They say the hasty law is bad law. This may not always be true but in the case of the Dangerous Dogs Act, 1991, the British government moved too fast, in the face of pressure from the media, especially the tabloid press, to control what were considered dangerous dogs, after the latest in a series of dog attacks on people, including several children. The press were up in arms, demanding that the government Do Something About It! So the law was hastily drawn up and passed, complete with enough loopholes to keep lawyers and expert witnesses gainfully arguing for years. The main fault of the law was that while it named three dangerous breeds, it failed to set down an exact definition for each breed. A full breed, no problem, but half and quarter breeds were left in a sort of legal limbo and there were endless arguments as to whether mongrels and crossbreeds came under the general headings set down in the Act.
What the Act did do, though, was to proscribe three breeds – Rottweilers, Japanese Bandogs and above all, Pitbull Terriers. These three breeds were designated dangerous and were to be strictly controlled. No dangerous dog was to be allowed out of doors without a muzzle. All dangerous dogs had to be registered and could not be bred, imported or given away. Unregistered dogs were to be seized and destroyed. The long term plan was to make these dogs virtually extinct in the UK. And that could only be a good ting because they are, Pitbulls especially, unstable, dangerous creatures. Yes, they are dogs, but they are also wild animals. There is something about their genetic make-up that makes them not only very strong but also very aggressive and very unstable. They were bred, after all, as fighting dos, not lapdogs. The sort of inadequate person who owns one of these dogs – who decides that he wants a Pitbull out of all the dozens of breeds available – claims that his dog is different, that he wouldn’t hurt a fly, that he is wonderful with children. Yeah, yeah, yeah – we’ve heard it all before. It may even be true…. until the red mist comes down. That is the problem. The red mist does come down, and when that happens a Pitbull becomes little more than a pair of jaws on legs. No matter how much sentimental drivel is talked by their owners, these are wild animals that are simply giving the appearance of being tame until further notice.
When I was in the Metropolitan Police, I attended more than one lecture by members of the dog handling department about the Dangerous Dogs Act and the animals it covers. I can vividly remember one set of photos from a dog attack – a Pitbull suddenly turned on its owner when his wife switched on the vacuum cleaner one day – and I wondered why anyone would decorate their kitchen with bright red wallpaper like that until I realised that it wasn’t wallpaper, it was blood. That was just one incident among many concerning these awful creatures.
Now that I am on this side of the pond, I am often, even after five years, taken aback by the cavalier attitude with which people allow these dogs into their homes and lives. I see them all the time on TV court shows. As in Britain, the sort of people who choose to own Pitbulls and Rottweilers, when they have so many other breeds to choose from, to say nothing of mongrels, are for the most part ill-educated misfits who seem completely taken by surprise that their cute doggie has suddenly tried to rip somebody’s throat out.
Now, ownership of these dogs is not one of your basic human rights. The progress of human civilisation will not be retarded if ownership of these creatures is regulated and then prohibited. Set the law out carefully, avoiding the ambiguities of the British Dangerous Dogs Act and then, on a federal or state by state basis set the groundwork for the disappearance of these killers in waiting – an extinction devoutly to be wished.
● Sad to report, about a week ago a five-month-old baby was savaged and killed by two Rottweilers in England. This incident took place indoors where the dogs did not need to be muzzled. Apparently they found the baby sleeping, grabbed it from its cot and killed it. Further testament to the savagery of these monsters.
Heartiest congratulations to MI5 and the Metropolitan Police for foiling that plot to blow up a dozen jet airliners in July, and maybe all those extra precautions regarding carry on baggage are necessary. Better safe than sorry, and all that, but I must say I’m glad I’m not doing a transatlantic flight, or even longer, without anything to read except the airline’s in-flight magazine. And if you can make a bomb out of hair gel and toothpaste, by all mean keep them out of the cabin, as far as I’m concerned. Let people buy fresh supplies when they reach their destination.
But do we have to be so silly about profiling? The people who set off a bomb in the World Trace Centre in 1993 were young Moslem males. The people responsible for 911 were young Moslem males. So were the people who committed the atrocities in Bali, Madrid and London. Surely we can see the common factor here. Yes, it is very unfortunate for all the innocent, non-terrorist Moslems (which is to say almost all of them), but where have intensive security screening, it makes perfect sense to concentrate on those who most resemble those whom we know to have been guilty of past bombings. Maybe not exclusively, but heavily. Of course everyone else needs screening too but is there really any sense at all in treating the eighty-five year old grandmother as though she is just as much the potential terrorist as the young man from Saudi? Knee-jerk correctness may say yes, but logic and common sense say no.
