Emeritus II (not his real name) the two guitarists, bassist, keyboardist and drummer are all known as Nameless Ghouls, and wear identical black robes and plague doctor-esque plastic masks.  PE2 dresses as a satanic pope or anti-bishop, with mitre, robes, etc. and face painted as a skull, a bit better detailed than the Misfits mascot. 

  They have two albums, Opus Eponymous and Infestissumam, with a covers EP called If You Have Ghost.  Soundwise?   Harken back to 1970-72, when Blue Oyster Cult, then known as Stalk-Forrest Group, were rejected by Elektra and told by Columbia to beef up, as that label wanted their own Black Sabbath (who were on Warner Brothers).  Oddly, none of BOC’s songs or albums sound like Black Sabbath.  I’d describe Ghost as, “Blue Oyster Cult with Tony Iommi on guitar instead of Buck Dharma”. 

   Back in December 2000, Wishbone Ash came by to a local club.  At that time, as now, the only original member was Andy Powell.  For that reason, I was skeptical, but 2 hours before showtime I decided, “what the hell”, and went.  WISE DECISION.  Although he wasn’t backed up by Ted Turner, Martin Turner and Steve Upton, the nobodies Powell did hire were certainly competent.  The three guitarists I’ve seen play with this band over the years, Mark Birch, Ben Granfelt, and Muddy Manninen, are all excellent (maybe even better than Powell himself).  I was blown away.

   Likewise with Ghost, who I had never seen in concert.   Here’s some advice: if you keep seeing bands you’ve seen before, you’re far more likely to be disappointed hearing the same sets than to be surprised hearing songs they’ve never played before.  The Nameless Ghoul Guitarists play reissued Gibson RDs (one black, one white); unlike the original 70s models, the reissues have stock PAFs and no active electronics.  Killer guitar sound, mind you, although the tube amps were tastefully hidden away.  Behind them, a backdrop of a cathedral with faux stained glass images of quasi-satanic subject matter, and various smoking braziers of incense.   If Anton LeVey were alive today, he’d probably be their biggest fan.  Like KISS, what you get is a full concert experience, but the music is still a compelling ingredient of the live show.  They even covered the Beatles’ “Here Comes The Sun”, as heavily as anyone could imagine that song being played… “it’s alright…”   Check them out on Youtube (apparently they don’t have any concert DVDs yet) or better yet, do yourself a favor and see them live.   

Shirley Muldowney vs. Danica Patrick

Recently NASCAR legend Richard Petty got in hot water for saying that the only way Danica Patrick could win a NASCAR race was if no one else showed up.   The issue of women drivers, and particularly women race drivers, is this week’s blog topic.

Before Danica Patrick, the most successful female race car driver was Shirley Muldowney, who was active in NHRA (drag racing) from the mid 60’s up until her retirement in 2003.   Not merely competitive, she actually won three NHRA Top Fuel championships, in 1977, 1980, and 1982.   That means not merely winning ONE event, but the entire season.   The nature of drag racing means that winning an event means not beating 35 other drivers on a dragstrip simultaneously, but winning a bracket of paired races. 

Danica Patrick started out in Indy Racing League (IRL) before NASCAR.   From 2005 to 2010 she raced in IndyCar, switching to NASCAR in 2010, initially in Nationwide (2^nd tier) and bumping up to Sprint Cup (top tier) in 2012.   Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jimmy Johnson, etc. are in Sprint Cup.   In her entire career, through IRL to Sprint Cup, Patrick has won ONE race, in 2008.  Her highest position was 5^th place in the standings, the 2009 IRL season.  While she has won pole positions, these are won by driving quickly alone on the track, and do not translate into results amidst the full field of competitors on the track at once.  To date she does not appear to be competitive. 

Granted, there are big differences between drag racing and stock car racing.  In drag racing you drive the dragster from a dead stop for a quarter mile, racing at most one other competitor in the other lane, in as close to a straight line for that 1320 feet as you can.  NASCAR means driving around a track, among a field of 30-something other drivers. 

The local tracks have “bracket racing”, which means you can literally bring your street car to the track, zip off at the same quarter mile as the NHRA legends, and compare your E.T. and mph to theirs in an apples-to-apples comparison.   Obviously a street car isn’t going to compete with a top fuel dragster (the fastest category), or even the Pro Stock dragster (the slowest category), but the track and measurement are the same.   A street car might be anywhere from 20 seconds (slow minivan) to 14 seconds (fast muscle car) to 12 seconds (Dodge Viper or Z06 Corvette).   Race motorcycles are even faster.   

