Maviglia - Critics Who Know Jack

CRITICS WHO KNOW JACK

URBAN MYTHS, MEDIA AND ROCK & ROLL

Joseph Maviglia

GUERNICA ESSENTIAL ESSAYS SERIES 62

TORONTO BUFFALO BERKELEY LANCASTER (U.K.)

2014

Copyright 2014, Joseph Maviglia and Guernica Editions Inc.

All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise stored in a retrieval system, without the prior consent of the publisher is an infringement of the copyright law.

Michael Mirolla, editor

David Moratto, interior book design

Guernica Editions Inc.

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Distributors:

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Legal Deposit First Quarter

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2013953833

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Maviglia, Joseph, 1953-, author

Critics who know Jack : urban myths, media and rock & roll [electronic resource] / Joseph Maviglia.

(Essential essays series ; 62)

Essays.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-55071-837-9 (pbk.).--ISBN 978-1-55071-838-6 (epub).-

ISBN 978-1-55071-839-3 (mobi)

I. Title. II. Series: Essential essays series (Toronto, Ont.) ; 62

PS8576.A8576C75 2014 C814'.54 C2013-907533-X C2013-907534-8

Guernica Editions Inc. acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. The Ontario Arts Council is an agency of the Government of Ontario.

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) for our publishing activities.

Thanks and love to all!

I dont really wanna stop the show

but I thought youd all like to know

that the singers gonna sing a song

and he wants you all to sing along ...

Lennon and McCartney

Tune into Joseph.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sAS0a65nPE

or scan the QR Code.

CONTENTS

PREFACE

I ntroductions are never easy. I remember the last time I met a woman I came to spend a few years with. A friend who was attending an event with me called me over, saying there was someone I should meet. I was busy with the antipasto and wine and my hand was getting fairly oily from the sun-dried tomatoes. In any case, I rushed over to my friends side and he said: This is_________.And before I could wipe my hand down on a superbly inefficient mini-napkin, there it was. Oil all over her right palm though I had tried in earnest to lose the oil in a couple of hand shakes leading up to that sort of fateful hand-shake.

Introductions are never easy. Read any introduction to a translation of Dantes Divine Comedy and you will feel nausea (unless maybe youwrote it). I prefer liner notes. Like you would find on old vinyl 33 and 1/3rdlong-playing record covers. Or compact disc collections. Though I preferred the print size on the albums. Liner notes dont seem to go on too long. And they are (were) always enhanced by visuals. You dont tend to get that with books. Sure, there are illustrated books and comics and graphic novels but texts per se rarely have visual introductions. So try and visualize this.

A set of titles coming in early one spring morning. Walking along in the chilly April air and titles coming like lines in a poem. Tumbling in one after another after days of reading, watching TV news and DVDs. Listening to CDs. Playing guitar and walking to parks on the way to cafes or walking to cafes on the way back from parks. Dodging dogs and their leashes. Moving my foot out of the way from an on-coming pram. Remembering MAD magazine and running the neighbourhood streets with my older brother. Getting a song on a Juno Award-winning CD compilation. Being asked to play a song I dedicated to my father for his retirement for the umpteenth time. Watching the umpires tolerate the shenanigans of Major League Baseball players. Digging Coltrane as I turn down the volume on World Cup Soccer. Spending time in a cabin in the woods. Watching a snake slither down a tree and then up again (no apples in sight) and shed its skin.

Think of a day that doesnt exist. Out of time. June 31st, 7 oclock in the afternoon. When to write the titles out into segments. Think semiotics and Marshall McLuhan. Think of the last time a critic for any medium sat like a fat calf expert, collecting his or her wage for the weekly column while an artist waits on grant submission replies and eats dark bread for protein. Read Dylan Thomas, Walt Whitman, Dante, Auden, Ginsberg and The New York Times again and again. Listen to everything from Leadbelly to Paul Robeson. Then Zimmerman Bob and BRUUUCE and Lennon and meet a woman who wants to sleep in a tantric sort of way and whisper unlunar incantations (apologies to T.S. Eliot). Dig the moon landing and the radical nature of the New Left circa 1968.

Meet another woman who works as a therapist but is into conspiracy theory. Visit the pining west coast of Canada. Read MAD magazine again. Have more great espresso and try not to spit out the bad ones in public. Go to the cabin in the woods again. Go because you cant be online and there is no service provider but with your fingers on a portable typewriter, letting your grade ten fingers tap the night away against the glow of candles and kerosene lamps. Shave by moonlight and think of Warren Zevons Werewolves of London then The Clashs London Calling.

Get back to the city and rent all the available episodes of The Fugitive in black and white and dont pay attention to federal election results. Play a couple of club concerts and run home and try to visualize what a text on all this would run like. Feel ornery because the personal computer gives off too much light and underlines your whole text in red and green. Be grateful that when you write poems or songs on your PC you use caesuras and the PC doesnt know how to underline them. See all the artists in the neighbourhood in beachcomber slacks and Frank Sinatra hats, gawking at the well-toned Victorian houses and whisper how they got to get one.

Dig French, Italian and Spanish radio programming. It seems only the English stations have mile long ads. Re-watch the moon landing of nineteen-sixty-nine. Have more espresso. Try and follow the lines on the latest tattoos on folks in the neighbourhood and think sailors and Moby Dicks cannibal Queequeg and bad CSI programs where the technology acts better than the actors (including actresses). They are bad in both genders. Avoid the annual Film Festival at all costs cause it costs too much! Chase down the ice-cream truck where a cone costs a dollar and half compared to the three dollars and fifty cents it costs for a badly made gelato. Eat hazelnuts instead. Visit organic markets and grow tomatoes and eggplants. Only withdraw enough money from your ATM each day and not enough for a week cause you will spend it all in a day. Leave your bank card at home after you do and let your credit card sit tucked and warm in your wallet at home next to your passport for a real decent other country getaway.