When the weather turns cold in Toronto, we all think about flying down Ocho Rios way . . . .
Thank you to the late, great Paul Jabara for your body of work. We just didn't appreciate you enough when you were here among us. I hope in the afterlife you're making "Heaven is a Disco" a dream come true.
I enjoyed this book far more than I probably should have. While it's not perfectly written, it is very entertaining, especially for me, someone who remembers well the rise and fall of Casablanca Records, the Kiss era, Donna Summer, disco, Parliament/Funkadelic, and everything else that Neil Bogart, Larry Harris, et al., begat and bequeathed.
Not all of it was good, but when it was good, it was great, as much for the music as for the fantasy, glamour, and excess it created.
The focus in this book is perhaps more on Kiss than on the others. As more of a disco dolly, I would have preferred more about Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder. Nonetheless, Harris does a good job of conveying some of what was going on with them and their music at the time. He also touches upon the rise of gay culture in the disco era, not shying away from it, although again, I was left wanting more.
That's not really a criticism. I'm just greedy.
While not a Kiss fan and knowing only a little about George Clinton and Parliament, I was nonetheless enthralled to read about their personalities, work, and vision, and how Casablanca hustled to unleash them on a receptive, if unsuspecting, public.
I was a teenager during this era, a time in my mind's eye, when America was still on the move, when the angst and anger of the late '60s had somewhat subsided and the conservatism and consumerism of the '80s had not taken over. So there's a special place in my heart for the people, places, and events described within. People often say the '70s were about nothing, but I think they were about a number of things: harmony, unity, diversity, fun, working out our past social kinks and moving on to a better, more liberated culture. An idealized take on the decade? Perhaps, but I'd match it any day to the accomplishments of the '80s.
Having said that, from some of the events described in these pages, I'm not sure I would have survived if I'd been on that '70s scene. In fact, many didn't. Drugs, decadence, and disease took their toll.
Thus it's great to have Harris's stories about Paul Jabara, Marc Paul Simon, Jacques Morali, Henri Belolo, Casablanca FilmWorks, Donna Summer, George Clinton, the four Kiss solo albums, radio promotion, marketing music, and all the rest. It's a terrific chronicle of a lost time and place and a loving but honest look at the genius and the folly that was Neil Bogart.
Because I've got a head cold and I'm in a cranky mood, let me launch the first counter-offensive in the War on Feet of Clay.
With the sudden death of David Bowie, it's going to be a long day on social media, especially for those of us who never quite "got" him--or perhaps got him only too well. Twitter's the worst of it right now with people I follow making comments like, "I never cried this much when my father died." And then there's Facebook where one "friend" took only about five seconds to bring in the passing of his friend and my former boyfriend Cali two years ago into the mix of misplaced grief.
Not meaning to be cold, but everything comes back to Cali for this guy.
(I should really get back to telling you more about Cali one of these days, shouldn't I? Despite the passing of a couple of years, it's still highly relevant. Even on good days, I often weigh in my mind whether he was cruel to be kind or just plain cruel, a mean-spirited spectre in my life that I still find hanging over me, ready to swoop down on my heart and my mind and pick them to pieces. Just imagine the bad days.)
Please do give me a fudge-ripple break. I will admit to having cried some when a favorite musician died, often because I felt they were under-appreciated or misunderstood during his or her lifetime, or because they were simply gone too soon, in my mind at least. Ditto for when a favorite show has ended or been axed. A world of emotion, comfort, and inspiration is lost. I mean, the tears I spent over Betty's fate at the end of Mad Men was quite ridiculous and embarrassing. In a bad Hitchcock ripoff kind of way, I think she was unjustly punished for not being the ideal that she represented, for figuring out her life and her inner self "too late." Meanwhile, ol' Dirty Dapper Don Draper has panic attacks, a major meltdown, and then gets an epiphany--about how to market Coca Cola.
Pop pop fizz fizz.
But even though I thought Betty got the rawest of deals, I didn't stop on the street and share my special feelings with everyone I met.
Intellectually, I can understand how someone might feel all verklempt about David Bowie and his oeuvre. And this certainly doesn't mean you, dear Reader, shouldn't like
David Bowie or fail to recognize his impact on your life, and share that to some degree with those around you. But perspective, please: Let's not
go overboard and pay him more due or attach more import to him than to the passing of your father or mother or anyone that you actually know.
I don't happen to feel this pain that the world is experiencing at the moment. I can assure you that I never cried as much over anything or anyone than when my father died, a pain that still can bring me to tears nearly nine years later. I can also think of one pet that died too young that can also make me sad from time to time.
But pardonnez-moi if'n I don't join in the mass rending of garments, the collective wailing of "Why?!" at the tomb of the alleged idol that is Steve Jobs David Bowie.
