Fashion crimes against humanity

All y'all know I love the '70s, for lots of reasons but especially for its politics of dancing, which for me encapsulates the decade's open and relaxed attitude, its positive vibe, and its diversity of ethnicities, sexualities, ages, income levels, social strata, body types, and more. It was OK to be gay, lesbian, straight, and bisexual. It was OK to be African-American, Latino, Anglo, a woman, a man, rich, poor, middle class. It was OK to be. At least that's how it seemed from my vantage as a boy and then a teen. There were lots of possibilities, lots of positivity. The horizon was endless, the future bright and welcoming.

And the music--such a mix! Glam, pop, rock, Southern rock, punk, new wave, soul, funk, jazz, and, yes, disco--and some or all of it coupled together in the same song.

All y'all know as well that disco is one of my favorite genres. I like it in part because of the diversity it embraced and represented but also in part because of the beat. I, for whatever reason, have always been a slave to the rhythm, even though my Anglo-Saxon culture too often seems to fear, reject, and denigrate it. Considering the beat . . . what? Too "ethnic"? Too feminine? Too gay? Too queer? Disco was about the party, sure, about self-focused dancefloor fantasies and glamorous excess. But I think there was some love and kindness there, too. Joy, happiness, and community. And sometimes even more depth than it's give credit for.

I don't think this is just my fantasy either. I'm currently reading excerpts from Vince Aletti's The Disco Files 1973-78: New York's Underground, Week by Week, a compendium of articles and charts from the '70s disco scene, along with some before-after-the-fact interviews with Aletti (a columnist, scene-chronicler, and record distributor during the era), who describes what the disco heyday was like:

There's this scene at the end of [the movie] The Last Days of Disco, one of the characters has this very idealistic speech where he says disco was a whole movement. It was funny, but it was really true and people felt that. They felt disappointed that the idealistic quality of it was being trampled over, in favor of money and celebrity. As much as disco was glitzy and certainly loved celebrity culture, there was never a sense of it being driven by that. It was much more driven by an underground idea of unity (Aletti, 1998, p. 466).

All to the good, and all to the sad and the bad that that feeling was lost due to the "disco sucks" backlash, Anita Bryant, the Reagan and neo-con era, HIV/AIDS, and the fierce, sometimes hate-filled reaction to the culture of the '60s and '70s. Those were "Good Times," and I'm so sorry that they disappeared in a huff of money-grubbing, wowserism, and not-in-my-backyard bitterness.

Nevertheless, despite my love for the era, there's one thing I cannot abide about the '70s: The absolute vileness of the clothes. The colors, the fabrics, the cut, and the style. Profoundly horrid, incredibly tragic, viscerally repulsive.

Oh sure, you could slap a Gucci-Pucci-Fiarucci label on it, but there was nothing flattering about it, except maybe that the clothes did allow for a diversity of body types more so than today's lines. You could be heavier in a caftan or hairier in a leisure suit, but if that's your only saving grace, you probably need to go back to design studio and the catwalk and try, try again.

I hate to go there because it is so so easy, such a cheap laugh, the ugliness of '70s fashion. Mind you, I don't think the '80s, in retrospect, were any prettier. Edgier and sleeker perhaps but still, ultimately, hollow and very dated-looking nowadays--that "triangle" design motif with the broad shoulders tapering to a narrow waist pervaded every piece, all of which were shaded in equally decade-giveaway colors.

I favor a lot of '50s and '60s design. It must be the MadMan in me, but that era looks so much classier and classic (albeit preppy-conservative at times), even if the experimentation of the late '60s often looks clownish and tawdry nowadays, an odd mix of Dacron and denim, in organic shapes and lurid colors.

A couple of cases in point--the dancers in the video above by Spanish pop-rock-disco combo Barrabás and this one below by the oddly named Spanish/French band Bimbojet.



Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. Fugly foxtrot at that. Nothing you'd ever want to wear yourself, let alone see on anyone you know, except maybe on someone who dumped you for a Solid Gold dancer.

