Ask Greil: December 18, 2023

Had an argument with a friend the other day about, of all things, Liz Cheney, who you may have seen all over MSNBC and other liberal outlets, promoting her new book and warning about the dangers of Trump 2.0. My friend says never trust a Republican, even the moderate ones, and especially a Cheney. (Or any of the other "Never Trumpers," those who, like Bill Kristol, two decades ago, were touting weapons of mass destruction and stripping us of every civil liberty they could get their hands on). I disagree, figuring Democrats need all the allies they can to stave off American fascistic rule—all comers welcome. And honestly, I think it does show courage for someone like Cheney to have dug in so deeply on the subject. She lost a job over it and no doubt many friends and associates on the right, and if she's out there to sell books so fucking what, I don't see how that in any way taints what she's saying about Trump. What has been your own response to the likes of Liz Cheney and other right wing anti-Trumpers? —TERRY

Unlike Trump himself, most people are made of parts. Dick Cheney was, and is, an unrepentant war criminal. He also supported gay marriage, in the most effective manner (Why not? Who does it hurt? No one. Who does it help? A lot of people) well before any notable Democratic politician except Gavin Newsom. Liz Cheney voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020, not to mention nearly every other tenet of reactionary ideology. She seems to have been genuinely shocked at Trump’s attempt to steal the 2020 election after it had been conclusively determined that he lost: to steal the government, to steal the country  and claim ownership of its history and its future, now all reconfigured in his own image. And to be shocked by how many of her colleagues and fellow citizens signed on with him.

That’s what she talks about. She’s not repositioning herself on abortion, affirmative action, labor rights, environmental policies, civil rights, or anything else to attract sympathy or a job as head of the Ford Foundation or to win a Nobel Peace Prize or sell books. She believes if Trump wins it will be the last election, that he will serve until his death and his family will continue to maintain ownership of the country and its citizens far into the future. Trump has said he wants his enemies executed for treason. A lot of people continue to make their livings arguing that he doesn’t mean what he says. She’s not one of them.

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How on Earth did I live this long without knowing that Aretha Franklin performed “The Shoop Shoop Song (It's In His Kiss)” live on TV in 1965 (and with Darlene Love on backing vocals, no less) and absolutely killed it? How did this come about? She was at the tail end of her Columbia contract, and as far as I know was still being marketed there as a sophisticated torch singer. Strange to think of the road not taken where she could have been signed by, say, Shadow Morton and become the Queen of the Girl Group Sound instead of (or prior to) the Queen of Soul. —JAMES L.

I never liked that song. It seemed badly written and made anyone singing it sound awkward, as if they were tripping over themselves. This is fabulous. She gives it everything, makes all the other versions sound cheap and about nothing. And it’s a shock to see her slim, coy, dressed in a nice but ordinary outfit, and not the Queen of anything. No, it’s better she went on to world-historical greatness with “I Never Loved a Man,” but this is unique, for her and for the song.

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What genre is Jeffrey Martin? Is he Americana or Roots music? —NANCY COBB

These are not useful distinctions. Trying to pigeonhole performers by genre is reductive. Do you like him? Why? That's all that matters.

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There are those who feel that the US version of Aftermath is superior to the UK version both because they see “Paint It Black” as a better album opener than “Mother's Little Helper,” and because they feel “Goin' Home” works better at the end of the album than it does in the middle. I myself am currently undecided. What would your response to both points be given that your preference is for the UK version? Also, is there anything about Aftermath you would add to your description from Stranded or do you feel that your description still stands as you wrote it back then? —BEN MERLISS

This is not something that needs to be relitigated. But the Court of St. James has ruled that the sixties practice of not including singles on albums should stand.

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Have you ever read a biography of one person that was over 500 pages long but still managed to justify its length? —BEN MERLISS

Recently, Howard Fishman, To Anyone Who Ever Asks: The Life, Music and Mystery of Connie Converse, over 600 pages, and James Gavin, Deep in a Dream: The Long Night of Chet Baker, just short of 500 pages, but we’ll give it a few of Fishman’s and call it square.

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This may have been submitted on the old form/website, but wanted to make sure it was considered. So: Is it possible to access syllabi to the university classes you have taught? —KORCH

I don’t know. It seems it ought to be, through various departments and programs, but there also might be privacy rules that would get in the way. I have all of it, but am leery about cluttering up my website or Substack newsletter with information most people would never look at.

