DesertFest NYC 2022

 

Yet another substantial interval between my last blog entry and the current one.   Time and time again I determine that my expected topic has been covered already and I had nothing new to offer.  In 2022 I’ve had to realize that the blog will be haphazard and irregular, as I no longer have the luxury of being able to drone on about something new and original every Friday.   I still have NO idea how many people actually read the blog, as I understand many read it and give no feedback at all.  For all I know former Romanian friend Julia is reading them, though I doubt it. 

But here I undeniably have something to say, a remarkable (if not unique) experience to share.  So here goes.

While I’ll discuss “stoner rock” again in more detail later herein, for now it suffices to simply describe it as a form which melts dark and heavy music (like Black Sabbath), with something else, usually something psychedelic.  Although I’ve yet to hear Hawkwind described as stoner rock, I would say they certainly qualify as such.  So then the question becomes:  are there stoner rock festivals?   And by festival I mean a concert with more than 3 bands and possibly stretching over several days.

Oh, and this business of associating “desert” with stoner rock.  This comes from Kyuss holding concerts out in the desert in California in the early 1990s, bringing portable generators with them so they could play somewhere far from any actual electrical outlets.  As my own venture to L.A. lasted a few days in summer 2010, I wasn’t in a position to sample that scene when it occurred.  I saw Kyuss open for White Zombie in 1995 but wasn’t paying attention to them because at the time I had no idea who they were.  Summon the Delorean to bring me back so I can actually enjoy it.  Anyhow.

Yes, there are DesertFest festivals in London and Berlin, a Freak Valley Festival in rural Germany (somewhere between Cologne and Frankfurt), a HellFest in northwest France (near Nantes and nowhere near Paris), and a Psycho Las Vegas festival.  But the closest to where I live, the DC/Baltimore area, was this DesertFest thing, first in 2019 and more recently in 2022.  Fortunately on both occasions a friend of mine in Fort Lee, allowed me to crash at her place for the duration of the show.  I attended the 2019 version of this, at the Saint Vitus Bar in Brooklyn, three years before.  Now the 2022 version came by, and I decided to see it. Here’s the Report.

Friday, May 13, 2022

The show was at the Knockdown Center in Queens, although the nearest MTA stop was in Brooklyn, about 12 blocks northeast.  My friend lives in Fort Lee, New Jersey, on the NJ side of the George Washington Bridge.  There’s a New Jersey Transit bus, #158, which goes from three blocks away from her house to Port Authority Bus Terminal at 42^nd Street and 8^th Ave.   As a matter of fact, it’s the bus she uses to get to work in Manhattan.  It takes an hour to get from one to the other, and runs until about 1 a.m. 

I took a Chinatown bus from Rosslyn, Virginia (across Key Bridge from Georgetown, Washington, DC), to Penn Station, NYC, which is itself about 8 blocks south of Port Authority on 8^th Avenue.  Given the timing, I did not have enough time to go to Fort Lee, drop off my stuff, and then come all the way back to NYC, so I simply held on to my backpack, hoodie, and hat, and eventually “coat checked” them at the club itself; on Saturday I could simply leave them at Fort Lee.  Friday attire was a Green Lung t-shirt (they were originally scheduled but had to bail out due to visa issues); Saturday was a green Brant Bjork t-shirt. 

From the Jefferson St. (L Line) subway stop, I walked over to the club on Flushing Blvd.  There was NO sign of any shuttle bus.  The bus seems to be fiction.  No one at the venue had any information about it and no other patrons expressed knowledge about it.  That meant a 12 block walk, something like 30 minutes – unpleasant in the rain. 

This place had two stages.  BIG “MAIN” STAGE and LITTLE “TEXAS” STAGE.   LS is like a small room.  BS is a stage at one end of a huge, empty ballroom.  This is one of these nineteenth century structures with a raised roof in the middle column.  The place was mostly empty except for the stages, a few bars, the food trucks, and the merch tables.  The neighborhood was body shops.  Definitely NOT upscale or trendy, south Queens on the border with Brooklyn.  Nominally you would think two stages would mean you could see both tiers of bands, one band setting up on one stage while the other was playing on the other, but there was about 15 minutes of overlap between sets.  Well, too bad. 

Part of what deterred me from seeing the festival this time around was that the bands I liked most I had already seen, unlike 2019 when Elder was the headliner.  Of course this meant I could forgo those bands if I wasn’t that interested.  The 2022 stoner rock ME is considerably more jaded and less tolerant of the wide net cast defining “stoner rock”.  To me, bands like Slayer and Motorhead are too standard rock/metal, offering no “special ingredients”, to differentiate themselves from their peers.  Ironically I’d be happy to classify Trouble and Hawkwind as stoner rock.  Some bands seem epicly suited to the soundtrack of an angry mob of orcs – “meat’s back on the menu, boys!” – and if total aggression is your scene, well, we had multiple Angry Noise Bands to satisfy that niche.  For me, something trippier and weirder, with intelligible vocals from a competent singer, was the ideal mix for any band calling itself “stoner rock”. 

So who showed up, and did I zone out on?  Actually I took it upon myself to prep by listening to many of these newer bands’ latest releases on Spotify before coming up.  However, with about 24 bands total – not counting the Sunday lineup which I would be missing (see below) – inevitably even this pre-festival prep would go in one ear out the other.  Here goes:

Leather Lung.  (LS) [Boston, Massaschusetts].  I had listened to their album, Lonesome, On’ry and Evil, and it was modestly OK, with a very nice album cover.  Livewise, they simply projected generic stoner rock angry noise.  Mostly ignored.

Black Tusk.  (BS). [Savannah, Georgia.] Angry noise.  I was not impressed by the most recent album on Spotify, TCBT, nor was I in real life.  Basically a ripoff of Orange Goblin and Motorhead.  Not sure why this type of music gets a free pass at qualifying as “stoner rock”, but I’m probably in the minority in feeling this way.

Howling Giant (LS). [Nashville, TN – like All Them Witches].  Actually better live than they were on the studio album.  A three piece.  Tom Polzine is the guitarist/singer, with short hair and a mustache, he looks like he’s “the manager” at a store or company.  Sebastian Baltes (son of Accept bassist Peter Baltes) looks like a male version of Gilly (Hannah Murray), Craster’s daughter who hooks up with Samwell Tarly.  I didn’t see much of the drummer.  I saw Tom & Sebastian walking around the crowd fairly often.  I already had their most recent CD, The Space Between Worlds, but wasn’t impressed by the two t-shirts they had for sale.  This was by far my favorite of Friday’s bands and a pleasant surprise.

Mothership (BS). [Dallas, TX].  I’d seen them at the Ottobar in Baltimore.  More high octane rock but I actually found them fairly boring – both then and now.  ZZZ.  If anything, they remind me of Pantera; a surplus of attitude, aggression and enthusiasm which doesn’t quite crutch an absence of truly original material. 