This desperation to treat everyone with uniform suspicion, in order not to offend the easily offended reached new heights very recently. There was the world’s most successful living author, J.K. Rowling, preparing to fly back to England from the USA after some meeting or other. She wanted to take with her on the plane her notebook which apparently contained, among other things, her hand-written notes for the final Harry Potter book. Nope! Not allowed! The over-zealous security screeners at JFK or wherever it was wouldn’t allowed her to taker it on the plane. Never mind her protests that it was irreplaceable, they told her she had to put it in her unlocked checked bags. She was on the point of abandoning her flight and returning to England by sea when they finally relented, on the condition that she bound her notebook securely with several rubber bands. What was all that about? Does anyone in the entire solar system really think that this phenomenally successful author had somehow morphed into an Islamic terrorist? Of course not. So why were they making such a fuss? Was it some misguided belief that if one person is inconvenienced, then everyone must be? Does that really make anyone feel better? In J.K. Rowling the security people had one person whom they could guarantee 100% was not a terrorist. It would have made more sense for them to wave her through unscreened. At least that would have made the queue move just that bit faster, to make the stress of getting onto the plane just that little less for everyone else. The people charged with screening airline passengers have a heavy responsibility. It would be nice if they could discharge it in a sensible, mature fashion. They are people possessed of a certain skill, we hope, not robots.
It’s not earth-shattering or anything, but it’s one of those niggling little things that bothers me. Whenever they announce be episode of a TV series, why (if it isn’t a re-run) do they describe it as “all new”? Of course it’s all new! Either it’s a re-run, or it’s something we haven’t seen before. It’s the use of the word “all” which is redundant that I object to. No one ever heard of a show that is new up till the second commercial break, and then a re-run from then on. In the sense of TV shows that have never been broadcast before, the adjective “new” is a singular quality. It’s new or it isn’t. The word “all” serves no purpose, insults the viewer’s intelligence and I’m sorry but I want something done about it!
“The mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of civilization in any country. A calm and dispassionate recognition of the rights of the accused against the state, and even of convicted criminals against the state, a constant heart-searching by all charged with the duty of punishment, a desire and eagerness to rehabilitate in the world of industry all those who have paid their dues in the hard coinage of punishment, tireless efforts towards the discovery of regenerating processes, and an unfaltering faith that there is a treasure, if you can only find it, in the heart of every man – these are the things which in the treatment of crime and criminals mark and measure the stored-up strength of a nation, and are the sign and proof of the living virtue in it.”
Winston Churchill to the House of Commons, 20th July, 1910
It is a truth universally acknowledged, and deeply regretted, that the sub-species prudus miserabilis is everywhere among us, like some incurable crotch rot. I’m not talking about people who simply don’t like seeing this or doing that. I’m talking about those people who, due to their own personal shortcomings, not only don’t want to see this or do that but they want to make sure no one else sees or does either. In other words: I don’t like it so you can’t do it. These are the practitioners of the sharply indrawn breath, who cast a pall of gloom over any gathering they attend because they make it known that they disapprove of what is going on, and ruin things for everyone. Was there ever a phrase more guaranteed to make the adult heart sink than “good, wholesome family entertainment”? Well, to the prude, that is almost pushing the envelope.
John Cleese put it best. Whenever someone says “I’m not a prude but…” what they really mean is: “I am a prude and…” And then they go on to say how they want to spoil everyone’s fun. If ever there was group that deserved to be loaded into a rocket and fired straight into the sun to receive a humane but justified end, it is the prudes of this world. However, there is probably some law or regulation to prevent this extermination devoutly to be wished. All one can do is try to ignore them, deplore them and discard them.
Prudes On The Prowl was the title of a series of articles in the Daily Telegraph in the 1890s, which lampooned and derided the followers of a vinegar-faced Victorian prude, a certain Mrs. Ormiston Chant. She had got it into her head to change the status quo at the Empire Theatre, a music hall much beloved of officer cadets from nearby Sandhurst, where ladies of the evening would parade themselves in the wide area behind the dress circle, which was lined with bars at which cadets, students and others drank before, during and after the stage performances. This delightful mingling of Bacchus and Venus went undisturbed for years, until the prudes decided that they wanted to put a stop to it. They forced a craven theatre management to erect canvas screens between the bars and the area where the girls walked. This was obviously an age where good people did not sit still and allow prudery to overpower them, and the following day a crowd of enraged students and cadets attacked the screens and tore them down. They were never erected again. The cadet who led the mob, I am delighted to report, was a hero of mine, Winston Churchill, then in his early twenties, who later went on to distinguish himself in resisting other tyrannies
But cut one head off the hydra and two more grow in its place. Prudery is everywhere. Witness the moronic reaction to Janet Jackson’s five-second exposure of a nipple on national television. The latest depressing example, though, comes from Paris.
