The Trouble With Tosca

If one's answer to the question "What's in a name?" is anything other than "nothing", one is probably best served by not having the name Bondy in New York Cty right now. This year one such unfortunate has managed to get himself fired from a top City job; that would be "Joel" Bondy, who is at least unofficially accumulating much of the blame for what has become known as the CityTime scandal. But my concern right now is with another Bondy, the almost equally maligned Luc, who last year offered us a new Met production of Tosca, the Puccini opera that has managed to stay in the forefront of the repertoire in spite of its rather dubious dramatic premise.

Bondy's production, which I saw Monday night, replaced Franco Zefirelli's longstanding one last year. Though I never saw the Zefirrelli production (they didn't have $20 Varis rush tickets then) it is not hard to imagine what it was like if you have ever seen his films (which I have). Zefirrelli's staging and set design are descendents of the Hollywood blockbuster style of the '50's, Cecil B. DeMille in particular. Fancy costumes and oversizes sets fill all the available space, with enough extras to employ a small town in full. Luc Bondy is the opposite: stark, indeed dark, spare staging, with unadorned sets that loom like huge geological outcrops. 

Bondy's Tosca was roundly criticized when it appeared last year, with calls for bringing back the Zefirrelli show at all cost. The Met resisted. I wonder why! Read Donald Henahan's review of their 1985 opening of the Zefirrelli production and you'll see. In case your Times access is restricted, let me give you an idea. It begins, "Poor Franco Zefirrelli," and gets a little worse from there. Of the famous procession in the Te Deum sequence Henahan writes: "Given a modicum of talent onstage and in the pit, it is difficult to keep this scene from making a tremendous theatrical effect. Mr. Zeffirelli, however, succeeded in failing simply by crowding his procession of panoplied worshipers downstage close behind Cornell MacNeil" (Scarpia). What further galled some people was Zefirrelli's use of an elevator stage in the third act, literally lifting the courtyard into the air to reveal Cavaradossi in a dungeon, awaiting execution.

No elevator in the Bondy production. Everything's cut back to the bare walls. Ed Pilkington wrote in the Guardian that Scarpia's office looks like "a waiting room in an institution". Then there is the odd bit of antithesis to this restraint: three sluts who hang out with Scarpia in his office fawning over him in various sexual positions - a man who declares only a few moments later that he could care less for this sort of affection, who only gets excited when he has a woman caught in his iron grip, after which he tosses her aside. And there's the tremedous Cavaradossi painting, not much smaller than Chagall's Met murals, which Pilkington inaptly compares to "a Mills and Boon cover portrait"; it is rather vaguely reminiscent of some Italian Renaissance painting, though certainly not a good painting - a bit of washed out Rembrandt or toned down Rubens perhaps, and certainly nothing that would have been painted in Italy during the time of the Napoleonic wars.

But all that in itself would not make or break a production. Why, then, does this one seem so, let's say, not very satisfying? I have a theory. It goes like this: take a problematic drama and dress it up and no one stops to think about what a problematic drama it is; take the same one and cut the frills back to recession levels, and there is no avoiding the painful fact that the play is just not very good. The problem, in short, is not so much Bondy as what happens to Puccini, or perhaps Sardou, when Tosca is allowed to stand on its own as a drama.

What happens, to my sensisbilities, is that the action is seen as so simplisitic - formulaic, if you will - that it fairly insults the intelligence. The crux of it is that an evil police chief is going to try to get Tosca to sleep with him by torturing her lover until she relents in order to save him. Torture does not really work on the stage. It can work fine in movies, from Open City to Casino Royale; it falls flat on stage just because it is so over the top. Male sexual predation also does not work dramatically when the situation has no subtlety; there is no room there to plumb any deep human insights, as we are all a little too familiar with this sort of character flaw. Sexual conquest guaranteed by torture is about as naked as it gets, and even the leather that Bondy injects into the scene (how 1800... not) cannot make it more interesting.

But what if the sexual exploits are a vehicle for some higher-order meaning? After all, there are quite a few themes that surround and contextualize the underlying sexual tension (such as it is): there is the Napoleonic invasion, and the fate of the Republican Angelotti, who depends on the favor of Napoleon for his office as Consul. There is Tosca's jealousy. And there are numerous references to the relationship between art, politics, religion and morality. Does this save the play? Not really. Perhaps Scarpia's dictatorial pretensions are being equated with sexual domination; I doubt, though, that that was a new or interesting metaphor 100 years ago, and certainly isn't today. Another problem is that when the action turns this way and that based on the fate of the Napoleonic invasion it has the quality of an ad hoc device: someone runs in and declares that his forces are losing, or winning, and bingo, deus ex machina, the dramatist has what he wants to alter the fates of the characters.

The role of Tosca's jealousy, other than to give rise to a duet or two, is to cause her to run to Cavaradossi's love nest in the woods, unwittingly leading Scarpia's men to where they think Angelotti is hiding and to the arrest of Cavaradossi himself. I guess you can say that her jelousy leads to her undoing and that of her lover. The problem is that that idea, though it has some merit as irony, is so completely overshadowed by the sexual power play in Act Two that it really does not get exploited much for dramatic or philosophical value. Here you have not only an ignoble man dominating two great artists, but an inferior theme dominating a much better one. And as for that art and morality idea, I am at a loss to see that it gets a very insightful treatment here. Art does not seem to have much power in this depiction, and perhaps that is the point, though it is an odd point for a drama. After all, it's what everyone thought all along (though I suppose Plato would be an exception - he thought it had the power to distort our understanding of reality). The painter is murdered, the singer is betrayed and commits suicide... aside from a pile-up worthy of Shakespeare, what does this ultimately say about the human spirit or the role of art in uplifting it? It's not as if the tragic flaws here are so well exploited that we can get any further message out of it.

