Ulysses S. Grant: Learning President Lincoln Had Been Assassinated

"It was the darkest day of my life," Grant told newsman John Russell Young.  "I did not know what it meant.  Her was the Rebellion put down in the field, and starting up in the gutters.  We had fought it as a war, now we had to fight it as assassination."

Recall, there was an attempt on Grant's life as well that night, but the Grants' railroad car door when stopped at Havre de Grace (where I've been -- Maryland), was locked, preventing the assassin getting to Grant.  The assassin  wrote an unsigned note later to Grant, thanking God that he'd been prevented from attempting to kill him. (Julia Dent Grant, The Personal Memoirs of Julia Dent Grant 156-57, John Y Simon, ed. (New York; G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1975).

The Rebellion continues to this day, by many, many other means, but particularly via those hatched in the gutters of mind and media.

el V, In His Own Words: Dr. John and John Boutté

New Orleans music thrives in old buildings. I'm so glad I got to see the Dr. John "Funky But It's Nu Awlins" show at BAM Friday night. I guess BAM felt like throwing a party to celebrate its 150th anniversary -- 1861, it was. That the building has not been demolished and the site rebuilt on is a minor miracle in a city that cannibalizes its architecture. Fortunately, I missed the night the functionaries spoke.
(Robt. Christgau's assessment of Dr. John's three-week residency at BAM is here, and Larry Blumenfeld's pieces for the Voice are here, here, and here.)
It was a wonderful show. Though it felt like a party where everybody onstage knew everybody else, which indeed they did, it was deceptively intricate. No two songs had the same feel. The show rolled from one highlight to the next. Big Chief Donald Harrison -- who is bringing his New Orleans band to Symphony Space on April 27, attendance mandatory -- rocked the house with vocals and sax on "Hey Pocky Way" and dueted with Ronnie Cuber on bari. Nicholas Payton killed it on "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans." Davell Crawford's blistering version of "Junko Partner" will stay with me a long time -- definitely one of the peak musical experiences of '12, so far, and I'd buy the record that will surely come out of this just for that number. Ivan Neville. Dirty Dozen. Tami Lynn. Irma Thomas.

It opened with Dr. John heading up a second line into the hall from the back, in a li'l parade with the Dirty Dozen blasting away. As they passed us, I saw tried-and-true New Orleansophile Bonnie Raitt second-lining her way down the aisle behind Dr. John, and I knew I was in the right place and not at the wrong time, either. Ms. Raitt didn't appear in the show, but she knows what's good. She happened to be in town in connection with her lovely new album, Slipstream (videoclip here), which I'd seen a stack of -- a depleted stack, I might add, meaning people were buying it -- at Starbuck's earlier in the day. May it sell a million or three. She was a guest on John Schaefer's Soundcheck yesterday. (JS also conversed with Dr. John earlier in the month, a true meeting of the vocabularies.)

It's been a while since I bothered to notice what albums were coming out in a given week, but this is a week to listen up, with some titles out today (Tuesday is the traditional street date, dating back from the era of record stores, something today's college students no longer remember). Jon Cleary's got an album of songs by great American songwriter Allen Toussaint, called Occapella, which I haven't heard but which I hear is great, and why wouldn't it be? The Tremé soundtrack for season two comes out on Rounder. And the second season of Tremé comes out on DVD -- if you want to support the show, says David Simon, buy the DVDs. (The third season of Tremé will air in the fall on HBO.) May they all sell a million or three.

And now we get personal.
John Boutté's new album comes out today -- available from CD Baby, or better yet go buy it from the artist at d/b/a if you're in New Orleans, or at Louisiana Music Factory. Produced by Blake Leyh (music supervisor of Tremé), it's titled All About Everything.

The title song, "All About Everything," is my translation from Portuguese of Chico Buarque's "Sobre Todas as Coisas." (Buarque's album version here.) "Sobre Todas as Coisas" is, to me, songwriting on the highest level. I translated this lyric (and others) over a period of years as a personal project, and I've sung it for years for my own pleasure. When you do something like that, you forget you didn't write it. I certainly didn't write the song, but the English version is mine, as faithful and singable a translation as I could make. So in some sense I'm personally invested in it as a songwriter, and we croaking songwriters love to hear our songs in the voice of a great interpreter. Hearing John Boutté sing this one, I feel like I've been blessed. 

*Conan The Barbarian* 2011 Movie

 I saw this the other day.

It is probably 98% action; what dialog there is, that isn't howls and grunts and snarls, is bombast. (So many villains in movies seem modeled after Jackson’s orcs in appearance, behavior and communication, whether they are supposedly human or not – it’s true in this film as well, with the Big Bad’s henchman who chases Conan and the Virgin, whom after many hours, Conan finally destroys by using him as a message / messenger, catapaulting the ugly hench-bad from the cliffs above to crash into the Big Bad’s bedroom.)
All very well done for what it is, and quite faithful to Howard. But that's why the movie was dull. By the time I found Howard's novels I'd already outgrown flat characters, non-dimensional story, implausible world building and those preposterous monsters, still so beloved by boys of any age who adore that sort of thing.