Yes, Paris. The one In France. The same Paris that was Mecca to so many progressive artists, authors and musicians between the wars. The Paris where Josephine Baker danced topless at a time when Hollywood was being smothered by a prude conspiracy called the Hays Office. About the last place on earth you’d expect the cancer of prudery to raise its filthy head. In 2001 they had the brilliant idea of actually building an artificial beach on the banks of the Seine (do you build beaches?) – a real, live, sandy beach where Parisians and tourists who couldn’t get to the Mediterranean or Atlantic coasts could relax and sunbathe.
Now, the French have the right idea about beaches. Mattresses are often provided, as are food and drink. No deck chairs. And there is nothing remotely remarkable about topless sunbathers, or people wearing thongs. There is no drivel about children who see bare breasts being traumatised or damaged. No one bats an eyelid. In fact, anyone who dared complain would probably be laughed off the beach.
But not, it seems, on Paris Plage. Not only have they seen fit to ban thongs and topless sunbathing, but they are also imposing fines for transgressors, 36 euros being the tariff. What are they thinking? This is like building a bar and then announcing that wine is banned.
Luckily the popular press has rightfully been heaping ridicule on the prudes in the city government. The mayor, Bertrand Delanoë (openly gay and therefore should know better than to cave to the prude faction) and his deputies have found themselves on the defensive. With luck the press will keep up the pressure and put an end to this utterly ridiculous situation. Maybe someone should suggest to these stinking killjoys that they should all move to Kansas, join an old ladies’ church quilting group, watch good wholesome family entertainment, and go round telling everyone that they are not prudes but…
Speaking of reality TV, which we weren’t, but somebody somewhere must have been, one of the things they so often do, which to my mind really insults the intelligence of the viewer (yes, I know, to watch some reality shows the viewer needs no intelligence anyway) is that not only at the start of the show do they give you a preview of what is to come, which is perhaps not unreasonable, but they also do it just before each commercial break. They do it on all those televised court shows; they do it on that one about insufferable, snotty airline staff lording it over frustrated and sometimes ill-behaved passengers; they even do it on intelligent reality shows like Top Chef and Project Runway and Bad Lads’ Army.
The producers must be so utterly terrified that as soon as the commercials start, viewers are going to start surfing, never to return. Well, if your show’s hold on the viewer is so tenuous, maybe it would be a good idea to improve it. Just an idea. I’m glad to say they don’t indulge in this ridiculous practice in the excellent The Amazing Race or the riveting Hell’s Kitchen.
Now, if like me you tape programs to time-shift your viewing, you can always fast-forward through these pre-break previews, which always give away the best bits, but you shouldn’t have to. If I watch an episode of E.R. or West Wing (may it rest in peace) they do not tell me what is coming next. That would ruin the drama - and reality shows should earn from that because they too need drama about them, or else no one would watch.
But before drama shows get too smug, let me add that come the revolution, one of the first groups of people to be put up against the wall (right after all the middle-aged men with ponytails) will be the folks who make trailers for TV dramas. They seem to feel the need not just to whet your appetite but to ruin it. They, too, give away all the best bits in advance. What are they thinking?
Remember that episode of E.R. the other day (late 2004 I think it was) where a patient with a mystery illness was discovered – shock horror – to have smallpox? Well, right at the start of the show when they were wheeling him onto a curtained cubicle to see what was wrong with him, I was saying; “Check him for smallpox, guys!” Why? Because the trailer people had already given away the most dramatic twist of the whole show. They didn’t have to – I would have watched anyway.
Likewise, on one of my current fave progs, Life On Mars, there was a rather witty joke which, when we finally saw it, fell completely flat. Those trailer trash had featured it in the preview that had been shown over and over during the week before the show. It’s not easy to force even a half smile at a joke you’ve already heard a dozen times in the last few days. This was all so unnecessary but they do seem to regard the viewer as a disloyal clod with the attention span of a goldfish, and I don’t think they are right.
A few days ago I read Mel Gibson’s statement (of apology? explanation?) after his arrest for driving drunk, and the reportedly anti-Semitic comments (though comments is probably far too civilised a word for such sayings) he made to the arresting officer. About what he said when he was arrested, I shall say nothing. You probably have read it too. It is beneath contempt and doesn’t deserve any form of debate.