Lastly, there's an art-love-religion conjuncture here, but again, I can't see that much coming out of it. Tosca is a deeply religious woman, and her love for Cavaradossi is first enacted in a cathedral, where she at first refuses his advances due to the presence of a depiction of the Madonna. But Cavaradossi's painting is apparently also compared with the Madonna, so Tosca's jealousy, inspired by the painting, has a double edge to it as more than slightly immoral. Perhaps this is why she has it within her to commit murder -  in self-defense, or is it revenge? A little of both, perhaps. As for Cavaradossi, the torture he is subjected to in Scarpia's hands is described as having a spiked ring tightened around his head. Uh, right, let me see, does that remind me of anything? The artist as Messiah, tortured and murdered by the... Roman guards? Okay, I get it. But in what way, exactly, is art supposed to save the world here? That part I don't get. There may be something about faith and freedom going on, though the equation of Napoleon with liberty and justice might not resonate very much today. I guess one could explore this more. I am convinced, though, that whatever philsophical content there is here is too deeply hidden beneath the sordid action to have much theatrical power.

Quite a bit could be added about Puccini's role in making the opera difficult to bring off dramatically. I mean, for example, the not exactly faint vocal part assigned to Cavaradossi as be emerges from the torture chamber - is that supposed to be believable? No, it's supposed to be opera... All the same, there are some dubious choices here. Admittedly, there is a certain genius to the device of having an offstage "cantata" (sung by Tosca and choir) competing with the vocal lead in Scarpia's office; I'd love to examine the score to see if they are even in the same key. (A foreshadowing of Stravinsky and Ives?) But no one has ever denied that Tosca is a great work of music.

So am I saying "buy the CD, don't go to the opera"? Not quite, though I could see an argument for it. Why then go into this lengthy dramatic analysis of a 110-year-old opera? Because in my opinion that's what underlies the Zefirrelli-Bondy debate. The former tried to mitigate the play's dramatic failures; the latter perhaps thought that was dishonest and it is best to let it speak for itself. I'm all for honesty, but it can only be brought off if the quality of the acting is as high as that of the singing. In the case of this production, at least, that was not really so. Sondra Radvanovsky gave an admirable performance of the music. She had sufficient range and power to bring off the part, and was particularly impressive in the magnificent Vissi d'arte, the aria in which she compares her dedication to art with her present horrible situation, after which the audience erupted in enthusiastic applause. If she had one or two minor difficulties with some of the vocal leaps demanded by Puccini it did not, overall, detract from the beauty of her singing, which included some perfectly executed pianissimo tones up in the coloratura range. Unfortunately, her dramatic skills are all but nonexistent. I was seated in the orchestra, not close, but close enough to appreciate the difference between a rote performance and real acting. Falk Struckmann's Scarpia was quite a bit better dramatically; as the imperious police chief he was sufficiently domineering but capable of pulling off the good-cop-bad-cop thing that is implied by this character's machinations. His singing, and that of Marcelo Alvarez as Cavaradossi, whose dramatic options are really quite limited in this opera, was strong and fully up to the part.

In light of all this, I guess the question to ask is whether there was anything really wrong with the Zefirrelli production. Should it be brought back? Actually, Zefirrelli produced the opera not only for the Met, but for La Scala and Covent Garden, and given the differences in the stages and the state of technology at the time, I'm not sure all these productions were the same or even very similar. One thing I can say without hesitation: there is nothing wrong with this Zefirrelli production - though bringing it back would be something like a scene from The Uninvited. I doubt there is a true opera fan who would not have given his left ear to have been there. Until somebody brings back these dramatic skills, I'm afraid that Bondy's production will continue to highlight the awkwardly simplistic drama at the heart of Tosca.

Ultimately, people go to opera for the music, not the play, and I suspect that in the long run they will continue to go to Tosca regardless of what the production is. Nevertheless, this production should be taken as a warning. There are quite a lot of operas based on weak underlying dramas. If the drama is not the point anyway, I say let the production take over when it has to. The music will be heard, and may be more satisfying, because a bad play is in the end more distracting than a good spectacle.

Double Standard? Deaccessioning in Art and Music

Everybody who follows the art world at all knows that the National Academy museum in New York has been coming in for merciless criticism over its sale of two Hudson River School paintings to raise money for basic operating expenses. The Association of Art Museum Directors has prohibited its members from entering into any collaboration with the NA. The so-called "deaccessioning" of holdings to pay operating expenses is like the cardinal sin of the museum community. And there are some good reasons for this; for example: (a) it suggests that the museum leadership is sitting on its duff instead of fundraising; (b) it sends an awful message to people who might contribute artworks with the intention of improving a particular museum's holdings; (c) it threatens to dismantle collections that were painstakingly built up over decades to represent a particular style or school (d) since the only works worth selling for this purpose are those of great merit which bring high prices, it is a sure road to the diminution of the status of the institution - a slippery slope, so to speak; and (e) it demoralizes patrons, staff, audiences, critics, and just about anyone else the museum might count as its base of support.

Whew! Plenty to be concerned about, there. The NY State Legislature has even begun to consider a bill that would legally prohibit deaccessioning to pay operating expenses. And though I personally doubt they would be able to prevent such sales, which can be executed under a variety of pretenses, there are more than enough examples to worry anyone who thinks that important collections have a life of their own and need to be preserved. In 2005 the New York Public Library sold a large number of paintings, including another Hudson River School work of inestimable cultural value to the area and the institution (Asher Durand's "Kindred Spirits"). It ended up in the hands of Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton, who also wished to denude Fisk University of half their interest in a world-class collection of Georgia O'Keefe paintings. With the full complicity of the university Board, who pleaded financial distress, she hoped to stash some of them in her Crystal Bridges museum in Arkansas. If Arkansas travellers can smuggle some artworks out of the NYPL, maybe we can kidnap some backporch country fiddlers and move a couple of swamps to Queens? (What's that you say - Queens already has enough swamps?) And in what must be the Nightmare on Elm Street of deaccessioning, Brandeis University recently announced that they would close the highly regarded Rose Art Museum due to a budget shortfall, and use the money to improve "arts education" (there's plenty of art in Beantown, they reasoned, so who needs this particular collection?)

