Ken Kesey [© Jay Blakesberg]

Boomerangst: Friday’s Five

By Roy Trakin

1. Smashing Pumpkins at Gibson Amphitheatre, Universal City: "I don't want to be alone," sings Billy Corgan in "Tarantula," a song from Zeitgeist, the band's last major label album for Warner Bros. "If it's a white-hot soul they want/Then a black heart they'll get." At this point, we've already had a 10-minute "Roctopus" drum solo from the band's only other original member, Jimmy Chamberlin, and Billy himself with a giant fan head piece and crinoline wedding dress, looking like a cross between a high priestess and a Star Trek alien, leading the entire ensemble in a party-hearty cover of The Searchers' "Everybody Come Clap Your Hands," assuring the crowd not to worry, "it's just a show." And while you might say that, with D'arcy Wretzky and James Iha being replaced by squint-and-they-look-just-like-‘em tutu-clad bassist Ginger Reyes and guitarist Jeff Schroeder, the 20th anniversary edition of the Pumpkins is like Axl Rose calling his current group Guns N' Roses, this band was always about Corgan (and arguably Chamberlin), his obsessions, stubbornness and, especially, his guitar heroics. Unfortunately, Billy wants it both ways--he doesn't care to truck in nostalgia, but he calls his band Smashing Pumpkins. Of course, all you need to know about the state of the record industry is that Corgan and company basically filled two nights at this 6,000-seat venue and are currently without a major label. Always one who's abhorred looking back ("The ‘90s are a distant memory," he says at one point, then, "We make up for the lack of hits with good cheer"), he still managed to squeeze familiar material like Gish's "Siva," Siamese Dream's "Mayonaise" and "Today," and Mellon Collie's "Tonight, Tonight" around more obscure, newer songs like the brand-new Guitar Hero track "G.L.O.W." and "United States," with an interpolated acid-soaked rave-up which reminds me of Hendrix an instant before Corgan bites out Jimi's Woodstock "Star Spangled Banner" with his teeth. After changing into a fringed, ankle-length hoop skirt that makes him look like something out of Little House on the Prairie, white high-top sneakers and a form-fitting shirt with Zero emblazoned across the front, Corgan introduces a three-song acoustic set, including "Once Upon a Time," a track from 1998's Adore, which he describes sardonically as "just about the time everyone gave up on us." In "Bullet With Butterfly Wings," he expresses that frustration of being on the treadmill of channeling anger into commerce with the line that may best sum up his career: "Despite all my rage/I'm still just a rat in a cage," while in "Heavy Metal Machine," he wonders, "If I were dead/Would my records sell?" It's a reasonable question given that Corgan's partner-in-grunge Kurt Cobain has become a bona fide legend, and he's now a man in free agent limbo, even if he does appear more than happy at his current freedom. "The smiles on our faces are real," he remarks at one point, his giant bald dome beaming like a planet. "We actually enjoy what we do now." After a freak-out cover of Pink Floyd's psychedelic standard, "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun," features Billy pounding on a pair of large kettle drums, he returns for an encore of Melon Collie's "We Only Come Out at Night" ("There's an end, that there's an end to this begin"), which degenerates into an amiable chorus of kazoos on a seemingly impromptu finale of The Carpenters' Bacharach and David-penned "(They Long To Be) Close to You," that is meant to be an un-ironic tribute to his followers' loyalty. "We clawed our way into your heart, and then pissed on it," Corgan admits, but his still-adoring fans are more than willing to forgive...if not forget.

2. Chris Rock: Kill The Messenger (HBO): It's weird times indeed when the court jesters seem to have their finger on the pulse of things more than our elected officials, but Chris Rock has long ago proven to be one of our more astute social observers, and this Marty Callner-directed special, which seamlessly cuts between three separate performances at New York's Apollo Theatre, London and Johannesburg, South Africa, is more than proof of his acumen. Rock, who played the President of the U.S. in the 2003 film Head of State, gets an awful lot of mileage out of the candidacy of Barack Obama as well as the expected ridicule of George W. ("The man just doesn't give a fuck"), he's even better with social observations, including meditations on a job vs. a career, how black women don't really like white men, if it's ever proper for white people to use the word nigger ("Not really") or straight people to use faggot, and the monetary power of good pussy. The constant cross-editing of the three performances enforces the idea of how well-prepared and scripted Rock's performance really is, though this technique tends to undercut his remarkably spontaneous delivery, stalking the stage like a cat, a combination of, but a definite advance on, the work of influences like Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy. I've had a tendency in the past to think Rock was a bit overrated, that a combination of his race and cock-sure hip-hop swagger were the style-over-substance keys to his success, but Kill the Messenger shows the comic's material is even more universal in Obama's America.

