INFLUENTIAL BOOK - CHARLES DICKENS, GREAT EXPECTATIONS

There aren't many books from my school days that have stayed with me since those years, but the Dickens classic, Great Expectations, is one which made a permanent impression on me.  Perhaps it's the image in my mind of the ghostly Miss Havisham lingering, forlorn, in her mansion, enrobed in her tattered wedding dress, lamenting her being jilted at the altar all those years ago.  Her long game revenge plan of manipulating the charming girl Estelle into a guided missile of misery to be aimed at any hapless suitor as an adult is fascinating and perverse.  Watching it play out over the course of the book along with its tragic results has always been appealing to me, especially being something of a fanatic for haunted house stories.  This isn't a supernatural tale, by any means, but it still manages to exude that sense of dread and mystery. 

The book is also, as is often the case with Dickens, a study in class inequity and bias, displaying the nature of privilege and how one's station in life is so critical in determining one's success.  Though its setting is some 2 centuries ago, its themes and messages remain timeless, a trait which Dickens managed more than a few times. 

I've seen a number of film adaptations of it over the years, usually to very good effect.  The most recent was the 2011 UK production staring Gillian Anderson as Miss Havisham.  I was rather taken aback by that casting as I always pictured the jilted matron as being much older, but when I considered the actual practicality of the story timing, I realized that the character wouldn't actually be that old at the time of its telling, it being only some 20 years after the failed nuptials. 

After all these years since I read it in high school, it has become an iconic cautionary tale of the dangers of allowing oneself to be possessed of bitterness.  It shows how thoughts of revenge can turn one's heart to stone and destroy any chances for happiness in the present or the future.

INFLUENTIAL ALBUM - MRS. MILLER'S GREATEST HITS

Not all "influential" albums qualify as necessarily "good".  Some music, in fact, takes a more Nietzschean course and transcends such primal dualities as "good" vs "bad".  This is the very essence of the true "outsider" when it comes to music and the performing arts.  These are the dedicated souls who pursue their art without any need for the validation of critical approval or even fan support, though they often end up with some form of both.  The sheer inevitability of their existence makes them invaluable treasures in the end. 

It was, I think, some time around 1995 when Elva Ruby Miller, Mrs. Miller, came into my sphere of consciousness.  Her 1966 "Greatest Hits" album was lent to me by an acquaintance who never managed to get the record returned.  Normally, I'm very good about borrowing, but this one refused to leave my grasp once it found itself there.  It only took a minute of the first track for me to be enchanted by the warbling, soprano atonalities fluttering from these grooves. 

Mrs. Miller had somehow managed to forge a successful recording career in the 1960s despite her obvious lack of professional skills.  Against a backdrop of professionally recorded and performed music by, I assume, the top studio talent of the day, Elva plonked down her vocals like mom having been summoned unexpectedly from cooking dinner and she left the beans burning.  She sounded kinda rushed and off key and she'd forget lyrics and then stick an ice cube in her mouth for her whistling solo and all of this was crashing together simultaneously into this glorious symphony of ineptitude.  It's like they only let her do one take of every vocal and didn't let her see the lyric sheet beforehand. 

She managed to have a career at a time when outsider artists could even have hit records (as in Tiny Tim's Tiptoe).  For me, discovering her, along with The Shaggs, sent me on a musical side quest for other artists who managed to defy the odds and the standards of the day to create their own space where they could be free to be themselves and damn everyone else, though you're more than welcome to hang about if you like.

INFLUENTIAL ALBUM - THE STRANGLERS, THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE MENINBLACK

When I was in grade 11 high school (1979-1980), I became friends with this guy who was also getting into some of the new music that was coming out.  He'd twigged that I was listening to The Clash and asked if I had heard the Sex Pistols and we got chatting about these bands, which were not at all popular with the rest of the teens in our isolated Northern Ontario school.  He mentioned that he had a cousin who lived in the UK and would send him tapes of the latest bands.  We started to hang out after that and he was the first person to play me any music by The Stranglers, who fast became his favorite band. 

I wasn't quite so into them at first.  I liked them well enough, but it wasn't until I heard The Raven that I started to find them really interesting, particularly the Meninblack song with it's half speed drums and evil Munchkin voices.  When they put out the Meninblack album in 1981, an entire LP dedicated to exposing the conspiracy of aliens farming humans for food, I was all in.  The Gospel According to the Meninblack became the first album I'd buy from The Stranglers.  I wasn't put off by the middling reviews for the album as I found the combination of the mechanical percussion and Dave Grenfield's synths highlights of the album and the whole concept was super cool to me.   I had no idea at the time that the endeavor would turn out to be something of a "curse" for the band, who endured a year of terrible misfortune while they attempted to record, promote and tour the album.