And now for something not completely different: everybody who follows the music world knows that in 2007 the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra sold its recently acquired collection of classic Cremonese instruments. All sorts of shenanigans accompanied the acquisition of the instruments in 2003, including a gross overestimate of the value of the collection by the seller, Herbert Axelrod, questions about the authenticity of some of them, and doubts about the appraisal process. What is not in question, though, is that the NJSO in one leap became an orchestra renowned for its string sound (something it took the Philadelphia Orchestra many years to achieve), and the repository of a substantial share of the greatest violins ever made. Yet in 2007 the orchestra sold the collection to pay down debt and support future operating expenses. The collection, some 30 historic string instruments including several Stradivaris and del Gesus, was purchased by hedge fund managers Seth and Brook Taube. The twin bankers, whose Columbus Nova Partners fund was allegedly closed for poor performance, helped themselves to two Strads and gave the orchestra a 5-year loan on the rest.

For this act of deaccessioning, the NJSO was not roundly criticized in the press or condemned by their peers. No professional organization said, "okay, don't lend these guys any instruments". They were not censured by critics or made the goats of music bloggers. So - double standard, or what? Think about it. A museum's "product" is the display of art. An orchestra's "product" is the performance of music. The art that a museum collects gives it a particular strength, or personality. The orchestra's strength or personality is more complex, and depends on the type of music it performs, the skills of its players, and the personalities of the conductors it has had; but the instruments it acquires and uses are definitely a part of the mix, and perhaps the main component of the tonal qualities of its sound. Many orchestras will purchase or commission instruments according to certain principles of sound or taste. So the presence of 30 of the world's greatest string instruments on one stage is not exactly a minor aspect of the orchestra's sound. Replacing them with other, more modern and less sonorous, instruments is comparable to to the Metropolitan Museum saying, "You know, we could really fix the bottom line here if we just get rid of these Rembrandts and Vermeers and pull up some of that French neo-classical stuff out of the basement".

Now let's go back to some of the arguments against deaccessioning in the museum world: (a) it suggests that the museum leadership is sitting on its duff instead of fundraising (this would see to apply equally well in the music world); (b) it sends an awful message to people who might contribute artworks with the intention of improving a particular museum's holdings (contribution of instruments may be a less typical situation in music, but the argument is equally coherent when it applies); (c) it threatens to dismantle collections that were painstakingly built up over decades to represent a particular style or school (less compelling in this case, since this particular collection was acquired all at once and deaccessioned fairly quickly) (d) since the only works worth selling for this purpose are those of great merit which bring high prices, it is a sure road to the diminution of the status of the institution (ditto for an orchestra with a collection of fine instruments); and (e) it demoralizes patrons, staff, audiences, critics, and just about anyone else the museum might count as its base of support (no question the same applies in this case, in spades).

In fact, let's be blunt, the Axelrod transaction put the NJSO on the cultural map for the first time in its history, allowing it to compete for audience with the far more famous orchestra across the Hudson, and was an important factor in their ability to lure a world class conductor, Neeme Jarvi. And let's not forget, the National Gallery sold off two major paintings, and had plans (apparently now abandoned) to sell off a few more; whereas NJSO sold off what was essentially the single most important physical component of its sound!

But there are other facts that make this decision more complicated. Bringing the sound of the rest of the orchestra in line with what amounts to one of the most resonant string sections in the world certainly would take a concerted (nyuk nyuk :-) effort. I suppose the storage, security and insurance costs must be considerable. The sale was executed only a few years after the purchase, before one could say that it was part of the NJSO tradition. And of course one can now add the standard recessionist logic, in-these-difficult-times-one-must-be-prepared-to-make-tough decisions: if they had not sold them when they did, would they be able to survive a major economic crisis?

All this, however, doesn't quite cut it as a reason to sell off the collection for operating expenses. For one thing, by the time the 5-year loan is up, the orchestra will have been using the collection for about 10 years. Those years will have been the ones in which the orchestra first drew serious attention in the music world, gained new status and audiences, and perhaps even lured a few of us across the river to check out the new sound. (I admit I have not gone to hear them yet, but it's been on my agenda. Like going to the Barnes Collection before they deaccession their original quarters. Even the Parrot can't take wing and fly to every worthwhile cultural event in this area.) Furthermore, none of these excuses would have been accepted in the art world as a reason to sell holdings in order to pay debt or operating expenses. That is considered just bad management, selling what will attract people tomorrow in order to pay what you owe today. Fool's gambit, is the thinking over in artland.

So what to make of all this? My basic instinct is that all the arguments and assumptions aren't getting to the heart of the problem, which seems to always lie a little below the surface of the institutional fracas. What it's about is that in a world where more and more people are willing to trade slot cars for video games, guitars for Guitar Hero, real life for Second Lives, real books for Kindles, real friends for Facebook "friends" and real thought for Twitters, cultural institutions have by default been saddled with the incredibly serious task of reminding us that our longstanding cultural traditions are actually still just as important as they always were, indeed moreso. They are, like it or not, responsible for reminding us that this painting, that building, that piece of music, are part of who we are - as persons, as New Yorkers (or even New Jerseyans, I guess), as Americans, and why we should care that this is so. It is to our collective benefit, as I see it, that certain things which have inherent value and help define us should simply persist; that they don't just go away and turn into something else, become virtual or get replaced with some cheapened version after dumbing down the audience so much that they barely notice the difference. This is the burden that our museums, publishing houses, orchestras, landmark commissions and other cultural institutions have to bear. To protect what is there, sometimes for no more than the simple reason that it has been there for a long time, and that the place where it is is admired partly because this or that symbol is there and carries with it the sense of place and of tradition, is a responsibility of those who are entrusted with our cultural heritage. And that includes not only museums and libraries, but universities, who merit additional calumny for pigheadedness in posing a false dichotomy between a cultural trust and the bottom line. (Ultimately you can thank Reagan and his "revolution" for this, as that is the source of the ideological migration of university boards from seeing financial accountability as serving educational goals in the broadest sense, to seeing it as a justification for stripping away tenured chairs and academic freedom, as well as abandoning cultural leadership.)

I would say this preservationist sensibility even applies to something like Yankee Stadium, which, if there weren't plenty of other reasons to question the value for the City of replacing it, ought to have been preserved for no other reason than that it is one of America's historic ballparks and has been associated with one of America's most historic baseball teams. (I didn't ask whether you like them; I'd probably say the same about Fenway Park or Wrigley Field, FYI. Squawck!) The point is, it is incumbent on every cultural institution to be a sort of levee against gratuitous change; to the extent possible, the only change should be in the direction of enrichment of what is there already, not the utilitarian swapping of art or instruments or other cultural treasures for short term gains.

