0 In the Wee Small Hours (1955)

(Requested by reader T.J.)

Trying to get my bearings on Frank Sinatra to write about this album, which is a genuine milestone achievement in more ways than one, I took another look at The Man With the Golden Arm, a Sinatra vehicle directed by Otto Preminger that came out the same year and won him an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. It was also the year that Sinatra turned 40. That's an age when most of a person's innocence has worn away, yet when heartbreaks hurt more than ever. The movie, edgy by definition, is about a heroin addict living in an anonymous American slum trying to make it on the straight and narrow. It revels in down-and-out bitterness and squalor, something of a Barfly (or The Panic in Needle Park) for its time, gritty social realism based on a celebrated work by Chicago novelist Nelson Algren. In the Wee Small Hours by contrast is about losing a girlfriend—Ava Gardner, to be specific. It's about heartbreak. Which brings us to the first thing that's a milestone about it. It's a very early, perhaps even first "concept" album. Every song is selected and arranged toward an end of presenting on LP vinyl a portrait of a man (this is not exactly a woman's album), alone and sad after midnight, the hour past which no good happens. A little drunk, perhaps, but in any event can't sleep. Sitting up, vulnerable, in pajamas, feeling out as more embers of the lost innocence of his life fade to ash. It's intended to be played and enjoyed in exactly such circumstances, and it's brilliantly pulled off, built out of hand-picked standards by numerous usual suspects (Rodgers and Hart, Hoagy Carmichael, Duke Ellington), arranged with tender saccharine by Nelson Riddle, and worked out from there to the tiniest detail. I'm impressed more than ever by Sinatra's craft. A quote from John Rockwell (which I pulled out of the liner notes by Pete Welding) really gets at how fine the work here is: "The slight insecurity in the area just above middle C became more pronounced," Rockwell writes about Sinatra's vocal development, saying he was "masterful in exploiting that frailty for expressive purposes." I think that's what I hear going on in "Can't We Be Friends?" in the part of the melody that first goes "I thought I'd found the girl of my dreams / Now it seems, this is how the story ends"—on the word "seems" (and, later, "bust") and the way he finishes the line, as if running away from it. That level of technique has to count as a milestone achievement too. There are times I'm not sure anyone, ever, sang as crisply or on point as Sinatra. The way he hits the notes and lets them go, his phrasing, so often sensitive to the lyric, the way he has of handling and feeling through the melodies. The exercise of attempting to sing along, as always, illustrates how difficult what he's doing actually is. Get this one for the next time you have insomnia and study it closely.

Detail: In the Wee Small Hours (1955)

0 Frank Zappa, cont'd

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Detail: Frank Zappa, cont'd

0 The Man in the High Castle (2015)

(Requested by reader Mon-Sewer Paul Regret.)

USA, 60 minutes, TV pilot

The single most interesting point for me of Philip K. Dick's novel The Man in the High Castle is the premise—in brief, an alternate history in which the Axis powers defeated the Allies in World War II, resulting in a world where North America has been divided into spheres of influence the way Eurasia was divided in our own, with Germany and Japan subsequently conducting their own versions of a Cold War. Early indications from the pilot of a new television miniseries (produced by Amazon) based on one of Dick's signature achievements show that vision preserved well, with deft use of iconography to get the point across. Unlike Dick, however, the latter-day TV adaptors already seem prone to indulging an all too familiar partiality for the delicious, delicious evils of Nazism. Thus, while Dick's novel never strayed over into scenes of German America (occupying the East Coast to approximately the Rocky Mountains, which serve as a buffering "neutral zone" between German and Japanese America), the television series actually opens there, and lovingly observes typical cool television versions of Nazi atrocities. Oh, they are bad—so bad. I have complaints about Dick's narrative myself, about the general obscurity and impulse to include what would become his trademark preoccupations (alternate time streams and parallel realities accessed via drugs and/or mental illness). None of that works for me as well as the singular premise, which in the early '60s (and since) offered a nigh perfect way in to understanding the hideous logic and intractable insanity of the Cold War. It looks so chillingly possible, particularly in those reconstructed maps of North America, very nicely done in the TV pilot. But how to make a story work in the context just might be a universal problem. The series appears to be departing from Dick's own attempts, but I'm dubious they have struck on anything better (or, it must be said, worse). At first I was unimpressed with the true believers in the TV pilot, characters so vividly moved and fascinated by the idea of an alternate history in which the Allies won the war. But then I remembered my own wistful fantasies about undoing Republican control in the US for the past several decades. I would probably be similarly moved and fascinated by film footage of Ronald Reagan not winning those '80s elections. The blankness in Dick's writing, combined with his unusual and evocative ideas, somehow makes it easy for filmmakers and script writers to put their own stamp on his material—think about Blade Runner, Minority Report, and Total Recall. I suspect that's what I see happening in this new television series. Already, with a Big Reveal at the end of the pilot, it is trading in the usual tricks, the beats and rhythms, of present-day television entertainment, with multiple story arcs established and moved along down their early pathways, climaxes every 12 minutes, touching sentimental (and thus easily manipulated) notes of family and patriotism, "freedom and liberty," and with moments of gorgeous human kindness, plus a swelling pop soundtrack ("Edelweiss" as theme song is pretty nifty here). I'm not saying this is bad—one thing about television series these days is they really have unlocked the keys into capturing and controlling their nichy audiences. They can make you cry on command and send you to rousing heights. But it's just not nearly as original as Dick. I would expect more of what we like from television in this version of The Man in the High Castle, but not much more. Certainly, from the pilot, I don't feel compelled to see every episode as soon as I possibly can, but then I don't feel compelled in that direction for Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, or The Wire either, all of which I have been plodding along through for years.

