This is a great piece of political advocacy and messaging, made to the backdrop of Leslie Gore’s 1964 hit, “You Don’t Own Me,” directed especially at voters concerned about women’s health and choice. Gore herself is on camera, at the beginning and the end. One of my favorite placards in it: “Keep Your Rosaries off My Ovaries.” Please view and share widely.
I love this picture of excited Obama voters
which I first saw in a tweet from the president’s campaign. 
For the second year in a row I attended a bunch of live rock shows during the annual CMJ Music Marathon, Oct. 16-20, going to hear live music at a handful of different Lower East Side venues.
Wednesday night, for the showcase mounted by Canadian Blast at Arlene’s Grocery, I heard Two Hours Traffic from Prince Edward Island, a place that produces great musicians, belying its status as Canada’s smallest province. This 4-piece played an infectious chord-driven guitar rock with bright pop vocals by frontman Liam Corcoran, who looked like he could be the brother of actor Toby Maguire. Next up was Elephant Stone, an exciting psychedelic quartet from Montreal with Rishi Dhir’s thumping bass and sitar at the center of their often mind-blowing sound collage. They’re about to release a new self-titled album, their third, on Hidden Pony Records. Foam Lake of Saskatoon played next, leading off with “True Hearts,” which has a rousing chorus I recognized from hearing it on CBC Radio 3, the hub of indie rock in Canada. Later, in front of Arlene’s, on Stanton Street, I met a musician I recognized from earlier as Two Hours Traffic’s bassist. Nathan Gill’s his name. Late though it was, he was planning to be up in a few hours for a morning for a flight to Nova Scotia, where he’d be playing the Halifax Pop Explosion with another band of which he’s a member.
Thanks to Cara Wodnicki of BMF Media Group, who accommodated me and the guest I’d invited to join me this night, Torontonian Peter Evans, CEO of Speakerfile, the company I consult for that connects conference organizers with authors and other experts who do public speaking. Like me, Peter really enjoyed Two Hours Traffic’s efficient, tuneful set.
Before closing out my Canadian Blast evening, I also ran into members of Rah Rah, a band I have blogged about before, and of which I’m a big fan. They weren’t performing on this bill, but would be playing four times over the next few days, including Thursday evening at Bowery Electric, a gig I would be attending, not far from where legendary punk venue CBGB’s operated until 2006. Rah Rah’s new album, “The Poet’s Dead” has just been released and it’s terrific, with a great lead song, “Art and a Wife.” I recommend you listen to it at their website. It’s one of their best set of lyrics yet, striking themes about what a maturing artist wants from life and music. Rah Rah played a pleasantly raucous and spontaneous live show in the basement room at Bowery Electric, with players swapping instruments with one another, and grabbing drum sticks to make percussion sounds on any available hard surface, from amp cases to brick walls. The anarchic vibe encompassed Rah Rah’s Jeffrey Romanyk, who alternated between acoustic guitar on some songs, and drums on others–he weathered a broken string on one song and a toppling drum kit on another. But no mishap could snap the spell of the band’s great performance, with its fun, uninhibited vibe. The finale included inflated mylar letters spelling out R-A-H, bouncing over the heads of the audience, and an exploding confetti cannon. Low-tech fun. Afterward, I spent time visiting with Romanyk, as well as his bandmate Leif Thorsen, and Leif’s wife, photographic scholar, Alison Dean. Out in front of the club, lead singer Marshall Burns showed me their big touring van, with its Saskatchewan license plates, and huge lock on the back door protecting their instruments and equipment from thieves, a potential bane for all touring bands.
Friday offered a rare afternoon opportunity to hear live music, like a day baseball game. A showcase from noon-6 at Pianos on Ludlow Street was put on by music marketing and radio promotion outfit Planetary Group, featuring shows by Hot Panda and The Orwells, as well as Australian bands Sun Cisco and Twerps, and again, Elephant Stone and Rah Rah. Just as Rah Rah was sliding into place on Pianos’ raised stage, a friendly fellow sat on the stool next to me. This was Wilson Lemieux, who works as music director at KWTS radio station in Canyon, Texas. They have “Art and a Wife” in heavy rotation, he told me, but he’d never heard them live, until today. I assured him he was in for a treat. It was great hearing Rah Rah again, as they played a largely different set of songs than the night before. During this relaxed afternoon I met Planetary Group’s Greg Khaikin and Oscar Zubia, and their boss, Chris, all very welcoming and articulate about the bands they were promoting. During a break between sets I had a chance for pleasant chats with Hidden Pony’s Mike Renaud, his wife Natasha, and Elephant Stone’s Rishi Dhir, and bandmates Gabriel, Steven, and Miles, nice guys all. It’s always fun talking with Canadians in NYC, who are so appreciative of Gotham’s charms. Out on the sidewalk dodging the cigarette smoke, I also met the members of Kiven, a 4-piece outfit from Los Angeles whose music I’m now eager to hear via their bandcamp page.