That statement which was released a few days later, though, bears looking at in detail because it is a sad, sad document. It was released through his publicist and the first question one asks is whether he wrote it or whether his publicists cobbled it together. It certainly seems the work of someone who is not comfortable with language as a means of communication and who feels that you can strengthen any argument by throwing in as many syllables as possible and that you should never use one word when seventeen will do. Well, there’s a lot of it about in west-coast movie circles. But let’s look at one or two things especially.
I would like to take it one step further, and meet with leaders in the Jewish community, with whom I can have a one-on-one discussion to discern the appropriate path for healing. It’s almost as though he doesn’t want to let the sentence end, so he says it in that verbose, inflated way. Incidentally, matey, you can’t have a one-on-one meeting with a group of people. One-on-one equals two. But exactly how will you be doing all that path-discerning? Did you have anything in mind or did it just sound good when you wrote the statement? And how will you know when the path is appropriate? Would you recognise an inappropriate path when you see one? I’m not really up in discerning paths, so I’d be very curious to know how it is done.
Let’s look at what comes next. I have begun an ongoing programme of recovery and what I am now realising is that I cannot do it alone. He’s carrying on as though he were a victim. He isn’t. The people who had to listen to him that night were the victims. So, you’re in an “ongoing programme” of recovery. Tell us: how long did you think that you could do it alone? What made you realise you cannot? And when? Yesterday? Last week? Three months ago from last Tuesday?
I am in the process of understanding where those vicious words came from… They came from you, sunshine, nowhere else! You were not a ventriloquist’s dummy with someone else (presumably an anti-Semite) working you. Alcohol can make a person belligerent, tired, euphoric, even violent. But can it turn a person into an anti-Semite? Or does alcohol simply make a person less guarded about his inner feelings?
The whole of this statement, when you hack you way through the awkward psychobabble, is designed to make him out to be an unwilling victim of something that suddenly enveloped him when he was arrested, that is not part of his personality make-up. Anti-Semitism isn’t something that just descends upon you out of the blue when you least expect it, and vanishes with the dawn. It is a set of twisted values and judgements that a person arrives at himself, and in order for you to let it out - in a drunken rage for example - it has to be in you in the first place. Apologise by all means – it is the only right thing to do. Atone, make restitution. But to try to join hands with your victims and make out that you and they have suffered equally by your actions – that’s just pathetic.
If you want a smile or two, look at this site, which lists twenty-five movie clichés we have all seen a million times. The one about eye-closing really irritates me. In the spirit of imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, I offer the following examples of more movie clichés we see all the time – screenplay writers must be a very unimaginative lot.
1. The overweight, middle-aged cop in jacket and tie who is able to outrun a slim teenager in jeans and tee-shirt, even giving him a twenty-yard head start, and is also able to overpower and restrain him after catching him.
2. In chick flicks, the inevitable cool, funny, yet unpopular best friend who is also a Goth, a lesbian, or both (invariably far above the fray till betrayed by friend trying to be popular).
3. The cop whose wife/girlfriend doesn't understand the demands of his job and either sulks constantly or leaves him during the critical point in an investigation.
4. Rewinding a tape recorder or VCR always produces a high pitched squeaking, as of voices played very fast (which just doesn’t happen with real machines). What’s more, whoever is doing the rewinding is always able to rewind to the exact spot they want, at the first attempt, with no trial and error.
5. Whenever the villain leaves a time bomb, anything from an atom bomb to a cluster of sticks of dynamite, the hero always manages to defuse the bomb with 3 seconds to go. The bomb usually has convenient digital timer on the outside to tell the hero how long is left.
6. Alternatively, if it is a small bomb, the hero is able to pick it up and run to the nearest lake or river and hurl it in, half a second before it explodes.
7. The simplified movie procedure for giving CPR, i.e. breathe once into the victim’s mouth, press two or three times on his chest, and mutter something encouraging like “Come on!” The victim will then cough twice and sit up, as good as new. For a touch of gritty realism, the victim may drool very slightly after coughing.
8. The team of absolute no-hopers in a sporting event wins the key game after coming from behind. The lamest player of all scores the key goal/basket/touchdown/home run with 2 seconds to go, often in slow motion.
9. Soldiers on guard duty at night who say how much they are looking forward to going home on leave in a couple of days are guaranteed to be garroted or knifed in the back within two minutes.
10. With the same inevitability, anyone who agrees to testify against Mr. Big because the police have guaranteed their safety and given them round-the-clock protection, will definitely be shot, stabbed or blown up before the movie ends.
11. The fight between a young girl and her parents just before she stomps out the door into the path of a serial killer.
12. Walking alone through restless city streets to moody alternative music to point up a failed relationship
13. Mad killers are always able to stage elaborate ritual murders in midst of city without attracting attention
14. The driver of a car who, in rush hour in the city, can glance into his rear view mirror for half a second and announce “We’re being followed.”
