In Memoriam

Hunt Me Down

/ J. Eric Smith / Leave a comment

1. We’ve been living in Northern Arizona for about three and half years now, the time it does fly, especially when having fun and (mostly) doing what we want to do. With several season cycles behind us, we’re at the point where we have some sense of the changes that different parts of the year bring, some of them common to all places with four mostly-mild seasons, some unique to our particular climate, categorized in the Koppen-Geiger classification system as “Csa: Hot Summer Mediterranean.” Here’s the global map of where such climates exist; you can click to enlarge:

It’s obviously not one of the world’s most widespread climates, though it exists in a lot of super-nice places. And we’re actually quite a weird little micro-example of the form, sitting in that tiny, barely-visible yellow sliver east of Southern California, even unusual in the greater Southwestern deserts and mountain ranges around us, a little sweet spot in an often more-extreme climatic region. Things are particularly glorious outside right now, with wildflowers in full bloom, cacti getting there, the deciduous trees budding and leafing out, and along the various perennial waterways, what looks like magical snow blowing about as the majestic cottonwoods swing into full reproductive fervor.

I’ve been thinking about seasonality of late both as the weather shifts, and as our days here are impacted by another facet of local experience: the ebbs and flows of the people we share our lives with. We’re dogged year-rounders here, with no interest in having (and having to maintain) a second home anywhere else; our vacations suffice for us in terms of time away from our primary home. But this is a community heavily shaped by part-timers, like our next-door neighbors, who are generally here from December to April, then leave their house here empty for the rest of the year, returning to New England for its summer and autumn months. Some of our friends have primary residences elsewhere in colder climes and winter here, while some have primary residences in warmer regions and summer here. Others have their main homes here, but head north in summertime to beat the (not too extreme to us) heat. Who we’re hanging around with at any given time has almost become as predictive of the seasons as what the weather might be doing, and in the ways that spring is nature’s season of rapid change and rebirth, our social dockets are similarly in their period of greatest flux right now with various comings and goings among our social circle.

We miss our friends when they’re away, of course, and then we love it when they return, per their own season cycles. Rinse, repeat, every spring, every autumn. Not a bad way to mark the passing of the months, in the grand scheme of things.

2. Speaking of the glorious outdoors, I’ve been posting photo albums of most of what I’d consider “major” hikes, i.e. new places, extreme places, long routes, or significant summits, over at my Flickr account, each in their own albums. If you’d like a peak at what things are looking like here, click the photo below, taken yesterday from the red rock shoals in Oak Creek, to see the full collection, filled with fabulous vistas, sites, and scenes.

3. Marcia’s political campaign is proceeding apace under its own season cycle, with her candidacy having been certified for this year’s ballots. She is running unopposed in the Democratic primary (July 30), allowing her and her Clean Slate for Democracy colleagues to focus on issues and the general election, rather than having to throw rocks at other Democrats for the next three months. The GOP incumbents do have primary challengers, which means that they will spent most of the summer trying to out-extreme each other to curry favor among the most rabidly partisan voters at the right-ward end of the political spectrum. It will be interesting to see how they fare, especially as Arizona is under the national spotlight as a key battleground on a wide range of cultural and political hot topics. The Clean Slate team held a great “meet the candidates” event in nearby Cottonwood last night; here’s Marcia delivering her remarks:

And here’s the front- and back-sides of the palm cards they’re sharing at events and elsewhere, with their various campaign and social media links, if you’d like to follow along in the months ahead:

Why should you follow along and support Marcia, Jay and Mike if you don’t live here? I’ll once again post my own personal explanation on that front, as follows:

While this is a regional state level election, a key component of Marcia, Mike and Jay’s campaign is expanding outreach and engagement to prospective voters who are disillusioned with the extreme and performative approach to politics that has become so toxic across the State and country, where consciously and willfully obstructing the processes of governance is considered acceptable behavior in service to often hateful and discriminatory goals. By working hard on their own voter engagement, Marcia, Mike and Jay hope and expect to boost up-ticket Democrats in the State’s Federal races, and given that Arizona is one of a small number of true swing states, those races could easily be the deciding linchpins to defining who controls the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives, and the White House come January 2025, along with who controls the Federal judiciary in the years that follow. These state level races are important for our home in Arizona, sure, but they’re also integral to the national electoral narrative in 2024 and beyond.

4. Katelin and John have returned home after their three-week adventure in Japan and Taiwan. They spent time in Toyko, Kyoto, Osaka and Taipei; a planned trip to southern Taiwan was tabled following the earthquakes there, though they did experience multiple aftershocks during their time at the northern end of the geologically-active island. We had a nice time taking care of their cats, Lily and Ella, while they were away. It’s good to be reminded of the amusement factor that four-legged housemates provide, since it’s been nearly a decade since we’ve had our own cats about the house. Katelin and John brought one of their cat towers with them, and it was placed in my office, so this was the scene behind me as I clattered away at my keyboard for most of the past month:

5. Finally, I’d mentioned the untimely and unexpected passing of my hiking friend, Bob, in an earlier post. On April 20, a group of neighbors, friends, and family members carried his cremated remains up to a lovely spot above his neighborhood and returned him to the land that was so special for him, and for us. We then returned indoors for a celebration of life, sharing memories, laughs, pictures, and food together, in his honor and memory. He is and will long be missed, for sure, but we’ve collectively marked a spot of remembrance, where I suspect many of us with pause and reflect on occasion, through all the seasons that remain for each of us. Here are a few photos of the procession and ceremony that we shared that day:

