what a beautiful feeling

The writing is on the wall for the Summer of 2008, "the summer that really wasn't." Already the leaves on the patio cherry tree are staring to fall, and there has been an undeniable crispness to the air these past few nights. Granted this is New England I'm talking about, so the possibility of a suffocating Indian summer shouldn't yet be dismissed, but the present vibe is leaning heavily toward "autumnal."

I suppose I could lament the passing of the season, which came and went without even registering on my consciousness, but this is the first Sunday in a month that hasn't been marked by the violent thunderstorms which have rolled across the Northeast for the past eight weeks. The skies above the highlands are currently a dazzling blue, the sun is shining through the trees out back, and if there is harvest season tang to the air, it only strengthens the urge to enjoy it while it lasts.

With that in mind, here's a mini-mix of psychdelic pop nuggets ideal for lazy Sunday lounging on the patio, fire escape, or wherever the sun is warm and the breezes are cool.

Donovan - Atlantis (from Barabajagal, 1969) - I'd be able to listen to Coast to Coast AM if sounded more like this. A ladle full of dreamy folk-rock makes the paranormal bullshit slide down easier. My question is: Did Donovan's Atlanteans blaze a trail for the little people of Stonehenge?

Tommy James & The Shondells - Crimson and Clover (7" version) (from Anthology, 1989) - Better than "Strawberry Fields Forever"? Yes, it's the greatest pop song ever recorded and nothing you or anyone else might say will change my mind.

The Byrds - Eight Miles High (from Fifth Dimension, 1966) - Maura on the twelve-string guitar wizardy -- an attempt to emulate the style of John Coltrane's saxophone playing -- employed by Roger McGuinn on this track: "It sounds like the flickering of flames." An apt description, even though she really doesn't care for the song, or psychedelia in general. (It's okay, I knew she was a no nonsense punk/pop purist when I proposed to her.)

that is I think I disagree

I was up until the wee hours of Saturday evening (or, more accurately, Sunday morning) dealing with my upteenth irritating head cold of the season. (A wiser man might be concerned about such a recurrence of illness, but I've never prided myself on matters of wisdom.) Having resigned myself to feverish and phlegmy wakefulness, I decided to finish rereading the final chapters of The Gun Seller, Hugh Laurie's quite entertaining novelistic mash-up of P.G. Wodehouse and Len Deighton, but ended up watching a late night showing of How I Won The War on one of the cable movie channels.

I've watched the film, a 1967 black comedy with an anti-war slant, at least half a dozen times over the years, but I'm still uncertain how I feel about the film. Directed by Richard Lester, it bridges the stylistic gap between the 1965 Beatle vehicle Help! and the surreal 1970 post-nuclear satire, The Bed-Sitting Room, in terms of Lester's appropriation of absurdist elements (which, I'd argue, reached an unintentional apotheosis in the Lester-helmed Superman II.)

How I Won the War follows the misadventures of the hopelessly inept Lt. Goodbody (played by Michael Crawford, who I'll forever associate with this, and especially this), who manages to stumble unharmed through the Second World War, though at the cost of the lives of those under his command. The events are presented as absurdist farce, making ample use of physical comedy, slapstick, documentary footage, and even elements of pantomime -- all wrapped up in a very 1960's, very self-conscious "avant-garde" veneer -- to bring its message home.

Despite all its creative ambitions and good intentions, however, the film never manages to equal the sum of its (frequently inspired) parts, and ends up falling into that oh-so-infuriating category of "interesting mess." Absurdity and war are hardly strange bedfellows, but what sets something like How I Won the War and better realized works like Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow or Heller's Catch-22 (the twin pillars of the literary subgenre) is that the absurdity in those novels is presented as a natural consequence of the bureaucratization of mass slaughter, in which irrationality has assumed its own merciless and horrifying logic. (Mike Nichols's flawed cinematic version of Heller's novel managed to grasp the concept, though it frequently stumbled in conveying it onscreen.) How I Won the War, on the other hand, too often treats the absurdity as a matter of aesthetic window-dressing, which has the effect of undercutting the intended anti-war message and reducing it to facile sloganeering or wit for wit's sake. Imagine Samuel Beckett and Eugene Ionesco cranking out a WW2 version of Candide for some quick booze and cigarette money at the behest of MoveOn.org, and you'd have general idea. An IMBD.com commenter described the film as a "sheep in wolf's clothing," and despite the well-documented caveats regarding information gleaned from that source, it's a very apt description.

