Levon Helm

The generations that have been shaped by rock and roll have always known death as a close companion. Even before Sam Phillips, Little Richard, Elvis, Ike Turner and the others had the stove turned on, Robert Johnson was hoodooing up a vat of deep blues that would be distilled into one vein of rock. Mr. Johnson was poisoned. Was it a jealous husband? Maybe a boyfriend, or even the woman herself. Or was it the devil, come to collect on a bargain made at the crossroads? Whoever the perpetrator, Robert Johnson left way too much music unplayed.
James Dean seemed rock and roll. He wasn't a musician, but he was young, loud, angry and lonely. That's as rock and roll as it gets. Dean bought it in a fast car, going too fast around a curve. Life in the fast lane, indeed!
Buddy Holly and Richie Valens died in an airplane crash way too young. They were in Iowa in the winter, trying to get to the next gig. Hey, the show must go on, right?
The drug deaths that rock appropriated from jazz came later. Hendrix, Joplin, Morrison, Epstein, Jones, Moon, Bonham...live fast, die young, leave a good looking corpse? Motto of the late 60's and 70's!  But it didn't stop there. Fat Elvis lived every excess known to humanity. And died from them, too.
John Lennon's murder brought musicians' deaths into uncharted territory. Who'd have ever thought that a rocker would become the target of (depending on how you see John and his killer) a mentally ill obsessive, or an assassin. We learned about John's killing on Monday Night Football, from the ubiquitous Howard Cosell. It became an Event. We wrestle with it still.
The rappers took over the death biz. East Coast v. West Coast, the would-be gangsters shot off their mouths on their albums, and shot up the competition in the streets. Tupac, Biggie and about 197 of their colleagues whose names I don't know or care to know are dead for...what, the bling? Did any of them see 30? Nice work, morons!
There have been others and other circumstances, Cobain and Hutchence and on and on.
But a new day has dawned. We have reached the time when those who've made it through everything else are getting old, or sick, or old and sick. Cash, Dickinson, Zevon, gone from the issues that plague normal people. Just this last year, Sumlin, Willie Big Eyes Smith and Pinetop Perkins are gone at advanced ages. For crying out loud, even The Monkees' Davy Jones just died of a heart attack.
Now, Levon Helm is gone. Levon was homefolks, from just across the river in Arkansas. He grew up on the music we all did in this part of the country, and somehow took all that and fell in with a bunch of Canadians. They played as the Hawks. Backing Ronnie Hawkins.  Hawkins and the Hawks. Get it? They were smart and funny but mainly tremendous musicians. So good that Bob Dylan asked them to back him. They were on the scene as Dylan blew music up in 1965 and 1966, being accused of everything in plugging in and, allegedly turning his back on the folkies. Death threats, riots, all kinds of fun accompanied the tour of Dylan and the group now known as The Band.  Music from Big Pink, The Basement Tapes, The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, The Weight, Cripple Creek, Rag Mama Rag; how did the Canadian Robbie Robertson write such music for that fabulous, soulful Arkansas voice? Levon drummed, he sang, he played the mandolin, and helped carve out the sound that influenced everybody who came after them. When Dylan went back out in 1974 to do his first shows since 1966, and the motorcycle wreck, he had to have The Band around him. 'Nuf said!
It was all supposed to end with Scorsese's movie, The Last Waltz. The Band's farewell concert is a great movie, although Levon wasn't that wild about it. Helm gathered the boys, minus Robertson, for several more albums and tours, moving even further to the center of the stage. That was a good thing!
In the late 90's, Levon was diagnosed with throat cancer. Wasn't supposed to ever speak again, let alone sing. But somewhere along the line, things started to come together again. And when they did, Levon recorded. He issued Dirt Farmer in 2007 and won the Grammy for Best Traditional Folk Album. 2010 brought Electric Dirt, and another Grammy, this time for Best Americana Album. His last recording, Ramble at the Ryman, took 2011's Grammy in the same category.  Pretty good encore, eh?
Levon and his Ramblers played Memphis' Orpheum Theatre on November 10, 2010. It was one of the most joyous concert experiences I've ever known.
A few weeks ago, Levon's family posted a message on his Facebook page that he was in the last stages of his fight against a recurrence of his cancer. He died at home on April 19, five weeks short of his 72nd birthday. Levon lived long and well, and died the same way. I was hoping for a whole lot more music from Levon Helm, but his last teaching was in wrapping things up and celebrating a good life.

