Life During Wartime

I've finally hit the halfway mark in The Rest is Noise and we're moving into the 1950s and beyond. The recent chapters have been incredibly fascinating and heartbreaking as they've discussed music during Hitler and Stalin's dictatorships and the way these governments manipulated composers and the use of music. Many composers were silenced either through threats, fear or murder while others were propped up like puppets to glorify the nations. Composers had few options. They could leave the country and the life they knew and loved, refuse to play along and suffer the consequences or they could swallow their morality and give themselves over to the control of the state. It's an aspect of the horror of World War II that I had never read about.

Dmitri Shostakovich's tale is deeply disturbing and highlights the hoops some jumped through to continue following their passion even as it was twisted and manipulated by the governments they despised. The Soviet government officially denounced him twice during his lifetime so had to learn to subvert his true emotions and code his beliefs inside music that would pass muster with the cultural gatekeepers of the era. After his second denunciation in 1949, he was forced to publicly repent as most of his works became banned from public performance.

In 1941, Shostakovich completed his seventh symphony which he dedicated to the city of Leningrad. In its time it was viewed as a symbol of resistance and a condemnation of Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union. It is also viewed by some as a depiction of Shostakovich's disgust a totalitarianism of all kinds, including that practiced by his own country but this is a more modern interpretation. During the war, the Leningrad symphony made Shostakovich a symbol for Soviet propaganda. It debuted in New York on July 19, 1942 with professional badass Arturo Toscanini conducting. To get there the score had to be transferred to a microfilm which was put in a tin can, flown to Tehran, taken to Cairo in a car, then put on another plane to South America and lastly flown to NYC. But the most amazing story about the symphony concerns its debut performance in Leningrad itself. As author Alex Ross writes:

"Besieged Leningrad heard the symphony on August 9, 1942, under the most dramatic circumstances imaginable. The score was flown in by military aircraft in June, and a severely depleted Leningrad Radio Orchestra began learning it. After a mere fifteen musicians showed up for the initial rehearsal, the commanding general ordered all competent musicians to report from the front lines. The players would break from the rehearsals to return to their duties, which sometimes included the digging of mass graves for victims of the siege. Three members of the orchestra died of starvation before the premiere took place. the opposing German general heard about the performance in advance and planned to disrupt it, but the Soviets preempted him by launching a bombardment of German positions...An array of loudspeakers then broadcast the Leningrad into the silence of no-man's land."

Book Review: Swordfishtrombones

If you are a music obsessive like me, simply listening to an album over and over again isn't enough for you. You want to read interviews with the musicians, pore over the liner notes, study the artwork, read the thank yous and memorize the name of their music publishing company. For the complete music nerd, the 33 1/3 series of books is a pure joy. Each book is an in depth examination of some classic album or other. Many are vaunted records by the usual suspects (The Clash - London Calling, The Rolling Stones - Exile on Main Street, Nick Drake - Pink Moon) but they also have some oddball choices too (The Afghan Whigs - Gentlemen, Celine Dion - Let's Talk About Love).

I've read a few so far and they're all pretty interesting but the quality of the book tends to depend more on the stylistic tics of the author and it can be torturous to find yourself at the mercy of a writer who has no interest in exploring the things you want to know about a cherished favorite. I can't imagine any of the books topping Kim Cooper's endlessly fascinating story of how In the Aeroplane Over the Sea came to be. The exuberance and chaos of the album pour forth from every page but not every entry in the series is as magical as this one. Andy Miller nearly kills all enjoyment of The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society by getting waaaaay too in-depth about the recording process and Matthew Stearns tries a bit too hard to be hip and neo-beat with his writing on Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation. Meat is Murder was turned into a fictional tale by Joe Pernice but it somehow manages to be both an interesting short story and a impressionistic summation of the album's themes. John Darnielle just published a semi-fictional account of Black Sabbath's mammoth Master of Reality and I can't wait to get my hands on a copy.

I recently finished David Smay's well researched examination of Swordfishtrombones by Tom Waits. I was never a huge fan of Tom Waits' early albums recorded during his jazzhobohemian era and of the eight albums he recorded during that period, only Small Change still remains in my collection. With Swordfishtrombones, Tom Waits got a lot more interesting and his albums took a dramatic shift towards the wonderfully bizarre. The book touches on all aspects of his career and how his collaborations with Kathleen Brennan brought him to his creative apex and allowed him to fully explore his twisted creativity. He also sums up Tom Waits' gravitation towards the raw, dirty and bizarre with this fantastic line: "Tom Waits writes the kind of blues that has snoots in it." Indeed. I highly recommend this exploration of a modern classic to anyone even remotely interested and if you want me to send you my copy, let me know. I will happily trade with anyone as my goal is to eventually read every entry in this ever growing series and continue feeding my addiction.

He Walked With the Zombies

I'm currently nearing the end of Max Brooks' mostly fantastic novel World War Z. If you're unfamiliar with the book let me just hit you with the subtitle "An Oral History of the Zombie War." Intrigued? Max's first book was the self-explanatory The Zombie Survival Guide which was so well researched and handy that I can't believe he didn't win the Pulitzer for self help books. If you're still less than interested, I can't help you but trust me, his mad obsession makes for fascinating books and I can't help but believe it is all consuming. Both books seem like works of non-fiction, so much so that I worry for Mr. Brooks' sanity and wonder where he could possibly go next. Moan, Grunt, Moooooan: The Diary of the World's Last Zombie?

So I'm reading this crazy book as it traces the timeline from first infections to near human annihilation by the zombie masses to reorganizing of the armed forces and finally all out warfare where every able bodied citizen participates in some way to the common goal of a zombie holocaust when I came across this gem where Todd, an American military soldier, speaks about the new armed forces:

"...the new faces, they could have been from anywhere: your neighbor, your aunt, that geeky substitute teacher, or that fat, lazy slob at the DMV. From former insurance salesman to a guy who I'm damn sure was Michael Stipe, although I never got him to admit it."

I love this passage. It shows just how desperate things have gotten when Michael Stipe picks up a gun and goes on the warpath for the living dead. Think global, act local, right Michael? This part also makes me think of the great Roky Erickson cover R.E.M. recorded years ago, "I Walked With a Zombie." I remember drifting off the sleep listening to WHFS (r.i.p.) when this came on and shocked me awake. It makes me long for the days when R.E.M. deserved breathless, who-needs-sleep adulation. And if you go walking with a zombie, please remember that simple decapitation is not enough - you really need to crush the brain.