You could try searching in this manner: Princeton, 2000, 2002, 2006. New School, Writing Program, 2007, 2009-14, University of Minnesota, 2008, CUNY Graduate Center, 2015, Berkeley, intermittently in American Studies 2000-19.

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I appreciate your work very much and I'm glad to hear you're feeling better. I have two questions.

In your top 10 list from May 31, 1988, the number one entry was for the song "Complete Control from The Story of The Clash, Volume One. In this, you wrote that the song "as pure sound stands as the greatest rock 'n' roll recording ever made." I'm wondering how this take resonates with you now and what your feelings are, these years later, about the Clash?

Secondly, I had an interesting experience recently while driving. The Social Distortion cover of Johnny Cash's “Ring of Fire” came on XM. Without thinking, my mind immediately flashed "cultural appropriation." I was surprised that this came to mind so explicitly and without contemplation. I went down a mental rabbit hole of pondering how, when, and where cultural appropriation can be said to have taken place. In this context I began to think about all the artists from the 1960s covering songs from the 1930s, so on and so forth. Is cultural appropriation only between races or can it be between generations of the same society?

Sincere thanks — W.A. MARX, JR.

There are a lot of Greatest Rock ‘n’ Roll Records Ever Made. Maybe hundreds, from Elvis’s “Mystery Train” to the Chantels’ “If You Try’’ to Eminem’s “Lose Yourself.” To me the test is simple: when you’re listening to whatever it might be, you can’t imagine that there could be anything better. When I listen to “Complete Control”—a little dispute with a record company blown up into a manifesto about the meaning of life and what to do about it—I am filled with awe, I don’t understand how human beings could have summoned the intent, will, imagination, and intelligence to make this happen.

‘Cultural appropriation’ is a canard. It’s a false category. It presumes to imprison all people into a straitjacket of one dimensional identity, be it ethnic, racial, geographical, gender, or whatever division a cabal of intellectual terrorists decides everyone must now conform to. Was Al Green engaging in cultural appropriation when he recorded Hank Williams’s “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry”? Of course not. He was singing a song he loved, to get closer to it, to see if he could do it justice, to try to make others feel the joy and satisfaction he felt whenever he heard that song. Apply that test whenever the self-terrorizing notion of appropriation appears to you, and maybe things will look differently. More open. More free. People taking to each other without apologies.

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The recent death of TV trailblazer (All In The Family) Norman Lear at the amazing age of 101 years old (!) makes me think of John Fogerty because about 20 years ago, Lear helped buy out Fantasy Records, the CCR label, from Fogerty's arch-enemy, Saul Zaentz (Zaentz can't dance/But he'll steal your money). This change in ownership brought Fogerty back to Fantasy and presumably, treated him fairer than Zaentz who famously sued John for plagiarizing an old CCR song (“Run Through The Jungle”) with a new song (“Old Man Down The Road”). Details are included in John's Fortunate Son autobiography of about 10 years ago. Fogerty continues to play his old CCR catalog extensively during his current shows and although I haven't seen him play in concert for a long time, I'm happy for him. He released several entertaining videos during the pandemic of him and his adult kids from his second marriage performing CCR hits. But for what seems like the last time, John Fogerty has not recorded any new material in over 10 years save for the terrific one-off song “Weeping In The Promised Land” a couple years ago. He stopped in the ’70s, in the ’80's-’90's, and since the Revival LP in 2007, nothing new from a songwriter who defined an evergreen sound in a way no one in rock 'n roll has ever done except for Chuck Berry. And like Chuck, John seems satisfied with his old catalog of hits. Still, for a guy who in his prime could put three chords to the phone book and have a hit, it seems a little sad to me that he's just an oldies act. If the Stones can have a well received new album of original songs, here's hoping John Fogerty has at least one more album left in him. —JAMES R STACHO

Who knows. JF’s string of hits with Creedence had their beginnings in a notebook where in a burst of inspirations he sketched out many of them at the same time, each one feeding off the other, as if he’d hit a mother lode and everywhere he looked there were more threads of gold in the rock. After that it may have been a matter of consciously attempting to find that now lost mine, retracing steps, so that where once “Green River” and “Proud Mary” appeared before him now he had to pursue the likes of “Epitaph”—which was just as good.

