Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie.

The Year in Music, vol. 1

I’m trying something a bit different this year. Rather than an alphabet soup offering my take on the year just passed, I’ll be rolling out several short lists — starting today with the five biggest disappointments of 2015.

I want to be clear up front: These are not necessarily albums I disliked. They are albums that under-performed when compared to earlier work by these artists. In that way, they stand as disappointments.
One other caveat: I only included records that I bought — so that leaves a lot of music on the floor.
The list:
1. Neil Young, The Monsanto Years. I love Neil’s music, but this one is a real dog — in a long line of recent dogs. Musically, The Monsanto Years rocks. It is Crazy Horse muscular and full of distortion. But the lyrics are pedantic and unimaginative, overtly political without being poetic or inspiring.
2. Adele, 25. The most apt way to describe what may have been the most-hyped record of the year is meh. See my review here.
3. Father John Misty, I Love You, Honeybear. I liked this on first listen, but found that it faded and couldn’t withstand repeated hearings, going from intriguing to pedestrian quickly.
4. Best Coast, California Nights. I like this album, but it feels flat when compared to the band’s much more creative earlier work.
5. Kacey Musgraves, Pageant Material. Another album I liked on my first few passes, it ends up sounding like too much contemporary country — which is unfortunate, given the excellence of her debut.
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Notes on ‘The Force Awakens’

Star Wars: The Force Awakens Trailer (Official) on Disney Video

Star Wars: The Force Awakens is out nearly two weeks now and, as could be predicted after the release-week hype, we are witnessing a critical and fan backlash of sorts.

A friend posts that The Force Awakens is the worst movie to gross more than a billion dollars in its first weekend. Others are calling it derivative, going so far as to call it a form of plagiarism. The acting has been derided, the storytelling questioned, and on and on.

On the other side is the full-bore defense, with point-by-point rebutted.

I can see both sides of this: The Force Awakens is a thrilling ride, well paced and compelling, helping to erase the stench of the three prequels. It also is derivative and was over-hyped.

I saw the movie this week, for the second time, which gave me a chance to temper my initial enthusiasm and let the hype recede. My judgment remains essentially the same: The Force Awakens re-energizes the Star Wars franchise, recapturing the feel of the originals. But I have to admit the film is flawed, but only because the entire franchise is also flawed: It’s really nothing more than a glorified cowboys-and-Indians saga layered with Eastern and Christian mysticism.

I think much of the hype on both sides owes to Star Wars’ place in our imagination. It is generational, and it means we remember the film as being a better cinematic product than it actually is. As I said, the original hits on all of the problem spots: cliches? Got ’em. A overly simple storyline? Yep. Less-than-stellar acting? Got that too.

The new movie is plagued by all of these things, as well, plus it is weighed down by the nearly 40 years of memories that few films have to carry. Even the longest-tenured franchises — James Bond, for instance — have less emotional baggage to carry.

So, what do we make of this latest awakening?

1. It is, as I said, a rebirth of sorts. My friend Vince called it a reboot without the rebooting, and I think that is accurate. It carries all of the old tropes without getting bogged down. It retreads much of the same thematic territory — birth of the hero, good. v. evil, the need to balance the “force” — without tripping over itself.

2. It is derivative and an excuse to sell toys. But we can say that about the previous four films (Empire Strikes Back remains the most complete and fleshed out of the series, while the three “prequels” are just eye candy).

3. The acting is universally mediocre, but consistent with the B-movie-meets-blockbuster sensibility that buttresses the entire franchise.

4. It is great to see Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher, along with Chewbacca, but Ford hasn’t turned in a good performance in years. As Vince said after we saw it earlier this week, Ford just mugs his way through this.

5. The decision to have a woman be the newest Jedi savior is genius. After years of essentially reinforcing gender stereotypes, we have a female character who not only breaks the mold, but needs no help from anyone. Ray makes this film work.

6. Finn gets to play a variant of the Han Solo arc — struggling within himself over whether to join the resistance. It is a story as old as stories and serves this movie well.

7. The good-v.-evil storyline has less of a Reagan “Morning in America” feel than the earlier films did and more of a sense of liberty v. tyranny. Leia is no longer a princess, but a general in a rebel army, allowing the film to move away from an endorsement of rightful heirs and monarchical bloodlines.

8. Whatever else can be said about this movie, it moves. Its pacing is, with a few exceptions, exceptional. I found that I couldn’t fully sit back, even on second viewing, even as when I knew what has going to happen.

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Music notes: The Byrds in 7

We went to see a friend’s band on Sunday — a pickup band featuring guys playing their favorite classic rock. It was a loose affair, but the harmonies were tight and it made for a nice respite from grading and the craziness of the season.