Life Song

/ J. Eric Smith / 1 Comment

1. Those of you who are connected with me on social media will have already likely seen this news, but my little community of hikers was rocked last week by the sudden death of our good friend, Robert “Bob” Breard, the victim of an aortic dissection on his 75th birthday. Here’s a photo of Bob and I from a couple of summers ago, standing on Vultee Arch; click on the image for an album of Bob with “40 or so his many friends,” shared by our mutual friend and fellow hiker, Heide:

I had last hiked with Bob two weeks before his death, joining him and two other friends for a climb up to the southwestern summit of Horse Mesa. We were supposed to hike the next Monday, but the weather was gross, so I took a pass. He then asked me and two other friends to join him on a trek up to a remote feature called Mushroom Rock last Wednesday, but I again had to decline due to family being in town (more on that below). Bob died on Tuesday, before he could finish that Mushroom Rock route.

I went back up Horse Mesa on my own last weekend as a small act of remembrance, making it an adventure (because it was always an adventure hiking with Bob) by taking a new-to-me and very challenging route up the south face. Then this Monday, four members of our regular hiking group decided to pay a visit to the Mushroom, in Bob’s honor and memory. Bob was a key part of the community support group for another friend living with acute cancer-related illness, and that friend shared a special song and poem with us, to be played and read at the summit, in celebration of their friendship, and as a way of processing and releasing our grief. We did so, and it was powerful, and fitting, and profound. We were on the rocks through the eclipse, which was only partial in Arizona, though we noted the darkening and temperature drop as the sun was partially occluded above us, adding to the special feel of the day. Here’s a photo (also taken by Heide) from the summit of Mushroom; click on the image to see the full photo album:

There will be a memorial with Bob’s family on April 20, with a short hike to a point where we will spread his ashes, up one of Bob’s favorite neighborhood trails. He was very much the connective tissue who brought and held together a diverse crew of folks, me among them, so he will be deeply missed by us all, even as we rally to continue doing the things he loved to do, on his own, and with his many, many friends.

2. On that aforementioned family front, Katelin and John were here for a couple of days last week on their way to a three-week trip in Japan and Taiwan; Katelin’s employer offers a month-long sabbatical to their directors, and this is how they are choosing to spend it. John had worked as an ESL teacher in Taiwan after graduating from college, but neither of them have been to Japan before, so it will be a grand adventure for them both. Part of the reason that they came to see us was to bring their cats, Lily and Ella, to stay with us while they were away. It’s been awhile since we have any four-legged friends about the house, so we’ve been enjoying that. Ella is still a kitten, Lily the grown-up chief of the clowder. Here they are, making themselves at home, Lily in one of the “if it fits, it sits” boxes I put out for them:

Ella and Lily are inside cats, so we’ve been bemused by the fact that a couple of the outdoor cats that roam our neighborhood have decided that they must appear at our door each day to show off their freedom before our captive kitties. Not nice, guys. Not nice at all:

3. It’s kind of a running joke in our family that my taste is so bad that anytime I express a particular liking for something, be it food, or clothing, or a store, or a particular item on a restaurant menu, or any of many other things, said thing will inevitably be discontinued or otherwise disappear immediately thereafter. Knowing my own anti-Midas touch on such things, when I find something I really like, I will often buy multiple copies, just to protect myself for a little bit longer from the inevitable obsolescence.  One area where I have done that is in my choices of footwear; I have some neurological problems with my feet and legs, so I’m really picky and choosy about what works for me, especially when it comes to hiking. I’ve found a line of zero-drop hiking shoes that are dynamite and perfect for me, so I did acquire a couple of pairs of them last summer. This week, I decided that the first pair had reached the end of their useful life expectancy for me, so I grabbed the fresh pair from the closet. It was interesting to see the difference between the new shoes and the ones I’d put an estimated 1,600+ miles on, through a variety of difficult terrains, from the Alps to the Red Rocks and beyond:

I was going to link those photos to the manufacturer’s website, in case you’d like to try a similar pair yourselves, but, of course, it appears this particular model is no longer being manufactured and sold. Sigh.

Nothing More: Gerry Conway (1947-2024)

/ J. Eric Smith / Leave a comment

One of the things that comes part and parcel with being a fairly hardcore and lifelong music nerd is an obsessive attention to liner notes and other musical reference source materials, through which I and others like me learn about the working “below the fold” musicians who often make defining contributions their headlining artists’ best works, unbeknownst to most casual listeners. English drummer Gerry Conway, who died of motor neurone disease yesterday at the age of 76, is an extraordinary example of that phenomenon, contributing to a vast and influential discography, much of it right square in my wheelhouse, making him one of those players whose name on a credit sheet would immediately attract my attention, even if I might not otherwise be interested.

