Flight

After the big election, now's the perfect time to see a slew of new movies on the big screen! 

First up: Flight (2012), directed by Robert Zemeckis, starring Denzel Washington and filmed in Georgia, USA.  Washington is superb, the movie is sharp and the soundtrack includes songs by John Lee Hooker ("Never Get Out of These Blues Alive") and the Rolling Stones ("Gimme Shelter," "Sympathy for the Devil"). 

Unexpectedly, there are parts of Flight that immediately reminded me of Werner Herzog's Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009) -- and that's a compliment.  

Overall, I liked Flight a lot more than Forrest Gump (1994).

Thanks to his strong but also nuanced performance, Denzel Washington deserves all the nominations for various awards that he'll undoubtedly garner. Let's not forget John Goodman, Don Cheadle and the rest of the film's crew -- all solid.

Official website: http://www.paramount.com/flight/

Today's Rune: Wholeness.

  

Sing the Blues on Every Decoration Day

Many layers of meaning attach themselves to Memorial Day and its worldwide equivalents. Soldiers, military veterans, wars -- of course. Mortality and contemplation. The meaning of life and the worth of a life. Loss. Remembrance.

In the past century, the technology of war has become increasingly sophisticated, greatly expanding in possibility through air power, advanced communications, high exposive armaments, submarines, tanks, laser-guided munitions, remotely piloted attack drones, poison gas, atomic weapons, mass electronic propaganda and mediated filtering. And, when nations coalesce together to fight "Total War" or "assymetrical war," everything is brought to bear against perceived enemies, including children, animals, woman and men together, not to mention their combined social spaces. 

Given mass killing realities like the 9/11/2001 attacks, the Holocaust, Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Nanking, the Armenian Genocide, indiscriminate firebombings of great cities, the Great War, and the U.S.-Vietnam War -- just to recall a handful of grisly atrocities perpetrated by human societies or tribes or groups in the past century -- it may be wise to expand the official scope and acknowldgement of Decoration Day, of Memorial Day, to include all societies touched by war and massacre, to think beyond the uniformed.

But hell, what do I know?  In the spirit of John Lee Hooker, "I sing the blues every Decoration Day." 

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune.   

The Man in Black Revisited

Here's another selection culled from the first five years of "Erik's Choice." This one was first posted on June 8, 2006:

Johnny Cash (2/26/1932-9/12/2003) was a man of faith, an American, a country and pop icon, a tortured but compassionate singer and songwriter. He sang songs -- partly originals, partly written by others -- that cover the range of human behavior and emotions. I’ve always thought that he was a close spiritual cousin to bluesman John Lee Hooker, coming from another world and yet essentially coming from the same world. And while I admire Johnny’s later work, the resurrection as it were, I can’t help but go back to the ones that grabbed me as a kid, songs like “Folsom Prison Blues,” “I Walk the Line,” “Ring of Fire,” and even “Hey Porter.” Not to mention a zillion others. My parents used to play Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison (1968) quite a bit, and I loved (and still love) every minute of it.

When I was in college, I read a lot of Albert Camus and Fyodor Dostoevsky, and have always wondered whether anyone else has drawn direct comparisons between a song like “Folsom Prison Blues” by the Man in Black and the short novel The Stranger (L'Etranger, 1942) by Camus or Crime and Punishment (1866) by Dostoevsky. It always seemed clear to me, anyway.

But I shot in man in Reno
Just to watch him die. . .

Some people find this chilling, but I find it merely honest – seriously, there but for the grace of God go I or any of us. I’ve certainly had fantasies of blowing away people I detest, and in the fantasies, at least, I’m more than happy to watch them die. Think of Ruth’s fantasies if you’re a Six Feet Under fan, taking out each of her exes, one at a time, with a happy little smile; or any other fantasy sequence like it. Johnny Cash never killed anyone, yet he could obviously understand and empathize with the impulse. So, too, Dostoevsky with the set up of Crime and Punishment, and with even closer alignment, Meursault’s killing of an Arab in Algeria also just to watch him die in Camus' The Stranger.