            To give examples, my best speed in my fastest car, a 1992 Pontiac Firebird Formula 350, was 14.28 seconds and 98 mph.  The current NHRA records are: Pro Stock, 6.471 ET, 214.69 mph; Funny Car, 3.965 ET, 324.15 mph (John Force); Top Fuel 3.701 ET, 332.18 mph.   This means John Force covered the same quarter mile it took my car to cover in 14.28 seconds, in just under 4 seconds (10 seconds faster), at over 3 times the speed by the time he reached the end of the track. 

            Needless to say, the same does not hold true for NASCAR.  You cannot bring your street Camaro or Mustang down to Daytona and race your buddies.  For that reason, drag racing appeals more to me as someone who sometimes drives “performance” cars., emphasis on “sometimes.”

Also, I’ve noticed that NASCAR has a bit of a soap opera element to it.  Fans get passionate about their allegiances to different drivers, and subjective qualities of the drivers come into play.  Jeff Gordon, in particular, seems to elicit the same hostility as Justin Bieber.  But the world of drag racing also had its drama.  Muldowney was dating Connie Kalitta, “The Mongoose”, a rival of Don Prudhomme, “The Snake”.  Don Garlits and Jungle Jim and Jungle Pam were also colorful characters in the 70s.  Some of this can been seen in “Heart Like A Wheel”, the movie about Muldowney, featuring Bonnie Bedelia as her, though Muldowney was not impressed by the film or Bedelia. 

Anyhow.  If you look at many of the records Muldowney and Patrick have made, almost all of them are “first” or “best” by a woman, not first or best overall.  There are so few women in racing that either of these two were bound to break some of these records.  Clearly among the sports, Muldowney was far more competitive.  As it stands, Patrick’s only virtue appears to be as a photogenic, articulate Go Daddy spokesperson amidst a male-dominated sport.  The likelihood of her of winning a Sprint Cup race is extremely low.  Her likelihood of winning the trophy – top points score by the end of the season – is effectively nil.   Contrast that with Muldowney’s three championships. 

Why are women not more competitive in racing?  Given how diligently the engineers try to reduce weight in the race cars, a lighter woman (e.g. 5’2”, 100 lb Danica Patrick – no Brienne of Tarth!) should be competitive against a bigger, heavier man driving the exact same vehicle.  Neither a vagina nor ovaries appear to have any direct impact on steering, shifting, accelerating or braking, relative to male anatomy. 

In Puttering About In A Small Land, an early Philip K. Dick novel with no science fiction elements, the major character Roger Lindahl articulates why he believes women make poor drivers:  because they don’t focus on driving.   The book was written in 1957 but not published until 1985, a few years after Dick died.  By 1957, automatic transmissions had become popular in American cars.   With an automatic, as opposed to a manual, a driver can shift attention away from shifting the transmission and let his – or her – attention to other things, which may not even include driving.  I find my own attention wanders immensely if I’m tired.  The safest and most effective driving is when you’re focused exclusively on driving.  While I can’t speak from my own nonexistent experience in NASCAR (though I have bracket raced, as noted above) it takes little imagination to ascertain that what holds true at 70 mph on I-95 is even more important at over 200 mph at Daytona. 

I’m not going to suggest that Danica Patrick isn’t winning NASCAR races because she’s fixing her makeup or thinking about wallpaper or the argument she had with Ricky the night before, or worried that her race jumpsuit makes her butt look fat.  This isn’t the blonde chick on “The Big Bang” (who we know is no bimbo in real life anyway).  I’m sure she’s 100% concentrated on finishing 30^th instead of last, on not crashing again, and on finishing the race.  But results are results.   She is NOT competitive.  Why is that?

Women love to brag about their ability to multitask.  Relative to men, they are definitely better.  Men think in linear, series, terms:  focus on one thing to the exclusion of all others, do that, do it right, then move on to the next task, tackling problems and assignments one at a time.  Women think in parallel: they are more apt to try to do many things at the same time, but while they may be better at doing so than men are, none of the individual tasks will be completed as competently as if it had been done exclusively.  While this may apply to most of the women drivers out on the roads today, I don’t think this is necessarily the issue with Patrick, as noted earlier. 