The Discogs Website  (a truly superb resources for learning who did what with whom and when) cites 344 credits for Conway, only one of which bears his name on its front cover as a featured artist: 1995’s About Thyme, credited to Jacqui McShee (Conway’s wife), Conway, and Spencer Cozens. But, boy oh boy, when you dig into the other 343 records, their reach and quality is exceptional. For me, personally, I own and love records by the following artists who deployed Gerry Conway as their solid-in-the-pocket time-keeper and percussive accent-maker at some point in their histories:

  • Eclection
  • Sandy Denny
  • Fotheringay
  • Iain Matthews/Matthews Southern Comfort
  • The Incredible String Band/Mike Heron
  • Steeleye Span/Maddy Prior and Tim Hart
  • Cat Stevens
  • Magna Carta
  • Mick Greenwood
  • Fairport Convention/Richard Thompson/Simon Nicol
  • Neil Innes/GRIMMS
  • John Cale
  • Jethro Tull/Ian Anderson
  • Kate and Anna McGarrigle
  • Pentangle

While I’d guess that, at some points in his long career as a gigging professional, Gerry Conway took some drum solos in live or studio settings, none of them readily spring to mind when I think about his best work. He wasn’t a Bonham-esque crusher or a Moon-y chaos-engine, or a Baker-phile devotee of diverting the flow of a show for self-indulgent crash-and-bash interludes. But he was masterful at serving the songs he played on, subtly when necessary, and in-your-face when required, equally accomplished in both modes. Conway had a fine sense of tempo and time-keeping, which served him well, especially when working with some of the complex, yet fragile, rhythms of the English folk-rock idiom in which he played for half-a-century. But then, he was also Cat Stevens’ drummer during that artist’s critical heyday, playing arenas, and showing up regularly on pop and classic-rock radio, even if you didn’t know it was him at the skins.

I wanted to take a moment today to remember and celebrate Gerry Conway’s work by sharing ten cuts that move me, and upon which he left a tangible creative mark, in hopes that perhaps they’ll work for you, too, and lead you to explore other facets of his rich catalog. I’ve purposefully included his first studio release, with Eclection, and his last, with Fairport Convention, as well as the Fotheringay song whose title is used in this post’s headline. I was somewhat surprised and saddened when the seemingly-immortal Fairport had announced Conway’s retirement a few years back, though given the progressive nature of the disease that killed him, I suspect his obituary explains why he was no longer able to pursue his percussive passions after his diagnosis. Nicely and fittingly enough, Conway’s seat with Fairport was filled by Dave Mattacks, perhaps his most closely-analogous drummer, with similarly rich experiences with a similarly-broad folk-rock-centric caste of leading characters; it wasn’t the first time that the two have traded seats over the courses of their long careers.

In any case, lift a glass of your chosen libation to a great drummer and percussionist, and dig the tunes that follow, lending an attentive ear to the ways that they are shaped and accented by the textures and touches of their rhythms. RIP, Gerry Conway. You were appreciated.

Eclection, “In Her Mind,” from Eclection (1968)

Fotheringay, “Nothing More,” from Fotheringay (1970)

Steeleye Span, “Dark-Eyed Sailor,” from Hark! The Village Wait (1970)

Mick Greenwood, “To The Sea,” from Living Game (1971)

Neil Innes, “Immortal Invisible,” from How Sweet to Be an Idiot (1973)

Cat Stevens, “Angelsea,” from Catch Bull at Four (1974)

John Cale, “Guts,” from Slow Dazzle (1975)

Jethro Tull, “Fallen on Hard Times,” from The Broadsword and the Beast (1982)

Simon Nicol, “Caught a Whisper,” from Before Your Time . . . (1987)

Fairport Convention, “Shuffle and Go,” from Shuffle and Go (2020)

