Flux
Mr. Lion posted a message on facebook about the Flux night event. He wanted to attend, but didn’t have anyone to go with. PG saw this, and realized that he needed to get out of Brookhaven. Messages were sent, phone calls made, and an agreement reached to meet at a midtown parking lot at 9:00 pm. In a bit of murphy’s law denial, a vehicle left Piedmont Avenue, heading south, at 9:15.
PG is a nervous suburbanite, and had no clue where to park. Turning past the dome, the barricades and crowds were evident, as were the lines of cars going nowhere. An illegal one eighty turn later, PG gave up, and parked at the dome.
The two men were soon in another world. Castleberry Hill is a downtown neighborhood, reclaimed by the trendy and prosperous. The old brick buildings were swarming with culture vultures of all persuasions. PG wondered more than once where these mobs of bug eyed youth came from.
The first stop was an elderly brick building. For this night, it was crawling with murals, music, and machines that shot out cannonballs of smoke. People were posing in front of the well lit murals, which made it easy for PG to cop a leftover image or two. Mr. Lion got into a chat with a director of the collective, while PG dealt with the heat by photographing unsuspecting young ladies.
Mr. Lion is an elitist, but not a snob. PG is an anti semanticist, with an aversion to labelism. It was noted that calling yourself an non labelist was an act of labelism. But, as they say in Alabama, hypocrisy is usually the cheapest argument. Despite this existential eggshell walking, the Mr. Lion managed to keep up with PG, who was up to his usual mischief. With few dogs to photograph, the focus was on humans. There was lots of barking and tail wagging.
“Can I have a picture of your makeup” ” Sure” ” Can I have some attitude” ” What” “You call that attitude” “How can I have attitude if I am having a good time”
The streets were often crowded. In best Atlanta tradition, it was tough to know if you were going north, south, to heaven, or to hell. In an effort to not miss anything, several streets were covered twice. Finally, enough was enough. Mr. Lion managed to remember the side street that led back to the dome. It is part of elitism to always know where to go. A rat should always have a hole to crawl into.
Twerk Off
There is a bit of likeme trolling on facebook this morning. It is a link, Miley Cyrus Points Out Something Wrong With America — And She’s Absolutely Right. It is from a facility called upworthy. These missives usually have a popup ad, encouraging you to like uw on fb. The message today was a poll. “It’s nice to be reminded of the good in the world. And it should happen more often. I Agree I Disagree” PG clicked disagree, and was sent through to the headline post.
Miley Cyrus has gotten attention lately. She performed at an awards show, and got people excited. PG does not pay to watch TV, and missed the spectacle. Maybe this is the best approach.
The message from miss achy breaky heart is not that great. She says that some nasty things are on television, but you can’t say fuck. This is the same observation about double standards that has been around since the top half of Elvis was on the Ed Sullivan show. It is just as meaningless today as ever.
Calling someone a hypocrite is a cheap argument. Whenever someone says something, you can be sure that the standards of someone else are violated. Hypocrisy is in the eye of the beholder. Two wrongs do not make a right. Not everybody agrees with you. Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Cultural Appropriation
While reading the Chelsea Handler book, PG started to think of things to write about. A list appeared on the back inside cover. A few of these have hit the innertubes already. Today, three more are going to be incorporated into one post. If this is not to your liking, you are encouraged to skip over the text and look at the pictures. These images today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
This monolog will include items four, five, and seven. Number four is people who don’t like quiet. Number five is stupid phones. Number seven is a question. Is it cultural appropriation for white people to get upset about racism? All three items involve people making needless noise.
Some people don’t like quiet. Whenever there is a break in a conversation, they feel obligated to fill in the dead air. Whether of not they have anything worthwhile to say is beside the point. The idea is to not let there be any silent time.
This is more than dead air in a conversation. Some feel the need to listen to canned entertainment at all times. The earbud riders miss the background sounds of the world. Especially when in motion outdoors, there is a steady background of sound. Crickets, birds, wind make a pleasing aural backdrop. In addition, there is the sound of automobile tires whooshing against the pavement, getting louder and louder, then softer and softer. It is also good to hear these sounds if you are sharing a roadway with these steel behemoths. They are bigger than you.
