I have greatly enjoyed Pat Metheny's work since I first heard him play (on As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls, released in 1981). The Falcon and the Snowman (1985) is one of the great soundtracks ever, in my opinon. The Pat Metheny Group CDs that I have [Still Life (Talking) (1987); Letter From Home (1989); The Road To You (1993); We Live Here (1995); Quartet (1996); Imaginary Day (1997; this is a truly brilliant CD, and has one of the most intriguing covers I have ever seen--I wish I could decode it); Speaking Of Now (2002); and The Way Up (2005)] are filled with wonderful music; I play them often. His collaboration with Charlie Haden, Beyond the Missouri Sky (1996), is a stunningly beautiful set of music. Song X (1986), with Ornette Coleman (and DeNardo Coleman, Jack DeJohnette, and Charlie Haden) is a work of immense majesty. The work with Brad Meldau [Metheny/Meldau (2006) and Metheny Meldau Quartet (2007) is truly wonderful. I have not yet mentioned One Quiet Night, a solo album (2003), which is lyrical and entrancing. His collaboration with Gary Burton, Chick Corea, Roy Haynes andDave Holland, Like Minds (1998) swings. His works with John Scofield [I Can See Your House From Here (1993)] and with Jim Hall [Jim Hall & Pat Metheny (1996)] help define what you can do with guitars. I could go on, but I think this makes my point. Pat Metheny's music has pleased me and challenged me and stimulated me immensely over the years.
So my expectations for Orchestrion (2010) were extremely high. Metheny plays all the instruments on this CD (described as guitars and "pianos, marimba, vibraphone, orchestra bells, basses, guitarbots, percussion, cymbals and drums, blown bottles, and other custom-fabricated acoustic mechanical instruments, keyboard"), in what he describes as an attempt to "...merge...an idea from the late 19th and early 20th centuries with the technologies of today to create a new, open-ended platform for musical composition, improvisation and performance."
My problem is that the music, while mildly interesting and definitely inoffensive, is also unobtrusive, and, frankly, forgettable. I have played the CD twice in the past two days, and nothing I have heard caused me to listen intently. Nothing created an emotional engagement. Nothing challenged me, beyond the intellectual challenge of trying to pick apart the sounds I heard into their constituent elements. Metheny's guitar playing remains fluid and melodic, but, in this case, it's a fluidity and virtuosity without much in the way of interesting musical ideas. It seems more that he has forced his playing into conformity with an idea for creating music, rather than having created music which led to a way of playing.
This is a set of music that is easily listened to, but all too easily forgotten. And that's too bad.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Michael Gilbert, Fear to Tread--And Rationing
One writer whose work I have come very lately to is Michael Gilbert (1912-2006). A couple of months ago I read his first mystery novel, Close Quarters (1947). I subsequently read Smallbone Deceased (1950). (I give thanks nightly for Tom and Enid Schantz and the Rue Morgue Press, whose work keeps a large number of authors in print, when they might otherwise be entirely forgotten.) And I just finished his 1953 novel, Fear to Tread (1953) (out of print, but available from numerous used book sellers).
In Fear to Tread, Gilbert tells the story of the headmaster of a minor council school (what we in the US would call a public school) in London, to whom a series of unusual events occur. Largely because he can’t leave well enough alone. The plot moves right along, even if the ending is somewhat forced (everything sort of comes down with a thump at the end). What is perhaps most interesting to me is that the book deals directly with post-World-War-II shortages and rationing in England. Gilbert lays out a convincing scenario for the development of a highly organized black market operation, convincing enough that I wondered whether it was based on fact. The principal characters were reasonably well-developed and acted in ways that their characters would have suggested. All in all, a reasonably good book, one I’m glad I read and more than glad to recommend. And Gilbert was, I think, still developing as a writer; it was only his 7th book.
What it made me think about, though, was the persistence of rationing and explicit shortages in post-World-War-II England. While I knew that such shortages had existed, I had never read an explanation for it, and so I investigated.
