Friday, December 26, 2008

Homeward Bound

Laura and I will be leaving in about twenty minutes to go to Midway Airport to catch our flight to Buffalo. We'll be in the Jamestown area until we leave on January 3rd.

Hope everyone had a nice Christmas.

Sunday, December 21, 2008

Carol Chomsky, Wife of Noam, Dies at 78

From the NYT Obituary:

"In the 1960s, faced with the possibility that her husband would be jailed for his activities in opposition to the Vietnam War, Carol Chomsky resumed her education: a doctorate would be useful should she need to become the sole family breadwinner. Though that prospect did not materialize, she earned a Ph.D. in linguistics from Harvard in 1968."

Friday, December 19, 2008

Analysis of It's A Wonderful Life

This article appealed to my cynical-yet-inwardly-idealistic nature...

December 19, 2008

Wonderful? Sorry, George, It’s a Pitiful, Dreadful Life

By WENDELL JAMIESON

MR. ELLMAN didn’t tell us why he wanted us to stay after school that December afternoon in 1981. When we got to the classroom — cinderblock walls, like all the others, with a dreary view of the parking lot — we smelled popcorn.

He had set up a 16-millimeter projector and a movie screen, and rearranged the chairs. Book bags, jackets and overcoats were tossed on seat backs, teenagers sat, suspicious, slumping, and Mr. Ellman started the projector whirring. “It’s a Wonderful Life” filled the screen.

I was not a mushy kid. My ears were fed a steady stream of the Clash and the Jam, and I was doing my best to conjure a dyed-haired, wry, angry-young-man teenage persona. But I was enthralled that afternoon in Brooklyn. In the years that followed, my affection for “It’s a Wonderful Life” has never waned, despite the film’s overexposure and sugar-sweet marketing, and the rolling eyes of friends and family.

Lots of people love this movie of course. But I’m convinced it’s for the wrong reasons. Because to me “It’s a Wonderful Life” is anything but a cheery holiday tale. Sitting in that dark public high school classroom, I shuddered as the projector whirred and George Bailey’s life unspooled.

Was this what adulthood promised?

“It’s a Wonderful Life” is a terrifying, asphyxiating story about growing up and relinquishing your dreams, of seeing your father driven to the grave before his time, of living among bitter, small-minded people. It is a story of being trapped, of compromising, of watching others move ahead and away, of becoming so filled with rage that you verbally abuse your children, their teacher and your oppressively perfect wife. It is also a nightmare account of an endless home renovation.

I haven’t seen it on a movie screen since that first time, but on Friday it begins its annual pre-Christmas run at the IFC Cinema in Greenwich Village. I plan to take my 9-year-old son and my father, who has never seen it the whole way through because he thinks it’s too corny.

How wrong he is.

I’m no movie critic, and I’ll leave to others any erudite evaluation of the film as cinematic art, but to examine it closely is to experience “It’s a Wonderful Life” on several different levels.

Many are pulling the movie out of the archives lately because of its prescience on the perils of trusting bankers. I’ve found, after repeated viewings, that the film turns upside down and inside out, and some glaring — and often funny — flaws become apparent. These flaws have somehow deepened my affection for it over the years.

Take the extended sequence in which George Bailey (James Stewart), having repeatedly tried and failed to escape Bedford Falls, N.Y., sees what it would be like had he never been born. The bucolic small town is replaced by a smoky, nightclub-filled, boogie-woogie-driven haven for showgirls and gamblers, who spill raucously out into the crowded sidewalks on Christmas Eve. It’s been renamed Pottersville, after the villainous Mr. Potter, Lionel Barrymore’s scheming financier.

Here’s the thing about Pottersville that struck me when I was 15: It looks like much more fun than stultifying Bedford Falls — the women are hot, the music swings, and the fun times go on all night. If anything, Pottersville captures just the type of excitement George had long been seeking.

