http://daveshiflett.com/news.html Dave Shiflett: News Jannis' PHPRss class - http://www.jannis.to/ Sat, 04 Feb 2012 06:18:23 -0800 http://daveshiflett.com/news.html#126
In "Scapegoat: A History of Blaming Other People," British writer Charlie Campbell traces the habit of buck passing back to the Garden of Eden, where Eve, an apparently gullible person with far too much time on her hands, blamed a talking snake for persuading her to pick the forbidden fruit, thus unleashing our continuing pageant of sorrows.

Whatever our other shortcomings, humans have a profound talent for designating fall guys for problems and disasters that we ourselves are responsible for or that we simply do not understand. As Mr. Campbell observes in this brief and entertaining book, there might not always be a cure for what ails humanity, "but there's always a culprit."

Mr. Campbell traces the word "scapegoat" to William Tyndale's 1530 English-language translation of the Bible. Tyndale used the word to describe a ritual found in Leviticus in which two goats representing Israel's sins were sacrificed to appease the celestial authorities. The translator himself shared a similar fate in Henry VIII's England. He was eventually condemned as a heretic and strangled—then burned at the stake for good measure.

Scapegoating and religion have kept close company, according to Mr. Campbell, a former editor at the Literary Review.

Christianity's central figure can be viewed as a scapegoat, taking on humanity's sin and in the process earning a trip to Golgotha. Early believers were blamed for various disasters and accused of hideous behavior, including incest, cannibalism and child murder—accusations, Mr. Campbell adds, that Christians would later level against their own adversaries. "Ultimately our imagination is relatively limited when it comes to wickedness," Mr. Campbell writes, "and the authorities trot out the same list of accusations towards minorities they wish to demonize."

Jews, perhaps the eternal scapegoats, catch it in the neck even from people they're trying to help. When Crusaders set out in 1096 to retake the Holy Land, Mr. Campbell says, they stopped off in the Rhine Valley and slaughtered Jews—"many of whom had lent the money the Crusaders needed to set out on this religious quest in the first place."

The list of wrongdoing that Jews have been blamed for is quite expansive, Mr. Campbell reminds us, including poisoned wells and crops, missing children and the Black Death, though Pope Clement VI issued a bull relieving them of responsibility for the last horror. Instead, he chalked it up to "a misalignment of the planets," as Mr. Campbell explains, "which is as close as the Church will ever get to saying that it, like the rest of us, just doesn't know."

Yet there has been little lack of certitude in history's scapegoating efforts, some of which may strike readers as laughable despite the horrendous results. Fifteenth-century Dutch scholar Johann Wyler, a witch expert, calculated that there were 7,405,926 witches, "divided into 72 battalions, each led by a prince or a captain." Another estimate put the number at 1.8 million. While most witches apparently escaped detection, some 50,000 were killed.

Mr. Campbell's descriptions of executions are suitably grim, though he also takes a look on the bright side. While the Middle Ages were especially rough times for the accused, they were plush times for a certain type of entrepreneur. Witch-hunter Matthew Hopkins made a killing in the trade in the mid-1600s, earning 20 shillings per conviction (a month's wages for a laborer). On one red-letter day he sent 19 witches to their deaths. Impoverished towns might spend a big portion of their budgets on witch extermination. This was not an exact science. The famous "swimming" test bound witches and lowered them in water. If they floated, they were guilty. If they drowned, they were innocent. (Sorry—we meant well!)

Mr. Campbell trots out other popular scapegoats—communists, financiers, the devil in his various guises and even inanimate objects, including a bell that innocently tolled away in the Russian town of Uglich until a prince was assassinated there in 1591, after which it was shipped off to Siberia, a cursed object, to languish for several centuries.

Yet Mr. Campbell's strangest examples feature animals. He tells the story of a storm that ravaged the Hebridean island of St. Kilda in 1840. A Great Auk, rare in those parts, was seen walking on the beach; it was captured and put on trial for instigating the fatal storm. The Auk, already a flightless bird, was found guilty and stoned to death. In a similarly vengeful spirit, a Parisian cow was executed in 1546 for having amorous relations with a man, though common sense indicates that the man was likely the aggressor. In a nod to fairness, both were hanged, then burned.

Mixing metaphors, insects have endured a similar scrutiny as scapegoats. Mosquitoes, flies and ravenous weevils have been threatened with excommunication by the church. A killing frost would usually solve the problem. But in southern France, the church put the local weevils on trial for a crop blight. The trial went on for eight months, during which time the weevils were granted a plot of land for sanctuary.

While we might like to believe that humanity has outgrown its addiction to scapegoating, Mr. Campbell reminds us otherwise. Economic downturns, he writes, "are extraordinarily complex and hard to fathom, yet that does not deter the blamemongers." Bankers take much of the blame because "they are regarded by the public as being overpaid." They may certainly be blamed for a revived interest in urban camping.

When bankers won't do, creative minds come up with even more exotic malefactors. Author and lecturer David Icke, a former British soccer player and Green Party spokesman, teaches that "the world is run by a secret cabal of giant shape-shifting extraterrestrial lizards known as the Babylon Brotherhood." This group, he says, includes both President Bushes and troubadours Kris Kristofferson and Boxcar Willie. There is apparently a good market for this viewpoint: Mr. Icke has written 18 books, and his website reportedly gets 600,000 hits per week.

Athletes sometimes play the role of the scapegoat, especially if they blow a scoring opportunity that would have clenched the game, as Baltimore Ravens kicker Billy Cundiff did in his team's recent loss in the AFC championship. Mr. Cundiff, who partially blamed a scoreboard error for making him rush the kick, might argue that losing, like winning, is a team effort. Soccer star Andrés Escobar, blamed for scoring a goal against his own team in the 1994 World Cup game, might argue the same, if he had not been murdered in connection with his gaffe.

Finally, there are politicians, who get blamed for a lot, sometimes wrongly. But they may also be the world's pre-eminent blame shifters—demonizing rival politicians with eternal vigilance. Mr. Campbell does acknowledge exceptions to prominent leaders dodging blame. He cites Robert E. Lee's post-Gettysburg mea culpa: "All of this has been my fault. I asked more of my men than should have been asked of them." Then again, the architect of Pickett's Charge had cause for humility.

Mr. Campbell cannot be accused of writing a ringing endorsement of our species. But he has made it clear that many of us operate on a revised version of the Golden Rule: Do unto others what should probably be done unto you.

—Mr. Shiflett is the author of the recently published novel "In the Matter of J. Van Pelt."]]> http://daveshiflett.com/news.html#126 Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800 New Acoustic Music from Dave Shiflett & Friends and The Karma Farmers - Dave Shiflett - News http://daveshiflett.com/news.html#125
Tara Nevins is best known for fronting Donna The Buffalo, the enduring (20 plus years) rock/jam/festival band based in Trumansburg, New York. Years pass, band members come and go, but Tara (and co-founder Jeb Puryear) keep Donna hoppin’ and constantly touring.

But in her heart of hearts, Tara Nevins is an old-time fiddler. Her most vivid musical experiences are tied to the traditional music of the North Carolina hills, where she sought out and learned the tunes that still excite her and deeply influence her work with Donna and as a solo artist.

I met Tara last spring at Merlefest. She’s slender and good-looking, with a warm bearing. While some professional musicians seem bored with their routines Tara maintains a passion for music, especially traditional forms, including cajun, zydeco, and old time. She’s something of an old time apostle, and when I told her I was interested in learning more about the music she suggested I attend the Mt. Airy Fiddler’s Convention in Mt. Airy, North Carolina (the subject of an earlier post — scroll down, you’ll find it).

“Mt. Airy has been and still is my Mecca,” she told me. She books no shows during the week of the festival, and sure enough this year she rolled into the festival grounds in Donna The Buffalo’s big purple tour bus, which has an interesting history all its own: among its previous owners are Toby Keith and Jim and Tammy Bakker’s PTL Club.