What I didn't realize until watching this movie version of Howard's Great Hero, is that Hybornia or whatever this S&S world is called, it's still a western. Taciturn protagonist who rides off alone at the end of saving the girl and the ranch world from the the banker the EviLe Sorceror-Sorceress. Which makes sense in the context of Howard's Texanhood. It makes even more sense if you've read Larry McMurtry's Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen, his collection of essays on what it means to be born into Texas ranching in the era of Howard, which McMurtry was, and grew up with a love of books, learning and writing, whch they both did, I think.

McMurtry was a happier fellow though, from boyhood, than Howard was. If I have this right, Howard was gay, while McMurtry isn't, so that's a big reason right there why McMurtry would have been a happier person in that time of the world, in Texas.

*Treme* Season 3, Dr. John, Bonnie Raitt

Ain't airing until the fall.

So we'll have to make due with the dvds of seasons 1 & 2 until then, and the Dr. John residency these last three weeks at BAM.

The show last night was beyond spectacular -- it was, as Mac said, Insides Out Funky But Its Nu Awlins.  Partly it was as the performers danced down the aisle of the orchestra to the stage to Dirty Dozen -- and Bonnie Raitt, who is town to do promo for her new album, Slip Stream, danced with them!  When she called on Mac earlier he said she had to do it, though she wasn't part of the show.  So she hung out in the Green Room and watched from back stage.  By the way, have you read her reasons why she says, "Thank God for Occupy," earlier this month on salon.com?  Slipstream is a beautiful album, by the way.  Her voice is at least as good if not better than at any other time in her career.

Part of the spectacularness  was Davell Crawford who dominated two numbers back-to-back that he introduced as "Remember the Nighttripper?"  And it was horrible and wonderful, dangerous and terrifying, was like some of the nights in the Funky Butt, seeing the branches in Louis Armstrong park dancing, struggling, yearning, tossing, struggling along with the music, and you KNEW you were in a swamp and things aren't the same here, where the vegetation is sentient, as somewhere anywhere else.  He took one number right down to Angola and the war on young black men that has been escalating in the last year, and yet it was strong, it was deep, it was wild, and nobody except a New Orleans musician could do this.  The entire show brought out goosebumps over and over, and yet we all danced too, even in that classic nineteenth century recital theater.

They were all wonderful, not a clunker among them.  It just snapped and sizzled.  From what we can tell, since we were there only one night each of the three weekends, it was almost a sold-out gig each weekend of Thurs., Fri. and Sat.  Not much can pull that of these days.  That theater is a large capacity theater, and the show, featuring a different orientation with different artists each weekend, was not an inexpensive production by any means.  Dr. John does it again.

We hung out a bit afterwards backstage since we had invitations, so we chatted some with the band members we know, and with Mac and Bonnie and Donald.  Then headed home on the train with LK, who made Tootie's Last Suit and is in town working on her current project which is documenting the health problems of those who experienced 9/11 and BP.

The lobby was quite a schmooze-fest.  El V said, "It's only at New Orleans events I get recognized by complete strangers from a book jacket photo."  Ay-up, it was like that.  The people in those seats grooving to the music these last three weekends all love New Orleans, even if they live here.

So we ended the night nicely in our local French bistro, el V with a beer and me with water as I'm taking pain medication, and discussed over and over the highlights of the show.

O, and one more thing that gives us a hit of New Orleans as we wait for Treme season 3, is the new Jon Boutté joint, which includes a cut of something el V suggested and translated from the Portuguese, and is also the title cut!

ETA: Got an e-mail last night from a friend who took one of his classes to NO for spring break, coming live from DBA, where JB was onstage, singing the title cut, and shouting out el V credit!  Title in Portuguese is sobre todas as coisas.  Chico Buarque's version:

Novels Recently Read, Novels Acquired Today

I have finished re-reading Gore Vidal's Burr, Lincoln and 1876, which I took on after reading The Education of Henry Adams.  Both of them write very well, and they know whereof they write.  They also share a loathing for President Grant that will not allow him to have done a thing right.  There's never mention of his attempts to follow Lincoln's Reconstruction plans, particularly for integrating the free black population into the economic and political life of the nation, nothing about how he attempted to reform the scandal and corruption that was the Bureau of Indian Affairs -- rather they focus on the corruption scandal involving the wife of one of his cabinet members, who had some kind of shenanigan deal with a reservation store merchant.  That sort of thing.  I have to dig down and find out more about this antipathy for Grant by those who would seem to have on surface provided him more support.  But they hate him, and portray him as being hated by the voters too -- which doesn't fit in with other things I've read about how Grant was regarded by non-politicians.  There's a scene in 1876 that breaks your heart -- and I'm thinking that Vidal was exercising whole cloth his privilege as a novelist to make up stuff, while Adams in his Education was writing neither history nor fiction, but fashioning his persona for the ages.