Often the listening device of choice is a smart phone. They are not good for conversation, so many resort to text messages. PG, on the other hand, is a hold out. He has a twelve button stupid phone. The time cards are purchased every three months, and cost about seven dollars a month. If you get lost on your way somewhere, you can call for directions. With a bit of effort, you can send a text message. It is a handy device, even if you can’t play angry birds on it.
Angry birdbrains birds leads us to our final subject for this morning. Some white people just love to talk about how horrible racism is. Outside of defriending people who do not share their outrage, these people often do little, other than talk, to actually fight incorrect racial attitudes. Could it be cultural appropriation for white people to get so worked up about racism?
If any of these privileged characters were to read this feature, someone would probably say that PG does not understand cultural appropriation. Fair enough, as the uncertain umpire might say. The odds are that these self anointed progressives don’t understand cultural appropriation. CA has a fluid definition, like racism. It boils down to being something the accuser does not like.
There has been a lot of angry talk about race this year. A white woman filed a bad boss lawsuit. Her lawyer proceeds to slander the celebrity sister of her former boss, about saying the n word thirty years earlier. A cereal company makes anonymous comments about a commercial, and gets truckloads of free publicity. None of these incidents will make improve the lives of color. Mostly, people just want a cheap, easy way to feel superior to their neighbor. When you look at the history of race relations in amerika, you have to wonder what race started it.
Hair
There is a tasteful feature on the innertubes now, A Few Good Reasons Why White People Should Not Wear “Mohawks” or Dreadlocks. Yes, this is another polemic about cultural appropriation. If you want to skip the text, and look at the pictures, no one will get mad. Or get even. If you read the text, you might get odd. It is your choice.
The gist of the tract is “When white people wear “Mohawks” or dreadlocks it twists those hairstyles into symbols of privilege rather than symbols of survival and resistance.” Little is known about why the Natives of Upstate New York wore their hair the way they did. Isn’t calling this hair choice “symbols of survival and resistance” playing into the game of misunderstanding non European cultures?
The tract is not well written. Maybe the author feels like using good grammar is appropriating someone else’s culture.
There is one part of the tract that had PG shaking his buzz cut head. This is a free country. Can’t I do whatever I want? This country has never been free for people of color/non-white people. Certainly, you can choose wear your hair however you want. Historically, however, people of color have not been able to make that choice. This is not why the Bronner Brothers are multi millionaires. Black Americans spend more on hair care products than the gross national product of many African countries.
Both mohawks and dreadlocks are high maintenance affairs. After his struggles with shoulder length redneck curls, PG is not about to shave the sides of a beaver tail every day. And dreadlocks have always seemed to be just a bit on the dirty side. The rastas are welcome to wear dreadlocks, as long as they pass the spliff.
One thing PG has wondered was answered as a result of this polemic. Did the Mohawk tribe really wear their hair that way? When you type “Did the Mohawk… ” into google, the rest of the phrase to pop up is “Did the Mohawk Indians have mohawks?” Someone else has wondered the same thing. Wikipedia has more information.
The mohawk (also referred to as a mohican in British English) is a hairstyle in which, in the most common variety, both sides of the head are shaven, leaving a strip of noticeably longer hair in the center. Though mohawk is associated mostly with punk rock subculture, today it has entered mainstream fashion. The mohawk is also sometimes referred to as an iro in reference to the Iroquois, from whom the hairstyle is derived – though historically the hair was plucked out rather than shaved. … The Mohawk and the rest of the Iroquois confederacy (Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Tuscarora and Oneida) in fact wore a square of hair on the back of the crown of the head. The Mohawk did not shave their heads when creating this square of hair, but rather pulled the hair out, small tufts at a time. … Therefore a true hairstyle of the Mohawks was one of plucked-out hair, leaving a three-inch square of hair on the back crown of the head with three short braids of hair decorated.
They didn’t shave the sides of the head, they plucked the hair out. That does eliminate the need to shave the sides of your head every day. This is not the way the fashion conscious hair people do the modern mohawk. The question arises if this non authentic hairstyle is really cultural appropriation.
