Listening To The Beatles’ White Album With Fresh Ears

Yeah, Another Blogger6 Comments
The author with his well worn vinyl edition of The White Album.
The author with his well worn vinyl edition of The White Album.

One year ago, for no particular reason, I decided to compile a list of my 30 favorite records of all time, limiting myself to only one album per artist. I excluded classical music and non-vocal jazz from the list. In other words I stuck to recordings that fall within the amorphous definition of vocal popular music. The Kinks (Muswell Hillbillies) made the list, as did Skip James (Today), Steve Earle (Transcendental Blues), Billy Bragg and Wilco (Mermaid Avenue), and Ella Fitzgerald (The Cole Porter Songbook). I came of age in the 1960s and, like hundreds of millions worldwide, I used to be a Beatles fanatic. So, needless to say, a Beatles album is on the list. It was hard making that selection, but I settled on their namesake creation, The Beatles, which is popularly known to one and all as The White Album.

Last week I remembered my list of 30 albums. One idea leading to another, I started wondering about which pop music album is the best of all time. Some of us would pick a Kanye West oeuvre, or something by The Cure or Stevie Wonder. Yet, there’s no doubt that a Beatles record would be top choice for countless folks. Maybe Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Maybe Abbey Road. Maybe The White Album. Picking one album from the millions that have been recorded is of course a somewhat foolish exercise. Most listeners have heard a meaninglessly small percentage of all there are to hear. Still, it’s an interesting proposition. I’m hardly the first to think about this. Oh well, late to another party.

The Web is full of lists ranking the best albums ever.  Rolling Stone magazine polled musicians and music industry folks in 2012 to compile a list of the all-time 500. The Beatles took four of the top 10 spots, Pepper coming in at number one, The White Album at number 10. Pitchfork magazine says that Kanye West’s My Beautiful Twisted Fantasy is the greatest of the 500 greatest. The first Beatles album on the Pitchfork list is number 71, Abbey Road. The White Album missed the Pitchfork cut altogether. Entertainment Weekly rated 100 records, and The Beatles proved to be EW royalty. Revolver ranked number one, and White took the twelfth position.

It’s time for another list, a very short list, and I’m going to keep my poll simple. I’ll poll only one person. Me. Though “favorite album” and “best album” aren’t necessarily one and the same, in my case I’ve concluded that they are. Hear ye, hear ye! The best pop album ever, of those that I know about (and I have heard a lot of albums over the years), is The White Album.

I’ve spun this recording on vinyl and CD a thousand times, but until last week hadn’t in at least a year. I listened twice and was taken aback, though I shouldn’t have been. I mean, The White Album is amazing, an aural kaleidoscope. It is modern, dazzling and delightfully tuneful. Some songs are heart-tugging. Others are witty, endearingly whimsical or downright wacky. Many rock like crazy, though a surprising number are tender ballads or spacey contemplations and not really rock at all. Regardless, The White Album hits with great song after great song, except for Revolution 9 (the less said about it the better) and maybe Martha My Dear, which is awfully treacly but which I like anyway. With each listening now and those many years before, White has revealed textures, accents, wonderful backing vocals and sound manipulations that I hadn’t noticed before. It’s that kind of album.

Part of The White Album’s brilliance is its sheer size. On vinyl and CD it is a double disk holding 30 tracks. It is maybe a sort of miracle that the record turned out so well, as The Beatles were starting to unravel during its making. Before the recording sessions began, though, things were pretty copacetic in Beatlesville. In spring 1968, John, Paul, George and Ringo spent time learning Transcendental Meditation in India at an ashram run by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. It was a productive musical period for the boys, as most were. They wrote many songs while there, though apparently John and Paul composed largely individually, collaborating very little. About two-thirds of The White Album comprises songs from the India adventure, including Ringo’s first compositional effort, Don’t Pass Me By.

Recording sessions for The White Album began on May 30, 1968, and lasted for four and a half months. The sessions were often bumpy. The Beatles had previously made albums basically as a fenced-off unit with their producer George Martin and various engineers. Not true for White, as Lennon frequently brought Yoko Ono to the studios. John and Yoko had become a couple earlier that year. Yoko’s presence changed the working dynamics that McCartney, Harrison and Starr were used to. Inevitably, verbal squabbles punctuated some sessions. Tensions rose. In June, one of the chief engineers couldn’t stand the atmosphere anymore and quit. Worse yet, halfway through the sessions Ringo fell victim to feelings of self-doubt and frustration and left the group. His bandmates begged him to return, and 12 days later he did.

All of this proves that, for bands, greatness doesn’t necessarily depend on internal harmony. Struggle and discord might still result in a magnificent end product. It’s true that a few of The White Album’s tracks were recorded by only one Beatle (just John on Julia; just Paul on Blackbird), but the Fab Four stuck it out as best they could and played together on most songs. And what they created sounds as fresh as if recorded yesterday.

Listening to The White Album last week, various songs jumped out at me. Hellter Skelter is a grinding heavy workout, a wonder. Long Long Long, a Harrison composition in waltz time, is beautiful and airy, brought to a close by Ringo’s perfectly placed snare drum whack. Dear Prudence grips the heart, framed by chiming repeating guitar chords and lifted by angelic vocal choruses.

Speaking of Ringo, to me he is a star throughout The White Album, not only on drums but as a singer. He doesn’t appear on Dear Prudence or the album’s opening cut, Back In The USSR. They were recorded during his absence from the band. But elsewhere his drum work is nimble and creative, right on the money. And the album comes to a majestic close with Ringo’s gorgeous vocal work on Good Night, a lullaby credited to Lennon-McCartney but written fully by John. Ringo is the sole Beatle on Good Night. He sings so well, so tenderly, backed by a large orchestra and vocal choir. Who’d have thunk he could sing like this? It is the finest vocal performance of his career.

Outdoors At Last, At Morris Arboretum

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Ocean, beach and sand cliffs on Cape Cod.
Ocean, beach and sand cliffs on Cape Cod.