Geezer.  (LS).  [Kingston, NY]. No, not the bassist for Black Sabbath.  Actually, I found them pretty good.  They have several albums, of which I listened to the most recent, Groovy, on Spotify.  I planned on getting it at the show, but they only had it on vinyl. I did buy a t-shirt.  They’re a three piece band led by an Angry Santa guy (chubby, long white beard).  He’s left handed and often plays a Mosrite, though distorted through a full stack.  No sites actually list the band members’ names, so far as I can tell the main guy is Pat Harrington.  Maybe not. 

Orange Goblin (BS). [London, UK.]  Angry noise, but for me at its most tolerable thanks to Ben Ward and Joe Hoare.  I watched most of it.  I’d seen them a few times, have all their albums, and can generally enjoy them enough. 

Holy Death Trio (LS) [“Central” TX, USA].   Quickly degenerated into more angry noise.  I paid scant attention and left the room. 

John Garcia & Band of Gold (BS). [California, USA].   JG was the singer for Kyuss and Kyuss Lives, plus Unida.  On that alone he has substantial stoner star power, but I’m not finding he has a Midas touch such that every band he’s in winds up being just as good as Kyuss.  Having heard both albums by his Band of Gold – Coyote seemed to be acoustic covers, including some well known Kyuss songs - I wasn’t impressed by either.  This went in one ear, out the other.

Sasquatch (LS) [Los Angeles, CA].  I bought their newest album, but live they were just more angry noise.  I left during the middle of their set as I wasn’t impressed.  Overall I found this band was 70% angry noise and 30% weird stuff, but that puts them in with early Opeth.  Why listen to early Opeth when you can listen to late model Opeth?  Well, aside from being nostalgic for the blue monster who loves cookies, but Sesame Street characters shouldn’t be your model for band vocals.  I left at this point.

The final headliner was Corrosion of Conformity (BS).[North Carolina, USA].  This time around I did not stick around for their set, partly because I’ve already seen them a few times before, partly to void courting disaster at getting back to Fort Lee while public transportation was still working, and partly simply to enjoy quality time with my friend before she entered hibernation mode for the evening.

I had fries, a beer, and a Coke at the show.  The food trucks – “both” of them – had a very limited range of food.  It was diet time at the show.  Fortunately I had scored pizza & a Coke at the hole in the wall pizza place near PABT.  Those wide, thin slices of NY style pizza are among my favorites, and you can’t screw up a name brand soda.

I found my way back to the subway, no thanks to that nonexistent shuttle bus.  L train to 14^th Street, A train north to PABT.  Snagged the 158 bus, and was back in Fort Lee while my friend was still awake. 

Saturday, May 14, 2022

Murphy, absent yesterday, showed up.  First, the first 158 bus to come by the stop completely ignored me, passing on down the road.   I had to get the next bus down on North Street.  Then the ACE lines were deactivated southbound from Port Authority.  I had to go north on ACE to Columbus Circle, then south past 14^th street, then back up on the F line to the 14^th street station, before I could finally get an L line train to Jefferson St.  Then it was raining.  D’oh.  Fortunately I had no trouble finding the club the second time or getting in, except that I arrived after some shows were over.

Green Druid. (LS) [Denver, Colorado].  MISSED.

Warhorse (BS). [Worcester, MA.] More angry noise.  ZZZ.

Somnuri (LS).  [Brooklyn, NY.] Angry noise.  ZZZ.  The sad thing is that they mixed it up a bit, but no sooner than they drift off into “weird & fun” – and I came back to watch them – they veered back into Cookie Monster aggression.  See, that’s early Opeth for you. 

Cloakroom (BS).  [Northwest Indiana]. WHOA.  Some killer psychedelic stuff from a three piece, led by guitarist/vocalist Doyle Martin on a Telecaster.  I had listened to their new album online, and fortunately managed to buy the CD and an ugly tie-dye t-shirt.  A very pleasant surprise.

Brume (LS) [San Francisco, CA].  Mostly ignored, especially since their set conflicted with Cloakroom’s.  They seem to have a female singer, Susie McMullen who wears a full white dress.   The problem is that they enter the “very serious, pretentious” zone of goth/art kind of music. 

Inter Arma (BS).  [Richmond, VA]. Multiple musicians with a theremin player.  Most of what I heard was noise so I ignored most of their set.

Yatra (LS) [Ocean City, MD].  I had seen them before.  They’re a three piece with a big hairy guy on guitar singing (Dana Helmuth), a drummer (Sean Lafferty) and an attractive, dark woman on bass (Maria Geisbert).  Helmuth is apparently Maria’s husband or boyfriend.  I saw them hanging around during Cloakroom’s set.  But although I have their newest album, which came in the mail several months after I ordered it, this was another casualty of “excess angry noise”, which sadly Yatra are another band of this nature; I kind of have to be in the mood for this type of music to really enjoy it.

King Buffalo (BS) [Rochester, NY].  Up with Cloakroom as my favorites.  I’ve seen them twice as headliners in small clubs, recently opening for Uncle Acid, and now this time.  These guys are always fantastic, and this was no exception.  I spent most of their set up close to Sean McVey’s side of the stage.  At one point I looked back and saw Sebastian Baltes five feet away – he appeared to be knocked out by King Buffalo.  A very enthusiastic audience, rightly so.

Silvertomb (LS) [Brooklyn, N] [includes the guitarist for Type O Negative], Torche (BS) [Miami, FL], and Baroness (BS) [Savannah, GA] I did not see.  By this point I wanted to get out of there.  Of these, I had seen Baroness I had seen several years before in DC.  Their distinction is color-themed albums with impressive artwork, even if the music itself isn’t as original or impressive.  I have Torche’s newest album, which I liked, but their set was a casualty of my inclination to vacate the premises.

Note that except for Orange Goblin, these are all American bands.  OG is doing a four date tour of the US.  Not sure how that makes $$$ sense, but that’s not my problem.

The SNAFU with the ACE/L line at Fourteenth Street and Eighth Ave was still there, so I detoured up to Times Square and over to Port Authority, managing to get another 158 bus to Fort Lee.

Sunday, May 15, 2022

Woke up.  I made sure I had everything, and walked over to Med West.  The 158 bus came in about 5 minutes.  No issues.  A nice goodbye from my friend, on slightly better terms than in the past.

Arrival at Port Authority. 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.  NO REST STOPS, I was starving.  Chipotle in Rosslyn. Uber picked me up 5 minutes later.  Home at 4 p.m.  TUB & Beer.

SUNDAY NIGHT:  ALL THEM WITCHES.  BLACK CAT, DC.

Amazing Factoid.  I was on the fence about Desert Fest because unlike the 2019 version which had Elder, which I had never seen, most of the bands I could identify, I had actually seen before.  Monster Magnet bailed out, as did Green Lung (who I’d never seen in person, though I’ve seen them do a live stream show); and King Buffalo were added.  Moreover, I had no guarantee that my friend would allow me to stay with her, and there are no cheap hotels in the NYC area.  In any case I rolled the dice and bought the tickets before she agreed.  But that still left Sunday; although DesertFest had a Sunday lineup, I had already bought a ticket for All Them Witches for that Sunday at the Black Cat in Washington, DC. 