Wikipedia goes on to add that this do might not be an Iroquois invention. “The hairstyle has been in existence in many parts of the world for millennia. For instance, the Clonycavan Man, a 2000-year-old male bog body discovered near Dublin in 2003, was found to be wearing a mohawk styled with plant oil and pine resin. Artwork discovered at the Pazyryk burials dating back to 600 BCE depicts Scythian warriors sporting similar mohawks. The body of a warrior occupying one of the kurgans had been scalped earlier in life and wore a hair prosthesis in the form of a mohawk. Herodotus claimed that the Macai, a northern Libyan tribe, “shave their hair so as to leave tufts, letting the middle of their hair grow long, but round this on all sides shaving it close to the skin.” Amongst the Pawnee people, who historically lived along in present-day Nebraska and Kansas, a “mohawk” hair style was common.”
Part of the polemic took a question and answer format. “But, I wear my hair this way as a statement against oppressive cultures and governments. How is that racist?” “You can take a stand against oppression and dominant cultures without appropriating the cultures of the people being hurt by them. Appropriation actually enforces oppression, it does not stand against it. Appropriation is part of the problem, not part of the solution”
To paraphrase this, you can be anti racist without proudly avoiding high maintenance hairdoos. Especially one that bears little resemblance to the actual article.
There was a statement in yesterday’s post . “Black Americans spend more on hair care products than the gross national product of many African countries.” This was tossed out in a careless moment, which is not a good thing to do. Today’s post is an investigation. For purposes of this report, America’s gross national product is the republican party.
Finding out how much African Americans spend on hair care is more google intensive than this slack reporter imagined. Madame Noire has a feature, Black Women Spend Half a Trillion Dollars on Haircare and Weaves! Why? “Black women spend half a trillion dollars to keep our hairstyles tight, our weaves looking good and our “kitchens” tamed. Why do we do this?” The $500 billion figure might include pain and suffering. Target Market News is more conservative, reporting “Personal Care Products and Services – $6.66 billion”.
In the chatter about a Chris Rock movie, Good Hair, the phrase “9 billion dollar hair trade industry” is used. The Magazine Publishers of America report that advertising spending on “Hair Products & Accessories” was $1,242,700 in 2007.
The short answers are “a lot”, and “we don’t know”. It is probably less that $500 Billion. For the purposes of this feature, we will go with a conservative estimate. This would be Target Market News. Since not all “Personal Care Products and Services” are hair related, we will call our number Five Billion. This is probably a conservative figure, but for our purposes it will do.
The second part of the statement was “Black Americans spend more on hair care products than the gross national product of many African countries.” The numbers come from Wikipedia and the International Money Fund. There are sixteen African countries with GNP less than $5 billion. They include: Mauritania, Swaziland, Togo, Eritrea, Lesotho, Burundi, Sierra Leone, Central African Republic, Cape Verde, Djibouti, Liberia, Seychelles, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Comoros, and São Tomé and Príncipe. The last seven have a GNP less than the amount spent advertising hair products and accessories for Black Americans.
Today’s double feature about hair is a repost. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Coat Of Many Colors
This feature was originally posted last august. The first part was about the 2012 election. At the time where Mr. Romney was taken seriously. Out of kindness to the readers, that part has been left out today. The pictures, from The Library of Congress, are a year older. Dolly Parton is a year younger.
When PG saw this, he thought about the song, “Coat of many colors”. The b side was by Porter Wagoner, “Coat of many sequins”. COMC is about a woman who is too poor to buy her little girl a coat at the store, so she makes a quilt. The other kids make fun of her, but little Dolly knows that the coat is really made of love. Mitt Romney never had a coat of many colors.
The song talks about a story in the Bible. PG had heard about the story, but didn’t remember the details. He must have been daydreaming in Sunday School when that story was taught. With the help of google, Genesis 37 appears, as if by magic. Pass the popcorn.
2 These are the generations of Jacob. Joseph, being seventeen years old, was feeding the flock with his brethren; and the lad was with the sons of Bilhah, and with the sons of Zilpah, his father’s wives: and Joseph brought unto his father their evil report.