3. Mikal Gilmore, Stories Done: Writings on the 1960s and Its Discontents (Free Press/Simon & Schuster): This collection of profiles, most of which first appeared in Rolling Stone, demonstrate Gilmore's strengths in the type of critical overview that has become the stock in trade at Jann Wenner's flagship, deftly weaving historical events, psychological profiles and aesthetic analysis. The theme is ‘60s icons, many of whom he's met and interviewed, with Gilmore apologizing beforehand for not including a single female and only one person of color (Bob Marley). He notes that the themes of many involve death, sometimes early and under tragic circumstances (Jim Morrison, Marley, Jerry Garcia, John Lennon, George Harrison, Ken Kesey, Phil Ochs, John Bonham, Duane Allman and Berry Oakley), others long and drawn out (Timothy Leary, Hunter S. Thompson, Johnny Cash, Syd Barrett), all involving, in one form or another, drugs, from LSD to amphetamines and heroin. And while Gilmore makes his own passions perfectly clear about most of these subjects, he is at his best when he relates personally, as in his story of Cash's call to his brother Gary Gilmore (the subject of Mikal's award-winning 1994 book Shot in the Heart) on death row for murder, urging him not to agree to his own execution. You sense that Mikal's interest in these intense characters who invent their reality is to gain insight into not just his brother's unfathomable depths, but also his own bouts of depression and uncertainty, reflected in many of these icons' tumultuous, sometimes messy, lives. Perhaps the most moving tale of all comes in the Acknowledgments and Memoriam afterword, where Mikal salutes his mentor, the late rock critic Paul Nelson, with uncommon empathy and grace for his sad passing. The final section, The Living, celebrates a pair of venerable survivors, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, who use their existential doubt to fuel their work. For Dylan, Gilmore concentrates on The Basement Tapes period in '67 (as interpreted by Greil Marcus' book Invisible Republic) and Dylan's '05 autobiography Chronicles, Vol. 1 for clues to his longevity, and finds the counterculture ideals that forge a new world, built simultaneously on reverence for the past and hope for the future. "At one time we heard it as a voice that enlightened us to something that was new, the unknown that was now possible," he says about Dylan. "Perhaps, though, that voice was all along telling us about a different unknown: what we've had, what we've lost and what we may--or may never--get to hold close again." The same could be said about every one of Mikal Gilmore's subjects.


4.  The Hives and Cyndi Lauper, "A Christmas Duel": I'm usually kind of churlish about holiday tunes, but this delightfully combative collaboration between the cheeky Swedish garage-rockers, the self-proclaimed "Your New Favourite Band," and that gum-smacking, Noo Yawk girl who just wants to have fun features Howlin' Pelle Almqvist's bass on the bottom and Cyndi Lauper's soaring soprano on top, trading jibes like "I slept with your sister" and "I went down on your mother," a modern-day classic that wouldn't sound out of place on Phil Spector's Christmas album. Check it out for yourself on The Hives' website here.

5. Brian F. O'Byrne (Brotherhood): This Irish character actor had a small but flashy role as a two-bit hoodlum in Sidney Lumet's Before the Devil Knows Your Dead, but comes into his own as the brooding cousin Colin Carr, who arrives from the old country, and immediately joins up as the muscle for Jason Isaacs' gang leader Michael Caffey. With a sadness in his eyes belied by a hair-trigger temper, capable of exploding into violence at a moment's notice, O'Byrne's Carr is one of the series' most intriguing characters. He's now pining away for Michael's girlfriend, Tina Benko's Kath Perry, even having a secret, but ultimately fruitless, rendezvous with her right under the jealous mobster's nose. Last week, while delivering some pot to a pair of Jamaican dealers, he got caught getting stoned by Michael after taking a bong hit and grooving to some ska. The two then traded bitch slaps, leading to a later confrontation in which Michael kicks the shit out of him, gradually starting to suspect there's something going on, as the series' third season races to its conclusion.