The 80's

After a blog on the 70s, I suppose this is appropriate.

 I will note, though, that there seems to be a 2-3 year lag on transitions.  The first few years of the 60s looked like the 50s, the first few years of the 70s looked like the 60s, the first few years of the 80s looked like the 70s, and so forth.  I spent the first 6 years of the 80s in Paris, which included high school for me.  I was able to enjoy the US 9 months out of 12 for the remainder, and I graduated from college in August 1990.

 Style.  If there is anything so vague I could refer to as the style of the 80’s, I’d associate it with bright colors, flashy outfits, and lots of mousse – the hair went UP instead of down, and way out as well.  Guys have the skinny ties, or frequently a t-shirt under a light sport jacket.  Madonna and Cyndi Lauper were primary sources of female style, plus Kim Basinger in “9½ Weeks”.  By now there are quite a few 80’s nostalgia films, most recently “The Wedding Singer” and “Hot Tub Time Machine”.

 MTV.  It’s hard to find a more appropriate logo or image so closely associated with this decade than MTV.  MTV really came into being in the 80s, and at this time it actually showed music videos!  And to get MTV, you needed to get cable.  Growing up in the 70s, we were unaware that cable even existed, and knew no one who had it.  Now it was essential.  Moreover, with cable we suddenly had programming 24/7, instead of bizarre test patterns from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m.  Now we take that for granted, but back then it was a dramatic departure.  Since Fox only came by in the late 80s, if you didn’t have cable your options were the big 3 (NBC, ABC and CBS) and a variety of unimpressive UHF channels and PBS.  For most of America, MTV heralded the irrevocable arrival of cable TV to our homes.

 Pop Music.  These clearly dominant bands of the 80s were Madonna, Michael Jackson, Cyndi Lauper, Boy George, Huey Lewis and the News, Prince and The Police.  Naturally they featured heavily on MTV.  I tended to ignore them as much as possible, but it was impossible not to notice them.  Of these Michael Jackson was by far the most obnoxious, but at least back then he had a normal nose and black complexion; the rumors of his private life were decades to come, so we just knew of him as pop megastar.

 Heavy Metal.  For us, metal was the real deal.  We were a bit young to absorb the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, though I remember when Number of the Beast came out, got Pyromania when it came out, and we saw Saxon at the Zenith in Paris in 1985.  Our first concert (as mentioned much earlier) was AC/DC at Bercy in Paris on the Flick of the Switch Tour in October 1984, followed by Foreigner, Deep Purple, Saxon, Twisted Sister, Accept & Dokken, Motley Crue, and Dio.  

            While metal didn’t rise to the level of Michael Jackson or Madonna in popularity, it was certainly borderline mainstream:  top acts like Iron Maiden and Judas Priest were headlining the Cap Center by the mid to late 80s.  Even MTV had “Headbanger’s Ball”, tucked safely away late at night with the brain-dead moron Rikki Rachtman as a live action Beavis & Butt-head.  After awhile I zoned out on Headbanger’s Ball; 1/3 of the programming was commercials anyway, and of the 2/3rds which was actual music videos, we had to wade through mostly Warrant, Poison, Motley Crue and other hair metal bands to get to the rare Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden or Judas Priest gems buried in the mix.  What we think of as “classic heavy metal” peaked in the 2^nd half of the 80s, soon replaced by grunge in the early 90s.

 Computers.  In the 70s, almost no one had computers.  The Apple II+ was around in 1979, but the IBM PC made its debut in the early 80s, followed by the Mac in 1985.  By the late 80s practically everyone had a PC at home, and were being taught basic programming at school.   Video games were falling out of favor – the Intellivision and Atari 2600 met their demise in the early 80s – and computer games, though considerably cruder and less sophisticated than the dazzling eye candy we take for granted now, were considerably more advanced and more sophisticated than anything Mattel or Atari could hope to give us on video game consoles.  Nintendo began to reverse the tide with its first NES system in 1986.  But it wouldn’t be until the 90s that video game systems began to assert any dominance relative to computer games.