Without A Trace

/ J. Eric Smith / 3 Comments

1. Three folks of significance to me have flown away in recent weeks, and I wanted to note their passings here:

    • Kenji “Damo” Suzuki, (1950-2024), lead singer and shaman with Germany’s extraordinarily influential “krautrock” group Can from 1970-1973. Can were founded after keyboardist-composer Irmin Schmidt’s 1966 trip to New York City, where he formulated a strategy to mix the European avant-garde and classical traditions in which he had been schooled with the energy and unpredictability of free jazz, art rock, soul, and funk. Can’s first lead singer, American artist Malcolm Mooney, left the group in late 1969 to return to the United States following doctors’ advice regarding his then-degrading mental health. In early 1970, Can’s Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit encountered Damo Suzuki, a young Japanese busker with rudimentary guitar talents and impressive improvisational vocal and lyrical skills, on the streets of Berlin; they asked him to perform with their group that very night. Damo fronted the group through its arguably greatest creative period, including the epic albums Tago Mago, Ege Bamyasi, and Future Days, offering both perfect visual presence and eclectically weird singing, sometimes in English, sometimes in Japanese, sometimes in languages of his own making. The mercurial artist left Can in 1973, returning to music-making in the early 1980s; he worked as a shaman for hire, essentially, eschewing stable supporting line-ups in favor of enlisting what he dubbed “sound carriers,” e.g. local musicians in whatever markets he was playing, capable of creating the open-ended soundscapes atop which Damo could layer his mystical vocal magic. Among the many artists inspired by Can’s work was the late Mark E. Smith of The Fall, who wrote and performed a song called “I Am Damo Suzuki” on his group’s 1985 album This Nation’s Saving Grace. Following Mark E. Smith’s death in 2018, the surviving members of the Fall (now Imperial Wax) served as Damo’s sound carriers for a performance in Smith’s Salford, UK, hometown; a great review of that show here. In the Fall Cup that I’m working on at this point, and have written about earlier, “I Am Damo Suzuki” has made it to the Final 32 of some 500+ Fall songs, and I’d predict it’s likely to advance even further. It’s a truly worthy and creative tribute based on Can’s song “Oh Yeah,” so I will remember the great Damo Suzuki here by offering both his own live performance of that song, and the Fall’s studio homage to it and its creator.
  • Christopher Priest, (1943-2024), British author, perhaps best known in the United States for his 1995 novel, The Prestige, which was adapted into a popular film directed by Christopher Nolan and starring Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale, among other A-listers. Priest became a full-time writer in 1968, but I did not discover his works until 2011. While I was late to his party, I was all-in once I arrived, and he became and remains one of my very favorite novelists, ever. In my “Five By Five Books” series, where I wrote about the series of novels that have most moved me throughout a lifetime of reading, I covered the first book I read by Priest, The Islanders. My review of it, with additional biographical information and appreciation, is here. He was an extraordinarily gifted writer and story-teller, and his series of stories set in “The Dream Archipelago” are among the greatest achievements in world building that I’ve ever encountered. The final novel published in his lifetime (I don’t know if he has any works in the pipeline for posthumous releases) was 2023’s Airside; it has not seen release in the United States yet, so I am glad to know that I have at least one final work from the master to appreciate in the months to come.
  • Admiral Bruce DeMars, (1935-2024), third Director of Naval Reactors (1988-1996). This one is personally resonant for me, as Admiral DeMars was my boss for most of my own time with Naval Reactors (I was there from 1987-1996). In 1991, he selected me to serve as his personal field representative at the Naval Reactors Facility in Idaho, and then in 1993, he had me move to the Machinery Apparatus Operation in Schenectady, New York, to serve in the same role. In my field representative role, Admiral DeMars and I had regular, ongoing, open communications about the ways in which I was working to support the program’s governmental interests in the facilities of the contractors engaged to bring its mission and vision to material fruition. Having that sort of access and engagement with a four-star admiral is not terribly common in the Navy, and I appreciated it. Admiral DeMars’ directorship of Naval Reactors came at a particularly challenging time for the program, hinging around the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the radical changes in expectations (and funds) for the nuclear submarine and aircraft carrier fleets, which had been cornerstones to the United States’ power projection and sea control through the Cold War era, and were (wrongly) seen by some as inessential in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Admiral DeMars was a savvy and strategic leader for the organization who kept our industrial base intact and shifted our research and production priorities to new and crucial post-Soviet roles. One of my jobs in Washington, DC was working on his traveling testimony team, helping transport models and materials to and from the halls of Congress where he testified on our program’s behalf. He was superb in action in those settings, and he was also just a great boss, one of the best I ever had, and a man who I admire immensely to this day.

2. Marcia’s campaign as a Democratic candidate for the Arizona State House of Representatives is moving along well. She has secured the “qualifying five” gifts needed to secure state funding for her campaign, and has over 80% of the petition signatures required to get on the ballot. Those two steps are limited to residents of Arizona Legislative District One, but she is also doing well in securing seed money for her campaign, within the constraints established by the Clean Slate rubric under which she and her slate mates (Jay Ruby for State House of Representatives and Mike Fogel for State Senate) are running. To those readers who have already supported her campaign: Thank You! To those who have not: you can make gifts of up to a maximum of $210 at the Clean Slate website, here. (Scroll down to the bottom of the page, and click the “Donate” buttons for Marcia, Jay and/or Mike). The trio pool their resources, so support for any of them is support for all of them. Why should you do so? I re-post an answer to that question that I used in an email fundraising appeal below:

Why should people outside of our district support their campaign? While this is a regional state level election, a key component of Marcia, Mike and Jay’s campaign is expanding outreach and engagement to prospective voters who are disillusioned with the extreme and performative approach to politics that has become so toxic across the State and country, where consciously and willfully obstructing the processes of governance is considered acceptable behavior in service to often hateful goals.
By working hard on their own voter engagement, Marcia, Mike and Jay hope and expect to boost up-ticket Democrats in the State’s Federal races, and given that Arizona is one of a small number of true swing states, those races could easily be the deciding linchpins to defining who controls the U.S. Senate, the House of Representatives, and the White House come January 2025, along with who control the Federal judiciary in the years that follow.
These state level races are important for our home in Arizona, sure, but they’re also integral to the national electoral narrative in 2024 and beyond.

It is important at bottom line if you’re committed to empowering representative democracy in opposition to a political movement that’s heaving us toward collective authoritarianism, racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and homophobia, via the political disenfranchisement of scores of millions of citizens across the country. Your support will make a difference, so here’s that link again to do something about it, if you would like, with our thanks.

3. Having won the 2023 Unleash Creatives Book Prize for my short story collection, Ubulembu and Other Stories, I have been asked to serve as final judge for the 2024 prize, and am currently working my way through the final four Short List entries, all of which are exceptional. In advance of the announcement of the 2024 winner, Unleash Lit ran a nice interview with me about my own current writing activities, about how to judge book prizes, and about useful tips and tricks for would-be writers. You can click on my smiling back-cover head-shot below to read it. Buy some books while you’re there, please and thanks. Mine included!

4. We’re having what passes for winter here in Sedona this week, with our first somewhat-significant snowfall of the season. That has kept me from my usual hiking rounds since getting a great group hike in with my fellow trail extremists last Monday, climbing the Cockscomb formation. I will acknowledge that the snow is very pretty, while also acknowledging that I want it go away, and soon. Here are some views taken from our front and back door yesterday, to give you the general vibe. And having shared these images, I say to the inclement weather: “Shoo! Begone! Stop it!”

