Ash Clifton, Writer

Friday Night Rock-Out: “Connected”

Once again, the title of this series, “Friday Night Rock-Out” is a total misnomer. This week, it’s a Friday Night Rap-Out. Or, more accurately (but more awkwardly), a Friday Night Hip-Hop.

Hip-hop is, of course, the musical genre most closely associated with the African-American, inner-city youth experience. But a lot of great hip-hop comes from big cities outside the U.S. (in this case, Stereo MC’s, from London).

I think what I like about this song is the way it combines the main element of rap—the propulsive, virtuosic spoken poetry—with the beats and grooves of R&B, especially Cath Coffee’s seering background lyrics.

So, enjoy…

What I’m Reading: “Thanks a Lot Mr. Kibblewhite”

In the past decade or so, it’s become fashionable to talk about creativity as the result of freedom, relaxation, and “flow”—that ineffable point where the artist connects with the sources of inspiration deep within the human soul. I, for one, believe in this idea. Art is really about connecting with the spiritual subconscious, and all of us have the ability to channel this source (although very few of us are willing to put in the work that is also required to develop it).

Kibblewhite1 But not enough has been written about the role of conflict in creativity. Specifically, the role of rivalry, competition, and—yes—jealousy, at its most venomous and sincere. The history of art is, in some ways, a history of rivalries. Picasso and Matisse. Faulkner and Hemingway. The Eagles and Fleetwood Mac. Rivals have a way of inspiring each other, of spurring each other on in ways that “healthier” forms of motivation just can’t reach. The greatest rivalries of all are, perhaps, those that exist within a rock-and-roll band. Would Lennon have been as good without McCartney breathing down his neck? Richards without Jagger? Henley without Frey?

Such internal rivalries are more intense because they also bring the family dynamic to bear. A rock band is like a family, and the members are like siblings. They love each other, but they hate each other, too. Worst of all, they know each other’s weaknesses. Which buttons to push.

Surely one of the greatest rock rivalries of all time is that between Roger Daltrey, the mesmerizing lead-singer for The Who, and that band’s lead guitarist and resident genius, Pete Townshend. As in any rivalry, one competitor eventually gets the upper-hand—in the judgment of history, at least—and that is also the case with Daltrey and Townshend. Daltrey has long been acknowledged as a brilliant singer, but it’s Townshend who gets the real credit for The Who’s iconic status. After all, Townshend is the writer of the pair, the creator of all the band’s great hits, including the classic rock opera Tommy.

Continue reading “What I’m Reading: “Thanks a Lot Mr. Kibblewhite””

Friday Night Rock-Out: “Corduroy”

Pearl Jam’s “Corduroy”

The grunge era of rock music began around 1991, when bands like Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, and (especially) Nirvana began to get massive play on FM radio. I remember how earth-shaking the sound seemed to me, at the time, when I first heard “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Even playing on the tinny speakers of my old econobox car, the power and passion of the music hit me like a revelation.

Sadly, of those three original, vanguard bands, the frontmen of two are no longer with us. Kurt Cobain and Chris Cornell committed suicide, decades apart, and only Eddie Vedder remains. It might sound strange, but I suspect that if someone had asked me back in 1991 which of those three men (and bands) would still be around in thirty years, I probably would’ve guessed Vedder—and not just because he sang “I’m still alive” so defiantly in the chorus of my original favorite Pearl Jam song, “Alive.” Vedder’s voice and lyrics had just as much power and pathos as Cornell’s or Cobain’s, but it was also tinged with a kind of dogged defiance that resonated with me. Like Vedder, I had a fairly traumatic childhood, and I liked the way he sang about the act of survival as, itself, a kind of redemption. As my old mentor Harry Crews once famously said, “Survival is triumph enough.”

Pearl Jam’s “Corduroy” came out a few years after that first grunge wave crested, but it has since become one of my favorite songs of all time.

Rock on…

“My Book, The Movie” Post

There is a cool website called My Book, The Movie where authors can describe their dream movie production of their book. The gentleman who runs the site invited me to post, and here is the result…

https://mybookthemovie.blogspot.com/2024/05/ash-cliftons-twice-trouble.html

Shakespeare vs. The Method

Not long ago, I read a very fine biography called Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and the Marriage of the Century by Nancy Schoenberger. I picked it up not only because I am a huge fan of Richard Burton but also because of my growing interest in Taylor, who was surely one of the most remarkable people of the 20th Century. It was Taylor who, upon hearing that her great friend Montgomery Clift had just been in a car accident a few blocks away, literally ran to the scene. She got there in time to pull one of Clift’s dislodged teeth from his throat just before he choked on it. Pretty amazing.

Clift’s importance in the larger story of Taylor and Burton’s whirlwind romance is minor. He is only mentioned in one or two parts. And yet his unexpected appearance in the book fascinated me, especially when Schoenberger reveals the mutual disdain that Clift and Burton felt for each other. Jealously over Taylor’s affections surely had something to do with this, despite the fact that Clift was gay and by all accounts his relationship with Taylor was platonic. But even deeper than this personal rancor lay an artistic rivalry between the two men regarding their respective abilities as actors.

