SECOND THOUGHTS
My Mick Jagger piece has now been published by the American
Spectator, and upon further reflection it is much
better than the gloomy assessment below. It now strikes me
as particularly lucid, and dare I say it, trenchant and
even coruscating:
Mick Jagger was knighted
Friday, joining Sir Elton and Sir Paul. Some conservatives
grumbled, including Keith Richards, seemingly under the
impression his musical partner had been raised to the
peerage: "I don't want to step out on stage with
someone wearing a coronet and sporting the old
ermine." Mick, as usual, had the last word: "I
don't really think the establishment as we knew it exists
any more." No, it doesn't. But neither does rock and
roll...[More]
Perhaps my new attitude is simply a matter of no longer
being critically short of the readies. I sold my rock
music collection today. That is, everything that Lyle's
Place on Yates would buy: about 500 CDs, the result of 15
years collecting. It took about 90 minutes for them to
decide what they wanted and how much they would pay for
it, after checking each disk for damage. I've been through
mass sell-offs before, and it's rather like (I should
think) a tart on the curbside waiting for custom. Not
conducive to self-respect, but at the end I received
C$1,268, which is. This forestalls homelessness for
another month and saves Christmas for my family. Ho ho ho.
You should all read my friend Kevin Steel's report
on Canada-U.S. relations, also in today's Spectator:
the Voice of the New Intelligentsia. Mr. Steel describes
himself as a writer, graphic designer and musician.
Not since Renaissance Florence, etc.
Kevin
Michael Grace, 11.59 p.m., December 15,
2003►
EVERYTHING MUST GO
My apologies for deserting this space for five days.
Various crises, domestic and otherwise, have intervened.
I spent some time struggling with a piece on Mick
Jagger. (See below.)
I realized that my ability to write for publication has
become so attenuated as to be almost unmeasurable. This
distressed me, as journalism was the only thing I was ever
any good at. Further distress was to follow.
The piece was based on Ian MacDonald’s observation
that rock music produced by people over 30 isn’t much
good. I was checking a reference about MacDonald when I
discovered he had died in August. I was saddened, as I had
felt a kinship with him through his writing. Then I read
Richard Williams’s obituary
in the Guardian, and my mounting trepidation was
rewarded with devastation:
The climax of the
[MacDonald’s] anthology [The
People’s Music] is a lengthy
meditation on the life and work of Nick Drake, the
precociously gifted singer-songwriter whom MacDonald had
encountered at Cambridge and who committed suicide in
1974, when still in his mid-twenties. Written with an
intensity that at times overwhelms its ostensible subject,
it can now be seen to have provided clues to MacDonald's
own lengthy struggle with profound depression. "Can
it be," he asks, apropos of Drake's preoccupation
with spiritual transcendence, "that the materialist
worldview, in which there is no intrinsic meaning, is
slowly murdering our souls?" The decision to commit
suicide, at his home in Wotton-under-Edge,
Gloucestershire, indicates that he had drawn his own
conclusion.
Ian MacDonald joined the staff of the New Musical
Express as assistant editor in 1972, which is the year
I took out a subscription. I’ve never loved a newspaper
as much as I loved the NME. It was brash, arrogant
and often laugh-out-loud funny. Nick
Kent and Charles Shaar Murray saw to that.
But it was also erudite, eclectic, witty and consistently
well written and edited. It was usually more enjoyable
than the music it covered.
Editor Nick Logan is usually cited as the genius that
turned the NME around and made it the best-selling
music paper in Britain, passing perennial leader Melody
Maker. (Logan later created Smash Hits and The
Face.) I think that MacDonald and fellow assistant
editor Tony
Tyler never really got the credit they
deserved.
MacDonald appeared to have arrived fully formed as a
beautiful writer. I could cite any number of examples.
Here’s the lead from his review
of Stranded,
November 10, 1973:
In a way, Roxy Music's
original ambiguous stance—the Chinese Box thing that was
probably their most enticing quality—always fought
against their acceptance as a for-real rock ‘n’ roll
band. Even their most committed devotees surely felt deep
down a nagging doubt that, after they'd taken the last box
out of the last box out of the last box, etc., they'd be
left with only a scented nothingness and the distant
wicked chuckle of a Mephistophelean Ferry as he, too, did
a Cheshire cat and faded into thin air.
Keep in mind the NME was a newspaper written for
a mass, largely teenaged, audience. (Circulation: 220,000
copies weekly in 1975.) Anyone who tells you that
educational standards have not declined since then is
lying. I daresay most graduate students today would not be
expected to know of Chinese boxes and Faust and Alice
in Wonderland. Oh, and the review's called "A
Pearl Beyond Price."
