I'm back -- the weather was great the whole time, but the drives were long every day, and I chose to SLEEP rather than BLOG when I got to the motel! (More below)

Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Mississauga, Ontario; Springfield, Virginia; ?? United Kingdom; Metz, France (Where my friend Jack Kirby fought in WWII); Amherst, Massachusetts (No, Emily Dickinson has been dead for over a hundred years); ?? Italy; City of London, UK; Greeley, Colorado; Tulsa, Oklahoma; NYC, New York; Lake Alfred, Florida; Cambridge, Canada; San Jose, Costa Rica; Winsford, UK; Baltimore, Maryland; Fresh Meadows, New York; Louth, Ireland (Hearts and Flowers to 'ya, Eavan!); Rochester, New York; Maynard, Massachusetts; San Diego, California (Hollah, Justin!); Lod, Israel, and Atlanta, Georgia

ROCK against Reaganomics at: Theater X-Net

Starring: Ida Rubinstein Belle Epoch Russian/Parisian beauty.
Ida's Places in Paris -- from my first jet-lagged day by the Seine.
Read more about Ida in Sisters of Salome by Toni Bentley

Visit: Michael's Montana Web Archive
Theater, Art, Flash Gordon, Funky Music and MORE!
NEW --Launching NOW! Outre Space Cinema -- Featuring: 1930's Rocketry, Spitfires of the Spaceways and Cellulose to Celluloid, Flash Gordon in the Saturday Matinees and Sunday Comics.





Many thanks to Jim Keefe (Visit his Website) -- the LAST Flash Gordon illustrator of the 20th Century, and Flash's first illustrator of the 21st, for his recommendations -- HERE!

Charity Alert: Check into Terra Sigilata blog -- donate $$$ to cancer patients just by clicking onto the site. Keep that Resolution to click on The Hunger Site every day.

In The Community: The Hockaday Museum of Art has Rails, Trails, and A Road -- honoring the 75th Anniversary of Going To The Sun Road in Glacier National Park, almost ready to -- er, ROLL.
I took Nancy Cawdrey's American Silk Road exhibit from the Copper Village Museum and Arts Center in Anaconda to the MonDak Heritage Center in Sidney, Montana over the weekend. On the way, I also delivered a small, but valuable, item to the Yellowstone Art Museum in Billings for their upcoming Gifts to Montana: The Legacy of Miriam Sample from July 3 to October 15, 2008. Thanks to Carol, Jeff, and Leanne for all their help.


Check out Fall for Glacier -- a fundraiser for several programs that make Glacier National Park even better!

Media Watch: Right now -- Mahler's 9th Symphony on the New York Philharmonic's FM broadcast, and Yoko Ono's 100 Acorns kept it's eyes on the skies while I was gone. (See my list of "Friendly Sites") The former was a favorite of the late Maestro Maurice Abravanel when he conducted the Utah Symphony in my original hometown.
I will describe my travels later, but for now I am going to summarize my thoughts about all that satellite radio I heard while driving the last 72 hours. First of all, it kept me awake and alert. Second, I couldn't get a sense of everything the service presented without risking too much distraction -- high-speed driving is actually a very hazardous activity, and requires concentration. I gave the Jam Band channel a try, but there was music that suited my task better elsewhere. The kitschy All-Elvis channel is still there, and my joke about a Rat Pack station has unfortunately turned into reality.


Early in the day, when I felt charged-up and energetic, I tended to tune-in to Jazz, Blues, and Reggae. Jazz bandleader James Burton, and Bruce Lundvall, current president of Blue Note Records hosted my favorite Jazz blocs -- playing extened pieces by Thelonious Monk, Charlie Mingus, Art Blakey, Miles Davis, and other hard-hitting or leading-edge composer/players. Ellington/Strayhorn's Take the A-Train was welcome -- it once introduced a famous syndicated Jazz program I used to hear as a youth. The piece itself is mighty on its own, and has been around since my parents were little kids.
Reggae's heartbeat bass and rhythm still move me, but I found myself turning the dial back to an earlier musical love of mine -- THE BLUES! Distinctive voices and loud guitars predominated in every bloc of time, but that's what I stuck around to hear. One or two segments had hosts, but most of the time I was treated to segues of new and timeless songs, performed for the old and young, by the young and old. White and black artists make this music, and Blues exist in Jazz, Folk, Gospel, Country and Rock, as well as their own genre.

Nina Blackwood and Martha Quinn were two of MTV's first five VJs. They are both professional announcers, but have very contrasting personalities and backgrounds.
For awhile I bounced between Channel 6 (Sixties), Channel 7 (Seventies), and Channel 8 (Eighties). Pioneering MTV personalities Martha Quinn and Nina Blackwood have packaged shows on Channel 8. I enjoyed 80's New Wave when it was fresh and new, but I thought that other genres declined in creativity (overall) during that decade. Channel 7 played a lot of Funk, more than the Soul channels higher on the dial, but I tuned out when I started hearing those over-played standards from Styx and Kansas (et al) that calcified FM radio, and contributed to a near-fatal collapse of a music industry that had out-performed movies for a number of years.
Channel 5 was a lot more Fifties-oriented than it was during my last encounter with Satellite Radio. They tend to stick with Rock & Roll, which is fine with me, but I grew up in those times, and remember that there was a lot more competing music coming out of Radio and TV in that decade. One thing EVERYBODY wanted in the 50's was original vocal stylists, with onomonopoeic vocal groups backing them. Although there were some major instrumental successes, they were exceptions that emphasized the rule: Sleepwalk by Johnny & Santo; Honky Tonk by Bill Doggett; Take Five by the Dave Brubeck Quartet, and Rebel Rouser by Duane Eddy. Another example, Tequila by The Champs, featured Hal Blaine and his Los Angeles 'Wrecking Crew,' which would dominate popular music in the next decade.

