Category: Arts & letters

Arise, ye pris’ners of … Hollywood?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 17 Comments

The New York Times is a little short on May Day news, surprise, surprise.

Other than one piece about the French, who remain pissed off about having their retirement-age goalposts shifted two years (To age 64! Zut alors!), I found exactly one labor story on the website.

It concerned the struggles of — wait for it! — screenwriters.

Screenwriters?

Now, I don’t mean to make light of screenwriters’ issues. They remind me very much of the issues Your Humble Narrator faced as a free-range rumormonger. So, up the rebels, etc.

Nevertheless, it seemed appropriate to make today’s singing of “The Internationale” the version from the 1981 Warren Beatty-Diane Keaton vehicle “Reds,” which I have liberated in the name of the people from YouTube, which is owned by Google.

The writers credited for the flick are Beatty and Trevor Griffiths, according to IMDB, which is owned by Amazon.

And you’d better hope Apple TV flogged Brendan Hunt, Joe Kelly, Bill Lawrence, Jason Sudeikis and the rest of the writers room into cramming a shit-ton of “Ted Lasso” episodes into the can. According to Mother Times:

Absent an unlikely last-minute resolution with studios, more than 11,000 unionized screenwriters could head to picket lines in Los Angeles and New York as soon as Tuesday, an action that, depending on its duration, would bring Hollywood’s creative assembly lines to a gradual halt. Writers Guild of America leaders have called this an “existential” moment, contending that compensation has stagnated despite the proliferation of content in the streaming era — to the degree that even writers with substantial experience are having a hard time getting ahead and, sometimes, paying their bills.

“Even writers with substantial experience are having a hard time getting ahead and, sometimes, paying their bills.” Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.

R.I.P., Keith Reid

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments

Keith Reid, the lyricist behind Procol Harum’s legendary “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” has gone west. He was 76.

I would’ve written “has left the stage,” but Reid was apparently never on it. He was “a full-time non-performing member” of the band, according to The Guardian.

That doesn’t mean Reid wasn’t carrying his share of the load. He wrote almost all of Procol Harum’s lyrics throughout nine albums, from 1967 through ’77, and then a couple more albums’ worth for good measure in 1991 and 2003.

In an interview with Uncut magazine cited in American Songwriter, Reid addressed the song’s origin and meaning.

“I had the phrase ‘a whiter shade of pale,’ that was the start, and I knew it was a song,” he said. “It’s like a jigsaw where you’ve got one piece, then you make up all the others to fit in. I was trying to conjure a mood as much as tell a straightforward, girl-leaves-boy story. With the ceiling flying away and room humming harder, I wanted to paint an image of a scene.”

In the 1991 film “The Commitments,” Jimmy Rabbitte derides Reid’s work on “Whiter Shade” as the “poxiest bleedin’ lyrics ever written.” But I notice he knew them so well he could correct Steven Clifford when the pianist misquotes the first line.

Me, I loved those lyrics, and the organ riffs nicked from Bach, too. So I tip me cap to Reid, who joins his old bandmate, lead singer Gary Brooker — who wrote the music for “Whiter Shade” — in that ever-growing jam band in the sky.

Extra credit listening

• “A Salty Dog.”

• “Conquistador.”

The cat’s meow

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 31 Comments
It’s all uphill from here?

Mack awakened, started up, stretched, staggered to the pool, washed his face with cupped hands, hacked, spat, washed out his mouth, broke wind, tightened his belt, scratched his legs, combed his wet hair with his fingers, drank from the jug, belched and sat down by the fire.

— John Steinbeck, “Cannery Row”

“Men all do about the same things when they wake up,” Steinbeck continued.

Maybe so. But my morning ritual departs from the norm in subtle ways.

There is no pool, jug, or fire by the bed; the nightstand holds a lamp and glass of water, and a sink is just a few steps away.

Once I’ve tumbled out of bed I snatch up bits of clothing at random and dress in the dark just to see what happens. This morning when I turned on the bathroom light I saw the pea-green T-shirt I’d selected complemented my fetching pallor. Thanks to an overlong winter that has spilled over into spring I looked like a scoop of pistachio ice cream with eyes.