But I know I had it comin',
I know I can't be free,
But those people keep a-movin',
And that's what tortures me.

Meursault understands that through his exercise of freedom, he’s committed an act that is condemned by the laws of society, and thereby has lost his freedom. He only fully understands the idea of freedom when he is in prison, condemned to death.

In all truth, perhaps the only thing holding back mayhem is civil society, the existence of a legal system and prisons, and religious codes that proscribe killing, leading to haunting feelings of guilt and remorse for those who believe yet kill anyway.

Existentialists, of course, often wore black, as did nihilists, Beatniks, and punks. Johnny gave several reasons for his donning of the black, including that it made choosing outfits a lot simpler. I can go with any and all of his reasons. I also love black, as anyone who knows me well can attest. It may seem a bit funereal sometimes (like on a sunny afternoon), but so what? It’s a tragic world and we should always be thinking of the dead: let the dead bury the dead. Camus won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957 while still in his forties, but died in a car accident three years later. Dostoevsky was lined up to be shot in a firing squad in Russia, then given a last-miniute reprieve. Imagine what that does to a person – talk about post-traumatic
stress. . .

If you haven’t picked it up by now, I’m a strong advocate for mixing up genres and art forms, blending, and thinking beyond categories and ratings that have been, when you think about, handed down to us by God knows who. The canon and all – better a loaded cannon than a load of canon. Which is one of the things I love about the internet – it’s a free for all!

p.s. The Cure’s “Killing an Arab” is a short single cover of The Stranger. And since everybody in our immediate Michigan blogland seems to adore Johnny Cash, too, I’ll put in an additional vote for “Cocaine Blues,” as well. Among a zillion others.

I hear that train a'comin' . . . . .

Today's Rune: Joy.

Crazy Heart Live

Here's a shot I snapped of the Crazy Heart band with Jeff Bridges and T. Bone Burnett last month at the 8.0 ("Eight Oh"), not long after The Big Lebowski showing at the Modern. Felt like stepping inside the movie Crazy Heart, weirdly.

Burnett and Bridges earlier this year won Crazy Heart Academy Awards: T-Bone (with Ryan Bingham) for "The Weary Kind" and Bridges (Best Actor) for his depiction of Bad Blake. Burnett was awarded a Stephen Bruton Award at the Lone Star International Film Festival and Bridges was given a Lone Star Society Lifetime Achievement Award. Stephen Bruton, who died last year, worked on the Crazy Heart soundtrack and was buddies from way back with T-Bone Burnett; Bruton had been part of Kris Kristofferson's band (among others) and cut five solo albums.  










I had the opportunity to hear T-Bone Burnett speak for about an hour at the public library. There he talked a lot about his friendship with (Turner) Stephen Bruton, whose family owned Record Town, a "Beatnik record store" where they both learned a ton more about music. I'll pick up from there at some point, but meanwhile, "time out."

This past weekend, I actually went to Record Town and met Sumter Bruton III, Stephen's older brother and a veteran recording musician in his own right. Record Town, which was first opened by the Bruton family in 1957 after they moved to Fort Worth from New Jersey, is still going strong and still has a strong but laid back Bohemian vibe.

Sumter Bruton is a blast, throwing out stories left and right and going every which way with them. He spoke highly of Before Motown A History Of Jazz In Detroit 1920-1960 by Lars Bjorn with Jim Gallert (2001) and at one point, played a lick of John Lee Hooker's "Boogie Chillen'" on a guitar from behind the counter. Stories bounced from Black Ace to ZZ Top, about the intermingling of blues and country and so on. And he was the very guy who handed T-Bone Burnett the Stephen Bruton Award. "I had to think of things to say . . . like his full name is Joseph Henry Burnett." On a not unrelated note, Sumter Bruton has a reputation for playing in the tradition and style of an earlier T-Bone: Aaron Thibeaux T-Bone Walker.