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Delighted to see that Rust Belt Chic, the book to which I contributed an essay, “Remembering Mr. Stress, Live at the Euclid Tavern,” is getting lots of coverage. One of the best parts of writing the essay has been that it’s put me back in touch with the venerable Cleveland bluesman, Mr. Stress, whom I followed avidly for many years.
This week, Andrew Sullivan’s blog at The Daily Beast website, The Dish, wrote about Rust Belt Chic in a piece called “Between Ruin and Rebirth,” citing the book and Roger Ebert’s review of a new documentary, “Detropia.” Fitting, with the Tigers beating the Yankees on Thursday and advancing to the World Series. Relatedly, Friday’s NY Times brought a smart essay by Bill Morris, on the recent rejuvenation of Detroit’s downtown. It seems that the topic of urban decline and rebirth is never far from the collective mind.
Rust Belt Chic has also been covered by Karen D. Long, Book Editor at the Cleveland Plain Dealer in a weekend piece, “‘Rust Belt Chic’ warms to scruffy, problematic Cleveland”. Long writes that the community enterprise that fueled the book “resembled a pop-up civic action.” Typifying this approach, co-editors Anne Trubek and Richey Piiparinen asked all the contributors–in the event that the book sells well enough to make back its expenses and reaches profitability–if we would want an honorarium payment, or prefer to plow our earnings into another indie project to be chosen from among book ideas presented by the contributors, with one (or if we’re really fortunate, more than one) project being chosen for funding. I have a ready book idea–a new volume to be culled from the Guinness Book of World Records-recognized diary of Edward Robb Ellis, whose A Diary of the Century: Tales from America’s Greatest Diarist, I edited and published in 1995. I am happy to have chosen the latter option.
In case you missed an item I put up last month, one of my fellow Rust Belt Chic contributors is Connie Schultz, the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and author. In the past year, she left the Plain Dealer while for her husband Sherrod Brown’s run for re-election to the US Senate from Ohio. A few weeks ago, on the Rust Belt Chic Facebook page, I saw this note from Ms. Schultz:
“Sherrod didn’t get home until after midnight last night, but as soon as he saw my newly arrived stack of ‘Rust Belt Chic: The Cleveland Anthology,’ he had to pick up a book and take a look. ‘Wow,’ he said, over and over, as he recognized one writer’s name after another, read aloud some of the titles and marveled at the photos.” Here’s my whole piece, “Senator Sherrod Brown ♥s “Rust Belt Chic”.
I hope you buy the book as a print or a digital edition, or get one of each, not simply because you want to support this communal effort, but because it offers thirty-five fine examples of narrative journalism, chronicling a distinctive part of the country that is too often overlooked on the literary and cultural map. I also urge you to follow the book’s Twitter feed, @rust-belt-chic. On my own Twitter feed, @philipsturner, I’ve started a hashtag, #MrStress. You may also ‘like’ the Rust Belt Chic Facebook page. Thank you for supporting this exciting experiment in cultural urban renewal.
Finally, I got word today that there will be a public event with Rust Belt Chic contributors in Brooklyn, NY, on January 3. I hope to be there, reading from my essay on Mr. Stress. More details when I have them.
Green-wood Cemetery is a NYC landmark I’ve been keen to visit for years and last weekend an ideal opportunity arrived for my wife and son and myself to finally get there. The complex, 478 acres of rolling hills (making it more than half the size of Manhattan’s Central Park), big hardwood trees, and sparkling views of Manhattan and NY Harbor, was founded in 1838 as a non-denominational burial ground that also offered what was described then as a “rural” location. To the urbanites who conceived Green-wood*, it was important to create a pastoral, soothing place for mourners to say goodbye to their loved ones. The three of us discovered on Saturday that it is still pastoral and still a balm to the daily cares of city-dwellers.