 Carter, Reagan, and Gorbachev.  The 80s started with Carter still in office and the hostages still in Iran.  Come November, no one was impressed with Carter (or Anderson) and Reagan won in 1980 in a landslide.  He won again – also in a landslide – against the hopelessly outmatched Mondale-Ferraro ticket, yet another Democratic ticket which only hardcore Berkeley leftists could ever love.  Reagan left office on January 20, 1989, 8 years after his arrival, leaving the Oval Office to his VP, George Bush Sr., Dubya’s father.  For 99% of Americans, the 80s were about Reagan.

            What was so special about him?  After Vietnam, America had a hangover and inferiority complex.  We were lost in the woods, confused and embarrassed by some punks in black pajamas overseas and their lefty allies at home.  With Reagan, America was BACK, kicking ass and taking names.  First we “liberated” Grenada from a bunch of “skinny, tequila-crazed Marxist Cubans” – somewhat of a hollow victory, but a necessary first step in asserting some military muscle and self-confidence which was badly lost in Vietnam.  We bombed Libya in 1986, telling Kaddafi (Gaddafi? Qaddafi?  Well, he’s running out of time anyway) to stick it where the sun don’t shine.  Then he bumped ugly with the Soviets.  After a series of decrepit Soviet Al Davises dropped like flies in rapid succession – Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko – the new kid, Mikhail Gorbachev, with the funny mark on his head tried to save communism with glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring), with the net result that Eastern Europe came unglued and eventually the Soviet Union itself collapsed.  Whether this was really caused by deficit defense spending by us which the Soviets couldn’t hope to match, or due to internal problems which could no longer be crutched, and were actually exacerbated by Gorbachev’s policies, is a difficult question to answer, but mostly plausibly the real answer is simply a combination of the two.

 Yuppies.   BMWs, stockbrokers, etc.  “Wall Street”, the original 1985 movie with Charlie “2.5 Men” Sheen and Michael Douglas, pretty much shows the scene.  Coming in with Reagan’s new America was a blacklash against the leftist malaise of the 70s and a new appreciation for laissez-faire capitalism.  To be rich, wealthy, and arrogant was back in style, and ostentatious displays of wealth in the form of BMWs and Rolexes were not only acceptable but expected.  Milton Friedman and William F. Buckley emerged from the wilderness to take up the ideological crusade which Ayn Rand (RIP 1982) left them, however obliquely.  As with the incessant pop music, not everyone loved yuppies, but they were impossible to ignore.

 TV.  On one hand, there were the tame family-friendly sit-coms: “Family Ties” (1982 to 1989) which gave us Michael J. Fox (also starring in 1985’s “Back to the Future”); “Full House” (1986-1995), where the Olsen Twins began as babies; and “Growing Pains” (1984 to 1992) with Kirk Cameron and Alan Thicke, just to name the most popular.   They seemed to echo the new conservatism with dull plots and predictable morals.  Reagan’s rep was epitomized by Alex Keaton (Michael J. Fox) whose character had an on-screen romance with a pre-“Friends” Courtney Cox; Keaton would have had a Reagan tattoo had he believed in tattoos, but he preferred Porsches to BMW.

            “M*A*S*H” finally ended in 1984, so to replace it as more edgier entertainment were “Knight Rider” (1982-86), “The A-Team” (1983-1986), “ALF” (1986-90), “Cheers” (1982-1993), and “Moonlighting” (Bruce Willis with some hair).  “The Simpsons” and “Seinfeld” made their debuts towards the end of the 80s and are really more 90s shows.  Saturday Night Live started the 80s with Eddie Murphy, Billy Crystal, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, but ended the 80s with familiar faces such as Adam Sandler, Mike Myers, Dana Carvey, Phil Hartman, and Kevin Nealon.  And for style, nothing beat establishing the 80’s like “Miami Vice” (which I never watched).  Finally, after almost 20 years off the small screen, Star Trek was back with a new generation and a new captain, Jean-Luc Picard, boldly going where no ONE (!!) had gone before.