15. The hero involved in a life or death fight with the villain while his girlfriend/wife stands on sidelines looking worried.
16. Anyone (usually the hero) who gives 100% assurances that he will finish what he has to do in plenty of time to attend his wife’s poetry reading, speech to civic group, kid’s school play etc will arrive just as it is ending. Kid in tears, wife in a sulk – no excuses accepted. Also, no wedding plans ever run smoothly. Either the bride or groom will arrive at the very last moment after a long series of mishaps, usually when the priest is looking at his watch and complaining that he has another wedding at three o’clock and a funeral at four.
17. Finally, the one that irritates me most of all. That line that hardly anyone uses in real life but scriptwriters, with a stunning lack of imagination, put into the mouths of their characters over and over: “Let’s get outta here!”
This list isn't exhaustive. I'm sure some of you have your own suggestions.
Image provided courtesy of Mike Thomas of Encyclopedia of British Dance Bands. So how does someone like you get interested in music like that? Wow, that’s an original question! Never had that before in twenty-five years of collecting jazz and hot dance records. And it’s a question I can’t really answer because it’s all a matter of taste, like why do I like bacon but hate beetroot? I don’t know why, I just do. “You weren’t even alive in the war!” someone once exclaimed in an attempt, so it seemed, to convince me not to enjoy my 78s. I’ve got news for you, I thought but didn’t say, most of my records were well out of date by the time the war started. Out loud, I didn’t bother to argue. “That music is older than your parents!” was another gem hurled my way. Well, gosh darn, so was Mozart, matey!
I’m not quite sure why some people considered it their mission to convince me not to enjoy the music I do, but some were really adamant. None succeeded, of course. It isn’t as though I don’t like any other music. I worship at he shrine of The Beatles, and I enjoy the music of the 1960s in general, and 1967 in particular, for nostalgia as much as anything else. Also, I know that the 1970s are supposed to be the decade that taste forgot but I like hearing again the music from that period because the 70s were a very exciting bunch of years for me. Mind you, I probably couldn’t name you more than half a dozen songs that came out in the 80s or 90s.
I can hardly claim, though, that I listen to Ambrose or Nat Shilkret out of nostalgia. Most of the people I listen to were dead long before I even became aware of them. Simply a matter of taste. I once heard it best explained by George Harrison, bless him, who said that if you like recorded music from another period, it’s not just the music you like but also the way it went through the microphone and the way it comes back at you out of the record. The whole package. And he was right! A modern day recording of Feelin’ No Pain would not sound the same, or as good, as, say, Miff Mole’s version, even if the band had the same instrumentation and followed the same arrangement note for note.
So, when I played a 78 for the very first time (Charlie Barnet’s Skyliner from 1944: a bit out of the period I came to like best, but a wonderful record all the same) it was that combination of sounds and the way they were reproduced that started an addiction. Quite harmless, perfectly inoffensive, and I refuse to try to justify it. So there!
Do you want to be rich? Do you want to be famous? Better still, would you like to be both? No matter what they say, just about everyone has nurtured such a dream at some point in their life. But as time moves on and most of us don’t manage it, we let the dream drift away and settle for a more normal life. After all, the opportunities become more and more limited. To be plucked from the back row of the chorus to fill in for an indisposed star you have to be in the chorus in the first place, not unheard of behind a desk. What you need is a short cut, like a best selling novel you can write in your spare time, or, if that is too much of an effort, then a successful song lyric might do just as well.
There’s a lot of money in music, always provided you are successful. Remember that list of the richest people in show-business, with Paul McCartney near the top? Then again, the estate of the late Cole Porter rakes in tens of thousands of dollars every year in royalties from Night and Day alone. It’s a bandwagon we’d all like to hop on, if only we knew how to set about it.
For all the rewards that just a few lines can offer, though, successful songwriting is far from easy. But because the size of the finished product is so small compared to a book or a script, it is easy to overlook this and there are people, as we shall see, who neglect to draw your attention to the fact that it takes a great deal of talent or even genius, but not necessarily a lot of time, to write a good song lyric, one that people will remember as they leave the theatre, one that will become embedded in the public consciousness as a standard. To write a mediocre lyric one only as to be mediocre oneself---it is no great effort to dash off something mildly pleasing and instantly forgettable which, like Kleenex, can be used once and then thrown away.
On the other hand, while it is easy to write a mediocre or bad lyric, writing a dreadful one is something you’ve got to work at. I know this because a few years ago a couple of friends and I saw what at first glance appeared to be a door to fame and fortune opened wide and beckoning. With tongues planted firmly in cheeks we conducted a little experiment.