Don’t Let It Bring You Down: Denny Laine (1944-2023)

/ J. Eric Smith / 3 Comments

I was sorry to learn this afternoon of the passing of English musician Denny Laine, co-founder of the Moody Blues and long-time Paul McCartney collaborator during the Wings era and beyond. Laine died earlier today of lung disease in Naples, Florida, at the age of 79, mere months after announcing his marriage to Elizabeth Mele. His wife had established a GoFundMe campaign earlier this year after Denny had suffered a collapsed lung and been through three surgeries and a blood infection following a bout of COVID. A benefit concert for Laine was held last month at the legendary Troubadour in West Hollywood, featuring a pair of his former Wings bandmates, plus Susanna Hoffs, Micky Dolenz, and Peter Asher, among others. I extend sympathies to Denny’s family and loved ones, and wish them all peace in the difficult days ahead.

Denny Laine was born on the Channel Islands and raised in Greater Birmingham, England, and was named Brian Frederick Hines by his parents. (While his long association with Paul McCartney might lead casual observers to presume that “Denny Laine” must be some form of tribute to or was inspired by Sir Paul’s song, “Penny Lane,” the Artist Formerly Known as Brian Hines actually adopted his stage name well before that popular Beatles song was written, recorded and released). Inspired by Django Reinhardt, Laine took up guitar in his youth and formed his first band (Denny and the Diplomats, featuring Bev Bevan, later of The Move, The Electric Light Orchestra and [briefly] Black Sabbath) in his mid-teens. In 1964, Laine joined a newly-formed Beat/R&B band known as the Moody Blues, and he sang their first huge radio hit, the Bessie Banks cover “Go Now!” Laine also co-wrote all of the original songs on the group’s debut album (mostly composed of covers), sang lead vocals on all but three of its cuts, and composed or co-composed a variety of singles and B-sides for the Moodies.

After those singles failed to match the success of “Go Now!”, Laine left the Moodies in late 1966, embarking on a variety of short-lived musical ventures, including The Electric String Band, Balls, Ginger Baker’s Air Force and a pair of solo singles. His fortunes took a turn for the better in 1971 when Paul and Linda McCartney recruited Laine for their nascent family band, Wings, along with drummer Denny Seiwell. (The Beatles and the Moody Blues had toured together in their earlier days, so Paul was aware of Denny’s work via that connection). The group issued their casual and lo-fi debut, Wild Life, later that year, and embarked on a variety of small-scale tours and shows that allowed the McCartneys to bring their family with them on the road, an effort to restore the creative intimacy that Paul had once enjoyed in the Beatles’ small venue days.

Various guitarists and drummers came and went during Wings’ decade-long run, but the core of Paul, Linda and Denny were constant, and at two points in the group’s career, they were the band in its entirety, most notably during the recording of Wings’ arguable masterwork, Band on the Run, recorded in Lagos, Nigeria in 1973. The core Wings trio also featured on Laine’s second solo album, 1977’s Holly Days, in which the threesome tackled an assortment of good-natured Buddy Holly covers. Before guitarist Jimmy McCulloch and drummer Joe English departed that same year, the group embarked on the massive “Wings Over the World” tour, highlights of which were released on the chart-topping Wings Over America triple album, which featured Paul McCartney’s first released recordings of songs from the Beatles catalog since that group’s demise.

Wings were arguably the most commercially successful band in the world at that point in time, with Laine serving in a crucial “utility infielder” role, singing and playing bass, guitar or keyboards as needed, depending on what Paul was playing on a particular song. He also sang lead vocals on many Wings songs and wrote or co-wrote a passel of their tunes, most notably “Mull of Kintyre,” which was the highest-selling single in English history for several years following its release. The Wings’ story ground to its sad conclusion in the early 1980s, following Paul McCartney’s arrest for marijuana possession in Japan, and compounded by Paul’s justifiable worries about touring following the murder of John Lennon. While Wings were no more, Laine remained a loyal contributor to Paul McCartney’s creative endeavors for several additional years, appearing on his earlier solo albums, helping to bridge a collaborative gap until McCartney’s now-long-standing solo band cohered.

Denny Laine issued nine solo albums after the end of his association with Paul McCartney (my favorite is 1996’s Reborn) and toured as a solo performer, with his own band, and with the legacy act Classic Rock All-Stars. I’ve always keep abreast of his activities and doings, in large part because how much Wings meant to me in their time, how often I still listen to them, and how many of Laine’s spotlight tracks or compositions are among my favorites by the group. I did a long article about my affection for and history with Wings as part of my Favorite Songs by Favorite Bands series a few years ago; you can read it in its entirety here. I noted in that article: “I’m also a big fan of Denny Laine, who served fairly selflessly as a tremendously supportive studio and on-stage foil on guitar, bass and vocals for Paul and Linda from the inception to the demise of Wings. He deserves more accolades than he actually receives for that role.” And I do believe that, deeply, especially given the retrospective snark and disdain that are often heaped upon Wings (most especially upon the late Linda McCartney) by music writers who should really know better. I was also pleased that Denny Laine was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2018 as a member of the Moody Blues. He deserved that accolade.