Clift was one of the first and greatest alumni of “the method” studios taught by Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg, which emphasized acting as a physical interpretation of deep psychological impulses. The actor seems to transform into the character from the “inside out”. (Think Robert De Niro in Raging Bull or…well…any other De Niro movie.)

Friday Night Rock-Out: “Shaft”

I’ve long harbored the secret hope that someone, someday would refer to me reverentially as a bad-mother-hush-your-mouth, but I don’t think it’s ever going to happen. Oh, well.

This week’s Friday Night Rock-Out (okay, it’s more a Friday-Night Funk/Soul-Out) is dedicated to the late, great Isaac Hayes. Hayes was a musical genius, as well as being a pretty good actor. (He did fine journeyman work in The Rockford Files and Escape from New York. He was also a great voice-actor on South Park.) He will always be remembered, though, for the theme-song of the 1971 Gordon Parks film about the most phallocentric private investigator in the history of American crime fiction.

Yeah, I’m talkin about Shaft. I hope you can dig it.

When Will Hollywood Rediscover the Great B-Movie Action Flick?

The great B-Movie director Roger Corman has died. As a kind of tribute, I’m reposting an essay I wrote some years ago on my old blog. Enjoy!

Ever since I turned forty, I find myself going to see fewer and fewer movies. It’s only natural, I suppose. The less time you have left, the less time you want to spend in a darkened theater, lost in flights of fancy. And so, what little I know of recent film releases comes to me second-hand, either through friends or online reviews or through the film trailers that I see when I do occasionally go to a movie. Even from this limited perspective, I can glean a few obvious facts about movies these days: 1.) they are all rated PG-13 and 2.) they are all about the end-of-the-world and 3.) they all rely heavily on digital effects.

These three qualities go together, of course, for reasons that are based more in economics than anything else. The digital effects are required to attract a modern audience raised on video games and violent TV. And because these CGI effects tend to be horrifically expensive, the movies must be rated PG-13 in order to gather as large are a customer base as possible. Finally, the reliance on end-of-the-world plots come naturally, mainly because the plot-lines that justify these breathtaking explosions, airships, monsters, and laser guns usually involve some kind Biblical-style, science-fiction-themed catastrophe.

Friday Night Rock-Out: “Even Better Than the Real Thing”

When U2’s Achtung Baby came out in 1991, critics joked that it was the album that saved the band from itself. After the enormous success of 1987’s The Joshua Tree, U2 too fell into an abyss of self-indulgence and ego with their follow-up album-and-movie extravaganza Rattle and Hum, which alienated some of their fans. Fortunately, Achtung Baby marked not only a return to form for the band but a whole new direction, one influenced by techno, funk, and other genres.

One of my favorite songs on the album is “Even Better Than the Real Thing.” Most young people today do not realize that the title and chorus on the song is a reference to Coca-Cola’s long-standing slogan: “It’s the real thing.” With his brilliant and demented lyrics, Bono twists the slogan into a critique of modern consumerism. The song is basically a sequel to The Rolling Stones’s “Satisfaction,” but with an even more apocalyptic bent.

It also has a great video, notable at the time for its innovative use of a harness in which Bono was strapped while the camera whirled around him. The final effect is both exhilarating and somewhat nauseating, literal sensory overload, in keeping with the theme of the song itself. Not to mention our modern age.

Rock on.

Classic Sci-Fi Book Cover: “Snow Crash”

It’s hard to believe that 32 years have passed since Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash was published. Not only is it one of the best books of the 1990s, it’s also one of the definitive novels of the cyberpunk genre. In retrospect, one of the most surprising things about Snow Crash is that it’s not really a dystopian novel. It’s more like a satire, a spoof of corporate America’s relentless pursuit of wealth and power in the 21st Century. Its hero (deftly named Hiro) is a Ninja-level hacker by night and a pizza-delivery guy by day. The pizza company he works for is run by the mafia (which has become legal), and if he fails to deliver a pizza in thirty minutes or less, Hiro faces summary execution.

Yeah, it’s that kind of book. It also has some really kick-ass fight scenes.

I love this cover by Bruce Jensen because it’s photorealistic and immediately suggests a narrative, which is perfect for this kind of sci-fi, quasi-adventure novel. More importantly, it captures the crazy melange of elements that Stephenson squeezes into the novel. you’ve got a hero with his samurai sword walking towards a clearly futuristic, cyberpunk city. Paradoxically, he’s passing through an ancient stone doorway that might be a relic from Bronze Age Persia.

It’s an enigmatic cover but also thrilling and stimulating to the imagination. Which is exactly what one expects from a great sci-fi book cover.

Shepherd Book List

The good people at Shepherd.com invited me to post a “5 best” list on their site. I had a lot of fun with it. Thanks to Ben Shepherd for making this happen.

Here’s my list. Check it out…

https://shepherd.com/best-books/literary-novels-masquerading-as-crime-novels