Here Comes the Man

"Well, they told me to come on over


I made my way to New York


And they tried to have me deported


Stop me from getting work


Blacklisted me all over


They were vicious and they were mean


They were big time operators


Baby, on the music business scene."

- Van Morrison, "Big Time Operators"

It is well documented that Bing Crosby was a ferocious father who beat his sons and enstilled years of depression into his entire family. Yet every December, hundreds of thousands of Americans put on White Christmas and lose themselves in the magic of the season to Crosby's swooning voice "roasting chestnuts" and "dreaming of a white Christmas." It is safe to say that many are completely oblivious to the fact that Crosby liked to use his sons like a chain-hung Everlast bag. I ask you then, do people really care about the man behind the music? Especially when the music is so good?

Thursday was St. Patrick's Day and BreakThru Radio has dedicated all things this week to the Emerald Isle. To do my part, I want to try to expose the truth behind a rumor regarding an Irish musician that only some of you young listeners may have heard, few of you may actually know more than a few songs by, and most of you probably won't have a clue who I am talking about: Van Morrison. (I realize I am not giving BTR's listeners much credit here. My editor already scolded me, and in all fairness, he is right to do so. I just find it infuriating when people find out I am a huge Van Morrison fan and start whistling the melody to "Brown Eyed Girl". It's like thinking The Beatles stopped recording after "Love Me Do".) Here is what one music blogger has to say about 'Van the Man': "Van Morrison is a cantankerous, paranoid asshole who thinks everyone is stealing his ideas." Okay, that is pretty much to the point; but is it true? Well, as a staunch Van Morrison fan of over 15 years, owner of 33 Van albums, three DVDs, having read two biographies on the man, and seeing him perform over five times, I can pretty much confirm that from everything I have seen and learned--yep, the guy is a real Irish prick!

But who cares?

Like so many great artists before him, Van Morrison is a victim of being identified with only one or two pieces of his work--most commonly "Brown Eyed Girl" and then maybe "Gloria" or "Moondance", or perhaps "Baby Please Don't Go" (which, ironically enough, is a song he did not even write but adapted from American bluesman, John

Lee Hooker). Understandably, Morrison gets very annoyed at the banal expectations of his more pedestrian fans to perform those specific 'hits' from fifty years ago. I was once at one show in Toronto where Van opened up with "Tupelo Honey" and immediately followed, without break, into "Brown Eyed Girl." Knowing these Morrison-identifiers are usually saved for the encore, I was both shocked and pleased at his decision to get the crap out so early. When "Brown Eyed Girl" ended, Van looked aimlessly to the side of the stage, took a sip from a nearby glass, and announced something to the effect of: "Now that we got that shit outta the way, we can get on with the real show." Half the audience cheered as the rest sat dumbfounded, understanding neither the man's accent nor the truthful pleasure in his jest.

(Interluding anecdote: The song "Brown Eyed Girl" was originally written, recorded and titled as "Brown-Skinned Girl" by Van Morrison in March of 1966. Morrison begrudgingly had to change the lyrics because of the implied content. The song, "an exuberant combination of R&B and pop with a nostalgic lyric celebrating the euphoria of young love,"[1] was a little too risqué of a topic [inter-racial relations] for 1966 and Morrison lost his will to fight Producer Bert Berns' insistence on "radio playability.")

Van Morrison's attitude towards life and his music is a combination of his own eccentricity and abuse at the hands of the industry. For an only child growing up in the civil unrest of Belfast during the middle decades of the twentieth century, Van had an astonishing talent and obsession for American music (specifically the Delta Blues). He became insistent on 'making it in America' after breaking from his founding band, Them (who were known for their macho and pugnacious attitude towards the burgeoning 'pop' industry) because of their less-than-shared vision of musical competence.