But, again, no cheap shots: Rather than blaming disco, the '70s, hedonism, the Gay Agenda, a mass outbreak of vision and taste impairment, or any other easy-ways-out, let's call out the real culprit: Tacky couture and fascist glamor, courtesy of one Generalísimo Francisco Franco.

I'm (mostly) not making this up and only being slightly ridiculous: Dictatorships do seem to have a certain (horrid) fashion sense. Rarely is it good, with the possible exception of you-know-who. More often it is simply, cruelly vulgar. Really, how often do you need to look at photos of Eva Braun and Marlene Dietrich side-by-side to see that La Dietrich not only left behind a genocidal maniac with a really stupid mustache but also lots of treacly, frilly Berliner Alexander-plotz hausfrau drag? And how many times do you have see a certain V. Putin shirtless on the back of the people's long-suffering horse to long for the days when horse-drawn carriages pulled up to balls and banquets and gentleman sauntered about the manor house in well-cut Eugene Onegin-inspired shirts, trousers, and suits?

It's bad enough that these anal retentive mass murderers abuse their citizens' basic human rights--must they also destroy their nations' innate sense of style? The Italian working class had it going on with its headscarves, neck kerchiefs, and wrap dresses. Bendito Benito "Muscles" Mussolini, with that lampshade pull on the end of his modified fez, so did not.

During a fashion war, intervention and action are vital now, not later. Where is the UN General Council when you need it? No doubt helping victims of famine, conflict, disease, and the like. Yet while the UN dithers, miserable wretches must dance around in jewel-toned Arabian Nights' fantasies and mustard-yellow-and-sage-green baby poop-striped travesties, with no one caring, no one coming to their rescue, not even Couturiers-sans-Frontières.

Clams on the half-shell and roller skates? A rumor has it that it's getting late. Time marches on, just can't wait. There's not a moment to waste when the survival of humankind's fashion sense is at stake!

If your sex toy lasts for more than 4 hours . . .

Before the fall

Let's just call it "failure to raunch."

Apparently, some in Paris have been a-quiver over the last few days due to the fact that a gigantic, kelly green, um, "Christmas tree" has been erected in the the posh Place Vendôme area of the city.

After a couple of days of outrage--including the issuance of some very public slaps to the artist's face--someone has taken the matter into his own hands (ahem) and purposefully deflated the Jolly Green Giant Sex Toy of Paris.

Quelle tragique. Or not.

Personally, I think the Butt Plug Assassins (and wouldn't that make a great name for a punk band?) missed a wonderful opportunity. The artist notes that indeed his alleged work of art was designed to resemble a giant sex toy but also could be interpreted to resemble a Christmas tree. Ho ho ho.

So, conservative Parisians, why not make it a Christmas tree? Form a fashionably ensemble'd guerrilla group and decorate that gros garçon kamikaze style--guns at the ready to blast balls of paint in colors that look like ornaments and lights, maybe get a ladder and string some veiny garland around the circumference, and then climb to the top and plant at the tip a rather splashy-looking star, something with an effervescent spray of glitter, that erupts or perhaps smokes.

Really, art critics, use your imagination. You'll be far ahead of the artist if you do.

I don't know that I think Paris was "humiliated" by this vision/derision in polyurethane, as Printemps Paris claims. At the same time, is the work really worth the outrage? It just seems like another lazy conceptual art piece, something the artist conjured up to provoke easy shame and cheap indignation. Like the Big Rubber Ducky that inhabited the Pittsburgh waterfront a year ago--but with an outsized erection. In other words, not much more than a smutty joke told between work colleagues but accidentally overheard by your clients when you thought you'd disconnected the conference call but, oops, no, you hadn't.

Not that that's ever happened to anyone I know.

So wow, Monsieur Artiste. Vous êtes such a vrai trailblazer. [Insert sarcastic tone.]

Essentially, Madonna trod the same ground with her Sex book way back in the last century--and that was hardly an original idea then. It was all designed to provoke, to challenge, to engorge public opinion, and have it spew forth all over proper society--oh, and sell records and un-stall a career, too.

So let's not pretend we're noble, Painter Man, that we're doing this all as an ironic public service to the perpetually pinched. I've been to the Tate Modern. I know bullshit when I see it in an art gallery and read about in an exhibition catalog.

