Thursday 1/16/25
Chuck Berry takes three guitar solos in "The Promised Land," which is perhaps ironic, given the torrent of the words--which are nonetheless perfectly paced--and the depth and range of the story those words tell. The second solo in particular is like thrash-flamenco and is suggestive of a sped-up, electrified version of what Pete Townshend plays in the segue from "Overture" to "It's a Boy," on Tommy, which among the great instrumental passages in rock and one that has never been much talked about. "The Promised Land" is a true work of art. Isn't it strange that it's not on The Great 28? I should like to write a book about that album--actually, I have plans to.
I like the idea of a "greatest hits" album that works as a proper album. This is a perfect example. The Beach Boys' Endless Summer is another, the Buzzcocks' Singles Going Steady, The Best of Sam Cooke, and Professor Stone's Who package, The Singles Collected: 1964-68. Elvis' Golden Records. That one has the rockers on the first side and the ballads on the second. Kind of like the way the original albums documenting Miles Davis' 1964 Valentine's concert at Philharmonic Hall were divvied up.
I read a lot of Soren Kierkegaard over my last two years of high school, with his journals being something I return to. Not because he was assigned, of course. I found very little value in what was formally assigned to me, especially in college. I had to say to myself, "Right, this isn't it, focus on what would be better for you to see." I've always gone out and found what was better. I never needed anyone to tell me. Whether that's with literature, or film, or music, or art. Forms of exercise, if one likes, such as stairs.
People now have even less of an ability than at any other time--and it's not like people ever had much of one--to go looking. It won't even occur to them. They don't know it's possible. And then they are so lazy. They need to be spoon fed, told, have everything appear in front of their fat faces, or else it's the same--to them--as if whatever doesn't doesn't exist. They can't think. They definitely can't think for themselves. You must go looking. I'm not just talking about finding things that are worthwhile, that are actually entertaining, interesting, substantive, beneficial. But with everything.
You must go looking in your own head and your own heart. Your own thoughts. What happens now is technology has replaced that looking. It could abet it. Imagine if you were intelligent and curious what something like the internet could do for you. Look at my excitement yesterday over that Grateful Dead Grabber. With mere clicks of my fingers, I can access some of the finest musical art ever made and partake of all that that can do for me. Twenty years ago, I could have accessed some of it, but not at great convenience. This involved a more precise form of being in the know--certainly more precise than executing a Google search--and a day out.
When we moved to Illinois--which I hated, being a New Englander in my soul--we lived about thirty miles from Chicago. On a trip there before we moved, when we were getting ready to move--or, rather, my parents were, and I had to go with them--I located a used record store on Clark Street that sold bootlegs. I asked my dad to show me how to drive to this record store. You basically got off the highway, took a left, then took a right when you got to Wrigley Field. There was a McDonald's and I'd stealthily park there and scamper down the street in search of bootleg treasure in what I figured was the time it took someone to order and eat a Filet-O-Fish and large fries lest I get ticketed or towed.
It was there that I found a copy of the Beatles' Stars of '63 on the Swingin' Pig label, a boot of their Swedish October 23 concert from that year. I had these hopes of finding another volume of the BBC recordings. If they were only available on vinyl, I got them on vinyl and made cassette copies from the records.
My point being is that this took some work and some luck. You couldn't pick what you wanted. You hoped to find certain things, but you got what you got. That still-unreleased show could now be accessed from your computer in about five seconds.
We can do this with anything nearly. Whatever you want to learn, you are free to learn. Don't know that word? Type it in, learn it. Unfamiliar with the French Revolution? Type in the name, get the reference that someone else was making, dig deeper later if you want. But that's not what anyone does. You cannot overestimate how lazy we are. You can't overstate it. We are so lazy that I don't think anyone can comprehend the obliterating totality of that laziness. We are maximally conditioned to maximum laziness.
Van Gogh and Delacroix are two painters whose most valuable work was their writings. Delacroix's journal is a book that must be read the same as Thoreau's journal must be read. He saw life clearly.
The Great Gatsby was never assigned to me in school. There was only a single Fitzgerald work that was--"Bernice Bobs Her Hair" in tenth grade. I had mentioned those "Crack-Up" essays yesterday; they were rounded up by Edmund Wilson (whose 1962 book, Patriotic Gore: Studies in the Literature of Civil War is recommended) for a 1945 collection of the same name. It was a sort of quirky, catch-some--rather than catch-all--volume, akin to Fitzgerald's version of the Smiths' Hatful of Hollow. One of my favorite books.
People overemphasize--again, because they don't think to think and they won't think on their own--the idea of a "proper" book, which to them will mean a novel with Fitzgerald. But he had so many other things that were better than his novels and often more novelistic. "Winter Dreams," a short story, has greater and richer novelistic potency--and it flat out contains more--than any of his novels.
So what are we doing with these labels? Ignorant publishing people use them as badges. Because they certainly can't think and literature really means nothing to them. They're not in their field because of a love it. What else were they going to do and where else could they get away with being what they are and the things they do? That's why they're here where they are and that's why the system is what the system is. In part. But a big part.
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