So I remain stumped:  problem identified, but not conclusively solved.   Perhaps it is a male-female brain thing.  In my earlier blog I suggested that gays are people with the wrong-sex brain.  Notwithstanding “Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby”, that Will Ferrell NASCAR parody in which a competing driver Jean Girard (Sacha Baron Cohen) from “Formula Un” – a GAY driver! – defeats Ricky Bobby, I’m not aware of any NASCAR champions who are gay.  For that matter, I’m not aware of any lesbian race car drivers either, and by all appearances, Danica Patrick only sleeps with men.  For that matter, the same holds true for Shirley “Cha-Cha” Muldowney.  While I’m not a big champion of gay rights, maybe a lesbian NASCAR champion could resolve this issue once and for all.            

The Thought Police vs Donald Sterling

Obviously the Clippers’ owner is in big trouble.   No one is defending the substance of his statements.  But Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Mark Cuban have raised extremely relevant points.   KAJ, aka “Roger Murdock”, pointed out that the comments were not made in public, but were a private conversation, surreptitiously taped by the GF or someone else, and then leaked.  It’s not like Sterling took the mike at halftime, and went out onto the court, and addressed the crowd and the national viewing audience in an attempt to broadcast his unpopular views.  Nor is this like the Greaseman’s “now I know why they drag them behind trucks” comment: again, broadcast to the public on the air.   These comments were made in a private conversation and leaked without his consent. 

            As of now, Stiviano is denying that she released the conversation; I don’t see what her motive for doing so could have been.   If a third party recorded the conversation and then released it, under California law, that would be illegal and subject to civil suit.   In particular, CA law requires the consent of ALL parties to record a conversation, so if Stiviano was the one responsible, she would be on the hook here.   Given that Mr. Sterling is out at least $2.5 million AND possibly the value of his franchise if expropriated from him by the NBA, the civil damages under CA law would be x3 = $7.5 million + 3x the value of the Clippers; Sterling acquired hte Clippers in 1981 for $12.5 million, and as of 2014 the team is valued at $575 million by Forbes magazine.  Perhaps the L.A. County District Attorney’s Office should be investigating exactly who did that, though the criminal sanctions (less than a year in jail) are dwarfed by the civil repercussions.  

            Cuban rightly questioned whether having “incorrect” or moronic views is just cause for taking away an NBA team from you.  Who decides what is the “correct” view or position?  Granted, the NBA’s actions are those of a private party and not a state action, so legally it’s not censorship.  But then we have to interview all the NBA owners, all the NFL, MLB, and NHL owners, etc., and determine if they are all “on board” with America’s currently acceptable political views.   How long would Steinbrenner have kept the Yankees?  Are we sure we like Dan Snyder that much?   Bigoted assholes can’t own a sports franchise – only nice, likeable rich people?  You have to pass a politically correct litmus test?  Is that what we want?  Brilliant, now only Warren Buffett and Richard Branson can own sports teams.

            Now Harry Reid is urging more of this coercion:  that the Redskins be forced to rename their franchise.  There is also talk about forcing the Clippers to change their name.  Where does it end?  Mass seppuku for the team – after the playoffs, of course?  Will Winston Smith, of the Ministry of Truth, excise all mention of the L.A. Clippers and Donald Sterling from public media?  Review this again:  for making racist statements in private, Sterling is banned from the NBA for life, fined $2.5 million, and now there’s talk of forcing him to sell the team.

            To take an extreme example, suppose David Duke bought a sports franchise.   Then he hired coaches and managers to run the team, and basically sit back and let the money pile in (assuming the franchise was profitable).   No KLAN ads in the forum, he hires black players, even a black coach, etc., so no outward change perceptible.   But we know who David Duke is and what he stands for.   Is he prohibited from owning a team?

            We talk about “diversity”, but the standard only seems to work one way.   We decide what the “correct” position on each issue is, and reward the people who express agreement with it and punish those who don’t.   The end result – and implicit intention – is to bludgeon the entire country into accepting a narrowly defined value judgment system which someone – who? – has decided is “correct.”   Lifetime bans, humungous fines, and a forced sale of private property.  Bottom line:  if your views are unpopular your property is fair game.  Imagine being forced to sell your house or your business because you said something nasty in private and it was leaked to the public.  That’s a dangerous precedent.