In the classifieds at the back of certain magazines, particularly those which publicise love affairs between film stars, new infallible diets, and shock horror encounters with visiting aliens and which enjoy surprisingly large circulations, you can find, sandwiched between the offers of genuine good-luck charms (send only $10.99) and religious tracts, ads from music publishers looking for new songwriters to join the business. Send your lyric, they ask, for free appraisal.
To cynical types, this may have the word “con,” writ large all over it, but who can resist something free? Now, places like that have a reputation for enthusing over everything sent to them. They work, of course, in the business of vanity publishing and there are lots of publishers of this sort around everywhere. They set out to hook in as many aspiring novelists, poets, and songwriters as they can find who believe in their own work, however dire it may be, and who will part with their own money in order to see their efforts in print.
Never mind the fact that no successful writer has ever had to resort to financing his or her own publication. Maybe they collected rejection slips by the truck load or wore out shoe leather searching Tin Pan Alley for a publisher to buy their work, but they never had to put their own money up front. The fact is that their work spoke for itself when it finally found a sympathetic ear.
The vanity publishers might argue that they serve a section of the creative industries, that they serve a section of the creative industries, that they fulfill a need otherwise ignored, or that they provide a short cut for those who have something to offer that properly serviced will bring them that longed-for celebrity without their first having to serve the soul-destroying apprenticeship of rejection and lack of interest that is the fate of the beginner. Very worthy perhaps, but then they spoil the whole effect by seldom, or never, turning down a submitted work.
My friends and I decided to put this to the test. It was a cold evening a few years ago (in the mid-seventies actually) in Toronto, shortly after Christmas and feeling suitably merry (as befitted the season), we sat down to write a really bad lyric to see what these music publishers would make of it.
It isn’t easy to write a really bad lyric. No matter how lousy you set out to make it there’s always a danger that a good point or two will creep in. You feel pleased with a rather nice internal rhyme, or perhaps the words actually make sense; and before you realize it, your lyric has risen to the level of mediocre. To avoid such pitfalls, my chums, whom I shall call Mark and Patti (for those were their names) and I decided to use a method pinched from a parlour game.
I wrote a line, folded the paper over, and passed it to Patti who wrote her line without knowing what I had written. Then she folded the paper and passed it to Mark, who added his contribution. The paper went round a few times, we unfolded it, and voila! We had this deathless piece:
The rainbow is wrapped around my elbow, Can’t you see why I must leave you baby? By living on the blues, by living under trash Oh yeah! My beer tastes bad, I want you back today And the sun shines above while the birds Twitter in the Colorado sunshine So I don’t want no war, no war, no war And I don’t want no job either.
It didn’t scan; it didn’t rhyme. Not only did the words make no sense at all but they actually contradicted themselves. The only redeeming feature was that we had fun writing it, and that wasn’t something you could tell by reading or hearing it, so we wondered what sort of reply we’d get when we sent it off for free appraisal.
The next day I typed up the lyric and added a title. I chose “Christmas Alone” because it had nothing to do with the words, and put together a covering letter above the invented name of Walter P. Temillson, who described himself as a supermarket shelf-filler but who wanted to “make a career of being a famous song compositor.” I rather liked that touch, I must admit.
In case the lyric didn’t make it absolutely clear, the letter, complete with syntax errors, would show that Mr Temillson was no genius. Finally I sealed the envelope and sent it to Gerry Lanzarote Music Publishers at a post office box number in Hollywood.
Maybe our lyrics had some hidden meaning of which we were unaware. Perhaps we had unknowingly anticipated a trend in pop music. At any rate we received, a week or two later, a most enthusiastic letter (albeit a mimeographed one with blanks filled in with ballpoint) from Gerry Lanzarote himself saying that “Christmas Alone” had been reviewed by his selection panel and had been accepted for publishing. He would arrange for music to be written to fit the words, if we would be good enough to tell him what style of music we preferred.
For this purpose he enclosed a form listing the styles available: rock, country and western, waltz, polka, tango, jazz, military, sacred and latin. All we had to do was put a tick next to the one we felt would be most suited to our lyric. Once we had sent our instructions to Mr Lanzarote he would commission a songwriter to compose music in our chosen style, would publish the song and arrange for it to be recorded by a top-line band.
Here followed a list of names: top-line they may have been, but neither Mark, Patti nor I had ever heard of any of them. We would then receive half a dozen copies of the sheet music and two demo discs. All this Mr Lanzarote would do for us as soon as he received our cheque or money order for $150. However, if we replied within ten days we could make use of the enclosed discount voucher worth $25 and would receive a further discount voucher to use toward publication of our next song.