And what about that banking issue? When he returns to the “real” Bedford Falls, George is saved by his friends, who open their wallets to cover an $8,000 shortfall at his savings and loan brought about when the evil Mr. Potter snatched a deposit mislaid by George’s idiot uncle, Billy (Thomas Mitchell).

But isn’t George still liable for the missing funds, even if he has made restitution? I mean, if someone robs a bank, and then gives the money back, that person still robbed the bank, right?

I checked my theory with Frank J. Clark, the district attorney for Erie County upstate, where, as far as I can tell, the fictional Bedford Falls is set. He thought it over, and then agreed: George would still face prosecution and possible prison time.

“In terms of the theft, sure, you take the money and put it back, you still committed the larceny,” he said. “By giving the money back, you have mitigated in large measure what the sentence might be, but you are still technically guilty of the offense.”

He took this a bit further: “If you steal over $3,000, it’s a D felony; 2 ½ to 7 years is the maximum term for that. The least you can get is probation. You know Jimmy Stewart, though, he had that hangdog face. He’d be a tough guy to send to jail.”

He paused, and then added: “You really have a cynical sense of humor.”

He should have met me when I was 15.

The movie starts sappily enough, with three angels in outer space discussing George’s fate. Maybe that’s what turned my dad off, that or the saccharine title. I’m amazed they didn’t spoil it for me in 1981, but I may not have been paying attention yet.

Soon enough, though, the darkness sets in. George’s brother, Harry (Todd Karns), almost drowns in a childhood accident; Mr. Gower, a pharmacist, nearly poisons a sick child; and then George, a head taller than everyone else, becomes the pathetic older sibling creepily hanging around Harry’s high school graduation party. That night George humiliates his future wife, Mary (Donna Reed), by forcing her to hide behind a bush naked, and the evening ends with his father’s sudden death.

Disappointments pile up. George can’t go to college because of his obligation to run the Bailey Building and Loan, and instead sends Harry. But Harry returns a slick, self-obsessed jerk, cannily getting out of his responsibility to help with the family business, by marrying a woman whose dad gives him a job. George again treats Mary cruelly, this time by chewing her out and bringing her to tears before kissing her. It is hard to understand precisely what she sees in him.

George is further emasculated when his bad hearing keeps him out of World War II, and then it’s Christmas Eve 1945. These scenes — rather than the subsequent Bizarro-world alternate reality — have always been the film’s defining moments for me. All the decades of anger boil to the surface.

After Potter takes the deposit, George flies into a rage and finally lets Uncle Billy know what he thinks of him, calling him a “silly, stupid old fool.” Then he explodes at his family.

If you watch the film this year, keep a close eye on Stewart during this sequence. First he smashes a model bridge he has built. Then, like any parent who loses his temper with his children, he seems genuinely embarrassed. He’s ashamed. He apologizes. And then ... slowly ... he starts getting angry all over again.

To me Stewart’s rage, building throughout the film, is perfectly calibrated — and believable — here.

Now as for that famous alternate-reality sequence: This is supposedly what the town would turn out to be if not for George. I interpret it instead as showing the true characters of these individuals, their venal internal selves stripped bare. The flirty Violet (played by a supersexy Gloria Grahame, who would soon become a timeless film noir femme fatale) is a dime dancer and maybe a prostitute; Ernie the cabbie’s blank face speaks true misery as George enters his taxi; Bert the cop is a trigger-happy madman, violating every rule in the patrol guide when he opens fire on the fleeing, yet unarmed, George, forcing revelers to cower on the pavement.

Gary Kamiya, in a funny story on Salon.com in 2001, rightly pointed out how much fun Pottersville appears to be, and how awful and dull Bedford Falls is. He even noticed that the only entertainment in the real town, glimpsed on the marquee of the movie theater after George emerges from the alternate universe, is “The Bells of St. Mary’s.”

Now that’s scary.

