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Critical Countdowns

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Peter Runey, Dylan Fields, Noah Eskew, and Melissa Yeh

Peter Runey’s Critical Listening Top 10

1. “Nobody Loves You (When You’re Down and Out)” by John Lennon

2. “Come Together” by The Beatles

3. “A Hard Day’s Night” by The Beatles

4. “Get Back” (Live on the Rooftop) by The Beatles

5. “Don’t Let Me Down” by The Beatles

6. “Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight” by The Beatles

7. “Good Vibrations” by the Beach Boys

8. “Band on the Run” by Paul McCartney(/Wings)

9. “The Long And Winding Road” by The Beatles

10. “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” by The Beatles

This was extremely difficult to boil down to the top ten, however these are my thought-through, most profound songs of the Critical Listening class this year. While many of these carry real-life meaning to me since they’re attached to a fond memory of mine, some of these I admire purely based on their musical and lyrical quality.

“Nobody Loves You (When You’re Down and Out)” — John Lennon creates one of the most uniquely-sounding songs I’ve heard from him, whether it be from his solo career or from the Beatles. He incorporates a string orchestra as well as trumpets/horns, all the while still retaining the same classic Lennon vibe from the Beatles so many loved. Lyrically, Lennon takes a creative approach to exposing the fact people tend to only show love when they want it in return (“I’ll scratch your back and you scratch mine”), as well as the fact often great people are only admired and recognized for their accomplishments when they’re “six feet in the ground.” Ironically, Lennon gained even more of a following of his ideas upon his assassination.

“Come Together” — Despite the fact Lennon is known to be involved with the use of psychedelics, few can say the Beatles’ music became any less unique when they began using. Lennon crafts an incredibly artistic song beginning with a deep bass masking whispers of “shoot me, shoot me,” most likely referring to heroine. At this point, John Lennon was becoming a figure in many a cultural and even political scene (as an influencer not a participant) and used the song as somewhat of an anthem for the freedom to use psychedelics. Despite its intentions, I find this song to be one of the most creative and catchy songs the Beatles ever produced.

“A Hard Day’s Night” — I could tell an incredibly long story of a memory attached to this song for me. Instead, I’ll just say this song became very relevant to me on one special night in the Shenandoah mountains.

“Get Back” (live on the rooftop) — This song mostly holds its meaning to me since it was the final song to be performed live by the Beatles. I found it amusing that their desire was to be dragged off the venue by police since the concert was considered to be an unannounced public interruption, however the concert ended with a mere “pull of the plug,” so to speak, from the local authorities. It’s not just a special song but also a special performance since it was the last time the four ever played together in public.

“Don’t Let Me Down” — There are a few reasons why I love this song. The first of these is this was also played at the final rooftop concert. Another reason is Paul and John both harmonize beautifully in this song, which makes John’s raw, heartfelt message of love to Yoko Ono that much more special.

“Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight” — While these are technically two separate songs, the track was ordered so “Golden Slumbers” could carry seamlessly into “Carry That Weight” as part of a 6-part climactic medley in Abbey Road. I love “Golden Slumbers” because it begins simply with Paul and a piano playing a sheet of music he found on his grandfather’s piano with his own words put to it.

“Good Vibrations” — While this is the only Beach Boys song that made the list, it’s definitely one of the most enjoyable listens of the years. I appreciate the upbeat rhythm and lighthearted melody. The Beach Boys have mastered the art of crafting songs perfect for driving in a car with the windows down on a summer day, and this is certainly one of those.

“Band On The Run” — Paul branched out with this song. He begins to step out of his shell of his creativity since he no longer experiences the same pressures of being in the Beatles now that he was in control of his own solo career. On this track, Paul, in a way, mixes three songs into one, making a roller coaster of a song, but not to the point where it’s distracting to the listener. Paul’s musical brilliance really shines when somehow he pulls off a silky-smooth transition from the magnificent blare of brass and electric guitar instruments into an acoustic guitar/drum combination for the rest of the track.

“The Long And Winding Road” — This is easily one of the most emotional song from the Beatles, aside from maybe “Blackbird.” Paul takes the listener on a journey down a long and winding road with this song but leaves the listener with little conclusion or sense of achievement. It’s inferred that the end can’t be reached, and it’s unattainable. Obviously, this is how Paul must’ve felt at some point in his life, and he depicts this season of life very effectively and eloquently.

“Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” — This song is believed to be a reference to a drug known as LSD, which was likely being used by at least one of the band at the time. One thing I do appreciate about the times when the Beatles were under the effects of drug usage is their creative thinking tended to be much more outside the box, which resulted in unique tracks like “Lucy In the Sky.” The song doesn’t make much sense, lyrically, but to me it doesn’t have to in order to appreciate its special sound.

Dylan Fields’s Critical Listening Top 10

1. “A Hard Day’s Night” — Beatles

2. “Come Together” — Beatles

3. “Little Deuce Coupe” — Beach Boys

4. “Don’t Let Me Down” — Beatles

5. “Maybe I’m Amazed” — Paul McCartney

6. “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” — Beach Boys

7. “All Things Must Pass” — George Harrison

8. “Help Me Rhonda” — Beach Boys

9. “Pease Please Me” — Beatles

10. “The Monster Mash” (Live) — Beach Boys

This list was a whole lot harder to make than I anticipated it being. Many of these songs may not be my favorite for their musical aspects but the stories behind them. I will be explaining why each song is special to me throughout the course of this paper.

“A Hard Day’s Night” — This is the epitome of Critical Listening music for me. It may not be my favorite critical song musically but the story behind it makes it what it is to me. In the beginning of the year when Critical Listening was just starting, we had just heard this song and Pete and I were jamming to it non-stop. We literally had this album on repeat every time we were in the car. That being said one day I had the bright idea to go on a road trip/camping trip to the Shenandoah mountains with Pete and Pedro. The trip started off great: we were having a ton of fun and everything was going great. We arrived in the mountains and that’s where things started going wrong. There was a police car involved and we had to stay in an overpriced dirty motel instead of camping out. We got to camp out the second night and it was decently fine from then on out. So fast forward to the ride home, Pete throws on this song and it just made sense. That trip was “A Hard Day’s Night.” So every time I hear this song I think about this trip, the bad parts but mostly the good.

“Come Together” — This song has been one of my favorite Beatles songs since the start of the class. I love the intro of this song. I think the crazy thing about the beginning and throughout the song is John is saying “shoot me” and ends up getting shot and killed; he obviously want talking about guns in the song but it is still ironic. I am going to say this for a lot of these songs and I could probably say this for all of them but this was a song me and Pete loved to jam to in the car.

“Little Deuce Coupe” — I really don’t like this song musically, but the story behind it is what makes it one of my favorite Critical Listening songs. One of the first times we were listening to this song in first semester I think it was Pete that started singing the chorus obnoxiously at a super high pitch, then I would sing low, then Noah would go high with Pete. This turned into a thing we did. We would just sing “Little Deuce Coupe” as obnoxiously as we could. We did it everywhere, in the classroom, in the halls, in the parking lot, everywhere.

“Don’t Let Me Down” — My first memory of this song was the video of them playing on the roof around the time they were breaking up and all the people come out of their houses to watch. After we watched that in class I had it stuck in my head and I was jamming to it non-stop and apparently Pete did too because I was texting him one night and I said I was jamming out to the Beatles and he said he was, too, and I texted him “Don’t Let Me Down” was a banger and as I hit the send button I got a text from him saying basically the same thing. We always kinda joked about that.

“Maybe I’m Amazed” — My words while listing to this song for the first time were “Dang, I like this song … Oh, dang, I really like this song!” This song was one of those rare cases of love at first hearing of a song; most songs take me a couple times to listen to them to really like them. This one was not the case; I had this song stuck in my head for about a whole month after I listened to it one time. I remember jamming to this with Pete while going from thrift shop to thrift shop looking for pianos to cure our addiction to music.

“Wouldn’t it Be Nice” — Every time I hear this song I see Joanna and Sarah on stage at the Battle Cry talent show. This song makes me think of my class and all the memories we shared together. It’s crazy how music will do that to you.

“All Things Must Pass” — This has been my theme song for the past couple of weeks with so much changing. I am going from one huge part of my life to the rest of my life. This is the end of the beginning for me and I can really relate to this song right now. I loved high school and made so many memories here but like everything in life all things must pass, good things or bad they all will pass.

“Help Me Rhonda” — I don’t really have a story behind why I like this song, but this could easily be my favorite Beach Boys song. It’s just so free spirited and groovy and I dig that. This is in my top ten in any genre for jam out sessions in the car.

“Please Please Me” — This was my first song in Critical Listening I really liked. I listened to this song and the entire album a whole lot at the beginning of the class. I still really like this song and it brings me back to Noah, Pete, and me dancing all around room 103 all first semester.

“The Monster Mash” (Live) — I don’t like this song for its musical sense unless it’s around Halloween, but this song was a classic in the first semester of Critical Listening. Noah and I would sing this obnoxiously all the time and it was so much fun. I remember sitting in our second period study all just doing our math homework and singing “He did the mash … He did the monster mash! … It was a graveyard smash.” That song was just a lot of fun to me.

In conclusion, I loved this class and I’ve said it before but I’ll go ahead and put in in writing, this was my favorite and most beneficial class I ever took at Summit. Not to take anything away from the other classes or teachers, but this class had such an impact not only in my taste for music but it really did impact my life. It brought Noah, Pete, and me closer, and they are some of my best friends I have. It also made me open my eyes to music: I discovered so much more music and even made me want to get in the realm of creating music, which I was not successful in at all. It also played a huge roll in choosing my thesis topic because music was constantly on my mind during that time. Mr. Rush, thank you for offering this class and putting up with us even when I was rolling around on the cart or playing with the music stand; I truly appreciated this class.

Noah Eskew’s Favorite Five, yea Six Beatles Albums

What are the top 5 Beatles records? I would put that question in a top 5 list of unanswerable questions. However, I have determined my 6 favorite Beatles records based on the ratio of songs that left a memorable and positive impression on me over the total number of tracks on the LP. The one fault to this method is it doesn’t account for how much I enjoy a specific track; it instead simplifies it to: Did I like it? For example, I thoroughly appreciate the songs “I’ve Got a Feeling,” “For You Blue,” “Across the Universe,” and “Get Back,” which are all featured on Let It Be, but the rest of the album leaves much to be desired. The outcome of this process slightly surprised me (in regards to the resulting order), even though my previous general idea was almost precise.

#5 A Hard Day’s Night

With this album I found seven of the thirteen songs appealed to me. The title track begins with a special strum of a chord. To this day, few can identify what note is exactly being played. The lyrics are highly relatable to anybody who’s been hard at work. Plus, the guitar solo is swung in a manner that’ll make the guitar player and the average listener happy. In this song, the Beatles prove within the context of pop sensibility they can remain true to their musicianship. “I Should Have Known Better,” “If I Fell,” and “I’m Happy Just to Dance with You” also add to what is truly a solid start to this album. “Can’t Buy Me Love” is practically a Beatles staple. With a catchy chorus, and rather true lyrics in the verse, this hit did not disappoint. Lastly, my favorite song of the entire work is without question “You Can’t Do That.” With a jangly guitar intro, John’s impeccable attitude-filled vocals, and Ringo’s driving drum and cowbell groove, this song has placed itself among my favorites.

#4 Magical Mystery Tour

There are seven songs of the twelve on this compilation of which I am fond. The title track kicks off the record with a catchy repeatable chorus, and in between choruses we get a glimpse of the mysteriousness to be experienced in the following minutes of the LP. “Your Mother Should Know” is yet another classic involving Paul and the piano. The piano riff bounces along lightheartedly, while the lyrics are a fun alternative to some of the other strange styles during this period. The hits that have emerged from this compilation included such smashes as “Hello, Goodbye,” “I Am the Walrus,” “Strawberry Fields Forever,” and “All You Need is Love.” Part of the genius behind the Beatles’ discography is their ability to churn out the hits with fun and catchy choruses, but simultaneously the ability to entertain with more eerie sounding progressions as well.

#3 The Beatles (The White Album)

Out of the 30 tracks produced on this double album, I like listening to 18 of them. If I always had the time required, I would not skip any of the first 12 tracks (except maybe “Wild Honey Pie”). The first dozen on disc 1 could be an album by themselves. This, above all the other albums, shows the individual musical personality of each of the four Beatles. This is probably due to the fact the group did not spend much time together in the studio compared to previous sessions. Paul thrives on “Back in the USSR” (the driving rock ‘n’ roll tune), “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” (the happy and hopeful pop song), “Martha My Dear,” “Birthday,” and “Helter Skelter.” George offers some of my favorite Beatles numbers of all time such as “Savoy Truffle,” “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” and “Piggies.” John ventures into interesting lyrical processes by incorporating the stories of other Beatle songs into the phrases of “Glass Onion.”

#2 Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

Many magazines and other award-givers rank this work as the greatest album of all time. Combining the sounds of the psychedelic rock movement with those magical Beatle melodies, the Fab Four did indeed produce one of the most revolutionary records ever. Eight of the songs stick with me years after hearing them. Tracks one through five have the flow of a live performance. “Fixing a Hole,” “Getting Better,” and the reprise of the title tracks remain my favorites for their interesting lyrics, simple but solid guitar parts, and energy that really speaks to me.