I’ll be adding a bunch of Denny’s tunes to our family playlist this afternoon, using them to reflect on a musical life well lived. Probably top of that heap will be “Weep for Love,” a Denny solo cut featuring the core Wings trio. If you’ve never heard it, I commend it to your attention as one of his loveliest works. Here you go:

And now only Paul remains . . .

Sunday Afternoon

/ J. Eric Smith / 3 Comments

1. I have a few catch-up/mop-up items to post this morning after three-plus weeks away on our Alps to Adriatic trek. First in the queue: continuing this year’s process of posting my ever-growing list of the year’s Best Albums on a quarterly basis. Here’s the third installment of that series, featuring the music that’s moved me most over the past three months:

BEST ALBUMS OF 2023 (THIRD QUARTER)

  • Brighde Chaimbeul, Carry Them With Us
  • Alaska Reid, Disenchanter
  • Mammoth WVH, Mammoth II
  • Public Image Ltd., End of World
  • Osees, Intercepted Messages
  • Genesis Owusu, Struggler

BEST NON-ALBUM SINGLES OF 2023 (THIRD QUARTER)

  • Yard Act, “The Trench Coat Museum”

And here’s the Spotify playlist of a representative sample cut from each of the albums, EPs and singles I’ve cited thus far this year:

The next report of this ilk will likely come in early December, when I do my 32nd Annual Best Albums of the Year Report, looking at what I loved throughout the entire year, ranking the results, and selecting 2023’s very best release. In some years, I pretty much have a solid sense of what the winner’s going to be by September, but this year, not so much, with several strong contenders still rattling around the brain box, and obviously a few months of new things yet to come. But when I analyzed the month of release for the 31 Albums of the Year that I’ve already reported, there’s a strong trend toward them being released earlier in the year rather than later, so odds are that one of the 31 releases sampled in that playlist will take this year’s crown.

2. It’s been quite some time since I’ve done one my elimination-style music tournaments here, though their results remain highly-trafficked parts of my website, especially 2004’s (!) Worst Rock Band Ever. The most recent one was 2014’s (!) Let’s Take It To the Stage: The Greatest Live Album Ever, which was a bit of a different beast, co-written by me and two esteemed colleagues, reaching an interesting outcome that likely wouldn’t have emerged had I done the project myself. (If you click either of those prior links, at the bottom of each article, there’s a roster of all the long-form pieces in this series). I’m pleased to report that I’m participating in another group project of that variety right now, in real time, though I’m not the host in this case. Here’s the landing page for the project: The Fall Cup 2023. Five music nerds with particular interests and expertise in the canon, history, and work of England’s mighty Fall will work through the group’s vast catalog (over 500 songs) to develop a consensus (?) over which of those songs is the very best of the bunch. Steve Pringle, author of the acclaimed You Must Get Them All: The Fall on Record, will be wrangling the cats, and we’ve already gotten through the first six subsets of randomized songs. Give it a bookmark if you’re interested in The Fall, or if you’d like to learn more about them, and do please share widely if you know other music nerds with a taste for such fare.

3. I was sorry to learn while we were away of the passing of the great Gary Wright, best known in the United States for his 1975 album The Dream Weaver and its pair of top ten singles, “Dream Weaver” (different title from the album) and “Love is Alive.” I absolutely adored that album in its time, and its then-innovative synth/key-heavy recording approach was hugely influential in shaping my listening aesthetic (alongside Jean-Michel Jarre’s works of the same era). Years later, I delved into Wright’s pre-The Dream Weaver work with Spooky Tooth (some of which also featured future Foreigner-founder Mick Jones), and I found it equally engaging and interesting. And then there’s Wright’s extensive work as an acclaimed session player, arranger and live sideman, most especially represented by his long musical partnership with George Harrison (Wright was one of the core players on 1970’s epochal All Things Must Pass), which endured until the Quiet Beatle’s death in 2001. He was one of those singers and players with his own distinct style, but who also made everything he worked on behind the scenes better than it would have been without him. Respect and rest in peace.

4. On the book-writing/marketing front, and for my Arizona readers, I have two book-signings and readings coming up over the next month or so for Side by Side in Eternity: The Lives Behind Adjacent American Military Graves, my nonfiction history work written and researched with Rear Admiral James R. McNeal. Here are the details:

October 17: Village of Oak Creek Branch, Sedona Public Library

November 8: Downtown Branch, Flagstaff City Library

Additionally, Jim McNeal and I will be doing another book signing together at the Naval Academy in Annapolis on Friday, October 20. We will be posted up at the Mid Store on the Yard, the day before the Navy-Air Force football game. Hope to see some of you at one of these events!

5. Regarding the title of this post: While you may be reading it on Sunday Afternoon, I’m actually writing it on Sunday Morning, but that’s not really relevant, at all. As this site has evolved since its original incarnation in 1995, its content tends to shift and morph in various ways, with different approaches and series and structures emerging to reflect what’s interesting me and how I want to write at different times. 2023 has found me writing fewer long form pieces (that energy directed toward book work, mainly) and more compendium/omnibus posts. As has long been my habit, I pick some arcane rubric for naming such posts, and stick with said convention until it seems to have run its course. Which feels, to me, the case today, so I’m retiring the convention for the past year or so (where omnibus posts are named after songs by the band Clutch) and launching a new convention for however it seems to suit and please. Your guesses on what the new convention is, always appreciated. If you get it, then I’ll know you’re as much of a music nerd as I am.