In 1966, Van made the move to New York City where he was quickly picked up by Producer Berns of Bang Records (a partner of Atlantic). As a ruthless businessman eager to feed off the new Irish talent behind Them's success, Burns quickly recorded Van's new single and soon-to-be US Top 10 hit "Brown Eyed Girl" (1966). Upon arriving in New York, Morrison recorded a number of singles for Berns who robbed him of the royalties through a deceptive contract and sent him packing back to Ireland flat broke. Even worse, Berns coerced Morrison into signing a "five-year publishing deal for a non-recoupable advance of $500." It was a deal Morrison would never emotionally recover from, later describing the arrangement as "professional suicide."[1]

Already fragile because of his extraordinary quirkiness and lack of social skills, Morrison's opinion of the music industry was ruined for life, and with good cause. What makes Morrison so admirable is the way in which he channeled that anger and hatred into fifty years of amazing albums. Watch this video, recorded in Canada in 2008, to get a sense of Morrison's continued disdain for "the record industry" still, forty-four years later:

It is a fair statement to presume that anyone who is a serious Van Morrison fan is most likely aware of his reputation around the industry; both within musician circles and fans alike. A review of one of Morrison's more recent unauthorized biographies, (one I have not read) titled Can You Feel the Silence (2003), remarks how the biographer "makes no bones" about Morrison's "even-handed manner," claiming that "Morrison may have made much more great music than bad, but it always comes with the caveat that Van the Man is essentially difficult and nasty." Biographer Clinton Heylin immediately sets the tone to his book, opening with a Morrison quote on himself; "'Hello darlin', I never said I was a nice guy.'" Yet, the response I usually like to give to the one in one hundred people who know Van's legendary temper is, "Who cares? Do you know anything about his music beyond five popular songs from the Sixties? The man is a musical genius."

Sir Harold Nicolson, the British writer, diplomat, and politician, once said of the Irish: "The Irish do not want anyone to wish them well; they want everyone to wish their enemies ill." This may be what best sums up Van Morrison: a young Irish musician burned early on in the ugly corporate world of American record labels who is unlikely to forgive and certain to never forget. Again, though, I ask: "Who cares?"

Van Morrison is a man about music and can do without the rest of the bullshit. In one interview, he remarked how image, identity, and name mean nothing. "Can you play?" is all he asks of anyone. In Van's world, either you can or you can't. That's it. No questions asked. The circus of frenzy that attaches itself to the music industry is what makes Morrison so miserable, and in return, so crass.

'Just shut up and play,' is his mantra. And everything from the breaking down of his songs to an attempt to understand the motive behind each metaphor inflates irritation. Van Morrison will be the first to tell anyone that nothing else matters but the music:

"'No, no, no, because, it's not about me,' Morrison said with a vehemence that didn't sound defensive--as his denials, of anything, so often do. 'It's totally fictional. These are short stories, in musical form--put together of composites, of conversations I heard, things I saw, and movies, newspapers, books, and comes out as stories. That's it,' he said, though already his tone had shifted to that of utter wonder that people won't accept this. 'There's no more.'"[3]

[1] Rogan, Johnny. Van Morrison: No Surrender (London: Vintage Books, 2006) Pg. 199.
[2] ibid.
[3]Marcus, Greil. When That Rough Goes Riding (New York: Public Affairs, 2010) Pg. 140.

The Inequalities of Classification

Go into the iTunes Music Store on your MacBook or iPhone and type in a search for "World Music." Here are the first six albums that come up within that organized genre: Irish Drinking Songs, Moulin Rouge Songs of France, Sicilian Folk Festival, Songs of Israel, Paraguayan Harp Vol. 1, and Little Singers of Tokyo. I don't think you have to be a music scholar to hear the difference between an 'Irish drinking song' like "Biddy Mulligan" and "Kisha-Poppo", the Japanese child choir choral.

I have written on the taxonomy of music for BTR before, and this week being 'Globalization & Culture Week' presents the perfect opportunity to re-hatch the topic. Understanding there is an innate part of the human psyche that has each one of us subconsciously seek ways to organize items and thoughts in our head as to better understand their components, I still ask the question; "How necessary is this practice?" When you go to visit a friend living in a new town and they take you out to a place you have never been before, before getting ready you ask the question, "What kind of place is it?" In this scenario, the question serves as part of a greater purpose--"what should I wear?" Therefore the attempt to predetermine whether the place is a restaurant, English pub, sports bar, or full on nightclub actually plays a role in related decision-making. The point to be drawn here is that the organization of an object can serve a valuable purpose and thus not all practices of taxonomy are moot.