#1 Tie Between: Revolver & Rubber Soul

Within these two records begins the change of the Beatles’ career. They move from the lovable mop-tops into the genius musicians that have pulled themselves out of live performances in order to further their art. They begin to incorporate eastern influences into their songs, but yet again don’t shy away from their rock ‘n’ roll identity. Each of these albums included 14 tracks, and each of the albums included 9 tracks that I love. “Nowhere Man,” “Think For Yourself,” “What Goes On,” and “I’m Looking Through You” are my favorites from Rubber Soul. “Taxman,” “I’m Only Sleeping,” “She Said She Said,” “Good Day Sunshine,” and “Got to Get You Into My Life” are my favorites from Revolver.

Melissa Yeh on “Band on the Run”

With the Wings album, Paul McCartney released “Band on the Run” in 1973.  The song has different interpretations based on history and listeners agree it is well composed and one of his most memorable.  The most popular and speculated-on theory from this song concerns the reflections and aftermath of the breakup the Beatles underwent from Paul McCartney’s perspective.  He confirms in an interview the song was influenced by one of the many long meetings where George Harrison remarks on the regrets of the events going on at the time.  “If I ever get out of here, thought of giving it all away, to a registered charity.”  For this phrase especially, he wishes they could have spent more time on the music, focusing on the good, and the wealth was not worth that happiness; instead it should have been devoted to charities.  The song then develops his freedom from the tension of the break-up and his ability to pursue what he wants to without being burdened by the obligations the band held over him.  When asked about if the song was in association to the break-up, Paul McCartney responds, “Sort of, yeah.  I think most bands are on the run.”  In another comment, one listener feels the song is not as much about the break-up as people think the song is.  In fact, it’s completely absurd and almost obsessive to relate everything back to the Beatles.  In another part of the song, articles and listeners have alluded to the line “and the jailer man and sailor Sam were searching everyone,” being connected to the incident in Sweden in 1972.  Paul McCartney and all of group Wings were arrested on drug charges.  Thus, the police were searching them at the time.  Later comments express McCartney’s plead for focus away from these types of charges and on what matters most, the music.  Overall, the song is about a prison escape and the shift from captivity to freedom.  “Stuck inside these four walls, sent inside forever,” describe the jailed prisoner, cut off from the outside world.  Again the prison is referred to in “if I ever get out of here.”  The explosion symbolizes the escape and again the band is running from police, “in the town they’re searching for us everywhere, but we never will be found.”

When talking about the instrumental in working with the theme of that escaped prisoner, the composition itself embodies the mood of the song.  Paul McCartney has been noted for his ability to combine multiple songs into one; here there are three distinct melodies. The first transitions into the second from verse one to two, beginning at, “if I ever get out of here.”  The tempo speeds up slightly and moves into a minor key through an instrumental break.  This represents a sense of sadness and regret in the tone of the song.  The third begins after the dramatic instrumental charge into the verse, “Well, the rain exploded with a mighty crash as we fell into the sun.”  The song modulates from A minor into C major, now with a new and happier tone from what it was before.  The movement of the song captures that feeling of relief and freedom.

What moved me to choose this song followed from the moment where as I was sitting in class, I heard the first chord and immediately decided I like this song.  Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the music in class, but none of the songs had caught my attention as quickly as this one.  While in the bus in Germany passing through the countryside, I remember going through a tunnel or under a bridge and right as the song changed from the second part into the third, the bus flew into the open again into the light with long fields surrounding us.  That moment McCartney creates of an explosion into freedom was more than what I can describe in words.  With that, this song will always tie me back to the memory with our class, driving past landscapes in Europe.

Bonus Track: Mr. Rush’s 5 Mandatory Beach Boys Non-canonical Albums for Real Fans

1967: Sunshine Tomorrow — Wild Honey is one of my favorite BB albums, and this 2017 release of many WH outtakes, alternate versions, and unreleased live cuts, including the entire Lei’d in Hawaii album, make this essential.  As if that wasn’t enough, it has Smiley Smile outtakes and a beautiful a cappella version of my favorite BB song, “Surfer Girl.”  Don’t miss this.

Endless Harmony Soundtrack — This collection of rare cuts accompanying the biopic is a monumental gift.  You’ll get a fresh look at a band you think you know, a fresh look that will only reinforce your love for them.

Hawthorne, CA — Thanks to the success of Endless Harmony, Capitol Records continued to open the vaults of rare cuts, radio spots, demos, and more.  Just when you thought you heard it all, you learn you haven’t heard anything yet.  It’s disjointed at times, but it is more BB tracks, which is what we want.

Made in California 1962-2012 — This 6-cd panoply of the band’s career is pricey but worth it.  It has a lot of rare live tracks, alternate versions, and much forgotten work from Carl and Dennis.  If you’re a real fan, you need this mega-set.

Ultimate Christmas — Not only does this have the entire original Christmas Album, it collects all the tracks for the unreleased second Christmas album plus all the rare promos, singles, and other Christmas goodies.  It’s a must-have.

*2023 Editor Note: Be sure to get the original version of Ultimate Christmas! The recent streaming versions delete the best song on the collection, “Christmastime is Here Again.”

A Tull Trilogy, pt. 2: Heavy Horses

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Stringfellow Bartholomew

From the Wood to the Farm

Hello!  I finally get to write my own article for the journal after all this time, and I’m really excited to talk to you about a fantastic album from Jethro Tull, Heavy Horses.  This is the second in the “folk rock trilogy” from Tull, as some have called it, but unlike most sequels, it does not suffer any let-down or disappointment.  In fact, many like it more than Songs from the Wood, which is a remarkable thing to say.  I’m not sure I like it more, but it is definitely growing on me, thanks to listening to it so much lately.  In this outing, Ian Anderson shifts his gaze from the mystical forests of bygone England to the hardworking farmers and their steads, along with the animals who, frankly, do most of the work.  Even though I’m a penguin, I can appreciate the skill and sacrifice of my fellow animals as they have made the world a better place, especially when working in conjunction with you humans.

Where the dance of ages is playing still

This first song gives me some shivers, which is difficult to do for a penguin.  I don’t spend a lot of time around cats, not too many of them where I live most of the time, but cats can be scary.  “…And the Mouse Police Never Sleeps” is also a bit scary because of the odd ending, but that’s mostly just Ian Anderson having some fun, and he knows better than most when he’s having fun and that he’s having fun and laughs at himself when he’s having fun (which is why it ends with his self-aware coughing).  It’s sort of an odd opener to this album, especially in contrast to Songs from the Wood, which gave a nice opener to the theme of that album.  I suppose “Mouse Police” sets the musical tone for the album, and it does get us out of the woods and into the farmhouse, but the metaphor distracts us initially until we have time to reflect on where this album is going.

While it may not be fair to continue the Songs from the Wood comparison going, it’s rather unavoidable, and thus “Acres Wild” seems to me like it would make a better opener for Heavy Horses, since it declaims the setting of this rural/hamlet/agricultural album much better than “Mouse Police” (you didn’t think penguins knew words like “declaims,” did you?).  It’s a very optimistic song, which is important, since this Tull Trilogy gets progressively pessimistic.  Songs is almost wholly optimistic, as we saw last issue.  Heavy Horses is rougher, grittier (certainly not musically, as it may be even more impressive musically, in many cases), and at times harder. Perhaps more melancholic than pessimistic, since many of these songs are rather ebullient, but there is a general tenor of regret for days gone by and the lost lifestyle of the hardworking agricola (though the animals do most of the work).  “Acres Wild” is a jaunty number full of zeal for living a full life, enjoining us to come “where the dance of ages is playing still / through far marches of acres wild,” but it also reminds us the world around us, before those far marches, is decaying and crumbling and a dim memory of what it once was.

Leave it to Ian Anderson to write a song about not singing a lullaby to his newborn son, but leave it to Ian Anderson to justify it because he has no desire to rear his son on false hopes and delusions about how life really is.  He wants to protect his son as much as possible (“There’s a lock on the window; there’s a chain on the door; / A big dog in the hall”), but he’s also open about the dangers of the world.  This is part of that growing edge in this Tull Trilogy of which we’ve been speaking, The dangers of the world require skills and preparation, but if know that, and treat each other with love, it’s possible to put your kids down for bed at night “safe and sound.”  Musically, this is the first of two mini-suites on the album, with multiple musical motifs.  Penguins like alliteration, what can I say.

“Moths” is another almost typical Tull juxtaposition of beautiful music and a warning of the brevity of life.  It ends optimistically, in its way, but it also presents the joy of life akin to a burning candle, and a too long life can be a bad thing.  That’s a strange thought, isn’t it?  Hard to trust lemmings and moths, I suppose.  Still, a beautiful song.  “Journeyman,” too, is a precise, hard-rocking song, bemoaning the difficult life of the hardworking city man.  Probably should be out living in nature, as the rest of the album enjoins us to do.  Be warned by this number, human people: city life is bad for your health; live in nature (but don’t mess it up for us while you do so).  Otherwise, you’ll be lonely and cold and sick and tired and hungry.  But I understand if the crisp, funky groove of the number overshadows the dire warning.  It’s hard not to smile and tap your toes to it and ignore the message.  Well, being a penguin myself, I don’t typically tap my toes, since I just waddle and rock back and forth.  I’m a bit like Ian Anderson that way.

And every day we’ll turn another page

The “B”-side of this album is possibly the third greatest B-side of all time, behind Foxtrot and Magical Mystery Tour.  These four better-than-solid songs are great listening.  “Rover” kicks it off with another solid musical gem.  Tull really was firing on all instrumental cylinders during this lineup, as delineated in the previous issue.  The diverse rhythms and crispness of the different instruments makes “Rover” a fun song, but the melody during “So slip the chain and I’m off again” elevates it to pretty great.  On one level it’s about a dog, right?  And I admit I don’t know much about dogs, since, again, I’m a penguin, but the later verses don’t sound completely like they’re about dogs to me (the last one may be about Gonzo), but it’s still rather jaunty and optimistic.  Maybe I was wrong about this album being more edgy than Songs from the Wood.

“Own Brown Mouse” could be the best song on this album, though sometimes the eponymous track wins out on that one.  But let’s not quibble: it’s not a competition – let’s just enjoy the fact we have multiple great songs on this album.  Here we have another Tullian juxtaposition of musical brilliance and a wistful song.  This wistfulness, though, is not dark or edgy.  It has a bit of sorrow to it, as the narrator and the brown mouse may be in a contest over who is the one in the real cage, but as always the uplifting music and Ian Anderson’s delivery comfort us more than concern us.  The only flaw of this song is it’s not longer.

The grand masterpiece of this album is truly sublime.  Reminiscent of the madrigal, which is perfect for the apex of a trilogy memorializing Merry Ol’ England, “Heavy Horses” is a multi-layered, multi-sectioned opera about the farm and the horses and the way things used to be.  A lot of animals featured in this album.  That’s only part of why it’s so good.  This tribute to the horses that have literally moved the earth of England makes us all yearn for a simple life of honest toil, living off the land, at one with nature.  I’m part of nature myself, and I tend to live off the ocean, but this song makes the rural life appealing even to me.  Part of that is surely the exquisite choral sections and musical brilliance, and the diverse sections keep our interest sustained throughout almost eight minutes of a song about horses and furrows.  Ian warns us the technological-driven world will soon disappoint us, and those of us with refulgent souls will soon yearn for the kind of life we have collectively abandoned.  (I’m not sure if I have a soul, being a penguin, but let’s stay focused here.)  So get back to the land, plant and harvest real food, become one with nature again.

In contradistinction to Songs from the Wood, this album ends not with the nighttime at the end of a hard day’s forestry but with the dawn of a new day.  “Weathercock” signals the kind of weather we’ll have as we start a new day working the land, or at least from what direction the wind is coming today, signaling as well the changing of the seasons.  The passage of time is a steady undercurrent of this album, as Ian Anderson bemoans the loss of anthropological-agricultural unity, but concurrently he reminds us each new day is a new opportunity for good: “Point the way to better days we can share with you,” ends the album.

So Heavy Horses is not so melancholy or cynical after all, as is often declaimed.  It is very aware of the brevity and ephemerality of life, much more so than Songs from the Wood, but that does not make it darker or edgier.  Perhaps it makes the album more Realistic, whereas Songs is more Romantic.  Nothing wrong with either.  They each have their season.  The winds of change that redirect the weathercock were certainly signaling changes for Jethro Tull as well, but that is a subject fit more for the finale of this trilogy, so I will leave that to my good buddy Theodore Aloysius to discuss in his exploration of Stormwatch.  Thanks for reading my analysis of Heavy Horses, everyone.  If you haven’t heard it lately (or at all), do yourself a tremendous boon and get it into your soul.  If the five-disc fortieth anniversary box set is a bit daunting, start with the regular album and work your way up to the goodie-filled, bonus-packed deluxe version.  You’ll be glad you did.  So long!

The Musical Experience

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Dylan Fields

Beethoven. Bach. What if these legendary musicians were put into today’s era? Would they be better? Would they be worse? I would argue they would be better at what they do today than they were in their day. They might not be as popular today simply because orchestral music is not popular today, but they would have more tools and more feedback than they had in their day. With the amount of technology they would be able to access today, the quality of sound these musical geniuses would be able to create would be absolutely incredible. Being able to write your music down and hear it as soon as you write it is a tool we have today. If these composers had this tool at their fingertips, they could produce more music and better music as they could fix any and every flaw. With this we would now have more music to enjoy from these great composers today.