The sun was on full broil that May weekend and it felt like you could roast potatoes inside the bus, so after a brief talk we stepped outside where Tara pointed out several friends and former band mates who were singing country standards. One old pal is Joe Thrift, well known to old time practitioners for his fiddle tune “Pale Face.” Joe, a highly respected violin maker, once played keyboards for Donna. He was also the band’s bus driver, he told me, and considered himself very good at it. I hope to interview him for this project a bit further on.

The purple bus was on Tara’s mind when I caught up with her a few weeks ago to talk about her early days as a musician, her love of old time, and whatever else came to mind. Donna the Buffalo had played a gig in Annapolis, Maryland the night before and soon after departing for home the bus began shaking violently. The problem turned out to be bad rims. “We all got on our computers and found a 24-hour roadside service,” she said. Several hours and four hundred dollars later they proceeded toward Trumansburg. “I got to bed at six-thirty this morning.” I was reminded of something Jorma Kaukonen wrote a few years back (roughly paraphrased here): Being a professional musician means long hours of driving interspersed with brief periods of actually playing music.

Donna usually does around 100 shows a year, Tara says, but this year they’re doing far more. “We have debt to pay.” She said touring is getting a bit harder as time goes on. “I don’t like being out of my routine. I don’t always get to eat as well as I’d like, or exercise as much. I really like to get in an hour of walking each day, and that can be hard to do when you’re on the road.” The band is currently working on a new disc, and she’s also trying to get out more to promote her latest solo album, “Wood and Stone.” Though she sounded somewhat tired she was also upbeat. She clearly loves the path she has chosen.

I asked her how old she was when she knew she would spend her life making music. “I never consciously thought that,” she says. There was no decision one day to forego everything else in favor of the musical life. But many years were spent developing the chops, and worldview, that made this life possible.

Tara grew up in Orangeburg, New York, not far from New York City. She got her first violin at age 5 and took up the guitar at 14, learning the songs of Joni Mitchell, James Taylor and Carol King. She wrote her first song at 17 — “it was a silly little song called ”˜We’re On Our Way To A New World Now.’ The theme was kinda ”˜the younger generation is alive and happening. We know what it’s all about.’ It did foreshadow the uplifting, worldly message that’s in a lot of Donna the Buffalo’s music.”

She played violin in the high school orchestra, and during that time discovered that not all the old masters played classical music. “When I heard the ”˜Will The Circle Be Unbroken’ album, it turned my head. I thought ”˜That’s what I want to do.’” Her classical violin studies took her to the Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam, but she did not solely concentrate on the classical curriculum.

“My roommate played in a band called the St. Regis River Valley String Band,” Tara says. “They played old time and I fell in love with it in a minute.” The band liked her as well, and eventually added her as a member. “Before I knew it, playing old time was what I was doing with my life.” While she had earned a teaching degree, “I had no interest in teaching music.”

Instead, she wanted to learn as much about old time as possible. After college, she “dove in,” and no place was more important in her development than the Mt. Airy festival. “We also went to Galax and Brandywine, but Mt. Airy was my favorite. It was small and there were lots of local players to learn from, and some of the greatest players came from that area, including Tommy Jarrell, Benton Flippen, and Fred Cockerham.”

There was, she adds, something of a culture clash. “This was a very southern festival, and we were outsiders. We were from the North, the West Coast, the Midwest, and we were alternative minded. We were called ”˜The Revivalists’ because we were the younger generation that was reviving this music. At first, the local people looked at us sort of crossways. I think we amused them. But they knew we respected their culture and that we had come to learn their music. And come Sunday morning when it was time to leave, we left the place spotless. Eventually we were accepted, appreciated and loved.”

One sign of that acceptance was that the outsiders began winning contests. “We started an all-girl band called The Heartbeats and one year won the best up and coming band.” The Heartbeats “were and are an extremely significant band in my life. We are a powerful old time band that plays hard driving fiddle tunes and songs that have a bit of pop sensibility.” Tara also won the fiddle contest. “Being accepted at that level was a very powerful experience,” Tara says , though perhaps her most memorable musical experience followed an on-stage performance of the classic tune “Sally Anne.”

“I played the tune in the fiddle contest and got off the stage. I was standing there and Riley Baugus walked up to me and said there was someone who wanted to meet me. I was a little nervous, but I went with him. So he takes me to a campsite, and there’s Dix Freeman, who played banjo with Tommy Jarrell for years. He had heard me playing ”˜Sally Anne’ and said ”˜You sound so much like Tommy.’ Well, I had learned the tune from a Tommy Jarrell recording. He asked me to play it again. For me, being face-to-face with Dix was mind blowing. He was very nice and invited me to his house and showed me around. There was a little cabin there where they had square dances. He also had Tommy Jarrell’s moonshine jug. “

For Tara, these were life-shaping events. “These times were like Christmas when you’re a kid. They still are very powerful for me, and I know for a lot of other musicians.” Donna the Buffalo, she adds, has its roots in old time. “Originally, all the people in the band were old time musicians. Jeb picked up the electric guitar and I got an electric violin from my dad. We added drums and morphed into an electric band, but the old time influence is definitely there.”

I asked Tara about songwriting. She is a solitary woman in that regard. While she and Jeb Puryear write all Donna’s original material, and have been doing so for 22 years, “we haven’t written a song together.” She hasn’t co-written with anyone, she adds, though she does perform with other writers, including country hit maker Jim Lauderdale, who appeared on her recent solo album as a harmony singer.

Her new solo disc, “Wood And Stone” (Sugar Hill Records), has stellar contributors, including drummer Levon Helm and producer Larry Campbell, and has kept her in pretty good company, appearing on the Americana charts with recordings from Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle and Gillian Welch. The disc is a deeply personal reflection on family life, including the breakup of her longtime marriage. Yet it is not, she says, “maudlin or so private that it’s embarrassing. This is not a woe is me record” or, as she has said elsewhere, a musical version of a “chick flick.” It is also something of a departure from her first solo record, “Mule To Ride,” which came out on Sugar Hill in 1999 and showcased Tara’s fiddling. That disc, which also charted, featured several high profile guest artists, including Ralph Stanley and Mike Seeger.

Her only woe, she says, is that she hasn’t gotten out to play the tunes as much as she’d like due to commitments with Donna the Buffalo.

“I’m thinking I’d like to put together a little band and do more gigs in the spring.” Despite over 20 years of public performances, including gigs before large audiences, she is still uncomfortable unaccompanied. “I never have just played solo, except maybe at a songwriter workshop.” When she’s with a smaller band, she adds, she enjoys talking with the audience, which she doesn’t do much of when playing with Donna. “It’s nice having that sort of communication.”

Near conversation’s end she offered advice for younger musicians. They should listen to the classical masters — Bach, Beethoven et al. — but also to the best of other traditions, whether Loretta Lynn, Hank Williams, the Balfa Brothers, Thomas Mapfumo, The Frank Family, plus rock and pop deities including the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and Bob Marley. And if old time turns their head, as it turned Tara’s, she suggests Jarrell, Flippen, the Smoky Valley Boys and the Roan Mountain Hilltoppers, for starters.

And, of course, a yearly visit to Mt. Airy. She’ll be the fiddle babe in the big purple bus.

Talking with Tara reminded me of my trip to Mt. Airy and the other great old time players I’d heard there, including Mark Olitsky. Mark’s clawhammer banjo had turned my head when I first heard it a couple of years ago at Clifftop. We eventually struck up a friendship, played some tunes together, and shared campsites at a few festivals. After eating some of my highly carnivorous cooking, Mark went vegan.