 Movies.  “Beverly Hills Cop”, “E.T.”, “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Return of the Jedi”…Steven Spielberg started his Hollywood dominance in the 1980s.  Competing with Lucas' efforts were the Star Trek films, of which the agreed best, "Wrath of Khan", came out in 1982, followed by "Voyage Home" in 1986.  And Eddie Murphy was at his peak at the time, in live action movies and not playing an animated donkey.

Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905)

Another obscure war, though it represents Japan’s entry into the big time, defeating a European power on its own terms.  Russia’s defeat almost cost Tsar Nicholas II his throne; though he eventually lost it in February 1917.   Observing China’s embarrassment in the Opium Wars in the 1840s, and with Western ships forcing entry into Japanese ports, the Japanese were on notice that modernization would be necessary to avoid the same fate as China.  The Japanese Army modeled itself on the Prussian Army, victorious in 1870-71, while the Japanese Navy emulated the powerful and successful Royal Navy.  China became the first victim of Japan’s newfound power, losing Korea in a brief war from 1894-95.  Alarmed by Japan’s growing power, yet arrogantly seeking to assert its own interests in the region, the Tsar took various actions to counter Japanese plans. Manchuria, far northeast China, became an area of mutual interest to both Japan and Russia.  Russia sent in 100,000 troops during the unrest of the Boxer Rebellion.  For their part, the British wanted an ally in the Far East to counter Russian ambitions, so Japanese overtures to England resulted in modest alliance in 1902.  The US also started playing in the Pacific: it annexed Hawaii in 1898 and took the Philippines from Spain in 1899.  But Roosevelt warned Russia, France and Germany that it would side with England and Japan against them in the Far East.  When Russia abruptly and ominously abandoned its plans to withdraw its troops from Manchuria in 1903, the Japanese realized they had a real problem.

 The war basically occurred in three stages. 

 Stage One:  Battle For Port Arthur (February to December 1904).  Unlike Vladivostok, Port Arthur remains usable year-round, making it an important port for the Russians.  The main Russian fleet was there:  seven battleships (Petropavlovsk, Sevastopol, Poltava, Peresvyet, Pobeda, Tsesarevich and Retvizan) along with six cruisers and a merchant ship. The Japanese attacked from land and blockaded the port from the sea (six battleships, 10 cruisers, 30 destroyers and 40 torpedo boats).  All attempts to break the Japanese blockade were unsuccessful.  Laying mines outside the harbor, the Japanese sunk the Russian flagship, Petropavlovsk, which went down with the charismatic and heroic Vice-Admiral Makarov – as severe a blow to Russian morale as Makarov’s arrival had been a boost.  Several attempts by the Russian fleet to break out of Port Arthur for Vladivostok were all unsuccessful.  Having successfully bottled up the Russian fleet in Port Arthur, the Japanese were free to land troops in Korea.  They crossed the Yalu River (border between Korea and China) and defeated the Russians at Nanshan, a natural bottleneck of land protecting the approach to Port Arthur.  However, staunch Russian resistance stymied initial Japanese attacks, forcing them into siege position.  The Japanese defeated the Russians at Liaoyang, cutting off Port Arthur from Mukden.  The Russian commander, Kuropatkin, had a healthy respect for the Japanese, but was hampered by junior generals and officers who lacked his informed view (the Tsar himself dismissed the Japanese as “monkeys”) and almost complete absence of any intelligence on Japanese strength or movements.   After a series of battles in which the Japanese took various hills and destroyed concentric lines of defense, the Russians were forced to surrender Port Arthur in January 1905. 

 The Japanese were remarkably lenient with the local Chinese, in radical contrast to their later atrocious mistreatment of the Chinese in the 1930s, also in contrast with arrogant Russian treatment of the locals, which meant they were more willing to report Russian movements to the Japanese, than to assist the Russians against the Japanese.  While the Japanese built bathhouses keeping the soldiers clean and healthy, the dirty Russians suffered smallpox epidemics.