Music has been changing for centuries: for better or worse is the issue. Before I explain my thesis I need to define a key term. The phrase “musical experience” means anything directly pertaining to music, such as buying and selling, listening, and the making of it. Music started all the way back in Bible times as we can see from King David being a skilled harp player. Now with more recent advances of music such as the birth of iTunes in April of 2003, we play music out of a speaker.  Music has developed into a predominately but not exclusively electronic base as opposed to the acoustic installments that have been used for centuries before us. This change is important because it is going to change the way music will be made and how we will listen to music for years to come.

My thesis states the experience of music is at its all-time high. I will confirm three reasons why this is true: listening to music has never been easier, music is more diverse than ever; and the recording process is better than ever. I will also refute two counterarguments: first, digital music has decreased revenue for musicians, and, second, music is too perfect.

My first argument to prove the musical experience is at an all-time high is listening to music has never been easier. In the 1950s if you wanted to listen to a certain song you would have to buy the entire album on vinyl, unless of course it was a single. In order to listen to the song you want to hear, you would have to look for and change the record to what you wanted to hear next. Now let’s say after you listened to the song you wanted to hear, you want to listen to a song from a completely different album. You would need to take that record off, put it into its case or sleeve, and then put the other record onto the record player. You would start it and find the right song. The whole music listening experience was just a hassle compared to nowadays, when I can have ten songs from ten different albums on one playlist and not have a single second of downtime in-between each song. Now, all we have to do is click what song we want to listen to and our phones, laptops, iPods or mp3s will play the song for us. We can create playlists with songs from any album from any band or artist we choose and can listen to the songs as many times as we want without having to touch the vinyl player at all. For example, if I was doing my homework, and I wanted a compilation of my favorite Rolling Stones and Beatles hits, then I would have to frequently stop my homework and change the song. This is not as convenient as if I could make a playlist or even just click a button and change it in a matter of a couple of seconds.

Another reason listening to music has improved is the means by which we actually listen to it. The first pair of headphones were released in 1881, long before Sony Walkmans or iPods. Although they were revolutionary for their time, they weighed over ten pounds. That is ten times the weight of Dr. Dre’s Beats headphones today,as some editions of beats weigh less than a pound. Another invention that changed how we listen to music today is the wireless power of Bluetooth. Bluetooth gives us the ability to listen to music not only without cords hanging out of headphones but away from the source of the music. I had used headphones with cords my whole life until recently. My first iPod cracked because I forgot it was hooked into my headphones, and I walked away from it, pulling the iPod and sending it crashing to the ground. Bluetooth eliminates that threat altogether, because we all make careless mistakes like that. Also, I can stand all the way across a room and be playing my music on a speaker or headphones on the other side of the room. For example, when I am working out, I use my Beats headphones that are Bluetooth. I set my phone down on the table across the room and have my headphones on. Working out with a cord hanging out of your pocket is extremely difficult because many times you will get caught on the cord and your phone will rip out of your pocket or your headphones will fall off your head. Another example is when I am training for baseball. I can hit in a batting cage with my phone twenty feet away from me while I have my headphones on. Hitting a baseball with headphones with a cord connecting to a phone would be nearly impossible. This is why Bluetooth is so great. This Bluetooth feature also comes in handy when your device needs to be charged. You can charge your device on one side of the room while wearing your headphones on the other side of the room, or even in a completely different room.

Listening to CDs and radios in cars were both huge steps in the past, but now the next big step is listening to our phone, iPod, or mp3 on Bluetooth or an auxiliary cord. This is better for multiple reasons. Now we can go from what we were listening to before we got into our cars, plug our phone or mp3 in, and continue listening. In addition, we do not have to keep a thousand different CDs in our cars. This feature also gives us the ability to listen to whatever we want while in the car, even beyond music with things like podcasts or sermons. For example, in my morning routine I listen to music all morning. When I’m ready to leave my house, I get into my car and, with the Bluetooth system I have installed, my music automatically goes from playing on my phone to playing on the speaker system in my car.

My second argument is music is more diverse than it has ever been before. There are more types of music, more genres, and more branches of each genres. For example, country in American music was created in the late 1920s. It was more of an Appalachian folk-type music or blues, which featured instruments much more string-based such as the banjo, American fiddle, fretted dulcimer, and guitar. Today’s country music still includes the original Appalachian folk music, but now bands such as Florida Georgia Line or Sam Hunt are the top-selling country artists today. They incorporate a type of hip hop or pop element into their country music. We see this hip hop element in songs including artists in the hip hop genre such a Nelly or The Chainsmokers. This is noteworthy because this new movement of combining genres has been so successful it has become a new genre altogether. Nelly even went on tour with Florida Georgia Line as their opener on their Smooth World Tour. So now there is traditional country music and modernized country music. This sort of change of genres is nothing new, though. We have seen this in the past and it was successful as it created the types of music we listen to now. Rap has changed from Tupac Shakur’s era to big rappers like Lil Pump who recently signed a record deal with Warner Bros. for eight million dollars. The classic elements to rap are the theme of the lyrics, the rhythm, and the rhyming, as well as the bass in most rap songs. We have seen rap change. It really started with artists like Lil Wayne who changed the flow of rap introducing a that no-one had seen before, sometimes slowing it down and mixing up the beat in a unique way. Rap has split its genre so much that now they have gospel rap. Artists such as Lecrae, KB, Andy Mineo, and NF have made their marks in the rap genre from this unique branch of music.

Another aspect of music that has broken music into different genres is the lyrical sense of the songs. Staying with country music, let’s take two artists: Jimmy Buffet and Brantley Gilbert. Jimmy Buffet is known for many of his songs, such as his song with Alan Jackson called “It’s Five O’clock Somewhere,” which spent eight weeks on the top of Billboard’s Hot Country Song list. This song’s lyrics are about not wanting to work anymore, leaving work early, and getting drunk at the bar. Brantley Gilbert’s music is more of a country rock, as one of his top selling songs, “Take It Outside,” talks about “the good ole days,” where if someone had a problem with someone else they could just go outside and fight to settle things. Both artists are technically in the county genre but have completely different styles of music. Brantley Gilbert’s style is more of the “get your hands dirty” type of country music. Jimmy Buffet’s lyrics are quite the opposite, as his are more about resting and partying. These two completely different country artists represent different branches of country music.

In addition to the branches of each genre, there have been new genres created recently that have changed music, such as indie pop, alternative rock, air pop, and EDM. These genres have had huge successes and have been controlling the Billboard charts. Most of these types of music have sounds such as synthetic and computer-based sounds that have never been used as much in music as ever before due to the advanced recording and creation of music that will be discussed later.

My third argument is recording music is easier and has better sound quality than ever before. There are four eras of recording to look at: the acoustic era, the electrical era, the magnetic era, and the digital era. The acoustic era lasted from 1877-1925. During the acoustic era, people recording typically used a large conical horn to collect and focus the physical air pressure of the sound waves produced by the human voice or musical instruments. A membrane or diaphragm, located at the top of the cone, was connected to a scriber or stylus, and as the changing air pressure moved the diaphragm back and forth, the stylus scratched or incised analogue of the sound waves onto a moving recording medium, such as a roll of coated paper, or a cylinder or disc coated with a soft material such as wax or a soft metal. The next era of recording was the electrical era when they used a system of electrical microphones, electronic signal amplifiers, and electromechanical recorders, which was adopted by many music publishers in 1925. Sound could now be captured, amplified, filtered and balanced electronically. This means when you record a sound, you are able to alter the volume, pitch, or frequency of the music. This was a monumental move in the line of music at the time, but something simple enough today. We can do it better now on an iPhone, as the microphone on an iPhone is better quality than anything that had been made in the ’40s. The third era of recording music was the magnetic era, introducing features such as multi-track tape recording (MTR), when different sounds are recorded on different sessions and put together to make a cohesive whole. This was also the introduction of the disc as the primary mastering medium for sound. Fast forward to the digital age, the era in which we are living today. This is the era when digital encoding surpasses all previous recording technologies. Unlike all previous eras of recording, which captured a continuous analogue of the sounds being recorded, the digital era captures very dense and rapid and discrete samples of the sounds, which makes the sounds more crisp, taking out static or background fuzz.

Making music has never been so easy; anyone on any level of musical education can make music. All you need to make music nowadays is a laptop and a music editing application such as Logic Pro X. A few of my friends and I have been making music as a hobby, and we have more capability to record and edit the music than big name music artists had in the ’40s or ’50s. This does not mean the music we make is better than those that have come before us, but if we worked hard enough and developed our talents and abilities, we could make some quality music.

The first counterargument I will refute says the current technology trends in the industry have led to music artists not making as much money as previous artists used to make. The music industry’s profits have dropped a shocking sixty percent in the last decade as we see in charts from RIAA U.S. sales database. This is due to the loss of buying and selling of music. Music used to be put on files of polyvinyl chloride, also known as vinyl. When music was made on vinyl, it was hard to pirate or steal.  As soon as it could be turned into a file, many previous listeners didn’t choose to pay for it anymore. Another factor is about a century ago it was more popular than it is now to buy and listen to entire albums. Today iTunes, the largest music store in the country, sells individual tracks listeners can mix and match in personal audio-collages.

Music has suffered a loss in revenue over the past decade and ever since the beginning of the digital era in general, but lately it has been on the climb. The RIAA (the U.S. sales database) announced sales of recorded music in the U.S. generated $7.7 billion in revenue in 2016, its highest sales figure since 2009. The growth also represents an 11.4 percent increase from the previous year, the best percentage gain since 1998. These gains, the RIAA said, are largely due to an increase in on-demand streams from services like Apple Music, TIDAL, and Spotify’s paid tier, which accounted for $2.5 billion in revenue, more than double from the previous year. Together, on-demand and free streams accounted for $3.9 million in revenue. Although music sales are not what they were in the late ’90s, we may see it there again shortly if music sales follow the 2016 trends we see on the RIAA sales charts.

The second counterargument to refute claims music today is too perfect. There is no room for error in today’s world when it comes to the element of recording music. Editing music today has to be done with almost surgical precision. They remove the types of things that often made music of the past more interesting such as idiosyncrasies, nuances, and inexactitudes. For example, compare two songs, “Louie Louie” from the Kingsmen and “Fancy” from Iggy Azalea. “Louie Louie” was recorded in one take while Iggy Azalea’s song “Fancy” was most certainly not. Another interesting thing is in one part of the Kingsmen’s song, the drummer drops his stick and exclaims a profane word I will not repeat. But nowadays there is no way that would be put into the final cut. It would be edited out so the song would sound more perfect.

Music being too perfect is not a problem to most listeners as we can see by their digitally-edited music sales. This type of digital edited music is pop music as we know it today. Music cannot be too perfect. As humans we should strive for perfection in everything we do; this includes music. If there is a flaw in the music, edit it out or try it again. Any artist in the digital era that doesn’t  perfect every note or cord won’t be as successful as an artist that does. This is due to the fact this generation has grown up in the digital era and have grown used to the “perfect” music, while the older generations have grown up listening to flawed music and appreciate that aspect of the music.

Music has only developed for the better. The progression of technology has led to the progression of music, which we see through the different eras of music and time. The music recording process and distribution is easier and better than ever before. The music industry is bringing in revenue and looking to come back to where they once were. The experience of music is at its peak, and this is something to be excited about.

Bibliography

Beardsley, Roger. “CHARM.” A Brief History of Recording to Ca. 1950, 8 May 2017, http://www.charm.rhul.ac.uk/history/p20_4_1.html.

Craig. “Headphones: Then and Now.” LiGo Blog, 10 Feb. 2015, http://www.ligo.co.uk/blog/headphones-then-and-now/.

Dandridge-Lemco, Ben. “The American Music Industry Had Its Biggest Year In Nearly A Decade Thanks To Streaming.” The FADER, The FADER, 10 Nov. 2017, http://www.thefader.com/2017/03/30/music-industry-revenue-growth-2016-drake-streaming.

“Most Popular.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, http://www.forbes.com/most-popular/#4a262d707048.

“Music: Top 100 Songs | Billboard Hot 100 Chart.” Billboard, http://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-100.

Quirky. “Great Inventions: History and Evolution of the Headphone.” Quirky, shop.quirky.com/blogs/news/great-inventions-history-of-headphone.

Rabade, Parag. “Bluetooth – A Path Towards an IT Revolution.” Bluetooth – A Path Towards an IT Revolution, tech.af/post/papers/bluetooth-a-path-towards-an-it-revolution/details.

Thompson, Derek. “Has Technology Changed the Experience of Music?” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 10 June 2010, http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/06/has-technology-changed-the-experience-of-music/57961/.

Voice. “History of the Record Industry, 1920- 1950s  – A Voice. – Medium.” Medium, Medium, 8 June 2014, medium.com/@Vinylmint/history-of-the-record-industry-1920-1950s-6d491d7cb606.

Neither Geek Nor Nerd

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Christopher Rush

I prefer to think of myself as someone who has an accurate grasp of what is important in life.  That is not to say I always prioritize life’s opportunities correctly: I don’t know any other languages, I haven’t memorized the Bible, I don’t know how to fix … things.  Yet, in the variegated realms of what we used to call “pop culture,” I think I’m fairly well traveled.  While today it is becoming de rigueur to brandish the appellations “geek” or “nerd,” as if we have survived the great Name-calling Wars of 1989 and those terms are now badges of honor, I posit they are hollow terms, and, more importantly, they are not for me.

From the outset, I would like to forestall any connections with other cultural situations in which certain terms have been, shall we say, appropriated or re-appropriated or the like.  This is not meant to be a variation on that social situation.  Rather, I’m just going to say things at you, as is my wont, about a topic that has no meaningful connection to real history, real people, or real life.  And this topic is innately such.

