Monday, November 17, 2003
Didn't This Machine Used to Only Kill Fascists?
How Folk Music Can Kill or Be Killed.
Remember that little village I came from? There was all sorts of arts there, both in permanent and temporary residence. The music in the place ran a wide course, from jazz musicians to symphony people, no rock and roll people just yet, but Mexican tunes and American folk music people were there and imports were arriving.
There was a fellow who moved there who had studied gamelan and had learned Balinese dancing while living on one of those remote islands. And one day there showed up at the store that sold stringed instruments and Folkways records was a person calling himself Bill Guthrie. He happened into the area and stayed around for a while. He called himself by the name Bill "Guthrie," and he frailed a banjo. Soon people were saying he even looked like Woody. I couldn't tell if he did or not, only having an old scratchy photo on an album cover to look at. Soon it was said he was one of the many children that Woody had sired as he roamed about the country, and everyone "in the know" seemed to believe this story, although he never told it himself that I ever heard. I wasn't sure what to believe. He was a very quiet person, and during his single year there, he disappeared for many weeks one summer, it was said he had gone back East to see "his dad". And then he returned, but not to stay for long.
One night he drove his black model T Ford onto the railroad tracks, turned off the engine, and waited for the freight train to show up. It came along full speed and he sat behind the wooden steering wheel, he didn't move his car in spite of their warning whistles. He was killed in a very noticable manner and the newspaper gave his name but it wasn't "Guthrie".
The story became even more dramatic in a small town, people reporting that his car key was found alongside the tracks, which implied he was worried about changing his mind. Whoever he might have really been, I found myself grieving a bit for Bill, that was a damn shame he could never find acceptance from "his father", trying in some way to be like him, playing folk music, travelling about in cars of his "dad's" generation's vintage and he even picked a "hobo" symbol of freedom for his demise. That was years ago, 1961 or 1962 that happened, and I was a rather young person at the time, just barely a teenager.
Then Woody died. Then Arlo Guthrie later showed up with "Alice's Restaurant" in the mid-sixties. I thought it was interesting as a "talking new york blues" if a bit overlong as a story-song but I was amazed at how popular it became. Just for regaling some trifling little anti-authoritarian conflict. It was popular because I guess people really, really felt assaulted by the powers that be at that time, and everyone accepted that the establishment would go to any ridiculous lengths to harrass and punish them.
Then, that era was over and everything just seemed to degenerate as it became more widespread, popularized and glittery.
In 1974, I stumbled into a new oak-paneled eaterie on Pacific Coast Highway, a thoroughfare so busy by then you couldn't so much as stop to look at the waves any longer and people waited impatiently to back out of their own driveways to their simple wood cottages which although always overpriced then were upwards of six hundred grand.
So I had risked life and limb to turn across the busy highway to get some chow and I was in this restaurant. As I stood peering into the case, the guy behind the counter swooped up. As he was waiting to take my order, he actually sang "You can get anything you want in Alice's Restaurant." Now, that might have been a welcome or interesting phenomenon, in and of itself, but it also happened to be the name of the place which was spelled out in cursive by a light rope above the counter.
A Malibu LA-look, the waiter was, with top two buttons of the shirt precisely undone to display casual disarray or disregard for appearance, a style that in fact came to be known as "Malibu casual", a pose belied by the well-pressed surface of the maroon gabardine of his shirting and the gold chain necklace which was a beginning phenomenon then, a well-coiffed dark ponytail, earlocks, and antique-store gemstone earring, he now smiling and singing, "You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant ..."
Well, what would a reasonable response to something like that be? Should I sing my order back to him? This wasn't neat or cool or surprising, this was kind of boring. I stared down at the overly-glazed items on the frilly paper doilies on the glass shelves in the to-go case and the situation was getting a bit more irritating because I didn't see anything I really wanted there.
¶ 11/17/2003 09:14:00 PM
How Folk Music Can Kill or Be Killed.
Remember that little village I came from? There was all sorts of arts there, both in permanent and temporary residence. The music in the place ran a wide course, from jazz musicians to symphony people, no rock and roll people just yet, but Mexican tunes and American folk music people were there and imports were arriving.
There was a fellow who moved there who had studied gamelan and had learned Balinese dancing while living on one of those remote islands. And one day there showed up at the store that sold stringed instruments and Folkways records was a person calling himself Bill Guthrie. He happened into the area and stayed around for a while. He called himself by the name Bill "Guthrie," and he frailed a banjo. Soon people were saying he even looked like Woody. I couldn't tell if he did or not, only having an old scratchy photo on an album cover to look at. Soon it was said he was one of the many children that Woody had sired as he roamed about the country, and everyone "in the know" seemed to believe this story, although he never told it himself that I ever heard. I wasn't sure what to believe. He was a very quiet person, and during his single year there, he disappeared for many weeks one summer, it was said he had gone back East to see "his dad". And then he returned, but not to stay for long.
One night he drove his black model T Ford onto the railroad tracks, turned off the engine, and waited for the freight train to show up. It came along full speed and he sat behind the wooden steering wheel, he didn't move his car in spite of their warning whistles. He was killed in a very noticable manner and the newspaper gave his name but it wasn't "Guthrie".
The story became even more dramatic in a small town, people reporting that his car key was found alongside the tracks, which implied he was worried about changing his mind. Whoever he might have really been, I found myself grieving a bit for Bill, that was a damn shame he could never find acceptance from "his father", trying in some way to be like him, playing folk music, travelling about in cars of his "dad's" generation's vintage and he even picked a "hobo" symbol of freedom for his demise. That was years ago, 1961 or 1962 that happened, and I was a rather young person at the time, just barely a teenager.
Then Woody died. Then Arlo Guthrie later showed up with "Alice's Restaurant" in the mid-sixties. I thought it was interesting as a "talking new york blues" if a bit overlong as a story-song but I was amazed at how popular it became. Just for regaling some trifling little anti-authoritarian conflict. It was popular because I guess people really, really felt assaulted by the powers that be at that time, and everyone accepted that the establishment would go to any ridiculous lengths to harrass and punish them.
Then, that era was over and everything just seemed to degenerate as it became more widespread, popularized and glittery.
In 1974, I stumbled into a new oak-paneled eaterie on Pacific Coast Highway, a thoroughfare so busy by then you couldn't so much as stop to look at the waves any longer and people waited impatiently to back out of their own driveways to their simple wood cottages which although always overpriced then were upwards of six hundred grand.
So I had risked life and limb to turn across the busy highway to get some chow and I was in this restaurant. As I stood peering into the case, the guy behind the counter swooped up. As he was waiting to take my order, he actually sang "You can get anything you want in Alice's Restaurant." Now, that might have been a welcome or interesting phenomenon, in and of itself, but it also happened to be the name of the place which was spelled out in cursive by a light rope above the counter.
A Malibu LA-look, the waiter was, with top two buttons of the shirt precisely undone to display casual disarray or disregard for appearance, a style that in fact came to be known as "Malibu casual", a pose belied by the well-pressed surface of the maroon gabardine of his shirting and the gold chain necklace which was a beginning phenomenon then, a well-coiffed dark ponytail, earlocks, and antique-store gemstone earring, he now smiling and singing, "You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant ..."
Well, what would a reasonable response to something like that be? Should I sing my order back to him? This wasn't neat or cool or surprising, this was kind of boring. I stared down at the overly-glazed items on the frilly paper doilies on the glass shelves in the to-go case and the situation was getting a bit more irritating because I didn't see anything I really wanted there.
¶ 11/17/2003 09:14:00 PM