Do I think that any institution that ever sold anything to pay expenses should be condemned? No. If the question is really survival in a diminished form rather than disappearance off the face of the earth, we may have to accept the smaller loss. But even that is not an absolute truth. The O'Keefe paintings were given to Fisk wth the express mandate that they may not be sold - ever. It appears that the intent here is simply that the works shall not be used as collateral, regardless of the circumstances. This is not in the least mitigated by the shool's economic plight, and O'Keefe's heirs were right to sue to recover the works. (Though the judge's decision that the university must neither sell them nor return them was, at least for the time being, the best solution.) Moreover, to say that survival is really at stake reqires being intimately familiar with the finances, fundraising history, and possible alternatives for an institution. When I was a student at the Mannes College of Music, there was an effort to merge the school with the much larger Manhattan School of Music uptown. This was supposed to be an effort to "save" the school; it's financial condition was allegedly deteriorating, and Manhattan would have the resources to support much of Mannes and its staff. To make a long story short, the Board of Directors that made this decision was sued, removed by the Court for failure to carry out their fiscal responsibilities, and replaced with a new Board that was actually committed to the school. The merger effort was a kind of deaccessioning, not just of the building, which was soon abandoned anyway, but of the musical traditions that informed the school since it was founded. Mannes has a distinctive theoretical tradition and pedagogical philosophy, and this would have been diluted at best, or in all probability swallowed whole, as it was effectively collapsed into the Manhattan School curriculum. Ultimately, a much less toxic merger with the New School allowed Mannes to maintain its independence and musical traditions while obtaining the financial resources of a major university.

So, it is far from clear that every time an institution's board jumps up and says, "Sell, sell! We are deeply in debt!" everyone must pull out their handkerchiefs and weep for the troubled institution, or look the other way while they pawn their prized possessions. The presumption should not be one of innocence, but of guilt: boards are a mixture of wealthy, well-meaning and committed individuals, and lazy, rich, obstructive, neurotic and self-interested attention-getters and status-seekers. No one can know who is winning at any given moment, but when the Board says they just can't raise enough money or hire competent enough managers to keep the institution going without deaccessioning, it's time to be suspicious.

And it is not only lack of fundraising initiative that should be looked into. In the case of the National Academy, part of the story was the temporary replacement of the museum's Director with someone who had nonprofit management and fundraising experience, but no experience in the art world. The problem only intensifies when the board is responsible to a higher entity like a university, whose primary mission is not that of the cultural institution, and whose financial goals may at times conflict with its commitment to cultural goals. For any number of reasons, our instinct should be to keep things where they are. That won't always be right, and it won't always be possible, but we should have to be thoroughly convinced before we give up the principle and accede to deaccessioning.

So, there you go: another art-and-the-public-interest post from your friendly local Parrot. If I didn't have two other blogs, three or four books to write, an album to record and a fulltime job, I could get used to this. Or maybe I could deaccession one or two of my six lives and learn to focus. It is tempting.

NYC Radio: Jack Hits the Road

Hot on the heels of the two mouths who spewed an endless stream of dull, adolescent conversation and puerile sex humor, recently departed from WXRK, the unloved and in fact nonexistent "Jack" has hightailed it out of town, apparently back to Canada from which "he" was imported, duty-free. For those of you who are not NYC listeners (in all probability a highly favored status right now), "Jack" was the pre-recorded personality with the puerile, adolescent attitude (anyone notice a pattern here?) who would periodically interrupt WCBS's jukebox format with some snide remark, often about alleged skeptics regarding about CBS's format, and then, with equally annoying attitude, intone, "Jack-FM - playing what we want". Figure Napolean Dynamite after DJ lessons; that's about how this came across. Raise your hand if you thought it would last.

Going back a few decades, CBS-FM was once one of NYC's premier prog-pop radio stations, playing everything from the Moody Blues and Jethro Tull to Carol King and Elton John, but bringing consistent taste as well as quality to NY radio. There were more experimental formats - WXLR, if I recall, was one - but this was a station no reasonable music lover could complain about. At some point, CBS switched to an Oldies format, about which all that can be said is that "Oldies" never means a really creative sampling of older songs, but rather an attempt to mine nostalgia for well-known hits. This is necessarily an uneven format, since hits are of uneven quality. At some point around the turn of the millenium the format deteriorated further, and the selection of hits was reduced to early Motown with a few Beatles songs or other superhits thrown in. This format is what Jack replaced.

It is hardly surprising that Jack did not catch on, and in fact reduced CBS's listenership (and advertising revenue) significantly. But it is interesting to consider why. I suspect it was a nearly total disconnect between the music selection and the impersonal, mechanized, phony-DJ-with-attitude idea (which according to the Times was supposed to make someone think of an iPod Shuffle - as if that is really a rationale for a radio format). But the music selection, though far from exemplary, was much better than the parade of Motown hits, and indeed much better than the wider Oldies format of yesteryear. "Jack" actually pulled from a much wider playlist than any other oldies or classics format, and had a predilection for some groups that I feel are grossly underplayed in such formats compared to their quality, such as Steely Dan or The Fixx. "Jack" did not limit the selection to major hits, though most of the tunes were at least vaguely familiar. "He" had a disposition towards crisp, catchy tunes with hooks, but that left him very wide latitude to pick and choose. Not that there wasn't repetition; and indeed one could still detect a bit too much of "Hotel California" and the like, as if we did not hear enough of that incredibly tired stuff from the "classic rock" (or is it "Clearchannel rock"?) guys at 104.3. There was also a perhaps commercially wise but musically dubious effort to stick to early-80's disco on the weekend.

All that said, there was something extremely refreshing about the "playing what we want" idea. Playlists are exactly what is wrong with rock radio, be it contemporary pop (100.3), classic rock, country or just about any other format. Jack was a great experiment in widening the playlist so much that it almost disappeared. K-Rock, even with their all-chatter format on weekdays, actually experimented on the weekends with a very interesting contemporary mix.
That has now been quieted, along with the talking emptyheads, and the station has gone to an extremely careful and repetitious selection of new stuff that is even more conservative than their earlier hard rock format. And for CBS-FM, it is now Back to the Playlist: Oldies, slightly updated but still tired. And so ends a brief and occasionally interesting era of sort-of free form rock radio in NYC.