I used the word “con” earlier on. That is not quite fair because although false hopes may be raised by this sort of thing, there is not actual con involved. Mr. Lanzarote and publishers like him do for you everything they say they will---they provide music to your words and then publish, print and record the product. There the matter rests. They may encourage you to deceive yourself into imagining that you are about to hae a brilliant success leading to a profitable career but they never promise it.
The only profitable career is Mr. Lanzarote’s, and his business is playing on the hopes and vanity of people who don’t know, or choose to ignore, the fact that there has never been a successful song whose publication was paid for by the composer rather than the publisher. Perhaps there always is a first time but we (in the person of Walter P. Temillson) didn’t want to risk $150 on the offchance we’d be it.
So we didn’t send off our cheque or money order but even so we did hear from Mr. Lanzarote several more times. He sent us letter after form letter, reminding us that his offer was still open. He made things easier for us by extending the deadline for using the discount voucher and when that had no effect, told us about his easy payment installment plan. In case we doubted the value of his services there was a sheet of testimonials from satisfied clients, all of whom seemed to be married women with initials (“I have played my record to all my friends and they all like it very much. One day I hope to write another song” says Mrs. R.D. of Boise, Idaho).
But we ignored all this and in time Mr. Lanzarote gave up on us. His advertisement appeared every week in the tabloid in which we had originally found it so there was presumably a steady supply of people willing to pay $150 for six sheets of paper and two records.
Maybe we should have taken the matter further. We were level-headed enough to realise that our song was rubbish and that it would not bring us one inch closer to a new career, no matter how much we paid for it. But just for the sake of sheer curiosity I sometimes think it would have been interesting to find out exactly what Mr. Lanzarote would have done with it. For my part, I would have gone the whole hog and would have marked the form to indicate that the preferred style of music was military or sacred, but perhaps that would have been going too far; rock or country and western, would have been the natural choices though a tango might have bee a nice idea. But even though the three of us tossed the notion about for a bit we finally lost interest. Mr. Lanzarote was not the least worried -- there are plenty of budding song compositors with egos that need massaging to keep him comfortable.
As for the notional Walter P. Temillson, he continued to restockk the shelves at the supermarket. After all, there are lots of other things one can do badly without having to pay for the privilege.
I was listening to Boogie Woogie by King Oliver’s Orchestra the other day, and after a bar or two I thought how much they sounded like Paul Howard’s Quality Serenaders, a California based band that made a dozen sides in 1929 and 1930 which had a very distinctive sound, not least because they were driven forward by the drumming of a young Lionel Hampton. In fact I had to check in Rust (where would we be without him?) to see if it was a mislabelling that the radio station was unaware of. But no, Oliver’s band it was, directed for that session by Carroll Dickerson.
Then, in a rather self-satisfied way, I reflected how, over the twenty-five years that I have been listening to this sort of music, I have gradually become able to tell bands, and musicians, by their sound. This should come as no surprise to the rest of you who share my taste for this music. You probably could tell one from the other right from the start, and in a few days could tell Jimmy Dorsey from Fud Livingston in a nanosecond. But I am a late developer and easily pleased, hence my smugness at my progress, albeit slow, as a discerning listener.
Vocalists are a different proposition entirely. After just a week or two of seeking out and listening to jazz and dance I could recognise Al Bowlly and Denny Dennis, with Sam Browne, Les Allen and Maurice Elwin not far behind. American vocalists were harder, I don’t know why, but my British ear had a hard time telling them apart. Okay, yes, Bing is unmistakable, and Dick Todd, Bob Crosby and Charlie Palloy are recognisable because they almost sound like Bing. As for the rest, they took time, but now I can pick out Irving Kaufman after a few notes (if it sounds like Irving Kaufman but isn’t, then it is Arthur Fields), and the same goes for Chick Bullock. As for Elmer Feldkamp, Scrappy Lambert, Billy Hillpot and Smith Ballew, they are so far all interchangeable, but check back with me in another twenty-five years. Female vocalists are fewer and easier. Elsie Carlisle, Evelyn Dall, Ann Lenner, Vaughn de Leath, Annette, Billie, Ella – I know and love them all.