Sumter is both affable and sharp, and others hung around listening, too. I picked up some Slim Harpo and Black Ace grooves while there.  In the words of Arnie, I'll be back.

Lightnin' Hopkins: Cryin' for Bread

Two idiosyncratic blues greats, Sam Lightnin' Hopkins and John Lee Hooker, both use the "cryin' for bread" trope.  Transcribing their lyrics is tricky, because they glide in and out of present, past and future, using irregular grammar and muttering some words so that at certain points I have no idea (at least yet) what they're singing or saying. Here's my first shot with Hopkins' "Cryin' for Bread" and second with Hooker's "No Shoes."  The Hopkins track was recorded in Houston, Texas, on April 11/12, 1968, with Lawrence Evans on bass, Ben Turner on drums and Cedric Hayward on piano.  It's a deeply wrought lyrical improvisation, involving two men, a woman, hungry kids, money and a matter of land ownership.

"Cryin' for Bread"  by Sam Lightnin' Hopkins

Sure is sad
I come home and
My baby was cryin' for bread
But when she told me
You oughta heard what poor Lightning said
I said it don't look like my baby
She ought to be cryin' for bread

She had takin' all my money
Whoah she throwed it all away
Whoah she had taken all poor Ligntnin's money
Do you know that girl had throwed it all away
That's the reason I come home and caught her cryin'
She was cryin' on one Saturday

But a women will do them things
You gotta watch her close
When you gone somebody will come by
And lead her to the door
... and my children done got tired
And they can't eat no more

He tell her never unless you go to bed with me
I let your whole family
Go down the drain just like old Monk and me
But that's something that people don't understand
What a woman will do to a man

Then he went in the house
And made him feel real good
Then she give him the money
Then holler at the kids that
I didn't do what I should
She done mistreated her whole family

All in the world and me is gone
Ah there ain't no tellin' how soon
Your Daddy will come home
But you take a woman, she's weak
She can't hardly help herself

I can pass the house with a little money
When you see it . . .
She said the children just come
And look at the money
And that man's hand
If I could overtake him and get it
We would own this land

But the children said to Mama, Papa
He doin' the best that he can
When Papa come in, I believe
He'll make us all . . .
That be my Daddy
Yes and them books said that he will . . .
I believe that he would be your husband
And will take care of his baby child

Yes but when Papa come in
This is what he see
He see the baby boy standing at the door
He would sure look at me
He said Daddy, there's been a man by here
Led Mama to the door

Papa rapped her across the head, and she said
I never do that no more
No, she wouldn't
'Cause everything in the world she got was gone
Well, that would be all right, you know
Them childrens can't live there by themselves

Compare with John Lee Hooker's "No Shoes" (1960). (Note: this plays briefly in the background during Ridley Scott's American Gangster [2007] in a scene where Frank Lucas gathers his family in Greensboro, North Carolina, establishing in mood how far he's come since childhood).  "No Shoes" makes no mention of a woman, but like "Cryin' for Bread" involves hungry children, a man, money and improvised living arrangements.

"No Shoes" by John Lee Hooker

No food on my table

And no shoes to go on my feet
No food on my table
And no shoes to go on my feet
My children cry for mercy
They ain’t got no place to call their own

Hard times, hard times
Hard times seem like a jealous thing
Hard times, hard times
Hard times seem like a jealous thing
If somebody don’t help me
And I just can’t be around free much long[er]

No shoes on my feet
And no food go on my table, oh no
It’s too sad
The children crying for bread. 

 Today's Rune: Journey.  Happy Birthday to Hubert Sumlin!

Many Lives Was Gone Down That Night: The Natchez Rhythm Club Fire

I've posted on songs about the Natchez Rhythm Club Fire of April 23, 1940, before, but since reading Luigi Monge's "DEATH BY FIRE: African American Popular Music on the Natchez Rhythm Club Fire"* and the creation of a new documentary** by Bryan Burch, it keeps coming up again. Why?