Thus, one of my reactions to this sort of thing is, meh, how boring, how childish. It's the same reaction I have whenever I watch The Colbert Report or The Daily Show and the Colorado legalization of marijuana gets a mention. A certain element in the crowd always whoops it up, shouts, celebrates, sounding like thirsty frat boys at a Rush Week kegger. Beer! Dope! Sex! Human behavior reduced to the most thuddingly dull and monosyllabic of advertising campaigns!

Despite promises by skin creams and surgeons to the contrary, you simply cannot be 16 forever, dudes. More to the point, why would you want to? What's missing from your life that makes you idealize your youth and infantilize your joy?

My other reaction is--if I must be honest--a small amount of embarrassment. It's not because I'm shocked by the sight of a sex toy--trust me on this. While seeing one out of context, in public, is provocative and makes a vague point (and hence the term conceptual art), it also seems . . . immodest--akin to too much sharing about your bodily functions, too many sloppy tongue kisses on the TV screen, too great a knowledge about what turns you on and turns you off when you're just an acquaintance, and I really don't want or need to know.

Yes, you can share everything with everyone. But do you really need to? Shocking the easily shocked is hardly a bold maneuver. About all it does is draw attention to yourself, which I suspect is mostly the point anyway.

And yet, I'm blogging about this, finding it amusing, the reactions from the quickly enraged as well as the staff writers tripping and dripping all over themselves to find the best penis pun in the mix. As a Facebook friend of mine suggested earlier today, The Guardian did a nice job, but I still don't think there's a clear winner in The Chronicles of Wangia just yet.

* * *

Even though I'm definitely a Westerner and that's unlikely to change anytime soon, the West in general seems incredibly, unnecessarily immodest, prurient, and frivolous to me these days, this being an excellent example of the anything-goes-just-add-nipple-clamps approach to popular culture. I don't know that I think we should live our lives cloistered, concealed, and chastened, too frightened, too ashamed to be our real selves, beat down by the wowsers among us. I benefit in many ways from a more liberal, laissez-faire culture, and I have no desire to step back in time--at least not too far back. Nothing before the Second World War in the U.S., please, or possibly during the interwar years in Europe, thank you.

I also don't want us to live our lives as if the whole world were watching. But the fact remains that the whole world is watching and judging and dismissing or despising us for our "freedom"--or maybe it's just because we're tacky fools who have an it's-all-just-one-big-dirty-joke take on life.

I feel the same sort of embarrassment when I am reminded of some of the street festivals in San Francisco, particularly the Folsom Street Fair, in which bodily functions are eroticized, S&M peccadilloes are put on display--and then immediately photographed and filmed by religious conservatives and shared with their converts to further "prove" that gays are "dirty," "disgusting," and "perverted."

No thank you, not even a cigarette

Of course we're not all like that and some of us are bothered by the behavior of our brethren and the resulting undue pressure that we need to "get with it" in order to be hip, cool, hot, or radically out there. Alternately, that doesn't mean we all want a spouse, 2.5 kids, and a mortgage in the 'burbs either. There's a lot to be said for living between the extremes, one foot on this red dot, a hand on the blue one, an elbow on yellow, a knee on green, Twister-style.

At the same time, I can't spend a lot of time worrying about what other consenting adults get up to in their spare time, in their private or semi-private rooms, with whom, and with which household objects.

However, conversely, I don't like being tarred with the same brush or having my hide tanned by the same bullwhip. Yes, it would be great if the world would just lighten up a tad and let people be. But that's unlikely to happen--and even if it did, would we be prepared for the Libertarian-styled, don't-tread-on-me-but-don't-mind-if-I-do-tread-on-you lengths such a world would be likely to extend to?

Maybe it's because I grew up in the South and in a small town that I'm particularly attuned to this dis-ease over showing too much of your private self to the world. The goal growing up was for everyone to not know your business, any of your business, or even to know what the inside of your house looked like. Because you knew those who found out anything would talk about you in the most unflattering (and inaccurate) terms behind your back while smiling sweetly and insincerely to your face. You might get lucky and catch them in their hypocrisy--overhear them dissing and deriding you or read about them getting caught (literally) with their pants down or dress up with someone else's spouse. But you couldn't bank on that--although their sanctimony had a life-time guarantee.