Long-time readers of the journal will remember I have spent what we could generously call a healthy amount of time playing video games, watching science-fiction television, playing roles in games, reading science fiction and fantasy literature (I mean, “literature” or whatever), and sundry similar activities.  I’ve opened more packs of Marvel Universe Cards (especially the best set, series three from 1992) than you’ll ever see in your lifetime even if you live to a hundred and three.  I’ve paused through more commercial breaks recording episodes of Star Trek (the first four series) than you will ever see in your lifetime even if you live to three hundred and one.  You couldn’t push majick “skip ad” buttons in my day.  We had to use our hands.  It was like a baby toy, yes.  I’ve stood in line for over an hour to get Orson Scott Card’s autograph … not on Ender’s Game, no siree.  Too obvious.  I went with the first two books of his I read: How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy and Hart’s Hope.  If you haven’t read Hart’s Hope, get it today and read it today (but it’s not for the faint of heart, let me warn you now).

I used to subscribe to a few comic book series: Captain America, The Avengers, The Fantastic Four, The Uncanny X-Men, The X-Men, and Generation X.  I would bag them and board them and label them and catalog them.  I’ve spent hours of Saturdays (months of Saturdays) arranging notebooks full of The Lord of the Rings: The Collectible Card Game cards, tearing 3”x5” notecards in half to mark places in what you would call baseball card storage sheets for missing cards.  I’ve printed off dozens of walkthroughs for computer games you’ve never even heard of but I’m completely sure are far superior to any of the “app” games these kids are into today.  I’ve written down more 32-digit save game codes in my teenage years than you’ll get trophies of (I’m not quite sure where that last one was going).  You kids today with your spawn points and your automatic save spots and your hula-hoops … you don’t know what struggle is.  Talk to me after you’ve tried BattleToads.  Yeah, and I’ve torn out and filed more sections of Nintendo Power than, well, you get the idea.

But I’m not a geek.  And I’m not a nerd.

I don’t dress up and go to conventions.  My brother does that and he’s great at it, but that’s not my scene.  Maybe one day I’ll get to a convention before Jonathan Frakes turns 80, though there’s a better chance my family will get to some sort of boardgaming convention first.  We will not be dressing up as our favorite boardgame characters, though.  Some people do, you know.  Come to think of it, my dad and I did used to go to a few baseball card shows back in the day.

I have recently taken up painting tabletop boardgame figures, as some of you know.  I’m not any good at it, but it is an enjoyable hobby, another thing my brother has known and practiced for thirty-some years.  I’ve taken most of the winter season off from this hobby, since the weather isn’t conducive for priming (something you need to do outside if you don’t have an airbrush), plus we needed the table for holiday meals, and thesis season really cuts into one’s free time, and you know how it goes.  Once we get back from Spring Break, I’ll get back into it.  I’ll then be ready to take the next step and start assembling some tabletop miniature figures, assuming the weather hasn’t dried up the paint and glue hibernating in the garage all winter.  I have a decent-sized box full of Warhammer™ Space Marines waiting for me to build.  That does not mean I’m keen to start playing Warhammer™, but if you’re up for it, I suppose we could work something out.  I’d like to get a starter set or two of the Batman Miniatures Game, and maybe a few Age of Sigmar things.  But I have no grand plans for making terrain and turning the garage into a warehouse for miniatures and such.  Not yet.

But let’s get to the heart of the matter.  I’m not a geek or a nerd.  Back in the day, they were terms of insult for people who liked the sort of things I liked: comic books, video games, RPGs (the non-lethal kind), sci-fi and fantasy, and the rest of it.  Superman and Batman were almost 50 by the time I came onto the scene.  The Fantastic Four and Avengers and X-Men were pushing 30.  Star Trek had been a cult classic for almost twenty years.  Dungeons and Dragons was over a decade old and had weathered the well-intentioned pharisaical backlash of the sorts of people you can imagine engaged in that well-intentioned-yet-pharisaical backlash.  And yet, “we” were the enemy.  Avalon Hill and GenCon and even Atari had been around for some time, yet we were the outcasts.  The International Business Machine and Texas Instruments and Macintosh were quickly becoming staples of schools and households, yet we got laughed at and picked on and, well, I never got beat up, but I’m sure some of my generation did.  I never watched Freaks and Geeks or Drumline … why would I?  I lived it.  I don’t need to see someone’s vision of what it may have been like, even if they went through it, too.  That’s one of the reasons I have no pressing need to see Stranger Things.  I was there, kids.

But I don’t want to misrepresent why I’m neither a geek nor a nerd, and I suspect I have already mislead you, especially with that last paragraph.  Excuse the multiple negatives, but I don’t consider myself those things not because I got called mean names by the hooligans I went to school with back in the day.  I’m not rejecting those names because they conjure up painful memories and hurt feelings and tears into my pillow after school.  I didn’t really go through that.  Sure, I was ridiculed and laughed at once in a while, and I’ve experienced my share (if such a thing has “shares,” fair or otherwise) of mockery for the things I enjoyed (but that was mostly for my last name, especially as we were in the exciting finale of the Cold War era).  But it never scarred me or hampered me or anything like that.  And I don’t say that lightly, as I know those sorts of playground cruelties did cause some damage to people I knew long ago.  I’m not a geek or a nerd because, in truth, those words are nothing.  They are empty.  Hollow.  They don’t exist.

I like RPGs and comic books and sci-fi and fantasy because they are intrinsically worthwhile endeavors.  They are high-quality ways to get into one of the most important, most fundamental aspect of who we are as human beings, especially as imago dei human beings: they are stories.  They feature engaging characters and thrilling conflicts and thought-provoking themes and exciting storylines.  These are the best tools to fire our imaginations and invigorate our understandings of actual reality.  RPGs and comic books and sci-fi and fantasy aren’t merely escapes from the “real world” — they are perhaps the best way to help us understand ourselves and the world (outside of the Bible, of course), better even than mathematics and physics and the natural sciences.  They do a fine job telling us what and how, but the Humanities, stories, art, they tell us why.  You can’t get that from kicking a ball around the grass or throwing a ball through a hoop.  No offense, sports.  But you are less real than rolling dice to see how much damage a magic missile does to the hobgoblin four feet away from my 12th-level half-elf warrior-rogue.

Sports don’t tell us stories — sure, lots of writers create stories around what happens in a season or a game or whatever, and the biographies of athletes can be very riveting and truly inspiring.  But sports are competitive, telling you or your team you aren’t as good as that person or that team over there because you didn’t score enough points and thus all your efforts for the past four months have been a total waste.  (I understand there are ancillary benefits such as health and spending time with friends and hand-eye-coordination and sportsmanship and leadership and all that, sure, pretty much all of which can be done by joining the orchestra or playing board games instead, but that aside, I know what you’re going to say about how great sports are, but my point here is competition.)

Competition is a virulent disease, and real life abhors it.  The gospel has nothing to do with competition.  RPGs and comic books and sci-fi and fantasy have “competition,” but none of it is truly real human beings pitted against other human beings (often in dangerous activities that somehow make you “healthy”) in danger of “losing.”  If you “lose” in an RPG, you can go back a bit and try again.  For some reason, sports referees don’t let you do that.  Even when board games require competition, you still are using your imagination, developing your strategic and tactical thinking skills, spending time with friends, honing your “sportsmanship” by having fun with your friends — and though games can sometimes come down to “stop him from achieving that goal,” that won’t be a good experience for the people involved and it will likely not happen again.  Unlike most sports, that usually come down to “stop that person from doing that” in every game, often by knocking the guy down or embarrassing her by tricking her in front of her family and friends in the stands (like strikeouts in soft/baseball).  There’s no “I hope they fail” in the Realms of Gold, something sports depends and thrives on.

RPGs and comic books and sci-fi and fantasy and board games invite people in, enable you to create and think and engage, ennoble you to translate the ideas you encountered on a spaceship or in a dungeon to treat the real people you know and haven’t met yet better, to make the world a better place because you know good exists and evil exists and you can be a force for good.  Stories make us not just better people but also more human.  Even with Matthew 11 in mind, Jesus knew the power of stories and told quite a lot of them — not just to further confuse those who didn’t get it, but also to further engage those who got it.

And they still do that today.

I suspect, and this is only lightly and uncritically, the people who are going around proudly brandishing “I’m a _________ Geek!” or “I’m a __________ Nerd!” (say, “I’m a Harry Potter Geek!” or “I’m a Star Wars Nerd!” or whatever) are only doing so because, as I intimated quite some time ago, the Wheel has turned, as it always does, and now the kids who used to bully have come to realize the things they cared about weren’t (past tense) all that great and the things we care about are (present tense), so possibly they are trying to act like they were one of us all along or this is how they apologize.  And since they don’t remember our names, only the names they called us, they have revived those terms now as badges of cool (or whatever the kids are calling it these days).  I could be wrong.  It’s been known to happen.

Surely that would only cover the people my age and a bit older.  As for the kids, well, they’ve grown up in a world of marketing and pseudo-awareness of these hobbies*, and the People Who Love Money have been telling them for a while it’s cool to be a geek or a nerd (since the bullies of yesteryear are the advertising firm owners and marketing strategists and CEOs and CPAs of today — funny how that works out).  So, naturally, since it wasn’t their generation’s fight, the terms mean nothing negative to them.  And that’s fine.  They have their own battles to fight.

So, I’m not a geek, and I’m not a nerd.  I just know what’s important in life.

Being human.

Especially a human being in the image of God.

When “real life” does its best to siphon all hope and happiness out of us, RPGs and comic books and sci-fi and fantasy and boardgames give us hope.

And that, faithful friends, is what Redeeming Pandora is all about.

See you next issue!

*The false awareness of these Realms of Gold is quintessentially demonstrated by the reboot movies and series of the last couple of decades.  With the exception of Battlestar Galactica, complete misunderstanding and downright rejection of the original source material in terms of theme, message, and purpose dominate the “reboot” world today: the G.I. Joe and Transformers movies of late epitomize that utter rejection of the original source material.  And before you counter with “weren’t they just advertisements for the toys?” allow me to forestall your query with the riposte “even if they were, their quality of storytelling, engaging characters, and high-quality moral didacticism far outshine any pecuniary concerns, and thus their value transcends both the kind of dumbed-down programming for children today as well as the adulterated revisions of these worlds by today’s “creative” teams.†  (For a great example of how inestimably superior the shows we had back in the day are to the schlock kids have been force-fed for years, go watch Fraggle Rock and then any Nick, Jr. or Disney XD show today.  You’ll never watch contemporary programming again.)  And before you double-counter with the idea “you can’t technically have a pre-emptive riposte,” I’ll just nod and say “yes, that’s true.”

†“But wait, aren’t the people making some of the modern-day versions of things, like the Marvel movies and such, people who grew up on the very same RPGs, comics, books and whatnot you did?  What if these new versions and those who proudly proclaim ‘I’m a geek!’ and ‘I’m a nerd!’ are the people who enjoyed them when they were young and suffered the verbal slings and arrows of those bullies just like you did?” you may ask.  To which I can only say, mildly hubristically and mildly self-effacingly, “maybe they are, but if they are the ones changing everything for ‘today’s audience,’ they clearly did not understand those things for what they were.  Perhaps I understood and appreciated them better because I could filter them through absolute moral standards from God and His Word.”

Now, if these same people of my generation suffered the verbal assaults of “geek” and “nerd” and have now in their older years translated those terms into those “badges of honor” of which we earlier spoke, well, then, to each his own.

Live and let live.

A Tull Trilogy, pt. 1: Songs from the Wood

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Christopher Rush

I have been waiting for this literally all year.  On January 1st, 2018, thanks to the generosity of a few dear friends of mine, I was finally able to order the 40th anniversary edition of Songs from the Wood, one of my favorite Jethro Tull albums (not that I’ve heard them all yet, so let’s say “thus far”).  It’s distinct among Tull albums, especially in what we could call the 2nd phase of the band, what some would likely call the “classic” Tull era (from Aqualung in 1971 to Stormwatch in 1979), in that it is mostly optimistic and upbeat.  Ian Anderson has never struggled with finding satirical and almost cynical approaches to the various realms of life upon which his gaze and talents alight, but Songs from the Wood is both a musical shift and a lyrical shift toward invitation, reflection, and downright delight.  Since it is Ian Anderson, a few songs have a, shall we say, piquant bite to them, but it wouldn’t be Jethro Tull without a little spice.

As I said, I have been literally waiting all year for this edition to arrive.  And waiting.  Twice, our friends at the Mega-On-Line Shopping Site (you know which one I mean), sent me e-mails telling me in effect “we can’t find it, we’ll send it soon,” turning my 2-day shipping experience into a 10-week experience.  Now, before I sound (more) like a horribly self-centered 1st-world donkey, I’ll press on to say the delay was most likely Providential, forcing me to focus on the great deal of work I had to do for my recent Master’s License renewal course as well as all the annual excitement and commitment that goes into Thesis Season.  Sure enough, as I should have expected, the very afternoon I finished my final project for my on-line course, this magisterial 3-cd/2-dvd package arrived, unannounced and unexpected.  So now I have time to enjoy it, but not enough time for me to review the album as well I had wanted.  Ah well.  Let’s just get to it.