I’ll do Mr. Kamiya one better, though. Not only is Pottersville cooler and more fun than Bedford Falls, it also would have had a much, much stronger future. Think about it: In one scene George helps bring manufacturing to Bedford Falls. But since the era of “It’s a Wonderful Life” manufacturing in upstate New York has suffered terribly.

On the other hand, Pottersville, with its nightclubs and gambling halls, would almost certainly be in much better financial shape today. It might well be thriving.

I checked my theory with the oft-quoted Mitchell L. Moss, a professor of urban policy at New York University, and he agreed, pointing out that, of all the upstate counties, the only one that has seen growth in recent years has been Saratoga.

“The reason is that it is a resort, and it has built an economy around that,” he said. “Meanwhile the great industrial cities have declined terrifically. Look at Connecticut: where is the growth? It’s in casinos; they are constantly expanding.”

In New York, Mr. Moss added, Gov. David A. Paterson “is under enormous pressure to allow gambling upstate because of the economic problems.”

“We ease up on our lot of cultural behaviors in a depression,” he said.

What a grim thought: Had George Bailey never been born, the people in his town might very well be better off today.

Not too long ago I friended Mr. Ellman on Facebook. (To call him by his given name, Robert, is somehow still unnatural to me.)

I asked him about inviting us to stay after school to eat popcorn and watch “It’s a Wonderful Life.” He said it was always one of his favorite films, if a little corny and sentimental, and that he always saw staying late with us as part of his job. If anything, he said, there was just as much to learn after school as there was during it.

He reminded me that it was an actual film print we saw; this was before video took hold. And he also proved to be a close viewer. It was Mr. Ellman who pointed out to me how cruel George is to Mary the night they first kiss, and who told me to keep an eye out for Ernie’s vacant stare when George gets into the cab. He said he cried the first time he saw it.

I asked him if he’d continued those December viewings.

“In later years,” he wrote, “it became too difficult to get students to stay. We started doing a festival of student-written/student-directed one-act plays right after the end of the fall show. Everyone was too busy to stay and watch a movie.”

It’s a shame.

So I’ll tell Mr. Ellman a secret. It’s something I felt while watching the film all those years ago, but was too embarrassed to reveal.

That last scene, when Harry comes back from the war and says, “To my big brother, George, the richest man in town”? Well, as I sat in that classroom, despite the dreary view of the parking lot; despite the moronic Uncle Billy; despite the too-perfect wife, Mary; and all of George’s lost opportunities, I felt a tingling chill around my neck and behind my ears. Fifteen years old and imagining myself an angry young man, I got all choked up.

And I still do.

Thursday, December 18, 2008

John Paul Jones at 20th Annual Warren Haynes Christmas Jam

(pictured with Derek Trucks, above)

John Paul Jones at Warren Haynes 20th Annual Christmas Jam

JPJ was a busy man over 3 days in Asheville, North Carolina, from December 11th through December 13th as a guest musician for several acts. He played bass, keyboards, and a lot of mandolin. A round-up of his performances follows, courtesy '3hrsoflunacy' of Led Zeppelin mailing list FBO and LZ website Royal-Orleans:

2008.12.11
1. DEL MCCOURY BAND (1 song - "Angeline the Baker")
2. WARREN HAYNES (2 songs - "Soulshine" and "Going to California")
3. GOV'T MULE (2 songs - "I Can't Quit You Baby" and "Get out of My Life Woman")

2008.12.12
1. DEL MCCOURY BAND (2 songs - "Squirrel Hunter" and "My Love Will not Change")
2. WARREN HAYNES (2 songs - "Soulshine" and "Going to California")
3. ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND (2 songs - "Dazed and Confused" and "Mountain Jam")

2008.12.13
1. MICHAEL FRANTI & JAY BOWMAN (5 songs - "Love Don't Wait", "Sweet Little Lies", "All I Want is You", "Hey World", and "I Got Love for You")
2. BEN HARPER & RELENTLESS 7 (1 song - "Good Times, Bad Times")
3. GOV'T MULE (5 songs - "Livin' Lovin' Maid", "Since I've Been Loving You", "No Quarter", "The Ocean", and "When the Levee Breaks")

(with Warren Haynes, above - and Danny Louis, below)

From the Asheville (NC) Citizen-Times:

December 13, 2008
Jammers rock the night away

Paul Clark and Carol Motsinger

Not to borrow a line from a song played at the Christmas Jam, but really, wonder how tomorrow could ever follow today?

