Ernest Hemingway's "Islands in the Stream"

The modern incarnation of the eternal El Floridita in Havana, Cuba

When I was younger, I read Hemingway's Islands in the Stream for the fishing stories, local-Caribbean-color narratives and the crisp Hemingway prose. Now, upon rereading it after setting it aside for a decade, I find depth and solace in the struggles of the older men. Struggles with loneliness, death, lost love, duty, and facing life with half a century behind them.

The bar pictured above is a setting in the middle section of the three movement novel that is the book: I. Bimini, II. Cuba, and III. At Sea. (The fourth book in this series was separated and became the novella The Old Man and the Sea.)

As I read, Hemingway alter ego Thomas Hudson and I are in the car right now, dressed and ready to travel from the Finca Vigia to Havana, with a long stop at El Floridita -- (Wikipedia: .... El Floridita, also renowned for its Hemingway associations [read one of his regular bars], claims to be the “birthplace of the daiquiri”.) Papa Hemingway had his frozen daiquiris as doubles without sugar. The bartender, as a matter of bar policy, would leave the shaker with the customer. It contained another drink and a half.

When Papa was slumming it in Key West, he hung out at Capt. Tony's -- not the current location of Sloppy Joe's. In Havana he could get "uptown" past the slums, to the Gold Coast if you will, at El Floridita in the mid-1940's. There were old friends to see, some to avoid -- great old stories to be told and new rum-induced anarchistic toasts to be made. The things we fill our lives with, in war, to make them seem worth living. And then she walks in -- love and death and learning to handle both.

As you could not escape The War in Rick's Cafe' Americain in Casablanca, you cannot escape World War II even at El Floridita. In the end, Hemingway teaches here that all that's left is duty. Truly.
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"One Paper Kid" Covered by Emmylou Harris with Willie Nelson

Emmylou does it again: Songbird: Rare Tracks and Forgotten Gems [SPECIAL EDITION].

When I saw Emmylou Harris a few years back, I checked the set list with one of the sound engineers at the mixing board. The set list did not contain One Paper Kid. My new friend added that Emmylou hadn't done that old recording live in a long time.

This 4 disc, career-spanning collection is exceptionally deep-rooted. I'll cite here One Paper Kid sung in a duet with the perfect person across the microphone, Willie Nelson; and the alternate take of Waltz Across Texas Tonight -- a more electric version than the track included on Wrecking Ball.

Emmylou's magic becomes inescapable after review of the track list to Songbird.
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Bruce Springsteen's New Album: "Magic"

Left to Right: Gary Tallent, Bruce Springsteen, and "Little Steven" Van Zant, November 2007

Landover, Maryland

I saw Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band live, for the first times, in 1978 -- twice on the Darkness on the Edge of Town tour, once in New Orleans and once in St. Petersburg, Florida. At both gigs he and his Jersey-shore band mates cranked out more rock n' fire, laced with burning lead licks from Bruce and gospel/exorcist vocals aflame with intensity. I remember thinking at the time, "How can one little man in a spotlight do that?!"

Gospel wisdom? "It was too many for me." (--from S. L. Clemens)

I never fully recovered; my life-long devotion to guitar rock was now set in granite. If below, I slip into praise of Bruce Springsteen's new album without having listened to it enough to comprehend it, please think of it as a recurring rock critic sin.

Magic is Springsteen's first new studio album of original Springsteen cuts since 2005's Devils & Dust. Rolling Stone magazine gave this new album 5 out of 5 stars, a reviewer's nightmare. What do you write about a record already labelled an "instant classic". (But make your own call, you can hear all the album cuts, in their entirety, at the link that follows.) In his review of Magic for RollingStone.com, David Fricke gets a B in handling his task. He writes in part:

.... Magic is, in one way, the most openly nostalgic record Springsteen has ever made. The arrangements, the performances and Brendan O’Brien’s wall-of-surf production are mined with echoes and near-direct quotes of classic records, including Springsteen’s: the early-Sixties beach-radio bounce of “Girls in Their Summer Clothes‚” the overcast-Pet Sounds orchestration of “Your Own Worst Enemy”, the “Jungleland” ring of Roy Bittan’s piano rainfall in “I’ll Work for Your Love.” “You’ll Be Comin’ Down” sounds like it strutted over from The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle. “Livin’ in the Future” is “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” with a new, thick coat of twang and a full tank of lust. [Emphasis and link added] ....

Bruce reinventing old material here is good news for fans; more importantly, he is showing his commitment to personal artistic evolution. Dylan has been doing this very thing, reinventing his old songs, whenever he's stepped on a stage for 45 years. Reworking songs is one of Springsteen's great contributions to the against-the-tide view that "rock n' roll-can-save-the-world".

The distinctive love-story metaphor and mandolins on the title track are irresistible. Roy Bittan's piano into on I'll Work For Your Love is reminiscent of Bittan's masterful, delicate power on Dire Straits' 1980 Making Movies. It's clear that the deep album cuts on Magic show Springsteen bringing new colors to his music and poetry.