Side One

It’s not “folk rock,” let’s get that straight from the beginning.  That’s Bob Dylan with an electric harmonica.  This is Jethro Tull looking back at the diverse and mythical history of England and delighting in what it found in the nooks and crannies of rural ol’ England.  “Songs from the Wood” is such a cheerful, welcoming, medieval jester-like song, as is pretty clear from the harmonies, the intelligent and graceful lyrics (in the literal sense), and the diverse musical sounds.  Even when it picks up and starts rocking, reminding us this is a superlative group of talented musicians, we are well on our way to feeling much better, thanks to this album.

“Jack-in-the-Green” is basically Tom Bombadil.  There’s no way around it.  It is a complete Ian Anderson number, as he wrote the words (as usual) and he plays all the instruments on this song (it is known).  It starts out very fairy-in-the-woods-like, as most of them do on this album, but pretty soon the critical mind of Anderson turns from magical romp to contemporary critique: “will these changing times, motorways, powerlines” prevent humans from enjoying Nature how you want us to? he asks.  But before the potential despair can take root, so to speak, Anderson rejects it outright: “Well, I don’t think so.  I saw some grass grow through the pavements today.”  There is still hope for the restorative power of nature.

“Cup of Wonder” would likely be my favorite song on the album were it not for the final track of this side, to be addressed soon.  I don’t want to keep saying “it’s a tribute to the mystical heritage of rural English beliefs,” but it is, though tinged with a bit of Anderson’s slightly erroneous beliefs on Christian usurpation of pagan holidays.  For me, the music and, as is almost always the case with Tull, the vocal timbre of Anderson’s voice make a lyrically intelligent song a total aesthetic experience to be enjoyed again and again.  (Even if about ancient pagan holidays.)

We noted before this album, while mostly free of the harsh cynicism of early classic Tull like Aqualung and Passion Play, still has its piquant moments, and “Hunting Girl” is certainly spicy, being about an impromptu amorous romp between a noble lady and a regular common guy who knows he could get in a lot more trouble for their spontaneity than she ever could.  Still, the greatness of this song comes in the sheer greatness of the musicians in the band during this era: Martin Barre’s guitar brilliance, John Glascock’s bass, the dual keyboards of John Evans and David Palmer, and the vastly underrated drumming virtuosity of Barrie Barlow.  It was a golden lineup, and this album makes the most of it.

The first side of the album ends with my favorite of the album, “Ring Out, Solstice Bells” — it’s not a Christmas song, being about the winter solstice, and in fact, if Ian Anderson is to be believed, it’s sort of an anti-Christmas song, returning to that earlier notion of Anderson mistakenly thinking early Christianity foisted itself on a lot of pagan traditions and holidays, since “if you can’t beat them, join them,” as he says in the 40th edition liner notes.  Well, I disagree, and it’s such a musically wonderful song, I’ll just keep enjoying it, even if for the “wrong” reasons.

Side Two

Side two opens with another great Tull mini-opera, with sundry sections and atmospheres and evocations and beauty and fun and wonder.  It’s basically about the joys of an old-fashioned garden fête, such as the one a young Paul met a slightly less young John and the world was changed for the better.  Great things can happen when you stroll through a British park festival.  It does have a smidge of that “Hunting Green” sauciness, okay more than a smidge, but the musical motifs override the lyrical eyebrow-raising suggestions.  It’s a complex, impressive number.

“The Whistler” could also vie for my favorite of the album were it not for “Cup of Wonder” and “Solstice Bells.”  It starts out for mystical and menacing, but the chorus dives into as energetic and enthusiastic a rouser as one could ever ask for.  It will probably make you think of Gandalf if he were a bard, coming through town all mysterious and shady, then suddenly he spins around and smiles and a few fireworks shoot off and we’re all clapping and dancing and singing along.  Jolly good fun, this.

The only really sad song on this album, “Pibroch (Cap in Hand)” tells the tale of a man who has been far away from home, off doing his duty, only to find upon his return a strange man’s boots in the hallway.  He has returned, humble (cap in hand), ready to make amends to his wife, but she’s no longer his, apparently, and so he leaves without even seeing her.  But, as is often the case during this season of Tull, the musical length and diversity of the number, coupled with the aforementioned greatness of the musicians’ abilities, easily distract us from the sorrow of the lyrics.  Thanks to some mid-’70s mixing board magic, Martin Barre’s guitar somehow sounds like wailing bagpipes, and suddenly we are off on another mini-opera, whose hardness and strength perhaps give our poor fellow hope for a new day.

But that’s another story.  This collection of songs from the wood, having been brought to us by some dispenser of “kitchen prose and gutter rhymes” is ready to call it a day with “Fire at Midnight,” a quiet, encouraging tune that reminds us our love will be waiting for us when we return from a good day’s work.  We can sit by the fire, enjoy the comfort of a home filled with warmth and love, but we (as men, especially) must remember we still have an active role to play in creating an atmosphere of selfless and expressed love, expressed through words and actions in all rooms of the house, not just in the room where we find our slippers and pillow.

And so, Songs from the Wood draws to a gentle, cozy conclusion. It’s Jethro Tull, so it has its edgy moments, but here they are brief and winking.  It’s a positive, enjoyable album from a great band in its prime.  Get a copy, whether the expansive 40th anniversary edition or not, and enjoy it.  It will make you feel much better.

20th Century Fox vs. Agatha Christie

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Hannah Elliott

Recently, 20th Century Fox produced a movie based on Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express. It was interesting to see this classic book brought to life with some of today’s most successful actors and actresses, such as Johnny Depp and Penelope Cruz. However, like most motion pictures based on books, there were several differences between the movie and original book. Some were insignificant and some were significant enough to change big aspects of the book. Even though the plot of the movie followed the book, there were a multitude of differences related to the story line, characters, clues, and murder.

One difference related to the story line was the movie began with a case Poirot solved concerning a stolen relic and three suspected holy men. He exposes the true thief, the policeman, and explains how he put the clues together. This scene never takes place in the book. Poirot also has to take a ferry first before getting on the Orient Express. This is where he meets Mary and Arbuthnot. In the book, these characters board a train instead of a ferry. A love interest is also added to the story. Poirot carries a portrait of a woman to whom he refers as “my sweet Katherine.” This is not explained and is left as a loose end.

One of the most significant differences is the combination of Doctor Constantine and Colonel Arbuthnot. The only character in the movie is Doctor Arbuthnot. This changes the story a little bit because the doctor is not as involved as he is also a suspect. Greta Ohlsson, the Swedish missionary, is replaced by Pilar Estravados, a Spanish missionary and nurse. And lastly, Antonio Foscarelli, the Italian car salesman, is renamed Marquez and is a Latin car salesman. We see suspicion shift from the Italian, like in the book, to Colonel Arbuthnot and Marquez due to race.

The snow drift incident is also altered in the movie to provide more action and setting opportunity. The snow drift causes a very intense derailing of the train. In the book, the whole train is encompassed and no one is able to exit and go outside. In the movie, the characters are stranded but not trapped inside. This allows the suspects to leave the train and Poirot to interview his suspects outdoors. There is also a team of men that come to the rescue to fix the engine in the movie that do not exist in the book.

Poirot also states he has a more personal connection with the Armstrong case as he received a letter from Colonel Armstrong asking for help in solving the kidnapping of his daughter, Daisy. This is connection is not made in the book but is now why Poirot feels obligated to solve the case.

There are also some differences about the murder and clues in the movie. Ratchett asks Poirot to protect him over dessert and threatens him with his gun when he refuses to “watch his back.” The threatening letters written to Ratchett are made with cutout letters instead of being written by multiple people to avoid being traced to one person. He also proceeds to tell Poirot himself about the letters, unlike the book in which MacQueen tells him about the letters. Poirot actually sees the woman in the red kimono after Ratchett is dead, unlike the book where he has to rely on the suspects’ description of her. Poirot is actually the one to find Ratchett dead in his compartment and he tells the whole car about the murder at the same time. Hubbard states she locked her own door and is not sure how the man got in her room and she personally finds and gives the button from the Wagon Lit Conductor uniform to Poirot. Mary is also proven to be left-handed, whereas in the book the only possible lefty is Princess Dragomiroff. The red kimono is found to be inside Poirot’s suitcase not on top, which is odd because everyone at that time locked their suitcases. It is also explained the valet’s toothache was a thyroid condition in order to add more emotion to the movie. Mrs. Hubbard was stabbed with the murder weapon instead of her just finding it in her sponge bag. And lastly, all 12 suspects stabbed Ratchett at the same time.

There are also a few scenes added to the movie to provide more action. In one scene, MacQueen runs from Poirot and leads him down unstable stairs because he fears he has figured him out. He confesses to stealing money from Ratchett but Doctor Arbuthnot vouches for his alibi. An altered scene in the movie pertains to Mary and Poirot, in which he asks her instead of Bouc for help in answering 10 of his most difficult questions about the case. One last scene added is a fight between Poirot and Arbuthnot. Poirot accuses Mary of killing Ratchett and her knight in shining armor comes to defend her. Arbuthnot shoots Poirot in the arm and Bouc has to save him.

The ending of the book is the last, most significant difference between the movie and the book. Poirot still proposes the same two solutions as in the book, with just a few alterations in the second solution. He states Princess Dragomiroff was Daisy’s godmother, MacQueen’s father tried the maid involved in the Armstrong case who killed herself, and Pierre Michel was the brother of the maid. In the book, he allows M. Bouc to decide what he wants to tell the cops, stating he is sympathetic toward the killers. However, in the movie, it is much more dramatic. Poirot states he cannot live with the injustices that have taken place and proceeds to place a gun on the table in front of the conspirators. He tells them they will have to kill him to keep him silent. The action escalates as Mrs. Hubbard picks up the gun and pulls the trigger on herself. The gun turns out to be unloaded and Poirot decides to “live with the imbalance” and tell the police it was a lone assassin who escaped. The movie ends with Poirot being called away to another case in Egypt, probably referring to another famous mystery created by Agatha Christie.

Overall, the movie follows the basic story line and plot, with just some added details. The most significant change is the amount of violence added to the movie. Almost every man possesses a gun, whereas in the book, Ratchett is the only man to have a gun and it is only for self defense. Also multiple fights take place and the character of the timid and protective Count is warped into a violent and aggressive man. To have a successful movie nowadays there must be action, love, and violence, all three of which take place in Murder on the Orient Express.

Religion in British Literature

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Tarah Leake

A popular theme in British literature exemplified during Anglo-Saxon era, the Medieval era, and again in the Neoclassical era was that of religion. During the Anglo-Saxon era, life was heavily affected by the threat of conquest and war as seen through the Norman Conquest. Possibly because of the lingering presence of death, people gravitated toward old, recited tales and religious works. Christianity helps spread literature, and oral traditions unite groups of people. A popular piece of literature from this era is the Junius Manuscript, which is similar to today’s well-known Message Bible. The manuscript contained a poetically-rephrased account of Scripture passages and lessons. Editors have titled the four sections of the manuscript “Genesis,” “Exodus,” “Daniel,” and “Christ and Satan.” The first three express poetic adaptations of the popular Old Testament narratives. The fourth division of text combines several New Testament occasions, both real and prophesied, which feature moments of Christ’s victory over Satan. This compilation helped artistically capture God’s word in a way that had not commonly been done until then.

Another example of Old English literature was that of the monk, Bede, known more commonly as The Venerable Bede. He authored many works that helped frame a religious outlook on the occurrences of this world and provide moral instruction. Religion’s influence in British literature did not cease after the Norman invasion; it continued into Middle English, better known as the Medieval era.

The Medieval era brought an even stronger focus on religious devotion and instruction. As the Crusades began to take shape, Christians were expected to prove their obedience and loyalty to God. People would not be willing to sacrifice their lives for God’s will if they could not understand exactly what His will was. Illiteracy was common in these times, especially regarding the complex text of Scripture. Wishing its authority to thrive, the Church began to instruct its members through morality and miracle plays making it far easier to comprehend for those who could not read the word themselves. The Church was not alone in its pursuit of righteousness; several other works of literature focused on cultivating positive, moral habits although not necessarily religious ones. An example of this is Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. This ballad proposed many moral notions such as hospitality toward others, loyalty in friendship (to the point of sacrificing your life for another’s), and steadfastness in one’s promises.

As the Church gained power and influence, it became naturally susceptible to corruption, as any institution would be. When the institution that should display the highest levels of integrity and morality, as they taught to others, began falling into the deceit of wealth and power, an English poet and author would take note. Geoffrey Chaucer, author of The Canterbury Tales, came from a religious upbringing and Catholic school. When he was older, Chaucer became an esquire to King Edward III and rose up to the point of engaging in a few diplomatic journeys on the King’s behalf. Chaucer’s experience not only allowed him to be awakened to the crime and extortion within the government, but his religious childhood also contributed to his ability to identify the fraud happening within the Church. In The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer uses the traditional style of oral storytelling to convey his disapprovals of the lack of morality in society. As the pilgrims tell their stories, some characters seem to have no purpose while others seem to represent either moral characteristics Chaucer praises or fraudulent, hypocritical ones Chaucer detests. He especially focuses on those in the Church who are bribed with money and more concerned with women than helping people, such as the Friar and Pardoner. Chaucer however does acknowledge the Church is not completely devoid of good people, as seen with the Parson, who is decent and dedicated to his congregation. However, it is not difficult to perceive Chaucer had a fairly condescending view of the Church.