Ian MacDonald, 1948-2003:
A sworn foe of Richard Dawkins and that ilk
The Seventies was the last decade rock music fans could
be assumed to be intelligent. To put it another way, it
was the last decade popular music influenced the thinking
of intelligent people. Ian MacDonald was obviously highly
intelligent, but he never boasted in the NME or
burdened readers with the recondite. Just how learned
MacDonald was became apparent only in 1990 with the
publication of his The
New Shostakovich. MacDonald, it turned
out, was not only one of the foremost experts on the
composer’s music but also on the politics
of the Soviet Union.
MacDonald was an anti-Stalinist, so I don’t suppose
he would have gotten on with Julie Burchill, who joined
the NME in 1976 and quickly became the most
notorious of the "hip young gunslingers."
MacDonald had left in 1975, in part to pursue musical
interests. His brother, Bill
MacCormick, was a prominent jazz-rock
musician (Canterbury division) and Ian worked with him,
Roxy guitarist Phil Manzanera and Brian Eno.
His Shostakovich book was a succès d’estime,
but his 1994 book Revolution
in the Head, an evaluation of every
song recorded by the Beatles, was a best-seller. (A CD
tie-in, The
Beatles at Number 1, was published this
autumn.) According to Richard Williams, "Its success
encouraged him to write for a new generation of music
magazines." Shocking, really, that MacDonald needed
encouragement, but to the end he remained self-effacing to
an extreme.
He wrote for Uncut and Mojo, where his
famous essay on Nick
Drake appeared. "Exiled From
Heaven" had a profound effect on me, and rereading it
after MacDonald's death is unbearable. I have spent much
time pondering his question:
Can it be that the
materialist worldview, in which there is no intrinsic
meaning, is slowly murdering our souls?
I sometimes wonder if people have souls anymore. The
only thing I can state with certainty is that our lives
are deranged, and all evidence points to them becoming
ever more so.
Ian MacDonald’s suicide has unnerved me. He was a far
better writer than I could ever hope to be and was by all
accounts a far better person. It is
suicide, I think, that demonstrates more forcefully than
we care to admit the truth of Sartre’s dictum:
We come into this world
alone, and we die alone.
So I finally finished my wretched Mick Jagger piece:
facile, trite and, as always, besmirched by my need to
appear jokey and blokey. But at the end I made a
resolution—I’m getting rid of all my rock records.
Everything must go. I’m somewhat surprised by how little
I care.
Kevin
Michael Grace, 6.58 a.m., December 15, 2003►
MARGINALIA
Several people responded to my enquiry regarding the
purpose of gibberish strings in spam emails. Thank you
all. It has to do with something called Bayesian
filtering. David Janes's answer to my query is posted here.
The Smug Canadian has a background piece here.
Mr. Smug was helpful but
angry:
As
for this:
We
shouldn't expect any different from businessmen. Most
would cheerfully serve Hitler, Stalin, Mao or Kim Jong-Il.
Well,
that's just pure insulting bullshit. Maybe your former
bosses would, but that doesn't make them "most."
Journalists, sure, I can believe that—I read their
unwavering support for such characters every day.
We
have a good example even here in Canada: businesspeople
have fled theocratic Quebec in the thousands.
Speaking of non
sequiturs, what on earth can
"theocratic Quebec" mean? Does Mr. Smug believe,
as Diane
Francis does, that sovereignty association
is a Catholic conspiracy? Anglo "businesspeople"
fled Quebec after René Lévesque's victory because they
knew their hegemony had ended. C'est tout. As it
happens, I knew quite a few Westmount Rhodesians in the
1970s. They hated the French, thought them little better
than beasts and didn't bother to hide their opinion.
Quebec is well rid of them.
As for my "insulting bullshit," I should have
thought it obvious that businessmen are particularly
susceptible to government coercion. To begin with, they
require licences to trade. They are subject to all manner
of official and semi-official harassment. Business
requires stability to thrive, and if that includes sucking
up to odious regimes, then so be it. Businesses exist to
enrich their owners. Nothing wrong with that; the world
wouldn't work without them. But money has no ideology, so
let's skip the John Galt bullshit, shall we?
And as for those Canadian businessmen that have fled
south, they have done so because personal and corporate
taxes are lower there. If they were expecting to find
"freedom from government," they're bloody fools.
Ask any American businessman what ADA, CPSC, EEOC, EPA and
OSHA mean. Ask why these acronyms terrify him. Ask what
happens to him and his business if the IRS, the Department
of Justice or a state attorney general takes against him.
For all Canada's faults, it is not common for Canadian
businessmen to be ruined and threatened with imprisonment
at the whim of bureaucrats.
David
Warren has not left the Ottawa
Citizen. That'll teach me to traffic in instant
punditry. I'd cheer, except that the first
column after his return is yet another
excoriation of Canada for not dancing to G.W. Bush's tune,
and the second
is revoltingly twee.
