Mark Alan Stamaty … and the KRAZINESS

Not long after I moved to Boston, at the peak of my publications consumption that included the Boston Globe, The New York Times, New York Magazine, The Real Paper, the Boston Phoenix, Rolling Stone and the Village Voice every time they appeared, I was delighted to discover a new weekly comic strip in the Voice that I thought was the most inventive and zany since the advent of Jules Fieffer (earlier, R. Crumb’s “Mr. Natural” strip was actually a bit tamer than much of his underground comix and he clearly did not enjoy working on weekly deadlines). It was called “MacDoodle St.”, created by one Mark Alan Stamaty and it presented the adventures of a young poet schnook awash in the fast-decaying urban heap of New York City in the late ’70s.

It’s easier and clearer to just show a couple pages from the strip rather than try and fail to describe Stamaty’s scenes of erupting Kraziness —

Stamaty wasn’t deeply topical — punk lurked around his New York, but no hip-hop — though he did have one prophetic flash: the Conservative Liberation Front, a bunch of businessmen who re-wrapped their ties as headbands and began acting like Yippie hooligans. It was an eerie foreshadowing of how, very soon, being reactionary would be cast as being bold, adventurous, unconventional.

“MacDoodle St.” was the high point of Stamaty’s narrative comics. He went on to do the superb, but more contained and topical, “Washingtoon”. My fave installment of that strip was a confrontation between a frustrated buyer and a clerk in a store during the rising craze for bottled water. Stamaty grasped the wacky tension between companies trying to brand their water with the freshness and purity of Nature and the grubby essence of Nature itself. So he came up with the perfect bottled-springjuice name: Crystal Mountain Deer Toad Tick Water.

Stamaty now does completely charming and completely domesticated illustrations for Slate —

http://tinyurl.com/nhhs9nn

– and other publications as well as children’s books (well, I guess he’s always done children’s books for all ages), some of which sound profound and inspirational (Alia’s Mission: Saving the Books of Iraq), but notably lacking in Kraziness.

All this was prompted because I discovered there was a major earlier work by Stamaty, Who Needs Donuts?, which came out in 1973, when he was 25 or 26. In many ways a warm-up for “MacDoodle St.” it’s got plenty Kraziness and shows a wonderful light-heartedness.

Like Matt Groening, Stamaty was one of those guys comic-strip fans know exist but can’t really imagine — the son of a cartoonist. (Hope this explanatory link works)*

http://tinyurl.com/muz86ss

I expected to be more saddened/nostalgic reading vintage Stamaty. Kraziness has been stamped out today and it’s sometimes tough to revisit a vanished world where it felt like an ageless essential. But Stamaty’s work seemed more at ease and philosophical than I imagined. After all, there’s plenty of evidence he can still summon the Krazy when he wants to:

And hey, Who Needs Donuts? was reprinted in 2001 — so there ya go.

Some more scoop on the man:

http://tinyurl.com/lrygbkc

*[EDIT] Well, the link worked a couple times. I guess as long as I was logged into The New Yorker as a subscriber. Anyway, it’s a moving and informative story of how Stamaty came to identify himself as a cartoonist through the association of both his father and mother’s work in the field. I don’t think it’s been collected anywhere and sure is a shame I can’t seem to include it here. Crap. I’ll log in a few more times over the next few days, so it may or may not work.

*[EDIT][EDIT] Whattaya know? As of June, 2016, the link seems to work again. Let it roll …

Cracked Columnists

I have to agree with all of this —

http://tinyurl.com/lex395o

— Brooks has gone from a tolerable role-player (if that: I tossed Bobos in Paradise into the reject pile after about 50 pages and will forever hold popularizing The Closing of the American Mind against him) into an unbearable presence. Can’t the Times and the NewsHour do better? Also recommended is the link to the Robert Kuttner article, which itself links to a welcome jab at Thomas Friedman. I was horrified and more mystified than I should have been when Friedman came out for the Iraq war. And permanently turned him off when his excuse amounted to: “Well, sure would have been great if it had worked out.”

Note on Comments

Got some promising newcomer comments recently, but there is a temporary snag. I’m not happy with the way my comment-screening system is set up and it will take me a while to understand how to re-configure it. So new comments are on hold for a bit. Sorry about that.

Pete Seeger: Life As Performance

(As is always the case on this blog, this obit post is intended only as an account of what the subject meant to me, not as anything like a full and formal assessment of their history and work.)

I listened to a hefty batch of Pete Seeger the past few days — as much as any time since I started to dig into his music in the early ’70s (never forgot that TV show). And I’ve concluded that his finest legacy is not his recordings. The five-CD set American Favorite Ballads (Smithsonian Folkways, 2009) is an impressive, wide-ranging accomplishment — Seeger straight up as much as you want. But his role as a walking warehouse of American song, folk and otherwise, is not as useful as it once was. Nowadays, it’s easy to hear original versions — sometimes many variations — of most of the material, and they are often stranger, more curlicued and provocative than Seeger’s interpretations, oak-firm though those are. (And I will hang on to my vinyl best-of on Columbia for “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy,” the only essential track he made for the label.) Finally, sure, I would start with The Complete Bowdoin College Concert 1960 (Smithsonian Folkways, 2012) as a prime example of what Seeger meant during the folk revival. Dammit, though, I still say the Almanac Singers are the apex recordings that include Pete Seeger. Outlook, players, material — this is protest populism awakened to itself and as essential as, oh, Spirituals To Swing or something. That the group was quashed and still remains way off the screen of popular-music consciousness is sadly telling.