[Nevertheless, here was the Sunday DesertFest NYC 2022 lineup:  High On Fire: Matt Pike’s more brutal band than Sleep; Red Fang;  Dead Meadow (good, but I’ve seen them already); Big Business; Left Lane Cruiser; Telekenetic Yeti; High Reeper; Stinking Lizaveta; Mother Iron Horse; and Greenbeard.]

After unwinding at home with tub and beer, I prepped up for ATW.  Uber up to 14^th Street.  No trouble getting in.  I scored an impressive tie-dye version of the yellow shirt I was wearing (itself purchased at the Baltimore Soundstage show a few months ago).  I was up against the stage for the first 75 % of the show, dropping back out of sheer restlessness for the last few songs.  I noticed the setlist showed “Blood & Sand” as the last song, but had “?” after that on the list, which told me the actual encore would be a wildcard – and turned out to be “Alabaster”. 

Finally it occurred to me the distinction between King Buffalo and All Them Witches.   KB take more inspiration from Pink Floyd, whereas ATW draw their “oddball influence” of Doors, Allman Brothers, and Grateful Dead, even down to guitarist Ben McLeod mostly playing clean through Fender amps.   Bassist/vocalist Charles Michael Parks remains as charismatic as ever – in fact, ATW shows seem to attract more women than most bands of their nature, and were the band members inclined, it looked like several female audience members were very much eager and enthusiastic for post-show festivities – which remain pure speculation on my part. 

As a matter of fact, it appeared that, on both stages of the DesertFest, the bands’ guitarists were using a full stack of Orange 4x12” cabinets, but were switching out the head itself for the individual bands.  And of course they were using their own guitars. 

Stoner Rock Again.  By now many of you may be noticing that I was fairly unimpressed with most of these bands.  I suppose as I get older my tastes slide down to be more tolerant of mellower bands like the Grateful Dead and less tolerant of heavier bands like Slayer and Motorhead.  As noted, I have zero tolerance for “Cookie Monster” vocals, which cover many thrash bands and early Opeth. 

To me the essence of stoner rock is blending Black Sabbath and Pink Floyd (or some other band) into something heavy enough to keep me awake but varied enough to avoid being oppressive and boring; in fact, Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath is my favorite Black Sabbath album.  At this point my favorite such bands are Elder, REZN, and Weedpecker.   Elder were at the 2019 DesertFest NYC, and are FINALLY playing a show down here this summer.  REZN I’ve seen twice – though they owe DC a replay after their last set was abruptly cut short by technical issues.  Sadly, though, I’m not holding my breath for a band from Poland (Weedpecker), as good as they are, navigating the COVID/INS minefield to get to the US, although they seem to be expanding their audience and tour schedule across Europe, outside of Poland. 

Clutch.  Here’s a weird thing.  By now I know if I see a show in DC or Baltimore I can count on several people wearing Clutch shirts (yes, that includes Clutch concerts).  A rough guess is that Sleep and Black Sabbath were the two bands’ whose shirts were most common at this DesertFest, but oddly Clutch were also well represented, even if NYC is 4+ hours northeast of Germantown, Maryland.   Some bands develop a secondary “home market”, like KISS and Detroit, Grateful Dead and NYC, but if Clutch have conquered NYC, it’s news to me.  And as for being stoner rock?  Well, there’s a slight funk offstep to their songs and some offbeat lyrics from Neil Fallon, so I’d say Clutch meet a very generous and vague standard to qualify as stoner rock.  And I suppose “Willie Nelson” certainly reveals the band’s appreciation for Nelson’s herbal preferences. 

When you think about it, though, defining “stoner rock” this way is a bit odd.  Rappers are notorious stoners and not shy about blowing their smoke in our faces.  Snoop’s 420 cred is unimpeachable.  And jam bands are also well associated with weed; the distinctive aroma is ubiquitous at a GD/Dead & Co, Phish, Widespread Panic, etc. show.  Even more, jazz is "highly" associated with cannabis, in fact from earlier than 1937, when the national ban went into effect.  But these bands sound nothing like Black Sabbath.  That being the case, if rappers and Deadheads aren’t going to call us on applying the label to variants of Black Sabbath, I suppose we’re getting away with it.   Knowing smile…(cue “Sweet Leaf”)

Cover Albums

 

The March 2022 issue of Classic Rock Magazine has its cover story on … covers.  “Covers” are when one musician plays a song by another musician.  Oddly, although Garage, Inc. (Metallica’s double covers album) is mentioned, there’s really no discussion of cover albums per se.  And as I can show you below, there are now plenty of them to talk about.

Morning and Evening.  When bands are starting out, they have to rely on covers until they hone the skills necessary to write acceptable quality material of their own, obviously drawing upon the inspiration of those covers.  The Beatles had gone to 100% originals by the third album, A Hard Day’s Night, but even Please Please Me (#1) and With The Beatles (#2) were less than 50% covers.  The Stones didn’t make it to 100% originals until Aftermath, their fourth album, and the first album had only one original.

Likewise, when the bands get older and run out of gas, rather than put out an album of substandard originals, it’s much easier just to do an album of covers.  Of course, it’s intriguing to hear how they put their mark on other bands’ music.  What I noticed, though, was most of these covers predate the band’s own material and – as Saxon explicitly acknowledge with the album title – were their inspirations.  What I rarely hear are any of these bands playing covers of their own peers and competitors.  Thus no Beatles covers on Blue & Lonesome, no Black Sabbath (and just a snippet of “Dazed and Confused” in a medley) on Turning to Crime, no Megadeth, Slayer or Anthrax on Garage, Inc. 

Here they are, listing the songs and the original artists.

Deep Purple, Turning To Crime.  The most recent of these.  Half are fairly obscure 50s tunes, the rest are more famous 60s tunes.

7 and 7 Is (Love); Rockin’ Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu (Huey “Piano” Smith); Oh Well (Fleetwood Mac); Jenny Take A Ride (Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels); Watching The River Flow (Bob Dylan); Let The Good Times Roll (Louis Jordan & the Tympany Five); Dixie Chicken (Little Feat); Shapes of Things (Yardbirds); The Battle of New Orleans (Johnny Horton); Lucifer (Bob Seger); White Room (Cream); Caught in the Act (medley including “Dazed and Confused” (Led Zeppelin), “Hot ‘Lanta” (Allman Brothers))

Ace Frehley, Origins Vols 1 & 2.  The original lead guitarist for KISS.  These were released separately in 2016 and 2020.  He claims he’ll do a Vol. 3, but the story quoting him saying so isn’t dated.