A few NY-area college stations still dare to spin "what they want" at certain hours; but with their limited reach, they provide few opportunities for quality or exploratory programming. WFUV, which at some point had potential as a folk/acoustic station, long ago went commercial, limiting its exposure of new artists and focusing on already successful, and largely electric, acts to the point of becoming nearly indistinguishable from various "light rock" stations. WKCR gives us mainly jazz and some bluegrass and world music. I believe the nearest experimental rock station is Seton Hall's WSOU in Orange, NJ, though I can't get reception in Brooklyn; Fairleigh Dickinson's WFDU also provides some interest at the low end of the dial if you can get it. Other than that, it is pretty much a complete Radio Wasteland.

Almost. Strangely enough, it is 104.3 at night, with it's "Out of the Box" and "Underground Garage" shows, that still holds a few cutting edge cards now, as unbearable and stultifying as its daytime format is. That is something, but it ain't enough. What we need here is three things that we're not very likely to get, at least in a 24-hour station. One is a no-holds-barred experimental rock station that will give us everything from the latest progressive rock, in its various guises (see my previous post on the Book of Knots concert), to the more worthy alt-country happenings, to various interesting indie releases. Call this one WIND. And no, I don't mean Indiana. The second is a station that mines rock history for its 10,000's of extremely high quality but vastly underplayed cuts, be it from well known bands like Pink Floyd (when was the last time you heard "Atom Heart Mother" or "Astronomy Domine" on the radio?) to barely remembered groups like Family (their album Fearless is one of my favorite pieces of vinyl), from 60's garage bands (heard Bubble Puppy's "Hot Smoke and Sassafras" recently?) to some of the ingenious but rarely played cuts from contemporary groups like the Meat Puppets, Lemonheads, or Spoon. I could spin brilliant but virtually unplayed cuts by 10CC, Nektar and The Fixx for a couple of days without repeating anything. Spread that over half a century of rock history and you've got an almost endless supply of brilliant music, none of which has been overplayed by the 104.3 DJ's. Call this station WFRE. That's free, and without the attitude, Jack.

The third is a station that actually has some deep relationship to this country's musical traditions (other than jazz, which thankfully is actually represented in a couple of reasonable formats). I mean a station for which "country" means Hank WIlliams and Merle Haggard and Buck Owens and Johnny Cash and people who are their direct musical descendants. A station for which "folk" means Woody and Huddie and Pete and Bill (Staines - too bad I have to add that, he's fully their equal), and which plays some of the hundreds of high quality CD's released every year by acoustic musicians who look to them for inspiration. And which isn't afraid to play a scratchy old Big Bill Broonzy or Blind Willie McTell recording, or one by the host of worthy blues pickers who keep the tradition alive. Call this one WACU. Acoustic in spirit at least, because electronically amplified instruments are a kind of power center whose imperialistic tendencies we must resist, even if we love it as one form of expression.

For these stations to exist, I think the only hope is for some billionaire who actually cares about American music to buy out some media monopoly and play the stuff at a loss. Because one thing is clear: be it rock, country, or blues, what sells is obviously an extremely narrow spectrum of music that is constantly hammered into the heads of radio audiences through top-20 playlists and video channels. And that is a poor comment on us and our cultural bearings. A little paternalism can be a good thing, sometimes. Just give us some decent radio stations. The attitude needed to hit the road, but not the free format.

Weick in Marx in Soho at Vox Pop in Brooklyn

That's a lot of nesting up there; but this is a Parrot's hangout after all!

Speaking of hangouts, where might a couple of feathered friends bide their time on a Saturday night (or just about any other) without straying too far from the nest? The local Dunkin Donuts? Unfortunately, in this neck of the woods, in can come to that. You see, this is the heart of Multicultural Brooklyn, where speaking Parrotese does not necessarily put you in the minority. Indeed, most businesses around here shut up as tight as a vulture's... err... grip, come sundown on Friday, and stay that way until pretty late Saturday night at the earliest. Though the Parrot shares some DNA with these folks, we do not appreciate the Friday/Sat night morgue routine (we could always touch down in Greenwood Cemetery if we were into that), so we are apt to take wing and find more welcoming venues.

And venue is just what we find when we drop in to Vox Pop, the only place this side of Park Slope that qualifies as a genuine Coffeehouse. Only this is not your run-of-the-mill yuppie joint with the $2.50 cup of coffee or hot chocolate. Well, okay - I guess it is about that much for a cup of coffee or hot chocolate. That's the funny thing about Vox Pop, the name of which is short for "vox populi", the Voice of the People. I know, it sounds like a leftie tabloid from the '30's (or '60's). Which is, roughly what it is - updated a bit. The place was started a couple of years ago by Sander Hicks and some friends, though Sander is definitely the main presence there. Nothing if not a risk taker, Sander took over a small storefront on Cortelyou Road, a commercial strip that had all but faded into oblivion; where the one bookstore in the entire neighborhood could not make it, where you could count at one point 12 hair salons, 4 dry cleaners, and not one restaurant you'd want to stick your beak into. Now, I don't want to use a hysterical term like "renaissance", but there has been a noticeable pickup of commercial activity on this strip, which sits smack in the middle of a neighborhood full of expensive Victorian homes and not a few large apartment buildings. You'd think somebody would figure out that this is a potential goldmine - at least, it would be, if there were enough going on there to deter the locals from heading to Park Slope every time they need a toy for their kids or a Fine Dining Experience.