Mark Steyn has become a terrible bore. His columns are
now of interest only to bigots. You'd never know from
reading him (or Warren for that matter) that France,
Germany and Canada have good
reason to be angered by the Bush's
administration's decision to shut them out of Iraqi
reconstruction contracts. Steyn seems to think America
doesn't need allies.
But that's not Bush's position. The trouble is, Bush
doesn't seem to understand the difference between allies
and client states. A policy of "Screw you!"
followed by "Uh, little help, here?" is
guaranteed to result in alienation.
The best analysis I've read of the likely consequences
of Saddam Hussein's capture is by Patrick
Cockburn.
I'd meant for some time to write about Toronto Sun
editor Lorrie Goldstein, but I kept forgetting. Better
late than never. Goldstein had pressed relentlessly for
war against Iraq, based on received wisdom about Saddam's
"weapons of mass destruction." That the WMDs
were never found and were likely destroyed a decade ago
has not embarrassed the warhawks in the slightest. Oh, it
was all about our concern for the people of Iraq, they say
now. Or the links between Saddam and al-Qaeda. Or, as
Steyn argued, we won; who cares; no time for losers; for
we are the champions of the world.
Goldstein isn't
buying:
It now seems obvious Bush and
Blair and their respective administrations either lied
about the real threat posed by Iraq, or, the more likely
scenario, cherry-picked intelligence that reinforced their
own view that Iraq was an imminent threat.
And that those of us, present
company included, who supported the war on that basis,
were wrong...
It is no longer possible to
argue credibly is that Saddam posed an imminent threat at
the time of the invasion, in the sense he had operational
WMD ready to hand over to terrorists or launch against his
enemies.
And that was the major
reason, all attempts at revisionist history aside, Bush
and Blair gave for going to war.
You're a good man, Lorrie Goldstein.
Kevin
Michael Grace, 3.17 p.m., December 15, 2003►
PENSÉE
Heroin addiction is an attempt to annihilate the self,
a kind of chemical Buddhism.
Kevin
Michael Grace, 11.47 p.m., December 14,
2003►
ORPHAN
So I was writing a piece (see above), and the second
paragraph came off rather neatly. The trouble was that it
so disturbed the flow of the argument it had to be cut,
much to my chagrin. A pity to waste it, so here it is:
Tony
Blair invites yob-rockers Oasis
to 10 Downing Street. Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin
sits at the feet of Bono.
And George W. Bush performs a comedy
routine with Ozzy Osbourne at the White
House Correspondents Dinner. Ozzy fronted a band called
Black Sabbath, bit the head off a dove (twice), beat his
wife (repeatedly), was arrested for urinating on the Alamo
(only once, mind) and is the living (barely)
embodiment of the catchphrase “This is your mind on
drugs.” What price “family values” now, eh George?
Never mind. Rock and roll has become the
establishment.
Ozzy: You didn't mention the bat!
Kevin
Michael Grace, 11.34 p.m., December 14,
2003►
THE CASE OF DAVID WARREN
Frank, the
satirical fortnightly, once printed a scurrilous anecdote
about David Warren. It seems that a decade ago the pundit
had approached Conrad Black to rescue his intellectual
review the Idler. Black agreed to discuss the
matter with Warren and invited him to his box at the
SkyDome for a Toronto Blue Jays game. Black was late, and
Warren sought to soothe his considerable anxiety with a
little drink, then another, then another… By the time
the great man finally arrived, Warren was insensible.
Black decided not to invest in the Idler, and it
folded. Let me state for the record there is no question
this story is an outrageous calumny. Even so, it left me
with a warm regard for Warren, because I would have done
exactly the same myself.
I wish I had a similar understanding of Warren’s
motive for abandoning his perch at the Asper family’s Ottawa
Citizen. Warren had been at the Citizen since
1997, writing three columns a week. He had lately become a
great favourite of the warbloggers for his vigorous
support of the Bush administration’s adventurism in
Asia. It seems that Warren submitted his December 7
column, an
attack on multiculturalism, and the Citizen
demanded changes. Warren refused; the Citizen
spiked it; Warren and the Citizen agreed to part
company. (Oddly enough, the column appeared the next day
in the Asper’s National Post.)
I wish Warren had stayed. I am appalled by his
transformation into the Canadian William Kristol, but
there is much more to him than that. Warren is a genuine
conservative—apart from the warmongering, of
course—and there are precious few of that breed in my
poor, benighted country. Warren is also a brave
journalist—as his defence
of Larry Spencer proves—and the number of that Canadian
breed can be counted on one hand.
To be honest, if I had been Warren’s editor, I would
have demanded a rewrite as well; the column was confused
and confusing. But that’s not what got Warren into
trouble. Multiculturalism has become Canada’s
semi-official state religion, and it becomes less semi-
every day. To deny it is to commit criminal blasphemy.