The catastrophe itself is comparable to the Richmond Theater Fire of December 26, 1811. The 1811 fire engulfed segregated white and black audiences during slavery times; African American fatalities were included in the subsequent memorial, but still in a segregated way. In the post-emancipation 1940 fire, all casualties were African American; unlike the earlier disaster, which was covered widely in white newspapers, the Natchez fire was almost exclusively covered (and in detail) by black-owned newspapers around the USA. Both fires left enduring impressions, but for different audiences.  

Monge catalogs eleven songs derived from the Natchez Rhythm Club Fire:

Lewis Bronzeville Five, "Mississippi Fire Blues" and "Natchez Mississippi Blues" (Chicago, 1940).
Gene Gilmore, "The Natchez Fire" (Chicago, 1949).
Baby Doo [Leonard Castron], "The Death of Walter Barnes" (Chicago, 1940).
Charles Heffer, Jr., "The Natchez [Theater] Fire Disaster" (Clarksdale, Mississippi, 1942).
Howlin' Wolf [Chester Burnett], "The Natchez Burnin'" (Chicago, 1956) and "Natchez is Burning" (unreleased, 1968).
Robert Gilmore, "Wasn't That a Awful Day in Natchez" ("prob." Plaqemines, Louisiana, 1956-1957).
John Lee Hooker "Natchez Fire [Burnin']" (Detroit, 1959), "Fire at Natchez" (Los Angeles, 1961), "The Mighty Fire" (Newport Festival, 1963).

Monge mentions more recent cover versions, as well.

*In Nobody Knows Where the Blues Come From: Lyrics and History edited by Robert Springer (University Press of Mississippi, 2006), pages 76-107.

**The Rhythm Club Fire (2011).  Trailer below.



Today's Rune: Possessions.

James R. Tomlinson: Adopted Behaviors

Adopted Behaviors: Flash Memoir, Short Stories & Flash Fiction by James R. Tomlinson. [Detroit]: Motor City Burning Press, 2010.

FLASH MEMOIR
“The Trigger Man & His Accomplice”
“A Creative Nonfiction Escape”
“This One’s for the Birds”

SHORT STORIES
“Adopted Behaviors”
“Bread & Water Revival”
“Thumbprints, Deadlines”
“Jail Bait”
“Floss”

FLASH FICTION
“The Sober Truth about Tyler & Zachary on Bickerstaff Street”
“Animus”
“Pitch”
“Still Life in Detroit”
“If You’d Only Pay Attention”

Jim Tomlinson intones many of the selections included here with a wry -- and sly -- voice, reminding me of William S. Burroughs (especially Junky). There’s almost always an intentionally displaced sense of time and space as in Costa-Gavras films like Z and Missing.*

“Jail Bait” reminds me in part of Howlin’ Wolf’s “Commit a Crime,” but inverting Coumadin for Red Devil Lye -- and reversing the intent of the woman from loathing to affection.

Tomlinson’s choices for names are interesting. Is it synchronicity or coding? I don’t know. But take the first line in this story:

“Joshua Liddy swallows rat poison and rushes out the door to beat the high school bus to the corner of Samsa and Conner” – to peep at a young musician he calls Greta (like Hansel and Gretel?) 

Liddy makes me think of G. Gordon Liddy; Samsa, of Gregor Samsa from Franz Kafka’s Die Verwandlung / The Metamorphosis. So far as I can tell looking at a Detroit street map, there’s a Connor but not a Samsa; I have no idea where "Jolene and Lareby“ might be, either. Then there’s the character named Rizzo – bringing to mind Rizzo the Ratso from Midnight Cowboy. Rizzo likes vermiculite:

"Vermiculite," he repeats, "helps the plants to grow. I told you that. . ."  

It’s fun to get caught in the mesh, looking for new clues, absorbing the tales entirely and also deconstructing them.