            If Sterling, or anyone else, commits crimes or torts based on those beliefs, he should be held accountable for that behavior, but the underlying belief system should be free for him to decide.  As Sheriff Buford T. Justice said, “oh…you can THINK about it, but don’t do it.”   Is this a free country?  Or do you only have rights if people like you and agree with your politics or views? 

            For that matter, my focus has been on Sterling’s speech as private and publicized without his knowledge or consent.  But would it really be any different if he had made the remarks in public?   Courtside at a Clippers game?  In a magazine interview?  In a TV interview?  In a speech?  Does publicly verbalizing unpopular ideas – racism, anti-semitism, homophobia, etc. – necessarily entitle others to attack your personal property, expropriate your business, levy fines against you?  Do you forfeit your rights to life, liberty, or property?   Clearly the first two would equal censorship, and content-based restrictions by the state are forbidden under the 1^st Amendment, with narrowly confined exceptions.  Shouting “fire” in a crowded theater, inciting a crowd to riot, advocating the violent overthrow of the government, “fighting words”, and so forth, lose 1^st Amendment protection, though clearly these factors do not apply in Sterling’s case, where the speech was in a private conversation and publicized without his knowledge or consent. 

            In addition to not defending the substance of Sterling’s speech, nor am I saying that those offended by it have absolutely no right to react or respond.  Some allowance has to be made for others’ freedom of association, i.e. a country club could revoke his membership and his peers could ostracize him.  Sponsors could withdraw (depending on the contract), fans could boycott the team.  But contractual and property rights should not necessarily be forfeited.  I can't pretend to know whether the NBA has any contract with the Clippers which would allow the league to force an owner to sell the team against his will, but any such forced sale would have to come out of that and not merely popular demand.

           

            Again, I cannot accept the premise that our property rights are contingent upon holding views the rest of society accepts, or hiding as deep secrets whichever unconventional or unpopular views we might have for fear of such massive retaliation.   To protect and safeguard our own freedom of speech and belief, we have to accept the rights of others to hold contrary viewpoints, no matter how vehemently we may disagree with them.  As Mark Cuban said, "In this country, people are allowed to be morons."

Easter

Up until now I’ve never done a blog on Easter!  That oversight will now be corrected.  Easter is the Christian religious holiday celebrating Jesus’ death and resurrection, which follows several weeks of Lent.  Here’s Easter 101.

Cast of Characters

Jesus Christ.  Son of God. 

Peter.  Top Apostle, first Pope, denies Jesus 3 times.

Judas.  Bottom Apostle.  Betrays Jesus to the high priests for silver coins which he promptly discards and then hangs himself. 

Pontius Pilate.  The Roman governor who sentences Jesus to death, then washes his hands of the whole thing.  Sometimes played by Gary Oldman or Michael Palin.

Important Dates Etc

Fat Tuesday.  The Tuesday before Ash Wednesday.  Since Lent will begin the next day (Ash Wednesday) (see below on Lent) this is the last day to indulge in all those naughty things you’ve promised yourself you’ll give up for Lent.  Carnival (see below) takes Fat Tuesday, in time and concept, and stretches it out a few days.

Ash Wednesday.  The beginning of Lent.   You’re supposed to go to mass in the middle of the week and the get black ashes smudged on your forehead.  Easter falls on a different Sunday each year due to some lunar deal the Church decided on and no one knows why.  Since the days work back from Easter, Ash Wednesday also falls on a different date each year, but it’s always a Wednesday.

Lent.  Approximately 6 weeks between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday during which time the priest wears the same cool purple robes as Advent but we have to give up something and won’t be looking forward to a load of presents at the end.   What you “give up” for Lent is up to each individual, but it should be something substantial, like fast food or beer, and not something like opium or robbing convenience stores, something you aren’t doing anyway.  My dad said that for the purpose of Lent, Sundays didn’t count, but I thought that was a cop-out, so I’d follow the restriction all the way until Easter Sunday.

Palm Sunday.  The Sunday before Easter Sunday.  It’s about Jesus entering Jerusalem on a donkey, and the enthusiastic Jesus fans strew palms in front of his way, so at church we clutch a small palm and wave it around at each other.  Keeping it around is a good way to alert people that you’re Catholic.

Holy Thursday.  The day of the Last Supper, when Jesus announced to the Apostles that He would be leaving them soon, to honor Him with bread and water (body and blood), and that one of them (could it be...Judas?) would betray him.