What was gratifying, though, was how much Seeger could still piss off reactionaries, now cyber-chat wingnuts, unto his final days. Reading reactions to his obits I had to guffaw at the spittle-flicking frenzy of those soooo outraged at this Communist (= baby-raper), who obviously personally signed off on every atrocity committed by Uncle Joe Stalin and probably tried to have sex with Ho Chi Minh and and and … all so over-the-top goofy they might as well have been accusing him of being the Antichrist. Red-baiting has become so empty and divorced from reality that I dare entertain the hope that it may be in its last days. Soon to join “Papist” in the Dustbin of Hate History.

Pete Seeger’s masterpiece is his integrity coupled with his ability to champion and connect with ordinary people at the same time. I felt I saw him radiant in the latter days of Protest Glory at the Seabrook rally in June, 1978.

I had recently left behind post-hippie/proto-punk scrounging around and retail-clerk-rathood. Ahead was graduate school and serious art-journalist professionalism. But first I cashed in all my chips with the local leftist-weekly back in Missoula, MT and had them declare me a stringer who would file a report from the Clamshell Alliance event that weekend outside the nuke at Seabrook, NH. For the first time in my life, I rode on the media bus. I reserve the right to refuse to imagine how bad the writing I filed must have been and will say no more about that aspect of the event.

The rally itself delivered a lingering, last-days glow of protest and demonstration sensation that endured from the Free Speech era. The way merely attending rock and roll shows felt somehow defiant and dangerous a few years earlier. And nobody had more of that spirit, and infused all of us with it, than Pete Seeger.

Anti-nuke schooling, making a statement, showing up for solidarity — those were fundamental, and music was a sidelight. But I had never experienced a performer who was so much in the moment with the audience as Seeger. Really, the performance was about us all and what we believed, not a venerable folk star with a banjo. The mastery of establishing this tone is what I think Bruce Springsteen most admired about Seeger.

Apt that I remember how captivating Seeger was, and how caught up we all were, more than specific songs. His performance faltered a bit early on, as it was clear the audience was willing but stuck in the thick, stifling summer air. Peter had the perfect line —

“I think you all have absorbed too much solar energy.”

And he immediately got us to stand up and jiggle ‘n’ wiggle off the torpor.

That memory surpasses any recording.

Happy trails, Pete Seeger. My fondest dream is that you are reunited with Toshi and can once more harmonize with Woody. The afterlife is the only festival that never has to end.

Quick Post-Grammy Note

Since on Sunday I somehow managed to overlook mentioning that I hoped Kacey Musgraves won something, my way-to-go count stands at five. Which is above average. Broader taste than usual was indeed honored. A no disgusting pratfalls (that mattered to me, anyway).

A Science Blog for You

This confirms a pet theory of mine: if you chance across a blog and it has a lead topic that fascinates you, it become an immediate winner. Anyway this reads like a goodie to me:

http://www.gainesonbrains.com/

And I even like the presentation of multiple answers to the passage-of-time question.

I think the William James notion is bunk. I’ve had more eventful and less-eventful periods in my life and no question time just keeps subjectively going by faster and faster. My supposed first-filled childhood was very slow-moving.

The “ratio” notion has had the most appeal to me since I first heard it about 20 years ago. Nice to know who formulated it. Here’s some scoop on Pierre Janet, who should clearly be better known:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Janet

The “biological clock” one doesn’t quite make sense to me. My decelerating biological clock makes me seem slower … but not time seem faster.

The “pay less attention” notion has some truth. Except I think I paid less attention to time after I became a teenager until my early 50s, when I could not escape rising awareness that I have been here longer than I’m gonna be here, which shifts your perspective on your self, your body and health, and on your activities.

The “time stress” explanation is the fresh notion I’m taking away from “Gaines, on Brains.” I think it even applies to things you haven’t done but that you want to do. Get to Asia finally and back to Europe; truly organize and assess all possessions, and so forth.

Unrest At Peace: Pete Seeger Prologue

I have a (very) small Pete Seeger story, but I have to wait for a good mood to reflect on him. He deserves it. Got a bit discouraged trying to bone up by listening to a Folkways collection where I caught him cleaning up a couple chestnuts and then turning to the New Yorker profile only to find it was hooked to that misguided Bruce Springsteen tribtue album. Augh.

Jon Pareles strikes a good tone in this obit —

http://tinyurl.com/m2ods2h

And here’s an account of the event where I saw him perform for the first and only time —

http://tinyurl.com/mde6esb

PS: Well, I should add that I saw the “Smothers Brothers” performance of “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy” in 1968. As memorable as the Beatles. I was shocked at the blunt force of the song and suddenly felt as well as understood protest music.

Droomsmurf droomt zich af

On top of Old Smokey

All covered with grass

I saw a bald eagle

A’pickin’ his ass

Terrible Joke #1

A bunch of oddball rounders were sitting around bragging how short their Dads were (said they were oddballs).

“My Dad’s only five feet tall!” said Stump.

“That’s nothing,” said Squat. “My Dad is only four foot two!”

“Ain’t shit,” said Smush. “My Dad can walk under the bed.”

They looked at the guy who was silent. “What about your Dad, Speck?”

“He’s in the hospital.”

“What the hell happened?”

“He fell off a ladder picking strawberries.”

“Could it be that Dirty Little Boy …?”

(A line from a recording by Burroughs.)

Peter Schjeldahl on William S. Burroughs and the new biography by Barry Miles —

http://tinyurl.com/l8ssqvu

— as fair an assessment as you will read. Interesting that all the fair assessments of Burroughs I can remember come to the same conclusion: you need a slice of this guy, but how big is up to you.

PS: The one medium not discussed enough in the piece is spoken-word records. My favorite of the ones I have heard (I think it actually helps if it’s only Burroughs, not those all-star gang-bangs) is The Doctor Is on the Market (1986), which is one of those LPs that I don’t know if I’ll ever play again but I’m not gettin’ rid of, either.