Whether rightly or wrongly, I lost interest in David Bowie during the "China Girl" era. I heard "Just you shut your mouth" one too many times and then Bowie went and said in Rolling Stone, "I was never really bisexual," or words to that effect. And that, at the beginning of the AIDS crisis, at the onset of the backlash against gay people that has only just subsided in the last few years in the U.S., was when many of us desperately needed to hear someone be encouraging and positive about our sexuality and our difference.
But no. Instead we probably got the truth, not the one that we wanted, but the one that had been out there all along: That DB was not gay nor bisexual. That a decade before Bowie had claimed he was bisexual because . . . he was an agent provocateur and needed to stand out in the Glam era? Wanted to make a cultural fashion statement? He wanted to sell some records in the more open-to-the-dandy climate of merry ol' England?
Let me take you back to 1983 when the M in MTV was in full flower and the bloom was fast
coming off the raggedly, jaggedly rose of what seemed to be an honest, edgy,
alternative awakening. That brief moment in our lives from, say, 1977 to
1982 or so (or possibly even just 1980 to 1982 if I'm feeling
particularly pedantic) was quickly turned into a 30-second commercial,
advertising Modern Love and deep pore cleansers, accompanied by a soundtrack of slap bass
and a landscape of quiffy hair. And there was Bowie riding the Honda Scooter into
Reagan- and Thatcher-era consumerism/conservatism along with
everyone else, in that Rolling Stone article talking about the love for his child, what it was like being a
father, blah-di-freakin'-blah.
So at that point the Thin
White Duke became the Thin White Sell-Out for me. More interested in being on trend and clearing up any lingering confusion for the benefit of selling more records in the American market.
Maybe I'm not remembering the text exactly, although a quick perusal of Wikipedia highlighted for me what I recalled best from the article.
What I do remember clearly and freshly is being massively disappointed. I hadn't been out that long, only three years at that point, and despite my protestations otherwise, it would have helped to have someone so high profile not push away the "taint" of alternative sexuality and be supportive and proud of who he was--if indeed he was that person.
And if he wasn't that person, why claim to be otherwise in the first place? To be an agent provocateur? To stand out more than others in the Glam era? To seem edgy or cool? To sell more records in the dandy-friendly climate of merry ol' England?
Oh dear. I'm running the risk of being as it's-all-about-me as the rest of Facebookdom and the Twitterverse. David Bowie wasn't responsible for my happiness and self-worth. I know this, but still . . . the rejection . . . it burns.
Chameleons are interesting and pretty to look at, but you can't really rely on
them to show their true colors. Instead, I prefer having something real
to hang onto to, to believe in, to remember, to give thanks to, as I take the time to enjoy and experience the
people, places, and things I encounter on Life's Great Road
Trip.
* * *
Having said all this, I will go on record to proclaim that I like to adore "Fame," "Fashion," "Sound and Vision," "Heroes" (including Ewan MacGregor singing some verses of it in Moulin Rouge), "Golden Years," "TVC15," "Suffragette City," "Young Americans," and all the stuff before "Let's Dance." Those were some fantastic records. If he'd only made one or two of those, like "Golden Years" and "Changes," he'd be worthy of a very high level of pop cultural praise.
I'll even admit to liking "Let's Dance" and "China Girl" in the first 4,999 or so listens. But then you can rarely go wrong with Nile Rodgers at the control board. I think he deserves as much credit for his sound, minus vision, at that point in time. And Bowie deserves credit for his vision at that time, to pick someone who would become one of the hottest collaborators and producers of that era as well as today.
I also love this, "Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth," the bizarre collaboration between Bing Crosby and the Bowie from the late 1970s. Nevertheless, I have to wonder if this should have been our first clue about the chameleon-like (read: sell-out) nature of David Bowie.
I've had British friends howl with laughter and derision over our fake American Christmas specials, and then there's ol' Davy, right in the holly-and-ivy thick of it, with Mister Wonder Bread Christmas himself, pretending to be a clueless father from down the street who happens to stumble in wanting to use a friend's piano and ends up singing a (brilliant, wonderful, and timeless) duet with the Bingster.
Just add Andy Williams and some fake snow, and this mortal is ready to uncoil and viper attack the next person who starts emoting over the loss of a legend.
Obviously, I can cuddle and play footsie with a grudge for a very long time. Thank you for the music
and the creative imagery, David Bowie. You did make some great music and were obviously more influential to some, to many, than I ever realized. Rest in peace and all that jazz.
But if
you don't mind, I'm gonna sit out this global interpretive dance of
tribute and tribulation in your honor. I don't doubt that for some your death has great meaning, but for me, you'll always be that pop star who followed the zeitgeist and never looked back.
