Wildlife: The Blue Heron flew in front of our window yesterday morning and came to land next to the outlet of Middle Foy's Lake, where he commenced hunting in the shallows.



Visit: A Tale of Two Movies

Charity Alert: A Women's Health Site, and others to click-and-give.

In The Community: It's "Finals Week" here at the college -- lots of last minute requests.
Jeanna's doing a very good job, but I still needed to come in and fix a few things on the Hockaday's web site yesterday. We are going to have a busy summer: Upcoming Shows at the Hockaday Museum of Art Be sure to take a look at the Auction of Miniatures exhibit before we sell everything on May 20.
I'll be damned if I'm going to do a clean up day at the Central School Museum this weekend. I have my own funky yard to deal with, plus a kitchen we need to finish, now that we took away that gawdawful wallpaper. (What language!?!)

Media Watch: If you must watch BBC America, tape it -- a 23 minute program takes 45 minutes to run with "adverts." We saw now-famous British actor Clive Owen in a police show called Second Sight.

Looking Back: End of the Century; The Story of the Ramones by Michael Gramaglia & Jim Fields is a very good movie -- one of the best I've ever seen about music and musicians. (The latter can be an uncommunicative bunch when they're not playing their instruments or projecting their chosen images.)
Here's what Jim Fields had to say about what I saw on PBS' Independent Lens April 26th, 2005:
...At first they wanted us to cut it down to 82 minutes or so. We tried but we just thought it compromised the film too much. So, we said it’s all or nothing. After that we figured we’d end up with PBS’s bootprint on our behinds. But, miraculously, they went for it. They even had to preempt Charlie Rose for that night (looks like he ended up with the bootprint on HIS ass). No offense, Charlie, it wasn’t my call. We’re big fans. But you’re only giving up one night out of thousands. So…thank you.
OK -- My point of view now. I was living in Amsterdam, Holland when Punk-Rock became a media phenomenon in 1976. Most of the hype came from London, so I thought the whole thing originated there. I had been aware of the white-trash "skinheads" who lived on the underclass fringes of big-city Britain, so I thought this was just another gimmick to exploit a differing style. I was partly right, but mostly wrong.
I somehow forgot how influential the New York City musical scene was. Even though the five borroughs had been depopulating for half a generation, there was still power in the sub-cultures of America's largest city.
A few years earlier, Glam-Rock had circled the world, led by London's David Bowie, but it was fueled to a large part by the creativity of New York's Lou Reed, who had sneered in the face of 1967's 'Summer of Love' with his brilliant album The Velvet Underground and Nico. Glam somehow accepted Michigan hard rockers Iggy and the Stooges, plus veteran road dogs Alice Cooper (the group), who were also based out of Detroit for awhile. The primal Motor City Five had collapsed as a band, but their thrashing over-the-top aggression set an example for others to follow. Other Glam Rockers of note were the androgynous Marc Bolan, campy overweight homo-barfly Gary Glitter, Roxy Music, with suited-up Brian Ferry up front, cross-dressed Brian Eno at the back, and all sorts of musical talents in between, plus the re-formed Mott The Hoople band from England. The New York Dolls made a short-lived splash in this scene, but they were more famous for their makup and draggy outfits than their nihlistic, hard-driving, artfully unsophisticated music.
End of the Century tells how the young members of The Ramones were inspired by the Dolls to make music in the aftermath of Glam's inevitable collapse -- performing in a dive called C.B.G.B.'s in the degraded lower east side of Manhattan AKA "The Bowery." When they went to England in 1976, the only people who saw them were other down-and-out wannabe musicians -- the same kind of crowd they played for in New York.
The reason why The Ramones lasted long enough to tour at all was that they had something unique and special in their songs and performances. Their aggressive churning attack, derived from the MC5, Stooges, and Dolls, had cohesion, speed, and purpose that had escaped previous groups. Their bleak vision of reality was tempered by humor, and they really were the kind of people they portrayed themseves to be on stage. They possessed a discipline of performance that overcame the undertow of New York City street life, and wrote songs that were evocative, funny, yet brutally short and rocking.
There were others on the New York "Punk" scene, but I didn't hear about them in Amsterdam -- Richard Hell blazed the way with his groups Television, and the Voidoids. Intellectual poet Patti Smith formed a band with ace music critic Lenny Kaye. She was living with outlaw photographer Robert Mapplethorpe at the time, and her extreme experiences helped shape the music of the Patti Smith Group. Blondie and the Talking Heads played at C.B.G.B's too, but their stories come later.
When I came back to the USA in 1977, Punk-Rock was still around, on the fringes of commerce and society. There were records being made in this genre, but they weren't selling like Fleetwood Mac's -- or even coming close to the numbers generated by "Disco."
What WAS happening was a significant portion of the youth of the world related to the looks, feelings, attitudes, and musical statements of so-called Punk-Rock. What I wrongly thought had been just been a marketing gimmick for Malcom Mclaren's clothing store in London was a real social movement -- a heartfelt reaction to the widespread economic hardship and disillusion which deepened under Reagan and Thatcher.
I wasn't happy seeing our social gains of the 60's going in reverse, but I had to cope with the reality of the fact, and the resultant 'uglification' of the arts. I had some surprises coming however. (More to come...)