Vol #1.  White Room (Cream); Street Fighting Man (Rolling Stones); Spanish Castle Magic (Jimi Hendrix); Fire And Water (Free); Emerald (Thin Lizzy); Bring It On Home (Led Zeppelin); Wild Thing (Troggs); Parasite (KISS – really a cover?); Magic Carpet Ride (Steppenwolf); Cold Gin (KISS); Till The End of the Day (Kinks); Rock and Roll Hell (KISS)

Vol #2.  Good Times Bad Times (Led Zeppelin); Never In My Life (Mountain); Space Truckin’ (Deep Purple); I’m Down (Beatles); Jumpin’ Jack Flash (Rolling Stones); Politician (Cream); Lola (Kinks); 30 Days In The Hole (Humble Pie); Manic Depression (Jimi Hendrix); Kicks (Paul Revere & the Raiders); We’ve Gotta Get Out of This Place (Animals); She (KISS)

Fu Manchu, The Covers.  I have this on vinyl, and have never seen it on CD.  It doesn’t show up on Amazon or eBay in either format, nor does their Wikipedia discography even mention it.  Apparently it was a limited release of 700 copies by the band itself.  As stoner rock bands go, FM have shorter, snappier, high tempo songs, often about skateboarding, so the punk influence is definitely front center, as the cover choices make clear. 

Who Are You (Void); Nothing Done (SSD); D.O.A. (Van Halen, not Bloodrock); When The Shit Hits The Fan (The Circle Jerks); Moving in Stereo (The Cars); Beach Blanket Bongout (JFA); Freedom of Choice (Devo); Godzilla (Blue Oyster Cult); Things Start Moving (Adolescents); Ride To Live (Live To Ride) (Twisted Sister); Six Pack (Black Flag); Words To Live By (Penance); Jailbreak (Thin Lizzy); Chevy Van (Sammy Johns).

Yngwie Malmsteen, Inspiration.  A few years back before the Saxon album.  YM plays large headstock Stratocasters with scalloped fretboards and took classical music into overdrive, blending it with obvious influences of Ritchie Blackmore, Uli Roth, and Jimi Hendrix, which makes their inclusion on this covers album a no-brainer.  Although he’s obviously talented and practiced those oddball scales rigorously, somehow he doesn’t seem to pull off more bluesier solos that well.  My recollection is that I got the UK album after hearing this one, the only track on the album I wasn’t already familiar with. That’s a prog super group with Allan Holdsworth (guitar), John Wetton (bass & vocals), Bill Bruford (drums), and Eddie Jobson (keyboards).

Carry On Wayward Son (Kansas); Pictures of Home (Deep Purple); Gates of Babylon (Rainbow); Manic Depression (Jimi Hendrix); In the Dead of Night (UK); Mistreated (Deep Purple); The Sails of Charon (Scorpions); Demon’s Eye (Deep Purple); Anthem (Rush); Child in Time (Deep Purple); Spanish Castle Magic (Jimi Hendrix)

Metallica, Garage, Inc.  Before this, they had “broken in” Jason Newsted with the $5.98 EP, Garage Days Re-Revisited (1987), before his bass was ignored on …And Justice For All.  Fast forward to 1998, when the band released Garage, Inc., which included the EP on disc 2 along with other previously released covers – including “Am I Evil” (Diamond Head) and “Blitzkrieg” (Blitzkrieg) which had been the b-sides of “Creeping Death” and tacked on to the Elektra version of their first album, Kill ‘Em All.  Then they went into the studio and recorded a whole CD worth of new covers, for a two disc set.  I like that they pick more obscure tunes instead of big hits.

Disc 1 (Freshly recorded):  Free Speech For the Deaf (Discharge); It’s Electric (Diamond Head); Sabbra Cadabra (Black Sabbath); Turn The Page (Bob Seger); Die, Die My Darling (Misfits); Loverman (Nick Cave); Mercyful Fate (Mercyful Fate); Astronomy (Blue Oyster Cult); Whiskey In the Jar (traditional, played by Thin Lizzy); Tuesday’s Gone (Lynyrd Skynyrd); The More I See (Discharge)

Disc 2 (previously released):  Helpless (Diamond Head); The Small Hours (Holocaust); The Wait (Killing Joke); Crash Course in Brain Surgery (Budgie); Last Caress/Green Hell (Misfits); Am I Evil? (Diamond Head); Blitzkrieg (Blitzkrieg); Breadfan (Budgie); The Prince (Diamond Head); Stone Cold Crazy (Queen); So What (Anti-Nowhere League); Killing Time (Sweet Savage); Overkill (Motorhead); Damage Case (Motorhead); Stone Dead Forever (Motorhead); Too Late Too Late (Motorhead) 

Monster Magnet, A Better Dystopia.  New Jersey's premiere stoner rock band.  Dave Wyndorf gave us this collection of mostly obscure tunes.  I would have preferred an entire album of Hawkwind covers – or least add in their earlier covers of “Brainstorm” and “The Right Stuff” – but at least he gives us the distinction of the only Hawkwind cover on any of these albums.

The Diamond Mine (spoken word intro); Born To Go (Hawkwind); Epitaph For A Head (Blackfoot); Solid Gold Hell (Scientists); Be Forwarned (Pentagram); Mr. Destroyer (Poobah); When The Wolf Sits (Jerusalem); Death (Pretty Things); Situation (Josefus); It’s Trash (Cavemen); Motorcycle (Straight To Hell) (Table Scraps); Learning To Die (Dust); Welcome To The Void (Morgen)

Motorhead, Under Cover.  Given that the man himself, Lemmy, already did “Motorhead”, “Lost Johnny” and “The Watcher” on both On Parole and Motorhead, I suppose Hawkwind songs weren’t going to show up here, though “Silver Machine” would have been cool. 

Breaking The Law (Judas Priest); God Save The Queen (Sex Pistols); Heroes (Bowie & Fripp); Starstruck (Rainbow); Cat Scratch Fever (Ted Nugent); Jumpin’ Jack Flash (Rolling Stones); Sympathy For The Devil (Rolling Stones); Hellraiser (Ozzy Osbourne); Rockaway Beach (Ramones); Shoot ‘Em Down (Twisted Sister); Whiplash (Metallica)

Ozzy Osbourne, Under Cover.  Yes, the same title as Lemmy’s.  Instead of Zakk Wylde, his guitarist on this is Jerry Cantrell of Alice In Chains.  Mike Bordin of Faith No More (who also played drums with Ozzy’s solo band, and Black Sabbath on the 1997 Ozzfest tour) is here on drums.  Ozzy gives us lots of hits from left field: a Beatles song, two John Lennon songs, King Crimson, and the hit the Moody Blues had before Justin Hayward and John Lodge joined and they became a prog band with Days of Future Passed, “Go Now”. 

Rocky Mountain Way (Joe Walsh); In My Life (Beatles); Mississippi Queen (Mountain); Go Now (The Moody Blues); Woman (John Lennon); 21^st Century Schizoid Man (King Crimson); All The Young Dudes (Mott the Hoople); For What It’s Worth (Buffalo Springfield); Good Times (The Animals); Sunshine of Your Love (Cream); Fire (Arthur Brown); Working Class Hero (John Lennon); Sympathy For The Devil (Rolling Stones); Changes (Black Sabbath – yes, like Ace, covering a song he was originally on)

The Rolling Stones, Blue & Lonesome.  Eleven years after their last album of original material, A Bigger Bang (9/5/05), the Stones come back with an album of exclusively blues covers.