From "Thumbprints, Deadlines,“ here’s a deftly detailed  working class scene – it would seem as truthful an observation of neighbors in my Pennsylvania hometown during the 1960s as for the narrator in Hazel Park, Michigan: 

My childhood home two blocks away, a bluish-grey bungalow with a fatigued yellow porch and rusted-metal awning. From that porch, I last saw my father standing in the front yard, sporting a hunter’s orange cap and matching rain slicker; a sot with a balled-up fist clutching mother by her frizzy blond hair while she swung her cast-iron frying pan, not in defense, but as a tool of her emotion. You turned down overtime, didn’t you?

To quote JR: "Adopted Behaviors is . . . related in some way to the human condition and/or prison experience." Also note: "He teaches convicted felons for the Michigan Department of Corrections." 

Though the examples given above are from the longer pieces, I like JR's flash memoirs and flash fiction even more. They are pithy, too.

It’s good to see Motor City Burning Press revving up. Before you can say John Lee Hooker, more productions, I suspect, will be wooshing down the road.

http://motorcityburningpress.blogspot.com/2010/07/mcbp-debut-adopted-behaviors.html

*Free associating, these things surface after re-reading Adopted Behaviors: Deadpan agency. Culpability. Accomplices – complicities – implications -- accomplishments. Everything is part of the dynamic. PoV remains actually involved while seemingly detached. Shared ownership of what happens, part of the mix. Complexity.

 
Today's Rune: Harvest.

He Gotta Go to Vietnam

From John Lee Hooker's Urban Blues (1967).  Hope everyone's had a good April 1st!

Today's Rune: Movement.

The Battle of Hastings Street

Hastings Street used to be a very happening place in Paradise Valley, Detroit, going way back to the earlier part of the twentieth century. Much of it was destroyed by the routing of I-94 (Edsel Ford Freeway) and I-75 (Chrysler Freeway) some fifty years ago.  But not all of it. What's left of Hastings Street goes from East Grand Boulevard to just beyond Harper Avenue near the highways.  In the photo I took above, the eye can see down almost the entire length of Hastings Street's remnant as of the first decade of this century.

Battle of Hastings Street: Raw Detroit Blues and R & B from Joe's Record Shop, 1953-1954 (2006) is a 24-track UK release featuring John Lee Hooker associates like Eddie Kirkland and many others. The title appeals to English sensibilities -- referring to the 1066 victory of William the Conqueror as well as Hastings Street, Detroit, both largely forgotten or unknown among Americans, I suspect.




















Harper Avenue fragment with pilings, running into the freeway interchange embankment.  "Progress." In the 1940s, Sportree's Music Bar was at 2014 Hastings Street, near Gratiot Avenue. During The Great Depression, Ace Bar was at 3678 Hastings near the Mack Avenue intersection, and Club Tuxedo was at 4758 Hastings not far from East Warren.

Today's Rune: Signals.

John Lee Hooker in Detroit: The Women In My Life

Today at work I had John Lee Hooker's Detroit year tracks playing in the background; "The Women In My Life" from the early 1950s jumped out. It's a nice-sounding song, pretty mellow for JLH. Sometimes it's called (as above) "Four Women In My Life." That's because, as the song observes, he loves four women: his mother, his sister, his sweetheart and his wife . . . (Sometimes "wine" is substituted for wife, but last time I checked, wine is not a woman).

This reminds me of the Soul Queen of New Orleans Irma Thomas' "You Can Have My Husband But Please Don't Mess With My Man:"

Now, when I was with my husband he was really mean
But when I'm with my man he treats me like a queen

You can have my husband
But please don't mess with my man
I'm telling all you women . . .

Today's Rune: Possessions.

The Adventures of John Lee Hooker

A good overview of my favorite bluesman -- Boogie Man: The Adventures of John Lee Hooker in the American Twentieth Century (2000, 2002) by Charles Shaar Murray. Lots of details about his Detroit years, and about Detroit in those years. One of the places he lived was on Pennsylvania, just off Mack Avenue. And let's not forget Hastings Street, now site of an Amtrak crossing, oft-stolen street signs and large abandoned buildings -- what little is left of it.  