So, next time out, a conversation with Mark (if I can track him down). For now, a short break for Christmas. And for those who have wondered about my son Branch (scroll down a bit and you’ll find a piece I did on his deployment to Iraq) — he’s back home. And he’s looking for an upright bass. He’d probably like to find Tommy Jarrell’s moonshine jug as well. Lord help us every one.]]> http://daveshiflett.com/news.html#125 Fri, 30 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800 New Acoustic Music from Dave Shiflett & Friends and The Karma Farmers - Dave Shiflett - News http://daveshiflett.com/news.html#124
The book industry has responded with a barrage of works promising to bring a smile, or least a smirk, to our weary faces. Some of the material is new, some slightly recycled, some clunky. None of it is free.

In the fresh jokes department, comic Demetri Martin’s “This Is A Book” has a contemporary air, as befitting a guy who’s appeared on Conan, the Daily Show and his own slot on Comedy Central. His book includes essays, drawings, short stories and plenty of reminders that we live in an age when some people — make that lots of people — believe everything they think or do should be posted.

“Nearly ½ of all people in the United States are torsos,” Mr. Martin observes in a chapter entitled “Statistics,” along with “Men are 35 times more likely than women to be turned on by looking at a wedgie.” In a chapter about updating flags his new flag of the south features a man in a suit holding a Bible and a waffle. “He looks proud and is standing inside a trailer park.”

This stuff might be a lot funnier with a chaser of nitrous oxide, yet there are plenty of smiles in David McRaney’s “You Are Not So Smart,” which argues that humans are experts at self-delusion and in drawing large lessons from abnormal behavior, some of it not so funny at all. He cites hysterical responses to the Columbine school shootings: “A typical schoolkid is three times more likely to be struck by lightning than to be shot by a classmate,” he writes, “yet schools continue to guard against it as if it could happen at any second.” Keep that in mind the next time your local school officials start chirping about how they’re teaching “critical thinking skills.” A chuckle may ensue.

In a sexier vein, Merrill Markoe’s “Cool, Calm and Contentious” is a wry look at life from a woman who loves dogs but is a bit warier of men, as we see in her account of surrendering her virginity to a loutish hack artist who treated indifferently and failed to make the earth move despite being given several opportunities. His name is Brad, if anyone’s interested.

Some readers might find themselves saying “are you sure you want us to know all this?” yet may be amused by her explanation of why teenagers are “boneheads” about sexting, hooking up and other sexual endeavors: The frontal lobes, which allow us “to comprehend the idea of actions having consequences, aren’t finished being wired for functioning until your late twenties.” Hmmmm. The fact that many of us comprehended the likely consequences of our actions all too well is why we learned the art of lying at a very early age. That’s no joke.

There are lots of world-class laughs in Andy Borowitz’s “The 50 Funniest American Writers,” which includes the work of Mark Twain, S.J. Pereleman, Jean Shepherd, Hunter S. Thompson, Nora Ephron, Dorothy Parker, H.L. Mencken, Wanda Sykes, Dave Barry and the Onion. Essays on politics are especially timely: Twain writes as a man disclosing his sins prior to running for president: he not only “treed a rheumatic grandfather of mine in the winter of 1850” but went AWOL during Gettysburg. “I wanted my country saved, but I preferred to have somebody else save it.” Mencken, meantime, proposes that “unsuccessful candidates for the presidency be quietly hanged, as a matter of public sanitation and decorum” and on further reflection concludes ex-presidents be accorded the same treatment. At heart, maybe Mencken was a premature tea-bagger.

P.J. O’Rourke, now an elder in the temple of mirth and the only self-proclaimed Republican in this bunch, still has his teeth about him in “Holidays in Heck,” a collection of re-written magazine articles from Hong Kong, China, Kyrgyzstan and other exotic locales. Mr. O’Rourke, who has added “cancer survivor” to his resume, takes a scalpel to a modern art display at the Venice Biennale, eviscerating a piece by Italy’s Bruna Esposito, who “scattered onion skins on marble floor tiles and, remarkably, did not title it ”˜Get the Broom.’” Looking on the brighter side, Mr. O’Rourke theorizes that many dictators, including Hitler, were frustrated artists, so putting their dreck on display might have kept them out of bigger trouble. That might make a novel fund-raising line: We’re not hanging lousy pictures, we’re aborting world wars. Maybe worth a try.

Calvin Trillin, another elder, sounds a bit cranky in his take on health food in “Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin,” a rich compendium of 40 year’s worth of his work. “Am I the only one worried about how unhealthy the people who work in health food stores look?” he asks before smirking at “bee waste” and “stump paste” and wondering why legislation hasn’t been passed that protects consumers from “being reminded constantly of the last days of Howard Hughes.” Give it time, sir.

All told, some worthy additions to the humor vault. Other holiday gift suggestions: Juvenal, whose first- and second-century satires of gluttonous bluebloods keeling over on the way to the baths, and incestuous villainy (“every embryo lump was the living spit of uncle”) could have been written last week (though getting them published might be another matter). There’s also Paul Tabori’s “The Natural Science of Stupidity,” which includes a life insurance policy of sorts from the 16th century: Soldiers are instructed to sew moss taken from the skull of an executed man into their clothing. “As long as you wear the jerkin, you are safe from ball, cut and thrust.” Ah, the days before class action lawsuits.

Some of the best humor isn’t found in books, of course. The funniest line I’ve seen in years is on a funeral urn crafted by artist/songstress Nancy Josephson: “Does this urn make my ashes look big?”

A joke to die for, almost.]]> http://daveshiflett.com/news.html#124 Sat, 19 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800 New Acoustic Music from Dave Shiflett & Friends and The Karma Farmers - Dave Shiflett - News http://daveshiflett.com/news.html#123
“Where Soldiers Come From,” a new film about deployment and its consequences, airs Nov. 10 at 9 p.m. on PBS. It will stream Nov. 11-Dec. 11 at http://www.pbs.org/pov/wheresoldierscomefrom. Readers who enjoyed my Wall Street Journal piece, “While My Son Serves” (scroll down a bit; you’ll find it) will likely find this show worthy of your time.

It follows the deployment of a National Guard unit from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to Afghanistan and back home again. The project was four years in the making and is very thorough. Those with family members who have deployed will see a lot of their own experiences here, while those who haven’t will get a clear-eyed view of how deployment affects families.

Director Heather Courtney, who is from the same hometown (Hancock) as several of the soldiers, says the film “is about the people who fight our wars and the communities and families they come from. Many Americans, whatever their politics or feelings about war, are very far removed from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars because they don't know anyone personally who has served in them as a soldier. I hope that my film will help viewers get to know these young men and their families, feel compassion for them and see a bit of themselves in the people on the screen.”

The film is entirely respectful of the soldiers and their families, though no one will mistake this for a military recruiting film — or an anti-war film either. For my money, it’s a straight-ahead, non-dramatic look at a group of kids — ranging from late teens to early 20s — and their families and friends as they go through a deployment.

The soldiers signed up during hard times; the military gave them work, a $20,000 signing bonus, a promise of an underwritten education and, for some, a purpose in life. Plus, they were young and looking for adventure. They found plenty of that, though we are eventually reminded that adventure can wear you down after awhile, and definitely change your perspective.

Courtney takes us through the early days of training, wondering if they’ll go overseas, and the fateful day the deployment orders come through. Scenes from a farewell party will be familiar to many families: plenty of booze and stiff upper lips. Then they’re off.

The soldiers are fairly carefree, bantering blithely as they go about their job: detonating Improvised Explosive Devices along Afghan roadways. “I don’t want to kill anyone,” says one soldier. His pals chirp in on other subjects. “Have you had sex yet?” says one. “I’m a lover not a fighter,” says another. Many of the conversations in the film, one should add, are undertaken in what my son calls the “incredible mosaic of obscenity.”

Then — Boom! — a bomb goes off and things get very serious very quickly. If you’ve never seen film of an IED detonating, there are plenty here. Some result in wounds, though Courtney spares us the gore.