That, of course, is a play on a lyric from Led Zeppelin's "Going to California," which guitarist and jam founder Warren Haynes played with Zeppelin's bassist, John Paul Jones, at around 1 a.m.

In what was the biggest surprise so far in the 2008 Christmas Jam, Jones came farther than anyone ever to participate in the event, Haynes said before introducing Jones, who played mandolin.

Click here to watch video from the Christmas Jam.

Jones played earlier in the night with Del McCoury's bluegrass outfit. His second time on stage featured Haynes on acoustic guitar and vocals, with Jones once again picking on the mandolin.

The duo, who smiled and hugged at the end of their short set, also played "Soulshine" by The Allman Brothers. The crowd sang along, but truly roared with Haynes substituted the word "Carolina" for "California" in the "Going to California" cover.

Derek Trucks Band finished playing a little before 2 a.m., keeping the jam band spirit of the event by playing longer songs stuffed with guitar solos. One tune lasted close to 10 minutes, while the crowd, still strong, swayed along.

The Allman Brothers finished out the night, hitting the stage at around 2:30 a.m. and performing until about 4:20 a.m.
Haynes wailed on his guitar again, and was easily the hardest working man on stage tonight. He's played a few solos with almost every act on the bill.

Haynes has been a long term member of the Allman Brothers.

The band is also continuing the covers trend of the night. They've already played a version of Van Morrison's "And it stoned me."

As the clock clicked past 3 a.m., the crowd thinned, but the the die hard fans rocked to the final band of the night.

Jones surprised the fans that did remain and played the instrument he is most famous for mastering - the electric bass guitar. He jammed to Led Zeppelin's "Dazed and Confused."

The band returned for one encore the Allman Brother's classic, "One way out."
In a rare moment for an event defined by surprise collaborations, Travis Tritt shone brightest alone, with his guitar, on stage during his 2008 Christmas Jam set.

The country crooner sung the heck out of his ballad, "Anymore," before the rest of his band, which included guitarist and jam founder Warren Haynes, returned to rock until 12:40 a.m.

Tritt shared the story behind songs, such as the instrumental "Picking at it." He said the title comes from his mother telling him to stop picking at his bug bites.

Singer-songwriter Joan Osborne finished her set around 11:40 p.m., in which Haynes crossed guitars with Audley Freed, who once played with the rock band, The Black Crowes.

The two traded solos during a blues tune. She also covered a ballad by local favorites, Jump, Little Children, who played in Asheville before they disbanded.

"It's my first time (at the Jam)," Osborne said, "So be gentle with me."

She later thanked the crowd for "inviting her to the party" and warned she might bum rush the stage during other people's sets.

In honor of the holiday, Osborne finished her set with "Christmas in New Orleans."

Warren Haynes and Gov't Mule took the Civic Center stage first on Friday. Against the cascading sounds of drummer Matt Abts' rolling cymbals, Haynes opened with Middle Eastern music-inspired improvisation, then asked the dancing, whistling and cheering crowd: “How're you doing?

“I would ask you how you're feeling, but I think you're feeling good,” Haynes told the crowd. “It's not that I don't care. It's that I already know the answer.”

The crowd returned the love with yells and cheers. The two-night Christmas Jam had begun.

A few songs later, Abts was hammering a wicked drum line to a Warren Haynes solo when Angie White Rikard, a fan from Charlotte, declared Abts “the best rock ‘n' roll drummer still alive.”