 Stage Two: Japanese beat the Russians at Mukden (January to March 1905).  Proceeding northeast from Port Arthur, Japanese forces faced various Russian around Mukden.  Southeast of the city, the terrain was not really suitable for attack, so the Japanese had a smaller army make a feint on that side as a diversion.  Kuropatkin, the Russian general, fell for this, oblivious to a much larger Japanese Third Army on his right (west), under General Nogi, whose plan was to circle wide left around and behind Mukden.  Believing himself surrounded, and certainly outmaneuvered, Kupopatkin withdrew his forces northeast, basically ceding the battlefield, the battle, and Mukden, to the Japanese.   Both sides suffered heavy casualties; had the Russians had cooler heads and better reconnaissance, the Third Army attack could have been blunted, and a bloody stalemate would have exhausted the Japanese.  

 Stage Three: Japan defeats Russian fleet at Tsushima (May 27-28, 1905).  The Tsar sent another fleet from St. Petersburg all the way to the Far East to defeat the Japanese.  Seven and half months later they reached China.

 Japanese Fleet: Admiral Togo (First Division) battleships Mikasa (flagship), Shikishima, Fuji, Asahi, cruisers Kasuga, Nisshin; Admiral Kamimura (Second Division) cruisers Izumo (flagship), Azuma, Tokiwa, Yogumo, Iwate, and Asama

 Russian Fleet: Admiral Rozhestvensky (First Division) battleships Knyaz Suvorov (flagship), Imperator Aleksandr III, Borodino, Orel; Admiral Felkerzam (Second Division), battleships Oslyabya (flagship), Sisay Veliki, Navarin, cruiser Adm Nakhimov; Admiral Nebogatov (Third Division), battleship Imperator Nikolai I (flagship), coast defense monitors Gen-Adm Apraksin, Adm Senyavin, Adm Ushakov

            The Japanese Navy was modern and British built; the sailors were literate and often former fishermen.  The Russian ships were a mismash, many obsolete, staffed by arrogant, drunken officers and illiterate peasants who received little training in the six months of twelve they actually served on their ships.  The Russian fleet was no match for the Japanese; at this crucial naval battle, the Russians were defeated: the Oslyabya, Suvorov, Aleksandr III, and Borodino were sunk; the Asama was damaged.  With this strategic defeat, further fighting by the Russians was pointless.

 Theodore Roosevelt brokered the peace between Japan and Russia, resulting in the Treaty of Portsmouth in September 1905, though hostilities had ended in June with Japan’s invasion of Sakhalin Island.  As noted before, this was Europe’s wake-up call that an Asian nation, Japan, was rising and militarily competitive.  Granted, the Russians were the weakest European nation, and had largely been defeated due to their incompetence and complacency.  A true test would have to wait until World War II.  Although the Japanese had easily defeated German forces in World War I, these forces had essentially been stranded far away from Germany and could not be supported, whereas Japan was operating in her own back yard, so to speak.  Both the Japanese and British had realized that maintaining an empire spread across several thousand miles of ocean requires substantial naval power, a power which Germany lacked – despite the Kaiser’s best efforts to compete.  Ironically, it’s quite possible that Japan’s defeat of Russia in this war, and Germany in the next, may have lulled her into her own complacency, a misplaced belief in her own superiority over Western nations which had grown fat and lazy over centuries of dominance – and which would have been confirmed by the early successes against the English in Burma and Malaysia and the US in the Philippines and Pearl Harbor.  Of course, the US was certainly knocked down by the Japanese, but quickly got its bearings and fought back, successfully.  The fat and lazy Americans drove the point home at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  

Bruford vs. Wakeman

Now I’ve finished their books.  Oddly, I’m not a Yes fan, which is the band both musicians are most commonly associated with.  I am a King Crimson fan, which is more of how I know of Bill Bruford, and of course my analysis of his book will focus on that band.

 Bill Bruford: The Autobiography.  Bruford started out with Yes, then transferred to King Crimson 3 different times and – little did I know – also played with Genesis and Gong.  He’s been in UK, the supergroup with John Wetton (with whom he was in KC), Allan Holdsworth, and Eddie Jobson, and has had a solo band, Earthworks. 

