Building Ears

Listening
thegrowlingwolf has abandoned The Daily Growler plush walnut-panelled offices high above Larry's Love 'Em or Leave 'Em Bar & Grill near the old Mudway Hall turnoff in the Turnip Grove Section of teevee's Hooterville, you remember. home of Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor, two of the worst actors to ever hit the junior screen, especially Eva Gabor--God, what a barbaric phony she was--phony yes/actress no; Eddie Albert? Wasn't he an old band singer?

Without the Wolfman's rant we here at the offices are in a quandry--

We want to write something like a schoolgirl would write. We mean we're tired of all this grueling analysis we do here day-in and day-0ut, going through the stupid newspapers, BuzzFlash, surfing through some blogsites looking for intelligence--yeah, sure--we also cruise through the many links at the bottom of BuzzFlash.

We tried to go through today in an aesthetic way rather than a reality way--F the news today--it's always all lies and therefore all unbelieveable, even the horrible fires in Jersey suburbs and the shoot outs in Newark or the mangled vehicular wrecks on the throughways, freeways, parkways, and many tollroads that are woven in concrete lace around this massive metro area.

Aesthetics?

We listened to music.

We went around the office and asked for CD reviews; here's what we got:

The Spicerack Kid:
I listened to a recording of Douglas Moore's Farm Journal--a CD reissue of an LP made in the 50s with the Oslo (Whaa?) Philharmonic under Alfredo Antonini--Jesus, an Italian conducting a bunch of kipper herrings in a very American piece of music. I couldn't finish it. I got to the middle of the third section of the piece called "Lamp Light" and gave up. The recording was just too dated--hell, too monaural. Moore died in 1969--this piece was written in 1948, so Moore never travelled much further than his opera Baby Doe.

Cecil the Dog Boy:
My listening is limited to whatever music I see and hear off teevee. I'm a Bill and Gloria Gaither nut. Who? you are asking. Bill's an old Texas boy, isn't he? Started out in rock and roll; were they the Oak Ridge Boys?--I know there were some Oak Ridge Boys back in the era these birds came from. Now Bill Gaither is boss of what he calls the Gaither Vocal Band--a bunch of Southern good ole boy rocker types turned Holy Roller--

But that's the kind of music I like. Like old fat Addi Patti or whatever the hell her name is singing with that skinny black guy--Wow, when they get into one of Bill and Gloria's classics--whoooboy, even I start to maybe believing in a higher being.

Good ole boy Holy music--white gospel. It comes from white gospel groups that evolved out of the hillbilly thirties--the Grand Ole Opry always had their sacred tunes--even hard-drinking, hi-livin' hillbillies like Hank Williams, Ernest Tubb, and George Jones all did "sacred" tunes during their otherwise honky tonk-tear-jerking-adultry-heavy drinkin'-fornicatin' segments on the hillbilly circuit.

Then there's old reruns of The Lawrence Welk Show--Hey-ho me Milwaukee Polish mazurkers, get the accordions out and let's polka. I love Lawrence. I once heard one of his shows where he did a version of One Toke Over the Line, a song about smoking tenderleaf tea. "Ah, one, anna two...." "Somebody please turn off the bubble machine."

Houston Highchair II
I love this little Peruvian boy who sings on the Mexican channels--Nick's his name, and he sings the same song over and over--I see it all day long--maybe his name is Rick--but I think it's Nick, Ramos, maybe--what the hell do I know, I'm a poet? Anyway, this Peruvian boy, I guess he's Peruvian, he wears an out-of-style man's felt hat with one of those wool serape-things wrapped around him--he may even wear a black suit with a tie--a cravat, you know. That's my boy! Little Nick singing his kiddy high-squeaky-voiced love song. You think I'd take love advice from an eleven-year-old Peruvian boy? Hey, he's probably muy rico from selling CDs on Telemundo which means, yes, he knows more about love than I do. Remember, I'm only a poet:

In enclosures
spindled
bubbling out of grooves
upended vibrations
calcified toto
hey, that's my mother

I think The Daily Growler for letting me have my say.

The Benevolent Male Natch Dancer
What happened to Norah Jones? She was supposed to rock the world with her so serious form of singing and playing the piano. Ravi Shankar's daughter out of wedlock or some such bullshit. Hey, Ravi lucked out when the Beatles went looking for a better religion than that Liverpool Christianity they grew up in--turned them into young fops, but that Christianity gave them a musical mode that rocketed them to top of the American charts--the British church mode--they took American rock and roll definitely away from the black inventors of it and made it pure white--pure British.

The Beatles put old Ravi and his ragas on stage with them. That boring son of a bitch could play that boring 50-stringed out-of-key guitar thing for hours without stopping--without changing anything--mono--mono--notttt--i--nous. But, hey, it made old Ravi rich and introduced him to some hip NYC babes and why not have a bouncing baby girl with one of those NYC chicks?

It is assumed, I suppose, that the children of entertainers are, too, geniuses and have their own careers to think about. Jerry Lewis's son, a dishrag limp rock and roller; two of Der Bingel's sons, and I'm speakin' of Bing Crosby--both his sons by his first wife had hits, one had a hit with old Bing himself--both boys ended up decadent--one of 'em killed himself, didn't he? Bing's second family did a lot better. I watched Bing's second wife in An Anatomy of Murder that great old Otto Preminger film with Jimmy Stewart playing the Upper Peninsula supposedly hayseed lawyer who of course in typical Hollywood fashion turns out to be a notch above Clarence Darrow against a very cocky lawyer from Lansing played by the amazin' George C. Scott, who was a little dude, a pint-size dude like Sylvester Stallone.

Remeber when Joko Yoko trotted out John Lennon's goofbag son Sean for his musical debut. Holy trash. Even Yokey Yoko plugged up her ears. What a joke--both Yoko and her son.

Or how about John's other son--Julian--hey, he was better than Sean that's for sure.

Or does anyone remember Rebbie Jackson--wasn't that her name? She did a Michael thing called "Centipede," a damn good little tune.

Is Janet Jackson a big fat cow now?

Little Michael damn sure had all the talent in that family. What a waste.

And From The Daily Growler Grabbag
Check out the Graveyard of Hoaxes here:

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoaxsitesgr.html