Tuesday, June 28, 2011

...Phone Home

   Spotted yesterday outside the Women's Building, 18th St., San Francisco...


Monday, June 27, 2011

Lesions of Honor

   The AIDS years have been on my mind of late
   Last week I finished reading Just Kids, musician/poet Patti Smith's autobiography. Her first lover, the seminal artist and photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, succumbed to AIDS in 1989. The two met when they were twenty, and lived and worked together in the swirling art scene of the late sixties and seventies New York City. 



   
   In this quote from the 2008 film Dream of Life, a documentary about her, Ms. Smith talks about living even today with Mr. Mapplethorpe's memory: 

   Robert Mapplethorpe got AIDS. We were the same age. We knew each other since we were twenty. And he was forty years old, just starting to get success. His work was growing; he still had a million ideas. He really wanted to live. He was handsome. He had every, every reason on earth to live. All things, in every part of his life, were looking up. And he fought till his very last breath. Never gave up. I watched this man go through inconceivable horrors and humiliations, and still try to take photographs—you know, take a photograph, and vomit, and then take another photograph. Right to his last breath he was trying to work.
   And that, again, taught me a lesson. So after he died, and a sequence of other deaths—my piano player, who was very beloved, my husband, and my brother, and some other people—I kept, as low as I felt, I kept thinking of this person who struggled with all—every fiber of his being to live.
   I think about that every day. 

   In an excerpt on pgs. 275-276 of Just Kids, Ms. Smith, a fine writer, offers a pitch-perfect picture of her last visit with Mr. Mapplethorpe, in his New York loft. Everyone who lived through the '80s, or at least who lived in the firestorm of AIDS, remembers days like these: 

   There was no one present save his nurse and she left us to ourselves. I stood by his bed and took his hand. We stayed like that for a long time, not saying anything. Suddenly he looked up and said, “Patti, did art get us?”
   I looked away, not really wanting to think about it. “I don’t know, Robert. I don’t know.”
   Perhaps it did, but no one could regret that. Only a fool would regret being had by art; or a saint. Robert beckoned me to help him stand, and he faltered. “Patti,” he said, “I’m dying. It’s so painful.”
   He looked at me, his look of love and reproach. My love for him could not save him. His love for life could not save him. It was the first time that I truly knew he was going to die. He was suffering physical torment no man should endure. He looked at me with such deep apology that it was unbearable and I burst into tears. He admonished me for that, but he put his arms around me. I tried to brighten, but it was too late. I had nothing more to give him but love. I helped him to the couch. Mercifully, he did not cough, and he fell asleep with his head on my shoulder.
   The light poured through the windows upon his photographs and the poem of us sitting together a last time. Robert dying; creating silence. Myself, destined to live, listening closely to a silence that would take a lifetime to express. 


Totally Gay



   Yesterday was Gay Pride Day here in San Francisco, and the celebration for hundreds of thousands left Civic Center looking like this (above) round about 8:30pm. Heavy hangs the head that wore the crown the night before--or even that partied earlier that afternoon.
   I didn't make it down to the Parade or Civic Center celebration; I was tired from working. But by this point the only reason to do it would be to offer a silent nod to my fallen brothers of the 1980s and '90s and the dykes who stepped up to help them. And I can do that here.
   I first attended the Parade sometime in the mid-80s. By that time, AIDS had already claimed thousands. That doesn't mean the day lacked a sense of celebration. One year, an hour before the Parade, a friend and I dropped MDA, a precursor to Ecstasy. There followed the psychedelic onset of the Parade-opening Dykes on Bikes, a demented ten-minute onslaught of thunder and gas fumes and leather and tulle.
   But, for many of us, the Parade in those years--before corporate sponsorship and gay TV characters and LGBT marriage--simply provided a show of solidarity and a suggestion of possibility.
   More to the point, by the mid-to-late '80s it was a chance to see who still stood, given the indiscriminate ravages of AIDS. Solemn applause trailed the People With AIDS contingent down the route. Spectators clapped for those who still walked, who yet lived. And they clapped as if applause, like garlic a vampire, might keep AIDS at bay. A question hovered in the silence beneath the pitter-patter: Who among us is next?
   When talking about the Parade, then, it's tempting to ring the curmudgeon bell, to piss on the modern version's seemingly empty sense of spectacle. But there's no point. That was then. This is now. Hell, just last Friday New York state lawmakers approved a bill legalizing same-gender marriage. That's some kind of progress, right? Anyway, for at least one friend, this parade, his first, marked a kind of coming out: I'm here, they're queer, I'm getting used to it. 
   For us War Vets, then, it's enough to take a moment to remember the fallen, to blow a kiss up to the high blue sky where they may yet reside. And as we do so, so do we keep the feet firmly planted on the ground, be they shod in combat boots or stilettos, and appreciate the fact of our still being able to walk a'tall.