Music is not as concrete however, and when dealing with the abstract, the idea of organization under rubric becomes a tougher concept to sell. If anything, it can or should be linked to 'mood.' For example, when you get comfortable on your couch at the end of a week and flip on Netflix, the categorization of films in the Netflix library most likely assists you in determining which film you want to watch by forcing you to ask yourself, "What am I in the mood for?" Even still, the programmers at Netflix take a little too much liberty with their film-buff lexicon, offering genres like "Independent Romantic-Comedy Heist Film with a Twist," or my personal favorite, "Movies You'll Like." How is this a qualified genre when Netflix doesn't even know what mood I am in?

Record companies originally began to organize their product in categories so their customers could more easily navigate about the store in search of items they intended on purchasing. The point must not be lost on the reader here - the creation and development of organizing music by "type" was a practice in customer service and increasing sales revenue and had very little to do with sound. If someone walks into a music store looking for John Coltrane, they would be more likely to purchase an Ornette Coleman album that is filed next to Coltrane in the "C" column of the Jazz Section than if the entire store was merely alphabetized and next to Coltrane sat Coldplay, Edwyn Collins, Jason Collett and Sam Cooke. The business model was simple: learn the customer's musical taste, steer him/her down the desired aisle like cattle, and sell more records.

(Interluding anecdote: Some of you may find it interesting to learn that before Record Shops, music was sold in the furniture section of large department stores because radio/turntables were seen as pieces of furniture and the records were sold alongside them as add-ons to the purchasing of a new home stereo by furniture salesmen. I can guarantee, there was no "music-by-genre" then.)

Many artists who get categorized under the "World Music" heading find it ever more offensive than I have already discussed. According to an online BBC News article, Nitin Sawhney, a UK artist who was named winner of the Boundary-Crossing award at BBC Radio 3's inaugural Awards for World Music in 2002, is "less willing to accommodate the whims of retailers, media and shoppers."

Sawhney applies race-theory to the categorization of World Music: "The phrase creates a 'racist' category ... that lets people sideline music by artists who are not in the same style or from the same background as the majority," Shawney told the BBC. "It's always flattering and complimentary to get awards ... [b]ut at the same time I don't understand the concept of judgementalism [sic] in the arts. I always think of the arts as being about personal, emotional expression. I tend to think that music is the place that doesn't have barriers or prejudices, but it's amazing how people try to force their barriers or prejudices onto music."

While I personally would not go as far as to apply theories of racism to the categorization of music, I do empathize with Sawhney's ulterior motive--that being, to do away with concepts of "judgment in the arts" altogether. How can one major grouping like "rock" or "jazz" have so many subtypes that everything from Icelandic prayer to Aboriginal didgeridoo be classified as 'World Music?'

I prefer the laid back, disinterested approach of Spanish-French guitarist Manu Chao who says it is a "lazy label," and UK-born African singer Susheela Raman who calls the idea of a World Music genre "ridiculous." Regardless of what I, or any other artists think on the matter, "the term 'world music' has already become well established" in the industry. "There are magazines and festivals dedicated to it, and the music business has used it as a category to measure sales since 1998." Furthermore, some "2.5 million albums from the world category were sold in the UK that year."

It is great that sales are up in the category. Without doubt, the explosion of file sharing and online purchasing of music has made just about any piece of music, from anywhere in the world, accessible to all people of the earth. It may be too early to tell, but one can argue that the more we move into online music sharing as the norm and get away from large record labels trying to find a mathematical method that easily track sales in order to improve revenue streams, the closer we will be to getting rid of the concept of genre completely. And then what would we be left with?

Sound. Collaborative, harmonic, cooperative sound.