Tony Judt, in his book Postwar (which I cannot recommend strongly enough; it is magnificent), provides this explanation:
“In order to increase the country’s exports (and thus earn vital foreign currency) almost anything was either rationed or simply not available: meat, sugar, clothes, cars, gasoline, foreign travel, even sweets. Bread rationing, never imposed during the war, was introduced in 1946 and not abandoned until July 1948. The government ostentatiously celebrated a ‘bonfire of controls’ on November 5 1949, but many of those same controls had to be re-imposed with the belt-tightening of the Korean War, and basic food rationing in Britain only ended in 1954—long after the rest of western Europe” (pp. 162-163).
This is not really an explanation. Simply rationing consumer goods will do nothing (to speak of) to increase exports, which are dependent on demand for British goods in other countries. So it’s income in other countries that matter, and the prices of British goods. Rationing has no effect on either of those. The exchange rate—the price of the Pound in other currencies--matters greatly, and what Britain needed was for the Pound to become less valuable—lower-priced, That would have led to expanded exports. But the world was under a regime of fixed exchange rates during that time, and the value of the Pound remained roughly constant at (for example) $2.80 to the Pound from 1950 on, after depreciating by about 30% from the end of the war to 1950.
Judt suggests that the objective was to amass foreign currency—but to what end? Dollars, or Francs, or Lira were valuable only as a means of purchasing goods from other countries. And while rationing was not effective at boosting exports, it was (in combination with currency controls) effective at reducing imports.
Exports did, in fact, roughly double between 1947 and 1954, but this is hardly a surprise (given that British exports during the war were essentially zero). Imports also roughly doubled.
The only plausible alternative explanation, since Judt’s won’t work, is that the British government used rationing as a means of damping down inflationary pressure. This seems to have worked moderately well, as the average annual rate of inflation in Britain in the decade immediately following the war was about 6% (and most of that in 1946. 1947, 1950, and 1951). Except that the measured rate of inflation is hardly a useful guide to the “real” rate of inflation when rationing and other controls are in place.
So I’m still looking for the “why” of rationing. Gilbert’s book does a very nice job with the “what,” in the context of ordinary people’s daily lives.
In Fear to Tread, Gilbert tells the story of the headmaster of a minor council school (what we in the US would call a public school) in London, to whom a series of unusual events occur. Largely because he can’t leave well enough alone. The plot moves right along, even if the ending is somewhat forced (everything sort of comes down with a thump at the end). What is perhaps most interesting to me is that the book deals directly with post-World-War-II shortages and rationing in England. Gilbert lays out a convincing scenario for the development of a highly organized black market operation, convincing enough that I wondered whether it was based on fact. The principal characters were reasonably well-developed and acted in ways that their characters would have suggested. All in all, a reasonably good book, one I’m glad I read and more than glad to recommend. And Gilbert was, I think, still developing as a writer; it was only his 7th book.
What it made me think about, though, was the persistence of rationing and explicit shortages in post-World-War-II England. While I knew that such shortages had existed, I had never read an explanation for it, and so I investigated.
Tony Judt, in his book Postwar (which I cannot recommend strongly enough; it is magnificent), provides this explanation:
“In order to increase the country’s exports (and thus earn vital foreign currency) almost anything was either rationed or simply not available: meat, sugar, clothes, cars, gasoline, foreign travel, even sweets. Bread rationing, never imposed during the war, was introduced in 1946 and not abandoned until July 1948. The government ostentatiously celebrated a ‘bonfire of controls’ on November 5 1949, but many of those same controls had to be re-imposed with the belt-tightening of the Korean War, and basic food rationing in Britain only ended in 1954—long after the rest of western Europe” (pp. 162-163).
This is not really an explanation. Simply rationing consumer goods will do nothing (to speak of) to increase exports, which are dependent on demand for British goods in other countries. So it’s income in other countries that matter, and the prices of British goods. Rationing has no effect on either of those. The exchange rate—the price of the Pound in other currencies--matters greatly, and what Britain needed was for the Pound to become less valuable—lower-priced, That would have led to expanded exports. But the world was under a regime of fixed exchange rates during that time, and the value of the Pound remained roughly constant at (for example) $2.80 to the Pound from 1950 on, after depreciating by about 30% from the end of the war to 1950.