Rikard couldn't believe her luck in being there.

She had hoped to attend but didn't have a ticket until her cousin unexpectedly had one to spare. Rikard has been listening to Haynes since he hooked up with the Allman Brothers.

“Something about him strikes a chord with me,” she said, pacing herself for a night that was scheduled to go way past 1 a.m. “This is a great night. You get to see so many bands. You just have to hang in there.”

Dumpstaphunk took the stage next, about 8:30 p.m. And Katy White got her wish.

She loves to dance, and Dumpstaphunk is one nasty dance band.

White was in the middle of the crowd, grooving with about nine of her friends, all of them students at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, Ga.

They came from all over, kind of a family reunion among friends, White said. She's from Savannah, Ga., and she, like most of her friends, would be spending the night in Asheville, she said.

But not until they did some dancing.

It looked like a near-sellout crowd for the jam's 20th year in the 7,200-capacity arena. People had gathered and anticipated the show for hours. Bobby Starnes and Trey Hensley were among the first few hundred fans inside the Civic Center.

Both are guitar players, and both had come especially to see Warren Haynes and Derek Trucks. Starnes and Hensley, both from Johnson City, Tenn., were standing right in front of the stage, prepared to worship at Haynes' feet.

Before the show began, Abts, the drummer for Gov't Mule, was standing backstage, watching the crews make last-minute adjustments to the stage.

He's taken part in 12 of these Christmas Jams, and not just because he's a drummer in Haynes' band.

“It's all about Habitat for Humanity,” he said, mentioning the beneficiary of all the Christmas Jams.

“And this is Christmas,” Abts said. He said he spends Christmas with his family in Los Angeles, but “it feels more like Christmas here” in Asheville, he said, pointing to the audience in front of the stage.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Joe Bonamassa & Doug Henthorn Cover Zeppelin's Tea For One

An excellent cover in the style of Robin Trower/James Dewar of Led Zeppelin's Tea For One, from the underrated and under-appreciated Presence album.

Doug Henthorn is the lead singer in Healing Sixes - a band I was turned on to when Jason Bonham played with them for a while. Turck and I went to see them play at a small club in Cleveland in 2001. Joe Bonamassa is a great young guitarist; apparently he opened for BB King at the age of 12 (he's 31 now). This cover appears on his You and Me album and features an orchestral accompaniment.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

The Smashing Pumpkins at Auditorium Theatre, Chicago on December 8, 2008

Setlist from spfc.org

* Ava Adore
* Cupid de Locke
* 1979
* 99 Floors
* Owata
* Sunkissed
* Soma
* Cherub Rock
* Zero
* Bodies
* Crestfallen
* I of the Mourning
* A Song for a Son
* Landslide [Nicks]
* Disarm
* Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
* Galapogos
* Gossamer
* As Rome Burns
* The Sounds of Silence [Simon]
> Li'l Red Riding Hood [Blackwell]
* The March Hare
> Suffer
* Age of Innocence

Encore:

* That's the Way (My Love Is)
* I Am One Pt. 2

Billy Corgan on the Future of The Smashing Pumpkins

From Greg Kot at The Chicago Tribune:

Originally posted: December 9, 2008

Billy Corgan dishes on the Smashing Pumpkins: The past is dead to me

Are rock bands meant to last 20 years?

“No, no, they’re not,” Billy Corgan said back stage Monday at the Auditorium Theatre. Which sounds a little odd coming from someone whose band, the Smashing Pumpkins, had just completed their 20th anniversary tour with a triumphant performance short on hits but long on drama and daring.

The tour was never smooth, with Corgan baiting his fans as much as sating them with a handful of Pumpkins oldies. When the Pumpkins opened a series of homecoming shows a few weeks ago, the 41-year-old west suburban native finished off the opening night at the Chicago Theatre with a combination rant/comedic monologue that angered many in his audience. “What do you want from us?” Corgan said with mock exasperation while fans booed or streamed toward the exits.