Women of the 50's
TV personality Dagmar (L) and cult star Jayne Mansfield (R)
I only heard a few instrumentals on Channel 6, and almost none on Channel 5, but the latter played a lot of obscure vocal groups.
On my LONG second day (I drove for a full 16 hours) I found myself alternating between the 50's and the 60's as I drove back towards my hotel into the setting sun -- I think the loud beats, short, punchy songs, and brash dynamics kept my attention.
There was a character calling himself "Cousin Brucie" (C.B.) who did a retro-styled DJ show featuring 50's, 60's, and 70's tunes on Channel 6 -- he was loud and self-promoting, dropping famous names, reading requests, with drums and guitar noise thundering behind his announcements for almost two minutes, between records which lasted little more than two minutes themselves.
He introduced his program with a song called The Cousin Brucie Show, sung by the Four Seasons, which might have cost him some serious money -- it's real Pop Corn, but works as this guy's theme.



I remember when Pop/Rock took a progressive turn around 1965 -- the record-buying public discovered Bob Dylan, while the excellent English music scene kept dominating Top Forty radio in the wake of The Beatles. Motown and James Brown also broke out of the R&B ghetto with big-sounding singles. The Four Seasons had been making hits for a couple of years, and put out the well-crafted 45RPM called Girl Come Running, which didn't do as well as it deserved. A studio group calling themselves The Newbeats had a hit with the somewhat lewd Bread and Butter a few months earlier, which mimiced the Four Seasons' sound, or at least made fun of it. During August of '65, Dylan wrote 17 of the Top 100 songs on the charts -- one of them was Don't Think Twice (It's Alright) by The Wonder Who. It WAS a novelty version of what had become a Folk standard. In fact, it sounded like The Newbeats again, only it was the Four Seasons, making fun of themselves. The Cousin Brucie song comes out of this particular mold.
The Four Seasons immediately followed-up that self-parody with the superb Let's Hang On, and Working My Way Back To You, staying firmly in the charts until 1968, and coming back during the 70's. As Dick Clark mused on American Bandstand in 1967: "What an string of unbroken hits they've had!" I'm sure he meant to say those words in another order, but that's what he said!

1950's icon Mamie Van Doren, who became notorious playing the kind of "Girl Next Door" who drove everybody CRAY-ZEE!
Having mentioned all that stuff, I had time to muse between Channels 5 and 6 about how Rock & Roll, as vocal music, tied in with other popular forms. There were certain styles which were imitated widely -- The Modernaires and Four Freshman come to mind. There was also the sound of The Ink Spots, with their percussive bass singer, sonorous ooo's and ah's, and plaintive leads 'way up high -- this style was adopted in barbershops all over America, especially in black communities, and was later called Doo Wop. Gospel was the foundation for Nashville's Anita Kerr Singers and Billy Ward & The Dominos, featuring first Sam Cook and then Jackie Wilson. Mitch Miller at CBS had a stable of vocalists who backed up his stars.
As Rock got more slick and formulized over time, there were gains in sophistication, but losses in originality. I noticed how the idiosyncratic vibes of various male and female vocal groups energized jaded studio bands -- Phil Spector's recruitment of enthusiastic kids like the Ronettes and Crystals set even higher standards for excellent professional singers like Darlene Love. His compatriot "Shadow" Morton created a sonic niche with the Shangri-Las from a high school in Queens, New York. Unique talents like The Dells or The Jive Five were never outdone by even the best British vocal groups like The Swinging Blue Jeans, The Hollies, or The Fortunes.

The VERY theatrical Shangri-Las circa 1966. (L to R) Betty Weiss, Marge & Mary Ann Ganser, and lead singer Mary Weiss.
DJ Cousin Brucie might be cloying, but he's aware of the interactions within the cultural crucibles which forged Pop and Rock. He played examples of East Coast Beach Music -- an uptempo form of R&B which involved black and white singers, like Doo Wop had done. Patsy Cline beautifully expressive voice crossed over into all genres. C.B. warned us ahead of time, and then played the McGuire Sisters' Sugar In The Morning -- THAT was big-time music in the 50's. Back then, Rock & Roll was treated like a disease, and Tin Pan Alley almost succeeded in eradicating it by inoculating Amerika's youth with broken-voiced ear candy by actors like Annette and Fabian. They co-opted talents like Ricky Nelson, or Paul Anka to try and maintain their old monopoly from the 30's and 40's, but there were too many Baby Boomers who wanted to ROCK, and bought records, unlike their parents. C.B. played Percy Faith's Theme From A Summer Place as he was finishing his show -- the Number 1 record of 1960, which reminded me how close our generation came to losing its musical identity. Although Berry Gordy, Phil Spector, Doc Pomus, and Brian Wilson helped keep Rock alive, it took the success of The Beatles to restore it to full strength!

Electoral Madness: A bad week in politics. Barak Obama draws scorn from Corporate Media suck-ups while John McCain violates the McCain/Feingold Act. Reid and Pelosi CAVE so much to Bu$hCo, they could be Batman and Batwoman.
Support our troops -- bring them home!