"Someday, everything is gonna be smooth like a rhapsody
When I paint my masterpiece."

Dylan wrote it. Levon sang and lived it. We're richer for it.

10 Months

Hi. I'm Joe. I'm a recovering christian. And today, April 19, 2012, I have been clean for ten months.
I walked out of the church on Fathers' Day last June and have stayed out and away ever since. A couple of times early on, it was difficult, because I had developed habits over 30 years that, while destructive and painful, were very, very familiar. Those comfort zones are hard to step out of, even when they are killing us, and they surely were killing me, one miserable day at a time.
Ten months later, my blood pressure is corrected. I haven't had but one migraine headache in all this time, where the routine had become 3 to 5 per week. An awful lot of the frustration and anger that had become my constant companions are just distant memories now. I feel better than I'd felt in, perhaps, 25 years.
I have a new job. I work for people of integrity and honor, which I hadn't believed in at least a decade, previously. The schools bring their own challenges, but there is never a day when I feel that I am mission-less, making no difference in a deadend, dying institution. The stress level in my life is now miniscule.
The hebrew bible tells the story of Joseph. You know, the guy with the technicolor dreamcoat. No, not Donny Osmond, but the character he portrayed. Joseph had a bunch of the sorriest brothers the world has ever had to offer. They wanted to kill him, but were a few cojones short. So they sold him into slavery. Years later, we're told, the tables turned and the rich and powerful Joseph found those bastards in the palm of his hands. He screwed with them a little, but in the end, let them off the hook. He showed he was better than they were. Not that it was all that difficult to be better than them!
It's probably a good thing that Bishop Dick and the Dickettes don't find themselves in the palm of my hand. Allstate, I ain't! But I get Joseph's story in ways that I never did before. The cowardly predators that sought my life didn't get the job done, either, and, indeed, that which doesn't kill us makes us stronger.
I am the strongest I have ever been in my adult life. I have found truths that would have been terrifying earlier, and embraced them fully. I know the difference in reality and bullshit, and where each resides. This improvement could never have happened while in the grasp of the church. I am fortunate. I got out just in time.
Free at last, free at last, I am truly glad to be clean, sober and free!
Ten months and counting!