If it is headed towards "renaiassance" (or, ironically, gentrification), Vox Pop will have had a lot to do with it. To start with, they did an amazing, and amazingly quick, job of turning the space into a warm, welcoming little java joint - not crowded or cramped but a real homey feel, helped along by lots of natural wood grains. Kids dig Vox Pop (there's a play area); so do adults. So do parrots. But this is not yer ordinary Starbucks wannabe. They sell books, which seem to have 2 main themes: radical rock music, and radical politics. They have readings (by, you guessed it, radical writers), and they do self-publishing. They have music in the evenings, not all radical, but much of it inspired by either the Clash or Pete Seeger, depending on which night you happen to walk in. And they sell food. None of it cheap. They do have "free wifi" - the scare quotes indicating that "free" is to be interpreted here as meaning "please spend $6 an hour or else..." Or else what? Who knows, I guess you become a Vox Populi Persona Non Grata, at least if you speak Latin. The Open Mike is also free, but the 2 beers to cover the minimum will cost you $10. (Pay to Play, is that what it's called?) Well, let's put it this way - if you are already one of the converted, consider it a contribution, to whatever cause Sander happens to be promoting at the moment. And if you are not, I don't think you could stand the heat for very long. The Parrot long thought he was redder than a scarlet tanager, but at Vox Pop we have to perch in the loft to avoid getting into a harangue with some "9/11 Truth" type (a cause Sander actively promotes), or someone who wants Ralph Nader to run again. All the same, better this than listening to the discourse on the other side of the fence. (Question regarding evolution and Sam Brownback: does the evidence suggest that he more likely evolved from Neanderthals or Cretins? Could it be his ancestors were the evolutionary fork that leads to both? This would explain his position on Darwinism.)

So where was I? Vox Pop, the radical coffeehouse that is going to revive Cortelyou Road, expand into all major U.S cities within two years, and capture 10% of the multibillion dollar coffee market by selling Fair Trade coffee and locally brewed beer... Or not, but I am damn glad they started here. And one of the latest reasons I'm glad - I was starting to talk about what I did last Saturday night, wasn't I? - is Marx in Soho, the one-man, one-act play by Howard (A People's History of the United States) ZInn. Incidentally, he's the guy who wrote A People's History of the United States. Like Vox Pop, Zinn dared to tread where few had gone before, writing a lengthy, detailed account of U.S. history as seen not from the vantage point of the elite few who directed the show but the dispossessed, disenfranchised many who actually (come to think of it) built this country. And interestingly enough, he also wrote some plays, including this one. It has not been produced very often, at least until Robert Weick took it upon himself to learn the demanding solo part and promote the show to college campuses, small theatres, and radical coffeehouses like Vox Pop (possibly a class of one).

So what is it? Alright, I'm going to tell you, but you have to promise one thing - you won't like tune out, log off, turn on the parrot filter, etc., until you give the idea a chance. Okay, ready? Here it is: Marx comes back from the dead to deliver a critique of contemporary Western society. All right, are you still with me? Good, because it's not quite like what it sounds. A little, but not cloyingly so. Marx comes back, for sure, granted a one hour reprieve by the Opiate of the People (Opius Populi?). And he does give us plenty of reason to believe that were he alive today he would bore us with what we already know if we are not comatose, that profits mean more than people under capitalism, that the Imperialist West supports its standard of living with wars to keep the Oppressed Nations down, that we stole half the country from Mexico, that America was built by immigrant labor who we repay with racism and immigration quotas, and other true clichés. (Dear Mr. Sarkozy, friend of the U.S., enemy of all that post-colonial riffraff that is filtering into your country, please focus on the "true" (vrai)", not the "cliché (cliché)".) But luckily for us, and for the possibility of this play getting performed without coming off preachier than an Easter sermon by Cardinal Egan, this is not what Mr. Weick spends the hour or so talking about.

In fact. Marx seems to have more to say about his boils than about politics, and even more to say about his wife Jenny and their daughters (mainly Elizabeth, though I think he had about 11 in all) than about his boils. He spends several amusing minutes discussing the slovenly persona of Mikhail Bakunin, the Godfather (ooh, would he hate that!) of anarchism. And he talks about the Paris Commune in terms that still manage to be moving 135 years later. There is a lot of history going on, good for the classroom crowd - especially today, when you can't assume that the average, educated 19 year old has the faintest idea what Marxism, communism, socialism, or just about anything else (other than iPodism) means. Marx of course decries the distortion of his views in the hands of the Soviet regime. He lambasts Stalinism (not necessarily by name) and declares (as did the historical Marx) that "I am not a Marxist" (though I can't say that Zinn's script brings out the meaning of this utterance very clearly).

In the end one is glad to have happened to be in Soho (sort of) when Marx dropped in. The performance alone was well worth the price of admission, which included, for $23, a politically correct burger, a small salad, and a damn good pint of some dark amber Dogfish Ale, which I must admit may have enhanced the play without any extra work on Zinn's or Weick's part. Typical Vox Popitis - Sander managed to get an article about the event published in the Times, emailed his constituency, and then had a line of patrons waiting for that PC burger, forcing them to start the play about 40 minutes late. When I came to buy a ticket a few days earlier the only staff person at the store had no idea there was a play, how to buy a ticket for it, how to handle the various discounts, or what the price of coffee is in Nicaragua. (Okay, I didn't ask that - maybe she did know.) Considering they run a printing press and have done performances before I thought it was a little odd that they didn't just print up some tickets. Oh well, organizing the revo takes a lot of energy; ditto organizing to become the third biggest brewed coffee retailer in the U.S. Anyway, what do I care - I'd ten times rather have Vox Pop with all their little quirks and growing pains that Barstucks with their dirty bathrooms and overpriced pastries. More than that, it is the fact that they never uses their spaces, of which they have sometimes three or four within a few blocks, for anything like a musical presentation or a reading or just about anything other than pulling in every possible yuppie, not to mention the occasional emerald-plumed biped in search of an oatmeal cracker. Suggested corporate slogan: "Not A Coffeehouse (Just a "¢offee Hou$e)". Vox Pop fills a cultural vacuum created by the demise of the coffeehouse, be it a folk club, a chess bar or a poetry salon. They've become a neighborhood cultural institution in a little over a year, and I daresay it is awfully refreshing to sometimes find oneself politically to the right of a small business owner. It ain't no Utopia, or they'd give me that pot of fresh brewed tea for being a nice guy. But it's way cool, I mean awesome, groovy, whatever.