3 Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age: and he made him a coat of many colours.
4 And when his brethren saw that their father loved him more than all his brethren, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably unto him.
Ok, hold on for a minute. Israel had at least two wives. The Biblical definition of marriage must be between a man and two women.
The story gets a bit weird here. Joseph has this dream, where he becomes the boss hog brother. The other brothers decide something needs to be done, that Joseph needs to die. Reuben tries to help Joseph, and has a plan to save him. Joseph is stripped of the coat of many colors, and placed in a pit, with no water. Before Reuben can sneak Joseph out of the pit, a camel caravan comes by. Twenty pieces of silver change hands, and Joseph is sold into slavery. The brothers decide to pull a cover up, and make it look like Joseph was dead. Reuben made another sandwich.
31 And they took Joseph’s coat, and killed a kid of the goats, and dipped the coat in the blood;
32 And they sent the coat of many colours, and they brought it to their father; and said, This have we found: know now whether it be thy son’s coat or no.
33 And he knew it, and said, It is my son’s coat; an evil beast hath devoured him; Joseph is without doubt rent in pieces.
34 And Jacob rent his clothes, and put sackcloth upon his loins, and mourned for his son many days.
35 And all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted; and he said, For I will go down into the grave unto my son mourning. Thus his father wept for him.
Richards
A comment at a recent post mentioned “Jenning’s Rose Room, a classic poor white juke and dance hall … where Trader Joes now sits.” PG had been in that building when it was called Richards, and knew stories. Pictures are from ” The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
There is no telling what the original use of the building at 931 Monroe Drive was. It was across the street from Grady Stadium, and adjacent to Piedmont Park. The railroad tracks that became the beltline ran behind it. The parking lot was primitive, with a marquee sign built at some point. (PG drove by that sign several nights and saw that Lynyrd Skynyrd was playing. Somehow, he did not make it inside.)
There was another nightclub building on the hill behind JRR. One night, PG went to see a jazz band there, accompanied by someone who lived in a nearby house. After seeing the band, PG was led to a horse stable behind the bar. The horses were not well maintained … you could see the ribs sticking out. There is a story of a goat getting loose from the stable, and being chased out of the jazz bar during happy hour.
Jennings Rose Room was before PG’s time. There is a story that some men had lunch there, and made a bet. The idea was to hit a golf ball from the JRR parking lot, and putt it into a hole at Piedmont Park. A biscuit was used as a tee. The first shot went across the street, onto the field at the stadium. Eventually, the ball was hit across Tenth Street, onto a green, and into the cup.
At some point, Jennings Rose Room closed. A gay club called Chuck’s Rathskeller was opened in that location. A rock and roll club or two did business there. Then Richards opened.
The first time PG was in the house was after a Johnny Winter concert at the Fox. There were rumors of visiting musicians dropping by Richards to play after their shows. Mr. Winter was only onstage for a couple of minutes after PG got there.
The most memorable trip to Richards was during the summer of 1973. The headliner was Rory Gallagher, who was ok but not spectacular. The opening act was Sopwith Camel, one of the forgotten bands of the seventies. They performed a novelty hit, “Hello Hello”. Someone in the audience liked it, and paid them to do it again. The band wound up doing “Hello Hello” five times, and said that was the most money they made on a show in a long time.
Average White Band was making the rounds that fall, and had a show at Richards. A lot of the audience was black, and they hit the dance floor in unison when “Pick up the Pieces” was played. Fellow Scotsman Alex Harvey was in town, and joined AWB to sing “I heard it through the grapevine”.
Muddy Waters played at Richards one night. The band did most of the playing, with Mr. Waters tossing in a few licks on bottleneck guitar. He might have sang a couple of times.
About this time, Iggy Pop played a few shows at Richards. One night, someone snuck up on him, and gave him a hug. It was Elton John, wearing a gorilla suit.