            Recently he retired, and this book is his extremely lengthy and verbose explanation why.  The chapter titles read like a FAQ (frequently asked questions) from journalists and lay persons.  Fortunately he did explain, “what’s it like working with Robert Fripp?” – Fripp is, as any King Crimson fan can easily imagine, an eccentric, difficult genius who knows exactly what he wants, has zero tolerance for dissent or stupidity, has no children and zero plans to raise a family, and otherwise affects a twisted sense of humor (although it does exist) and a lonesome arrogance which rarely endears himself to fans, rock journalists or even the general public.  I wonder if he’s ever met Roger Waters (who has softened up considerably in recent years, by the way), or, for that matter, Frank Zappa.

            Readers hoping and expecting a grotesque catalog of rock excesses and colorful stories will find very little in here, certainly not enough to warrant reading it cover to cover.  20% is historical data and some tour stories, with the remaining 80% a lengthy and detailed analysis of the rock business and his views on art, music, jazz, aesthetics, family life, etc.  I did like his brief note that a letter from his lawyer merely mentioning Robert Fripp and King Crimson in the same sentence managed to persuade a reluctant record company to fork over royalties.  He also blames Jamie Muir, King Crimson’s percussionist on Larks Tongues, for inspiring Jon Anderson to steer Yes to write Tales of Topographic Oceans.

 Adventures of a Grumpy Old Rock Star (And Other Wondrous Stories!), and Further Adventures of Grumpy Old Rock Star, by Rick Wakeman.   All those who wanted the tales of debauchery, look no further, your quest is over.  Unlike his bandmate Bruford, who has his head in the clouds, Rick’s head can frequently be found in the toilet after a night of excessive drinking.  Tales of smuggling KGB uniforms out of Russia, curry-induced diarrhea, angry dogs on English TV, Chris Squire’s drinking, Yes’ vegetarianism, a fart-filled tour bus in Costa Rica, concerts gone wrong (think Spinal Tap, dialed up to 11), soccer stars, quiz show mishaps…the list goes on.  He takes the piss out of himself, #1, but is happy, having done so, to then tell us about all the other characters who did naughty things – not always rock stars, by the way.  Whereas I had to wade through Bruford’s “analysis”, Wakeman’s storytelling was entertaining in its own right.  By all means, ENJOY.  Oh.  And he has a second book full of more of the same.  Enjoy that one too.

Spain's Blue Division

More war!  Oh boy!  And yes, Nazis are involved…in a way.

 When Hitler invaded Russia in 1941, he needed some help, as the Russians had far more men than the Germans.  Using his political muscle, he convinced the Finns, Czechs, Hungarians, Romanians, Italians, and Spanish to contribute forces to the mix, not counting the volunteers who flocked to the Waffen SS, or turncoat Russians, Ukrainians, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Georgians, Armenians, and other locals who weren’t too thrilled with Stalin and were willing to fight against him alongside the Germans.

 Unlike the Hungarians and Romanians, however, the Spanish unit was completely volunteers.  In fact, Franco was not keen on sending forces.  Without a doubt, there is no way Franco could have won in Spain without Hitler’s help.  German Ju-52s airlifted Franco’s army from Morocco to Spain, and the Condor Legion helped give Franco air superiority; German weapons and advisors were also extremely critical in securing the Fascist victory.  Yet when it came to reciprocate for Hitler, Franco was extremely reluctant.  Basically he walked out of the German restaurant without paying for his high quality schnitzel, schnapps, and a nice little BJ under the table from Helga. 

 But these men were eager to serve.  Why?  These were Falangists who were (A) grateful to Hitler for helping the Generalissimo eradicate the plague of communism from Spain, and (B) hated communism enough to go to the frozen swamps of North Russia to fight the Red Army.  Just as the Waffen SS veterans serving in the French Foreign Legion in North Vietnam saw that conflict as an extension of their own battles on the Eastern Front in WWII, so did these Spaniards view the battle against the Red Army as an extension of the prior battle against communists in Spain in their own civil war, which had ended just two years before.  In other words, what Franco was unwilling to do, these men were. 