Detail: The Man in the High Castle (2015)

0 Between the Buttons (1967)

(Requested by reader S.S.)

Between the Buttons falls in that trough of Rolling Stones albums between the original focus on rhythm and blues covers and the later turn as world's greatest rock 'n' roll band, from their most obvious period of aping Beatles moves, also known as "psychedelia." Generally I prefer Aftermath and on some days even Their Satanic Majesties Request. But it was good to revisit Buttons again and find something that sounds a lot to me now like Mick Jagger's first solo album—and a pretty good one too, full of inconsequential little songs about yesterday's papers, my obsession, my connections, who's been sleeping here, something happened to me yesterday, etc. Jagger's most foppish persona tends to be front and center, with the bluesy guitar impulses of Brian Jones and Keith Richards often retired well to the background. No covers either—all Jagger/Richards originals. Interestingly, Jagger claims now to still like only "Back Street Girl." But the album still sounds like a Jagger solo to me, with the student of economics way that it calculates and checks off, throwing high signs to the Beatles, Kinks, Who, drugs, preening fashion, and other usual suspects. Jones, perhaps at the beginning of his long slow fade, has traded in for vibraphone, recorder, saxophone, electric dulcimer, and oscillator, among other sounds he contributed. Busy busy. The main difference between the UK and US versions is the inclusion of a couple of big hits for the States album: "Ruby Tuesday" and "Let's Spend [the Night / Some Time, the latter at the famous special request of Ed Sullivan] Together." One of my favorites on Buttons, perhaps because it's relatively strange and fresh to me, was not on the US version: "Please Go Home," which revs up a real nice head. It's altogether tempting to dismiss Between the Buttons as a badly aging sellout, but that's a little silly. From 1965 to maybe 1968 (before going on to deathless editions of classic rock), Jagger and Richards turned out to be first-rate masters of pop songcraft, among the very best, and Between the Buttons is basically a collection of experiments, with varying results and no US hits on the Brit version. As I said I'm more for Aftermath, not least for the one-on-one between signature long album side closers: "Goin' Home" (a brief obsession I still adore when I think to play it) vs. "Something Happened to Me Yesterday," which sounds vain, coy, smug, with (uncredited) brass section—of a piece indeed with Bob Dylan's bawdy "Rainy Day Women," another song I don't like nearly as much as I think I should. It's not really psychedelic, for one thing. I might have benefited from knowing "Something Happened" when I first got into psychedelics. But I didn't, so it's "Tuesday Afternoon" and "Itchycoo Park" that still sound the better and more mysteriously meaningful to me that way. Between the Buttons is essential, of course, because it's the Stones of the period, but it's ultimately in the minor key in every way.

Detail: Between the Buttons (1967)

0 New Year memo

Happy new year, everyone. Hope you are all well and doing fine. As you may have noticed, my blog productivity output is starting to show signs of the downward-sloping curve of so many before me. Blogging is cruel. After a few years of 200+ posts I have struggled to break 150 the past couple of years. This year I might not even make 100—that's the good news and the bad news (or vice versa). With another significant project in the offing, the only thing I'm willing to commit to are weekly book reviews on Sundays, not least because I have a sizable backlog of them and good habits these days about writing things up as I read them.

On the other hand, I think I might want to try requests, if anyone is so inclined. I believe I found one Facebook comment I can interpret as a request for an album review. And maybe some other comment somewhere for a movie? I'll see how they go. If there is any song, album, movie, book, or general topic you want to see me write about, don't hesitate to say in the comments here or any other way you have of contacting me (I'm on Facebook, I'm on Twitter, I subscribe to many newsletters, etc.). Your wish is my command, subject to my approval. To be realistic—well, to be realistic, I don't expect to be overwhelmed by a tidal wave of requests here—but to set expectations, I can likely get to songs and albums more quickly than movies, and books could take a real long time. General topics are totally unpredictable—who requests those anyway? It's all totally unpredictable. It's an experiment!

All best to everyone in the coming year. Thanks for reading my blog. You know who you are and it is appreciated. Drop a line once in awhile.

Detail: New Year memo