100 Years and a Godawful Movie Later, The Story Still Lives

OK, let's get it out of the way: with Cameron's Titanic being released with the excuse of being redone in 3D (for what, the sketching scene?) to glom a bit more money off the long-dead, the box office total has now exceeded $2 billion. I'll say that again. Titanic, the wretched movie, has sold more than $2 BILLION in tickets. Combine that with all the news coverage accompanying the 100th anniversary of the sinking, and the announcement that the last of the ship's dinner menus held by the salvage company sold at auction for $125,000, and the message seems to be that we still love us some Titanic.
Well, why not? The story-the real story, not the one that made James Cameron "King of the World"-has it all.
It starts with bigness. Human beings are fascinated with little else like we are "Big" and Titanic is all about big. From the very name to all the publicity back in the day involving now-ridiculous words like "Unsinkable," "Fastest," "Most Elegant" and so forth. The message was clear: the thing is too damned good-and big-to fail. Who doesn't dream somewhere along the line of gliding down the grand staircase, elegantly dressed, to dine with the finest society had to offer?
Then, if there's anything better than big, it's big getting knocked off its high horse. And they screwed the pooch about as big as is humanly possible. Cheap rivets, goofy design, arrogance regarding speed and ice warnings, and lack of training on the latest communications equipment? Well, you cut the corners, you find the bottom of the ocean! Dumbasses!
Victorian society holds our attention. Many of the men-and a significant percentage of them rich and/or famous choosing death instead of dropping a "Do you know who I am?" to force their way into a lifeboat? Hmmm. Somehow I just can't see Trump changing into tie and tails to enjoy one last cigar stoically. No, The Donald would be screaming at some immigrant with her children that she would never match his value to the economy, while he shoved the littlest ones into the sea. The musicians played. The crew largely maintained their positions and helped all the passengers they could.
The other side of the coin was the villain: Bruce Ismay owned the thing, and he lived to tell the tale. One of his biographies explains his fate: The Most Hated Man on Earth. Seems to rank up there with the Italian captain who tripped and fell into a lifeboat, damn the luck, when his cruise ship went belly up a few months ago. The stories that emerged from the investigations were numerous: Ismay ordered Captain Smith full speed ahead in spite of ice warnings, he ordered full steam ahead after striking the iceberg which speeded the sinking, etc.
Prefer poignancy? How about Mr. And Mrs. Strauss, part owners of Macy's, dying together, as she wouldn't leave her husband. Or, of course, the steerage passengers. I'm fortunate that my poor Irish forebears came to escape the Famine, some 60 years before. We are told that more first-class men survived than steerage children. That's the other side of that Victorian morality garbage.
Perhaps, instead of suffering again through the no-talent Vegas headliner barfing up one more rendition of the worst song ever written by someone not named "Gaga," we should honor the Titanic dead with a little meditation on hubris, frailty and how we're just never quite as smart as we think we are.

You Don't Sound Like You're From Around Here, Boy!

Ozzie Guillen is in trouble. Again. The first-year manager of the renamed Miami Marlins gave an interview. After all the tumult during Ozzie's tenure with the Chicago White Sox, maybe, we think, he should have learned not to give interviews. But Ozzie likes to talk, and he's a man who says what he thinks, with very little internal editing getting in the way.
Time magazine asked the Venezuelan native about Fidel Castro. Among other things, Ozzie said that Castro deserves respect "because that (expletive) has been in power so long." There are things you can't say in this world. Bobby Petrino would tell you that if you are the football coach at the University of Arkansas and you have a motorcycle wreck, you can't say you were by yourself if your 25 year old mistress was with you, or you'll be the ex-football coach at Arkansas. If Ozzie managed in Seattle, or had come from New Hampshire, he wouldn't have been asked about Cuba. But he works in Miami, and came from Venezuela, and now he is suspended for five games, while Miami's mayor seems to have nothing more significant to attend to than to call for Guillen's firing.
It doesn't seem to matter that many Venezuelans, chief among them, President Hugo Chavez, have a very different relationship with Castro and Cuba than the Little Havanans do. Chavez has gotten treatment for his recurring cancer in Castro's medical community, and sold his oil there. Venezuelans don't teach their children that all evil in the hemisphere emanates from Havana. So, like places in the world where children are taught that the US, or Israel, or both, are responsible for all the world's ills, and people are then willing to train as suicide bombers, we are left dealing with ways of looking at the world that don't make any sense to us. And in our day and time, what is different is wrong, and what's wrong needs to be wiped out.
Ozzie didn't blow anything up, except perhaps his career. But we see again that whether it's Moslem v. Christian, Jew v. Moslem, Cuban ex-pat v. Castro, or anyone who doesn't think like I do v. me, human beings don't deal very well with others' world-views when they are different.
Even when you're talking about a major league manager's perceptions of international relations!
It ultimately doesn't matter who manages the Marlins for the rest of the season. But until we can all reclaim a little empathy, just occasionally see the world through someone else's eyes, and build the bridges that necessarily follow, we will all keep looking for heads to be served up on plates. And we're running out of plates.