PG saw three more shows (that he can remember) at Richards. Richie Havens was worth the two dollar admission. Soft Machine played in the winter of 1974. Larry Coryell played a show that summer, with the Mike Greene Band opening. PG got to talk to Mike Greene that night. The National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences (who do the Grammy Awards) had a President named C. Michael Greene at one time. PG thinks this is the person he talked to that night.
Two friends of PG went, as their first date, to see Spirit at Richards. They were married a few years later. Towards the end of 1974, Richards was running out of steam. They advertised a New Years Eve show starring B.B. King, and sold high priced tickets. When the crowd showed up for the show, they found the doors locked. Richards had closed.
The next tenant for 931 Monroe Drive was going to be Cabaret After Dark, a gay club. There was a fire the night before the grand opening. The building was never used again. Eventually, a shopping center was built on the site.
UPDATE: Here is an article, from the Great Speckled Bird, about Richards. This is a repost.
Joni Part Two
Joni Mitchell gave am interview recently to a Canadian Broadcaster. She is famously Canadian. The chat was in her California living room, which is littered with her paintings. Many of the paintings are things like Saskatchewan at forty below. Mrs. Mitchell alternates between painting and music, which tend to balance her cigarette fueled mind.
The CBC interview is paired with a more formal chat in Toronto. She could not smoke during the Toronto interview. The Toronto interviewer is just a bit smarter than Jian Ghomeshi, who endured the second hand smoke in California. Mr. Ghomeshi said things like “The song “Woodstock” defined a generation.” Mrs. Mitchell was in a New York City hotel room that famous weekend.(Spell check suggestion for Jian Ghomeshi: Joan Shoeshine)
There are some juicy quotes. Art is short for artificial. When listening to Joni songs, you should look at yourself, and not at her. Free love was just a gimmick for the men to get laid. False modesty is pointless. Sylvia Plath was a liar, or maybe it was Anne Sexton. (James Dickey said that Sylvia Plath was the Judy Garland of American letters.)
A fearsome foursome gets in the game. Someone screamed, on a live album. “Joni, you have more flash than Mick Jagger, Richard Nixon, or Gomer Pyle combined!.” Years later, the fan introduced himself to Mrs. Mitchell.
The conversation mentioned Bob Dylan. He is from Northern Minnesota, and not quite Canadian. Apparently, Mrs. Mitchell kicked up a fuss with some comments in 2010. ” Bob is not authentic at all. He’s a plagiarist, and his name and voice are fake. Everything about Bob is a deception. We are like night and day, he and I. … Grace [Slick] and Janis Joplin were [sleeping with] their whole bands and falling down drunk, and nobody came after them!”
Did Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell ever tune up together? Joan Baez, a similarly named contemporary, is well known for dating Mr. Zimmerman. Ms. Baez did sing at Woodstock.
Mrs. Mitchell doesn’t exactly take back her comments about Bob Dylan. ““I like a lot of Bob’s songs, though musically he’s not very gifted. He’s borrowed his voice from old hillbillies. He’s got a lot of borrowed things. He’s not a great guitar player. He’s invented a character to deliver his songs. Sometimes I wish that I could have that character — because you can do things with that character. It’s a mask of sorts.”
In a kill the messenger moment, Mrs. Mitchell lashed out at the interviewer from the 2010 piece. It is odd, since he didn’t ask any trick questions. Black and white transcripts are tough to deny. “The interviewer was an asshole.” (The body part is bleeped.) “I hate doing interviews with stupid people, and this guy’s a moron” “His IQ is somewhere between his shoe size and (unintelligible)”.
The troublesome 2010 interview was conducted with John Kelly, a Joni Mitchell tribute artist. “JK: Drag does have a power, though — that netherworld of a thing you can’t quite know, which makes people nervous. JM: Drag wasn’t always counterculture. In his memoirs, Nixon talked about the Harvard and Yale men in power who would put on these plays where they dress like women, and Milton Berle did a kind of “hairy drag.” Becoming a gay thing made drag go underground.” Did Mick Jagger and Gomer Pyle ever do drag with Richard Nixon?