Religion in British literature reappears during the Neoclassical era roughly two hundred years after Chaucer’s tales are published. The Neoclassical era brings about the Age of Enlightenment and with it a dramatic shift in society’s focus to glorify man. The Age of Enlightenment emphasizes reasoning and logic as being the most powerful aspects of mankind. Man arises on the highest pedestal and this requires mankind to unite and harmonize since they are the most perfected and intelligent species. Although it should unite the masses, instead the Age of Enlightenment causes a division in the people as those considered more intelligent and logical view themselves higher than the rest. The entirety of the government’s role shifts from being less consumed with regulating its populace and more concerned with protecting the rights of man and property. This shift demonstrates a need for God’s reality more than ever. Authors and poets alike begin dedicating works to bringing the light of righteousness back into their people’s dark hearts.

Mankind was completely consumed with itself, so an obvious demand for humility and reassessment asserts itself. Author John Milton steps in and answers this call for a reevaluation of values in life. Milton starts at the beginning of time with his famous epic poem Paradise Lost. Through Paradise Lost, Milton wishes to accurately express the story of how man fell so far from God’s grace and transgressed his will for a bite of fruit, and how Jesus offered himself in man’s place. Although Milton does utilize creative freedom, he depicts the events in Scripture in an easily understood and conceivable manner, without at all discrediting the intended message. Paradise Lost benefits readers of any century by helping to identify just how imperfect man is and how fortunate he is Christ took God’s wrath in his place. One can only imagine the illuminating impact this book would have had on a people whose society was overtly captivated by exalting human will, a complete contradiction of religious morals and God’s will.

In 1749, roughly eighty years after Milton published Paradise Lost, Samuel Johnson wrote a poem entitled “The Vanity of Human Wishes.” In this poem, Johnson illustrates the futility of the carnal pursuit of greatness and happiness in this material world. He compares well-known, wealthy figures in society with commoners and scholars. He explains no matter what social class someone thrives in, everyone experiences disappointment and dissatisfaction in life because everyone is human. This world will never completely please mankind because it was not created for that purpose. This example of Johnson’s work is heavily influenced by Old Testament values and Ecclesiastes’s chapter one message of the downfalls of vanity. Throughout the early 1750s, Johnson reached his career climax writing over two hundred entries of his famous periodical, The Rambler. As the title suggests, his writings were often random in style and topic, but he clarified that no matter what topic he discussed, it would be centered on stimulating wisdom in readers with a tone consistent with God’s word. Johnson’s wise, straightforward expression of the importance of eternal value over earthly value would have been especially significant for those alive during his time of the Enlightenment. Unfortunately, much of his work would not reach popular levels of interest for years to come.

God’s will shall be done no matter what humans decide they want to happen. Each time mankind has slipped away from God’s set morals and laws, He finds a way to call them back to Him. The beauty and intrinsic value of literature is simply one of the many avenues for God to reach His people, as seen through His inspired, written Scripture. When faced with the threat of death and war, God offered his promises for Christ’s victory and goodness in the Junius Manuscript and the writings of the Venerable Bede. When the centuries uncovered a side of both Church and man that was bloodthirsty and power-hungry, God gifted individuals like Geoffrey Chaucer, John Milton, and Samuel Johnson with spiritual vision. Chaucer recognized the bribery spreading throughout the Church prevented them from placing God’s will above all else as they should. As the Enlightenment blinded humanity with false goals of personal success and material happiness, John Milton creatively captured the essence of God’s undeserved grace provoking an admittance of humility within its readers. Johnson, inspired by his wife’s religious devotion, used his poetic insight to convey to people that no matter the social class every person is composed of the same ingredients and all will experience defeat in this broken world. Mankind simply cannot glorify itself and its own needs, because everything about this world is flawed and imperfect.

In the midst of chaos and moral obscurity, God never abandoned His children, working through the incredible works of British authors and poets to answer the calls of His people.

Bibliography

http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195396584/obo9780195396584-0145.xml

https://www.biography.com/people/geoffrey-chaucer-9245691

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Samuel-Johnson

Christmas 7: Ring Out, Solstice Bells

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Christopher Rush

Hello, friends.  Here we are again: another Christmas, another New Year.  For some of you, 2017 was rough, and for that I am sorry.  For some of you, 2017 was a smashing good time, and for that I am happy for you.  Ours was pretty good — can’t really complain about it, certainly not with all the natural disasters and social unrest and political turmoil that made life difficult for so many people this year.  My wife got her Master’s degree, we have made significant improvements to our house, our kids stayed fairly healthy, we tried throughout the year to intentionally make good memories as a family, and that will continue to be an intentional plan going into 2018.  I hope you can spend a significant amount of time in 2018 similarly doing enjoyable things with people you love (for God’s glory, of course).

I think I’ve mentioned in the past as I get older I tend to go through the years in patterns: springtime seems to be my main wargaming season; videogames tend to come in the summer and Christmas break, when I actually have time to stay up and play them without work responsibilities; summer is also the time I tend to read the things I want to read for the same reason; autumn seems to be the time I return to Genesis and Rush albums for no reason I can intuit; and Christmastime is also the time of year I remember how much I enjoy Jethro Tull.  I suspect that has become a yearly thing because for several years there my sister-in-law and her husband got me a new-to-me Jethro Tull album for Christmas, so the band began to have a Christmastime connection with me.

When you get to the back page of this issue, you’ll notice we are going to begin a new series of album analyses on Tull’s folk rock trilogy, beginning with Songs from the Wood, if the Lord tarries.  I don’t want to get ahead of ourselves here, but in case you are wondering what that has to do with Christmas, if it’s been some time since you’ve heard the album, the first side ends with the song of the title in this very article, “Ring Out, Solstice Bells,” a great song about the beginning of winter and the festivals and good spirits and celebrations of life that occur at this time.  And since I’m sort of running out of ideas for Christmas-themed articles here, well, that seemed about as good as any for a title and a transition into a new series and a new year.  I thought about using the George Harrison line “ring out the old, ring in the new” already discussed in this issue, but I didn’t want to seem that desperate.

For the last few Christmas issues, as you may recall, we have included some shopping tips for games, and while I hope you enjoyed our recent recipe recalls from several issues ago (our first ever reprints), I don’t really want to recap the same game recommendations here.  Aside from the fact a fair number of the games we have recommended in the last couple of years have gone out of print and thus are rather difficult and/or expensive to track down, I’m not really a fan of straight repetition for its own sake.  Instead, here is a smattering of games I have acquired recently, games I have either played a bit lately or am looking forward to getting to the table as soon as I can.  Feel free to also use this list as an updated buying guide.

I have wanted to get my hands on Eminent Domain for a couple of years now (not to sound greedy or anything).  It has a lot of things going for it that I enjoy: it’s a deckbuilding game, it’s got a space theme (and you know I’m a fan of that), it’s small, and thanks to the expansion, which I also picked up at the same time, it has a lot of setup variability and replay value because it has more content in the game than you will see on any given play, so each playing experience is different (so they say).  I’m not a huge fan of the publishing company, Tasty Minstrel Games, but more so for niggling frustrations I’ve had with them than deep-seated and painful heartaches or anything like that, so for me to be eager and willing enough to get their game myself (instead of putting it on a Christmas list, say), tells you how much I’m looking forward to playing this one.

When 2017 began, I had two basic gaming goals: get a copy of Great Western Trail and get a Vital Lacerda game, a Portuguese designer of very thinking-heavy games.  Halfway through the year, I finally got ahold of GWT for my birthday, which made it even more special.  My wife and I played it a couple of times, and I got to play it a few more times with different alumni during summer gaming days, so for many reasons this game has become a personal favorite.  Like Eminent Domain, Great Western Trail has a few different gaming mechanisms involved, but it makes it all work together very well.  Much of the game is deckbuilding, in which your deck of cards is the herd you are driving from your ranch to Kansas City.  Additionally, you can control regions of the trail by adding buildings and thus making the trail longer, potentially.  You can also hire workers to make your trail-driving team more effective in different ways, either in acquiring better cattle, transporting them further and more lucratively, or improving your ability to make the trail itself more ideal to you and more difficult for the other players.  Like many top-notch games of today, it has variety in set-up and a multitude of gaming paths toward victory, making each game a new, rewarding experience.

As you many recall, I’m not a fan of horror in any way.  Edgar Allan Poe is pretty much my literary limit, and only in small, rare doses.  True, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein is my third-favorite movie of all time, but that’s not “real” horror, anyway.  Arkham Horror is based on the H.P. Lovecraft world of scariness, which I will likely never read, but now that it is public domain, every  second game that comes out has some sort of Cthulhu topping.  The games from Fantasy Flight Game, though, stand out positively.  I’ve played the board game version of Arkham Horror, and that was good, though, like most people, for time and space reasons (so to speak), it has been replaced by the wider Eldritch Horror.  I am interested in getting the dice game version of this world, Elder Sign (I had the chance to get it this past summer but let it slip by in favor of a more family-friendly game because I’m swell like that), even though it may be rather similar to the others in the series.  Arkham Horror The Card Game is a bit different from them in that it is a card game, in the sense you are a character doing the investigation of the dark forces trying to break into our world.  Eldritch Horror certainly has a lot of decks of cards, but it does not have the same feel, since none of those cards are “yours,” and that personal element in the card game generates a different feel in the game, which I enjoy.  It is also one of the newfangled “living card games,” which is secret code for “endless money hole.”  The base game pictured above gets you four investigators, a slew of cards (equipment, abilities, weaknesses), and three missions connected by a story.  After that, you can buy new stories, new expansions, all with new cards, ways to upgrade your character, different kinds of adventures, making the world/experience grow and continue … but, yes, you have to buy them.  But, you’ve got them, and then you can play them again and again, perhaps as different characters, even after the “secrets” of the stories are over.  It’s fine.

Remember a few moments ago when I said I wanted to get a Vital Lacerda game in 2017?  Quest: completed.  Thanks to the semi-annual sale at Noble Knight Games, and some gut-wrenching trade-ins I made days before it, I was able to get a brand new copy of The Gallerist, an intriguing game about making the best art gallery in town.  I haven’t been able to get it to the table yet, but I’m hoping my wife and I will find some time during the upcoming break to get it to the table and play.  I suspect she will win.  Though, getting it to the table may be a bit difficult, considering what is quickly becoming one of my favorite games of all-time…

Gloomhaven is a huge game: hundreds of components, dozens of characters, dozens of missions: you may think it’s your typical fantasy dungeon crawl, but it is much more than that.  It allows different paths of adventure, your characters have different life quests, different abilities, different battle goals, all of which add up to a sprawling, unique gaming adventure.  It takes a lot of table space, takes a decent amount of time to set up and take down, but once you get into this fun world, you will not want to take it down anyway.  It is a permanent campaign game with stickers and choices, but that all adds to the enjoyment of the experience.  It may be difficult to get for a while, since it was a Kickstarter game, but it should be out sometime in 2018, and it is worth it.  I’m really enjoying it; it will stay on my table for a long time to come.

Whew.  Another year has flown by.  On behalf of all of us here at Redeeming Pandora, especially Theodore Aloysius, the Polar Bear of Christmas, and Stringfellow Bartholomew, the Penguin of Presents, our special guest editors for this issue, we thank you for joining us on another wild ride.  Here’s hoping 2018 is a year of joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control, faith, hope, and love for you and yours!  See you next time, friends!

Too Soon: We Hardly Knew Ye

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Christopher Rush

I understand how usually we want our Christmas-themed issues to be light and fluffy like meringue cookies, but in addition to celebrating good times and Jesus’ birthday, at the end of a year we customarily look back on the lows as well as the highs of the year, taking inventory of what we gained and what we lost.  Before we proceed further, I should pause and admit this article has nothing to do with actual people and nothing to do with the year 2017 and thus nothing to do with genuine loss or sorrow, so you can relax.  This article is about characters that left television shows sooner than I wanted them to, either for real-life reasons such as contract disputes or new producers’ fancies, fake-life reasons such as ratings or storylines, or who knows what — and for the most part I don’t know the reasons involved here, so I won’t speculate or spend time arguing (much).  I understand kairotically this issue is a bit touchy, so to speak, but if it helps, without contradicting the previous sentence, I’m pretty sure none of the characters left these shows because the actors/actresses were fired for treating other real human being inappropriately, so you can relax about that as well.  Now that we are all relaxed, let’s begin.

Mark Brendanawicz, Parks and Recreation

You know those people who tell you, “Parks and Recreation is really good, you just have to get through the first season — it gets much better in season two”?  Turns out, they are correct.  Parks and Recreation has about as abysmal a first season as a show can have, but almost immediately it gets much better in season two.  I’m not saying it’s one of the best of all-time: it’s not terribly “safe” all the time, it does like to flaunt quite a bit of censored moments in a few episodes, and a fair number of its characters behave in ways shall we say contrary to Judeo-Christian values.  Despite that, and perhaps much of that was “necessary” to get the show made in the early 21st century, it has a fair amount of what we can blandly and vaguely call “heart,” and usually by the end of each episode we are smiling and happy these group of characters are smiling and happy themselves, often because fairly decent morals have won out after all (despite what was intimated moments ago).

Many of you will then likely disagree with this entry, since this character exists only during the easily forgettable era of the show.  However, the character had good potential especially as the show started to stretch and realize its own potential away from filling in the hole.  Just like in Futurama, as the expanded universe started to grow and the occasional repeating guest characters brought the town of Pawnee to life, Mark Brendanawicz could have grown and performed different functions as well, given the chance.  I understand how his character was basically written into a corner having effectively burned all his bridges with Leslie and Ann, the two main female characters, but it could have been interesting to see how they all rebounded from rebounding off each other.  His last few scenes at the end of the second season are just painful, and his character deserved better.  He began as the solid, intelligent character upon which our main character, Leslie Knope, could safely reach her enthusiastic dreams for a better life for her town.  He should not have ended up as he did, never mentioned again during the final five seasons of the show, even if the actor, Paul Schneider, was happy to move on to better things in his own life.