Cape Cod has become a favorite locale for me and my wife. It was love at first sight when we first ventured there for a vacation in 1998. We like pretty much everything about Cape Cod, but the one aspect above all others is its expansive areas of startling beauty. The Cape’s Atlantic Ocean beach, for one example, is breathtaking, about 30 miles of it uninterrupted and basically undeveloped. In the off-season you can walk there as far as you like, gazing at the waters and the tall sand cliffs backing the beach, and there’s a good chance you’ll cross paths with nary another human. Not many places where such a scenario can be duplicated. And at Cape Cod’s outer reaches is one of the more astonishing vistas I’ve ever seen, a five mile long lunar-like expanse of enormous sand dunes and valleys. Most unusual, most unexpected.

Cape Cod’s natural world draws me outdoors. When Capeside my wife and I spend hours in the fresh air daily. Home in the burbs, though, it’s another story. Here I’m out when mowing the lawn or shoveling snow or shooting hoops at my neighborhood playground. Other than that I’m indoors most of the time, and I think this is because there’s a dearth of beautiful suburban places to get lost in.

Luckily for me, Philadelphia is at hand. It’s an old city and a new one, with great architecture and sights. Walking its streets and parks is an outdoors activity that I do a fair amount of.  On Memorial Day weekend’s Sunday, my wife had an inspired Philadelphia idea. Let’s visit Morris Arboretum, she suggested. We hadn’t been there in years. This would be a fine chance to spend time in a lovely green spot not far from home. Okay, I said. We drove to Philadelphia’s Chestnut Hill section, where the Morris takes up a lot of space (167 acres). We spent three hours there. It was good to be outside for an extended period.

Morris Arboretum originally was an estate named Compton, home to siblings John Morris and Lydia Morris. They were wealthy, worldly and civic-minded folks. Their mansion is no longer with us, but Compton’s grounds and some secondary buildings remain. Established in 1887, Compton stayed in Morris hands till 1932, the year of Lydia’s passing (John had died in 1915). Lydia bequeathed Compton to the University of Pennsylvania as a botanical garden and research facility. The U of P has maintained and developed the property ever since.

Morris Arboretum has gotten a whole lot better since our previous visit. Back then a parent might have said to his or her five year old Amy or Andy, “Hey, look at that pine tree. Isn’t it beautiful?” and Amy or Andy would have responded “I’m bored, let’s go home.” The arboretum managers, obviously smart people, saw the need to build kid-magnet structures. Up went the Garden Railway in the late 1990s, and in 2009 Out On A Limb opened.

Morris Arboretum's Out On A Limb.
Morris Arboretum’s Out On A Limb.
Out On A Limb's play area.
Out On A Limb’s play area.

Out On A Limb is very cool. It’s an elevated twisting boardwalk, supported by steel columns and threaded between trees on a hilly part of the arboretum’s grounds. You enter at ground level and in a few seconds, because the earth slopes away quickly,  you’re looking down 40 or more feet at the forest floor. Walking alongside the mid and upper reaches of trees is a gas. Best yet is the play area at the walkway’s far end, where giant rope hammocks are suspended off to the side. Kids abound there. No wonder that attendance at Morris Arboretum has grown steadily since Out On A Limb came on the scene.

Morris Arboretum's Garden Railway.
Morris Arboretum’s Garden Railway.

Almost as invigorating is the Garden Railway. Nestled among trees and shrubbery near the Morris’s Rose Garden, it is a cleverly designed toy train layout. Passenger trains, freight trains, cable cars, tunnels, bridges . . . all are there in three large separate areas. So are natural-material replicas of famous structures, such as the Eiffel Tower and Philadelphia’s City Hall. The trains wind their way over, around and through, disappearing from view, eventually reemerging. My wife and I were intrigued by the whole set-up. It’s something.

The amazing Blue Atlas Cedar at Morris Arboretum.
The amazing Blue Atlas Cedar at Morris Arboretum.

It’s not a bad idea to stroll the arboretum’s grounds with no particular plan. That is to say, you won’t go wrong by not referring too often to the map you’re given at the information center. Morris Arboretum is a work of art, sculpted to display its trees, flower gardens, fern groves, swan pond and shrubs. Poking around them randomly works. Plenty of things, often green ones, will catch your eye. One tree in particular caught mine, a Blue Atlas Cedar. One of this massive being’s long lower limbs shoots out perpendicularly to the trunk, resting on the earth. The limb I think grows that way naturally. It doesn’t appear to have been forced into its strange position by windstorms or magic.

Sculptures by George Sugarman.
Sculptures by George Sugarman.
African Queen, a stone sculpture at Morris Arboretum.
African Queen, a stone sculpture at Morris Arboretum.

Manmade sculpture is another big part of the arboretum experience. Many such objects are placed on the grounds, continuing a tradition that John and Lydia began. The most colorful are the large playful and organically-shaped painted aluminum creations by the late George Sugarman. They’ve been on site since 1981. The most alluring sculpture to me is African Queen, a stone carving from Zimbabwe, artist unknown. How old is it? 50 years? 500 years? If the arboretum custodians have the answer, they’re not saying. Regardless, it’s a charmer. Pablo Picasso, who was greatly influenced by African art, would have loved it. The armless queen is asleep, her sweet face lost in dreams. The artist chose to depict her headdress as broad and undefined, focusing attention to the face below. A visit to Morris Arboretum, in my opinion, is incomplete without making time for this superb piece.

Dinner Was Better Than The Movie

Yeah, Another Blogger7 Comments

When my wife Sandy and I go to movie theaters, which is often, we usually go to a restaurant for dinner too. Movie times dictate when we eat. Seems to me that when we both were gainfully employed we’d dine around 7 pm and catch a flick about two hours later. That meant we’d arrive back home at 11:30 or so. I can’t recall exactly why or when that pattern changed a bit, but getting home late at night, and to bed even later, must have set us thinking about schedule alternatives. A sign of aging? Nah, not a chance. In any event, these days we seem to watch maybe one third of our movies in late afternoon, which allows us to dine at a pleasant hour and arrive back at the ranch before 9 pm.

