THE SIGNAL from David Katznelson
"All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream."-Edgar Allen Poe
WOW. One more day of Trump’s presidency. That is just awesome.
During his last days as president of Warner Bros. Records (which was not awesome), I would spend a lot of time hanging out in Lenny Waronker’s office, and he would tell me about producing music in the 60s: there were the few main guys who were trying to outdo the other, trying to do something truly brilliant with the few tracks they had to record on. Waronker was definitely one of them. Then there was Brian Wilson…Chet Atkins, Berry Gordy, George Martin…Jerry Wexler and the rest of the Atlantic crew. And then…then there was Phil Spector.
When I lived in LA, Spector was pretty accessible. He would hold court at Dan Tana’s or show up to Punkin Pie’s night at the Backstage in Beverly Hills. You could easily go up and talk to him…just bask in his weirdness with his outdated-but-still-cool-on-him duds and whatever crazy hair piece he decided to flaunt that month (usually the Beatles-era mop-top). You might not get much of a coherent answer to your questions to him, but who cares. It was Phil Spector, the maker of the wall of sound.
Spector died this past weekend while well into his second decade of being in prison. And yeah, he was a bad guy—bad to the artists he had contracts with— a guy who pulled guns on everyone from the Ramones to Leonard Cohen to Lana Clarkson…the latter who he killed at his house in 2003 (and who, by the way, was a very nice person). Confucius could have said that a person who likes to drink and likes to throw around loaded guns will eventually seriously hurt someone.
So what makes this murderer even worth remembering? It is all about the recordings he made that are impossible to forget. The wall of sound mono pieces of brilliance that demonstrate over and over how Spector figured the way to put onto tape his orchestrated vision of pop, with souring strings and clacking castanets. His signature songs (he wrote many of them) were right out of dreamland, full of reverb and sentiment. He became the most sought after producer of his day, even producing the final Beatles record. Paul McCartney might have been angry at the orchestration of The Long And Winding Road…but it did not stop both John and George from using Spector for years after, on some of their most beloved records. Spector “had it” like no one else: he created a sound that everyone wanted, that no one else could get. And for years, he always delivered.
The Ronettes AND THEN HE KISSED ME, The Righteous Brothers’ YOU’VE LOST THAT LOVING FEELING (and UNCHAINED MELODY), Ike and Tina’s RIVER DEEP MOUNTAIN HIGH, The Ramones ROCK AND ROLL HIGH SCHOOL, Lennon’s IMAGINE and on and on and on.
I put together a mix of some of my favorites of his recordings here…incomplete, but there is just too much to absorb in one sitting. It is hard to think of a producer who reached the sonic heights of the mono kingfish Phil Spector. It is such a shame he was such a horrible human being.
The Most Expensive Old Masters Artworks Ever Sold at Auction
The Life and Death of a Yiddish Puppet Theater
Ever hear of Yosl Cutler, the puppeteer whose funeral attracted over 10,000 people in 1919? This is one of those great, hidden American stories . My friend Eddy Portnoy knows this stuff better than anyone…and knows how to tell the stories of the Yiddish past in such a compelling way.
My friend Bill Bentley reminded me of this incredible story of a bunch of penguins being let loose in an art museum.
Tom Jones stuns with impromptu version of Solomon Burke's CRY TO ME
As King Solomon Burke spent his later years wowing his audiences while sitting on his throne, Sir Tom Jones surprised the televised crowd of The Voice with a sitting but stunning version of Burke’s Cry To Me. Sure, the scene was definitely strange with the audience zooming in on various TV sets around the singer, who was sitting ona star trek looking armchair, while the other hosts looked as though they were not sure how to interact, strapped in similar alien red chairs…but Jones overcame all that. The audience begged him for a song…and he gave them something to remember. Just a great music moment.
Pioneering sci-fi author Ursula K. Le Guin gets her own US postage stamp
The Conqueror Worm
By Edgar Allan Poe
Lo! ’t is a gala night
Within the lonesome latter years!
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre, to see
A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres.
Mimes, in the form of God on high,
Mutter and mumble low,
And hither and thither fly—
Mere puppets they, who come and go
At bidding of vast formless things
That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their Condor wings
Invisible Wo!
That motley drama—oh, be sure
It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased for evermore
By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
And Horror the soul of the plot.
But see, amid the mimic rout,
A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes!—it writhes!—with mortal pangs
The mimes become its food,
And seraphs sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued.
Out—out are the lights—out all!
And, over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
While the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, “Man,”
And its hero, the Conqueror Worm.