Bob Dylan has talked about how he simply can’t write in the mode that brought forth “Hard Rain” and “Hattie Carroll”—it’s not accessible, the times changed, he changed, the weather changed. Maybe JF knows he was privileged to be in the right place at the right time, and unlike others recognize it for what it was. Maybe the old songs haven’t worn out for him, maybe they still tell him things he didn’t know, and he takes satisfaction from passing whatever that might be on to others.

Yesterday I was listening to the 1993 Velvet Underground reunion album, and it was such a thrill to hear the songs speaking in new voices: to hear John Cale and not Nico or Lou Reed singing “All Tomorrow’s Parties” and “I’m Waiting for the Man,” as if he’d been waiting decades to give the songs what, to him, they always wanted. You never know.

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Hi Greil, I was going to get your thoughts on the new PJ Harvey video but after reading your recent letters column, I decided to ask instead about The Giant Gila Monster. The December 5th column had a couple of entries about Bay Area DJs and Alan Freed Dance Parties—and 1959's Gila Monster, a stultifying movie any way you slice it, is set firmly in the Freed era with a charming subplot about a wandering DJ who drops into a little southern burg with an armload of records to spin at the local soda shop.

The implication is that this was part of the DJ's mission in the '50s; to travel from small towns to even smaller towns like a combination of Willy Loman and the Pied Piper. My question—did these DJ appearances in backwater towns actually happen, or only in the movies? My guess is yes, these tiny towns couldn't get visits from top acts so the DJs who played their records would fill in.

The concept strikes me as great fodder for a movie set in that era, shot in black and white with any color coming from just the right soundtrack—a great mix of hits and more obscure fare. The traveling DJ could be young and eager or middle-aged and burnt out.

Speaking of black and white, I think the PJ video is beautiful, a Brothers Quay-like animation by the Chilean filmmakers Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña.

All the best —CHARLIE

I don't know anything about C.C. Rider disc jockeys—a wonderful idea. I can see a lot of actors getting into that role, in a messianic way. But David Thomas would have to be number one.

With the PJ Harvey video, it's very well done, it tries to find a story in the song, but the melody, the sketchy way it's built and sustained, and Harvey's faraway singing—she seems to start from faraway, never gets any further away, but is always out of reach of the living and the dead, doesn't need it. For me it gets in the way, It's a distraction. It takes away from the music.

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As a lifelong, second generation Bob Dylan fan, I've learned to roll with the punches, to revel in the classic mid-60s trilogy of albums and his many 'comebacks' throughout the years while enduring the late ’80s clunkers. Seeing Dylan live many times, I've mostly been rewarded, although I was too young to go see Tour '74 with The Band. I had to wait until his tour in 1978 which would be my first Dylan show. Of course even at 18, I understood that overblown, ill-conceived 'Vegas' Dylan show, was crap. I was embarrassed to be there, feeling guilty that I had invited friends to see the great Bob Dylan, only to see a shambolic show, overblown and overstuffed with too many musicians and instruments like conga drums and flute, which were a poor fit for any Dylan song, however re-arranged. The recent Complete Budokan release from Sony has not changed my opinion that the show was mostly a train wreck, despite the occasional blues highlights on rearranged originals like “You're A Big Girl Now” or his opening numbers, if you don't count lounge act instrumentals that precede him onstage. But I remained and still remain an ardent Dylan admirer and flash forward to 1999, when I took my teenage nephew to the Dylan/Paul Simon outdoor show on a hot 4th of July evening. Then it was Simon who fronted an overblown, overstuffed band of world musicians while Dylan led one of his better NET roadhouse bands featuring Larry Campbell and the then newly added Charlie Sexton. Dylan opened and we left before Simon finished as teenagers like my nephew then, knew crap when they heard it, as I did in '78. I appreciate the Bootleg Series of albums Sony has released, hoping an expanded Tour '74 might be in the works as the 50th anniversary nears. And there's all that NET Tour stuff, still going, which will last us for whatever time there is left to appreciate Dylan while he still lives and long after he, and we, have 'shuffled off this mortal coil' to quote a phrase. —JAMES R STACHO

The Budokan is the only Bootleg Series set I don’t even want to hear.