The Ambler Theater, cornerstone of beautiful downtown Ambler PA
The Ambler Theater, cornerstone of beautiful downtown Ambler PA

Such was the case this past Friday at the Ambler Theater in downtown Ambler, Pennsylvania. There we settled into our seats for the 4 pm showing of Far From The Madding Crowd, the fourth film adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s apparently still-beloved novel, first published in 1874. As far as I can recall, I never read the book nor saw the previous cinematic versions. I’m not a completist, so after watching the latest incarnation of Far I have no plans to visit any of the previous efforts.

Far From The Madding Crowd is by no means a bad movie. I’ll hand it, generously, two out of four stars. But it certainly didn’t floor me. It’s kind of slow, which didn’t put me off. It is also a soap opera, which didn’t rub me too wrong either. Soap operas can be fun. What I think I mainly didn’t enjoy were the lines of dialog that seemed to fall flat, or were poorly captured by the boom operator so that I couldn’t make them out (this English-speaking movie cried out for subtitles now and then). And the transition from scene to scene sometimes needed oiling. Other than that . . .

Set in rural England in the early 1870s, Far From The Madding Crowd concerns one Bathsheba Everdene, a young lady aged 18 or so whose innate charms knock men off their feet. Smart and independent, she is not seeking a husband, however. She does not wish to be stifled by the opposite sex. Politely rejecting two decent suitors, she eventually falls for and ends up marrying nogoodnik Frank Troy, an army sergeant who looks so fine in his uniform that Bathsheba’s latent sexual yearnings are forced to the surface. The movie has many plot twists from start to finish. Wait, this is a spoiler alert: Suffice it to say that in the end all is well, or mostly. Frank Troy exits, and steady and sturdy Gabriel Oak, a shepherd and Bathsheba’s first pursuer, finally captures her heart.

One moment at the very beginning of the film didn’t compute, and I’m still wondering how it got past the screenwriter. In voiceover, Bathsheba says that her parents died when she was young and, as there was no one thereafter to ask, she never knew why they gifted her with her uncommon given name. No one? How about asking her aunt, on whose farm Bathsheba is working as the movie opens. Or how about asking the relative from whom, several scenes later, she inherits a farm.

Oh well, that’s a mere quibble. Let me say that I enjoyed the acting of three of the four leads. That trio is Carey Mulligan (Bathsheba), Matthias Schoenaerts (Gabriel), and Michael Sheen (Mr. Boldwood, a rejected suitor). I didn’t clap for Tom Sturridge’s portrayal of Frank Troy, though. Tom’s pencil-thin mustache and darting eyes brought back images of too many silent movie era villains.

The beer I fell in love with at the Broad Axe Tavern.
The beer I fell in love with at the Broad Axe Tavern.

Time to eat. I’ll give three stars to the meal that followed Far, and much of that because of the lovely beer that I discovered. The repast took place in Ambler’s outer limits at the Broad Axe Tavern, where Sandy and I have dined at least 20 times. It’s a gastropub, meaning the food choices extend beyond hamburgers and hot roast beef sandwiches. And, like so many establishments in the Philadelphia region, it carries an incredible number of beers from around the world. That, more than anything, is the draw for me. After studying the beer menu for five minutes, at last I opted for one I’d never before tasted, Franziskaner Weissbier. It is a wheat beer from a German brewery that claims to trace its roots to a Franciscan monastery in 1363. Two thumbs up. Smooth, multi-spicy (pepper, coriander, who knows what else), a tad citrusy. And dig that satisfied monk on the label. Gotta love it.

Crab cake sandwich on left. To its right is grilled chicken panini.
Crab cake sandwich on left. To its right is grilled chicken panini.

Broad Axe’s food is good. I went with the crab cake sandwich and my wife ordered the grilled chicken panini. The former was light on filler, heavy on excellent meat, and pan-sautéed. The latter was large and flavorful, its thick slices of rustic Italian bread delicious. Like countless places these days, Broad Axe, not giving a hoot about contributing to America’s collective expanding waistline, accompanies its burgers and sandwiches with fries. But we weren’t in a fries mood, so for an extra two dollars we each substituted a side salad. On the surface there was nothing unusual about this salad, but it was strikingly fresh and crisp, which is not always the case. The bouncy red wine vinaigrette dressing was an ideal host for romaine lettuce, cucumber, red cabbage and feta cheese. Simple ingredients, top-notch outcome.

We had no room for dessert, though. Around 8 pm, our Ambler evening concluded, home we headed.

A Winning Dinner And A Fashionable Movie

Yeah, Another Blogger2 Comments

Figuring out last minute Saturday night plans at home in the burbs recently, my wife and I were surprised to find dinnertime slots available on OpenTable for Capofitto, a hot newish Italian restaurant in Philadelphia’s wonderful Old City section. This is a place we’d read about when it opened last autumn. It sounded good and also intriguing, as it contains a ten ton pizza oven that was built by three Italian masons on site from bricks and other materials boated over from Italy. Clearly this is an establishment that takes its pizza seriously, which makes me smile. Quickly we made an OpenTable reservation, shot off to a suburban train station, and rode the rails into Philadelphia. After dinner we planned to catch a movie, Dior And I, at the Ritz Bourse art house cinema, one block from Capofitto. We silently congratulated ourselves for developing such an efficient plan for the evening.

Capofitto's dining room.
Capofitto’s dining room.

Capofitto (233 Chestnut Street) is a good looking place, fairly wide and very long, comfortable but not too fancy. Housed in a building about 115 years old, its modern décor somehow gives off the vibes of a traditionally-decorated Italian eatery. The restaurant is owned by Stephanie and John Reitano, who have placed a geletaria in the front room. This is understandable, as the Reitanos blessed Philadelphia earlier this century with a scattering of mucho popular gelato cafés. Capofitto expands the culinary parameters of the Reitano empire.