Just Your Fool (Little Walter); Commit A Crime (Howlin’ Wolf); Blue and Lonesome (Little Walter); All of Your Love (Magic Sam); I Gotta Go (Little Walter); Everybody Knows About My Good Thing (Miles Grayson & Lermon Horton); Ride ‘Em On Down (Eddie Taylor); Hate To See You Go (Little Walter); Hoo Doo Blues (Otis Hicks & Jerry West); Little Rain (Ewart G. Abner Jr & Jimmy Reed); Just Like It Treat You (Willie Dixon); I Can’t Quit You Baby (Willie Dixon)

Rush, Feedback.  Back in 2007, fairly short – just an EP.  They did a tour for this album, which we saw, and for which some of the concert t-shirts were tie-dyes, with the 2112 Naked Man (who may or may not be the same naked guy from the Hemispheres cover) is now afraid of a peace symbol instead of a red star.

Summertime Blues (Eddie Cochran, but homage to The Who version, not the Blue Cheer version); Heart Full of Soul (Yardbirds); For What It’s Worth (Buffalo Springfield); The Seeker (The Who); Mr Soul (Buffalo Springfield); Seven and Seven Is (Love); Shapes of Things (Yardbirds); Crossroads (Robert Johnson/Cream).

Saxon, Inspirations.  Along with Iron Maiden and Def Leppard, among the trio of most successful New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) bands to emerge from the early 1980s and not merely survive but prosper, even if they aren't quite as famous or successful as the other two.  Biff & his comrades came out with this relatively recently.

Paint It Black (Rolling Stones); Immigrant Song (Led Zeppelin); Paperback Writer (Beatles); Evil Woman (Crow); Stone Free (Jimi Hendrix); Bomber (Motorhead); Speed King (Deep Purple); The Rocker (Thin Lizzy); Hold The Line (Toto); Problem Child (AC/DC); See My Friends (Kinks)

Tesla, Real to Reel (Discs 1 & 2).  Often lumped together with Motley Crue and Skid Row as a "hair metal" band, Tesla were less about image than about the music itself, with a sincerity that was sometimes borderline naive.  Disc 1 was sold outright in CD packaging allowing for two.  The second disc was given at the shows for that tour, which I saw at the Ram’s Head Live in Baltimore.  Frank Hannon himself was at the merch booth and give me the disc – and signed the insert.

Reel 1.  Space Truckin’ (Deep Purple); Walk Away (James Gang); Hand Me Down World (Guess Who); Bad Reputation (Thin Lizzy); Thank You (Led Zeppelin); I’ve Got A Feeling (Beatles); Day of the Eagle (Robin Trower); Ball of Confusion (Temptations); Rock Bottom (UFO); Stealin’ (Uriah Heep); Bell Bottom Blues (Derek & the Dominos); Honky Tonk Woman (Rolling Stones); Dear Mr. Fantasy (Traffic)

Reel 2.  All The Young Dudes (Mott the Hoople); Make It Last (Montrose); Shooting Star (Bad Company); Not Fragile (BTO); Street Fighting Man (Rolling Stones); It’s My Body (Alice Cooper); I Want To Take You Higher (Sly and the Family Stone); Do You Feel Like We Do (Peter Frampton); Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers (ZZTop); Seasons of Wither (Aerosmith); Saturday Night Special (Lynyrd Skynrd); War Pigs (Black Sabbath)

UFO, The Salentino Cuts.  They started off with Mick Bolton on guitar for two space jam-type albums, then found Michael Schenker for five major seventies albums and a later trio of reunion albums; Vinnie Moore has been the guitarist for the last several albums.  The only constant member has been vocalist Phil Mogg, and they give us a rare gem: a LATER song, “River of Deceit” from Mad Season. 

Heartful of Soul (Yardbirds); Break on Through (The Doors); River of Deceit (Mad Season); The Pusher (Steppenwolf); Paper In Fire (John Mellencamp); Rock Candy (Montrose); Mississippi Queen (Mountain); Ain’t No Sunshine (Bill Withers); Honey-Bee (Tom Petty); Too Rolling Stoned (Robin Trower); Just Got Paid (ZZTop); It’s My Life (Animals).

As these are all experienced professionals, I didn’t hear any songs butchered, though I didn’t hear any where I felt they had improved on the originals.  In about 20% of the cases I was unfamiliar with the source material to make any kind of comparison anyway.  As a Monster Magnet fan, though, I was dissatisfied with Wyndorf’s choices; it seems he deliberately picked extremely obscure tracks to continue cultivating his “aren’t I cool?  I wear sunglasses at night” persona. 

Tribute Albums.  I suppose the opposite of a covers album, where one band covers all sorts of different bands’ songs, is a tribute album, in which all different bands cover one band’s songs.  The most recent was Blacklist, where Metallica’s 1991 self-titled, so-called Black Album, gets cover treatment by a host of bands outside their own genre.  The sad apart about it is that almost all of them make the original versions sound that much better.  It’s almost as if the band was thinking, “well, everyone seems to think we sold out on this album, but here are versions of our songs which are far more commercial than our own.  See how you like those.” 

Red Dawns

 

Finally something to write about which I haven’t covered before.   With Russia becoming the Bad Guys once again, thanks to their tourism extravaganza in Ukraine, revisiting this movie, and watching its 2012 remake, became appropriate and amusing again.

Red Dawn (1984).  A small town in Colorado is abruptly attacked by Communist bloc army of Russians, Afghans and Sandinistas.  The local high school students take to the hills and continue the fight.  A USAF pilot, Tanner (Powers Boothe) is shot down but manages to join their group.  Casualties are to be expected, but a few survive to make their way to US lines and freedom.  The big two here are Jed Eckert and his brother Matty (Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen – the first major role for each of them).  The female contribution is Jennifer Grey – before her hookup with Swayze in “Dirty Dancing” – and Lea Thompson, briefly before she fell in love with Marty McFly, her own son gone back in time before his parents even hooked up (Grey and Sheen "hook up" briefly in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off"). Ron “Superfly” O’Neal is one of the Red leaders, evidently a former Sandinista.

Released in August 1984, we saw this when it came out.  It was right in the Reagan years, when patriotism was running high, to put it mildly.   Grenada was two years earlier, and I even managed to visit the USSR – Kiev, Moscow and Leningrad – in March 1983.  All the boxes are checked off here: AK47s, MI24 Hinds (actually French helicopters modified to look like them), and plenty of anti-communist and pro-American propaganda, either cringeworthy or amusing depending on your viewpoint.  Too bad these days, the types most likely to identify with the Wolverines tried to take over the government on January sixth and actually support Putin, because their beloved leader seems to have a tiny hard-on for the Russian dictator.  That’s the cue for the rest of us to stock up on AR15s and AK47s (plus the 5.56mm and 7.62x39mm ammunition they fire).  Oddly, some of the Comm-Bloc soldiers were actually firing FALs - not aware of any communist country which adopted it.

