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A Laurel and Hardy Party #5: THEY GO BOOM!

(1929; director: James Parrott)

There’s got to be at least one critic who’s written about how Laurel and Hardy are actually a subversive gay couple in their films, right? I’m not ready to drape a rainbow flag over the boys’ shoulders just yet, but the hints are there if you want ’em. Have at it, folks. Let’s make Laurel & Hardy hip new gay icons. Fine with me.

Exhibit A: They Go Boom!  It’s the two-reeler short in which Oliver Hardy comes down with a case of the sniffles and it’s a problem for both him and Stan Laurel because they sleep in the same bed together. Shoulder-to-shoulder almost. Closer than the Clintons have slept together in forty years and closer than the Trumps have probably slept together ever.

Now, I don’t know, maybe in 1929 two men could bed down under the same blanket and it didn’t mean anything other than that they were sleepy. I’m not sure. I was only four years old in 1929.

Also, one could argue that Stan and Ollie are simply poor and this is how they save money. Their room, which is about the size of–ahem–a closet is pretty shabby.

Or maybe they’re hiding out from their wives to live their secret life and are simply on a budget.

Anyway, while Ollie suffers through his cold, Stan tries to help out by applying antiquated home remedies that lead to the usual giant mess. The pratfalls are plenty, Ollie loses his temper, the police show up because of the noise and an air mattress explodes. It could happen.

It’s a bad night for our heroes, but a good time for us as this is easily one of the funniest of the team’s early shorts, all the more impressive because the production couldn’t be more economical. It’s just two guys in a room with brief appearances by a few bit players, including old school comedy stalwart Charlie Hall as the angry landlord.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #8: VAMPIRE ON TITUS

Guided by Voices
Vampire on Titus
1993, Scat Records

There’s a great Pollard quote in issue 82 of Magnet from 2011 on the occasion of GBV’s upcoming Let’s Go Eat the Factory album. Talking about his longevity in music, Pollard says:

One loses one’s innocence because of public acceptance. You become cognizant that the whole world is listening, and you’re not just writing for yourself. You have to maintain the attitude of a child… You have to make records for yourself… It means you’re not trying to make records for the whole world, and the record will be better because of that. I see people to this day complaining about how they keep sending stuff out and banging their heads against the wall and not getting anywhere, and it’s because they’re trying too hard. We don’t try too hard… We try not to try. That should be our motto.

That seems to sum up the journey of early Guided by Voices. They were a band learning in obscurity to not try. And they got a little better at it with every album. A little weirder. A little looser. To get more rough and ragged was their idea of progress. They were stripping everything down and they were serious about it.

Serious enough to make Vampire on Titus, the most fucked-up, wrecked and trashed Guided by Voices album ever, their most lo-fi cry in the night.

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The Meaningless Fun of THE MEANDERING CORPSE

Richard S. Prather
The Meandering Corpse
1966, Pocket Books

Reading a Richard S. Prather novel is like eating steak while drinking bourbon, smoking a cigar and playing with a loaded gun as you place a long-shot wager on a boxing match. There’s nothing healthy going on here. You don’t learn anything. You didn’t get here by following good advice.

No, all that these books have going for them is that they’re crackling, fast-paced entertainment and that’s that. They’re from a time when trash was trash and no one, neither the writer nor the audience, ever needed to apologize for it. No one came to these books looking for a message.

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Things I Will Keep #3: BOBBY MARCHAN, “There’s Something on Your Mind”

Bobby Marchan
“There’s Something on Your Mind”
1960, Fire Records

Among the records that I intend to keep until my fateful final day on the dragstrip of life, many are 45s. I’ve even had half a mind in recent years to collect music on 45s ONLY, but have yet to commit. That’s further down the Path of Enlightenment than I am willing to go right now. It’s too much sacrifice (and it’s not necessarily cheaper, either). I’m just not gangsta enough.

There’s nothing wrong with digital formats (I use ’em, I abuse ’em), but I do think that physical records and CDs encourage more active engagement with music. And IF this is true, the 45 is the ultimate in active engagement. Because you can’t just put it on and then let it go for an hour to play in the background while you entertain house guests or masturbate on your kitchen floor (or both). Nope, a 45 is gonna be all over in a few minutes after which time you either play that sucker again, take a chance on the B-side or put on something else. You have to move and make a decision. You’ve given the act of playing that song your full attention.

You are devoted to the song.

And I can’t think of many songs that deserve devotion more than Bobby Marchan’s desperate, devastated and dangerous cover of Big Jay McNeely’s “There’s Something on Your Mind”. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever heard.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #7: THE GRAND HOUR

No, the gold-print-on-red-sleeve cover art isn’t much more clear in person than it is in this photo.