Canada’s media moguls—including Conrad Black, to his
everlasting shame—have refused consistently to resist
the "human rights" commissariat whose goal is a
totalitarian state.
We shouldn’t expect any different from businessmen.
Most would cheerfully serve Hitler, Stalin, Mao or Kim
Jong-Il. So would most journalists. But is it too much to
hope that a single Canadian establishment journalist below
retirement age will one day defy our would-be tyrants
before defiance becomes life-threatening? Soon enough
Canadian dissidents will be imprisoned for their opinions.
What’s a spiked column compared to that?
Kevin
Michael Grace, 2.42 a.m., December 10, 2003►
NON SEQUITURS AU-GO-GO
Spam is not so much a problem for me now, as Telus, my
ISP, has made available a service that prevents it from
reaching my POP account Inbox. My Hotmail account is a
different kettle of scum entirely, however. I finally
enabled the bulk mail filter, and this has provided some
relief, but every day I still must delete several dozen
invitations to observe Paris Hilton in flagrante
delicto.
Several weeks ago I noticed that my spam routinely
incorporates lengthy strings of gibberish, often
historical in nature. For instance, a message from Harvey
connie (sic), soliciting membership in "a free dating
website created by women," contains this:
cheng by
name, was quicker to see an opportunity, and said:walls
and refused to fight. Teng Ch`iang said: "Our
adversary. learn the enemy's condition." And Chang Yu
says: "We must temptFletcher, of Balliol College, my
Secretary. I am also considerably. opposites you would
least desire?contain matter that has either been added by
a later hand or "What the devil is it all
about?" said my brother's fellowwalls and refused to
fight. Teng Ch’iang said: "Our adversary. contain
matter that has either been added by a later hand orcheng
by name, was quicker to see an opportunity, and said:
opposites you would least desire?met, how shaggy the hair
of the men, how large and bright their eyes,
Does anyone have an explanation?
Kevin
Michael Grace, 11.36 p.m., December 9, 2003►
INAPT METAPHOR WATCH
“Maverick
broadcaster” Bill Craig explains
why his “PrideVision gay digital TV channel” needs its
own studios:
At
the moment, they’re sort of riding on the back of The
Score television service.
Gosh, not “barebacking,”
I trust.
Kevin
Michael Grace, 10.38 p.m., December 9, 2003►
THE
GINGERBREAD MAN, OR, WHAT'S NEW AT THE CCFD
(The Citizens
Centre for Freedom and Democracy or Citizens Elsewhere, as
it shall be known henceforth in this space.)
If we want to be free, we
must tolerate the truth.
—Link Byfield, Calgary
Sun, December 5, 2003
United Western
Communications, erstwhile publisher of The Report
and wholly-owned subsidiary of Citizens Elsewhere,
sputtered briefly into life last week. UWC, having
received funds of approximately $20,000, sent cheques to
several former employees (though not to The Ambler). At
least two former employees received over $1,000. The
cheques were partial payment for outstanding holiday pay—41.5%
as reckoned by Link Byfield, chairman of Citizens
Elsewhere, erstwhile editor-publisher of The Report and
chairman of UWC.
The cheques are
worthless, as UWC's bank account was seized by the Alberta
Ministry of Human Resources and Employment directly after
the cheques were issued. Future payments (in the form of
non-rubber cheques) will come from the Government of
Alberta, but it is by no means certain that all those that
received cheques last week will be compensated in the same
amount. The reason is as follows. Only four former
employees (out of a couple dozen) had filed claims with
Alberta Employment Standards by last week's deadline. The
claims were not contested by UWC, and the total amount
claimed is in excess of the funds deposited into UWC's
account.
In a December 1
form letter (on UWC letterhead) that accompanied the
rubber cheques, Link Byfield reports that he anticipates
two further deposits of funds being made into the UWC bank
account, although this may now be moot.
Byfield's letter makes several claims, in Q&A
format, regarding the failure of The Report. One
question asks, "What happened to the donations raised
by the CCFD?" This is begging the question, as we
shall see.
In response to the question, "If the Citizens
Centre can afford radio advertising, why can't it pay
employees's holiday and severance pay?" Byfield
states,
The magazine (UWC) and the
Citizens Centre were separate corporate bodies with
different objectives. All of us worked for UWC. The fact
is, the CCFD raised over $600,000 [$630,000,
to be exact] and gave it to the magazine,
but it was not enough.
The facts are rather different. Citizens Elsewhere did not
raise $630,000, and this money was not
"given" to The Report. Citizens Elsewhere
did
not exist until February 18, 2003. The
lion's share of the money raised (perhaps as much as
$500,000 or more) was raised by an entity called The
Report Foundation, incorporated October 17,
2002. As I wrote last month,
In the December 16, 2002,
issue of the magazine, Link Byfield announced
the founding of the Citizens Centre for Freedom and
Democracy. Despite his claim—"The name ‘Report
Foundation’ was (as we explained two months ago)
temporary"—the Report Foundation and the Citizens
Centre were—and remain—separate
entities.