With the sudden, unexpected passing of keyboardist, Dave Greenfield, I wanted to highlight what was my "gateway" into appreciating this band, who were so significantly stamped with their identity thanks to Dave's inimitable musical prowess.

FORGOTTEN FILM - VISIONEERS

I first saw the 2008 film, Visioneers, a few months after it came out, when it hit the movie channels, back when I could afford movie channels.  The film stars Zach Galifianakis, whom I'd heard of and seen in his Purple Onion comedy special, but didn't know too well.  I think the first Hangover movie had just hit cinemas, so he was just on the verge of becoming a household name.  I wasn't quite sure what I was going to get from this one, but I soon found it to be a razor sharp skewering of contemporary corporate culture. 

The film is set in a near future only slightly off kilter from where we are now (or were in 2008).  It's a world where "touchy-feely" Human Resources driven "feel good" philosophies have become more than culture and more than courtesy.  They're basically the law of the land and everyone is expected to adhere to the "think good" techniques fostered and foisted by the corporate masters.  People do their best to portray an aura of happiness and pleasantness at all times, though there is a slight problem brewing as random individuals begin to spontaneously explode.  I don't mean emotional outburst either.  I mean they actually, literally blow up, as in "real good". 

Zach plays George, a white collar employee who works in the vaguely defined middle managerial role of "level 3 tunt", overseeing a handful of underlings.  The company he works for is the largest, most successful corporation in the world and it is run on the basis that appearances are EVERYTHING.  After witnessing one of his coworkers blow up in front of him, George begins to suspect he may be on the verge of experiencing the same fate and begins to question his life, his relationships and the nature of the world he lives in. 

The film is a brilliantly balance look at the insanity of a culture which denies true self expression and forces people into unnatural and intuitively conflicting roles.  It is deeply funny in its ability to expose the absurdities of interpersonal professional relationships, in particularly the often passive-aggressive subtexts within those interactions.  As the veneer if this idyllic dystopian civilization begins to wear thin, Galifianakis does an incredible job of imbuing George with comic pathos as he walks the tightrope between nervous restraint and occasional exuberant outbursts.  

If you're a fan of Galifianakis, this is one of his best roles in a truly original conception, wonderfully directed and realized by first time director Jared Drake.  If you can find this, watch it!

INFLUENTIAL ALBUM - THE CARS, THE CARS

You hear a lot of talk about "gateway drugs", substances which start you out on a path that leads you into more serious addictions.  In music, the most potent gateway drug I ever encountered was the 1978 debut LP by The Cars. 

My attention was initially drawn to the album courtesy of my obsession with all things Queen related.  The connection here being with producer Roy Thomas Baker, who'd just worked on this debut and who had previously enjoyed a renowned relationship with Freddie and the boys.  A favorable review in CREEM magazine got me intrigued enough to seek out the record and add it to my still meager, embryonic vinyl collection. 

At the time, I was getting a bit fed up with a lot of the other, more "mainstream" bands I was listening to.  As I've mentioned at least once before, I was tired of buying albums only to have one decent song on it and the rest just tired old boogie-woogie rehash drek.  So many of the AOR bands of the time fit that mold.  I was primed for something fresh and that's what I got with The Cars.

This album turned out to have far more than one or two good songs on it.  The opening trifecta of Good Times Roll, My Best Friend's Girl & Just What I Needed was enough to leave your head spinning.  If that was the end of it there, I'd have considered the album a hit.  But it's not and the good times keep rolling right to the very last song.  There's just nothing less than an A+ song on this album. 

But it wasn't just the stellar songwriting that was key here.  Stylistically, it was completely fresh and modern.  The production on this record glistened like the sheen of a streamlined new auto, fresh from the factory floor.  It was build tight and smooth and futuristic, but with a retro flair and classic rock 'n' roll rebel attitude.  For a naive Ontario boy in 1978, someone who'd been noticing all the press in the music magazines concerning this new "punk" and "new wave" music, it was a siren call.  It beckoned me off the path of the mainstream and pointed me towards more exotic and unusual sounds. 

The clincher came when The Cars were booked to host an episode of NBC's Friday night music staple, The Midnight Special.  In an unprecedented move, the producers gave The Cars carte blanche to curate the episode and book whomever they liked.  Taking full advantage, they stacked the show with the likes of Iggy Pop, Lene Lovich and, most mind shattering of all, New York's premier bad boys, Alan Vega & Martin Rev, aka SUICIDE!