True renaissance in rock music today is all too rare. The last time I heard Bruce do this in the studio is his acoustic version of the song "Born in the U.S.A." It's only when the wall of guitars and rhythm section are taken away that the despair of the verses and the sometimes-tragic redemption of the chorus are revealed. (Note: the two rockers I interviewed for this post turned out not to be Springsteen fans, but both cited the album Born in the U.S.A. as their touchstone with his work.)

One final point regarding the opening cut, Radio Nowhere. Rolling Stone critic Fricke gets it just right:

"... A thousand guitars . . . pounding drums," [Springsteen] demands against the racing squall of his band. But “Radio Nowhere” is actually about how we speak and listen to each other through the murk -- "Is there anybody alive out there?” he growls, over and over --and how a firm beat, some Telecaster sting and the robust peal of Clarence Clemons’ saxophone can still tell you more about the human condition than a thousand op-ed words. ....

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band are at the head of the class in helping us understand the human condition with "a thousand guitars" rather that 10,000 news analysis essays. It's no accident that

"I learned more from a three minute record, baby,
Than I ever learned in school." (-- Bruce Springsteen)

So let Bruce work his electric-Woody-Guthrie-heir Magic. Why, a skeptic might ask? Just one pearl of an example:

... Well the cops finally busted Madame Marie
For tellin' fortunes better than they do.
This boardwalk life for me is through.
You know you ought to quit this scene too. ...

(from 4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)
-- B. Springsteen, 1973)

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For My Fellow Emmylou Harris Fans

The "Red Dirt Girl"

See also, November 24, 2007 post here.

Alas. Two Recommendations Arise.

An associate, whose judgment on The Beatles I trust implicitly, highly recommends Across the Universe, in theatres now.

The genre-pioneering members of this ensemble force a recommendation of The Gilded Palace of Sin by The Flying Burrito Brothers. This is where country and rock got the conversation into high gear. "Cosmic American Music" as Gram Parsons called it.

Essential Albums: the Rolling Stones' "Beggars Banquet"

Mick and Keith

(photo (c) Annie Leibovitz circa 1975)

Beggars Banquet

In an earlier post, I recommended a greatest hits album as an introduction to the late sixties Rolling Stones' music. Now file that one away and get your hands on -- and ears into -- the real deal, 1968's Beggars Banquet.

This is a "transition-back" record -- back that is from the musical disarray of Her Satanic Majesty's Request -- to their adopted American roots: blues, country, and straight ahead Keith-driven rock and roll. And not coincidentally, the Stones hiring Jimmy Miller as producer in '68 to give the band some much need direction; it was from Miller that the Glimmer Twins learned their craft. The result, in the view of many -- I'm an Exile on Main Street man myself -- is the best album the Stones ever released.

The final touch was adding Nicky Hopkins on piano. As Jean-Luc Godard's film Sympathy for the Devil (titled One Plus One in its European release) clearly shows from extensive documentary footage of the song Sympathy for the Devil evolving in the studio, it was Hopkins on piano and Richards on bass that formed the core tracks around which the band and company built the haunting cut the song became. Further, the Godard film shows and the song gave us an aural portrait of the maddening chaos of North America in 1968. As Wikipedia put it, "[t]he dissolution of Stone Brian Jones is vividly portrayed, and the tragic chaos of 1968 is made clear when a line referring to the killing of (John F.) Kennedy is heard changed to the plural after the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in June [1968]." As a lyric/poet, Jagger has never been better than on Sympathy.

There is, truly, not a bad cut on Beggars Banquet.

Take Street Fighting Man, for example. I listened to this song for years before I tore the chorus lyrics out of it, but it didn't matter. Keith and the band deliver all the revolution you can take without you ever knowing that Jagger's telling us, in the chorus, "But what can a poor boy do, but to sing for a rock and roll band? 'Cause in sleepy London town there's just no place for a Street Fightin' Man."

Further, Jagger and Richards never made the "sum greater than the parts" better than on the vocal/acoustic guitar masterpiece Back Street Girl.

And Beggars Banquet would be the last time -- despite ongoing lack of credit to certain musicians who played on their later albums -- that they failed to give song writing credit as was due. One of the gems of this record is the acoustic parable Prodigal Son, written by but uncredited to The Reverend Robert Wilkins.

The lessons of this record are simple: give credit where credit is due; if you get lost in a psychedelic haze, get back to your roots; and, foremost, if you are unfamiliar with the deep album cuts that I fail to mention above, you simply cannot understand where much of today's "adult alternative" music comes from.

Oh yea, and watch out for those Stray Cat Blues!

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Norman Mailer, 1923-2007

Mr. Mailer, you will be missed. The Hemingway-esque truth and honesty you brought to your best and your worst work, set a standard for us all.

Requiescat in Pace. You earned it.