If UWC and Citizens Elsewhere were "separate
corporate bodies," how is it possible that "all
of us worked for UWC"? All of us were paid by
UWC, but that is not the same thing. Hundreds of thousands
of dollars were wasted by Citizens Elsewhere, which
floundered for months dragging The Report to its
death while it attempted to invent a purpose to justify
its existence. How did CCFD executive director Kevin
Avram's salary ($10,000 per month? more?) benefit the
magazine? What about Avram's wife (also added to staff)?
How did CCFD operations manager Craig Docksteader's salary
benefit the magazine? What about the considerable
legal fees charged by Calgary lawyer Gerry Chipeur, Link
and Joanne Byfield's weeklong trip to the United States
and the rest of the travel expenses incurred by Citizens
Elsewhere? What about "Western
Assembly II"? The Telus Centre in
Calgary was booked for three days in March 2004. The
deposit required (now forfeited)
would have been substantial. How did this fruitless vanity
project benefit the magazine?
The fact is, The Report Foundation was established,
primarily, to save The Report, as the first
fundraising letter of October 2, 2002,
makes plain. There is no question that the credulous and
good-hearted folk that contributed did so to prevent the
magazine from dying. This letter claims an annual
operating deficit of 5%. Based on annual revenues of $5
million, the operating deficit was $250,000. The
$630,000 raised would have kept the magazine going for
another two and one-half years. Citizens Elsewhere
profligacy and Link Byfield's "attempt to reposition,
rebrand and reprice the magazine" repositioned,
rebranded and repriced it into the grave. Citizens
Elsewhere survives, however, and Link Byfield still has a
job, having managed to divest himself of a publication he
had admitted he was "sick of."
Dozens of employees lost their jobs, and forty thousand
subscribers were cheated, but Link Byfield still has a
platform from which to indulge his puerile fantasies.
I was not sent a copy of the letter from which I have
quoted above. (I acquired a copy by other means.) Link
Byfield has not deigned to attempt an explanation of why
he cheated me of $14,400 in (pre-tax) wages fixed by
contract in April. His letter does, however, contain a
curious mea culpa, followed by a typical example of
the famous Byfield insouciance:
The company [UWC], as you
know, is insolvent. It has not been put into bankruptcy,
because it has no assets to sell. Nor have I been
personally sued into bankruptcy, although I am the person
morally and legally most at fault. But I have little if
anything to seize. Legal procedures cost money, and if
there are no assets, creditors have no reason to act.
In other words,
Run, run, as fast as you
can! You can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man!
Would you care to produce an audited statement of
worth, Link Byfield?
I might not be able to catch you, Link Byfield, but
there is one Whom you cannot outrun, try as you might.
Like your letter, the Penny
Catechism is written in Q&A format.
No. 327:
Q: What are the four sins
crying to Heaven for vengeance?
A: 1. Wilful murder. 2. The sin of Sodom. 3. Oppression of
the poor. 4. Defrauding labourers of their wages. (Gen. 4,
Gen. 18, Exod. 2, James 5.)
Do Nos. 3 and 4 look familiar, Link Byfield?
(For my earlier exposition on the murder of The
Report, go here.)
Kevin
Michael Grace, 5.01 a.m., December 9, 2003►
MARGINALIA
My friend and former colleague Mike Jenkinson has
reactivated his website.
He was the first person I knew to have one, way back in
the neolithic age, circa 1996, and my response was, "You
have a website?" My question served for
some time as a motto of sorts for its original
incarnation. Jenk is an amusing and intelligent fellow,
and his work is characterized by an agreeably light touch,
something all too rare in the blog-------. I just wish I
could talk him out of his penchant for pro wrestling, one
of the most disagreeable manifestations of our
disagreeable age.
For anyone who hasn't heard, Gregg Easterbrook's Tuesday
Morning Quarterback has now found a
permanent home at NFL.com. His book The
Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel
Worse is now available. Easterbrook has
set great store (financially and otherwise) by this work;
its amazon.com ranking is 1,386. Colby Cosh's review is
available here.
According to Publishers Weekly:
Easterbrook
sees a widespread case of cognitive dissonance in the
West: according to Easterbrook, though the typical
American's real income has doubled in the past 50 years,
the percentage of Americans who describe themselves as
"happy" remains where it was half a century ago
(oddly, Easterbrook doesn't tell us what that percentage
is). Why do so many of us remain discontented, he asks? Is
it because now that even the middle classes can afford
nearly every conceivable luxury, we have nothing left to
look forward to? Easterbrook, a senior editor at the New
Republic and contributing editor to the Atlantic,
believes so. He also castigates modern psychology and the
media for dwelling on minor problems without celebrating
the broader, more upbeat context in which they exist.