Warning Shots

 Those who know, rock. Those who don't, run for president.

 


   We imagined ourselves as the Sons of Liberty with a mission to preserve, protect, and project the revolutionary spirit of rock and roll. We feared that the music which had given us sustenance was in danger of spiritual starvation. We feared it losing its sense of purpose, we feared it falling into fattened hands, we feared it floundering in a mire of spectacle, finance, and vapid technological complexity. We would call forth in our minds the image of Paul Revere, riding through the American night, petitioning the people to wake up, to take up arms. We too would take up arms, the arms of our generation, the electric guitar and the microphone.       
   –-Patti Smith, stating her 1970s rock manifesto in her autobiography Just Kids, p. 245


   [Paul Revere is] he who warned, uh, the, the British that they weren’t gonna be taking away our arms by ringing those bells and, um, making sure as he’s RIDING HIS HORSE THROUGH TOWN to send those warning shots and bells that, uh, we were gonna be secure and we were gonna be free. 
   --Sarah Palin, June 3, 2010 

Saturday, June 25, 2011

That Sinking Feeling

   More than one Ryan Adams fan lamented the May, 2009 disintegration of his band the Cardinals. The Cardinals, a great jam band, managed to follow Adams through blind alleys, over cliffs and into the thickets of instantaneous song reinterpretation with easy elan.
   One of my favorite Cardinals tunes, from their last record, Cardinology, is the heart-wrenching "Sink Ships." It's played full electric on the album. But, true to form, Adams and the band--guitarist Neal Casal, pedal steel guitarist Jon Graboff, drummer Brad Pemberton, and the late and much lamented bassist Chris "Spacewolf" Feinstein--found all sorts of new versions of the piece as that last tour wore on.

   Here, the band performs a melancholy acoustic version November 6, 2008, at the Desmet Studios in Amsterdam:



   And here, Ryan and Neal perform a tender, aching reading in the back of a London cab (!) for "The Black Cab Sessions": 

Because the Rolling Stones are Fuckin' Awesome, That's Why #2

   Two live versions of "Brown Sugar," the show opener from the 1973 European tour, reveal just how inconsistent the band could be.

   This is from the second show on Oct. 14 at Ahoy Hall, in Rotterdam. It barrels along furiously, and is nearly a match for the fabled Brussels version. Listen to Keith and Mick Taylor take it home.



   This is from a month earlier (Sept. 13), the first show at City Hall, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. It finds the band seemingly in a drug stupor. They do not barrel along. They lope. They stagger. And they almost fall down.

Yeah. I Really Want to be Famous

   Doesn't this look like fun?


Because the Rolling Stones are Fuckin' Awesome, That's Why #1

   The Rolling Stones released Exile on Main Street, their gloomy, redemptive, druggy, shambolic masterwork, in the spring of 1972. They then took to the road in America and laid waste to just about every band that had taken a stage between 1969, when the Stones had last toured, and that year.
   The joy of the 1970s live Stones was their unpredictability; some nights a broken down car, others a winged chariot. The '72 tour (and its extension, in Europe, the following summer and fall) proved to be the band's live peak, at least with Mick Taylor playing guitar. (Some aficianados say that after Taylor bailed the band sagged for good.)
   These two clips (included in a single video), shot at Madison Square Garden at tour's end, in July, show the band at its hard-burning best. Jagger, tiny and fragile-seeming, laces his jumpsuit backstage. A moment later he's on, transmuted into a whole different creature--big, wild, frenzied, hot. The band doesn't so much launch into "Brown Sugar" as tackle it, catapulting crazily, all Keith Richards suspended chords and Charlie Watts drum whacks. "Street Fighting Man," the show closer, finds the band going entirely off the rails. Jagger spins and throws rose petals. Keith grinds down to the core. And Mick Taylor spirals lead lines into bright-lit indoor sky.
   There was a reason that, for a fleeting moment at least, they were able to call themselves, however ironically they did so, the Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the World.
   Here it is:


   (If you want to see it full screen, jump to YouTube here.)