I like it, even if I can recognize the “check the boxes” deal of immersing in contemporary uber-patriotic propaganda which this film indulges in.  The extra features were amusing to watch.  Although the movie takes place in Colorado, it was filmed in a small town in New Mexico, with the familiar name of Las Vegas, although this one doesn’t seem to have any casinos, and its fanciest hotel is supposedly haunted.  The town is not far east from Santa Fe.  The film crew hired experts to teach the cast about weapons training, as none of them (except C. Thomas Howell) had any relevant experience.  Lea Thompson said that was immensely fun.  She also shared the common knowledge that Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey did not get along with each other.  Well, three years later they could dance together without shooting at anyone, or each other. 

Red Dawn (2012).  I suppose if you remake a movie that was never particularly popular in the first place, there’s no wonder the remake won’t be a whole lot more popular (though I suppose “The Thing” is a counterexample).  Instead of a small town in Colorado, it’s Spokane, Washington (a decent sized city).  Instead of a Comm-bloc alliance army, it’s the North Koreans (!!) with a Russian Spetsnaz advisor.  Chris “Thor” Hemsworth takes over the Patrick Swayze (Jed Eckert) role, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan takes the Colonel Tanner role, now USMC instead of USAF.  Unlike the prior Jed Eckert, who was just a former football player, this one was in Iraq with the USMC and has combat experience.  Josh Hutcherson is the only other major actor here, dwarfed by Hemsworth. 

As we’re talking about North Koreans and not Sandinistas, Colonel Bella (O’Neal’s) comment about the guerillas turning into policemen is now switched with Jed Eckert talking about “policemen who are now guerillas”.  Other plot angles are switched as well, almost as a matter of principle.  Instead of a group gradually wound down in numbers (1984) this time they have a specific target, a black box (olive drab suitcase) which contains the North Koreans' anti-EMP device.   

Part of what makes this one a little stranger, is that as implausible as the “Russians invade us through Mexico” scenario of the first movie was, an invasion by North Korea is far more implausible than that.  If they can’t even roll back into Seoul and down to Pusan, it’s unclear which navy they have which can take an invasion force to Washington State.  Same deal with having higher military technology than we do.  As an actual threat, I’d say the Russians have returned to being our most likely adversary, though the Chinese seem to be moving in that direction as well – both far more so than North Korea. 

Either way, it’s the same type of story:  high school students defend their home against a foreign invader.  Ten years later, we’re cheering the Ukrainians as they do the same thing – against Russians, for that matter. 

As Americans we love this business of, "we didn't start this war, but we'll finish it!"  Whether we're avenging Fort Sumpter, the USS Maine, the Lusitania, Pearl Harbor, the USS Maddox, or the 9/11, we love this business of fighting back.  Otto Skorzeny, the black ops specialist of Nazi Germany - who arranged Mussolini's rescue and the behind-the-lines chaos of the Battle of the Bulge, gave SS Leader Heinrich Himmler advice when asked if the Germans could fire a V1 rocket off a U-boat into Manhattan.  "Don't underestimate the Anglo-Saxon strain in the Americans; their morale jumps sky-high when directly threatened."

However, there's no plausible scenario in which we would be faced with enemy ground forces on US soil.  Far more likely, unfortunately, is for Russia, China or North Korea to land on US soil in the form of nuclear assault, and none of our weapons training is of any use against an H bomb.  

Oh, and no sign of Hugh Jackman in either film.  Too bad. 

FN FAL

 

Back to guns.  I got a book on these for Christmas [The FN FAL Battle Rifle, by Ron Cashner], and briefly entertained the idea of purchasing one, but then realized that their scarcity and cost ($1500-2000) put them out of my budget for the immediate future.  I have yet to fire one in person.  Most are semiautomatic, but I saw a select-fire (full auto capable) model for sale at the recent Dulles Gun Show for $12,000.  As Class III weapons go, that’s a bargain.  DS Arms is still making new ones, based off the Austrian variant, the STG58, generally considered the best version of the FAL. 

Oddly, I have fired the gun, but in a slightly different form.  When we were living in Paris, the nearest US PX was in Belgium, right over the border from France, a three hour drive.  The closest bases in Germany, Kaiserslautern & Ramstein, were 5 hours away.  Initially we would make day trips, until my parents discovered a hotel in Mons, Belgium, the Raymond, which catered to US personnel, mainly people transferring to Brussels and waiting for their sea shipments to come or go.  It had AFN TV and a unique mozzarella pizza I’d never tasted anywhere else.

We’d go out looking around local Mons, and found a toy store which sold plastic guns which fired little plastic bullets.  The muzzle velocity was well short of allowing these bullets to pierce skin, so they were OK.  One was a Thompson SMG – semi auto, of course – and the other was an FAL.  I have no idea where they went, but we enjoyed them for awhile.  I still have my replica MP40, which actually looks exactly like a real one, but you can see the gun is nowhere close to being capable of converted to actually fire bullets, much less full auto.  Anyhow.

While the US upgraded to a semiautomatic rifle, the M1 Garand, slightly before WWII, the UK went through WWII with the Mark 4 Lee Enfield, a bolt-action rifle, as its main weapon.  By the time WWII ended, it was obvious that an upgrade to a better weapon was a good idea.  After some flirting with the idea of a smaller round (in .276 caliber) was done, eventually the US bludgeoned everyone into accepting .308/7.62x51 as the “main round” for NATO.  Fabrique National, the famous Belgian gun company, had been working on a weapon which morphed into the FAL, chambered in 7.62x51.  Oddly, despite insisting that its allies adopt 7.62x51, the US then went ahead and adopted its own intermediate round, the 5.56mm cartridge.  D’oh!

While the US adopted the M14 (in 7.62x51), then the M16 (in 5.56mm), the UK and its Buddies – Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, etc. – adopted the FAL.  In its main form, the gun has a 21” barrel and is fairly long.  Later, shorter versions came out, including a folding stock “paratrooper” model.  There is an inch pattern which only the British use, and a metric pattern which everyone else uses.  The inch version is semi-auto only, whereas the metric version is select fire (capable of both semi-auto and full-auto fire).  The Israelis and Australians made small changes to their models.  The Indians actually combined elements of the inch and metric pattern versions to make their own. 

Brazil has also been a big fan of the FAL and used it for a long time.  West Germany wanted to use it for the Bundeswehr (West German Army) and asked to produce it in Germany under license.  But the Belgians, who didn’t forget German misconduct during WWII – which included looting and destroying the FN factory at Herstal (northeast of Liege, east of Brussels) on their way out as the Allies pushed them back into Germany – gave them a hard NO.  So the Germans developed the H&K G3. 

Major Conflicts with the FAL. Despite the absence of a World War III, the world has not been completely at peace since August 1945.  Various low-level wars and guerilla conflicts have absorbed the resources of numerous countries which adopted the FAL as their main weapon, pretty much everyone except the Soviet Bloc (who use the AK47 and its variants) and the US, which loves its M16. 

Jadotville, Zaire.  A recent film which features the weapon prominently, even in the promotional photos.  A battle broke out on southeast Zaire in 1961, and a unit of Irish soldiers – with no combat experience – was sent down there, ending up in a siege.  In addition to the FAL, they also used Lee Enfield rifles, Bren guns, and a Vickers heavy machine gun.  Remarkably, none of the soldiers were killed. 