Now, to get back to the Marx-Zinn-Weick connection, though the play was definitely entertaining, and Weick's performance top notch, there were things I missed. In the brief discussion session afterward, my question was: when do we get the second act, in which he tells us how socialism is really supposed to work? Aside from that, I was kind of surprised that the only references to 20th century socialism were some digs at the easiest target, the Soviet empire. What about China, Cuba, or Yugoslavia? What about Chile under Allende, Grenada under Bishop, the Prague Spring - are there no models worth praising? If not, then that is a bigger problem for Marx than boils or Bakunin: it's like, you all screwed up, if you had only done it the way I said... And what way is that? Zinn's Marx tells us very little about socialism "as it was supposed to be", actually. You would think this Marx would have a thing or two to say about his vision, even if it were straight out of what the historical Marx said in his Critique of the Gotha Programme and a few other works. Because it is fine and dandy to say, "You see, capitalism still stinks!", but if every attempt to institute socialism since the Paris Commune stinks too, you need a little more than that or you're just getting a stream of hot air. Which is fine for a parrot, but the flight-challenged spectator might not be so thrilled.

I'm dead serious (so is Marx, for that matter, but nevermind) - I think Zinn should write a second act. The play is far from losing our attention by the end, at least with Weick's capable handling of the part. And now that he's memorized all that.... a second act, in which we actually get a sense of the man's vision, seems like it's waiting to be written. Aside from that, I was a little surprised that this Marx, who shows up clutching a wad of contemporary newspapers, has so very little to say about contemporary social problems. Other than one or two passing gestures about the environment there is nothing about this most urgent of political issues. What would Marx think of a European Union? Computers? The Internet? Okay, maybe it is safer not to weigh him down with ad hoc advice on every issue under the sun. And the focus on his own time and immediate surroundings seemed appropriate. As a historical play with a few passes at contemporary updating, it works fine. Be that as it may, having gone this far, I would have donned my Dialectical Materialism Thinking Cap and given my audience a more robust sense of the man's continued relevance.

But all of our Avian Advice aside, this was a surprisingly enjoyable theatrical experience, supported by an excellent one-man perofrmance and I'm guessing a wee bit more than a pint of Dogfish Ale. And now that we know about the ale, the old Wingtipped Minstrel just might pop in to the Open Mike pretty soon. Better plan to walk home, can't afford to get points on my flying license.

Get Jazzed at Bar Next Door

It's actually downstairs from the restaurant La Lanterna di Vittorio, though perhaps it is technically next door. You can practically fall into it if you happen to hit a slick spot on the sidewalk at just the right place. An almost literal hole in the wall at 129 Macdougal Street in the West Village, the "Bar Next Door" is one of the coolest jazz spots I've found in a city that does not exactly lack for cool jazz spots. They say that the house was built by Aaron Burr, I guess while he was taking time off from target practice. It definitely has that old, authentic look, with all sorts of funny little doors and closets. Owl and I were wondering what the long horizontal closet near the door might contain. Whatever it contains now, my bet for the original use is firearms. Why do bad things happen to decent folks like Alexander Hamilton and other rich brats get to fulfill their Presidential ambitions? History is so cruel...

Anyhow, this hobbit space below the restaurant was big enough for one rather tall and stout fellow who blew a mean tenor sax. Joel Frahm has apparently been around the NY jazz scene for a long time, and has just recorded a CD with members of Stan Getz's old band. But Tuesday nights he performs here with his own trio, which included Joel Martin on bass and Pete Zimmer on drums this week. These guys cooked up a concert that handed us, over the course of two sets, a wide variety of classics and originals - there was some Monk, some Bird (the Parrot is loving it so far!), some standards, some originals, probably some Getz though I didn't recognize it. (Frahm offered an original which I thought he called "Jobimiana", or something like that, but I can't say it set of the bossa nova bells in my head. Nice tune though.) This was relatively conservative material, but Frahm's treatment of it was exquisite. He is equally at home hanging on a slow bluesey tune with lots of breathy bends or doing lightning runs that make you wonder where he found all those notes. No technique for its own sake here. Free jazz is not his bag and you won't hear him pushing a reed hard enough to make it screech. But he has an original style that is hard to characterize and easy to admire; his lines are unpredictable even if the basic material is pretty well known.

Zimmer and Martin are no mere rhythm section but a couple of extremely talented musicians in their own right. It takes a lot to get me to really listen to a stand-up bass solo, but I was digging every note that Martin played when he took his breaks. ("Digging" here means "liking", for any overly web-savvy cranks out there. One "digs" in a hole in the ground, and "diggs" in a Web 2.0 media site. I was in a hole.) Zimmer is one of those jazz drummers who insists on being as much a part of the music as anyone else, and his contribution to the overall sound was immense. This is a group of musicians who it is almost insulting to call "professional", as that sounds a little like "competent". The fairly conservative tonality of the music at times makes you think of these words, but I would rather say that whatever can still be milked out of post-bop mainstream jazz, these guys are doing. Those who can't take anything less challenging than an Ornette Coleman concert should stay away. I'll be back though; this is serious music done with consummate taste and style.

Did I say the space was intimate? It is small enough that you might find yourself trying to get a seat where you are not staring down the horn of a sax or clinking your glass against a snare drum. Small but not uncomfortable, even at my table right next to the door. The cover is only $8; a 10" thin crust pizza is a bit more than that, but worth it. You can order from the full La Lanterna menu, but Owl and I stuck with pizza, salad, beer and desert, which came out to about $70 with the cover, tax and tip. Not too bad for dinner and a concert for two. My only complaint was that there was no beer on tap; but the waiter brought my Sam Adams in a tall glass so I never saw the bottle. I guess that is the next best thing to being on tap!

There may be some sort of folk music renaissance going on in New York, but there is no jazz renaissance. To my knowledge, the jazz scene never died in order to be reborn. It was great to find it so richly alive in a cave below Macdougal Street, a place I have passed many times without realizing there was life, music, beer and (perhaps most importantly) blueberry pie within. You want the "real New York"? So go to the Empire State Building! Or get hijacked into some underground hole at the Parrot's Lampost. Squawck!