Courtney also keeps the families in focusing, reminding viewers that when one family member is deployed, the entire family is deployed. Parents will definitely associate with a father who tells of fearing that “knock on the door” from a Pentagon representative bearing bad news. A girlfriend says there’s “lots of depression. Life is very different.” We see families talking via Skype, conversations that are deeply heartfelt but sometimes awkward; a combination of joy, relief, and trying to come up with small talk.

Back in Afghanistan, the stress begins taking its toll.
In their barracks, soldiers talk about having a hard time sleeping. One develops ulcers and adult asthma. A shift in attitude appears universal.

“I hate everybody here,” one soldier says. “I’m a racist American now because of this war.” Other soldiers have become somewhat disillusioned. The people of Afghanistan, one says, are “stricken with a burden that seems unfixable. What is the point in all this? Who am I fighting this war for?” There is talk of suffering “too many concussions” from being “blown up too many times.”

Yet there is also a high level of compassion, even for their adversaries. One soldier sympathizes with the people who are trying to blow him up, suggesting that if he were a native he might be doing the same thing. After a cache of explosives is found near a home, concerns are raised about what will happen to the family now that the man of the house is being arrested and taken away. One soldier asks what anyone would do if a Taliban insurgent ordered them to shoot at American convoys and hide explosives -- or see their children killed. As for the children, they “are unbelievable. They never stop smiling.”

Finally, it’s time to come home. “It’s just like being pregnant,” says one mother. “It’s on you mind every day until they get back.” When they do, everyone realizes these aren’t the same boys they had known. It can be very difficult getting back into the swing of civilian life — finding a job, restarting relationship — especially when some soldiers are suffering from post traumatic stress disorder or a brain injury. One lapses into fits of extreme anger. The hidden toll of war, we are reminded, can last far longer than the deployment itself.

This is a film worth watching, for military and non-military families alike. Many thanks to Cathy Fisher of POV for sending it along. On a personal note, our family appreciates the concerns and prayers sent aloft on behalf of “Sarge,” whom we expect to reappear in Virginia sometime in December or January. And here at Veteran’s Day, we are especially thankful for the service and safe return of soldiers we know who went overseas, including Ben, Josh, Ralph, Mike, Smitty and Chip. We are proud to call you our friends.]]> http://daveshiflett.com/news.html#123 Thu, 10 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800 New Acoustic Music from Dave Shiflett & Friends and The Karma Farmers - Dave Shiflett - News http://daveshiflett.com/news.html#122 By Dave Shiflett, Published: July 22
The children of icons seldom achieve at the level of their luminous parents, which is certainly true of Georgette Jones, daughter of country music deities Tammy Wynette and George Jones. That is, for the most part, a good thing for Georgette, as we learn in “The Three of Us,” her memoir of growing up in that deeply fractured household.

She was never her father’s equal as a boozer — few reach those heights — and hasn’t matched her mother’s level of domestic drama (romance with Burt Reynolds, a long string of sometimes malignant marriages and chronic pill-popping). Then there’s music. George Jones recorded some of country music’s greatest songs, including “He Stopped Loving Her Today” and “She Thinks I Still Care,” while Wynette’s “Stand by Your Man” is one of country’s best-known anthems.

While Georgette sang a bit with her parents as a child, and later as a backup singer for her mother, she made her living as a nurse before inching back into the family trade. She recognizes that she will never reach her parent’s level of stardom, which, it seems, would suit George and Tammy (RIP) quite well. “In a nutshell,” she writes, “my mom never trusted stardom, and my dad never liked it.”

She provides plenty of run-up to her birth in 1970, including a reminder that, while her parents’ marriage may not have been made in heaven, it was a Nashville dream. “When my mom married my dad, she was marrying her hero,” she writes.

Both came from rural backgrounds, though George’s was more desperate. “Dad had to quit school at a young age to help out his family,” she writes. “No stability and no safety, just poverty and uncertainty.” Music was his way out.

As it was for Virginia Wynette Pugh (Tammy’s real name), a single mother of three when she moved to Nashville in 1966, living in a motel and, in an old Nashville story, rejected by almost everyone on Music Row. Her fortunes changed when she slipped into the office of producer Billy Sherrill and told him, “You are my last hope.” Sherrill liked her voice but not her name and suggested she call herself Tammy — after the title character in the movie “Tammy and the Bachelor.” She soon met Jones at a recording session. She cottoned to “The Possum,” and he to her. They married in 1969.

Whatever marital bliss there might have been was short-lived. By 1972 George and Tammy’s stormy weather was the talk of the tabloids and resonated in their duet “We’re Gonna Hold On,” which, Georgette writes, was “appropriate given their sometimes on-the-rocks marital status.” When they were asked during a television show what would keep their marriage together, a classic line was born: “They agreed it would only work if Dad quit nippin’ and Mom quit naggin.’ ” Neither of which appears to have come to pass. The couple divorced in 1975, and George, for the most part, dropped out of his daughter’s life.

Georgette’s memoir is not an exercise in whining or score settling. Readers looking for yet more stories about George’s legendary guzzling will be disappointed; Georgette says it was largely hidden from her. When he worked the bar and club circuit, she adds, drinking became “a weapon against his introverted nature.”

As for her mom, her major problem involved that other world-class demon: men. Tammy stood by five men, with the last two marriages especially grim. Georgette seems to hold a special, though apparently deserved, animosity for the fifth and final husband, the late George Richey, a songwriter and producer Tammy married in 1978 while “heavily sedated with Demerol.” He was verbally and physically abusive, she writes, and appears to have been a world-class swindler as well.

Georgette, to be sure, didn’t live the convent life, marrying a couple of times and experiencing her own bout of substance abuse, which she backed away from. She later survived cancer and, of greater interest to most readers, her mother’s somewhat mysterious and gruesome death.

The curtain fell in 1998, following years of painkiller addiction partly resulting from multiple operations on abdominal maladies. Tammy apparently lay dead on a sofa several hours before anyone noticed she had stopped breathing. That left her body bloated and her face “cracked,” Georgette recalls. “Mom was dead. Not just dead, but horribly and disfiguringly dead.”

Tammy’s death helped Georgette reestablish her relationship with her father, who had ignored her for long stretches, including begging off when she asked him to walk her down the aisle. Her desire to reconnect, and forgive and forget, is her most engaging and touching characteristic.

All told, the memoir is remarkably upbeat. It also reminds us that Nashville, which operates under the family-values banner, should probably trade that one in for the skull and crossbones.]]> http://daveshiflett.com/news.html#122 Mon, 25 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700 New Acoustic Music from Dave Shiflett & Friends and The Karma Farmers - Dave Shiflett - News http://daveshiflett.com/news.html#121
Two new books—one personal, the other a broad history of "back to the land" enthusiasm—may touch a chord in a desperate urban-dweller's heart, but they may also show, if sometimes inadvertently, that Mother Earth's bosom is not always welcoming to mere humans.

Tom Montgomery Fate, whose "Cabin Fever" falls into the category of "nature writing," is far from a full-time homesteader. He is an English professor at the College of DuPage in Illinois, lives in a Chicago suburb with his family and minivan, participates in the antiwar movement, and could easily be mistaken for a cog in the notorious wheel.

But he is also devoted to Henry David Thoreau's "Walden" and especially to the idea of living a "deliberate life," which Mr. Fate defines as "a search for balance—in mind and body and spirit—amid our daily lives." That search often takes him to a cabin a few hours from his home, where he observes nature, and himself, at close quarters.

The book is organized into seasonal essays, starting with spring, a time when the sun brings the earth to blossom, though Mr. Fate is equally alert to life forms that have kept the pesticide industry in deep clover. He has a fascination for ticks, for instance. They go "questing" for blood donors, spearing their victims with a "beaklike projection" and drawing a "quantity of blood that is a hundred times their 'empty' weight."

