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22 Jun 2012
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Mr Tambourine Man

On this date, June 21st 1965, the Byrds released Mr. Tambourine Man, which marked the beginning of the folk -rock revolution. Written by Bob Dylan, it is the only time a Bobby song ever reached #1 on the U.S.pop charts. Rodger (” don’t call me Jim”, even though that’s the name he started his career with) McGuinn aimed at crossing the vocal style of Bob Dylan and John Lennon and with the harmonies of Gene Clark and Dave Crosby ( I’ve had a mustache longer than Dave  and I am not sure that’s a good thing) and Rodg’s ” Jingle-Jangle ” sound on his 12 string Rickenbacker.  Mr. Tambourine Man became a huge hit.  Newly signed to Columbia Records, the Byrds had access to an early demo version of M.T.M. even before their label mate Bobby D. had a chance to record it for his own upcoming album. Was Bob pissed? ” Wow, man, you can even dance to that!” said Bob without his wintry scowl.

The other big hit of the Byrds is Turn, Turn, Turn.  Another ” borrowed song”. This one from the folk icon Pete Seeger with the lyrics drawn from ” Ecclesiastes” in the Old Testament. Wow, Let’s party!

Currently, Rodger can be found as “The Ringer” in the Rock Bottom Remainders, a group composed of writers Stephen King, Dave Barry, Amy Tan ( Joy Luck Club), Scott Turow ( Presumed Innocent ), Mitch Albom (Tuesdays with Morrie), Matt Groening ( Simpsons creator ) and a few others. They play around for charity and are rumored to be calling it a day very soon. Bruce Springsteen once joined them on background vocals and remarked ” that they shouldn’t get any better because then they would be just another lousy band.”

The Byrds rendition is great stuff, but for me I prefer the version by Bill Shatner. Groove.

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20 Jun 2012
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Uplifters

So there I am – flaming west on  Sunset Blvd in my convertible Ford. Going too fast, but that’s ok. It is 1927 and the country is being constricted by that huge Anaconda: Prohibition.  It’s night, my throat is as dry as the Gobi, and here come those Santa Ana Winds again. You know those nights. Marlowe said it best : “It was one of those hot, dry Santa Ana’s that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair. make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that, every booze party ends up in a fight. And meek little housewives feel the edge of a carving knife and study their husband’s necks. Anything can happen when the Santa Ana blows in from  the desert.”  I need and want a drink.

I turn left on Rustic Canyon in the Pacific Palisades and head down to The Uplifters Ranch. I pass eighty year old Redwoods and one of the last natural creeks in Los Angeles that isn’t covered in concrete. I had remembered that big galoot Harry Haldeman tossed me a pass last time I saw him at Musso and Frank’s. Harry is a big, jovial Chicagoan who likes to light the Good Time lamp and is one of the founders of the Uplifters Ranch. Too bad his Grandson H.R. Haldeman turned out so creepy. He was one of the muscle lugs for Nixon’s regime. Got caught in the Watergate caper and did an eighteen month stretch in the Big House. Deserved more.

In 1922, Harry and his buddies bought 120 acres, built a clubhouse with tennis courts, a swimming pool, and   amphitheater, most of which are still there. Many members began to build summer and weekend cottages and lodges on land leased from the club. The homes are situated in a lush, dreamy landscape close enough to the ocean to get the gentle breeze. Many contain huge ballrooms, fanciful card parlors , prohibition style basement bars, and log cabins hauled over from silent movie sets.