So: Every day, in every way, we are
getting better and better, are we? Depends on what you
mean by "better." Here's an alternative
hypothesis: We are unhappy because we don't know how to be
happy, and we don't know how because our lives have no
meaning. Materialism is a dead end:
Naught
can amuse him, falcon, steed or chase:
No, not the mortal plight of his whole race
Dying before his balcony. The tune,
Sung to this tyrant by his pet buffoon,
Irks him. His couch seems far more like a grave.
Even the girls, for whom all kings seem brave,
Can think no toilet up, nor shameless rig,
To draw a smirk from this funereal prig.
—Baudelaire (translated by Roy Campbell)
It is our misfortune to be living
through the greatest revolution in history. The very
nature of what it means to be human is in doubt. God is
dead; religion has been supplanted by
"spirituality" and believers by "members of
faith communities." Now we are all as gods. Ignorance
is a virtue, while truth is derided as unknowable. Man and
woman no longer exist; they have been supplanted by six
"genders." The family is headed for the ashbin.
And so is the nation; we have sold our birthrights for a
mess of Thai food. There is no such thing as society. The
good news is you can get a DVD player at Wal-Mart for
$29.87—if you're not trampled first.
Now there's an idea for a book.
Kevin
Michael Grace, 9.41 p.m., December 7, 2003►
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
No matter how unhappy we may
be, we still have the great and miraculous happiness of
life itself and with it the freedom to draw breath in the
world—even if we don’t have it for very long.
—James
Bowman
Kevin
Michael Grace, 7.35 p.m., December 5, 2003►
LOOK AT THE SCOREBOARD
National Post resident scold Robert Fulford is displeased
with us. Us Canadians, that is. Seems we’ve been taking
too much enjoyment in Conrad Black’s downfall. Which is
very Methodist of us or German or something. In any event,
it isn’t seemly.
Schadenfreude, Fulford declares, is never seemly.
Well, almost never.
Of course, I myself never
experience it. But certainly there are occasions when it's
both justified and pleasurable. Peter Gay, the historian,
recalls in My
German Question that as a persecuted
Jewish teenager in Berlin he watched German athletes at
the 1936 Olympics lose medals they had expected to win. As
Germans fans despaired, Gay rejoiced. Schadenfreude,
he says, "can be one of the great joys of life."
Ah yes, Berlin 1936, when Furious Adolf snarled, "Ach
nein! Der verdammt Amerikanische Neger ist zu gut!"
And then he chewed some carpets. Or so we have been led to
believe. According to the International Olympic
Committee’s official
summary,
The 1936 Olympics, held in
Berlin, are best remembered for Adolf Hitler’s failed
attempt to use them to prove his theories of Aryan racial
superiority. As it turned out, the most popular hero of
the Games, even among the German people, was the
African-American sprinter and long jumper Jesse Owens, who
won four gold medals. During the long jump competition,
Owens’s German rival, Luz Long, publicly befriended him
in front of the Nazis.
Ah yes, noble
sport triumphed over nasty politics—as it
always does. Adolf Hitler’s supposed humiliation at the
hands (and feet) of Jesse Owens is one of the great myths
of the modern age. Funny, the IOC summary doesn’t
mention which country won the 1936 Summer Olympics. I
wonder why. Here is the medal
count (top 10 countries only):
|
COUNTRY
|
GOLD
|
SILVER
|
BRONZE
|
|
Germany
|
33
|
26
|
30
|
|
USA
|
24
|
20
|
12
|
|
Hungary
|
10
|
1
|
5
|
|
Italy
|
8
|
9
|
5
|
|
Finland
|
7
|
6
|
6
|
|
France
|
7
|
6
|
6
|
|
Sweden
|
6
|
5
|
6
|
|
Japan
|
6
|
4
|
8
|
|
Netherlands
|
6
|
4
|
7
|
|
Great Britain
|
4
|
7
|
3
|
Implicit in the IOC’s analysis is the disgusting
fascist belief that sporting success proves national
superiority. In 1932 in Los Angeles, pre-Adolf,
pre-"Aryan" Germany finished a miserable 9th.
In 1936, Germany won, easily, despite Jesse Owens. The
Berlin Olympiad was used to prove Hitler’s
theories of Aryan racial superiority, most notably in Leni
Riefenstahl’s Olympia.
As William
Shirer wrote,
Hitler, we who covered the
Games had to concede, turned the Olympics into a dazzling
propaganda success for his barbarian regime.
Fascist iconography: Berlin Olympiad, 1936
As we have seen, the IOC (which to this day serves to
facilitate propaganda successes for barbarian regimes)
prefers to peddle the Furious Adolf myth, but those
interested in the truth are directed to Duff
Hart-Davis’s excellent Hitler’s
Games. I cannot speak for Peter Gay,
but I must believe that for all his joy when the German
women’s relay team famously dropped their baton, the
success of Hitler’s Games must have been a crushing blow
to Germany’s Jews.