Good Friday.  The day Jesus was crucified.  That means nailed on a cross to suffer a long, painful death.

Easter Sunday.  Three days later Jesus came back to life.  For the next 40 days He stuck around. 

Ascension.  After those 40 days, Jesus went back upstairs.  It’s celebrated on a Sunday, but no one really does much about it.

Carnival.  You may have seen this most recently in “RIO”.  Guess what?  It’s an Easter thing!   Yes, that includes both the Rio de Janeiro, Brazil festival and New Orleans’ festivities which they call Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday).  Typically it starts the Friday before Ash Wednesday and ends on Fat Tuesday, but the Brazilians have to top everyone by continuing the debauchery onto Ash Wednesday itself.  Note that São Paulo, Recife, Salvador, and other cities in Brazil have their own Carnival – though Rio’s is the biggest and most famous – and other places around the world do it too.   Cologne, Germany has one they’re proud of, though you’ll find German tourists in Rio for Carnival.  Remember, Mardi Gras is New Orleans, not Rio.   

    Although I’ve been to Rio five times, one was the winter (June-July), twice was New Year’s Eve, and the remaining two times were up to a week before Carnival, so I’ve never been there for Carnival itself.  However, the blocos – drunken street parties – do begin a week before Carnival and I have enjoyed those.  The Carnival parades feature a nonstop array of painted naked bodies, samba school hinos (theme songs) repeated over and over again, and an orgy of noise and confetti, as I call it, a psychedelic sex parade.  Cariocas (natives of Rio) would have you believe that for Carnival, the entire city shuts down and everyone is continuously drunk, on drugs, having sex, etc. literally nonstop without sleep from Friday to Wednesday.  That includes the two blue birds.

Basket & Bunny.  Instead of lots of presents like at Christmas, traditionally in the US, Easter means the Easter Bunny – like Santa, completely divorced from any Biblical basis – brings candy.  Right, after fasting for all this time, your reward is chocolate and candy.  This is probably a big reason why Easter isn’t as popular as Christmas.  That and the morbidness of the crucifixion.

Movies.  Unlike Christmas, the movies on an Easter topic are far more faithful to the Jesus-On-A-Cross idea.  The Easter Bunny doesn’t compel our attention nearly as much as Santa does.  I’d say the big three for Easter movies, in my opinion, are:

1)         The Passion.  Mel Gibson’s movie, in Aramaic with subtitles (because we ALL speak Aramaic, right?) gets it really down and dirty, gritty, violent, the whole nine yards.  If you want it REAL, this is the one to watch.  You may be inclined to give up everything for Lent after watching this – or take your self-imposed restrictions that much more seriously.  On the other hand, it is difficult to watch, it’s very long, and it’s in Aramaic.  I can’t imagine anyone watching it more than once. 

2)         Ben Hur.  For epic-ness, look no further.  While Jesus isn’t the star of this one, Charlton Heston’s portrayal – and that bad-ass chariot race – really do the job nicely.  Warning, though, it’s a LONG film.  The 1925 silent version is worth checking out, just out of curiosity, but the 1959 version is the definite winner.

3)         Monty Python’s The Life of Brian.  Here’s a delightfully humorous view, which falls short of blasphemy.  Please note: Brian (Graham Chapman) is NOT Jesus.  Fun bits:  “Blessed are the cheesemakers”, “Romani ite domum” x100, “The Judean People’s Front!” and of course “Always Look On the Bright Side of Life”.  Arguably it tops “Holy Grail.” 

** Please note: PASSOVER is a Jewish holiday which happens to fall around Easter.   That’s about the Jews leaving Egypt, so watch “The Ten Commandments” instead of “Ben Hur”. 

There you have it.  After the Easter there’s Ascension, Pentecost, and then we wait for Advent again (usually first Sunday after Thanksgiving) for Christmas.  If you didn’t know before, you do now.

Red Plenty, American Road Trip, and Seven League Boots

I recently finished reading two books, and re-read portions of a third. 