6. I turned our yard trail cam back on yesterday, having left it off while we were away, knowing it would likely have filled beyond capacity given the frequency of visitors we experience here, day in, day out. When I downloaded the past day’s results, it was fun to see that we’ve had some new arrivals in the yard during our trek abroad. Circle of life and such, always a joy to see.

 

Enter the Angel: Teresa Taylor (1962-2023)

/ J. Eric Smith / 1 Comment

I rarely post twice in one day (or week) here anymore, but I do feel compelled to write again today to note the passing of Teresa Taylor (a.k.a. Teresa Nervosa), one of Butthole Surfers’ drummers during their gloriously garish ’80s heyday. Teresa had been in hospice care since late 2022 with a terminal lung disease, so I knew this news was coming, but it’s still sad to see it announced with finality. She had been somewhat active on social media through her final illness, and it was especially poignant when she posted on her last birthday that her Butthole bandmates Paul Leary, Gibby Haynes and King Coffey had been in touch to share their love and respect, a sentiment they echoed when announcing her passing today:

Butthole Surfers were my inarguable favorite band for probably longer than any other artist has held that lofty perch in my personal musical pantheon. I wrote a long piece a few years back about how their music fundamentally altered my creative and intellectual development as part of my “Favorite Songs By Favorite Bands” series. You can read that article here, along with a listing of my ten very favorite Surfer songs. They were at the peak of their creative powers, as both a live act and as recording artists, from about 1983 to about 1989, when Teresa and King Coffey provided the dual-drum barrage from which the front-line’s audio horrors took flight. I saw them many times in that period, and I actually made a significant professional life decision to go to school in Athens, Georgia for the sole reason that they had recently relocated there from their Texas homeland. Alas, by the time I actually got to Athens, they’d moved back to Texas, but at least I gave it a good post-college try.

Butthole Surfers did not make it easy to be informed fans, sharing relatively little information about the band’s members, lyrics, and creative processes, often even obscuring what the correct names of their songs were. And what few “facts” actually crept out of their inner sanctum were often lies. Prominent among those untruths was the oft-quoted “fact” that King and Teresa were twins. They were not, though they had played together in various high school marching bands before their Surfers’ service. Their utterly brain-warping debut 1983 EP (the title of which remains murky to this day) featured King drumming on a pair of cuts before Teresa’s arrival. Once the duo were firmly ensconced behind their kits, the group put out a live EP called Live PCPPEP, which was essentially the very same record, just more thunderous.

Teresa appeared on four studio LPs over the next six years, alongside a variety of singles, EPs, live albums and videos. She left the group briefly in 1985, was replaced by Kytha Gernatt for a tour cycle, then returned until 1989, when she began suffering seizures and eventually had brain surgery for a cerebral aneurysm. The group’s skull-shattering light and films shows probably didn’t do her any favors, had she had a preexisting condition related to neurological damage. In 1990, she appeared in Richard Linklater’s acclaimed debut film, Slacker, credited as “Pap Smear Pusher.” It was such an iconic scene in a truly bizarre film that Teresa became the cover model for the whole thing, the face of the insanity and mundanity within. Here’s the poster:

And here’s her signature scene (wait for it . . . ):

After Slacker, Teresa largely went back to living a private life outside of the rock and rock media machine. Gibby Haynes, Paul Leary and King Coffey kept on trucking for the better part of another decade, eventually scoring an improbable modern rock hit in 1996 with “Pepper.” After some damaging legal and creative challenges around the turn of the millennium, the Surfers scattered to the winds until 2008, when Gibby, Paul, Pinkus, King and Teresa reunited for a “classic era” reunion tour. She left again within a year, with the other four occasionally taking the show on the road since then, though with no new studio recordings.

Teresa Taylor is survived by her longtime partner, Cheryl Curtice, who first announced her passing this morning. I’m sorry that Teresa didn’t live long enough to experience the release of the long-in-progress, highly-anticipated Butthole Surfers Movie, the producers of which have shared some wonderful clips on social media culled from their interviews with her. Here’s the crowdsourcing preview reel of the project, if you’re interested in exploring it further:

While it’s impossible for little films to capture the huge, dangerous, damaging vigor of the vintage Butthole Surfers live experience, there are some decent clips floating around on the web of the group in full flight. I close with a quartet of super-fine Teresa-era clips, all favorite songs, and celebrate her work and life as a true superstar of the musical underworld that shaped me. Two of them are from Blind Eye Sees All, an essential 1985 VHS tape release, and the title of this post is culled from the lyrics of the final video. Bless Teresa’s memory, most sincerely.