Thus, sometimes I think it might not be a bad idea to cover up just a little, to tone it down a notch, to share that thought when we're among friends but maybe not shout it so loud while we're seated next to a family of four at Red Lobster. Use our inside kink, as it were.

And keep that sex toy in the drawer of the bedside table--or if we feel impelled to share it in public, try San Francisco or Amsterdam where it's likely to be more appreciated.

Evenings in Moscow

Nostalgia time: This is the version of "Moscow Nights" or "Evenings in Moscow" (in Russian: "Подмосковные Вечера") by Soviet-era jazz great, George (aka Georgiy) Garanian and the Melodiya Ensemble. As noted in the description for the YouTube video, this version of "Moscow Nights" was played as a sort of interval signal or signature tune--a signal or piece of music that identifies a radio station and helps the listener fine tune the radio, especially a shortwave radio, to the broadcast--for the old Radio Moscow. According to the comments section for the video--for once, not as vile, racist, homophobic, xenophobic, and sexist as most of the comments sections on the 'Tube--this was a specially commissioned version of the Russian standard by the broadcaster.

The question for me is whether this version was ever available on vinyl, CD, or as a high-quality mp3. So far, no luck on this one. I can find other versions by Garanian and the Melodiya Ensemble, but I would love to find a copy of this one--the sleek, jazzy, summer-in-the-city version.

This version makes me nostalgic for a number of reasons. In the 1970s and even into the early 1980s, I used to listen to Radio Moscow on shortwave. I don't think it was for the programming, other than Moscow's take on the news, somewhat skewed reports on life in America, and the occasional cultural moment, like Soviet jazz recordings. But listen I did, just as I did to Radio RSA: The Voice of (Apartheid-Era) South Africa, the BBC, the Voice of America, Paris Calling Africa, Radio Australia, Deutsche Welle, Radio Prague, Berlin Radio International, and hundreds of other stations--sometimes for the news, the music, and the cultural programming, sometimes just for the exoticism of the broadcast location. Iceland! Cameroon! Radio Sutatenza in Colombia! ORTF in Papeete, Tahiti! And, yes, even the exoticism of Soviet-style communism intoned--politely, firmly, humorlessly--by quasi-American-sounding voices.

There is nostalgia, too, for my trip to the Soviet Union, one of the highlights of my life (so far). Washington, Helsinki, Leningrad, Tallinn, Moscow, Helsinki, Stockholm, New York, Washington, May into June 1985--a journey that still makes my heart hum, moan, and ache, with the sights, sounds, voices, aromas, and thoughts almost tangible 30 years later.

It was my first time overseas and led to some other overseas trips, such as Australia in 1987, because of friends I made in my travels. I got to use my very limited Russian (often badly). I made a fool out of myself on more than one occasion (I was all of 23 at the time; in theory, I'm allowed to be immature, even though I won't allow myself that excuse in my memories). I was tired by the end of it, sick of dealing with American jerks (and the occasional Russian one), a little homesick, a little hungover, and needing some downtime and solitude, being the introvert that I am. As a result, Helsinki and Stockholm are somewhat of a blur.

Yet I was homesick for Russia, for Europe, after I got home to Washington. I felt I should be elsewhere, anywhere but here, a feeling I still experience regularly, though less painfully nowadays. I don't think it's so much that I thought I should be European; it's more the case that I just was ready to travel, learn, experience the universe, and meet people who had a larger worldview and more knowledge about life, culture, history, and the now than I--a little hayseed/hipster wannabe from rural North Carolina--had at the time (or even today). But I only had so much money to do so, and no real guidance from family and friends on how to go about it.

Afternoons in Leningrad, circa May 1985

So in some ways that first trip abroad was wonderful, revelatory, sublime. But in other ways, it was painful, harsh, and frustrating--it just made me want more.

I still feel that way today, often frustrated by my limited vantage from Pittsburgh and the insularity around me. I'm impatient for change and hopeful that the next change, the next move, the next job, the next trip, will salve my restlessness just a bit.