The fascist conflation of sporting triumph and national
superiority lives on: in England, whose football hooligans
long for a Führer—and in Canada, where our 1972
hockey triumph over the Soviet Union has become the most
celebrated national myth of all. How well I remember the
shame I felt reading innumerable letters to the editor
declaring that Canada’s victory in Moscow proved the
superiority of our way of life to theirs. And if the
Soviets had won instead? What fools. What rubbish.
Kevin
Michael Grace, 3.25 p.m., December 2, 2003►
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
Perhaps being bombed at
regular intervals throughout the 20th century has given
the British a different slant on the entertainment
quotient of violence.
—David
Mamet
Kevin
Michael Grace, 10.51 a.m., December 2, 2003►
WHAT ONCE WERE VICES
ARE NOW HABITS
The introduction to classical music collecting I
promised should be up sometime this week. In the meantime,
here’s an earlier piece I wrote on the classical babes
phenomenon.
Bach, Beethoven, Brahms and Beefcake
The Classical Record Industry Exploits Sex To Boost Its
Flaccid Sales
The Report
November 25, 1999
Yo-Yo Ma is not a household name. But neither is any
other classical musician, except for Luciano
Pavarotti—and he's known primarily as a member of
crossover supergroup the Three Tenors, as a pal of U2
singer Bono and for tabloid coverage of his marital and
tax woes. But Ma did become a catchphrase on Seinfeld,
and how many cellists can say that? So why is he afraid to
show his face?
His new album, Solo, on Sony Classical,
consists, as one might expect, of five pieces for solo
cello. Five obscure 20th-century pieces. One might expect
the CD cover to feature a portrait of the grinning artist,
with the implicit promise of "Hey, this new music is
not really so difficult, once you get to know it."
Instead, Ma sits on a chair, balancing his instrument on
his knees, thus concealing his torso and head. "Let
the music speak for itself"? Hardly. Selling the
sonata and not the sizzle is no longer an option when
classics account for only 3% of total music sales, and
executives warn balefully of the "death of classical
music."
Ma: Why so shy, Yo-Yo?
Ma's portrait is a sly joke at the expense of Sony's
marketing department and those of its rivals. For if you
have recently turned the pages of the venerable British
magazine the Gramophone, you might be forgiven if
you thought you had mistakenly picked up a copy of Vanity
Fair.
The Gramophone is a must for those to whom the
question, say, of whether Toscanini was mistaken in
calling for an F sharp instead of an F natural in bar 206
of his second 1934 live recording of Strauss's Ein
Heldenleben is a matter of honour. A serious read, in
other words. Yet when the full-page advertisement for Ma's
Solo in the October Gramophone is compared
to the boy toys that adorn the other glossy full-colour
ads, it proves he was prudent in hiding his bland but
amiable looks behind his cello. The ad for a recording of
Mozart flute quartets on EMI Classics is dominated by a
portrait of a supine Emmanuel Pahud, dressed entirely in
white, without jacket, shirt untucked, collar and sleeve
buttons unfastened, smouldering post-coitally. Pianist
Leif Ove Andsnes wears a goatee, a modish three-button
jacket and a black turtleneck, and glowers at the reader,
seemingly furious at being beaten out by Rick Schroder for
the lead role on NYPD Blue. And Daniele Gatti's
tousled moptop and baby fat hint at a man who can't buy
beer without being carded, let alone conduct the Royal
Philharmonic Orchestra.
Pahud, Gatti: Youth will be served
Classical labels have always traded on looks, from
Vladimir Horowitz and Jascha Heifetz to Leonard Bernstein
and Herbert von Karajan. But the physiognomy of these men
declared they had been to the mountaintop and not come
down empty-handed. The great soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf
was also a great beauty, but this was a bonus. Just as
conductor Fritz Reiner once barked "No!" to a
request for a racier run-through, recording company
executives had always sternly rejected using sex to sell
Schubert—until RCA's louche marketing of Canadian
cellist Ofra Harnoy.
Schwarzkopf, Harnoy: From ethereal to louche
Mere bad taste became pornography three years ago with
the début release from Canadian Lara St. John.
Twenty-four years old, but looking a decade younger, St.
John stands naked on the cover, her breasts hidden only by
her violin. Unlike Ma, St. John has it, and she flaunts
it. Adding sacrilege to insult, the recording is not some
crossover effort like Fiddlin’ To Get Jiggy, but
a Bach sonata and partita, the very Everest of the
repertoire.