But on Monday the Pumpkins embraced delicate ballads, scorched-earth rockers and expansive psychedelia with authority. Corgan was in an affable mood, and the band ended the show by reaching into a coffin and tossing Christmas presents to the cheering fans.

It was a final joke from an artist who has always taken his work very, very seriously --- to the point of self-destructiveness. The 20th Anniversary tour and Corgan’s confrontational onstage antics are merely the latest examples of the band’s polarizing impact. Musically, the Pumpkins can still swing the heavy lumber. Only Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlin, the master drummer, remain from the original band. James Iha and D’Arcy Wretzky are long gone. The Pumpkins broke up in 2000, and Corgan says the “door was left open” for Iha and Wretzky to return when the band re-assembled in 2005. But things didn’t work out, and Jeff Schroeder and Ginger Reyes were enlisted to take their place.

The band’s 2007 comeback album, “Zeitgeist,” sank without a trace, but the retooled Pumpkins have developed a chemistry and power on the road since then.

Corgan, wrapped in a bathrobe and towels while chowing down on a post-concert steak, was upbeat and combatively optimistic about the future of Pumpkins Mach II. His message: We’re not a nostalgia band. “It’s not old band vs. new band,” he says. “It’s new band or no band.”

“Calling it a 20th anniversary tour, people expected greatest hits,” he says. “The casual fan who comes in and just wants to see the hits, they were not having it. But we’ve seen a real reactivation in the hardcore fan base.”

Tribune: Did the hostility of some of the audiences bother you?

Corgan: No, what bothers me is the notion that we’re done. We didn’t come back for the cash, we came back to be great again. It made me mad that people thought we’re done, that we don’t have a future. Get out. We don’t want you. We’ve never been that band. That happy band. We picked up where we left off. We’re not the retirement band playing our old hits. ... I don’t give a [expletive] that most of my heroes got lame when they turned 40. I spent most of the last decade thinking about that. Why do they go from this insanely high level of work to diminished echoes of the past? And I think it’s a coziness thing. You do something amazing and you don’t want to lose the crowd that tells you that’s amazing. You’re out in the cold. Well we like to be out in the cold. We’re done with the record business, so we’re free to do whatever I want.

Tribune: So “Zeitgeist” was the last album?

Corgan: We’re done with that. There is no point. People don’t even listen to it all. They put it on their iPod, they drag over the two singles, and skip over the rest. The listening patterns have changed, so why are we killing ourselves to do albums, to create balance, and do the arty track to set up the single? It’s done.

Tribune: So how will you release music?

Corgan: Our primary function now is to be a singles band, that drives Pumpkins Inc. through singles. We’ll still be creative, but in a different form. We won’t do shows like this anymore, where we try to draw a good crowd and balance the past with the present. We’ll go small and do exactly what we want to do and stop playing catalogue. We’ll be like a new band that can’t rely on old gimmicks. I’m not stupid. I want people to feel good about what we do. What we weren’t getting [from playing a more balanced show with older songs] was excitement. We’re in the polarizing business. We don’t want a pat on the back: Good to have you back. We want a reaction, even if it’s a negative reaction.

Tribune: People are still talking about that show you did a few weeks ago at the Chicago Theatre.