"It will change your life; I swear"

In 1967, a mostly unknown folk duo from New York City performing under their last names provided a soundtrack to a daring screen adaptation by director Mike Nichols based on a 1963 novel by Charles Webb titled The Graduate. In the words of the pop culture blog Sarcasm Alley, the music and lyrics they produced "not only complimented the film, but enhanced it." For the young sixties generation that was on the dawn of a massive breakthrough in the sexual revolution, these traditional, peaceful folk-ballads dubbed over coming-of-age themes of adultery, temptation, and desire were an odd but hauntingly beautiful selection for the film. This is all without mention for what it did to the careers of the now- legendary duo, Simon & Garfunkel, as musicians and newly christened pop stars.

In 1967, the term "indie" as a music genre was far from even being imagined. The Graduate, however, sparked a fairly new concept in music promotion and that was the idea that a film studio and a record label could collaborate to push up and coming musicians by playing multiple tracks of a single artist in newly released films targeted to a youthful demographic. This subliminal marketing practice held court, really, until the 1990s when moviegoers and music-lovers alike began to notice the obvious relationship between film style and soundtrack. This is not to say that film genre and music genre did not pair well until the 1990s--anything from Jailhouse Rock to The Man With the Golden Arm would prove otherwise. It is just to push through the point that film and music may have never worked so well together to sell a subcultural zeitgeist of the "indie" category as it has in the last twenty years. Arguably, two films kick it all off: Reality Bites and Singles.

I apologize to my reader for quoting at length here, but one of the reviews I stumbled upon says everything there is to say about the new-wave nineties soundtrack as succinctly as I could ever put it. Here is what reviewer 'Lambchop' from epinions.com has to say about Singles: "The years 1990 through 1992 were banner years in the world of rock n' roll. Now considered the peak of the 'grunge' era, it yielded albums from massively popular acts Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains and Soundgarden in addition to somewhat less known but equally noteworthy bands including Screaming Trees, Mudhoney, and Mother Love Bone. After 1992, the 'Seattle Sound' (as it was also known) became the MTV version of rock n' roll but before then it was raw, real, and angry. It was everything that rock music should be. There are few compilations that truly capture the spirit of the era. One collection that managed that feat is the soundtrack to Singles. The film also did a fair job at capturing the scene and the generational angst." Singles was to the grunge generation who grew up in the 1990s what Garden State would be to the indie generation growing up in the 2000s.

"What are you listening to?" asks a coy and self-doubtful Zach Braff.

"The Shins. Ya know 'em?" answers the adorably wired and dorky Natalie Portman.

"No."

"You gotta hear this one song, it will change your life; I swear.

When actor Zach Braff places the oversized headphones upon his 'tête,' some clever film and sound editing follows that "changes the lives" of many young kids hearing The Shins for the first time. Garden State quickly became an underground cult classic after its release in August 2004. The soundtrack was equally successful, winning a Grammy for "Best Compilation Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media" in 2005 and launching the mainstream acceptance of such indie standards as The Postal Service, Nick Drake, and Iron & Wine. It even had shed some indie cred on the Brit-Pop sensation of the day, Coldplay. (Ironically enough, for this article anyhow, the soundtrack also featured a Simon and Garfunkel tune--"The Only Living Boy in New York").

I could go on to list so many other indie films that have helped push new bands, like what Juno did for Kimya Dawson and the Moldy Peaches, or what 500 Days of Summer did for She & Him, but as always is the case with these articles, brevity is golden. Of course, there is another film-soundtrack genre all on its own that hasn't been discussed whatsoever here. That is the trend for one single band to provide the entire soundtrack to a movie, especially for those movies whose narratives (fictional or otherwise) feature those musicians. An example of this would be the Irish-made Once or the Canadian-made This Movie is Broken which features music by Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglova, and Broken Social Scene, respectively. But that is a whole other article unto itself.

Ya Dig?

Just about anyone who knows me well can tell you what my all-time favorite DVD is. In fact, I love this movie so much that I have taken to the habit of being quite a philanthropist with it. Meaning, anyone with whom I meet and who shows a keen interest in its subject matter, I give them my copy and set out to buy another. I must be on my seventh or eighth copy by now. Spreading the greatness of The Last Waltz is well worth the $9.99 eight times over.