St. John: Pleased to see you, too
Released on a minor label, this "jailbait
Bach" has sold 30,000 copies, making it a runaway
best-seller. St. John appeared naked but for a jacket on
the cover of her next release, and the major labels,
determined to close the cheesecake gap, have since made
the push-up bra and the plunging neckline as essential as
the baton and the bow, the better to quicken the hearts of
the overwhelmingly male and middle-aged demographic that
buys classical records. The beefcake is presumably an
attempt to further nurture the gay market, which the
industry began openly cultivating five years ago with the
release of Out Classics, whose cover art was a
photograph of two muscular and naked men embracing.
Ed Savenye, who works at Sikora's Classical Records,
the Vancouver store for the discriminating buyer, rejects
the suggestion that soon classical record companies will
sign only those performers fit to join the cast of Friends.
"Perhaps I'm naïve," he declares,
"but artistry is undeniable." He defends Lara
St. John, calling her a "very competent
violinist," a view shared by the critical fraternity,
but admits that sexy CDs do sell better. He insists,
however, that his clientele is as interested in what's
inside the jewel box as with what adorns it. "Do you
know Hélène Grimaud?" he asks, referring to the
exquisite French pianist. "Customers are attracted by
her album covers, and they ask, 'Is this any good?'"
Savenye is pleased to tell them that her Gershwin and
Brahms are "fantastic." "People want the
total package," he says.
Reiner, Grimaud: From no-nonsense to come-hither
Hilton Kramer, editor of the New
Criterion, takes a less sanguine view
of the phenomenon. The classical record companies, he
argues, have "appropriated the marketing methods of
pop music," in a doomed attempt to cultivate youth
and boost sales. Kramer, formerly art critic of the New
York Times, says this strategy is similar to that
employed by the "Good Gray Lady": "The Times
devotes a great deal of space to pop culture in the belief
that young people will read it and then go to read the
rest of the paper, even though all their marketing surveys
tell them that they don't."
As for the "death of classical music," Kramer
confesses, "I feel very melancholy when I go to
concerts and see hardly anyone under the age of 50."
He remembers his own schooldays, when he and friends
"saved our pocket money to buy records and watch
Koussevitzky conduct the Boston Symphony," a time
when "being able to read music was considered as much
a part of literacy as reading and writing." He
concludes sadly that the "insidious" effects of
pop culture will continue to further accelerate the
"forfeiture of our cultural heritage."
The future of the conservation and promotion of the
classical music heritage now lies largely in the hands of
Edgar Bronfman Jr. The 45-year-old Canadian, who succeeded
his father of CEO of Seagram Co. in 1994, bought Polygram
last year and now controls 24% of world music sales,
including the classical labels Decca, Philips and Deutsche
Grammophon. Bronfman's leadership of what is now called
the Universal Music Group has been marked by ruthless
downsizing: hundreds of pop acts have been axed, and it
was announced last month that Philips, one of the most
revered marks in the industry, is to be folded into Decca.
Bronfman's history suggests that those that decry the
vulgarization of serious music ain't seen nothing yet. Not
only has he co-written a song recorded by Céline Dion,
but when rapper Ice-T, of "Cop Killer" infamy,
was cut from Time Warner after a shareholder revolt,
Bronfman found a home for him at Universal. Classical
Booty, anyone?
I was only half-serious about Classical Booty. I
should have known better, as RCA’s appalling Love
Notes series (Shacking Up to Chopin,
etc.) proves. I must confess, however, that I didn’t
anticipate the industry’s decision to go after Pop
Idol/American Idol viewers. Does EMI really
believe teenagers are interested in whatever "Becky"
has to offer, or is she aimed at the burgeoning pedophile
market?
Love Notes: I am not, as they say, making this up
Edgar Bronfman Jr., having lost control of Universal
Music to Vivendi (since swallowed by NBC), and not content
with having lost
billions of his family’s fortune, has now
with several other investors bought the Warner Music Group
(classical labels: Teldec, Erato, Finlandia, Nonesuch)
from Time Warner. Poor EMI was left standing at the altar
once again.
Lara St. John’s critical standing grows ever higher.
She is now signed to Sony—not that that means anything
anymore, Sony being almost as downmarket as EMI. The Penguin
Yearbook (2002/03) comments on a recent
release,
Lara St. John is a first-rate
Bach violinist, her technique wonderfully assured, her
playing lithe and full of communicative intensity.
Visitors to her handsome website
will discover St. John to be an engaging and intelligent
woman, even if she doesn’t understand what "pornography"
means.
Finally, I had not heard of Nina
Kotova, the Russian cellist, composer and catwalk
model, in 1999; otherwise, I would have
included her in my survey. Musical talent is surely supererogatory
to a woman this beautiful. Perhaps in the future John
Casablancas will be a bigger name in music than Julliard.
'Becky,' Kotova: Nothing in their outward appearance
suggested musicians
Kevin
Michael Grace, 1.47 a.m., December 1, 2003►