Mr. Fate is also a fan of ants. "Today there are more than a million ants for each person on the planet," he claims in a more-the-better spirit. As Mr. Fate watches ants doing their chores, including passing along "regurgitated" food and cooperating in ways that would make Mr. Rogers smile, he arrives at an epiphany: "It strikes me that humans could never reach such communal efficiency and economy." If the ant is condemned to be an ant and nothing more, "we too are absurdly trapped by our design"—but in our case the trap is "the labyrinth of language and reason." We must also contend with mind-numbing "choices" and "possibilities" that the ant might not imagine.

In such passages humans often appear as a less than heroic species. When Mr. Fate finds a "roadkill raccoon" who is not quite dead, he carries the stricken animal to the road's shoulder; soon he finds himself "kneeling down in the damp weeds in a sort of wordless prayer—for forgiveness, I think." He counts himself among the worst beasts in the forest, feeling as he strolls a riverbank "the burden of my role in its slow destruction."

Yet Mr. Fate has a talent for chuckling at the mind-numbing "possibilities" of existence, such as losing one's car in a parking lot. He confesses that he once found his billfold "in the cheese drawer of the refrigerator." Middle-aged readers (ahem) might find themselves mumbling, "Et tu, Fate?"

Best of all, Mr. Fate is a fan of the coyote—a creature whose tenacity is noticeably less precious and humble than the ant's. The city life seems to suit coyotes, Mr. Fate writes, observing that rural coyotes have a "30 percent chance of living through their first year" while their city dwelling cousins "are twice as likely to live that long." He tells the story of a coyote skulking into a Chicago sub shop, apparently in search of food, and another who stalked a 60-year-old woman through a suburban parking lot. Suddenly, Mr. Fate writes, the coyote "lunged for her miniature poodle, clamping his jaws around the dog's hindquarters." The woman prevailed in the ensuing tug-of-war. Perhaps there is hope for us humans yet.

As animals wander into suburban spaces—bears and deer as well as coyotes—they are betting that they'll eat better among humans than among their own kind. Man has attempted a version of this reverse migration, too, over the centuries. The never-ending search for grub is a central theme in Dona Brown's "Back to the Land."

Ms. Brown, also a professor (the University of Vermont), chronicles a movement that embraces people like Mr. Fate— professional, "progressive," concerned about the environment—but that has also included Americans who hoped to find "food self-sufficiency," preferably apart from a life of wage slavery. That desire was sweetly enunciated by 19th-century writer Philip G. Hubert: "Why is it not possible for a healthy man . . . to make bread and butter for his little ones and himself without chaining himself down to a life of drudgery?"

Ms. Brown starts with a look at early back-to-the-land efforts, which she says ended around World War I. They tended to attract Americans, some in financial peril, who struck out for the rustic regions "as a means of preserving artisanal skill, personal autonomy, and household self-sufficiency in the face of a rising tide of mechanization, monopoly and consumerism."

Later chapters carry the story through to later expressions of the same basic impulse: for example, the Southern Agrarian movement, whose ideal society might owe something to feudalism, and the cluster of thinkers known as "decentralists," who sought a world in which "everyone had access to productive property—to the tools and materials that would allow them to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves." In the 1930s, government programs sought to bring about "self-sufficiency," providing land to down-and-outers, including Johnny Cash's parents. Four decades later, suburban kids who didn't know a hoe from a howitzer traded the country club for the commune.

Ms. Brown reads deeply in the movement's core literature, including the seminal "Ten Acres Enough" (1864), by Edmund Morris, both a journalist and real-estate man. The book contained "detailed information about deep plowing, how best to save manure, and the treatment of worms on peach trees." Ms. Brown notes that a revised version of the book is still in print.

Not everyone thought it necessary to leave town to grow your own. Bolton Hall (1854—1938), a wealthy New Yorker with radical economic ideas and perhaps a green thumb, tended a third-acre garden at 137th Street and Lenox Avenue. In his "Three Acres and Liberty" (1907), he hailed other urban food-raising efforts: "Near San Francisco there are a number of frog ranches." In a similar spirit, Henry Ford provided gardens for 50,000 Detroit auto workers after the 1929 stock-market crash. Working the gardens for food was mandatory.

Ms. Brown writes engagingly, and while her sympathies are not exactly right of center, she doesn't mind detailing the hypocrisy and messianic extremes of some of the movement's more radical leaders. Helen and Scott Nearing, devoted homesteaders and ascetic socialists, sought the good life in rural simplicity and preached abstinence from all animal products, even though Helen ate ice cream. Worse yet, she declared that domestic animals were "slaves" and yet owned a cat. Scott ended up fasting to death in 1983, at age 100.

As Ms. Brown makes clear, the rural impulse can inspire a kind of religious intensity. The author and New Age activist Ray Mungo cast modern-day back-to-earthers as holy penitents: "Pushing long hair out of their way and thus marking their foreheads with beautiful penitent dust," he wrote in 1970, they "till the soil to atone for their fathers' destruction of it." Self-adoration, we are reminded, grows everywhere like a weed.

Toward the end of her survey, Ms. Brown observes that "the old question of food self-sufficiency simply no longer requires quite the same go-it-alone approach that characterized the 1970s." We have more cooperatives stores now, she says, and community-supported farms. And there are hopeful signs, in her view: The Obamas dug up part of the White House lawn in 2009 and planted a garden, while in Los Angeles 245 people (latest count) have joined the online "Los Angeles Urban Chicken Group."

Still, one has to wonder how many Americans would truly forsake their daily grind to raise chickens (and frogs), shovel manure, and operate that wonder of nature known as the cow udder. While a small portion may find solace in the soil, far more would probably prefer not to flirt with dirt.]]> http://daveshiflett.com/news.html#121 Sat, 09 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700 New Acoustic Music from Dave Shiflett & Friends and The Karma Farmers - Dave Shiflett - News http://daveshiflett.com/news.html#120
The question comes up regularly these days as our 26-year-old son prepares to ship out. Kids in our middle-class world tend to head for college or for the sort of job that eventually convinces them that college isn't such a bad idea after all. Some friends wonder how our son ended up a sergeant in the Army National Guard.

"Sarge" (as we call him now) didn't volunteer because of family influence. We are Virginians and have served, but only when called. The Vietnam War ended before I got called up, but my father was a World War II navigator in the Naval Air Corps, transporting troops from Hawaii to Guam, and Sarge's grandfather on the other side was in a front-line artillery unit in Korea. A century before, the man I was named after did some surveillance work for Robert E. Lee, and in something of that spirit, our son became an Army Scout.


As America celebrates Independence Day this weekend, it's a good time to think of the men and women serving their country overseas.
He is, to be sure, a good demographic fit: Over two-thirds of our armed forces are white, most are male, and Southerners continue to be well-represented in the ranks. There was also his early fascination with soldiers and guns, but that's true of many boys.

Sarge has always possessed one habit of mind seemingly at odds with military life, which many critics insist is fit only for drones. He possesses what we lovingly call a hard head, an independent streak that, as it happens, is an inherited characteristic.

After his enlistment I had to ask why he would join an organization where taking orders is a way of life. "It's how you get to the big game," he replied. Put another way, he's a single young man looking for adventure—and perhaps meaning—and tends to believe that the people who man the office cubicles are the real drones.

He certainly chose an unusual path: Fewer than 1% of Americans wear the uniform these days. That, in turn, puts families of deployed soldiers in something of a world of their own.

For one thing, you're unlikely to bump into someone at the local tavern to commiserate with (which is not an argument for avoiding taverns, tavern life being one of the traditions that our children cross the oceans to protect).

New acquaintances sometimes seem shocked to meet someone with a deployed family member. "I'm so sorry," is their typical response. You'd almost think the lad was heading into rehab or entering the slave trade.