Corgan: Energy we can do something with. Apathy we can’t work with. Who’s above us? Who’s lighting the culture on fire? Nobody. We don’t have to live in that world. We have the biggest manager [Irving Azoff] in the world. He tells us we can get there, we will get there. We will crack the egg like we did in ‘92, without doing something embarrassing like working with Timbaland. We will find how to do our thing and make it work. I can write songs. We’re big boys. We’ll do it. Last time I talked with you, I said we’re going to come back and make a better album. The album we made surprised us. We kept going back to this primitive thing. We wanted to do “Siamese Dream II.” Elaborate, orchestrated, but it wasn’t coming from me. It put us back in this organic process, and in this position of fighting back to why we do what we do. Now I understand it. It’s the difference between intellectual process and emotional process. We’re sober, healthy, we understand the business we’re in, and the pragmatic reality of what it takes. We have the skill set, we always have, and we belong in the conversation, and we will kick down the door to get back in the conversation. You take a milquetoast middle-of-the-road fake-tattoo band, we can out-write them. If you come up with the songs, the fans will show up. We found with “Zeitgeist” that the alternative audience isn’t alternative anymore. They’re a pop audience that listens to Nickelback. So doing a 10-minute song, nobody will listen to it. We have to come up with singles like “1979,” and come up with songs that sound good on the radio. We have to write those kinds of songs.

Tribune: Why’d you break up the Pumpkins in 2000?

Corgan: The real story was Iha was driving me out of my mind. He was so negative. The guy literally drove me insane. When I walked out of that band, I didn’t know what to do anymore. I didn’t have a direction, a central focus. I wandered through different things, but I couldn’t find that central thing. As soon as I got back in the band my brain started working again. I was engaged again.

Tribune: Did you make a sincere attempt to invite back Iha and D’Arcy?

Corgan: Sincere in the sense that we have to allow them the opportunity. They have the right to at least have the conversation. We said the door’s open. We were met with complete indifference. Darcy doesn’t care. And James, it was a money thing. They haven‘t done anything musical since they left. They were never that into it. They were into it in ‘92, when it was fun. When it got crazy, everyone went their separate ways. It’s like a bad marriage. So we opened the door [to them returning]. But there was no way they were gonna want to work like we want to work, and take on the crap of the business again. But we gave them the opportunity if they wanted it. Now that we’ve found people who we trust and are really dedicated, the door is closed. They’re done. They’re never coming back.

Tribune: But why call it the Pumpkins? It gives people a chance to doubt the band’s legitimacy and your motives.

Corgan: It’s my band. Anyone who doubts the legitimacy of this band can go [expletive] themselves. That’s old thinking about bands. Show me any band that lasts for any tenure, they don’t have the original members. This world doesn’t care about that. They just want to hear the songs. They got karaoke singers now fronting big bands.

Tribune: You said a few years ago that you were going to try and keep your mouth shut and let the music be the story. But that hasn’t been the case.

Corgan: I tried that for a while and it wasn’t working. I’m cemented in an image. I have to move to France to change that. I’m not a humble musician, but I am a humble human being, I have perspective, I have God in my life. [In the band] we talk a lot about spirituality and about why God made us musicians and why we’re here to do what we do. And we have decided in our estimation that God put us here to try new things, and be innovators. With all that’s going on in the world, is that the worst thing?

Tribune: That would seem to be the artist’s role.

Corgan: Let me be blunt. When Bruce Springsteen puts out a new album I pay attention. Same with Neil Young. Because they’re major artists who have something to say. I consider us in that category. When we do something it should be taken seriously, even when we’re off. If we’re marginalized by the culture, we’re not going to play dead and say thank you for our B-plus status. I poured my blood into my songs. I’ve had a bad marriage and seven bad girlfriends in a row. I make sacrifices to do my work. That’s not victim talk, that’s nobody’s fault, that’s a choice I made for me.

greg@gregkot.com

__________________

Billy published a post-interview "clarification" on the Pumpkins website:

I enjoyed talking to Greg. He is a very well-liked and respected writer, and outside of one small misquote (I don't recall saying we needed to write songs like '1999'. I think I said '1979'), the interview is an accurate potrayal of my feelings. But let's be clear here. I never said I would never play any old songs ever again. That's just drama if that's what people hear, or want to hear. What I've said is that we aren't going to play most of those old songs any more because it locks us into permanent reunion band mode, and we are over it. For some fans to be upset at a band that plays 48 songs over 2 nights, the great majority of which are old, shows you the level of insanity we deal with. The word is called entitled. If they are entitled to demand, we are entilted to be who we are without reservation. There is no apology in that. We feel good, happy, and strong, and that should be the story here. Nobody owns us. We own us. Where is the happy ending of 'the band that once self-destructed is back and playing great and is looking forward to the future?'