Weak Tweak
Kelly Clarkston likes to sing “Whatever doesn’t kills you makes you stronger.” This might be the only thing she agrees with Friedrich Nietzsche. This concept is good for books, and hit singles, but it doesn’t always work in the real world. What doesn’t kill a person might indeed make that human stronger. However, when you attack a weak idea, sometimes you make it less powerful.
Before the invasion of Babylon, Dick Cheney appeared on “Meet the Press.” “the people of Iraq … will welcome as liberators the United States”. A few hundred thousand dead Iraqis later, very few people believe this. The weak idea is dead, just like the American economy.
The quote appears to be genuine. Mr. Nietzsche wrote a book, Ecce homo, Wie man wird, was man ist, with the chapter, “Why I Am So Wise.” At some point he says “was ihn nicht umbringt, macht ihn stärker” “What does not kill him, makes him stronger. ” Mr. Nietzsche also wrote “Gott ist tot! Gott bleibt tot! Und wir haben ihn getötet.” “God is dead ! God remains dead! And we have killed him.”
John Hartford
Something was needed to listen to, while downloading pictures from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”. (where today’s images come from) This is how things work. The tv set has not been turned on since the super bowl. Entertainment is what you make it.
The ear candy for that afternoon was a broadcast with John Hartford. That’s him in the embedded video. He is singing about vinyl records, and one of the problems they face. Vinyl is supposedly making a comeback. It was always high maintenance. This is not the case with John Hartford, who was a treasure of American music. In 1967, Glen Campbell had a summer replacement series in the Smothers Brothers time spot. During the intro, Mr. Campbell would be in the audience, singing “Gentle on my mind”. John Hartford would stand up, and start playing his banjo. Mr. Hartford wrote the song.
The show Mr. Hartford was on is Wired For Books. The appearance was promoting a book, Steamboat in a Cornfield. A boat got caught in a flood, and wound up in a cornfield. It became a tourist attraction. In addition to picking and grinning, Mr. Hartford liked to pilot river boats. Yes, there is a reason for the past tense. John Hartford went to that bluegrass festival in the sky on June 4, 2001.
PG saw John Hartford one night. It was a saturday night without much happening, and PG walked over to the Great Southeast Music Hall. It was after the formal show was over. John Hartford was playing with Lester Flatt and Benny Martin. Six weeks later, Lester Flatt died.
Blue Tail Fly
Q: What does “Jimmy crack corn” mean, and why does he not care?—Matt, Columbus, Ohio
PG was trolling “stupidquestion.net” when there was a convergence of stupidity. (The site does not exist in 2012.) All his life he had heard “Blue Tail Fly”, and been embarrassed. And there, in (pardon the expression) black and white, was someone who wondered the same thing.
It seems as though “Blue Tail Fly” started out as a minstrel song. For those who don’t know, minstrel shows were white people putting on black makeup, and imitating African Americans. Minstrelsy is not well thought of these days.
The story of BTF involves a slave named Jim. A fly bit the pony the old massa was riding, the pony was offended, and threw the old massa off. He was hurt landing, and died. Jim still has to crack corn, but he doesn’t care anymore, because old massa has gone away.
Dave Barry took a poll once to find out the stupidest song of all time. The overwhelming winner/loser was “MacArthur Park”. The combination of over the top show stopping, while singing about a cake left out in the rain, makes this ditty a duh classic.
In the spirit of corny convergence, the video is a karaoke version featuring Donna Summer . Miss Summer is a talented singer, who happened to connect with Giorgio Moroder. There are lots of singers who would have hit the big time if they had fronted those records, but Donna Summer hit the jackpot.
For a proper post, there needs to be a third stupid song. This is not about stupid bands, singing about being D U M B. Even though they totally don’t belong, there is a video of the Ramones included. PG saw the Ramones at the Agora Ballroom in 1983. This was after their prime, and before a homeless man caught the Ballroom on fire.
We still need a third stupid song, and PG wants to get this posted with as little research as possible. Just like some writer was once given twenty minutes to write a song, and he decided to do the worst song he could think of. The result was “Wild Thing”. PG used to have a 45 of someone who sounded like Bobby Kennedy singing “Wild Thing”.
This is a repost. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”. This was downtown Atlanta in 1941.
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