Among its more than “560,000 permanent residents”–as Green-wood’s literature refers to those interred there–is Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829-69), a New Orleans composer and pianist whose kinetic and tuneful music provided our nation’s first examples of such styles as ragtime and stride piano, amid a fusion of African, Haitian, and Cuban rhythms joined with Western music. I get periodic emails from Green-wood and had learned from one message that in the 1970s, a memorial figure then gracing Gottschalk’s burial plot had been vandalized and destroyed. Saturday had been announced as the unveiling of a new figure at his gravesite. Not satisfied to merely place it there, Green-wood planned a program of live piano music in the bright autumn air, played and presented by John Davis; a talk by Frederick Starr, former president of Oberlin College and author of the Gottschalk biography, Bamboula!; an introduction of the sculptors who made the new figure; and finally, the unveiling of “The Angel of Music.” All this was offered to the public free of admission charge.
We emerged from the ‘R’ subway stop at 25th Street and 4th Avenue in Brooklyn, walking a block east toward 5th Avenue and Green-wood. Even before reaching the cemetery, we spotted a cool-looking complex of low buildings. Fenced around on all sides, this establishment was topped with a sign reading “McGovern Weir.” We wondered if it had been a business selling gravestones and monuments, though have since learned from the blog “Lost New York City” that it was for many years a florist. This handsome old wreck of a place was constructed in 1880, and was bought for $1.6M by Green-wood in April.
Walking past the Green-wood gatehouse we were met by a friendly young woman whom we’d later see again selling books from an outdoor kiosk. Here, she was handing out programs for the Gottschalk event. Ewan and I made it up the hill first where we saw the crowd gathered, with Kyle a bit behind taking pictures. Soon the three of us were settled comfortably on a grassy slope just a few yards from where a shiny black Steinway piano–lent by the Steinway company, whose forebears are buried at Green-wood–sat gleaming in the sun. Just the novelty of seeing a grand piano outdoors was exciting.
Green-wood President Richard J. Moylan quickly introduced John Davis, who, as he removed his gloves against the chill said he hoped we wouldn’t think he was pulling a pre-performance trick as Gottschalk was wont to do–carefully pulling off his white gloves one finger at a time as he sought to draw the attention of his audience to the very hands that were about to strike the piano keys. Davis launched in to his first Gottschalk selection, “Bamboula,” a sprightly piece based on a Creole song that warmed up the audience. One could hear shades of Chopin, as well as an anticipation of melodies that we’d later identify with Stephen Foster. Introducing “Danse Cubane,” he described Gottschalk as the “father of world music” and the first classical composer in America to break away from an exclusively European model. All this reminded me of what a relatively enlightened and open urban culture New Orleans was in the first half of the 19th century, with free people of color landing up there from the Caribbean and South America. Gottschalk, with a German-Jewish father and a Haitian mother, tapped into and reflected influences from the New World and the Old. Davis also amazed us when he described that in 1938–around 80 years after the peak of Gottschalk’s influence–Jelly Roll Morton wrote of “the Latin tinge” that pervaded his music, in a thread of influence that began with Gottschalk. Davis closed this part of the performance by evoking Mark Twain’s partiality toward the banjo and then playing one of Gottschalk’s signature compositions for solo piano, “The Banjo,” which thoroughly commingled African, Caribbean and European motifs. Here I’m glad to insert the front and back cover of an LP I acquired in the 1980s, with the music of Gottschalk played by Edward Gold. It still sounds great!
With these sounds still echoing in our ears, the program moved through Frederick Starr’s biographical presentation and the introduction of sculptors, Giancarlo Biagi and Jill Burkee. They bid us to walk a few yards along the slope to Gottschalk’s gravesite, ringed with a black wrought iron fence. As Mr. Moylan assured us even he had not yet seen the finished cast of “The Angel of Music,” we saw a pedestal in the middle of the grassy square topped with a figure enshrouded in a green tarpaulin. As we stood expectantly, hands reached out to shuck off the tarp, exposing an elegant bronze figure that looked as if it had set there for much longer than just this day. Applause and shouts of congratulations to the sculptors were heard as we all admired the delicate figure.