Heirloom 13 (On Books)

/ J. Eric Smith / 1 Comment

1. It’s Memorial Day today, which is always a notable commemorative holiday in my family, given the many generations worth of veterans (me and Marcia included) shaping both branches of our family tree. Thankfully, none of said family members died in service to their Nation during our lifetimes, but any and all of us could have, as an integral part of taking our respective oaths of office, and I deeply respect and honor the families who mark the day more meaningfully. I’m having a bit of a supplemental reaction to Memorial Day this year, too, having spent much of the past three years researching and writing about fallen military figures with my writing partner, Rear Admiral Jim McNeal, and then promoting the fruits of our labor: Side by Side in Eternity: The Lives Behind Adjacent American Military Graves. An over-arching theme throughout the book is a study of the ways in which survivors have honored (or occasionally dishonored) their fallen colleagues, from the American Civil War to the present, complemented by an assessment of the emergence and evolution of the National Cemetery system, within which so many of our fallen veterans lie. If your own reflections on the day include open questions about the ways in which families and society at large respond to the deaths of military and military-adjacent individuals, the book might help answer some of them, in what we believe to be an informative and engaging fashion. You can click on the cover image below for links to order your own copy, if you’re so moved:

2. And while I’m pimping books: last week, I posted a piece about the importance of pre-orders in the bookselling world, and respectfully asked you, dear readers, to help support the pre-launch campaign of my next book, Ubulembu and Other Stories, which comes out on August 1. I was really very pleased to see how many of you did so, with some moderately attention-getting numbers being posted in the days that followed. Thank you for that, most deeply and sincerely. The more copies of Ubulembu that are pre-ordered, the higher the probability that brick and mortar bookshops will stock the book right from its release date, and the higher the likelihood that critical outlets will notice and engage with it. I’m eager to keep pushing pre-sales through June and July, so if you’ve been considering acquiring your own advance copy, I’d remain most grateful if you ordered the book from the outlet of your choosing. You can click on the book cover below for information on where to order it, once again with my thanks.

3. And how about some chit-chat about a book I didn’t write, to cleanse the mental palate a bit? Marcia got me a great book for my birthday, called Quantum Criminals: Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, and Other Sole Survivors from the Songs of Steely Dan. Written by Alex Pappademus and illustrated by Joan LeMay, the book is one of more entertaining, informative, and opinionated rock biographies I’ve read in recent memory, crafted through an original lens: each chapter is anchored around one or more of the (usually sketchy) characters found in the lyrics composed by the Dan’s Donald Fagen and Walter Becker. That type of oddly-angled rock analysis often produces overly precious product, but Pappademus’ prose is as perfectly sardonic as it could possibly be when examining the lives and works of the grimly cynical Messrs Becker and Fagen, and his deep research and insights into the Steely Dan canon gave me a surprisingly large amount of fresh perspective, given how long and how deeply I’ve been immersed in and obsessed by their work.

I covered my history with the Dan in fairly lurid detail during my Favorite Songs by Favorite Bands series, and you can read that report here. But I think what made Quantum Criminals resonate so deeply with me was the fact that I’ve obsessed over Steely Dan’s quizzical lyrics in similar ways to Pappademus and LeMay, often in partnership with my equally obsessive, nerdy, and cynical friend Wilson Smith (RIP). Way back when (in Internet terms), Wilson and I created two deep digs into the Steely Dan lexicon and shared them online, and I re-share them with you today, even as I encourage you to score and read Quantum Criminals, whether you’re a Dan Fan or not. It’s that good of a book.

The first Dan-related lyrical project Wilson and I posted was anchored in the fact that Becker and Fagen extensively used imperative or directive forms in their lyrics, regularly and aggressively. A sample: “You better tell me everything you did, baby,” from the The Royal Scam (1976) track “Everything You Did.” Not “would you tell me?” or “could you tell me?” or “won’t someone tell me?” They used straight up command forms, directed your way, no doubts about it: “You better tell me.” Donald and Walter didn’t ask you for your advice or ideas or thoughts or suggestions; if they wanted them, they gave them to you, as orders, or commands, or statements that this was the way it was going to be. You there: “Turn up the Eagles, the neighbors are listening,” over and over and over again. It’s a key part part of their menacing lyrical charm, I think.

So Wilson and I created an interactive page called “What Would Don and Walt Do? (WWDWD)” The core concept was that Becker and Fagen were the coolest, wisest people in the world, and they’d laid out brilliant rules for living in their lyrics. You could type in a burning life question at your desktop, hit a button, and receive a message from the Dan, as a sort of Magic Eight-Ball or Oblique Strategies approach to changing your thinking or actions, with every one of the commands given having been culled from their lyrics. And there were a lot of them. The original WWDWD website crashed ages and ages ago, but I was able to preserve its text, include the complete list of Dan Commands, and I posted the whole thing in my obituary for Walter Becker after he flew away in 2017. You can read the complete WWDWD text here.

The second Dan Fan project that Wilson and I created stemmed from our observation that the world(s) that Becker and Fagen created are deeply rooted in very precise places, a huge number of which are specifically named over the course of their nine studio albums. Steely Dan’s realities aren’t generic ones, but are rather set in their own places, precisely, which always makes them seem more real, more lived in, and more meaningful than less observational fare might have been. They are universal in their precision, and precise in the universality of their messages because of that. So we created a map of The Geography of Steely Dan, also long obliterated by the entropy of the Internet, though once again, I was able to preserve the text, which I also re-posted shortly after Walter Becker’s passing. We titled it “Show Me Where You Are,” from a lyrical line in 1973’s “King of the World.” And, of course, true to form, it’s in directive, command form. You can read the whole thing here.

Needless to say, reading Quantum Criminals has put me on deep Dan listening jag this week. Damn, damn, damn, were they good. I’d most strongly suggest that you nab yourself a copy of the book, and then pile up a good Steely Dan playlist, and embrace your inner Jerome Aniton (if you have to ask, you’ll never know) because one thing I can tell ya, Brother, he is here tonight, Mister Magnificent One is here, the Beautiful One is here, you little old pretty one, you here too. You know . . . whatever . . .

My copy. You cannot has.