The movie isn't devoid of effective moments or elements, it's that they are swamped amidst the gimmicky cinematic clutter. The replacement of fallen members of Goodbody's outfit with silent, single-colored ghosts who continue to serve in death I found to be an effectively macabre touch, suggesting the utter inescapability of the mad situation. There is one scene in particular which I found to be extremely haunting: Goodbody, taken prisoner by the Germans, is sitting on a rail embankment as he awaits interrogation. He looks behind him at a closed boxcar stopped on the tracks, and the fingers of an emaciated hand poke out through a gap in the door as Goodbody is led away by his captors. It's a very simple, yet brutally effective moment which draws attention to an aspect of the war (mass-graves, gas chambers, crematoriums) ignored in the countless boiler-plate cinematic depictions of the war up to that time. It's a shame that the film as a whole couldn't sustain that level of insightfulness.

These days, How I Won the War is mostly remembered for featuring John Lennon (in his only non-Beatles-related cinematic appearance) as Musketeer Gripweed, Goodbody's batman (small "b," but we can dream) and a petty thief who "never found anything worth stealing." It's a smallish supporting role, though you'd never know that by looking at the VHS box. A little bait-and-switch never hurt anyone, right?

It was during the filming of How I Won the War that Lennon began composing what would become one of the greatest (if not the greatest) pop songs ever recorded, an oblique tribute to his childhood in Liverpool. There's no excuse for not having your own copy of the original (unless who happen to hate The Beatles, which is more of an explanation than excuse), so I'm posting an interesting, if inferior, cover version instead.

I'm referring to, of course:

Plastic Penny - Strawberry Fields Forever (from Two Sides of a Penny, 1968) - Known primarily for their one hit, 1968's "Everything I Am," the various members of this psych rock/proto-prog outfit later moved on to work with Elton John, UFO, and Procol Harum. Actually, this track sounds pretty close to what I imagine a Procol Harum cover of "Strawberry Fields Forever" would have sounded like.

dia de los padres

Jeez, he looks so damn young in these pictures. Then again, so do I.

Fire - Father's Name Was Dad (from a 1968 single; collected on Nuggets II: Original Artyfacts from the British Empire and Beyond, 2001)

The Astors - Daddy Didn't Tell Me (from The Astors Meet The Newcomers: Sweet Soul From Memphis, 1996)

the gauntlet has been thrown down

Gee, I don’t know if I’m “man enough” for MegaForce. Can I have a few minutes to think about it? I never really envisioned a scenario where an ad for a Hal Needham movie (“a lousy Hal Needham movie” would be redundant) might force me to define my gender role in specific terms, so I’m a bit unprepared.

What definition of “man” are we talking about, anyway? Because certain popular assumptions about what the term entails preclude wearing a spandex unitard and having perfectly trimmed and moussed facial hair. I eschew tight fitting clothing for reasons of comfort and practicality. I do sport chin stubble more often than not, but that is less a conscious affectation of manliness than the fact that my hypersensitive skin rules out shaving more frequently than once a week.

I can confidently state that I do not ascribe to the notion of manhood as defined by Spike TV, Maxim, or other proponents of the “man as drunken, hairless ape, and that’s cool” school of thought. Nor do I have much fondness for the sensitive male/emo crowd and its passive-aggressive brand of machismo, either. (Especially, since in many cases it’s a false front to market one’s self romantically, rather than as an actual enlightened attitude.)

Yet the question remains: Where does my masculinity stand vis-à-vis Ace Hunter and his jet-powered supercycle?

It’s not that I put a whole lot of thought what having a Y chromosome means on a daily basis, though I’m not saying that in the sense of those color/gender-blind statements that are the province of the privileged, and used haughtily to duck the issues of bias or kick historical and cultural context to the curb: “I don’t see why having a cover depicting a black man getting burned alive should be any more offensive than one featuring a white man in the same situation.” I won’t pretend that gender doesn’t play a factor in what Andrew is, but in how I view myself, it doesn’t mean as much to me as it seems to with a lot of other guys. It’s simply a whim of genetic coding, and nothing I feel the need to “prove,” “assert,” or “defend.”

I’m sorry, Ace, I just don’t think it would work out between your organization of hi-tech mercenaries and me. Staking my sense of self-worth and perception of masculinity on my ability to foil Henry Silva’s terrorist army with a futuristic dune buggy doesn’t sit well with me. I wouldn’t say no to one of those bike decals, though, if you’ve any to spare…

For the musical portion of today’s program, here are two variants on the themes of masculinity and self – one from a 60’s psychedelic perspective, the other from an 80’s pop one.

Chopper – I Think I’m a Man (from Le Beat Bespoké, 2004)

Men Without Hats – Hey Men (from The Adventures of Women & Men Without Hate in the 21st Century, 1989)