Peak Psychedelia

Vanilla Fudge doing their cover of The Supremes' You Keep Me Hangin' On, a #1 hit for the Motown group in 1966.  This is from the Ed Sullivan Show on January 14, 1968.  For the full nearly 7-minute album version listen here.  One of the great covers in rock.  Fudge specialized in slowed-down versions of rock and pop songs.  I listened to a lot of their stuff.  Drummer Carmine Appice is the best-known member, going on to play with Rod Stewart and many others, along with authoring a popular training book for drummers.  Three of the four original band members, including Appice, toured as recently as 2022.

Election '24

 I may write this guy in.

We have quite a choice ahead of us deciding between Trump and Biden. Here are my thoughts on whom to vote for. pic.twitter.com/kB2yhdw3Pe

— Frank J. Fleming (@IMAO_) March 19, 2024

Tough Guy

What were the 70 men gathered on the Lexington Green before dawn thinking as the sky began to brighten?  They knew the Regulars were coming - they weren't called the British because that word included those gathered on the Green.  They would have heard the approach of the Redcoat column coming up the road and then the voices of the officers.  Within a few minutes seven would be dead.  April 19, 1775.

The British moved on to Concord where they met disaster and then had to fight their way back to Boston.   Retracing their steps from Lincoln to Concord along what is now known as Battle Road and taking casualties all the way, they entered Arlington.  Nearing Arlington's border with Cambridge at Alewife Brook, the Redcoats encountered 78 year old Samuel Whittemore.  Whittemore was a farmer with extensive military experience, fighting in both King George's War (1744-48) and the Seven Years War (1756-63).  He was also quite prolific in his personal life having, by 1775, more than 180 direct descendants, most living in the same area.

Whittemore, with his home directly along the road of British retreat, decided he needed to do his part.  Taking his musket and pistols, he waited until the Redcoat column approached, rose up from behind his stone wall and fired his musket, killing a soldier.  As the British advanced on him, Whittemore drew his pistols and killed two more.  With that the British were upon him and he was shot in the face, bayoneted somewhere between 6 and 13 times, clubbed in the head with a musket, and left for dead.

Several hours later, neighbors noticed Samuel was still moving and brought him to the town doctor who proclaimed there was nothing to be done for him other than dressing his wounds and waiting for Whittemore to die.  They waited 18 years, as Samuel Whittemore died in 1793 at the age of 96.

The engraving on the marker in the picture is inaccurate as he was only 78 at the time.  The house seen to the right of the marker is Whittemore's home, which still stands.  For a decade I worked just on the other side of Alewife Brook on Whittemore Avenue in Cambridge.  You can read more about the British retreat from Concord in The Road Back.

Today is the 249th anniversary of the start of the American Revolution.  Next year will be the 250th and the year after that the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.  Time will tell if that nation, conceived in liberty, will continue to endure.

The Big Ukulele

Last night we attended a very enjoyable concert by the Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain, done with their usual humor (along with paper airplanes being tossed).   Covering everything from ZZ Top, Robert Palmer, The Clash, Willie Nelson, a medley of Life on Mars/My Way/For Once In My Life/Substitute/Born Free, The Muppet Show Theme, James Bond movie theme, to Black Sabbath's Paranoid intertwined with Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. They did a straight and beautiful version of The Cranberrie's Dreams, and closed with God Gave Rock n Roll To You from Kiss.

I've been a fan for years and it was a treat to finally see the group in person.  This was part of the annual Arizona MusicFest and the venue was the Casa de Christo Lutheran Church in Scottsdale, which was perfect for the concert.

Noted

The most significant aspect of Iran's attack on Israel last night was the Jordanian and Saudi military intercepting drones and cruise missiles, undermining simplistic narratives about the Middle East.  Three Jordanian civilians were killed in the attack.  One Israeli Bedouin child was critically injured.

Recent Reading: Fiction

A shorter list than my non-fiction one.

My Antonia by Willa Cather.  

Last year I read Death Comes For The Archbishop by Cather which was simply wonderful and a book I will reread.  My Antonia was very enjoyable, if not at quite the level of Death Comes.  Set in the late 19th century farmlands and small towns of Central Nebraska where Cather grew up, the book deftly captures memorable characters and the physical settings.  Never thought I'd be a Willa Cather fan but now I'm deciding which of her books I should read next. 

A Chateau Under Siege by Martin Walker.  

Set in the Dordogne region of France, I look forward to each installment of the Bruno, Chief of Police series.  This is the latest and while a good read, I fear the overall quality has begun to decline.  I still enjoy the settings, many of which I am familiar with, and the characters but if you haven't read the books, I suggest starting from the beginning and going through the first dozen and avoiding this one.

The Possessed by Fyodor Dostoevsky.  

I'm still making my way through this one.  It's slow going.  Maybe it is the translation.  I now know where Norm Macdonald got the inspiration for his version of The Moth Joke.  I hear Norm's voice in my head when reading the book.

Night Soldiers by Alan Furst 

One of my favorite authors, this was a book I reread.  Furst wrote about 15 novels all set in Europe during the years leading up to WW2 and during the war itself.  Night Soldiers, the first in the series, and its successor, Dark Star, are more sprawling in scope, time and geography than the later books, but essential as they set the framework for Furst's world.  His characters are Russians, Eastern Europeans, Poles, French, and sometimes British, caught in the murky world between the Soviets and the Nazis, where every other group has its own agenda, where alliances and motives shift quickly.  As history, the settings and dilemmas are very accurate.  Night Soldiers and Dark Star provide as good a background on those times, and the terrible choices faced by so many, as any academic history.

Night Soldiers held up well upon rereading.  The story of a Bulgarian in his late teens, living in a Danube river town, who witnesses his younger brother beaten to death by fascist thugs, and is then recruited by the Russians and set to Moscow for training as an intelligence agent.  Over the course of the book he is in Spain and France, before coming full circle to return to the Danube.  The novel covers 1934 to 1945.  After Dark Star, Furst's later books are set in a tight time frame from 1937 to 1941 with a number of recurring characters.  The writing is captivating and precise until the last two books in the series which fall off in quality.

Resurrection Walk by Michael Connelly

Another favorite.  Connelly has three different series of crime novels built around the characters of (now retired) LAPD detective Harry Bosch, current detective Rene Ballard, and Mickey Haller, the Lincoln Lawyer.  All are worth reading.  Resurrection Walk is his most recent, featuring both Bosch and Haller who are half-brothers.

L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy

I've seen the movie four or five times and it is a great film, on my top 10 list.  You can read my full take on the novel here, but I summed it up this way:

The 500 page book makes for intense and compelling reading, I couldn't put it down.  It is also completely bonkers, an insane fever dream . . .

No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

Quite a book, deserving of being on your must read list.  Reflecting upon it led me to some thoughts in Carryin' Fire and What Is To Come.