Parrot Eyes Lost (and Found)

So, where has El Parrotto been these many days? Reading Milton? Not quite. Let's see... He flew the coop? No, parrots don't live in coops, they live on lamposts, silly. Or at least designer cages (Frank Gehry, have I got a project for you!) Maybe the plumed blogger just cur-tailed his efforts? Maybe not. Parrot got into nuclear physics and was eaten by Schroedinger's Cat? No, actually, parrot took wing with Minerva's Owl and did some serious philosophy for awhile. Nothing wrong with that, you know; besides, it's not contagious. (Thank god, if he exists when no one's there to see him.) A couple of conference papers with deadlines, to be specific, one of which I actually met. (Possibly a first.) The other is a work in progress, only now I need a conference to fit the paper instead of the other way around. Oh well, won't be the first time.

We (the ubiquitous editorial We) did a little research on promoting the blog - it's called "reading the Blogger Help screens" - and found that we have seriously ignored much of the advice therein. First is to "publish regular updates". The last H.A. Monk post is dated 3 weeks ago. Baaaaaaadddd...... The next is to post short items that people can actually read and "spare them the 1000 word diatribes". Mr. Monk ('tis I) recently posted a piece on Brice Marden and pasted it into MS Word. After removing all the extraneous bits, he did a word count. It seems that a Parrot rattled off a 3,529-word post - a new world's record! This would be too long even for our philosophy conferences! Veeeeeeerrrryyyy bad!

So how about if we keep this one short? A good idea, since my desk is about four inches deep in articles and reminders about stuff I want to write about; and this post isn't about anything except flying off with an owl and getting lost for three weeks. Which brings me to... Valentine's Day! (And I haven't done a holiday post since Christmas, so I guess I'm due.) Parrot and Owl (by which I will lovingly refer to Parrot's wise Girlfriend) ran off to Duvet for a romantic drink. Other patrons were indulging in the dubious honor of paying $95 per person to lounge around an oversized mattress and eat sushi, or something that looked roughly like it - we never got close enough to the culinary cuddlers to see what they were actually stuffing down... errr, their throats. (Well, there's a correction that didn't fix anything.) Parrot and Owl wisely saved their money and sat at the bar. We each had some variation on a mimosa, consisting of champagne and peach schnappes; I guess it has a name but I don't know it. The thrifty birds (okay, this thrifty bird) ponied up $33.60 for their eight or so ounces of liquour; I mean, for the opportunity to watch their spendthrifty peers get horny over dinner, temporarily thankful for being preserved from the frigid, slushy mess awaiting them beyond. Duvet also sports a large jellyfish tank (SpongeBob, go away!) and plays new agey music to enhance the feeling that this experience is so totally pre-21st century. No surprise that there were tables (yes they have some) available on Valentine's Day.

Duvet's bathroom consists of a large dimly lit room with stalls arranged in a U shape. A napkin valet person sits by a handwash basin in the middle. The stall doors are two way glass, so you can see the valet but (presumably) he can't see you. In this situation I would imagine that most of Duvet's clientele would prefer a woman, but no such forethought on the part of Duvet. Or perhaps that's just why they have a guy there... Owl was wondering, does closing the lock turn on the two-way thing, otherwise you can see inside? Owl was happy she locked the door. Parrot didn't care; he pees with his back to guys all the time. And when Parrot is perched on his lamppost, caution is strongly advised.

Next, the lovebirds waltzed over to Francisco's Centro Vasco, a restaurant where the cuisine can hardly be called gourmet, but the seafood can definitely be called gourmand. Specifically, Francisco's serves lobsters of up to 20 lbs; some of the shells they have hanging up are larger than a 6 year old child. On this occasion the staff approached a nearby table with two options for the pot (vat? cauldron?) - a 9 pound monster, and an even more daunting 12 pound behemoth. Natural the big guy was the unlucky one (both were alive). The lovebirds dined on less conspicuous fare - a seafood paella (girlfriend ate the bivalves, I ate the other stuff) and a little 1 1/4 pound crustacean. (Parrot is a Scorpio - crustaceans are his friends. But they taste good too.)

The first time I was at Centro Vasco I noticed the place had one virtue other than lobsters with pituitary cases - an unusually high proportion of women whose only common virtue with a boiled lobster is that they were drop-dead gorgeous. (Hey, this blog is about aesthetics, ain't it?) My second visit was consistent with that experience. Yes, I'm talking about you, Owl, of course... but also birds of some other feathers. I'm not sure if there is a conceptual relationship going on here - lobsters, beautiful women... you figure it out. (And no cheap shots, like "they can be pretty crabby"... even if it's true, IYHO.)

Well, according to MS Word I'm at 878 words, and I haven't gotten to one of the main points yet. Damn. (Maybe Google could put a Word Count feature in the Blogger editor?) Anyway, here it is. Owl got a big bunch of flowers for VD (maybe we should change the initials of this holiday?) to help attract whatever little creatures Owls like to eat. (Do bivalves like flowers, I wonder?) And a box of chocolates from Jacques Torres (Google them; best chocolates in New York, an objective fact). And a wallet from Ferragamo, designed to show the purchaser just how thin your own wallet can become. And Parrot got... no, don't go there. Well, let's put it this way. Owl's 7.1 megapixel Cannon Powershot camera was getting a bit, how do you say, out of fashion, due to the release of a new 7.1 megapixel Cannon Powershot camera. So Owl bought herself the latest greatest 7.1 megapixel Cannon Powershot camera, and Parrot is now the proud owner (or is it borrower? I'm still not quite sure...) of a, you guessed it, 7.1 megapixel Cannon Powershot camera. You may have noticed the paucity of original images in The Parrot's Lamppost. That's because Parrot's only digital camera until now has been his pitiful little Verizon cellphone. This will all be corrected now. Parrot is armed and dangerous. Maybe he will even learn how to download the images. Parrot is very excited. Squawck!

Well, I've tried my best in the last paragraph to be as wordy as possible. Wouldn't want to shock anyone by starting off with an under-1000-word post after such a long absence. Not fair to my audience. Such as it is. Next up: a hit counter! Look for it soon, so I can count how many humans are failing to listen to me. Whatever the hit counter says, just subtract that from 6,000,000,000, and you get a good idea of how widely you are ignored. Amazing what we can do with technology these days. Well, I'm off to take some shots with my new out-of-fashion 7.1 megapixel Cannon Powershot camera. First stop? Maybe Francisco's Centro Vasco? Thanks, Owl! ;-)