With that, we went back to our earlier spots as John Davis sat again at the piano, joined by clarinetist Jeffrey Lederer and vocalist April Matthis. The trio performed “Slumber on, Baby Dear,” a lullaby composed by Gottschalk. As a final round of clapping rang out, Richard Moylan invited everyone to Green-wood’s nearby chapel where refreshments and coffee would be served. We walked down the hill and around the property to the chapel. Along the way, we stopped at the book kiosk where maps of Green-wood are also available. There we asked the same young woman who’d greeted us earlier if she could possibly help us determine where we’d find the grave of one’s of Green-wood’s “permanent residents,” Thomas C. Durant, who was instrumental in building the trans-continental railroad in the years immediately after the Civil War, and through his corruption became embroiled in the infamous Credit Mobilier scandal of the post-Civil War years. We’d learned about the real-life Durant from the TV series, “Hell on Wheels,” a fictional treatment of the building of the railroad, in which the Irish actor Colm Meaney plays the striving rail baron. One plot thread in the TV series–which is actually true to history, as far as I can tell–is that Durant had corruptly enriched himself at the expense of the US government and investors in the railroad, and very possibly ended his life in some disrepute. In the program, he runs his enterprise with a great deal of secrecy and intrigue, and again, this seems to conform with what I’ve read about the real Durant. Colm Meaney’s Durant is a scheming, self-interested, angry figure who, I daresay, most TV viewers come to distrust and even loathe. The friendly greeter-bookseller helped us locate Durant’s burial plot number and we made a note on our map, indicating where we ought to be able to find Durant’s memorial.
Following some coffee and a snack in the chapel, a vaulted space where mourners at Green-wood gather for indoor memorial services, we thanked our hosts and walked toward Section H, Lot 10400, in search of Durant. After passing some beautiful Civil War-era memorials, we hunted around for quite a while, to no avail. Growing frustrated, but no less determined, and refusing to leave disappointed, the three of kept walking and looking until I finally found a mausoleum bearing the legend, “T.C. Durant.” The form of the memorial was entirely in keeping with the Durant we’ve come to know from the program and our research. Sealed up tight behind a gated door flashing spear points, a stolid and impregnable edifice squats in the brow of a low hill, with trees looming protectively over it. Like the man interred there, it gives off no secrets and yields virtually no information. It doesn’t even use his full first or middle names, no year or birthplace is etched in the stone, and likewise no death date, though we’d read it was 1871. In the dappled light of mid-afternoon, we found it was even difficult to photograph the letters of his name mounted above the gate, and had to take many pictures before we got images that decently bear the legend of Durant’s initials and last name. The successful outcome to our searching left us with more questions than answers about the real Thomas Durant, and we will continue trying to learn about him what we can.
With that, we walked back toward the gatehouse and out on to the ordinary streets of a quiet Saturday in Brooklyn, grateful for the fine program celebrating Gottschalk put on this special day, and struck by the charm and splendor of Green-wood Cemetery, a bucolic urban retreat we hope to return to soon. I hope these photos, most of them taken by my wife Kyle Gallup, will give you some sense of the occasion. And, if you can, check out the music of Louis Moreau Gottschalk, a worldly musical pleasure.
*Green-wood shares the hyphen in its name with the New-York Historical Society, a particularly 19th century sort of spelling.
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Hadn’t realized until today that a big benefit concert’s going on today in Central Park. K’Naan, Band of Horses, Foo Fighters, Black Keys, and Neil Young with Crazy Horse are all playing on the Great Lawn. Might’ve tried to go, but I have other plans for the rest of the day. Some free tickets were drawn by lottery at teh site of the worthy organization coordinating this push to end “extreme poverty” worldwide. Many organizations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Earth Institute are coordinating to pull it all together, under the rubric of GlobalCitizen.org. So far, K’Naan has played, brilliantly. Also, Band of Horses, who were good too. It’s all being livestreamed at this link, and maybe cached there later, too. I hope so, because I’m going out in a few minutes, and would really love to see Neil and Crazy Horse. Meantime, here’s a photo I took of K’Naan in the livestream. He only played three songs, but he absolutely killed with those three, including with a rousing finale of his global hit, “Wavin’ Flag,’ telling the crowd he was at last reclaiming the song as his own, after seeing it used in so many different situations, like at the World Cup. He sang the personal passages in the lyrics, about leaving Somalia as a youngster, very quietly and intimately. He is a very inspirational figure.
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Got home just in time to hear Neil and Crazy Horse’s two closing songs, “Fucking Up” and “Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World,” on which the bands from earlier in the concert joined in. It’s been a Neil Young kind-of-weekend, with his new book, Waging Heavy Peace, one of my #FridayReads for this weekend. 