But maybe that wouldn't be such a good thing. Perhaps it's better for me to stay restless and hungry for something more, something better. Frustrating, yes, but it is ultimately oddly enjoyable.

Well, maybe not enjoyable, nor satisfying. It's just who I am. And it's past time to accept that, be a little proud of it, and celebrate it now and into an uncertain, opportunity-filled future.

This weekend's read--And Party Every Day: The Inside Story of Casablanca Records

I'm going to try something new with this blog--start writing more about what I'm reading.

It's not that you've been missing much. Simply stated, I've lost that reading feeling over the last couple of years. My normal explanation is that it's an occupational hazard--for me, as a librarian, information, words, text, are just so much "product" and so much noise at the end of a long day. Books are a commodity. Information = work. I get tired of seeing text all day

No, I don't read books at work, despite the idealized stereotype of the librarian at work. (I have shushed a couple of people in my time--and been shushed myself by library patrons for being a little too loud and boisterous.) However, I do read screens, memos, articles, websites, reports, e-mails, what have you. The thought of doing this even more when I get home, especially on a device like a Kindle or a Nook, is rather horrifying--or maybe just depressing. Or possibly both.

Couple this with the vague concept of ownership surrounding e-books (do you really own that book or are you just renting and borrowing it for a period of time?), preservation issues (will you be able to read that book in the same e-format 20 years from now? 10 years from now? Probably not), and not having a lot of room for books/wanting to travel light on any future moves, and I just find myself feeling indifferent to the printed word. Shocking, I know.

Nevertheless, I'm trying to get the feeling again. Last month I devoured Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, with 600 pages flying by during a week away from work. I will try to write up my thoughts on that book soon; while it probably is not perfect, I really enjoyed it, more than anything I've read in a long while--which may not be saying much as I really haven't read anything substantial in a long while. The novel Triomf by Marlene Van Niekerk was the last hefty tome I took on--a book I bought at The Strand in New York in 2005 and finally finished in . . . 2011? And I still haven't written up my thoughts about that one, which has left a heavy impression on me.

I may even do something radical and finally move past page 25 in Le Libraire by Gérard Bessette, my first (short) novel in French or at least try to finish A Spy in the House of Love by Anaïs Nin, another short novel and one that is testing my new-found interest in and patience for reading.

In the meantime, I'm turning my eye to my first love and the original intent of this blog, pop culture, by reading And Party Every Day: The Inside Story of Casablanca Records by Larry Harris, an executive at Casablanca during the mid- to late 1970s (co-written with Curt Gooch and Jeff Suhs). So far, so good--it's been an enjoyable read, although not one that I've read sequentially. Instead, I've skipped around to find and savor the parts of most interest--how Casablanca founder Neil Bogart started the label, the arrival of Giorgio Moroder and Donna Summer on the scene, and bits and pieces about Alec R. Constandinos, Jacques Morali, and Henri Belolo, the latter two of Village People fame.

Along the way, I've been reminded that Casablanca Records was also the home of KISS and Parliament/Funkadelic, something I've mostly forgotten, and two groups that have had amazing staying power over the decades, KISS for its image and Parliament/Funkadelic for its wild, innovative, influential, and highly sampled sound.

Casablanca, too, had a "filmworks," having produced not just the lamentable (or maybe just lame) Thank God Its Friday, but also the summer of '77 blockbuster, The Deep, among others.

What I've enjoyed most, of course, is gaining some insights into the personality and work ethic of Donna Summer. Harris writes that, based on her early recordings with Giorgio Moroder, Neil and he weren't that impressed with Summer on initial listen. Later, once that realized how talented (and invaluable) both were, Harris describes Summer as having a certain amount of drama surrounding her. Later, he notes that her marriage to Bruce Sudano settled things down and made her very happy. The author also seems to bear no ill will toward her for jumping to Geffen Records, which, along with the (alleged) death of disco, was the beginning of the end for the label. Rather, he seems to have facilitated her leaving for (according to him) altruistic reasons.