 Sidetrack on anti-communism.  These days it seems “communist” and “socialist” are terms bandied about recklessly by Republicans, used to describe not only true socialists like Michael Moore, Ralph Nader or Paul Wellstone, but also moderate liberal Democrats, including our own beloved Chocolate Jesus.  And with the debacle of the Vietnam War, and Joe McCarthy’s defeat in the 1950s, the liberal establishment has quite effectively discredited anti-communism as a viable political agenda in the US.  Legitimate refugees from communist dictatorships, such as Cubans escaping from Castro’s regime or the boat people from Vietnam, are pretty much ignored or written off as cranks.  The Nazis remain perpetual bad guys, but when it comes to Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot, the general attitude is, “what’s the big deal?”  Yet there is a thick volume, the Black Book of Communism, which chronicles the heavy body count of communist atrocities from the Russian Civil War (1917-22) all the way to the present day, with a natural focus on the USSR and Red China.   I don’t recall Spain being included, mainly because the communists failed to win the Civil War.  That doesn’t mean the PSUC didn’t have blood on its hands, not merely Falangists and Carlists, but innocent civilians, priests, nuns, monks, and even their fellow travelers of moderate socialists and anarchists (e.g. crackdown on POUM in Barcelona in May 1937).  While the Falangists had their own crimes to answer for, Stalin’s minions in Spain were competitive in brutality and ruthlessness.   To the Falangists of the Blue Division, communism was a very real threat, a very tangible octopus of evil, with its center in Moscow.  Having cut off a tentacle in Spain, the obvious next step was to slay it at home, in Russia.  

Their initial leader was General Agustin Munoz Grandes, who was well loved by his own troops and respected by the Germans.  The unit operated in Army Group North, in the Leningrad sector, and was heavily mauled in the battle of Krasny Bor in 1943.  The units were never large, and had no strategic impact, but they fought hard, fought well, and impressed both the Germans and the Russians with their skill and determination.  This was even more impressive due to the horrendous cold and snow, and nasty summer swampy weather (with mosquitos and malaria), a climate completely alien to Spaniards and unknown in Spain or its colonies. 

Avenue Q

A few weeks ago, actually on Christmas Day itself, my girlfriend and I went into Manhattan, to Times Square, and waited in line for an hour in the cold [an experience which convinced us to forgo the traditional “freeze your ass off in Times Square on New Year’s Eve” nonsense 6 days later] to purchase tickets to this off-color, off-Broadway piece, which is an extremely naughty, hilarious and clever parody of Sesame Street.  My first choice, Spamalot, has long been gone from Broadway, and I wasn’t keen on “Mama Mia” (ABBA) or any of the other alternatives. 

 One weird thing about this is, unlike Sesame Street, the puppeteers are actually visible onstage.  But like zoning out on crowd noise and aural imperfections on bootlegs, you eventually reach the point of ignoring the puppeteers and focusing on the puppets themselves.

 Like “South Park”, the show tackles various controversial issues in an irreverent and funny way.  “It Sucks to Be Me”, “Everyone is a Little Bit Racist” (sung by a Gary Coleman impersonator), a song slamming the Internet as primarily about porn, sung by Trekkie Monster (3 guesses as to which Sesame Street character he parodies) and even a Bert-like gay character in heavy denial – but who is so obviously gay that coming out of the closet is a surprise to only himself (the Ernie character, above left, is actually straight).  Finally, not to give it away, there is actually some wild puppet sex (fortunately the Bert character is not involved).  It’s a little more targeted and sophisticated than “Crank Yankers”.  Bottom line?  Excellent adult parody of “Sesame Street”, for those who like “South Park” and can handle these issues.  Leave the kids at home!

Insane? Blame Rock

They say I'm crazy, but I have a good time.
I'm just looking for clues at the scene of the crime.
Life's been good to me so far.

Joe Walsh, “Life’s Been Good”

 After that brief madness from fever last week, I’m brought back to music and reality, including Pink Floyd and Hawkwind.  So the topic is: rock and insanity, focusing on the craziest people in popular music.  And by that I mean truly insane, not “Keith Moon drives Rolls Royce into swimming pool” or “Brian Jones dresses in SS gear”, or even “Marilyn Manson installs fake tits in his chest”, outlandish behavior by rock stars who may do things we non-rock-stars would consider …ill-advised…but who really can’t be considered insane by any legitimate analysis. 