It didn’t help that Miss Mia Sopaipilla had begun singing “Happy Birthday” to me around 2:30. I thought I was prepared, having gone to bed early, but nothing prepares you for a cat singing “Happy Birthday” at 2:30 in the morning. Especially when you know it’s not “Happy Birthday” she’s singing.

Who knows what makes a cat sing anything at 2:30 in the morning? Not me, because I refuse to get up and find out. I rolled myself up like a burrito in the blankets, put a pillow over my head, and stayed put until 5.

Shortly after I finally arose to serve Her Majesty I heard an ambulance, but I wasn’t in it.

At least I don’t think I was. But I’ve only had two cups of coffee so all bets are off.

Up from the grave

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments
I got swept away. So sue me.

This is what comes of watching zombie shows on TV.

Turn your radio on.

Radio Free Dogpatch keeps trying to claw its way out from under its tombstone, and I guess I got tired of beating on it with a shovel and burying the sonofabitch again.

Basically, I just wanted to see whether I (a) could remember how to do a podcast after taking two years off, and (2) could keep from getting too deep into the audio-technical weeds.

There’s something about having a dedicated “podcast studio” with a Zoom PodTrak P4 hooked up to a MacBook Pro lashed to a 27-inch monitor and Hindenburg and cables running ever’ whichaway that leads to delusions of grandeur, is what. Chiseling away at the stone, you think you’re Michelango revealing his David, but what you you wind up with is Clarabell honking his horn.

Anyway, a small notion caught up with me while I was running the trails on Tuesday and when I got home I just kept on running with it. Ira Glass is still out there somewhere. Dude just couldn’t keep up. Sucks to be him, hah?

Anyway, this is the scenic route to announcing: Yes, yes, yes, it’s time for a special Undead Episode of Radio Free Dogpatch, another toot on the rusty tin whistle souring the globe-spanning, star-studded orchestra that is podcasting. My heartfelt apologies in advance.

P L A Y    R A D I O    F R E E    D O G P A T C H

• Technical notes: I didn’t know how into it I’d be after two years off, so I set up shop on the dining-room table, using a Shure SM58 mic and the Zoom H5 Handy Recorder. Editing was in Apple’s GarageBand, with a sonic bump from Auphonic. Zapsplat, Freesound and Voice Memos on the iPhone provided the music and sound effects, with the late Donna “Hot Stuff” Summer singing backup for Thomas “Keep the Change” McGuane, who remains very much with us.

Resurrection

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments
Desert Oracle, Vol. 1. May there be many, many more.

Weirdos and those who love them, rejoice: Ken Layne says he’s reviving his Desert Oracle quarterly, which many of us thought had died and was buried without ceremony somewhere in the desert, like Cactus Ed Abbey.

I bought and enjoyed the first book, a collection, compendium, companion, whatevs. And I help underwrite Desert Oracle Radio, the only audio project I support, though I subscribe to a wide range of virtual and actual magazines.

My next step along this twisted trail is probably subscribing to the quarterly. In for a penny, in for a pound, as the fella says.

In his “An Ode to ‘Desert Oracle'” in Alta Journal, Layne cuts straight to the heart of the beast:

Publishing a little magazine is attractive to exactly one kind of person: a writer who doesn’t want to work for somebody else’s magazine.

My old Pueblo Chieftain bro’ Hal Walter, who didn’t want to work for somebody else’s newspaper anymore, did something similar with Mountain Athlete, which lasted about six or seven years back in the late Eighties and into the early Nineties. Denver Post columnist Ed Quillen did likewise with Colorado Central, which has outlived him.

I contributed to both efforts in small ways, once loaning Ed one of my trucks so he could make it to a speaking engagement.

“Now remember, Ed, you can’t smoke in my truck,” I told him before he motored off. The trip took him about twice as long as it would have taken me because I wouldn’t have stopped and climbed out to burn one at every other mile marker.

But the closest I ever came to “publishing a little magazine” is this comosellama you’re looking at right now. The deadlines are flexible and the audience tolerant, and I can bear the small expense without having to sell a few bikes or vintage Macs.

Not adding books, podcasts, and road shows to the to-do list helps, of course. Saves trees, eardrums, and gasoline, too.

Besides, someone’s got to rustle up the grub around here. There are only so many hours in the day.