“'When I'm out in the desert, I feel like I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing,' our son said after returning home. Sometimes you have to travel 7,000 miles to find a sense of purpose.”

Others simply have no experience with the phenomenon of military service. At a Christmas party a few years ago, a colleague told me, very earnestly, that I was the only person he knew with someone in the military and that my son (whom he had never met) was his only link to that world.

Sheldon Kelly, an old family friend who served with the 82nd Airborne and whose own son has done multiple tours, recalls a lunch in Washington, D.C., with professional friends when the Iraq war was at a high point. "They were all war hawks," he recalled, "but when I told them my son was in Iraq, they were stunned. It was like I was in a different class." None, he added, had children in the military.
All of which can result in a feeling of isolation for some service families and an assumption of societal indifference. With so few people deployed, it's almost as if these conflicts are not really happening.

One local couple, whose son earned a Purple Heart in Iraq, told me that while plenty of people are happy to "ribbon up"—attach those "Support Our Troops" stickers to their cars—that's pretty much the extent of their outreach.

For the most part, however, the usual response when we tell people about Sarge is to say that we must be proud—which we are—and we must also be worried. Well, sure. We're parents—worry is our fate. Yet we try to worry wisely. And thankfully, at this point in his life, Sarge is not leaving behind a family of his own.

His first deployment, in 2007, was supposed to take him to Baghdad, but he ended up in a much quieter area at the southern border. He did not like that, but my wife and I sure did. This time around his gun truck will be driving point on convoys taking troops out of Iraq.

While the Iraq war has wound down, there are still dangers. In June, 11 servicemen were killed, five in a single rocket attack. Death by improvised explosive device is a possibility for anyone riding those roads, and so visions of your son bleeding out as he screams for his mother can appear, unsolicited, in the middle of the night. Some level of apprehension is unavoidable.

Then again, why do we have children if not to give us plenty to think about at 3 a.m.?

Sarge shows few signs of coffin phobia, though he is not looking forward to dealing with intense heat, scorpions and camel spiders (which, he tells us, can grow to the size of your hand, hiss loudly, and sometimes charge in packs). As for other hazards: Sandstorms can be blinding, it's not advisable to date the locals, and a cold beer can be very hard to come by.

And you never know where his service might eventually lead him. The U.S. is supposed to be out of Iraq by Dec. 31, but that could change. With Sarge's new deployment set at 400 days, we suspect a bonus trip to Afghanistan may be in the bargain. Who knows—maybe he'll end up seeing wild, wonderful Tripoli!

There's a saying that when one family member deploys, the entire family deploys. What often isn't said is that, despite the definite downsides to military deployment (including the possibility of becoming a casualty and, at the very least, long separations), it has a strange knack for bringing people together and even making life better.

“There's a saying that when one family member deploys, the entire family deploys.”

Sarge's 2007 deployment had some positive health benefits for me, though for nonheroic reasons. Here's why: If your soldier is killed (not a great possibility, though some parents lose sight of that), there will be a knock at your door. Accordingly, if you happen to be home in the afternoon when the FedEx guy drops by, you might experience an unwelcome cardiac jolt.

To avoid that experience I took up walking, often logging 30 to 40 miles per week. Not quite boot camp, but the exercise probably added a few years to my life.

There are also moments that simply would not have happened were it not for deployment. I remember a call from our son (via cellphone) who said he was out in the middle of the desert under a bright canopy of stars. Despite a short voice delay, the reception was incredible.

"You out there by yourself?" I asked.

"No, Dad. I have my machine gun."

It was a strange, intense moment of bonding, even though he was probably 7,000 miles away.

Deployment also cured me of a lingering cable-TV habit. Whatever patience I once had for the chattering class—make that the braying class—disappeared. I don't know what is worse: raving about how our soldiers are "mercenaries" or hearing a parlor patriot (go get 'em, boys!) suggest that because recent conflicts are "low-casualty" (compared with Vietnam, Korea and the world wars), they are nothing to get worked up about. As my friend Sheldon pointed out, it does seem that the people with the biggest heart for war never seem to have any blood on the line.

It is undoubtedly true that war is good not only for munitions makers but also for what a friend calls the "prayer life." In the run-up to Sarge's 2007 deployment, a celestial petition entered my mind so effortlessly and naturally that I assumed the same has been true for soldiers' parents through the ages: If a life must be taken, take mine and spare his.

Deployment can also be a positive experience for soldiers. After returning home, our son said that "when I'm out in the desert, I feel like I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing." Sometimes you have to travel 7,000 miles to find a sense of purpose, and many men, I suspect, may come to wish they had made a similar journey.

It's my impression that men like me, who never served, often feel that we've missed out on an important part of life. We don't know what it's like to be young and far away from home, vulnerable to instant personal extinction but also part of the comradeship that such danger creates. In this sense my son's service is a far greater thing than I have ever done.

Back home from deployments, soldiers can experience a vast array of problems, from nervousness while driving under an overpass (ambush?) or in traffic (since cars in today's war zones can carry bombs) to the more serious manifestations of post-traumatic stress disorder. The military offers some support. A Department of Defense service called MilitaryHomefront provides support for those suffering from various maladies, including combat stress, domestic abuse and suicide prevention.

For families whose soldiers didn't make it home, of course, there is an unfathomable depth of sorrow.

On a happier note, the one area in which deployment is nearly unsurpassed lies in its ability to bring people together for a grand sendoff.

We held Sarge's farewell party just before June 1, his official deployment date (he won't arrive in Iraq until this month).

This was definitely not a Norman Rockwell scene, though one suspects Norman would have had a rocking time. A smoky cooking fire (my idea to roast an octopus was vetoed; our oldest son flew in from San Francisco to butcher and cook a pig) cast a rich haze over 100 or so friends, relatives and a few thirsty strangers, some bearing musical instruments while many others, including soldiers with hard combat experience, came armed with a host of jugs.

When soldiers and musicians gather, the alcohol deities smile broadly. Thirsts worthy of condemned pirates were slaked with passion, and as the smoke and noise levels rose, neighbors could be forgiven for thinking the Vikings had landed (though none sounded the alarm down at the local sheriff's office, for which we are thankful). One senses that many serious head wounds required treatment the next morning, but there was the solace of knowing that the damage was sustained in the line of duty.

This party was not as raucous as the one for Sarge's first deployment, where lights-out came around 5 a.m. This time, all was quiet by 2. The last departure was also officially marked by a ceremony in which Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine traveled to Portsmouth to shake the hands of the hundreds of soldiers departing with my son's unit. Families appreciated that. This time, the current governor didn't show up at the sendoff, which was held in downtown Richmond.

For now, memories of Sarge's sendoff will keep us smiling as we ride out the 400-day deployment.

Grandmother: "Will the vehicle you're riding around in have any weapons?"

Sarge: "Yes, Grandma. We'll be taking along a .50-cal."

While Sarge is away, we're likely to see the local boys who have completed their tours and sometimes gather in a home-built "speakeasy," bedecked with the flags of their respective services: Army, Marines, Navy.

I recall a conversation with them one night about an American flag that has accompanied them on various deployments, sometimes tucked under their battle armor to keep it—and perhaps themselves—safe. The cable TV brayers would scoff at this as "gaudy patriotism," but to my eye this level of communal devotion is another thing soldiers have that most of us don't.

“Despite the definite downsides to deployment, it has a strange knack for bringing people together.”

These vets—young in years but in some cases having witnessed profound horrors—were in full hoot at the send-off, singing along to woozily brilliant renditions of Merle Haggard's "Mama Tried," Paul Simon's "The Boxer," a deeply fractured rendition of the Beatles' "Rocky Raccoon," and the Grateful Dead's "Dire Wolf," with its resoundingly appropriate chorus, "Don't murder me!"