If you come see us on some crazy big tour you will hear a few familiar songs, because that is the right forum for it. But it certainly won't be the main focus. When we play small venues we won't be playing those songs pretty much at all cause that won't be the place for it anymore. But that doesn't mean we are even gonna play at all. It doesn't make sense to some now and we understand and we are ok with those that leave because they are stuck in some year from a different decade. We'll be fine without them. Thanks, and goodbye. Just remember us when we say 'I told you so'. Because we are on our way back, and that's that. (Insert smiley face right fucking here). As I said to some fans, if after 20 years we are one song, or one show away from losing your loyalty, good riddance then. We don't need that energy around us.

Our message has been consistent: don't ask us to do or be anything that will once again lead to the death of the band. The band's survival comes first. We can debate aesthetics and marketing platforms later. If you want us to fall away, fade away like some dust and relics it aint gonna happen. We are here to stay. We deserve to be here, and are proud of what we have gotten right thru the years. And we are truly grateful to those fans that trust us like family. The kind of extended family where you can make a mistake, say something not quite the right way, and still be welcomed home. There will never be anything wrong with flying too close to the sun.

God bless everybody here, BC

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

One Year Ago Today...

...I witnessed Page, Plant, Jones, and Jason Bonham at the O2 Arena in London.

An incredible experience.

Here's one tiny part of a very rambling email retrospective I wrote for the Zeppelin email list For Badgeholders Only today about my emotions that night:

We waited fairly patiently through the opening acts. I hadn't had
anything to drink since around 2pm because I was intent on enjoying
every bit of Led Zeppelin without thinking about how much I had to go
to the men's room. This might not have been the most intelligent
idea, since I felt like I was literally going to pass out about three
songs into the set from a combination of locking my knees while
standing up for hours and the sheer unbelievability of the moment I
was witnessing, but at the time, it seemed imperative. Even though
the line we had been standing in was fairly long, it compressed down
into a surprisingly small area as we were assembled outside the inner
doors of the arena, prior to having our wristbands checked. I recited
to Laura the same thing I had been saying for the past few hours... I
had only seen Jimmy Page play once - in Pittsburgh in 2000 with the
Crowes - and for that reason, I would like to be on the right side of
the stage. However - if there was an obvious difference between right
and left in terms of how close we could get, I'd move like a bullet
for Jonesy's side (I had seen JPJ play three times and met him on two
occasions). Well, the crowd was seven rows deep on Page's side when
we race-walk/jogged in past the disapproving O2 staff, while the crowd
was paltry on John Paul's side. JPJ's side it was - and we settled
into the second row - able to grasp the rail when we needed it. We
were positioned just slightly to the right of Jonesy's Korg keyboard
rig, and I was understandably ecstatic about that turn of events. As
the concert transpired, the guys seemed to huddle around the drums
anyway, so I felt like we certainly made the right choice.

Prior to Good Times Bad Times:

I felt as if I was about to collapse. My back felt as if rigor mortis
had set in, but my legs were jelly. I clamped down on Laura's hand as
the tears welled up in my eyes and I yelled some guttural sound of
triumph and vulnerability. It was really happening, and I was there.
The culmination of ten years of becoming an increasingly obsessive
fan, over the years of 16 to 26 - the memories of subjecting friends
and relatives to hours of the albums and the bootlegs... I was living
it all in those brief moments, even as I was singing '...when I
whispered in her ear, I lost another friend...' From Puffy and Jimmy
on SNL in May 1998 all the way to December 2007...

Here's Whole Lotta Love (the first encore):

Jon Stewart and Mike Huckabee on The Daily Show

Part One -

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Mike Huckabee Pt. 1

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Part Two -