The book might have been compressed somewhat, cut by fifty pages or so, but I've kept it over the years.

My favorite jazz player is John Coltrane, originally from Hamlet, North Carolina, but also well associated with Philadelphia. How about you -- any favorites in either genre or from either city?

Today's Rune: Partnership.

No Shoes

I've never seen the lyrics to John Lee Hooker's "No Shoes" (1960) transcribed, so here's my quick and dirty take. It's simple but deep as is often the case with Hooker. This one is as delivered on the Travelin' album and later compilations. The great bluesman -- who made his breakthrough in Detroit -- could barely read or write, yet he composed scores and scores of memorable songs.

Aside: "No Shoes" appears briefly in the background during Ridley Scott's American Gangster (2007) in a scene where Frank Lucas gathers his family in Greensboro, North Carolina.

If anyone has any suggestions for tweaking this transcription, by all means . . .

No food on my table
And no shoes to go on my feet
No food on my table
And no shoes to go on my feet
My children cry for mercy
They ain’t got no place to call their own

Hard times, hard times
Hard times seem like a jealous thing
Hard times, hard times
Hard times seem like a jealous thing
If somebody don’t help me
And I just can’t be around free much long[er]

No shoes on my feet
And no food go on my table, oh no
It’s too sad
The children crying for bread

Today's Rune: Journey, Partnership.

John Lee Hooker: Urban Blues

A great album: John Lee Hooker's Urban Blues (1967). This is the one that features "The Motor City is Burning," a personal take on the '67 Detroit Riots (brazenly politicized in the MC5 cover version -- but this one is much better, the real thing). JLH has a powerful electric sound on this album, with a very raw feel. In addition to "The Motor City is Burning," songs like "Mr. Lucky" and "Backbiters and Syndicaters" stand out -- the first is kind of creepy (imagine Mr. Lucky -- angel or devil? --standing in your room, telling you how lucky your life will be) and the second is just plain cool.

"Hot Spring Water" is a two-part mini-story about a dude trying to contain his deranged girlfriend/wife; and "Cry Before I Go" vs. "Think Twice Before You Go" are flipsides of a man leaving a woman and a woman leaving a man. In other words, in this one album John Lee Hooker writes a whole book on life. For an extra period piece, there's always, "I Gotta Go to Vietnam/(I Don't Wanna Go to Vietnam)."

Love Detroit! Go Red Wings! Good luck to GM! And a salute to Motor City Burning Press!

Today's Rune: Signals.

Detroit After Dark: Maximum Overload

Checked out Motor Lounge in Hamtramck for an anniversary party, March 3, 2000. Know the date only because I still have a labeled “Maximum Overload” cd of that night's industrial/techno tracks, many of which still sound uber-cool (while others sound dumb and dated). Motor's been shuttered since 2002 (after a six year shelf life). There were rooms of different sizes with what seemed like hundreds of people dancing, some very obviously pumped on methylenedioxymethamphetamine. People were making out on couches around the edges; the main bar bustled with activity. I remember drinking a few pints of Guinness and "dancing" (if you haven't sampled such music, it's an odd exercise to try actual dancing with such a nonstop hammering musical backdrop as provided by blended techno and industrial). I guess it's more accurate to say, pseudo-danced for what seemed liked hours but was probably one solid hour. In a nutshell, Motor was weird, but interesting. Another couple there with us seemed completely freaked out by it all, which cracked me up at the time.
















Then there was the Garfield, in Sugar Hill (across from the present-day MOCAD,or Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit). It operated as an underground after-hours club around the same time as Motor; you had to pass through armed guards to get inside, down to the basement. I got in thanks to an Irishman who was completely nuts but knew his way around such shady enterprises. The place was raided several times, arrests were made as in the blind pig days of Prohibition, but it was fascinating to see how such a place could thrive regardless. I'm pretty sure the building has since "burned down," replaced with a pile of rubble.