I also like his positive takes on Paul Jabara and Jacques Morali and his not-unexpected takedown of Village bully Victor Willis, the one straight member of the group (other than producer Belolo) who by numerous accounts, here and elsewhere, seems like an asshole of the first order.

There are some surprises along the way--Harris noting that despite seeming and mostly being a gay-friendly record label (pretty much unknown heretofore), there were those in Casablanca management and staff that were indeed homophobic (not Neil Bogart, however). And there were those who didn't initially get that the Village People were a very gay act.

Interesting, too, is to read how often the music was viewed as "product" by executives, promoters, staff, and others (although seemingly not the artists themselves). Disco wasn't taken seriously at first (if ever), but it became a huge money-maker for the label, at least for a time. However, even KISS, a "serious" rock-and-roll act (OK, not really) was viewed in terms of money, product, risk, liability, promotion--the mechanics of the record industry.

Of course this shouldn't be such a surprise; it's just me being quite naive about how business works. It also shows my naivete about pop culture--it is often commerce that we attach deeper meaning to. Is that justified? Or does the meaning exist upon inception and creation of the work and the response to the creation is commercial? I can't really say; it's probably something of both. I'm unlikely to know unless I finally get that master's degree in popular culture from Bowling Green State University I've promised I would for years now.

Then again, in my profession, am I any different than a record company exec or flunky? I surround myself with literature, scholarship, and information, but they are really just product, commodities, costing money, requiring promotion, incurring liabilities and risks? Etc., etc., etc.

I don't mean this to sound negative about my profession or even the record industry. It just is what it is. Nevertheless, in my case, it's not too late to remember to appreciate books and information for the treasures that they truly are.

Which probably means a career change at some point, or retirement, or that master's degree from Bowling Green. I think it's plenty obvious that I'm not close to either of those events at this phase of my life. Alas and alack.

So in the meantime, I'll keep reading And Party Every Day and then hopefully quickly move on to Turn the Beat Around and The Disco Files (for which I am not paying the going rate), finally making it onto my suddenly rejuvenated reading list.

Get up and boogie, y'all.

No photographs, please

La gata negra del barrio

Meet Miss Kitty, my new, fast-moving neighbor, who, while extraordinarily affectionate for a cat, apparently has a "no photographs" clause in her contract. She just moves too darned quickly for me to get a good snap of her.

Normally, I am indifferent to the charms of cats. However, I am willing to make an exception for this one. She has begun greeting me every evening when I get home from work, almost every morning as well, and even during the day on weekends. Whenever she hears my garage door open, whether for my bike or my car, she flies out from a nearby alley, squalling hello, rubbing up against my legs, wanting me to stroke her back, her face, and even, tentatively, her belly. She has climbed into my lap once and even let me pick her up with no fuss just the other day.

Oh Miss Kitty, you had me at "meow."

I'd like to think that this cat-man love is limited just to me--and I may be right in that assumption. When Cairo last visited, she seemed surprised, even indifferent to him (and he's much more of a cat man than me) and even somewhat to me. She let me pet her . . . sort of. She let Cairo pick her up, which I didn't have the nerve to do prior to that, fearing the usual reaction I get from cats. (Pet me pet me pet me! How dare you pet me! Scratch!) But her reaction to both of us was all very perfunctory, very polite, very this-is-what-I'm-required-to-do. And then she coughed up a hairball in our presence.

It was like she suddenly went from being her normal Brazilian self to being British in spirit in the blink of an eye.

The next day, when Cairo left, she was back in black, with la Gata Negra hanging out with me while I tried to repair my bike brakes. This took hours (and I still didn't get them right), but le Chat Noir explored the garage, lolled about on the driveway, rubbed up against my hands and legs, and invited her (I'm assuming) kitten over for a visit. Even while I bitched, cursed, and dropped tools all over the concrete, she didn't sprint away in fear.

If all cats were this sweet, this charming, this happy, I'd consider getting one of my very own. Nonetheless, I don't think I'm likely to become a cat person anytime soon--and if I do, feel free to report me to the authorities as I will have officially lost my freakin' mind.

But I could get used to having Miss Kitty around the house. At least if she could stop coughing up hairballs.