Chano Amanguale, Barney Miller

Almost identically to Mark Brendanawicz, Chano Amanguale, played by Gregory Sierra, disappeared from the ol’ 1-2 (New York City Police Department Squad Room #12) at the end of the second season of Barney Miller with no warning or explanation.  At least he is mentioned a couple of times in the next few seasons and gets paid a brief tribute in the show’s finale (along with other former cast members).  Chano was a very interesting character in a show wholly driven by interesting characters.  While some may find the show’s intentional panoply of ethnic diversity (and the concomitant ethnic humor of the 1970s) somewhat dated, I find it hard to believe people even today would be offended by what the show does and how it does it.  And Chano Amanguale, as an intelligent Puerto Rican officer with skill, humor, and verve, brought some of the best moments to the show in its first two seasons.  Like the other roles in the show, Chano had more going for him than “he’s the Puerto Rican character.”  His bilinguality, for example, brought scenes and an authenticity to the interactions with New York City life in the early 1970s that was lacking after his character left (as great as the show was).

Chano also gave us some weight to the show that was, admittedly, picked up in smaller amounts by other characters and episodes here and there, especially by Ron Glass’s character Ron Harris, but he did it first, especially showing us the human emotional cost of being a police officer.  If you are familiar with the series, you are likely aware of the specific show to which I am referring, the final episode of season 1, “The Hero,” in which Chano has to shoot a bank robber and, though he saves lives, feels guilt and sorrow for taking another life.  Aside from this depth, he also provided an enthusiastic personality not really replaced after his departure.  Don’t get me wrong, the show was great without him but not because of the loss of his character.  It may have been another case of the actor wanting to branch out and avoid becoming stuck in an admittedly intentional ethnic rut, but the show was not the same without him, and considering how impressively fresh the entire show is despite having virtually one set location for its entire run, Chano’s character could have brought something engaging for at least a few more seasons.

Dr. Zack Addy, Bones

For a show that impressively managed to mismanage virtually everything about itself, one of its most impressive mismanagements was the character Zack Addy, portrayed by Eric Millegan.  Depending on much you like that show, you could have chosen from several characters that just disappeared or were fired or got killed.  For no particular reason other than my whims and fancies at the time of this list compilation, I tried to avoid characters that got killed off by a show, which thus excluded pretty much everyone from Lost or NCIS or Battlestar Galactica.  I will admit here I have not finished off Bones — we stopped subscribing to cable somewhere around season eight or nine, so I haven’t seen the last few seasons.  I use the “stopped getting cable” excuse instead of the more accurate “they had run out of ideas for their characters and were just doing stupid things” (such as the totally original “Bones is on the run from a murder charge she didn’t commit” plotline) to try to be nice if you really like the show.  As I said, the show could go down for me as one of the great disappointments because it started off with so much and did so little with it.  Perhaps the last few seasons got back on track, and some day I’d like to find out for myself, but for the sake of this segment, I thought I’d be honest.

Zack was a young, brilliant doctor person with very limited social skills.  In a show populated mostly by nonstop talkers, his taciturnity was often quite welcome.  Many of the characters early on represented different abstract values: Booth was Justice (with a disappointingly insincere patina of Catholicism), Bones was Scientific Fact/Rationality, Angela was Heart/Compassion (right?), Hodgins was … I dunno, Proletariat Morality or something, except for the fact he was secretly wealthy, and Zack was Logic — cold, calculating, unemotional logic, sort of like how young Spock must have been when his mother wasn’t around.  And this logic led him to very bizarre places, especially at the end of his character tenure.

Zack leaves when he has reached a new plateau of both self-understanding and adherence to ratiocination, which is a horrible place for his character to stop.  Finally he starts to feel and engage with human beings as human beings and not just bits of datum, and even worse he departs when most of the rest of the characters think he is guilty of some heinous act when he is, plot twist, innocent.  And while we can be somewhat grateful this is finally resolved in the series finale almost a decade later (so I hear), taking a character to a whole new place and just dumping him, especially while leaving the other characters erroneously hurt by/angry with him, is a rotten thing to do for the character and the audience that has journeyed with him.

Walt, Lost

(I did say “pretty much everyone” from Lost.)  We kid Lost for doing about a dozen or so times exactly what Bones did with Zack, though usually much more fatally: whenever a character comes to some important life-changing decision or realization, about four seconds later that character is killed off.  Fine.  If you’ll allow the expression, we can live with that.  I’ve gone on record before (and I’m not trying to be one of those “go read everything else I’ve written” authors here) as saying Lost is a good show and its ending is fully in-line with what the show was about from its beginning, even with the multitude of plot holes, character-arc abandonments, nonsensical explanations or lack thereof, and the total package that was the entertaining rollercoaster ride called Lost, driven much more by the creativity and skills of Cuse and Lindelof than Abrams.  I felt the show did a fine job drawing its main storylines to satisfactory conclusions, for the most part, and while we could all come up with a separate list of a dozen characters who left the show too soon because they were killed off (which would be most of the cast), I arbitrarily tried to stay away from such cases.

Walt, however, is another situation entirely.  I have no sympathy for show creators who put children into their programs, first of all.  Let’s face it: Opie was sweet and swell and Ron Howard is great, but the Opie-centric episodes of The Andy Griffith Show are among the worst of the series.  The early “Nog + Jake getting in trouble” episodes of DS9, likewise.  The shows that are mainly family shows because of the kids (Leave it to Beaver, The Brady Bunch, etc.) don’t really count here, since that is their whole schtick: the kids try and fail and try and succeed and we all laugh and cry and laugh again as they grow and learn to laugh at love … again, or whatever.  The Cosby Show avoided this for the most part, though there are a couple episodes here and there that suffer from this (like Rudy and Vanessa locked in the basement).  But by this point in the history of television, Lost and its creators should have known Malcolm David Kelley was going to reach puberty and grow quickly as a human being before his character had time to grow and develop.  They should have known that.  And if you are going to create a show that covers only a few months of “show time” though it takes years of “real time” to make, you should be prepared for that eventuality from the get-go.

Walt was special, they told us.  Mysterious and wondrous things happened around him, possibly because of him.  He had some keen preternatural connection to the island.  For all we know, he may have been the reason they crashed on the island in the first place.  But we will never really know, will we?  In a show that literally was about time travel, they couldn’t have found some excuse to say something to the effect of “Walt stepped into the quantum accelerator and suddenly older, taller Walt stepped out”?  We should have been told why Walt was special.  I don’t need an explicit explication of why the island breeds infertility (which, I suppose is a redundant and contradictory sentence).  I don’t need to know what was the deal with Libby and her boat and this and that.  Sure, it would be nice, but Walt was special!  He altered reality.  His story and character deserved much better treatment.

Murphy Michaels and Bernice Foxe, Remington Steele

I’m not implying I don’t like Doris Roberts or her character Mildred Krebs — she is great, of course — but Remington Steele lured us in with an intriguing conflict that had no meaningful resolution.  Remington Stele began with a fantastic ’80s-only premise: a plucky detective agency is making its mark in the misogynistic world thanks to the masculine manly man Remington Steele being in charge … except he doesn’t exist and the real brains behind the enterprise is Laura Holt, a feminine lady woman person, who actually has brains as well as beauty, a concept not everyone in the 1980s (or 2010s) understood.  Laura Holt has some assistants: Murphy Michaels played by James Read and Bernice Foxe played by Janet DeMay.  Murphy is another licensed private investigator and is a fairly smart cookie in his own right, not just the muscle for Laura.  Bernice is a disappointingly typical ’80s secretary, and, frankly, I’m sort of tossing her in for appearances, thus undercutting the enlightened-sounding nature of recent sentences.  Mainly, this entry is about Murphy Michaels.

The aforementioned “intriguing conflict” at the onset of the series comes from the appearance of the breathtaking Pierce Brosnan, who immediately announces to the world he is the real Remington Steele, surprising everyone who works at the Remington Steele Detective Agency, especially Laura and Murphy, who both know Laura made him up (Bernice does not know this, which adds some humorous moments during the first season, but the loss of her character is not much of a loss overall, sad to say).

Pierce’s character is mysterious and possibly felonious.  Murphy, of course, mistrusts him from the beginning.  So does Laura, but she also finds him difficult to resist (as we all do, frankly, and still to this day), a conflict that is allowed to expand and contract and expand again over the next few seasons.  Sadly, we only get the intriguing conflict of Murphy vs. “Remington” for the first season, after which Murphy and Bernice are replaced by Mildred Krebs.  True, this simplifies the show and allows it to grow in new directions, but I still would have liked to have seen an actual resolution to the Murphy vs. Remington arc, as well as more interesting things for James Read during his time as Murphy Michaels, especially since he is supposed to be good at his job — he should not always be topped by the amateur.  I’m not suggesting a prequel, although that notion now that I think of it is mildly intriguing.  Nor am I suggesting in this instance the show could have been better had Murphy stayed around longer.  One season, had it been handled better and more intentionally, could have sufficed for an engaging and complete story for Murphy Michaels both in relation to Remington Steele and in his own right.

Lt. Col. Henry Blake and Dr. Trapper John McIntyre, M*A*S*H

Moments ago I mentioned I tried not to pick characters that got killed off, which is why I didn’t pick Tasha Yar from Star Trek: The Next Generation (which was as nonsensical a decision as an actor could make, leaving a show midway in its first season — at least Christopher Eccleston sticks out the whole season) or Jadzia Dax from Deep Space Nine (though, why she couldn’t have stayed for one more season is beyond me), or anyone from Farscape or NCIS or 24 or other shows that solve their problems by killing off characters (not that Farscape did that).  Similarly, it would have been wistfully childish or childishly wistful to include characters that leave a show because the actor who portrays that role dies in real life, such as Bill McNeal from Newsradio or Coach from Cheers or Nick Yemana from Barney Miller or even Mr. Hooper from Sesame Street.  Sure, it would have been nice if they had lived, but more so that their families could have them around than more episodes of fake television.  (I still feel bad my first reaction in late 2016 when hearing of the passing of Carrie Fisher was, “oh no, what about Episode 9?”)

Even so, you may think I am now cheating my own arbitrary selection standards by picking Henry Blake from M*A*S*H.  However, if you take the whole M*A*S*H experience together (by which I mean the book series, including those not by Richard Hooker or whatever his real name was), sprinkle in a possibly-canonical moment from The Carol Burnett Show, and you come to know Henry Blake was not killed after all.  This still does not lessen the impact of his final episode in the series for me, and I still will only watch it when we do whole-series run-throughs every few years.  Most of you will disagree with me, and that’s fine.

The point remains: Henry should have stuck around longer.  Again, that does not mean I don’t like Col. Potter or think Henry is “better” than Col. Potter.  Similarly, I’m not saying Trapper is “better” than B.J.  M*A*S*H did a fantastic job replacing characters with almost exact opposite personalities, which was brilliant for the life of the show and the wellbeing of the fans and their affections.  Admittedly, part of the reason I like Henry and Trapper is because I like the comedic nature of their era so much.  Most of my favorite M*A*S*H episodes come from their era because they are so funny, and still so after countless watchings.  That’s not a knock against the Potter/Hunnicutt/Winchester era — I am still impressed by what they did during the more dramatic tenor in the latter seasons, especially as the creative team intentionally did episodes similar in plotlines to early series episodes but instead of dealing with the ideas comically, they dealt with them seriously, focusing on more realistic implications and consequences.  That is great, and though I don’t dwell as much in seasons seven through eleven as I do one through six, I still enjoy those episodes.  Still and all, though, the early comedic era is what I prefer.

This is not to say my fondness for Henry and Trapper is solely dependent upon the tenor of their tenure: quite the contrary, in fact.  I think the best moments Henry has, for example, are those rare opportunities when McLean Stevenson gets to play him seriously and intelligently, such as when Henry tells Hawkeye the two rules he knows in “Sometimes You Hear the Bullet” or the strong leadership he exhibits briefly in scattered moments such as “Divided We Stand” and “O.R.” and “Aid Station.”  “Life with Father” is an almost-perfect Henry episode except for his brief outburst after his phone call to his wife.  Many of his best moments are in season three, indeed, and sadly, just as his character was finally getting some growth and development, he’s gone.

Similar is Trapper John McIntyre.  His best moments are in season three, and just when we are starting to see him get some much-deserved life and screen time, he’s gone.  Trapper shines in episodes such as “Kim,” “Check-up,” “Bulletin Board,” and “Radar’s Report.”  (Couple of season two episodes, come to think of it — why didn’t they build on that?)  I can understand why Wayne Rogers and McLean Stevenson would want to leave, especially Wayne Rogers: if you are promised you are going to co-star in a show about two main doctors and suddenly you are not just second fiddle but oftentimes more the page turner, and if you can make a lot more money as a financial investment expert without having to act in the difficult conditions on set during the making of the series, yeah, I would probably do what he did as well.  And I can empathize with McLean Stevenson also: if my character was not getting the chance to grow and behave intelligently enough, and I had the opportunity to move from third fiddle to star of my own show, I’d probably consider taking off for potentially greener pastures just as he did.