During my explorations of Detroit after dark, I've tried to find remnants of the Detroit Playboy Club formerly located at 1014 East Jefferson Ave., but to no avail. Seems that nothing's left but photographs and memories.

On the other hand, I have been a few times to the Detroit-Leland Hotel, which was built in the late 1920s and subsequently hummed with considerable gangster activity, Jimmy Hoffa sightings, and more recently, the Leland City Club or just plain City Club underneath, at its base, a mostly Goth music scene last time I went. Bizarre scene, bizarre brightly colored drinks in plastic cups once you passed the security checkpoint in front. A lot of Bauhaus ("Bela Lugosi's Dead"), Nine Inch Nails, Siouxsie & the Banshees. etc., open well into the morning hours.

Today's Rune: Flow.

The Last Days of Emperor Bootsie

Here's another mashup: this one's a timely little mutation of Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Are Made for Walking" (1966), artist via YouTube.

With flying footwear so much in the news lately, it must have been synchronicity that I'd copied the embed code for this and also downloaded John Lee Hooker favorites including "No Shoes" and "Democrat Man" (1960) just before the news flash from Iraq.

A snippet of "Democrat Man" goes like this:

I know I'll get shoes, I'll get clothes
when the Democrats get back in again
Vote them, vote them in
I'm a Democrat man, I'm a Democrat man . . .
It won't be long, whoa yeah
I'm a Democrat , I'm a Democrat man
And I'll be until the day I die . . .

The Ides of December. Today's Rune: Possessions.

Microloans and Remixes

[Photo: Courtesy of Pro Mujer]

I've read so many accounts of students -- and know so many people -- who've bounced checks, that it makes me wonder. Turns out commercial banks are not often a friend of the typical small account holder. In fact, many banks and credit companies count on defaults, bounces, insufficient funds fees, overdraft charges, and "courtesy protection" to make money. Break the backs of the poor or the down-and-out via a daisy chain of defaults, a nightmarish domino effect, in order to give profits to the big investors. This is a predatory practice. More people should band together to fend off getting the shaft of late fees and overdraft fees and over-the-limit fees. And those who need a small investment loan to get something going should be able to get it without getting screwed by high interest rates.

And there is a way around conventional practices: Microloans. And credit unions. Bartering. Swapping. Individual loans. Built on trust and human relationships. And for those who are short on rent money or other bills, why not bring back the Rent Party? No need to feel embarrassed. Invite people over, ask for a small contribution in food, drink, cash. Have a party! John Lee Hooker may no longer be available, but maybe someone of talent could help in the entertainment department. Better than feeling abused or considering suicide, certainly. All aboard for fun time!













Another thing to explore is how copyright and remixing intersect. Lawrence Lessig's Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy is an excellent place to start. Give full credit where one can, and proceed cheerfully and creatively. It's a whole new world and at this point all bets are off.

Today's Rune: Defense.

Grinding Halt

Volatility seems the new status quo. Isn't that an oxymoron?

The Motor City is going to have to shift gears dramatically if it's going to remain a major city. Otherwise, more and more of Michigan will be going, going, gone . . .

Even The New York Times notices, a lot (for much more on the above, see the November 23, 2008 edition). The House of Cards is collapsing all down the line.

Down on the street level, areas to explore during the present turmoil might include ventures in urban gardening, expanding urban commons, production of neighborhood-based clean water filtering systems, hydroponic gardening, and various infrastructure projects. (Lancaster Hydroponics: Indoor Horticulture Specialists are British, but their systems can be adapted to North America).

Imagine a whole new meaning to Made in Detroit . . . and imagine it quickly, if you would be so kind . . .

Otherwise, Detroit and Michigan are going to disappear into The Cure's eerie 1979 song, "Grinding Halt:"



Today's Rune: Wholeness.