Icelandic White Ale
Icelandic White Ale

The first important question is: What beer did I order?  An Italian one would have been appropriate, but for the fact that Capofitto’s beer menu listed a brand I’d never heard of before, from a country I’d never given any thought to as a beer producer. Iceland of all places. Next time at this sweet restaurant I’ll drink Italian, but this night it had to be Einstök brewery’s Icelandic White Ale. This is a wheat beer whose label implies that the brewers toss orange peels and coriander into the vat. I noticed those flavors, but unexpectedly I also found a substantial hint of celery wafting up to my nostrils. Must have been the hops, weird dudes that can impart all manner of tastes and aromas to beer. Regardless, the ale had bite and was refreshingly bubbly and I liked it a lot.

Capofitto's pinoli salad and focaccia bread.
Capofitto’s pinoli salad and focaccia bread.

What then did we have for dinner? Pizza of course, preceded by a pinoli salad. Pinoli? That’s pine nuts to you and me. My wife and I shared both the salad and pizza. The salad was misnamed, being composed largely of shredded fennel and orange slices, and brought to life with a fine milky dressing and ricotta cheese. And with some toasted pinoli too. We thought much of the salad, though a lot more pinoli wouldn’t have hurt. With the salad came focaccia bread, very good indeed.

Our gorgeous pizza.
Our gorgeous pizza.

Our pie, a margherita to which we added salty black olives, was fabulous. The pie crust’s body was thin and crisp, its puffy rim chewy in a satisfying way. The entire crust was heat darkened and blistered here and there, the good quality wheat’s earthy flavor shining through. It’s not every pizza whose wheat catches your attention. My wife and I sighed contentedly as we munched away. This was one of the best pizzas I’ve had in recent years.

Capofitto's oak-burning pizza oven.
Capofitto’s oak-burning pizza oven.

The pizza oven, by the way, is a beauty. I looked it over for a few minutes. Capofitto feeds it wood, oak to be more precise, and it reaches very high temperatures, 900 degrees Fahreinheit or higher. Miraculously it bakes a pie in about 90 seconds.

Now, Capofitto has a large menu. Pizzas, salads, cold meats, cheeses, a few pasta dishes. I’d be surprised if most everything on it isn’t good to excellent. But after the pizza we were stuffed enough and didn’t eat anything more, not even the gelatos that brought the Reitanos their initial fame. We will return to Capofitto, at which time we’ll explore sections of the menu we didn’t get to. For now, on to the movie.

The poster for Dior And I outside the Ritz Bourse.
The poster for Dior And I outside the Ritz Bourse.

No one, most notably my wife, would describe me as a fashionisto. I am aware of trend-setting looks and high fashion, but the road sort of ends there. But like most anything, the world of high fashion, if explained and presented properly, will jump to life even for the mildly interested. At the Ritz Bourse my wife and I, as planned, watched Dior And I. Well-paced and well-developed, it is a documentary about the cloistered world of haute couture. It is very good, worth seeking out. Three out of four stars, I’d say.

Dior And I, directed by up and comer Frédéric Tcheng, follows the travails and successes of Raf Simons during the initial phase of his new job in 2012. For in April of that year, Simons, who had made his name in men’s fashion design, was hired by Paris’s world famous House of Dior as creative director for its women’s lines. Lucky Raf’s first big project began immediately. He had all of eight weeks to design and present Dior’s 2012 fall-winter haute couture collection. A snap, right?

The documentary begins with Raf’s first day at work, when he is introduced to the seamstresses and other staff now under his direction. Throughout the film Simons appears shy, which makes me wonder how he managed to rise to so high a creative and managerial position. Turns out that the House’s founder, Christian Dior, possessed traits similar to Simons’s. The private Dior was a reticent man, uncomfortable with the public demands of his occupation. Simons is aware of the founder’s bearings. On camera he says that he once began reading Dior’s memoir, only to put it down forever after a short while because he recognized too much of himself in Dior’s personality.

Wait, this is a spoiler alert: At the end Simons triumphs, a survivor of the strained nerves and pained expressions that accompanied him during his test by fire. The haute couture show, held on July 2, 2012 in a majestically flowered Parisian mansion, is a hit. There the movie ends. Today, almost three years later, Simons is still on the job. He undoubtedly has grown more comfortable in it.

Michelle Lordi, Jazz Singer

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The main room at Vintage Bar And Grill, 10 minutes before the music began.
The main room at Vintage Bar And Grill, 10 minutes before the music began.

Vintage Bar And Grill in Abington, Pennsylvania is a good place. It’s a sports bar that serves up thoughtful food. There are plenty of televisions (seven in the main room), knick knacks all over the walls and a not bad selection of beers. And, duh, the place can get noisy, very noisy. So when my wife and I go there for dinner a couple of Fridays or Saturdays each year we are ready and willing to deal with mega decibels. Never had been there mid-week till a handful of days ago though, when on Tuesday we went not only for dinner but to hear some jazz. Most unlikely, Vintage is given over on Tuesday evenings to jazz vocalist Michelle Lordi and her musical partners.

The Philadelphia area, where I live, is home to lots of very good musicians in most musical genres, including jazz. The music biz being what it is, though, only a handful of musicians break through to decent-sized audiences. The rest, like Lordi, do what they can, sometimes maybe plying their craft at small unexpected spots like Vintage.

I’d known about Lordi’s Vintage gigs for a long time. I’d seen her name on a weekly email jazz-near-you schedule that I subscribe to, but I hadn’t given her much thought. Last week, though, the notion to see her bubbled up. Being musically in the dark about Michelle, I first checked her out on YouTube, and she sounded excellent. How was she in person? YouTube didn’t lie. She was great.