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I keep asking this question and keep coming up dry. I'm almost 63 so I did not grow up under the Kennedy mystique. Both JFK and RFK were dead, and EMK badly damaged, by the time I paid attention to the outside world. I get that people older than me who do have memories of them, have strong feelings, sometimes very positive. What I don't get is why someone younger (and sometimes substantially younger) would care about the Kennedy name? I was born about 17 years after FDR died, and while I greatly admire his accomplishments, the name "Roosevelt" would not predispose me to liking or not liking someone. Granted, I do not idolize (not in my nature). I respect a person's accomplishments but that is not necessarily passed to their namesakes. But the Kennedy name still seems to (at least in the media's eyes) mean something to younger people. Why do people give a shit about RFK, Jr.? What am I missing here? —TED RAIKIN

Supposedly rational, sophisticated political writers went gaga of over John F. Kennedy Jr. and his so-called charmed marriage to golden girl, i.e., not Jewish, black, Hispanic, or otherwise compromised person, Carolyn Bessette, arguing that not only was his overfunded George a serious magazine but that it would lead to a political renaissance, i.e., restoration. There are people of all ages entranced by Kennedy wealth, privilege, entitlement, tragedy, hubris, and looks in the same way that people are entranced by Trump: if they can’t be him, live like him, get away with anything like him, they can at least pretend to do so by covering themselves in regalia and voting for him.

Now we’ve got this pea-brained ugly drug addict truther—and truthers are never more than a step away from Jews-rule-the-world—who breaks rules, who says what others are afraid to say. He will save the country. He will save you—from the burden of thought and choice, those uncomfortable obligations democracy imposes. That’s what a a lot of people in America want, and always have.

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Hi Greil, That was a fun story about running into Reggie Jackson at the 7/11... Were you an A's fan or Giants back then? Raiders or 49ers? I liked the SF Giants with Juan Marichal, Orlando Cepeda, Bobby Bonds, Willie McCovey, but the A's were exciting with the cool uniforms, mustaches, orange baseballs, etc. And some pretty good players, as well. It was very much a Marvel/DC situation, same as the 49ers and Raiders. The 49ers were very "square": conventional, workmanlike, but still exciting with John Brodie and Fred Willard, but not as cool as Daryl Lamonica, Kenny Stabler, Biletnikoff, George Blanda, Cliff Branch, et al. There was a documentary made here in Winnipeg in the eighties about someone attacking Burton Cummings at a 7/11 here in the middle of the night. We don't handle success very well, especially when it's one of our own... Wpg has always had a love/hate thing with Cummings. We have owned the title of the biggest consumers of Slurpees in the world for decades, and this was also the only place Phantom of the Paradise was a success. Just a couple of our dubious distinctions. Sadly, Chad Allan of Chad Allan and the Expressions—the precursor to the Guess Who—passed away last week. I was surprised to read in his obit that his name was really Allan Peter Stanley Kowbel—which is a great rock'n'roll name—although I don't think the Expressions or even the Guess Who used a lot of cowbell.

Happy Holidays Greil. All the best to you and your family —PETER

The Raiders were cool beyond cool but I was a 49ers fan since childhood, listening to the thrilling alley-oop games on the radio, visiting practice sessions, going to games. I was an absolute Giants fan from 1958. But then came a day in the 1970s when they were down one run in the ninth and had a man on first with no outs and for the I don’t how manyith time didn’t bunt. I was so disgusted I jumped ship to the A’s and didn’t look back—until John Fisher bought the team and picked it down to bones and teeth, which he continues to sell to medical supply companies. So now I follow the Giants again...

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I hope that you continue walking the planet for a good long time. I truly enjoy your writing. As an archivist by trade, I am curious about your personal papers: the published writings, as well as drafts, research materials, ephemera, etc. Have you considered a home for your archives, where future thinkers can do a deep dive and benefit from and build upon your exceptional lifetime's work? —ANDREW

My younger daughter is an archivist and we’ve often discussed this. Given where I live and where I went to school and taught, I hope the Bancroft Library at Cal, where I did research for Lipstick Traces, would be interested. They already have a bench designed by Julia Morgan from the old house we left in 2011.

Thanks for your kind words. 

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What are your views on Al Jolson? —BEN MERLISS

Wildly underrated dancer. Totally shocking: like Elvis on the Ed Sullivan Show but maybe even wilder. For blackface, including a lecture on its cultural necessity, look at his 1926 short film A Plantation Act. For the best dramatization of why blackface couldn’t stand, watch the 2007 Tamara Jenkins movie The Savages, with Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hofman, set in a nursing home where each patient is allowed to choose a film for movie night, and what happens when their father, who’s sunk in dementia but knows what he likes, chooses The Jazz Singer. And there’s Sonny Til, the lead singer for the Orioles, one of the great artists of the postwar period, starting with “It’s Too Soon to Know” in 1948, who spoke for many African-American artists when he said it was Al Jolson who most inspired him. And Jolson would have been around to hear Til sing, just barely.