The Sign ” Uplifters” hangs over Latimer road. Their creed: ” To uplift art and promote good fellowship”. Please – it’s just a place where the wealthy and the powerful can throw back a dozen or so drinks and not get busted by the  chief of Police because he is sitting next to them. Actors, politicians, sports heroes, they are all there. Over in the corner is L. Frank Baum, one of the founders of the Uplifters along with Haldeman, who of course wrote “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.” After he throws down a few scotches he is known to babble on about forcing the extinction of the American Indian. ” Having wronged them for centuries we had better, to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the Earth.” I just wish he felt that way about those annoying Munchkins and made them disappear. Sitting on a bar stool like he is sitting on a flagpole, is that loud mouth lout Ernie Ball , who wrote ” When Irish Eyes are Smiling” although he never laid his bloodshot eyes on the Emerald Island. Of course there are good guys who are members: Will Rodgers, Harold Lloyd, Leo Carillo, Walt Disney, Edgar Rice Burroughs ( Tarzan’s guy) and many more. Over the years a lot of well knowns have lived  close to the Uplifters Ranch: Johnny Weissmuller, Angela Lansbury, Aldous Huxley, Earl Warren, Randy Newman, Lee Marvin, , John Densmore, and at different times Meryl Streep and Wilt Chamberlain rented the same cottage though there is no way  Meryl was one of Wilt’s 10,000.

So next time you are in the area swing on down to ” The Uplifters Ranch” and ask for a drink ( the clubs demise came in 1947 so really don’t do that) for the ghosts are there. You just have to shut your eyes and look for them.

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05 Jun 2012
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Print The Legend

The strange  dusty road of Truth has many hairpin turns and hazy stretches. It collides with Myth at a billion miles per hour and leaves chunks of reality mixed in with lumps of fantasy. Yet truth is stranger than fiction. An example of that is that Richard Dawson, the host of Family Feud who recently passed away, married one of the contestants and that the descendants of the Hatfield’s and McCoy’s were contestants on the show in 1979 where they played for cash prizes and a pig. ( The Hatfields won).

Like in Western History there are some who believe that myth is more important than History. That myth transcends the truth, and like religion, is beyond fact. Truth is a much harder sell for we Americans don’t really study History we shop for it.  Stephen Jay Gould , paleontologist, Harvard instructor, and a great baseball guy said that “humans have a psychic need for an indigenous creation of myth. That we need to come up with an explicit point of origin rather than accept that most beginnings are gradual and complex. We need to identify heroes and sacred places while evolutionary stories provide no palpable particular thing as a symbol for reverence, worship, or patriotism.”

Many Baseball heads credit Abner Doubleday for “inventing Baseball” one day in a cow pasture  in 1839. Now Abner was a cool cat : a Union officer who is credited with firing the first cannon blast while defending Fort Sumter, which was the opening battle of the Civil War, and after the war he moved to San Francisco where he obtained the patent on the cable car , but he never claimed to have invented Baseball. The man who gave him posthumous credit for creating the sport was later judged ” criminally insane”on murder charges. There is clear evidence that our ” National pastime” evolved over decades from English games such as Rounders and Stool Ball. Now that cow pasture is where the Baseball Hall of Fame resides in Cooperstown , New York.

Rhode Island, which is not an island, got its name from a geographic mixup with Block Island, which Gio De Verrazzano thought  resembled the Greek Island of Rhodes. ” California” is believed to derive it’s name from Calafia, queen of the tall black Amazons, whom 16th century Spaniards conjured up as occupiers of the Golden State. And two continents, North & South America, bore the name of Amerigo Vespucci, who never set foot upon them and wrote fantasies about lands he never saw.

As they said in “The Man who Shot Liberty Valance” when ” The Legend becomes fact, print the Legend.”

Groove.

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01 Jun 2012
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Life is Good

I recently had the utmost pleasure of spending Memorial Day at my Sister’s pad in Del Mar (God’s Country if you are a believer) where I drank copious amounts of wine and spent time with her local friends trying out the Vertical Wine tasting method which involves wines from different vintages, but all the wine from the same winery  (in this case Spring Mountain). As opposed to Horizontal Tasting which is drinking wines that all come from the same year, but different wineries.

It really isn’t very confusing unless you are a dilettante like myself whose sophistication level took a big leap when I stopped drinking from the bottle and started using a glass. One has to be impressed when you hear conversation like: ” I believe there is a hint of pencil shavings”, “I sense the complexity of the interior of a 65′ Impala” , “Have you surveyed your tongue map lately?”, and “What about the Cork Taint ?  I need to know!”      The facts are that I am more interested in why Zac Brown and The Edge wear those knitted beanies – and if the reason is so obvious, is that my future?