Lordi had with her four musicians she works with quite often. Two of them, tenor saxophonist Larry McKenna and electric guitarist Sonny Troy, are grizzled musical veterans, superb players with long and impressive resumes.  Neither I suppose is on the road much anymore, if at all. It says a lot about Michelle that they choose to play with her. The other two are young guys, Sam Harris on upright bass and Mike Frank on electric piano. They did a fine job at Vintage.

Michelle and her band set up shop in a tight Vintage corner near the main entrance. A hi-def TV, on mute, showed the Phillies baseball game above them. Maybe 30 customers were in the room for the first set, at best half of them listening to the music. Five feet from Michelle and one foot from Sonny Troy was a table of six. As the music played, these folks blithely chitchatted about their vacations and the goings-on of various relatives, groundbreaking news all of it. I tip my hat to musicians who learn to become immune to this kind of stuff.

Michelle Lordi is from the understated school of jazz singing. I’d bet that she has taken cues from Doris Day and June Christy, calm singers from the 1940s and 50s. Diana Krall is maybe today’s biggest jazz name who isn’t interested in vocal gymnastics or in bursting a vein reaching for a high note. I like this style of singing a lot. You hear it consistently with Brazilian bossa nova singers.

Michelle Lordi and her band at Vintage Bar And Grill.
Michelle Lordi and her band at Vintage Bar And Grill.

During the one hour first set at Vintage, Lordi sang nine songs, standards from the American and Brazilian songbooks. She chose medium to slow tempos and sang efficiently and clearly in a firm and pretty voice. Lyrics came alive because she gave them room to breathe. Over Sonny Troy’s moody accompaniment, she slowed and elongated the words to Irving Berlin’s “They Say It’s Wonderful.” After a wise and moving Larry McKenna solo on Rodgers and Hart’s “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was,” Lordi sang unaffectedly, cleanly hitting the higher notes without strain or an excess of volume. The song  resonated.

Michelle Lordi performs pretty regularly at other venues in the Philadelphia area, such as Chestnut Hill’s Paris Bistro And Jazz Café. And she has done some recording too. But overall she is not exactly a household name. Unless I missed something, the set I took in at Vintage would have gone over just swell at the high-profile Village Vanguard or Café Carlyle in Manhattan or, closer to home, at Philadelphia’s Annenberg Center For The Performing Arts. Beautiful singing, assured and sympathetic instrumental work. Maybe one day I’ll be able to say “I saw her when . . . “

I Apologize For This Movie Review

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There are quite a few reasons to visit the old village section of Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Art (Michener Museum), music (Puck), historic curiosities (Mercer Museum), restaurants (too many to mention) all make Doylestown a worthy destination. And movies too, which are to be found at the County Theater.

Recently my wife and I drove with friends to Doylestown for dinner and a movie. Dinner took place at Chambers 19 Bistro & Bar. The four of us enjoyed our meals. It’s a good spot in the center of the old village. After dinner, around the corner we went to the County, which has been on site since 1938. The present theater is a reinvention of the earlier County, a  mainstream theater whose fortunes began to decline in the 1970s. Since the early ’90s the County has been a  two-screen art movie house, and has helped secure Doylestown’s status as a fine place.

Binoche and Stewart among the clouds
Binoche and Stewart among the clouds

The movie that we watched is Clouds Of Sils Maria, a hyper-wordy character-driven drama set mostly in Switzerland. Now, some people have a gift for understanding nearly every movie that they see. Film critics for sure, or so it would seem, and some laity too. I don’t have that gift. How many times has a movie (at theaters or on television) caused me to scratch my head intermittently? Oodles, thank you. Clouds is a challenge and makes me appreciate what professional critics do for a living. Dialogue and plot details fly by quickly in Clouds. If you aren’t in Sherlock Holmes’s league, plenty of both will elude you. Despite all of that, I think I came away with some understandings, in a broad sense if nothing else. And I wasn’t the only semi-lost soul. My wife and our friends weren’t certain about what they’d seen either. Each of us  recalled scenes differently, or maybe didn’t recall them at all. I believe that the writer and director, Olivier Assayas, would have beamed at our struggles, as I don’t doubt that he had in mind to create an open-sided movie elusive to pinning down.

Clouds Of Sils Maria revolves around the morphing relationships between a famous actress in mid-career, played by Juliette Binoche, and two far younger ladies. One is her personal assistant (played by Kristen Stewart) and the other is her co-star (played by Chloë Grace Moretz) in a play, a revival, being readied for the London stage. The play headed for revival is Maloja Snake, in which Binoche’s character, Maria Enders, had starred about 25 years earlier as a young woman involved professionally and apparently romantically with a much older lady. In the revival Enders has graduated to the older person’s role and fantasy/action movie star Jo-Ann Ellis (Moretz) takes on the young lady. Enders’s personal assistant Valentine (Stewart) helps Enders prepare for the play, reading and discussing the script with her. But all is not easy or simple in Maloja Snakeland. For our three protagonists, real life and the stage play uncannily and surreally seem to intertwine. Where does reality lie? Art, after all, reflects life. Binoche, Stewart and Moretz do fine work in this dizzying stew, playing off one another with panache and believability.

Well, like one of my friends said after the movie, this one is not for everybody. Plot offshoots overstretch its length by at least 20 minutes. And getting back to those pesky details . . . This morning I read the New York Times review of the movie, which is where I learned that the younger woman in the play has a sexual thing going with the older. Was this actually mentioned in Clouds? I sure don’t remember hearing about it. Maybe the Times reviewer had been given a crib sheet by the film’s producers before he saw the movie. Maybe I’m just slow. Probably both. I could mention many other such puzzlers. But that’s enough.

Yet, you know, I liked Clouds Of Sils Maria. It made me think, usually a good thing. My ultimate take on the movie is that the Binoche and Stewart characters were emotionally close but not quite right for each other, and needed separation in order to move on with their lives. Separate they did, though the circumstances and motivations involved are ripe for long discussions. I’m betting that as years went on, Enders and Valentine ended up just fine. Not so sure about the quality of Ellis’s fate down the road, though.