Guided by Voices
The Grand Hour
1993, Scat Records

In the Season One finale of The Guided by Voices Story, the band had just recorded Propeller, their masterpiece. And then they broke up because they were getting old and Robert Pollard’s family was giving him the stink-eye over this stupid rock band that he had going.

It was all just a hobby anyway. A goof-off. Something to pass the time. Pollard is now over this music stuff and he won’t even miss it. Right? Cut to credits.

Season Two begins with a phone call to Pollard’s house.

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Things I Will Keep #2: GOD BLESS TINY TIM

Tiny Tim
God Bless Tiny Tim
1968, Reprise

As the years go by, as my metabolism slows, as thoughts about mortality hit me like a bird shitting on my head everyday, as I figure out what I really care about in life, and as I enthusiastically prune my 4-5,000-piece record collection down to a modest stash of essentials, more and more do I realize that I love happy music most of all.

I guess that there’s great angry music and depressing music out there. Cool. Somebody else can listen to it.

Your humble reporter though, as he falls apart like an old Chevy Nova and spends his evenings at home tending to his two cats and his sciatic nerves, is all about the good times and sunny vibes. The occasional arty outsider thing can catch his weathered ear from time to time (watch this space for some of that in future installments, if you dare), but for the most part, he loves pretty tones that make luscious melodies that build up to timeless songs. This sordid specimen of whom we speak is your regular pop nerd and your basic freak for a hook. A real headcase. His younger music snob self would be ashamed. He’s a disgrace, this old short bald guy who never exercises. He wants to put on music and sway and sing along. He wants to play the same songs over and over. He wants to rock out and be flown around on angel wings. He wants to get out of this paragraph in which he’s stuck referring to himself in the third person.

That doesn’t mean that I only love songs about rainbows and candy (though I do love plenty of songs about rainbows and candy). Rather, I’d define “happy” music as music that exhibits a sincere love for life (sad songs can be awfully sweet on the ears when they’re beautifully written). There are many different ways do that.

And this genius first album from Tiny Tim hits a whole bunch of them. It’s a masterpiece of dreamy aural world-building and soul-soothing. I could never get rid of it. My mood lifts the moment that I put it on. I always want to be around it.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #6: PROPELLER

Guided by Voices
Propeller
1992, Rockathon Records
Reissue (via the vinyl version of the Box set): 1995, Scat Records

The final Guided by Voices album. The closing chapter. The grand exit. One last blast before Robert Pollard retires his mic, packs up his guitar, throws his songwriting notebooks in a drawer, never makes Bee Thousand,  never makes From a Compound Eye, never makes Space Gun, and kisses his dreams goodbye.

That was true for about five minutes in 1992, at least, when Pollard caved to pressure from his family who didn’t think that a 34-year-old man with a wife and kids should be wasting his time and money making records that nobody except Byron Coley hears.

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Dorothy Parker on Robert Benchley and Bookstores

My copy of The Portable Dorothy Parker never stays on the shelf. It travels from room to room in my home, picked up often and read and then moved again back and forth, mingling with anything else that I’m presently reading. I rarely look for it. I always just stumble upon it. One day, it’s on the bedside table. Maybe the next day, it’s on the floor by the living room couch.

Her theatre and book reviews for Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and Esquire that make up most of the last two hundred pages (pieces written from 1918 to 1962) are particularly good when I need a quick dose of wit. They’re the best reviews of anything that I’ve ever read and are a steady source of inspiration, including when I needed a name for this website. Her New Yorker book review column from 1927 to 1933 was called “The Constant Reader”, which I used about two brain cells to bend to my own purposes here. (Mrs. Parker would probably roll her eyes over it.)

Though I can be hard on my books, I don’t like to mark them with highlighters or pens, but I do like to remember and recognize great and/or interesting passages in what I’m presently reading, so why not do it here? What else have I got going on? Absolutely nothing.

So, haunting me at the moment is the opening paragraph of Parker’s May 1958 book column, in which she tells a brief anecdote about the dearest friend in her life Robert Benchley, before she celebrates a volume of Edmund Wilson’s Jazz Age essays, shrugs her shoulders at Jack Kerouac and smirks over Edna Ferber’s latest potboiler:

The late Robert Benchley, rest his soul, could scarcely bear to go into a bookshop. His was not a case of so widely shared an affliction as claustrophobia; his trouble came from a great and grueling compassion. It was no joy to him to see lines and tiers of shining volumes, for as he looked there would crash over him, like a mighty wave, a vision of every one of the authors of every one of those books saying to himself as he finished his opus, ‘There–I’ve done it! I have written THE book. Now it and I are famous forever.” Long after Mr. Benchley had rushed out of the shop, he would be racked with pity for poor human dreams. Eventually, he never went anywhere near a bookshop. If he wanted something to read, he either borrowed it or sent for it by mail.