Psychotic Reactions

Got to see Almost Famous again recently, reminding me of Lester Bangs, Creem Magazine (http://www.creemmagazine.com/) and the Detroit music scene.


Hey, man -- John Lee Hooker, Marvin Gaye, Iggy Pop -- what else does Detroit need to do a la the music scene? Add Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, Madonna, The White Stripes, Industrial -- what else does anyone in the sane world need?

Well, ya know how it is . . .

One of the actual bands in Almost Famous is The Allman Brothers . . .

Today's Rune: The Self.

Simple Twist of Fate

Times like these, it's good to reach back and remember how things were. Today's upheavals, yesterday's Great Depression of the 1930s.

As I see people pick up and go now, it's easy to think of my Mom's Uncle Curt riding a motorcycle West out of Pennsylvania, having to ditch it halfway across the country, working on a rail line, joining the Merchant Marines.

It's easy also to think of Del France, my Dad's Dad, leaving the coal mining region around Staunton, Illinois, making his way to Chicago, hitchhiking, determining that wherever the next car was headed, there he'd go.

The driver that picked him up headed for Kenosha, Wisconson.

Where he got a job at Nash Motors as a test car driver (that's a 1931 model Nash car pictured above), got a room next door and met his future wife, Alexandra Drougge (my grandmother), and her Swedish-born parents.

During The Great Depression, masses of people migrated for work and survival, and my grandfather and great uncle were two such people.


When Del got word from my Dad's Uncle Dennis Wilson that Autocar (manufacturer of heavy duty trucks like the one above) was hiring, he headed to Ardmore, Pennsylvania, and that's where my Dad was born. Later movement would bring my Dad into proximity of my Mom in the little twin cities of Stroudsburg and East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. It'd all started during The Great Depression with individual decisions and simple twists of fate . . . . . Curt going one way, Del going the other.

Today's Rune: Strength. P.S. Happy 94th Birthday to my maternal grandmother, Catherine Currier!

Tupelo

First visit to Tupelo, Mississippi, August, 1982:

[My sister Linda's notes are sparse here:]

Bynum Indian Mounds (700 A.D.), Natchez Trace. Small, almost conical mounds (proto-burial mounds).


Tupelo Fields -- neat small groovy park, site of Confederate attack [in 1864] . . . 2 miles from birthplace of Elvis Presley on Hwy 6. [One of the most helpful short biographies I've read since then is Bobbie Ann Mason's Elvis Presley, 2002, part of the Penguin Lives series now].


On to Brices Crossroads [American Civil War battle, 1864]. Stinky country (literally). Brices Crossroads a quiet spot like South Lowell [N.C.] -- old oak churchyard, dusk. Baldwin has a museum.


[Tupelo is featured in songs by John Lee Hooker ("Tupelo," 1960), Van Morrison ("Tupelo Honey," 1971), and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds ("Tupelo") Cave's version of the birth of Elvis in Tupelo (creepy and unsetlling) first came out in 1985.

Hooker's version is a variation on traditional blues takes recalling the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and Tupelo's horrific tornadic disaster of April 5-6, 1936. It goes in part like this:

The great flood of Tupelo, Mississippi

Did you read about the flood? It happened long time ago, in a little country town, way back in Mississippi

It rained and it rained, it rained both night and day

The people got worried, they began to cry, "Lord have mercy, where can we go now?"

There were women and there was children, screaming and crying, "Lord have mercy and a great disaster, who can we turn to now, but you?"

It happened one evenin', one Friday evenin', a long time ago, it rained and it started rainin'

The people of Tupelo, out on the farm gathering their harvest,

a dark cloud rolled, way back in Tupelo, Mississippi, hmm, hmm . . .].

[After we left Tupelo in 1982, we headed on down the line, aiming to reach Shiloh, Tennessee, by the next day.]

Booneville, Mississippi. Sad bebop, old generation, age 17.

Corinth, Mississippi at the Southern Hotel [Southern Motel] for $18.00 . . .

Today's Rune: Journey.