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Run for President!





They Call Them Flippers

   Who among us does not love swimmers, whether they're leaping, swimming, clowning or shaving?










Cool City, Hot Sky

   The view from the roof deck of my building. Sometime this year.


Touched by the Finger, or Something, of God

   Portola Road, San Francisco. A few months ago.


The Gods of Yore Who Yet Breathe Today

    It is impossible to overstate the extent to which pretty-boy 1970s TV and pop music stars such as Scott Baio, David Cassidy, and--here, in all his glory--Leif Garrett shaped the physical and sensual sensibilities of at least some of us in that decade.
   Today, sadly, drugs have hollowed out Mr. Garrett. Back then, though, he was a shining light of willowy youth, all tousled hair and pouty mouth. He was--to some, at least--compelling whether casual in a sweater with his hands on cocked hips; backlit haloed, gazing blankly; or laughably butched up in leather and tie.
   Not surprisingly, he was as hated in his way as Justin Bieber is today. But that's no surprise. Pretty boys draw the ire of many--and the lust of them and many more.





When Good Cars Go Badass 3

   Another report from the field via our LA spy, this one a mid-1960s Mercury Comet. Go, Daddy!

Patti Smith is God(dess)

   For the next five weeks we recorded and mixed my first album, Horses. Jimi Hendrix never came back to create his new musical language [at Electric Ladyland, the New York studio he built and where Smith recorded Horses], but he left behind a studio that resonated all his hopes for the future of our cultural voice. These things were in my mind from the first moment I entered the vocal booth. The gratitude I had for rock and roll as it pulled me through a difficult adolescence. The joy I experienced when I danced. The moral power I gleaned in taking responsibility for one's actions.
   These things were encoded in Horses as well as a salute to those who paved the way before us. 
   --Patti Smith, Just Kids, p. 149


On the Fins of Mercury...

   It's hard to say which is better, Cesar Cielo's insane 2008 Championship 50-free run (first swimmer, lane 3; did it in 18:47sec, breaking the standing record of 18.69), or the reaction of the young swim fans taking the video. Either way, a true pool party.
   I'm sorry to say that I can't seem to embed the vid, so find it by clicking here.
   For those of you unable or unwilling to jump to the link, here's a visual of the man. It should be plain that he's to be admired for his... swimming prowess. Obviously.





At Play in the Briny, or Perhaps the Chloriney, Deep

Because, you know, they can.


Wednesday, June 08, 2011

Child is Father to the Man, and Yoga Totally Rules, or Whatevs

   Former Cali Gov. Arnold Schwarzanegger has been having his troubles of late, marital-wise and whatnot and so forth.
   Happily, Patrick, son of Arnold and soon-to-be-ex-wife Maria Shriver, seems to to be weathering the storm.
   Recently he was snapped leaving a yoga studio with his mom and sis. Yoga relieves stress. It certainly seems to be working for him:



Saturday, June 04, 2011

When Good Cars go Badass 2

   Spotted at the Chevron station Thursday night (June 2), corner of Market and 17th streets, San Francisco.

When Good Cars go Badass 1

   Cruisin' in LA. Sent by a SoCal spy:

Wednesday, June 01, 2011

Glory Days

   I'm not nostalgic for things. I think my life now is better than it's ever been. I'm more interested in things than I've ever been. I very much look to the future. I don't think the good old days were the old days at all. 
   But certainly I'm fond of what happened in my life. I have pleasant memories of them. And some of the stories are so ludicrous and funny to me, in hindsight especially, that to tell them today I think gives young people hope that they too can do the same thing--that they can make a movie when you don't have any money and the police are chasing you and the censors want to stop you and nobody likes them, and you don't get one good review.  --John Waters, 2007

The Michelangelo Diet

THEN: 



NOW:


Gym Dandy


I'm the only gay man who's never been to the gym. If I could go to the gym and get the body of a junkie, I'd go. -- John Waters