There was also a glorious "Over the Rainbow," sung by a woman whose voice brought hope for better days, and then the farewell toast:

Know that you will be constantly in our thoughts and prayers.

We look forward to gathering together again to welcome you home.

Until then, don't mess with the women.

Keep your head down, and

Godspeed.

Now, off he goes.]]> http://daveshiflett.com/news.html#120 Mon, 04 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700 New Acoustic Music from Dave Shiflett & Friends and The Karma Farmers - Dave Shiflett - News http://daveshiflett.com/news.html#119
By DAVE SHIFLETT
Journalists lately have taken to portraying Hugh Hefner as an octogenarian whose libido requires chemical upgrades and whose mansion is stuffed with tattered mattresses and stained carpets. But he still has his admirers. These include Carrie Pitzulo, a self-described feminist, who in "Bachelors and Bunnies" casts Mr. Hefner as something of a philosopher king and underappreciated crusader for women's advancement. How dare anyone think the Bunnyboy was ever simply a guy on the make?

Ms. Pitzulo, an assistant history professor at the University of West Georgia, begins by sketching Mr. Hefner's origins. He was born in 1926 into what he called a "typical Midwestern, Methodist home with a lot of repression." As a teenager, he appears to have been less repressed than enthusiastically self-obsessed. He began documenting his life in a series of scrapbooks that now numbers more than 2,000. After a girl rejected him in high school, he "reinvented" himself as "Hef," Ms. Pitzulo says, and he began dressing dapper and writing a music column in the school paper.

View Full Image

copyright Playboy Magazine

A 1964 Playboy ad, claiming that its typical reader 'knows his way around.'
Mr. Hefner married in 1949 and had two children—a son, David, and daughter, Christie, who would eventually take over his empire. He and his wife, Mildred, didn't divorce until 1959, but by then he had made it clear that standard domesticity, that hotbed of monogamy, was not for him. In 1953, the former Esquire magazine copywriter had launched Playboy, a magazine that, as Ms. Pitzulo describes it, championed as its ideal "a swinging single Lothario" who rejected marriage in favor of "self-indulgence, materialism and promiscuous bachelorhood." Oh, and there were photos of naked women.

The magazine also included articles on fashion, food and gadgets such as the "Tensolator," which provided "bodybuilding isotonic tension," perhaps to make up for slow nights in the rumpus room. Mr. Hefner also wanted to appeal to men with intellectual pretensions. The Playboy man, he wrote in the inaugural issue, liked nothing more than "mixing up cocktails and an hors d' oeuvre or two, putting a little mood music on the phonograph, and inviting a female acquaintance for a quiet discussion on Picasso, Nietzsche, jazz, sex." Yet the rabbit logo was not meant to celebrate the cerebral nature of the insatiable hare.

Ms. Pitzulo looks closely at the true stars of the show: the Playmates, especially those who appeared in the centerfold—the three-page spread that was among the most sacred item of teenage contraband. While promoted by Mr. Hefner as the "girl next door" and "not unlike the women his readers encountered every day," writes Ms. Pitzulo, these women were actually the stuff of fantasy: perfectly sculpted and without detectable blemish.

Bachelors and Bunnies: The Sexual Politics of Playboy
By Carrie Pitzulo
Chicago, 240 pages, $25
In the 1960s, Playmates became the target of feminist ire. Protesters at the 1968 Miss America threw Playboys into a "freedom trashcan" and even Jennifer Jackson, the first African-American Playmate (March 1965), later called Mr. Hefner a "glorified pimp," though she added that she did like him as a person. Gloria Steinem, ever the subtle critic, dragged the Holocaust into the discussion in 1970: "A woman reading Playboy," she declared, "feels a little like a Jew reading a Nazi manual."

Far more troubling to Ms. Pitzulo than the girly pictures was the tone of early stories, such as "Miss Gold-Digger of 1953," which painted "women as conniving wenches only out for money." Another mainstay of the early years: articles belittling marriage and long-term commitment. Yet Ms. Pitzulo also detects a "budding attitude" in the magazine encouraging "sexual autonomy, expression, and pleasure for men and for women." Playboy came to support "progressive" political causes, including opposition to the Vietnam War and support for abortion rights. Eventually Mr. Hefner even stopped advocating male "flight from commitment." While "militant" feminists continued to despise the magazine, Ms. Pitzulo says, Playboy was actually working "toward feminist goals." Mr. Hefner could not agree more. "I was a feminist before there was such a thing as feminism," he told Esquire in 2002.

Freeing women from sexual restraint and ensuring their access to abortion, of course, are causes hailed in barracks, frat houses and other places where nonfeminists gather, but Ms. Pitzulo is not one to make such observations. She often writes with a messianic earnestness—we're told early on that her editor considers her efforts "worthy and important." She doesn't stint on the academic jargon as she "deciphers" the deeper meaning of centerfolds in "the context of postwar America" and refers to "the feminist porn critique" and the "heterosexual project." As prose goes, this can hit you like a very cold shower.

She also denounces the "religious right" and other "conservatives" with a tone suggesting she's writing universal objective truth, clearly unaware that perhaps her adversaries are not the only ones who adhere to a rigid orthodoxy.

But who among us is without blemish—except the Playmates, a few of whom grace these pages, including the thoroughly stunning Linda Summers (August 1972), stretched out in the sand with a look that says, "Hey boys, soup's on." There's also an in-house ad from 1964 boasting that 43% of Playboy readers had at least three drinks a week in a bar or restaurant, thus making the magazine an excellent buy for booze merchants. It's a reminder that Mr. Hefner believed it was his philosophy attracting the commerce that kept the bunny hopping.