Judt suggests that the objective was to amass foreign currency—but to what end? Dollars, or Francs, or Lira were valuable only as a means of purchasing goods from other countries. And while rationing was not effective at boosting exports, it was (in combination with currency controls) effective at reducing imports.
Exports did, in fact, roughly double between 1947 and 1954, but this is hardly a surprise (given that British exports during the war were essentially zero). Imports also roughly doubled.
The only plausible alternative explanation, since Judt’s won’t work, is that the British government used rationing as a means of damping down inflationary pressure. This seems to have worked moderately well, as the average annual rate of inflation in Britain in the decade immediately following the war was about 6% (and most of that in 1946. 1947, 1950, and 1951). Except that the measured rate of inflation is hardly a useful guide to the “real” rate of inflation when rationing and other controls are in place.
So I’m still looking for the “why” of rationing. Gilbert’s book does a very nice job with the “what,” in the context of ordinary people’s daily lives.
The happiest songs
Joe Posnanski has posted a list of 277 (and growing) songs that make him happy; it's a very personal list, as he points out, and there's a lot in it to disagree with (including his rules--one song per artist?), and his Bob Dylan song ("Don't Think Twice, It's Alright") is almost the antihesis of happy. But I did start thinking...and since I listen to a lot of jazz, here's what I have come up with, so far, in no particular order and with no restrictions:
Miles Davis, "Stella by Starlight," live on My Funny Valentine
Cannonball Adderly, "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy," live on Mercy, Mercy, Mercy (Of course, that whole album is happy..."Fun," "Games, "Sticks," "Hipadelphia,"
even "Sack 'o Woe" )
Dave Brubeck, "Take Five," on Time Out
Pat Metheny, "Last Train Home," on Still Life (Talking) and live on The Road to You
Charles Lloyd, "Dream Weaver," on Dream Weaver
John Coltrane, "After the Rain," on Impressions
Stan Getz, "Con Alma," on Sweet Rain
Antonio Carlos Jobim, "The Red Blouse," on Wave (maybe the sexiest album I know of)
Oscar Peterson, "Let There Be Love," on Live At the Blue Note
Duke Ellington, "It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing," one place is on The Essential Duke Ellington
Louis Armstrong, "Walking My Baby Back Home," one place is on The Essential Louis Armstrong
I'll add to this, but right now I have to get back to work.
Miles Davis, "Stella by Starlight," live on My Funny Valentine
Cannonball Adderly, "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy," live on Mercy, Mercy, Mercy (Of course, that whole album is happy..."Fun," "Games, "Sticks," "Hipadelphia,"
even "Sack 'o Woe" )
Dave Brubeck, "Take Five," on Time Out
Pat Metheny, "Last Train Home," on Still Life (Talking) and live on The Road to You
Charles Lloyd, "Dream Weaver," on Dream Weaver
John Coltrane, "After the Rain," on Impressions
Stan Getz, "Con Alma," on Sweet Rain
Antonio Carlos Jobim, "The Red Blouse," on Wave (maybe the sexiest album I know of)
Oscar Peterson, "Let There Be Love," on Live At the Blue Note
Duke Ellington, "It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing," one place is on The Essential Duke Ellington
Louis Armstrong, "Walking My Baby Back Home," one place is on The Essential Louis Armstrong
I'll add to this, but right now I have to get back to work.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
A beginning
I read a lot.
And I listen to a lot of music.
And I have opinions.
So I thought I'd create a place where I could record what I'm thinking about what I'm reading (mostly mysteries) and what I'm listening to (mostly jazz, with some classical and somewhat more rock).
I don't expect to post very often, but I do expect to have some fun here. See you soon.
And I listen to a lot of music.
And I have opinions.
So I thought I'd create a place where I could record what I'm thinking about what I'm reading (mostly mysteries) and what I'm listening to (mostly jazz, with some classical and somewhat more rock).
I don't expect to post very often, but I do expect to have some fun here. See you soon.
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