Red Plenty, by Francis Spufford, is a recent publication.  Aside from some small parts taking place in the 1930s and 1970s, the majority of the book takes place from 1959 to 1965.  It’s a lengthy (not too long) analysis in narrative form about the Soviet economy in the Krushchev era.   The best and brightest Soviet economists and mathematicians believed that if they found the right algorithms and mainframes they could replace supply and demand of the capitalist market economy with an efficiently planned economy.  Answer?  Well, we know they couldn’t handle that and by the 1970s (Brezhnev era) the Soviets had given up.  I liked one character – a “fixer” (almost like a “NEP-Man” who “gets things done”) - and one reference to a Western slam on the Soviet economy as a “permanent seller’s market.” 70% of the book is the narrative, followed by a full 30% of extremely detailed and illuminating footnotes.   If you’re curious about how and why the Soviet experiment failed, from an economic perspective, this is a good book to read.

Ilif & Petrov’s American Road Trip: The 1935 Travelogue of Two Soviet Writers.  It’s mentioned in the footnotes to Red Plenty, so I decided to check it out myself.  Because half the material is photographs it was fairly quick and easy to read: I finished it in one day.

Basically it’s a photo essay of two Soviets who went from New York to California and back in 1935 and took pictures.  They were on assignment from Stalin to tell a story about America for ordinary Russians back home, something along the lines of “it’s a nice place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there.”  New York and L.A. are crucified as plastic places, Hollywood as a factory for terrible films, and Americans are racist against blacks.  They also accuse Americans of being a country full of morons who mindlessly accept 100% of commercial advertising and Hollywood movies.  There are no “theaters” in America, only movie houses for the terrible films, so Americans are presumably “nekulturny” (uncultured).  So they’re also trying to make ordinary Russian workers and peasants feel superior to Americans.  I started out enjoying the book until I saw the trend emerge.  The first half is actually pretty complimentary, but as the book goes on the insults pile up.   While some are astute and reasonable, they pass that point halfway through and then veer off into “stupid American” territory – and never come back. 

“One story” refers to small town America where the towns are all the same and they don’t have multiple story skyscrapers like they do in New York or Chicago.  “If you’ve seen one of these small towns you’ve seen them all.”  They were also highly amused by the American habit of naming many such towns after large, better known European cities, e.g. Moscow, Ohio.  They did acknowledge that St. Petersburg, Florida, is actually a fairly large city. 

You know how we laugh when the Chinese or Iranian state agencies cluelessly pick up Onion articles and report them as true?  Well, these clownskis did the same: an ad for Boners, a Dr. Suess-illustrated collection of the funniest “stuff kids say” (the book is still around, you can check many of the hilarious entries on Amazon.com) simply pulled out the quote, “Revolution is a form of government abroad”.  These two idiots thought Americans really believe that. 

Seven League Boots.  I had to follow this up with re-reading portions of another book, Seven League Boots, by Richard Halliburton.   Indeed, that book arguably deserves a blog entry of its own, but I’ll cover it here, because among many other topics, Halliburton covers the Soviet Union – at almost exactly the same time as Comrades Beavis & Butt-head were touring the US collecting their literary fertilizer – Communist propaganda – masquerading as a travelogue.  

The range of topics of this book is remarkable.  Halliburton, who was an American adventurer-journalist in the 1930s, apparently did the following: met with AND spoke to Ermakov, the surviving Bolshevik who murdered the Romanovs in Sverdlovsk in July 1918 AND burned off and disposed of the whole family’s bodies – thus finally confirming what sensible people knew, i.e. Anastasia died there and did not escape; went to Ethiopia and spoke to Haile Selassie himself; visited the castle of Henri Christophe, Haiti’s short-lived dictator in the early nineteenth century; rented an elephant (!) and retraced Hannibal’s journey across the Alps into Italy; and even – unsuccessfully – attempted to enter Mecca despite being an infidel.  These are just some of the adventures he describes in his book.

            But it was his visit to Stalin’s Russia in 1935 which interested me.  As I said, the flip side of the Soviet idiots.  He met Comrade Krupskaya, Lenin’s widow.  He married his interpreter and immediately divorced her – an experiment to demonstrate the USSR’s liberal divorce laws.  He visited ballet and circus schools.  He visited Leningrad, Moscow, and other places in the USSR. 

            And what was Halliburton’s impression?  Well, he was impressed that so many women were working at men’s jobs.  He was impressed with the circus school.  That was about it.  The regime’s brutality, its censorship, the consistent poverty – a deliberate result of the regime’s policies – and overall drabness of the cities and the people, and also this business of destroying Russia’s vast culture in a heartbeat for this “social experiment on the lives of 160 million Russians”, who are forbidden to leave, to speak out, to protest, to accumulate any wealth or private property, to learn about the outside world or about Russia prior to 1917 – the sum total of the Soviet regime’s totalitarian nature, horrified him.  Of course he was also shocked at the hypocrisy of Soviet propaganda against the United States – much of which can be read first-hand in the Ilif & Petrov book. 