"We do live, now, in a Playboy world," Mr. Hefner said in a 2006 interview, which might be news many places, including those where women still go around wearing sacks. Yet many standard-issue American male readers may conclude they owe Mr. Hefner a debt of thanks. They might have believed it was those guitar lessons, steak dinners and charming conversation that greased the romantic skids, but maybe it was the philosophical Lothario with the smoking jacket and deep reverence for rabbits who actually turned the key to paradise.]]> http://daveshiflett.com/news.html#119 Sun, 29 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700 New Acoustic Music from Dave Shiflett & Friends and The Karma Farmers - Dave Shiflett - News http://daveshiflett.com/news.html#118 Protest music isn’t what it used to be.
“Steal From Walmart” and even the hundreds of anti-war songs that blossomed in the blood of the Iraq wars don’t approach the societal resonance of “We Shall Overcome” and “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” as U.K. music critic Dorian Lynskey confirms, and mourns, in “33 Revolutions Per Minute: A History of Protest Songs from Billie Holiday to Green Day,” (ecco/HarperCollins; 656 pages; $19.99).
“I began this book intending to write a history of a still vital form of music,” Linskey writes in his epilogue . “I finished it wondering if I had instead composed a eulogy.”
As eulogies go this is a lively and sprawling one, beginning with a chapter on “Strange Fruit,” written in 1939, and ending with largely ignored attacks on George W. Bush’s military policy.
“Strange Fruit,” a darkly powerful meditation on lynching, was anything but ignored. It put 24-year-old Billie Holiday on the map and remains vibrant today, thanks in part thanks to the ministrations of arranger Danny Mendelsohn, who initially dismissed it as “something or other alleged to be music.” While protest songs up to that point were “propaganda,” Lynskey writes, this one “proved they could be art.”’
Most protest songs, to be sure, are far less vocally demanding, including Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land,” written in a New York flophouse in 1940 and borrowing part of its melody from the Carter family’s “Little Darling Pal of Mine.”
In a similar sharing spirit “We Shall Overcome” commandeered an 18th century melody and boasts four lyricists, including Pete Seeger, whose rendition found an instant fan in Dr. Martin Luther King. “There’s something about that song that haunts you,” King said, though it did have its critics, not all of them named Bubba. “If you’re going to get yourself a .45 and start singing ”˜We Shall Overcome,’ I’m with you,” Malcolm X told a Harlem rally in 1964.
Lynskey writes passionately and often admiringly but doesn’t stint on the criticism, giving ample praise to Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War” but adding that fellow folkie Tom Paxton dismissed “Blowing in the Wind” as “a grocery list song where one line has absolutely no relevance to the next line.” Lynskey also reminds us that Dylan was a master of sometimes clunky contrariness: a few weeks after JFK’s assassination he claimed a strange kinship with Lee Harvey Oswald: “I saw some of myself in him,” he told a New York audience, which rewarded him with a bouquet of cat-calls.
Sing-along fans will appreciate Lynskey’s inclusion of Country Joe McDonald’s “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag,” perhaps most famous for the Fish Cheer that preceded it at Woodstock, which helped launch the F-bomb’s glorious ascendancy. In this case the criticism comes from McDonald himself. “What’s almost unfathomable is the smallness of it,” he says. “It was just another song.”
Yet we still remember that Rag, unlike the hundreds (if not thousands) of songs inspired by the Iraq/Afghanistan wars, known in some quarters as the Haliburton Expansion Initiative. Lynskey suggests one explanation: “The nature of the antiwar movement changed dramatically in February 1966,” he writes, “when the Selective Service System extended conscription to the campuses.” In that era singing anti-war songs might be considered an act of self preservation; today, the absence of a draft drains such warbling of urgency and audience.
The book ranges far beyond the sixties and includes songs celebrating gay and black pride, protesting apartheid and hunger, and denouncing various meanies including Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. There are also amusing non-musical asides, including a fond remembrance of punkster Jello Biafra’s run for mayor of San Francisco, where he took a respectable 4 percent of the vote, though that placed him behind Diane Feinstein and Sister Boom-Boom. (page 316) . Biafra would later say punk was “a close-minded, self-centered social club” and “a meaningless fad.”
The theme of smugness and encroaching irrelevance weaves through the book, with Lynskey reminding early on that many protest songs are short on chord changes and long on sanctimony, with fans to match. He characterizes the attitude as: “We understand. We are not like them. We are all on the same side.”
He gives a terrific example of another problem: the profundity-groping musician, in this case Steve Earle, who insisted that American Taliban John Walker Lindh was something of a post- adolescent everyman: “I became acutely aware that what happened to him could have happened to my son, and your son, and anyone’s son,” (Page 509) weirdly suggesting a widespread youthful desire to join an ultra-religious warrior group that doesn’t allow you to drink beer, listen to popular music, and stones you to death for unsanctioned sex.
Thankfully, we get a more sober and context-setting observation from the voice of reason himself, Keith Richards: “You don’t shoulder any responsibility when you pick up a guitar or sing a song, because it’s not a position of responsibility.”
Is protest music dead? The better question, Lynskey writes, is “Is anybody listening?” Not to protest music, it seems, which interrupts the pursuit of unencumbered entertainment. “It is not just that people have lost faith in any performer to help bring about change, it is that they resent anyone who attempts to do so,” he concludes.
Perhaps the only way to bring protest music back home is to re-institute the draft.]]> http://daveshiflett.com/news.html#118 Wed, 18 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700 New Acoustic Music from Dave Shiflett & Friends and The Karma Farmers - Dave Shiflett - News http://daveshiflett.com/news.html#117 If Peter Rowan or Jerry Douglas were to give a commencement address this spring, it might be titled: “Wise up, Punks. There’s more to music than Lady Gaga.”
Del McCoury thinks so too.
During interviews at the recent Merlefest festival in Wilkesboro, N.C., several legendary roots musicians discussed the music they think is essential for young people to become familiar with, and with any luck fully embrace.
To no surprise, Bill Monroe was at the top of several lists, but the old guard also had kind words for Jimi Hendrix, aboriginal music from Australia, and even Mick Jagger’s brother.
They were less generous when discussing attempts to cut funding to NPR and PBS, while one suggested a novel cure for Attention Deficit Disorder.
“Of course they should listen to Bach and Beethoven,” said Peter Rowan, perhaps best known for writing the stoner anthem “Panama Red” and his collaboration with the late Jerry Garcia in the band Old and In the Way.
Rowan, who played with Monroe from 1965 to 1967, says Monroe and blues singer Robert Johnson were crucial in creating a sound often lost in a world awash with musical expression.
“There’s too much music available,” said Rowan as he chomped a banana in the artist’s lounge. Lost in the thicket of commercial radio, YouTube and Myspace are traditions that deserve a better hearing, including “black church music, prison songs” and “aboriginal music” from Australia, which he characterized as “three chord” tunes that are an important element in the indigenous peoples’ civil rights movement.
Rowan, who recently returned from Australia, said that movement “has yet to have its Martin Luther King moment,” making the music all the more crucial for maintaining momentum. When asked for a contemporary artist he likes, Rowan suggested crooner Chris Jagger — “Mick’s brother.”
The festival featured several other former Monroe band mates, including Grammy winning bluegrasser Del McCoury, who played in Monroe’s band in 1963. McCoury, known for his piercing voice and gray pompadour, cited Monroe and “the Baptist hymnal” as wellsprings of roots music; Monroe’s picking style, he said, has yet to be topped.
“You can’t beat the innovator,” he said prior to a performance.
Yet McCoury, who recently released a CD with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, agreed that some things have gotten bigger and better. “When we were starting out,” he cackled, “our PA systems were so small you could carry the speakers under one arm and put the microphones in your pocket.”
At Merlefest, the speakers had to be trucked in, and people came in droves. Festival attendance has gone way up since the first multi-day bluegrass festival in Fincastle, Virginia in 1965. Merlefest organizers said 80,000 people attended the four-day event, which has raised $8 million for Wilkes Community College since starting in 1988.
Monroe wasn’t on the tip of everyone’s tongue. Rory Block, a willowy blues singer who grew up in Manhattan, sang the praises of the Rev. Gary Davis, Son House, Memphis Minnie and Bessie Smith. “They’re the ones I listened to when I was growing up,” she said after a foot-stomping set. Tara Nevins, a masterful fiddler who helps front Donna The Buffalo and also has a vibrant solo career, cited old-time musicians who are far below most radar screens. “I never book gigs during the Mt. Airy old time festival,” she said, adding that many of the players there are unknown but brilliant.
Nashville mainstay Sam Bush, best known for his innovative mandolin playing, praised Doc Watson, Chet Atkins, Les Paul and Eric Clapton.
Several players, including Bush, denounced efforts to cut funding to arts and music education, National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting System. Jens Kruger of the Kruger Brothers insisted that keeping music in the schools will pay profound medical benefits.
“In our schools,” he said of growing up in Europe, “we sang a song together every morning,” which he says focused minds and created a sense of community. When morning singing was cancelled, grades went down, he said, but rose again when the practice resumed.
If American schools made group singing a part of their morning routine, he said, it “would eliminate ADD” though that wouldn’t be music to the ears of the pharmaceutical industry.
Dobro master Jerry Douglas, who cited Flatt and Scruggs as perhaps his most important influences, said he had recently discovered the joys of singing publicly.
Douglas, who will be touring into November in support of Alison Krauss and Union Station’s new “Paper Airplane” CD, said he had launched his singing career the previous week during a Carnegie Hall gig.
“I’m 55,” he smiled. “I figured it was time.”
Had he sung a gentle, heartfelt tune?
“No. I did a murder ballad -- Jimi Hendrix’s ”˜Hey Joe.’”
Wonder how Bill Monroe would have liked that.]]> http://daveshiflett.com/news.html#117 Fri, 13 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700 New Acoustic Music from Dave Shiflett & Friends and The Karma Farmers - Dave Shiflett - News