After this, the floodgates were opened and my musical attention swung decidedly into the left field.  All bets were off at this point as I dove into every extreme of alternative music I could unearth.  No matter how far afield I've gone in my explorations, however, I always look back to the first Cars album as the one that set me on that journey in earnest.  I got in touch with their world and never looked back.

FORGOTTEN FILM - MARTIN

Coming of age is difficult for just about everybody, but it's even more so when you happen to be young adult vampire.  At least Martin thinks he is, a vampire that is, and maybe he is or maybe not, in this overlooked, modest little horror gem from Night of the Living Dead creator, George A. Romero.  I got turned onto this movie by a friend who insisted I see it and I loved it so much that I named the last cat I had after the titular lead character. 

The story follows the young Martin, who moves to live with his cousin's rather hostile family.  It's a particularly dysfunctional home and made even more so as Martin struggles to keep his somewhat homicidal tendencies in check.  Though he is convinced he is a real vampire, Martin is pretty contemporary and doesn't get bothered by the usual mythology and superstitions surrounding the concept.  He's okay going out in the daytime and isn't bothered by his cousin's attempts to save his soul by brandishing crosses and compelling him with religious rites. 

Like Romero's treatment of the "zombie" genre, he puts his own spin on these tropes and grounds them in a gritty realism which results in some pretty intense gore scenes and violence between Martin and his victims.  Romero's neatest trick here is to somehow make Martin sympathetic, despite his brutal nocturnal proclivities.  It is no mean feat to cast Martin as the protagonist in this film, given his nature and the results of his actions. 

As is the central talent of the film maker, Romero manages to make some pointed social commentary and explore some meaningful relationships between the blood and the beatings.  It's a surprising film if you're in the mood for a bit of brutality with some intellectual intersections.

INFLUENTIAL ALBUM - MICHAEL NESMITH, MAGNETIC SOUTH & LOOSE SALUTE

 

A lot of you probably know well my affection for The Monkees. It's an appreciation which has gone through many phases and forms over the years. There was the beginning in my childhood when they were a juvenile, "Saturday morning" entertainment with the TV show. Then there was discovering the film, HEAD, circa 1989, a mind bending psychedelic blast of the lid off the nature of media and marketing. Then I started to collect their albums and delve into the depths of their recorded output in the early 2000s and, finally, discovering the solo career of Michael Nesmith about 10 years ago or so.

Of course, I knew some of Mike's solo works from my childhood as well. My mom had the single for Joanne and, I think, Silver Moon as well. I remember playing them out of curiosity because I recognized his name from the group and was expecting it to be more "I'm a Believer" kind of stuff. At the time, I just heard "country" sounding music and pushed it aside like a dog sniffing broccoli. No thanks.

So I took my time before I started to get curious enough to start digging into his solo releases in earnest. As I'd become more familiar with the "deep cuts" in the Monkees catalogue, I started to find a growing affinity with the tracks Mike was responsible for. As an adult, I was more open to that "western" Texan influence and it was just about then that his solo catalogue was seeing a revival with several CD reissues hitting the market. The first one I picked up was a dual CD containing both his first and second LPs released with The First National Band, his first post-Monkees project, Magnetic South & Loose Salute.

Recorded in quick succession and released less than a year apart, given I got them together on one CD reissue, it's hard for me to separate them or consider them individually. For me, they're a continuum of music which quickly won me over with its sophistication, charm and cunning.

Even up to the present, it's hard for me to not see a lot of country music as crude and representing a certain kind of ignorance and anti-intellectualism. Certainly, there are country artists I admire deeply, like Johnny Cash or Patsy Cline, but there's a very large arena of artists whom I have no affinity for and who represent values I find anathema to me.

Listening to Nesmith's take on it, however, showed me a kind of depth of meaning and raised consciousness in a genre which I'd rarely considered being able to support such lofty ideals. This wasn't just "crying in your beer" heartache songs. These were musings on the nature of existence and the meaning of life. It's thoughtful music, but with great hooks, cleaver melodies and sweet soul. Nesmith's secret weapon in all these albums was always pedal steel master, the late Red Rhodes, who took his instrument into ethereal and transcendental realms of luscious perfection. What a score for Mike to have found this man and he never wasted him.

In the years since assimilating this incredible catalogue of music, I've found myself open to other sounds I'd never expected to enjoy, things I sometimes despised in my youth, not understanding their sophistication and even subversion. It's opened a few more doors for me to broaden my musical experiences even more and anything that helps one open one's mind a bit more to possibilities is certainly a magical thing.