            This is even more remarkable because Halliburton had a fairly open mind about Russia.  He was bending over backwards to find positive things to observe and acknowledge.  He also hoped – even perhaps expected – that in 20-30 years, the worst excesses of the regime would be over, that Russian society would be more like ours, and that in this time we ourselves would be more socialist and thus the two countries and societies would converge.  Alas, he died in 1939, trying to sail a Chinese junk from Hong Kong to San Francisco, so he never lived to see the reality as depicted in Red Plenty.

                While the Soviet Union I saw in 1983 was doubtless different than the one Halliburton saw in 1935, the similarities are more significant than the differences.   And vicariously, these three publications complement each other for an illuminating contrast of America and the USSR.

Gibson Firebird

Ages ago, an automotive advice column got some feedback from a reader.  “You told that man having problems with his Firebird that he should contact General Motors.  You should have told him to contact Ford.”  Apparently the reader was confusing the Pontiac Firebird (made by GM) with the Ford Thunderbird (made by Ford).  However, the guitar world has the Gibson Firebird and the bass equivalent, the Thunderbird, also made by Gibson.  And Fender makes both the Jaguar and Mustang, models considerably less popular than the Stratocaster or Telecaster, although Kurt Cobain liked the Mustang – and much less popular as guitars than the auto equivalents are, of course.  Confused yet?  Good, because it gets better.

In 1963, following up its replacement of the Les Paul with new models – the SG, the Explorer, and the Flying V – Gibson watered down the Explorer into the Firebird, designed by Ray Dietrich, who normally designed cars: Packard and Lincoln.   These models were the so-called “reverse” models.  The body looks like an Explorer radically toned down with a reverse headstock and chrome mini-humbuckers.  Rare among Gibsons – indeed, among guitars – the Firebird has “neck through body” construction, meaning the neck and middle of the body are all one piece.  Fenders have bolt-on necks (removable and replaceable) while most Gibsons (e.g. SGs and Les Pauls) have glued in necks.  The tuners were originally banjo tuners which went straight through the headstock and turned from behind, rather than from the side like regular tuners. 

Nonreverse.   Soon after the reverse model came out, Fender bitched and hollered, so Gibson changed to the “nonreverse” model, which to my eyes looks even MORE like a Fender than the reverse style - especially since they went from a reverse headstock (generally unique to the Firebird) with a regular 6-in-line headstock very similar to Fenders; some of the last reverse body Firebirds from 1965 (the transition year) actually have nonreverse headstocks.  Go figure.   The standard pickup on the nonreverse seems to be the single-coil P90s, sometimes with minihumbuckers (e.g. the Firebird X, see below). 

Since the sixties, Gibson has reissued the nonreverse model a few times, but reissued the reverse model far more often, so that the latter is effectively the standard Firebird model.   Gibson used Roman numerals to designate the individual reverse Firebird models, I = one pickup and dot inlays, III = two pickups, no vibrato, trapezoid inlays, V = two pickups, vibrato, trapezoid inlays, VII = three pickups, vibrato, and block inlays (i.e. a Firebird “Custom”).  As reissued the V wound up as the standard, without a vibrato.   There’s also the Firebird X, a modern nonreverse version with a 3x3 headstock, and the Firebird Studio, which uses regular humbuckers.  

For 2014, Gibson is still selling reverse Firebirds, although now only in cherry, classic white, and tobacco sunburst.  There are two signature models, the Eliot Easton (guitarist for the Cars) signature model in Gold Mist with humbuckers and a Bigsby vibrato, and just now the Jeff “Skunk” Baxter (Steely Dan) signature model in copper.   Funny, Easton more often plays SGs, and I’ve never seen Baxter play a Firebird.  That’s like an Angus Young signature Strat.

Pickups.  In addition to its neck-through-body construction and reverse headstock, another unique feature of the Firebird is the pickups.  While they look similar in shape and size to the minihumbuckers Gibson started putting in late 60s Les Paul Deluxes - themselves a stockpile of Epiphone pickups the company inherited when it bought Epiphone - they are a different design and sound different from minihumbuckers.  While PAFs, P90s, and other Gibson pickups appear on multiple models, the Firebird is the only Gibson with a pickup specific to the model. 