 Syd Barrett.  Bar none, the top “acid”/”rock” casualty, but Toby Manning (writer of The Rough Guide to Pink Floyd, an excellent guide on Pink Floyd) astutely points out that (A) some bizarre cult has developed around Syd, and (B) Syd’s actual musical output was rather thin.

            Syd acted as Pink Floyd’s original musical genius for most of Piper of the Gates of Dawn and two major singles, “Arnold Layne” and “See Emily Play” in 1966-67.  Then during a disastrous US tour, Syd started behaving erratically.  By 1968 David Gilmour was in, replacing his school chum, and Syd was reduced to “Jugband Blues”, his only tune on the second album, A Saucerful of Secrets.  Soon he was out, but resurfaced for a brief, eerie visit to the studio in 1975 when Floyd were working on “Shine on You Crazy Diamond”.  Gilmour tried to help him with his solo material, with modest success.

            Reading the Manning book, and the more I read about Syd (much of which I’d read before, from other sources, such as Mason’s book) the more it occurred to me that Syd’s madness might not be 100% sincere.  I start with his extreme eccentricity at making his solo material AFTER the others had kicked him out of Floyd, especially that “Have You Got It Yet” tune, which really seems like he was f**king with them deliberately. 

            Look at who was the #1 co-conspirator on this stuff: GILMOUR, the guy who replaced him.  I can just imagine Syd thinking, “ok, you bastards.  You hijacked and stole this band from me, the band I created, and now you want to throw me this bone of helping me on my SOLO material.  F**k off!”  A bit like a Randite character refusing to give “the sanction of the victim” (e.g. Rearden refusing to sell them the Rearden Metal and saying, “go ahead and take it, I won’t help you pretend this is a voluntary transaction”).

            So then the response (from Waters or Mason) to this is, “listen, Syd.  We tried to work with you.  But you were impossible.  Like this business of playing the song perfectly in rehearsal and blanking out ON AIR, then back to perfect on rehearsal again.  Or giving Pat Boone the silent treatment.  You know what we’re talking about.”

            Syd’s response?  “It’s MY band.  I’m the artist.  I’m entitled to be difficult, especially if you’re putting us on ‘Top of the Pops’ or ‘American Bandstand’, that inane crap for the masses of teeny boppers who can’t possibly understand what we’re all about, all they can relate to is ‘Arnold Layne’ and ‘See Emily Play’.  You’re trying to make Floyd a POP band and that’s NOT what we’re all about.  I had to sabotage it because it was turning into something completely different than it was supposed to be.  I had to destroy the band to save it.  This madness was feigned all along, just an act.  I can handle the acid; that was never the problem.  The real problem was Floyd’s success on terms I don’t agree with.” 

            Well, none of the albums they made immediately after Saucerful were particularly pop-oriented or calculated to sell lots of records, they were highly experimental.  It was Dark Side which clearly blew it all up.  Maybe Syd saw that coming.  Who knows.  While I know that The Wall was based on Waters’ own experiences as a successful rock musician and as a boy growing up in post-war England without a father, it’s hard not to see Syd in the Pink character who trashes his apartment, lapses into catatonia, then emerges as a fascist demagogue (ok, that part may be pure Waters). 

            Whatever the case was, Syd retired to almost complete seclusion with his mother in Cambridge, not even seeing his fellow band members, until his death in 2006. 

 Robert Calvert.  To me Syd gets too much attention, and Bob Calvert gets too little, but then again I’m a huge Hawkwind fan and probably always will be.  Calvert was definitely over the deep end, but contributed to the ‘Wind’s 70s stage act, often dressed in pilot’s gear on stage.  Lemmy describes him in sympathetic terms in White Line Fever.  His Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters concept album – about the West German Luftwaffe’s disastrous fighter-bomber, the Starfighter – was practically a Hawkwind album, and contributed several songs to HW’s live set: “Ejection” and “The Right Stuff”.  With Hawkwind, he was on Space Ritual, Astounding Sounds, Amazing Music (produced by…David Gilmour!), Quark, Strangeness and Charm, the Hawklords album, and PXR5.