Malayan Emergency, Oman, Aden, Northern Ireland.  During these brief conflicts involving British forces, the weapon of choice was the FAL.   Of these Malaya was a jungle scene, Oman and Aden were desert, and Northern Ireland was urban – Belfast, mainly.  “The Troubles” had the distinction wherein the IRA would lurk among the heavily populated civilian areas, effectively using the locals as shields.  All well and fine when guerillas wear civilian clothes in the jungle or rural areas, but in the middle of the city the challenge is for troops not to shoot civilians who can’t help being caught in the crossfire.    

Suez Canal (1956), Six Day War (1967), and Yom Kippur War (1973).  Leaving aside the original war of liberation in 1948, in which the Israelis were mainly armed with surplus guns from Nazi Germany – now there’s an irony – these three major Middle Eastern conflicts between Israel and its Muslim neighbors saw the IDF using the FAL.  Although there was some discussion of the gun’s reliability in desert conditions, overall the Israelis were pleased with it.

Vietnam War.  Although Harold Wilson’s Labour Government in the UK was against the war in Vietnam – as was John Lennon – the Australians sent troops to fight.  They were issued FALs, which performed well in the jungles of Vietnam.  Generally the troops found the weapon worked best on semiautomatic fire. 

Falkland Islands War (1982).  What’s amusing about this brief war is that not only were the Brits using the FAL, but so were the Argentinians.  Both sides enjoyed the weapon.  The Argentinians were also well equipped with Dassault Mirages and anti-ship missiles.  Merci, mes amis Français.  

It’s on my list of guns to get, but not sure when I’ll have an opportunity to acquire one: ideally a 21” full size model from DS Arms. 

The American School of Paris

 

Whoa!  A subject I can discuss which I didn’t cover already:  my high school.

Basics.  Established in 1946, after the Germans finally left.  The current campus dates from around the 1960s, supposedly at the former SHAPE facilities, vacant once DeGaulle took France out of NATO – and SHAPE moved up to Belgium.  The school actually has a Lower School (elementary school), a Middle School (junior high), and Upper School (high school).  I went to Marymount, a Catholic school in Neuilly, for fifth through eighth grade, but since Marymount stopped at eighth grade, I had to go somewhere else for high school.

Alternatives.  Georgetown Prep was the outlier, effectively a boarding school had I gone.  My father indicated Good Counsel in Wheaton, MD, would have been where I went had we stayed in Maryland instead of moving to Paris as we did.  Had I gone to Georgetown Prep, I would have been a freshman when Neil Gorsuch was a sophomore and Brett Cavanaugh was a senior.  Maybe going to ASP negatively impacted my legal career, as I’m not a judge, much less a Supreme Court justice.

#2 was the Lycee International in St Germain-en-Laye.  With all classes in French except for English and history, that was a non-starter.  I could barely handle French as it was.  So nope.

ASP was the closest thing to an American high school in Paris, even though it’s actually a private school.  So that was an easy choice for me.

IB.  Instead of Advanced Placement (AP), I took the International Baccalaureate program, despite having no intention of attending college anywhere other than the US.  As it was, I went to the University of Maryland, College Park, my home state university at its flagship campus in College Park. 

IB means three Sub-level courses – for me, those were French, Math, and Psychology (there is no High Psychology) – and three High level courses – and for me, English, Biology and History.  The exams are rated from 1-7, 4 being passing and 7 being an A+.  I got 4 in French, 4 in Math (though got a 6 on the mock exam), and 6 in Psychology.  On the High classes I got 5 on English and Biology and a SEVEN on History.  This is why I went to law school and not medical school.  If I recall correctly, my IB thesis was on Western European volunteers in the German armed forces in WWII.

Sports.  I wasn’t particularly athletically inclined.  The only sport I played was rugby, which for our school in Europe was the equivalent of football.  As mid-height and stocky, I played forward:  at some point I played most positions except hooker or eight man, but as a practical matter I was usually flanker or second row.  I went on one trip to Brussels – Chris Bren bought me my first beer (probably a Stella Artois).  But I wasn’t among the varsity elite and not invited to their parties.  I’m not even listed as a member of the team in the yearbook, although I show up in the pictures.  And I did get a letter (P) on my letter jacket... which I still have.  (It barely fits.)

I tried rugby at UMCP, but the school was so huge, with a top level football team which effectively excluded most of the male student body, that the rugby team was overstocked relative to other schools.  That being the case, the Terp team could be extremely selective.  After banging up my finger, I gave up.  I suppose that finger injury was lucky, as I didn’t screw up my anterior cruciate ligament. 

Other Extracurricular Activities.  Mainly AD&D & RuneQuest with my brother and our gamer buddies Myles & Eoin, Jean, Sean, Sean & Phil. 

Roscoe’s.  I only started going to Roscoe’s, the bar in downtown Paris where the ASP alumni hang out, when I was back in Paris on semester break during college in Maryland.   The drinking age in Paris is 14, compared to 21 in the US, so most high school students and all college students are old enough to drink.  I’d stick with Heineken, whereas the draft beer was Stella Artois.  I could usually count on meeting ASP comrades at Roscoe’s.  After we moved back to the US in 1990, I didn’t have an opportunity to visit Paris again until October 2017, but that short stay was too short to swing by Roscoe’s – the Marine House on Boetie and the Champs Elysees were as close as I got.  If it’s still an ASP-friendly bar, I’d be happy to know.

Favorite Teachers.  Mr. Kite, for freshman English, Mr. Ferguson for psychology, Mr. Mimmack for history, and Fraulein Delacroix for German, were my favorites.  I was not a trouble maker, didn’t smoke, drink, or sample the local hashish, and generally got along well with most teachers and students. 

Late Bus & SNCF.  When I first started at ASP, we were living at the Embassy Compound at Neuilly.  For those of you less familiar with Paris, that’s a suburb right next to Paris (“banlieu”), to the northwest.  That compound is two four-story buildings, a few blocks away from the Bois de Boulogne.  There’s a Boulogne Compound as well, three three-story buildings – down to the southwest of Paris.  I recall the first time we drove past it – I had no clue it existed.  But the buildings are the same architecture and style as the Neuilly Compound, just three stories instead of four.  Wait, is that ours?  It can’t be, those buildings only have three floors, and there were three, not two, of them. MIND.  BLOWN.  Our Embassy Fourth of July parties & fireworks (courtesy of the Marines) were there.  That and Halloween (trick or treating, a tradition unknown amongst the French at that time, i.e. 1979-82) were our occasions to visit the Boulogne Compound.  I later learned my ASP buddy Phil, with whom I’m still friends today, lived there at some time, so we may have been in the same place at the same time and not even known it.  Just like we were in the same Webelos den in Paris without even realizing it.  Weren’t we amazing?  I know, right?

Anyhow.  With lots of Compound Kids going to ASP, the school bus wasn’t a problem.  There were the usual buses after classes ended, and then a later bus, aka The Late Bus, which took us home if we had extracurricular activities like rugby. 

In May or so of 1984, we moved from the Neuilly Compound to an apartment in Paris itself, the upper Eighth Arrondisement, on Boulevard Malesherbes.  The bus route for school was such that we – my brother and I - were the only ones at that stop.  So the bus driver wasn’t too diligent about picking us up. 