Mini Humbucker Versus Firebird Guitar Pickups: What’s the Difference? – Humbucker Soup 

The Firebird pickups give the guitar a sound which is closer to a single-coil sound, but not quite – I’m actually not personally familiar with P90s to compare.  In 2010 the banjo tuners were replaced by Steinberger models. From what I can tell among the Firebird owners on Facebook, as of 2020 the Steinberger tuners are the most popular, even more so than the original banjo models, which seem to be preferred only for pure nostalgia and not playability.  https://guitarchitecture.org/2010/10/13/steinberger-gearless-tuners-review/

Famous Players:  Johnny Winter, Paul Stanley (KISS), and Allen Collins (Lynyrd Skynyrd) are the most commonly associated with the reverse model.  I’ve seen Eric Clapton, James Hetfield and Gary Moore playing them, albeit rarely.  For a short time, Dave Grohl was playing Firebirds in Pelham Blue while in the Foo Fighters.  Stanley has a Washburn signature model which copies the Firebird.  Brian Jones was playing a reverse model briefly, and Keith Richards played a nonreverse. 

My Own.  In 2014 I had a surplus of time and money, and at yet another visit to Chuck Levin’s in Wheaton, Maryland, saw an ebony Firebird V (brand new 2013 model) and fell in love immediately.  As a V model, it has the trapezoid inlays, two Firebird pickups, and as a 2013, the Steinberger tuners.  More recently I replaced the pickguard with an ebony model, still with the Firebird symbol.  It’s definitely a fun guitar to play, and if anyone wants another unique Gibson to add to their collection, by all means, choose this one – though I’d recommend getting a model with the Firebird pickups and Steinberger tuners.

Through The Never

Recently I saw Metallica’s most recent “concert movie”, Through The Never.   It’s 80% concert film and 20% “goofy story about a roadie who fights bad people.”  Something like that.  Something gay, stupid, irrelevant, and only meant to pull an iota of attention away from the band so it’s not just a concert movie, which in fact it is.

            It would be tempting to claim that Metallica “jumped the shark” after Cliff Burton died in 1986, but that would ignore how important …And Justice For All was, and I still maintain that Metallica (the self-titled fifth album, aka “The Black Album”) is really just more of the same, just a little less self-indulgent.  It’s like with Def Leppard:  compare High N’Dry to Pyromania, and the latter looks more commercial.  But compare both to Hysteria….Anyhow.   For all his issues, Jason Newsted really wasn’t all that bad a bassist, even if he wasn’t Cliff.

            But from Load through Death Man-getic, Metallica has been….plastic….insincere….phony.   The distortion is still on, but the real-ness is gone.   “Some Kind of Monster”?   Difficult to watch or endure, but if the movie’s intent was to assure the fans that the band was still “real”, it didn’t work.   Oddly, I don’t find Lulu, their collaboration with Lou Reed, as part of this; ironically, their most “commercial” effort also looks like their most sincere, and the other albums, while indeniably heavy and thrashy, still have a barely articulable yet nonetheless perceptible and discernable phoniness.   The haircuts and Kirk’s guyliner simply put into a picture what a 1,000 song lyric words couldn’t accomplish.

            Finally, there’s that business of the “roadie” (probably a professional stuntman) catching fire during the show and being put out, followed by the band pretending to be back in their shithole in San Francisco in the early days – back when Dave Mustaine was the lead guitarist and Cliff was still helping to call the shots.   It takes no imagination to figure that if Cliff was still with the band, none of the Load >> Death Man-getic crap would have happened.  There would be no “Some Kind of Monster”.  And had they tried to pull it off anyway, Cliff would have joined Megadeth.   Why isn’t “Cliff ‘Em All” on Blu-ray?  Is it because much of the source material is so low budget and crappy, or is it because they want to forget that period?   

            We saw Metallica at Donington in 1985 – with Cliff Burton.  It was the Ride The Lightning tour, and they were early on the bill.  The crowd was throwing dirt, bottles, beer, piss, whatever they could get their hands on.  You’re throwing shit at CLIFF BURTON?  Shame on you.   Were you also singing along with Fish later on?  Probably.  Well then, you should love Lulu.