But voices are voices. It is natural to be able to tell them apart. It’s when you can start differentiating between other sounds that you are developing a sophisticated ear (or hopefully two of them). Did you ever read about how, in the days when Morse code was used, each operator has his own distinctive way of keying the dits and dahs: his fist, as they called it, and other operators could recognise it and identify him by it. That concept was beyond me – I couldn’t see how something that mechanical could be that distinctive. However it didn’t take me long to realise, then recognise, that each band (well, many of them) had its own distinctive sound, created by its instrumentation, arrangements and the location in which it recorded. In fact, now, my new refined ear can distinguish between one recording company and another - sometimes. Anything recorded by the British Crystallate Company on its Rex, Eclipse or Crown labels had a very distinctive sound to it. And all those sides by Lou Gold, Sam Lanin and the rest of the gang and issued in England on Imperial have a uniformity about them thanks Grey Gull, ARC etc.
Anyway, for sure you can’t mistake Ellington – no one else could make a band sound like that, and though many tried they never really managed it. It was just a case of so-and-so doing an Ellington. And consider: didn’t McKinney’s Cotton Pickers have a unique sound? Big, substantial, coming right at you head on in those glorious monaural days (And that reminds me of another very distinctive vocalist: Don Redman, with his gentle, rather put upon tone: Gee, Ain’t I Good To You?). Is anyone fooled by the label that attributed Forgetting You to Jean Goldkette’s Orchestra? Oh yes, Goldkette: the best white band to come out of the USA ever. My Pretty Girl and Clementine have never been bettered in 80 years, but they didn’t do Forgetting You. That was McKinney’s.
When I started collecting pre-war jazz and hot dance 78s, buying everything I could find, I couldn’t tell one band from another. I just wanted the tunes, and the sound that went with 1920s and 1930s recording technology. It was almost a damascene moment when I first realised I could tell a band by its sound – Jack Hylton’s it was, from 1929 or 1930. No one else had that big, buoyant sound. Speaking of big and buoyant, there was Paul Whiteman – his band I mean, not him personally (I don’t know, though) – who had his own sound, which was unique to his organisation. Jack Payne, maybe the most exuberant of all the British bands, especially during his BBC days, was recognisable after less than a bar. So were Ambrose, Jack Jackson, The Six Swingers, Ted Weems, Ben Pollack. I could name lots more, and so could you.
Then of course we come to the instrumentalists. It’s one thing to recognise a voice, but it’s another, and far more satisfying, to pinpoint an instrumentalist. Twenty different, indifferent man playing the piano can all sound alike, but no one sounds like Fats or Jelly. Sidney Bechet and Coleman Hawkins stand out easily from any band they play in, as does Britain’s Freddy Gardner. And while we are on the subject of unique – I mean truly, indisputably, utterly unique – I’ll simply say Bix, Tram, Louis, Adrian Rollini.
So what happened? When did bands lose their own individual sounds? IMHO, which isn’t all that H, there were two debilitating influences – swing and the war. No, make that three debilitating influences, the third being Glenn Miller.
Swing may have been the new wave, but in rushing to embrace it so many bands put themselves in a straightjacket. BG and TD were first class musicians, with countless sides to their credit as members of all manner of hot bands, and while they had their own great sounds as bandleaders, they spread the swing infection to others who lacked their distinctiveness and just churned out cookie-cutter records one after the other. Not Bob Crosby’s though; they kept the faith always.
Then when Glenn Miller, a competent trombonist, skilful organiser and brilliant arranger, with a record of playing with some truly wonderful bands behind him, found a sound to distinguish his orchestra from all the others, and made a success of it, even though every one of his records sounded pretty much like all the others, everyone else except the really big names (e.g. Goodman, Dorsey x 2, Krupa, Shaw) tried to jump on the bandwagon. Everything drowned in dollops of slow moving woodwind. I heard a record a few days ago by The Skyrockets from around 1942, led by Paul Fenhoulet, himself no mean jazz player, and it could have been just anyone. Musical goop, plodding along, with no joy to it. Almost a sedative.
Maybe in wartime, with sudden death a real possibility for so many, people in their off hours wanted more syrup than spice but that excess of slush, and swing, had the effect of almost killing off a whole genre, if I may use that awful word. After the end of the recording ban in the USA, which lasted from 1942 to 1944, and after the war, the restarted jazz didn’t last long before splitting into two factions. Of the other faction, I shall say nothing. On our side we still had Louis, the Duke and many others, but it wasn’t the same. The sound had gone. Our thanks, of course, to Lou Watters, Bob Scobey, Humph and many others but we never quite got back the sound we wanted. With new techniques in recording, which meant that a band no longer had to play a number all together, start to finish, without a single mistake, changes were inevitable -- especially with the change of speed from 78 to 33 and 45, and with the replacement of shellac with vinyl. But it’s a shame that in the 1930s, with so many top jazzmen around, that the process had to be accelerated.