When I set out to write on this topic, though, I had to do some serious introsepctin' -- what makes Scorsese's 1975 documentary on The Band's last concert so magnificent? I admit, I am biased: I love The Band, and I love all the guest appearances who showed up that night to help bring the boys home just as much. So my opinion of the film was tainted even before the first time I ever saw the opening title card: "This Film Should Be Played LOUD!" It was expected that I, along with any other seventies classic rock fan, is going to appreciate the documentary. Yet the question is a pertinent one, does the music make up for any lack of camera technique or the overall quality of the filmmaking? How much can a film be judged beyond the quality of the subject?

The music documentary is not as old of a film genre as we may unconsciously think. Arguably, the first music documentary to make its mark on both the public and film-critic stage was D.A. Pennebaker's 1967 Bob Dylan documentary . Don't Look Back was a pivotal moment in filmmaking for two reasons: 1) it was among the first uses of the 'fly on the wall' cinematography technique in popular cinema; 2) it began a new craze in which musicians/bands were shot as they were, without a script and without slipping into character. This last point was significant in that it was a major shift from the kinds of films fans were used to seeing their stars in. Cross-fertilizing pop stars with film was not a revolutionary idea in 1965. The public was already used to seeing stars like Elvis Presley and The Beatles in movies like Jailhouse Rock (1957), Blue Hawaii (1961), Help! (1965) and A Hard Day's Night (1964), respectively. But until Bob Dylan and D.A. Pennebaker collaborated for his 1965 tour through the U.K., no one had ever seen anything like this.

Jim Ridley, in a 2008 'look back' piece (obviously he was above any title directive) for The Village Voicecalled the film a "rock doc [that] all but invented the form while presaging the music video." In another review, Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times remarks on the film's 'real' quality as its best; "the film is arranged in loose chronological order, [and] there is little obvious editing within each scene. This takes advantage of cinéma vérité's strong point -- its ability to show exactly what happened, moment by moment, the bad along with the good." Whether you are a fan or not (because Ebert certainly was not a fan of this film), there is no arguing its influence on the rest of "rock docs" to follow.

Skipping ahead a few generations (having already pseudo-represented the '70s with The Last Waltz in the opening paragraph), I feel I must spend some time discussing Dig!. The 2004 Sundance Grand Jury Prize: Documentary award winner orbits around friendly-competing bands, The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols. Although it wasn't revealed to the public until 2004, the footage is mostly all-'90s. When watching the film for the first time, one gets the sense that Director Ondi Timoner did anything more than release an edited version of her personal home video collection. Yet when deconstructing all that it is, Dig!soon reveals itself to be so much more compelling as an acute representation of how "indie" rock music perceived itself at the dusk of the twentieth century and how bands desired to be received by industry snobs. On top of all this, it was the ultimate no-holds-barred party vid--layered in alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, ecstasy, heroin, and good ol' rock n' roll. It is narrated by one of its stars, which is a whimsical twist, not originally planned by Timoner, that adds to its believability and the sincerity of its subject.

Joel Selvin of the San Francisco Chronicle: "Filmmaker Ondi Timoner followed the entangled rise of these two bands from the Pacific Northwest with an obsessive compulsive's eye for detail. Every ugly moment is on the screen -- from the onstage fistfights to the Georgia roadside marijuana bust -- as the two bands seek their respective fortunes." The screen plays out like a drug-addled version of Bob Saget's first season of America's Funniest Home Videos, for all of us old enough to remember what watching your buddies' band recorded in your garage on VHS was all about. Dig!'s success lies in it's relativity to its time and perhaps therein lies the lesson.

From Pennebaker to Timoner, with a very young Scorsese in between (he was 34 years old when he madeThe Last Waltz), the one thing these documentary filmmakers share in common is their ability to reflect the madness of their time through the music that defined it. The key to a successful band documentary is not to imitate that which has already been done. Instead, 'document' the music in the medium of which it lives, and you stand alone to make a great film.