If you are wowed by nuanced acting, beautiful scenery and swirling dialogue, I recommend Clouds Of Sils Maria to you. I also recommend that you read at least two reviews, other than my mediocre effort, before you head off to view it. I should have done some advance reading myself. The Times review will be helpful. The New Yorker’s too. Like me, Anthony Lane, The New Yorker critic, seems to be more than a bit unsure about what the heck was going on. Which makes me feel better about my own perceptual shortcomings.

Mason Porter And The Chris Kasper Band Take On The Grateful Dead

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1970 was a very good year for the Grateful Dead and a fairly good one for me. I was one year out of college, no long-term success plans in place, working here and there to earn a few dollars. But I was happy enough, I’m pretty sure. Unlike me, The Dead mined gold in 1970, recording and releasing that year what many agree are their two best studio albums: Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty. These albums were a big change from Aoxomoxoa, their pretty darn trippy effort from the previous year. The 1970 albums presented tightly arranged songs, many of them quiet and lovely ballads, straight out of the folk, blues and mountain music traditions. The 18 songs on these records shine with a timeless aura and are nothing but grand. The quality of the material probably took the Dead, and most everyone else, by surprise.

During a vagabond-like tour of the USA in summer 1970 I found myself in San Francisco for two or three weeks. I knew about the Dead (who didn’t?), but I don’t think I had any of their albums in my collection at that time. I wasn’t yet a fan. But in San Francisco, the Dead’s home base and where they had become emblematic of hippie culture,  I was smart enough to realize that I should go and see them if I had the chance. The chance arose, as they were booked for three nights in mid-August at the Fillmore West. I went to one of those shows. Workingman’s Dead had come out two months earlier, and the guys were already hard at work on American Beauty. It was a rich period. Sadly, for me the concert has almost disappeared into the fog. Well, I do recall a few things, such as standing in the middle of the Fillmore’s crowded open auditorium gazing at the stage. I also vaguely still can hear the band playing Casey Jones, the tune that brings Workingman’s Dead to its end. And I remember thinking that the concert was good but not great, an opinion that would have left Deadheads shaking their noggins in bewilderment. But memories about the show other than those  . . .  man, I could fill fifty books with all the things I’ve forgotten in my life, if the details magically could be jolted back into place.

Which brings us to April 29, 2015 at the Ardmore Music Hall in suburban Philadelphia. That evening I went with friends to watch two locally-based bands, musicians who had had the superb idea to play the Dead’s 1970 albums in their entirety, track by track. I’m writing this not long after seeing the concert, so my brain hasn’t had a chance yet to get fuzzy about the experience. And the experience was great. I enjoyed the concert in Ardmore more than I did the one in San Francisco 45 years ago.

The Ardmore Music Hall is in the midst of presenting five shows that celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Grateful Dead’s founding. The centerpiece show for me easily is the one I attended. Handling Workingman’s Dead was Mason Porter, which is a band not a person. The American Beauty duties fell to The Chris Kasper Band, a quintet that grew bigger on some songs with guest musicians. Both units lovingly approached the landmark albums, but didn’t try to duplicate the Dead’s sound. Each was pure rockier than the Dead, and each possessed something the Dead didn’t: a fiddler.  Three hundred or more folks packed the Ardmore, ages 20 to 70 all heavily represented and swaying and hippie-dancing to the tantalizing beats.

Mason Porter at Ardmore Music Hall
Mason Porter at Ardmore Music Hall

The five-person Mason Porter had me going from note number one of song number one, Uncle John’s Band. The group built the tune in stages, reaching heady heights with lead guitarist Paul Wilkinson’s soaring Eight Miles High-ish solo. And they nailed the seven songs that followed. Lead singer Joe D’Amico had an easy and calm delivery, very much in the Jerry Garcia vein. Sarah Larsen’s Appalachian fiddling infused the band with a whole lot of grit. The crowd erupted in applause after her long solo on Dire Wolf. She was overwhelmed by this outpouring and smiled the biggest smile I’ve ever seen on a musician’s face. It stretched out of the hall and halfway to the next town.

The Chris Kasper Band at Ardmore Music Hall (CK is second from left)
The Chris Kasper Band at Ardmore Music Hall (CK is second from left)

For some reason I was delayed getting into The Chris Kasper Band. But they hooked me with Candyman five songs into the set and didn’t let go after that. Keyboardist David Streim brought strong and broad chordal waves to Candyman and the song took flight with Chris’s electric guitar work and fiddler Kiley Ryan’s sweet solo turn. Quite a night for female fiddlers, and not usual to find two at the same concert. On some songs Ryan exchanged the fiddle for an acoustic guitar.

Chris Kasper’s lead vocals were crisp and mellow all set. Like Joe D’Amico and many others, he’s partly from the Garcia school of singing. He alternated between acoustic and electric guitar and used the latter to drive Till The Morning Comes, snapping off white hot riffs like Keith Richards. Matt Muir’s firecracker drumming bounced that song outrageously, pop pop pop. Tremendous.

Truckin’ brought the band’s American Beauty homage to a close. But the night wasn’t over. Mason Porter and a few guests joined the Kasper outfit on stage and a four song Grateful Dead encore ensued. The energy in the Ardmore Music Hall grew to dangerous levels as the huge ensemble ripped through Goin Down The Road Feeling Bad, Bertha, Franklin’s Tower and Mr. Charlie. The music was ferocious, the audience insatiable. At 11:30 PM the last notes rang out.

My Coca-Cola Relapse

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How much cola have I consumed in my life? Thousands of gallons I’d guess. Not to mention the huge quantities of other soda varieties that have passed through my body. But cola always was my favorite. Coca-Cola, Pepsi, RC Cola, store brands – I proudly and happily drank them all. Over time, Coke became my top cola choice.