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Dear Greil - Here’s something I’ve wondered about for over a quarter of a century: 1) Have you ever read Thomas Pynchon’s 1997 novel Mason & Dixon? and 2) Do you think the narrative might possibly have been influenced by your own Lipstick Traces from eight years earlier? It definitely seemed that way to me back when I read the novel, as part of the narrative suggested more than a touch of the Lettrist International.

The novel is too complex to boil down, but let’s just say it’s the story of the two famous surveyors—the astronomer Charles Mason and his protege Jeremiah Dixon—and their global adventures in the field of navigation, ultimately finding themselves caught up in the gears of history as they demarcate the line between the slave and free states. What immediately made me think of Lipstick Traces and the Lettrists was that Mason and Dixon are very much concerned with geography in both the physical and metaphysical sense. Just as the French rebels had their own psychogeographic maps, Pynchon’s surveyors are absorbed with the idea of what they call parageography, “"alternative maps of the World, superimpos'd upon the more familiar ones." The book has very much of a Heaven and Earth preoccupation, as two guys who map out one land are also thinking of alternate worlds. Mason, mourning the loss of his wife, considers whether it’s possible to reunite with the dead, while Dixon pursues the idea of “a Map entirely within his mind, of a World he could escape to, if he had to."

The echoes, in short, were so strong that all I could think was “He got all this from Marcus.” That may of course have been because the subjects of Situationism and Lettrism were so new to me that I figured they were new to everybody. On reflection, I’m sure it’s totally possible that a polymath like Pynchon could have already been steeped in rebel French artistic movements. Any connection, you think?

Anyway, loved the book and many of your books since. Stay well. —RODNEY (Elgin, SC)

The only Pynchon novels I've read all the way through are The Crying of Lot 49, which was much too Vonnegut-y for me, Vineland, which I hated, and Inherent Vice, which I read over and over, for nostalgia in its best, most painful sense, the slapstick, the fun, the opaqueness behind the action, and the guy showing up in his old band unrecognized saying that they didn't know who he was the first time around either. I started Mason & Dixon but didn't get this far. Whether Pynchon read Lipstick Traces I have no idea, but what you're describing sounds like something Pynchon was perfectly able of conjuring up on his own.

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Dear Greil - I enjoy your columns, always food for thought from places I haven't thought about. I wish you would call it "Amoeba Music." There is no Amoeba Records, and no Down Home Records, and... These places are so much more than records... —LARRY KELP

Trying to follow your metaphysics but I’m too earthbound... What I most like about Down Home is that even after Chris Strachwitz’s death the same crew is there, as flinty and sharp as they ever were.

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—> Note: Follow-up response to a question initially answered in Ask/Dec. 5. <—

Just proposing: let's delete the 1956 Alan Freed's Rock N' Roll Dance Party Vol. 1 (Coral 1956) from your Treasure Island list, and replace this terribly stiff album (save for the big fat blues instrumental "Slow Boat to Monaco") with Alan Freed's Rock N' Roll Dance Party Vol. 1 on WINS (a label, and the name of a New York radio station where Freed hosted his Dance Parties)… [see full question here]—ARNAUD

It's a deal. I found the WINS LP on eBay for about $12. There's a good feeling from recordings of people actually performing in front of others, even if they don't vary what they've already recorded, which means there's really no reason to go back to the Chuck Berry tracks. For me the highlights are from the Johnny Burnette Trio, which had more punch as an idea with their original Memphis name, the Rock 'n' Roll Trio, hammering out "Tear It Up" and "Oh Baby Babe"—they catch a momentum and ride it, as if something new is actually happening. But the set drops the bottom out of itself with a full three tracks from the Robins—the fake Robins, the real West Coast Robins, working with Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller with "Smokey Joe's Cafe" and "Riot in Cell Block Number Nine," having gone to Atlantic as the Coasters. This group seems to be auditioning for the already moribund pre-rock TV show Your Hit Parade. The music has as much to do with what Alan Freed was known for as the worst 1953 American radio fodder you could find. Either Freed has suffered a taste breakdown or he was getting a lot of money from playing and featuring these turkeys.