Novels acquired today -- a nice haul!


Derby Day by D.J. Taylor, an historical novel published last year in the UK, and last month here -- I have been waiting for a long time to get hold of a copy since reading about it in the UK reviews -- it was nominated for the Man Booker prize; from the Kirkus review:

[ " Taylor reinvents the Victorian novel, basing his narrative loosely on W.P. Frith’s massive satirical portrait of mid-19th-century English life of the same name. " ]

It's also been billed as a Victorian era mystery. Now I'll find out for myself. Perfect subway reading.

The Barbarian Nurseries by Héctor Tobar (2011) -- this has one of the best titles ever, which I just stumbled upon today out of nowhere, having heard nothing about it before; from the LA Times review:

[ " One of Tobar's conceits in this portion of the novel, and it really works, is to invite his readers to consider Los Angeles as though it were fabulous and exotic — which, of course, it is. His travelers stumble around this unfamiliar place like a lost band of Marco Polos. Later, 11-year-old Brandon recounts the adventure through the filter of all the hundreds of fantasy novels he's read. "We were looking for Grandpa's house, because Araceli said we should look for him. But we found this other place instead, where there are houses like jails I guess …. and other things I thought only existed in books. But they were real."

By then Brandon is telling his tale to a gape-mouthed audience composed not just of his parents but also of cops, lawyers, a psychologist and a formidable young woman from child protective services — for when Scott and Maureen finally got it together to come home, they found the house empty, called the police and accused Araceli of kidnapping. The truth of what happened is already disappearing beneath layers of invention, much as history itself accretes and gathers upon any patch of ground, even in an environment as ostensibly new as SoCal. " ]

Doc by Mary Doria Russell (2011).  Dpc and the Earps.  My constant interest in the history of the Western as fictional history has had this one in mind since it was published.

Don't Get Hero Much Around Here Any More ...

I have been fairly lost in the Henry Adams's 9 volume history of the four administrations of Jefferson and Madison, trying to cobble out a publishable article from the long last section of The American Slave Coast: How Enslaved Wombs Produced the American South, and another project that initially got me excited, which was perhaps an opportunity to write for the screen ... but no.  It's just too much again of this constant in movies and television now of all nekkid nekkid nekkid women all the time, all women are prostitutes if they're not witches into the bargain, and rape rape rape, humiliate humiliate humiliate if not downright torture torture torture.  As if no woman ever lives anywhere who ISN"T a whore and raped raped raped and even murdered. Or else just a pathetic victim who is raped and tortured and killed.

So few who write for the screen understand what makes a story or a character.  They evidently think now it's naked women and oceans oceans oceans of blood spilled in the most violent and brutal and graphic and prolonged action possible.

This is -- weird, when there are some excellent examples out there as to how its done, particularly the Simon-Burns-Overmeyer ouvre, starting with Homicide (though I don't think Overmeyer was connected with Homicide).  What this means is that the showrunners etc. must really know their locale, its history, it's citizens from the bottom up, the inside out.  Or else you have to be like Buffy's Joss Whedon, who built the Buffyverse from bottom up too -- not history, of course, but an imaginary world, that he understood deeply (he's never done it to that perfection since either, or even close!).

Everyone wants an arc series that lasts at least 5 seasons, but woo, is that hard to pull off, demanding as it does a whole suite of very special skill sets, of which very few people possess all of them. But starting with an actual story in your pilot really helps ....


Something else: Since blogger-google has chosen to no longer recognize IE, and the EviLe google coerced a download of its Chrome to access this plac I'm thinking of scrubbing Fox Home and moving to Word Press or some other host.  I still have my LJ and DW blogs though they too have their problems.

We had a lovely time at Easter.  Now back to the grind.

Banks Too Corrupt to Fail

Never in any dream have I imagined stating this: "I finally have sympathy for Andrew Jackson's War on Biddle's Bank fo the United States." Take these f*ckers OUT. Now.

"Bank of America: Too Crooked to Fail" by Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone. I just listened to a half hour segment with him and an interviewer on the subject. If you don't angry you are a lot different from me. You can read it all online here.

If you are unfamiliar with the reference to Jackson, Biddle and Bank, you can find out here. As he was with Indian removal and the acquistion of the Floridas, Texas and Mexico, Jackson was obsessed with taking out the Bank of the United States, going back to the days of early manhood. He succeeded in all these goals, except that Texas came in only (shortly) after he died, and though the U.S. never officially annexed Mexico, it did officially get a huge amount of its territiory after the Mexican-American War (territory that, I am obsessively forced to observe was expected by the South to become slave states).

Jackson did take out the bank of the United States, and with his determination to get rid of currency, and the corruption of what was called his pet state banks, plunged the country into an economic disaster larger and more prolonged than any heretofore experienced. Which says a great deal since the U.S. was already long into its national repetitive cycles of boom and bust.