However, as a fan of the show, and a fan of those characters, I wish they had either stuck around longer to give us more episodes building upon their growth and development as rounded personalities, or at least gotten some better scenes.  At least Trapper could have had some more of the funny lines instead of Hawkeye all the time.   Though, if you ask me which episodes I’d change, I couldn’t really name them offhand.  I’d have to assess that on an episode-by-episode basis, which I will do for my forthcoming M*A*S*H book.

Speaking of which, as a bit of a related aside, I have often thought how different the show would have been had the main group of nurses featured throughout the first season stayed at the camp.  I understand there’s an element of realism in their departure, since M*A*S*H units tended to have much faster personnel turnover rates than the fictional 4077th did, and from a similar “hungry for fame” reason I can understand why Marcia Strassman would want to branch out.  And as above, I do not mean to imply I don’t like Bigelow or Kellye or Gage or Sheila or Baker or Jo Ann or Wilson — certainly not.  I have already intimated I really enjoy series that keep their extended universe of characters around and let them grow and thrive along with the main cast.  And while Hawkeye and the producers basically cut all ties with the first season nursing staff in “Ceasefire,” imagine how different the show would have been had Ginger, Nancy, Margie Cutler, Barbara, Dish, and Leslie stuck around for a while, preferably adding in the other nurses as well, possibly alternating episodes as different shifts much like the doctors did.  Again, I understand how that would have fundamentally changed the show, and I can’t really point to a lot of episodes specifically and declare “this would have been better with this group of nurses instead” … except for one.  As great as “The Nurses” is, had it been nurses we already knew, perhaps building that tension up over the season, man, that could have been even better — and you wouldn’t have needed to change one of Margaret’s great lines.  But I digress.  I’ll put it in my book.  This was supposed to be about Henry and Trapper.

The real heartbreak for me about Trapper and Henry, beyond the eternal wistful desire for more/better episodes for them, is the fact the show actually did this kind of character development from the beginning for Col. Potter and B.J.  With the notable exception of the episode “Hawkeye” (and discrete others, to be sure), season four to the end significantly backed away from Hawkeye’s character as the main character and allowed others to dominate episodes.  Sure, a good deal of this was Alan Alda doing more behind-the-scenes work, but if he was going to do that anyway, why couldn’t it have happened while enabling Henry and Trapper to grow?  Ah, well.  Again, I’m glad it happened so Col. Potter and B.J. could grow and thrive, truly I am.  I just think Henry and Trapper left the show too soon.

C’est la tee-vee.

I’m sure you have a drastically different list of characters and shows from which their departures were too soon.  I would have also appreciated Farrah Forke sticking around Wings longer, for example, or Thomas Hayden Church for that matter.  Or Monk’s first-season theme song.  I’d be glad to hear from you about other characters in other shows that may have benefitted from more episodes or at least better utilization of them while they were around.  That was basically Khandi Alexander’s reason for leaving Newsradio (as well as her character’s reason for leaving), and it’s difficult to disagree with her.  I did not include her here because I thought we had a good run with her character anyway, though I would not have minded more Catherine Duke around station WNYX.  Tell me some others, preferably from shows I’ve never seen — as difficult as it is to believe, I haven’t seen them all.

At this point, my idea for the next entry in this series is a bit of a twist, something like “not a moment too soon: characters that should have left earlier,” if I can find some way of doing it without sounding mean-spirited.  While that sounds like a total break from what the series is about, it’s my series and I can do what I want with it.  Not to sound mean-spirited.  Just let me grow and develop, unlike the characters discussed above.

Overlooked Gems: Dark Horse

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Christopher Rush

George Harrison is no saint.  Well, he may be one right now, but back in his day he was no saint.  He fooled around, basically drove his first wife away (into Eric Clapton’s arms), inserted a great deal of narcotics into his being, he could hold grudges … basically, he was human.  We all have faults; we are all sinful, even those of us who are redeemed.  I’m not excusing George Harrison’s improper life choices (I save that for myself); I’m simply saying our task is not to allow one’s failures prevent us from enjoying the positive things one has to offer.  I knew you weren’t thinking that, but the more I read about George, Brian, Paul, Mike, John, Carl, Ringo, Dennis and the rest, the more that notion is pressing upon me.  But that’s a personal problem, I know.  On with the musical analysis … advertisement.  Whatever.

For some reason, not too many people liked the album Dark Horse when it first came out, but I do not understand why.  A lot of rough things were going on for Mr. Harrison at the time: rough vocal health (as can be heard throughout the album, including the bonus tracks on the cd release), divorce from his wife Pattie, his second trip to India, a poorly received U.S. tour with his good buddy Ravi Shankar, the end of Apple Records and the beginning of Dark Horse Records (George’s personal music studio) — a mixed bag of life experiences during which to release an album, yet none of them strike me as valid for disregarding the album.  Some of those rough experiences come out in the first half, which is mostly sad (other than the first song, which is quickly rising up my all-time faves list), but the second half is ebullient and typically self-effacing George Harrison.  I like it, and so should you.

Side One

“Hari’s On Tour (Express)” is an excellent instrumental: it varies in tempo and melodic line, and thus it never lags or overstays its welcome, which is surprising for an almost five-minute instrumental.  It has patterns, one could almost say “movements” or “motifs,” and the listener soon feels confident he or she understands the flow of the song, but the pattern is so various even in its familiarity it is never dull.  This may sound like faint praise, but it is not meant as such: the slower portions are a smooth groove and the faster portions really cook with the multiple guitars, the brass, the drums; basically, it’s a fresh combination of jazz and rock that holds up to multiple back-to-back listenings.

The autobiographical portion of the album begins with an intriguing reflection by George about his rock-and-roll lifestyle in “Simply Shady.”  The laryngitis from which George suffers during much of this album improves the atmosphere of this song especially, as it all about the dangers of succumbing to the stereotypical concomitant famous lifestyle experiences (so, drugs and alcohol, yes), and the taxing nature of George’s lifestyle outside of his religious devotion undergirds the pathos of the song.  Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of this intriguing song is George’s reference to “Sexy Sadie,” John’s irritated response to the Maharishi and the Beatles’ first trip to India.  This is odd considering George just came back from a more positive trip to India coupled with the album’s overall enthusiasm for Indian philosophy and religion.  Aside from these intriguing points, the verses are impressively sharp intellectually, philosophically, and realistically.  George wrestles with the consequences of the last ten years of his life, he ponders the implications for the future, and he meditates on his place in the universe.  The honesty and introspection place this song among his most important.

The autobiography continues with “So Sad,” a heartbreaking account of George’s response to his failing marriage.  For some the pathos may be tempered by George’s part in the dissolution of their marriage, depending on which (auto-)biographical account one reads, but that would not be wholly fair, especially considering the authenticity of George’s remorse throughout the song (which is not to downplay the horrible and rotten things George did during their marriage both to himself and in violation of his wedding vows, but go see the first paragraph of his essay for further thoughts).  The human anguish in this song is remarkable in light of the “spiritual peace” sung about on all of George’s solo albums to this point.  I suspect the George Harrison experiencing the emotions of this song would attempt something violent if the slightly younger “chant the name of the Lord and you’ll be free” George Harrison told him to simply release all of his problems through a mantra.  Another standout aspect of this song is the, well, I was going to say “rhythm,” but that’s not quite it: the number of guitar strums in the guitar riff, really.  The music sequence feels incomplete, but upon further reflection, the keen listener realizes that complements the lyrics beautifully.  He is so sad, so alone, he is no longer complete, and the musical line supports that.  It is effectively jarring.

The pathos takes a markedly cynical turn with George’s revision of the Everly Brothers’ “Bye Bye, Love,” featuring not only an added comma in the title but also a radically different melodic line (now in a minor key) and rhythm to the lyrics as well as a personal set of verses about Pattie’s not-so-newfound relationship with George’s good buddy Eric Clapton.  The latter verses highlight the cynicism with more than a tinge of hypocrisy as well, considering the narrator of the song (presumably George himself, considering the pointed nature of the first verse) expresses vitriol for the infidelity of the human woman, despite his own infidelity as a significant component of the dissolution of their marriage, in truth.  In all, this version has admittedly a world-weariness about it the original lacks, but this mood fits the actual lyrics far better anyway, as further reflection on the now-bizarrely jaunty nature of the Everly Brothers’ version seems almost ludicrous in contrast to the more authentic George Harrison version (despite, perhaps, its asperity).

Side one ends with the perplexing song “Maya Love.”  It highlights George’s penchant for the slide guitar, which drives the most consistently up-tempo song on this side of the album.  Some experts tell us this was mainly an instrumental lick to which George felt compelled to add lyrics inexplicably (I think it would have been just fine to bookend this half of the album with instrumentals).  The paucity of lyrics, especially in contrast to the impressive diction in “Simply Shady,” “So Sad,” and even “Dark Horse” on side two, lends an air of verity to that claim.  Regardless, this song could be interpreted in a couple of ways depending on how one understands the relation of the two words of the title to the rest of the words in the song.  This sounds obvious, of course, but bear with me, please.  For a long while I took the song to be about “love for maya,” or “illusion” in Hinduism — and for Hinduism, everything material is an illusion.  So I interpreted this song as George’s exhortation for us not to the love the material world of getting and spending or, worse, getting and hoarding, a love from which he suffered as well.  While this somewhat facile approach to the song worked, even if the lyrics were slapdashedly attached to a Billy Preston-driven funk, it didn’t really make a lot of sense.  After further reflection abetted by a modicum of research, I’m leaning more toward an interpretation in which “maya love” is not the distracting, destructive love of maya itself but a broader warning against a particular kind of love, the illusory kind of love in general (not the love of illusions themselves).  The song in its brevity, then, sees the progress of the autobiography culminate in a sober recovery from cynicism to a wiser, more concerned-for-others cautionary tale about being wary of false love — it is everywhere, it pervades, it is even in us and affects us, but even its ubiquity feels transient, a notion driven by the musical accompaniment, which thus feels more connected to the song than may have been intended.

Side Two

As if the flipping of the record were a complete shift in mentality and outlook, side two begins with a joyous, energetic song that would be my favorite on the album were it not for “Hari’s On Tour.”  “Ding Dong, Ding Dong” is a perfect New Year’s song or for any time you are feeling like you need a fresh start in life.  It is difficult to overcome the interpretive assumption this is George’s way of putting the past behind him (again, not excusing his transgressions or indiscretions) thanks, in part, to some of the many slogans Sir Frank Crisp inscribed in the halls of his (their) estate, Friar Park.  Not just his marriage to Pattie is behind him, but also his days as a Beatle (made even more evident in the accompanying music video).  It would be many years before he would revisit those days in musical homage, and only rarely, such as after John’s death and not again until his final album in his lifetime, Cloud Nine.  It is hard to begrudge him a desire for a fresh start barely five years after the dissolution of his first band and a few weeks after the dissolution of his first marriage.

This all leads to the eponymous track of the album, his personal record company, and likely, as biographer Geoffrey Giuliano aptly used it, his life: “Dark Horse.”  Critics still seem off-put by the scratchy vocals of this song, recorded while George was slowly but surely succumbing to laryngitis after all the hullabaloo, and while I have never read it referred to as “Dark Hoarse,” it is that.  The bonus rehearsal track included on the recent cd release features a much cleaner vocal of the song though accompanied by a much sparser instrumental track (basically just George’s guitar).  This song fits George so well because … well, it fits so well.  That sounded rather tautological, I bet, but here’s one case in which a tautology is true: this is George Harrison.  We thought he was just the nice, quiet one … we were wrong, even though George didn’t say or do anything to legitimize our perception of him.  We were the ones who assumed we understood him simply because he wasn’t like Paul or John or Ringo.  Oops.

“Far East Man” initially strikes one as an atypical George Harrison song until one suddenly realizes “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” is unlike “Taxman” is unlike “Within You Without You” is unlike “All Things Must Pass” is unlike “Here Comes the Sun” and just as suddenly one is asking onerself, just what is “typical” George Harrison, anyway?  This song is dedicated to Frank Sinatra, but one gets the sensation that’s more in the musical style of the smooth groove than the lyrics, unless one knows Mr. Sinatra had interest in the Far East, which I do not.  The lyrics are not so enthusiastic as the last couple, pondering the political turmoil of the early ’70s, but the song continually reminds us George (and/or Frank) is going to hang in there and stay true to himself and do what can be done to make the world better.  The gloomy notion “God, it’s hellish at times” is immediately refuted with the optimistic “But I feel that a heaven’s in sight.”  Hang in there, Levine.  Perhaps 2017 wasn’t so kind to you as you had hoped, and perhaps the social-media-generated pseudo-horror has got you down.  Hang in there, Levine.  A heaven’s in sight.

For George, the heaven is immediately in sight as the album closes with the final song overtly-influenced by Hinduism published in his lifetime, “It is ‘He’ (Jai Sri Krishna).”  Now, I readily admit my All Things Must Pass interpretation was more wishful thinking than feasible, but I can’t do much with this one.  It’s all Hindu, all the time.  But it is really catchy.

Dark Horse is a great album, so don’t listen to the nonsense of those who think it isn’t.  It is at once a snapshot in time in the life of George Harrison and a collection of timeless songs, especially “Hari’s On Tour” and “Ding Dong, Ding Dong.”  With the bonus songs on the cd release, this is the best time to get into this overlooked gem.  Don’t let the Hinduism prevent you from enjoying a great album — you’re too good for that, and so is this album.  Put it on your Christmas list, stuff it in the stocking of someone you love, just go get this album and enjoy it.