We soon learned that the local train station, Gare St. Lazare, was about the same distance from our apartment, in the opposite direction, as the bus stop.  Not only that, the train ran directly to St. Cloud & Garches, the commuter train stops nearest ASP itself.  A direct route!  More mind blowing.  And if we got a Carte Orange – “orange card” – this gave us unlimited access to the trains AND the Paris Metro, a flat rate for all public transportation for a full month. Awesome. 

There were three daily trains:  8:00 (only as far as St. Cloud, needed a bus to get to school), 8:15, and 8:30.  The 8:15 train got us to Garches at 8:40, plenty of time to walk to school and get there before first period at 8:50 a.m.  The 8:30 train would get you to class late.  If you missed the 8:15 train, you could get the 8:30 train.  If you missed the 8:30 train, the next train wasn’t until 9:15 or so.   Good luck with that: you’d miss the first two periods, assuming you actually cared. 

All well and fine for that.  But here’s the kicker.  That aforementioned “late bus”, which came all the way to the Compound, did NOT come all the way to Blvd. Malesherbes.  Nope, it went as close as the E-TOILE and then went off somewhere else.  So I’d have to take the Metro from the E-TOILE to Villiers, our closest stop.  Since FNAC-Wagram was right there, I simply stopped there, with my Walkman, and walked all the way home from Wagram, past Parc Monceau (where the Communards were executed in May 1871).  Don’t you love history?

This meant, instead of worrying about catching a late bus which still meant a Metro trip, just taking whichever train came by after school - which would take us to Gare St. Lazare - was the better deal.  Well, I’d hit FNAC or Virgin on some other day.  Switching to the train was the best deal overall.  Thank you, SNCF!

Bottom line….

Spending 4 years at Georgetown Prep and being on the Supreme Court?  Or 4 more years in Paris and just being another attorney in Virginia?  I think I’ll take 4 more years of Paris.

Who Wants To Live Forever?

 

First off, two nuggets of weirdness I’d like to share with my beloved readers, whoever you might be.

I went to buy beer at the Safeway, a regional supermarket.  Beer is an “age-restricted item”, which requires a Safeway Authority Figure to verify my State-Issued Vehicle Operation ID to make sure a child is not purchasing low-potency alcoholic beverages.  In her casual haste to fulfil her duties, the SAF entered my year of birth as 1169, prompting the Cashier Computer to go into “WTF” mode, meaning I would have to bring my purchase from the self-checkout register to the Actual Flesh & Blood Store Cashier register.  Once the Cashier verified I was 52 years old, instead of 852 years old, my beer purchase was finally consummated.  And there was much rejoicing.

Then, the weather report.  As my hearing is well below milspec (which is why I’m an attorney and not an Army-trained killing machine) I have the TV thing set with captions.  And in the wintery time, in a place such as Northern former Confederate State Virginia which sometimes sees that snow stuff, obviously that possibility was germane to weather reporting.  However, the captioning indicated that because the temperature would be rising above freezing, the snow would transition to “eyes”.  Raining eyes?  Really?  Now that’s a form of precipitation I’ve never seen.   Imagine that.  We’re all Mortys living in Rick’s world. 

I’ve been plowing through Westworld, Season 3.  Whereas season 1 & 2 took place in the “park” area, somewhere in Utah, season 3 takes us out to the real world, as the Hosts (Androids) manage to determine how to survive on their own.  Aaron Paul, aka Jesse Pinkman from “Breaking Bad”, is here as veteran with PTSD who ends up working with Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood).  Of course, the #1 issue is always, who is a guest (human) and who is a host (android)?

Biological Functions.  This came up during “Blade Runner”, the early 80s sci-fi film based on PKD’s book, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, with Harrison Ford as Deckard, an assassin who takes out rogue replicants (androids), the main one being Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer).  Replicants are hardwired with a two year lifespan, which Batty is trying to fix, only to find that it can’t be fixed.  Then the faux-clever question is, “is Deckard himself a replicant”?  First off, if he was doing it for more than 2 years, then no.  But here’s another big issue.

Humans have these things called biological functions.  We eat, drink, poop, pee, sleep, get sick, age, and die.  Androids need at least some power source, but beyond that there’s no reason to program them with all those biological functions.  Why do so??? That would be like retro-engineering a modern car with the same features as a Model T.  Best to keep androids the way they are and not worry about making them replicate humans.

The really stupid thing is that aside from plot reasons, there’s no reason to show people in movies or TVs shows peeing or pooing, or getting sick.  So those occur off-camera, presumably, for any character who is human.  If you’re uncertain if you’re a human or a robot, the simple deal is:  do you get hungry and have to eat?  If you eat, do you poo?  Do you get older and sick?  The narrative of “Westworld” occurs over 20-30 years, and we see at least one human character age so much he’s played by two completely different actors at those different times.  But all the hosts – the most notable being Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) and Meave (Thandie Newton) look exactly the same.  Well, of course:  an advantage of androids is that they don’t age and are theoretically immortal.

The catch is, how does a HUMAN get to enjoy that immortality?  How do you transfer your consciousness from your meatbag, aging, peeing and pooing shell, into that sleek, non-aging host body?  So far as I can tell, none of the guests from Westworld made that transition.  They can make host copies of guests, but while the copies might have memories of the guest, there is no continuity of consciousness; the host is just a copy, the original person eventually dies.  The best they can do is reduce all the hosts’ personalities and memories to a small globe which can be removed and inserted into any other host body.  They can also make copies of these globes and inhabit multiple host bodies simultaneously.  Think of how the narrative might change with that possibility.  Anyhow, none of us are androids and unlikely to be one anytime soon, or ever.

Robocop.  One scenario where it did happen, albeit under somewhat suboptimal circumstances.  In the first movie, Detroit, facing an unruly police union, decides to avoid the issue by making robot cops: a robo-cop made from somewhat deceased cop, Murphy (Peter Weller).  Robocop starts off as a robot, but Murphy’s prior memories leach back in.  In Robocop 2, they pull the brain, eyes and spinal cord of the subject (truly evil bad guy) into a second generation robot.  They had to use the bad guy, Cain; the good guys they tried it with first immediately killed themselves.  Is this a truly practical solution?  Probably not.

In any case, the insanely rich and well funded Delos Corp never seemed to manage to figure out how to transplant an original guest consciousness into a host body:  the best they could do was somehow copy the humans into a very convincing android who supposedly had the original’s personality and memories.  But if the original human simply died at some point, what’s the point of all these android copies?  It doesn’t do the original human any good, and doesn’t solve the ultimate problem.

The other issue is that our brains have limited memory capacity.  Once we reach that limit, new memories are only acquired at the expense of old ones.  So if you could live to be 1000, but your brain can only reliably store 100 years worth of memories, which of those do you retain? That would be 10%.  Then if you live to be 2,000, we’re talking 5%, and so on.  This sounds like a problem which will never be fixed no matter how brilliant the scientists are.  Let’s talk to Dr. Strange…