It was an interesting mix of songs, but one jumped out — “I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better” by The Byrds. The guys did a nice job with a song that, while sounding simple, is one that helped remake rock ‘n’ roll. Critics credit The Byrds with creating a new genre, folk rock — a hybrid of Dylan folk and Beatles rock. That’s probably too simple — 1965 was also the year Dylan went electric and released both Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited and The Beatles issued Rubber Soul.

But The Byrds added something to the mix — a California feel, perhaps, or a softer sound infused with a kinetic charge that made it feel revolutionary.

“I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better” appears on Mr. Tambourine Man, which came out in the summer of 1965. A second Byrds album, Turn! Turn! Turn!, arrived in December of that year — making this year that is closing the 50th anniversary of the band. (It also is the 50th anniversary of what may be the single most significant year in rock history, but that’s another discussion.)

What strikes me is that The Byrds are sometimes overlooked, that when we tick off the list of important and influential rock acts, The Byrds do not always make the list, though there is no question they belong.

1. 12-string guitars: The Byrds were not the first to use the 12-string, but the band’s reliance on the instrument created a signature sound that many have tried to emulate. The jangling sound has influenced many, most notably early Tom Petty and the power pop movement led by Big Star.

2. Roger — or is it Jim — McGuinn: McGuinn was a transformative guitar player. Rolling Stone ranked him 95th (I’d rank him higher) and had this to say about him:

Roger McGuinn’s sparkling, chordal 12-string Rickenbacker riffs on the Byrds‘ early hits were the sonic bridge between folk and rock – and an irreplaceable color in rock’s palette: Every indie band who’s more interested in beatific strumming than screaming solos owes him a debt (the striking break in “Bells of Rhymney” could be on a Smiths record). McGuinn could do a lot more than chime, however, as demonstrated by his still-astonishing psychedelic-raga-Coltrane licks on “Eight Miles High.”

3. Gram Parsons and the creation of alt-country: Four words (an album title) — Sweetheart of the Rodeo. Simply a breathtaking work, it is Americana or alt-country years before we recognized those genres.

4. Those harmonies: In early rock, only The Beatles’ use of harmonies was as divine.

5. “Eight Miles High”: Listen to McGuinn’s guitar. Just listen. No one was doing that in rock at the time, and few have done it as impressively since.

6. “So You Want to be a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star”: A parody of the the industry, the song flat out rocks — and features among the greatest trumpet work (by the legendary Hugh Masekela) on a rock record you will ever hear.

7. Aside from, maybe, Jimi Hendrix — and this a big maybe — no one covers Dylan like Roger McGuinn and company. From their debut record, Mr. Tambourine Man through the early ’70s, the band in its many incarnations turned out one great cover after another of the rock bard’s songs. (They were eventually collected on a single record long after the band split.)

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#onPC: A Twitter essay on political correctness

Another Twitter experiment — an essay on political correctness and its variations,

Send me an e-mail.

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#twowrongs — a Twitter essay of sorts on ‘The Donald’

I’ve been seeing a lot of this kind of reasoning on Facebook the last couple of days (I removed the name of the poster):

The point of this link and others is to call liberals out as hypocrites. “Carter did it,” this argument goes, so what do have to say about that?

My response is simple: so what? Carter was wrong. I have no problem saying that and many of my liberal friends feel as I do.

But the reality is this is part of a larger pattern used to deflect focus from what is on the table today.

Called out by a friend on this specific point on Facebook, so I offer this clarification (from my Facebook response):

Hyperbole on my part. Yes. It isn’t ethnic or religious cleansing, but the specific targeting of a religious or ethnic group with the intention of separating them in some way (physically, symbolically) from the general population would seem a first step in its direction — hence my calling it a continuum. You start by painting a group as a threat, then you use legal measures to control them in some way (which, at the very least, confers legal status on their separateness), then you expand those measures beyond control, and so on. I think Trump’s rhetoric falls at the beginning of that continuum.

To elaborate further: Banning entry of an individual religious or ethnic group by force of law or executive order is creating a separate legal class for that group, which then opens the doors for other things. Does this mean that a more explicit form of agitation and separate will waltz in through that door? No. A lot of other things would need to occur before something like that might follow. But opening the door does seem a dangerous first step.

This line of argument has been building up for a few days as I attempted to respond on Facebook to some of the memes and links that have been circulating, but the response to my posting of today’s Daily News cover ultimately led me to put it in writing (or tweets):

The Daily News in full crusader mode.

Posted by Hank Kalet on Tuesday, December 8, 2015

So, jump into the fray. What do you think. Answer in the comments, or feel free to join in the fun on Twitter or my Facebook page.

Send me an e-mail.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.