My cola habit was strong in my teens and went up some notches in my early 20s. But it ended in my mid-40s when I gave up cola and other sodas. All of that sugar for so many years, combined with sad dental hygiene, had made a mess of my teeth and gums. I needed to stop drinking the stuff, and it’s a good thing that my willpower was strong enough to follow through. I didn’t switch to diet sodas because I’ve never liked the taste of artificial sweeteners.

The scene of my relapse
The scene of my relapse

But cola is back in my life. Coca-Cola, to be precise. Its return began not long ago at a pizza place I’ve been going to for a couple of years, Tony Roni’s. Roni’s resides at a remarkably congested and dangerous road intersection in Willow Grove, PA, not far from Philadelphia. Customers might somewhat put their lives in jeopardy to visit Roni’s, but that doesn’t keep them away. And that includes me.

I love pizza, especially the more traditional and unadulterated types, but I can’t find many by-the-slice places that make it the way I prefer: crisp charred crust, sweet tomato sauce, good quality cheese and not an overload of it nor of oil. Tony Roni’s traditional pies seem to vary in quality from visit to visit. They are not too bad overall, but in a better world they consistently would be less floppy and oily. So, a bit frustrated, last year I started ordering slices of Roni’s tomato pie instead. It’s a pizza variety I had rarely had before. They do a nice job with tomato pie, its underside heat-darkened, the crushed tomatoes ripe with good flavor, very little oil, a dusting of cheese. The crust could be better, but what the heck.

Initially I drove to Tony Roni’s once every two or three weeks and, for various reasons, most frequently on Wednesdays. Wednesday is the one day when they offer a free fountain soda to anyone who buys two pizza slices. For a long time I rejected the free drink. After much cavity filling and periodontal work, my teeth and gums have been pretty good for quite awhile now, so why press my luck? But the lure of Tony Roni’s free soda must have been nibbling at my subconscious. Earlier this year my resistence grew thin. Paying for two slices on a January Wednesday I said “oh well” to myself and accepted the cashier’s proferred paper soda cup. Off I went to the soda dispenser and allowed six or so ounces of Coca-Cola to descend. I took a seat, took a sip, and was in heaven. Coke is heaven. I knew that all along.

Since then, my trips to Tony Roni’s have been almost weekly, and exclusive to Wednesdays. Each time I buy two slices of pie, usually tomato pie, and savor about six ounces of free Coke. I try very hard not to drink more Coke than that. So far I’ve been successful. And when I get home from my pizza and soda outings I brush my teeth. Coke is delicious. Dental work isn’t.

Willy Porter Anchors A Visit To Jim Thorpe, PA

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Another weekend has come and gone. It was a good one. The locale: Jim Thorpe, PA. The main reason for being there: Willy Porter, a terrifically talented singer-songwriter and guitarist.

As with Kim Richey, whom I wrote about recently, I’ve known of Willy Porter for years but actually knew almost nothing about him. I’d never seen him perform, couldn’t have named a single song by him. One thing I did know, though, is that he would be at the Mauch Chunk Opera House in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania on April 25. The idea of visiting Jim Thorpe had been spinning quietly in my head for a couple of years, ever since some good friends of mine told about the fine time they’d had there. My wife and I recently were thinking about nabbing a weekend getaway, and at seventy miles Jim Thorpe isn’t too far from where we live. But our visit would need an anchor, a strong reason for going. To wit, Willy Porter. Something told me he’d put on a good show, and I was right.

Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania
Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania

Jim Thorpe is a cute town nestled in the foothills of the Pocono Mountains. From the early 1800s until 1930 or so it was a prosperous place, a cog for coal mining and railroad industries. Its name then was Mauch Chunk, derived from a Native American language. Over time, there came to be not only Mauch Chunk, but also the adjacent town of East Mauch Chunk. As coal mining in the area dwindled in the 1900s, both Chunks’ fortunes headed south. People and money left. Town leaders had a plan, though a very odd plan, to try and reverse the decline. It revolved around Jim Thorpe, the celebrated Native American athlete who died in 1953.

Jim Thorpe lived in California at the time of his death, but was a native Oklahoman. His burial was to be in Oklahoma. It seems, though, that Oklahoma had trouble raising money for a Thorpe memorial, something that his family wanted. His widow Patricia somehow had heard that the two Chunks were looking for an economic boost. So, she and the towns’ officials made a deal. Mauch Chunk and East Mauch Chunk merged and became Jim Thorpe. Town leaders hoped that the new name would prove a draw for businesses and tourists, a pretty wifty notion if you ask me.  Jim’s remains were transported to the newly-christened community, which built a memorial to him. Possibly Patricia was paid for all of this. The details are quite cloudy.

I doubt if the name change helped business grow at all, but during the last 20 or more years Jim Thorpe has become one of those places that people like to visit. With its old fashioned look as key, it has evolved into an artsy, craftsy and happily hippyish town. Bed and breakfast establishments have blossomed. The historic district is small but well-preserved, with strings of nice neat 19th century structures on twisting and narrow streets. Jim Thorpe is close to beautiful areas where you can hike, bike and water raft. But if you aren’t overly jazzed by those activities, then a one night stay, or even a day trip, is all you need. We arrived on April 25 and left the next day.

The highlight of our excursion was indeed Willy Porter. We also enjoyed walking around town checking out the architectural details and the town’s surrounding mountains, though that becomes old pretty fast as a steady pace will bring you from one end of the historic district to the other in eight minutes. But the addition of an excellent restaurant dinner, a bit of shopping,  and a tour of the Asa Packer Mansion made the weekend worthwhile, as did The Parsonage, the comfy B&B where we landed.

Willy Porter and Carmen Nickerson at Mauch Chunk Opera House
Willy Porter and Carmen Nickerson at Mauch Chunk Opera House

If you are a fan of good singer-songwriters, then Willy Porter is your man. His subjects often are love and personal freedom, and he peers at them intelligently from a spectrum of angles. One of many tunes that had me head-bopping was the Caribbean-flavored Elouise, a gentle love song that put me in mind of artists such as James Taylor, Jack Johnson and Martin Sexton.