 Peter Green.  The original guitarist for Fleetwood Mac, before the Rumours era broke them loose to the big time.  Back then, FM was a blues band with no commercial pretenses.  I like “Oh Well”.  Green went nuts and fell out of the spotlight for ages, only resurfacing fairly recently with a resurrected music career.

 Roky Erikson.  The guitarist/singer of the 13^th Floor Elevators, an Austin, Texas psychedelic band from the late 60s.  He fried his brain on too much acid, was committed to an asylum, where he endured electro-shock therapy.  I’m not sure exactly how far he’s recovered, but he’s making music again.  I like to refer to 13FE as “Iggy Piper”, a punky cross between the first Floyd album and the Stooges.

 Section 8.  “Section 8” is the “Catch 22” insanity exemption for the military, famously invoked by Max Klinger (Jamie Farr) in “M*A*S*H”, cross-dressing in an unsuccessful attempt to get a discharge and sent home.  As mentioned above, Marilyn Manson’s behavior is 100% shock value.  Likewise, I don’t think Axl Rose is insane.  To me, Rose simply suffers from “adult immaturity syndrome”, i.e. he’s a petulant asshole who does whatever he feels like and deliberately cultivates a persona of jaded, difficult rock star to attract attention -  because if he showed up on time at studios and concerts and played the music as expected, or released Chinese Democracy after 4 years and not 14, he fears no one would worship him as AXL and he’d be just another musician.  Boo f**king hoo.  Slash still wears the goofy hat and perpetual sunglasses, but he’s cleaned up his act and hasn’t been consigned to oblivion.  Get a clue, Axl.

Sick Again

For the first time I can recall, I got the flu.  I’ve had fevers and colds in the past, but never the dreaded combination of the two. 

 Fever.  High temperature – something from 99 to 101.  When I was very young, I had a fever so high I became delirious.  That was an unpleasant experience: a nightmare which continued with your eyes open when you were wide awake, from which there was no escape.  From then on the Universal Pictures logo would make me nervous. 

            Since then, I’ve never had a fever go that high, and the closest to delirium I’d get would be a greenish tinge to everything, even with my lenses out.  I have noticed that Excedrin Migraine makes a dramatic difference, dropping the temperature by 2 degrees and making me feel much more normal.

            Other unpleasant aspects are a general feeling of weakness and fatigue, as if every single cell in your body was at half strength, and a deep chill, resulting in intense shivering, despite being inside with the heat on and wrapped in warm clothing.

            Finally, there is the “same dream over and over again” deal, hardly being able to sleep as I drench the bed soaking wet in sweat, until the fever finally peaks and breaks.  Again, not particularly pleasant.

 Cold.  A cold usually starts out with a sore throat, which is easily remedied with aspirin or Tylenol.  Later comes stuffy nose, coughing, then runny nose, with sneezing thrown in.  It tends to last a week or two.  Unlike a fever, which gives an overall impression of “out of it, on another planet”, a psychological as well as physiological impact, a cold merely seems to be a physical inconvenience.

 A cold, to me, is mostly a nuisance, and won’t keep me from work, from play, from going out and about.  I might not work as hard at the gym as I otherwise would, but it’s not a big deal.  A fever, though, may keep me at home for the first day or so until it begins to taper off.  Illnesses always seem to hit strong and hard, yet taper off in severity gradually.

 What to do?  Well, one thing I don’t do is go to the ER or even urgent care.  Instead, I stay home and self-medicate on aspirin or whatever.  I really hate forced idleness; staying in bed sick is not my natural inclination.  But if I’m stuck at home, I’ll find something to do.  This time around I watched all of “Life on Mars” on DVD, all 4 discs of the single season in the US.  Years ago I had the rare occasion where I was both snowed in AND had a fever, plus I had just borrowed the extended versions of Lord of the Rings on DVD – a LOTR marathon for the remarkably rare opportunity where you can watch 10 hours of hobbits nonstop.  Or another time, I had purchased 3 Tom Clancy books, which I had never read, by some strange coincidence the day before I was struck down with a fever.