In the end, as I felt a bit of self induced fermentation, I was less impressed with the wine and the hoopla of the complexity of the analysis, as much as I was impressed with the wonderful group of friends my Sister has collected over the years, the genuine laughter which comes so easy to them all, their fondness for their mates and each other, and the sometimes intricate flow of groove  which my Sister presents with such ease and taste.

It was a pleasant form of lark indeed.

A lucky Man am I.

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30 May 2012
2 Comments

Bob & Barack

Image  Our President recently bestowed the ” The Presidential Medal of Freedom ” to one of our favorite balladeers Bob Dylan. In his seventy one years Bob has received Grammies, a Academy award,and a Golden Globe. He is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, The Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, The Songwriters Hall of Fame, and a Pulitzer Prize and those are just the ones he wears on his Green Jacket.

      The following are the words from our President as he speaks of giving Bobby D. his award : ” Here’s what I love about Dylan. He was exactly as you’d expect he would be. He wouldn’t come to rehearsal, usually. All these guys are practicing before the set in the evening. He didn’t want to take a picture with me, usually the talent is dying to take a picture with me and Michelle before the show, he didn’t show up for that. He came in and played “Times they Are A-Changing”. A beautiful rendition. The guy is so steeped in that stuff that he can just come up with some new arrangement, and the song sounds so completely different. Finishes the song, steps off stage- I’m sitting right in the front row-comes up, shakes my hand, sort of tips his head, gives me just a little grin, and then leaves. And that was it-then he left. That was our only interaction with him. And I thought: That’s how you want Bob Dylan, right? You don’t want him to be all cheesin’ and grinnin’ with you. You want him to be a little skeptical about the whole enterprise. So that was a real treat.”

      Well said and I agree with the Prez that we want Bob to be Bob and let Minnie Pearl be Minnie Pearl. Groove.

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27 May 2012

Grooving at Dodger Stadium

Grooving at Dodger Stadium

My kids have always loved baseball probably because I do too. The look on their faces as we turn the corner and see the field at Dodger stadium is the same look as they had when they were young opening presents on Xmas morn. Though they have seen this field dozens of times – it is always the same: a look of wonderment, hope, and pure delight.

Recently at a night game my daughter Lily spotted a strange light emitting a soft yellow glow from the far reaches of the parking lot behind right field. As it turns out it comes from a lantern that was erected in 1965 inside a Japanese garden that was built by the O’ Malley family during the construction of Dodger Stadium in 1962. A Japanese sportswriter legend named  Sotaro Suzuki was invited to the grand opening of the stadium and he was so taken with its magnificence that he commissioned a stone lantern to commemorate the lasting connection between The Dodgers and the nation of Japan. One can visit this place and imagine Walter O’Malley meditating on the single bench clearing his large head with visions of the fleet-footed Maury Wills stealing bag after bag and reaching harmony and the ultimate serene mode of consciousness with the thought of Sandy Koufax’s curveball.

So next time you find yourself in the far reaches of parking lot six look to the Garden and remember that Tommy Lasorda was given the Order of the Rising Sun and bow to the Enlightenment that is Dodger Stadium.

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30 Apr 2012

Sterlfest

He adorns himself in satin, crushed velvet , and taffeta. He does not speak hard or dry of word,nor has a voice of pored gravel. He brings light, groove, and an aura of a knight who is on top of his game and is exempt from hands that hold us down. I speak of the Great Sterling Brandt and the honorable fifth annual Sterlfest  August 24th and 25th down at La Fonda Mexico.

This journey is for the Uplifters and those who are fond of the smile and laughter. Make your plans and prepare for the Good time because it will be coming at you with the vigor and strength of a freight train off the rails, off the charts, and with the understanding that mistakes are the portals of discovery.

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