If you are a fan of singer-songwriters who do more with their guitars than simple strumming, then Willy is totally your man. His abilities on amplified acoustic guitar made my jaw drop. He can play pretty much any which way he wants, and often had several harmonious interweaving lines going at the same time. Think Leo Kottke or Michael Hedges.

Willy was on stage for over two hours. Carmen Nickerson, his vocal accompanist, added depth and deft atmospherics to the mix. The funky Mauch Chunk Opera House, occupying its site in town since 1882, was another plus. Porter, a nationally-touring musician, has played there many times, becoming a Poconos fixture.

Food? Don’t miss Moya, a stylish and casual restaurant on Race Street. Before the Porter concert, my wife and I both ordered crab cakes, which came with a wonderful cilantro sauce. Delicious. Dessert, a shared crème brulee, was rich and vanilla loaded, and was served at the correct temperature, warm instead of piping hot. I’m always in search of beers I haven’t had before, and I found a great one at Moya, the Fort Collins Brewery’s very hoppy and dry Rocky Mountain IPA.

Asa Packer Mansion
Asa Packer Mansion

Well-presented history? Take the tour of the Asa Packer Mansion. Asa Packer’s name has been substantially lost in the mists of time, but he was a rich and powerful man in the 1800s, a railroad magnate and founder of Lehigh University. He lived in the mansion with his wife and several children from 1861 until his passing in 1879, and it continued to be the Packer home until 1912, the year in which his last surviving child, Mary, died at age 73. Mary left the house and its contents to Mauch Chunk. Everything there today is pretty much intact from that date.

Now, house tours can be kind of a snooze, but this one wasn’t. The home is full of lovely objects, and the tour guides are lively and make Packer history interesting. I especially liked the gorgeous but modest stained glass windows in the dining room and second floor landing. They stood out in a house dominated by various shades of brown.

The Wonderful Kim Richey In New Hope

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Kim Richey, with Dan Mitchell, at The New Hope Winery
Kim Richey, with Dan Mitchell, at The New Hope Winery

Ah, the world is ripe for discovery. So many places to see, and not nearly enough time to make a big dent in the to-visit list. And I’m not even talking about locales such as Barcelona, Copenhagen, the Amazonian jungle or the Hindu Kush mountains. Let’s leave them for another day and look instead at what’s not far from our front doors.

Last June my wife and I did just that, journeying all of 17 miles from our home to a music venue a short distance from the artsy heart of New Hope, Pennsylvania. That venue, The New Hope Winery, had been at the lower areas of my radar screen for several years. The stars finally aligned correctly and led us there, where we saw Griffin House, a good singer-songwriter. We enjoyed the Winery experience so much, we returned three more times before year’s end.

The New Hope Winery actually is several buildings. One is a wine and gift shop. The music hall is another. A large rectangle, the hall is wood-paneled and filled with cocktail tables draped with red tablecloths. It is a comfortable place, but nothing fancy, and seats around 200. Many musicians who pass through the Winery make their living touring this and other countries. People such as Raul Malo, Chris Hillman (an original Byrd), Dar Williams and Judy Collins. Yet, the Winery isn’t as well known as other Philadelphia-area venues, Sellersville Theater and World Café Live for instance, that present these same or similar artists. In other words, The New Hope Winery could use more visibility.

We took in our first Winery concert of 2015 last Friday when we went to see Nashville-based Kim Richey, who was accompanied by her longtime musical mate Dan Mitchell. Kim sang lead and strummed an acoustic guitar, and Dan handled vocal harmonies, keyboards and, most unexpectedly, an occasional trumpet or fluegelhorn interlude. Kim wrote or co-wrote all of the 17 songs that she performed in her 90 minutes set. She was absolutely wonderful.

Kim inhabits the sweet spot where country, folk and singer-songwriter sensibilities come together. Her voice is steady and lovely, her songs tuneful and literate. Fans of Mary Chapin Carpenter or Patty Griffin probably already love, or would love, Kim Richey. I’ve known of her for years, but never knew much about her or her music. Turns out she was a latecomer to the music game, grabbing her first record contract at age 37 (she’s 58 now). She has released seven studio albums since 1995. The most recent is 2013’s Thorn In My Heart.

At the Winery, Richey and Mitchell worked together pretty seamlessly. Mitchell did a good job on keyboards and on the horns, but what I liked best were the effortless vocal harmonies that he partnered with Richey’s calm but warm voice. Their singing brought a hush to the room.

About half of Richey’s set came from Thorn In My Heart. She sang her chosen songs unhurriedly, and most looked at love and relationships, but from differing angles. On one hand there was Every River , the song’s narrator so in love with her guy that she declares “When the day comes that I don’t love you/Every star will fall out of the sky.” She doesn’t expect to lose love, but for sure her world will become calamitous if she does.

Alas, in the sad sad sad Those Words We Said, calamity has arrived. A traumatic breakup has struck a gal hard. She hits the highway to try and assuage her problems, but she can’t stop thinking about “Those words that wounded like an arrow to the heart,/And keep me drivin’, drivin’.” In New Hope, I totally believed the heartbreak.

Kim Richey is a high-level talent. And she might have a demographics problem. Based on The New Hope Winery audience, I’d think so. The 150 or so folks in the room were middle-aged or older, with the emphasis definitely on older. They were a great audience, clapping long and loudly after each song. But seeing a few youthful faces in the crowd I’m sure would have made Kim’s night even better. If Kim doesn’t have many younger fans, why is beyond me.  The millenials who turn out in droves to see smart youngish songwriters like Norah Jones and Conor Oberst would like Kim Richey too. Yes, I’m pretty certain that Kim could use a broader fan base. She certainly deserves one, but she’s not alone in that. The music business is not only tough, it’s tough to figure out.