When I woke this morning, I found my mind occupied by my alarm clock, which told me: "When Czechoslovakians woke on Aug. 21, 1968, they found their country occupied by 500,000 Warsaw Pact troops."
It was 40 years ago today that Soviet tanks invaded, forcibly ending a period of internal reforms known as Prague Spring. The mild reforms that the communists within then-Czechoslovakia had tried -- and the central party in Moscow decided to crush -- were such grave threats to Mother Russia as: allowing people to play Western music; to form sports and women's groups; to be Boy Scouts; to show a pulse of creativity in a dour Orwellian landscape.
Funny to think about this anniversary with Mother Russia rattling its sword in Georgia today. Another year, another round of deaths to protect its sphere of influence. History repeats.
NPR's feature about 1968 today is really good. I hear my dad's voice in the audio clips of the Czech intellectuals they interviewed. NPR also has a good companion piece online about that era, which gets into the between-war period of Czechoslovak democracy and why the Soviet imposition of their bastardized form of pseudo-communism never sat well with the Czechs, who were historically a creative people with a healthy intellectual scene at the crossroads of Central Europe.
My father was one of the ones forced out (well, it was escape or die) way back in 1948, when the Soviets first said, "We're here!" Which is lucky for him, because the imprisoned friends he left behind had to live through hell and then the hope and heartbreak of 1968. That year, he was expecting his third child here in the U.S. Heh, maybe my brother owes his conception to a particularly hopeful 1968 spring.
The NPR story points out that, while the invasion and subsequent "normalization" brutally crushed hopes in Czechoslovakia, it may have had the benefit of permanently undermining the idea of an international communist (Soviet-bastardized style) movement: Other, "true" communists were appalled by the Soviet action, which was hardly an example of how to treat your movement "brothers."
So it would be two more decades before the Soviet era finally ended in 1989, after my father had given up hoping he would ever live to see it. Sometimes I forget how dramatically, incredibly things changed after that. My father went from thinking he'd never see his home again, to visiting it each summer and ultimately moving back.
Reading and listening to the NPR stories, it strikes me how much music is intertwined with those hopes and times, and how its control is representative of the way regimes like that just destroy the human spirit. It was the same way for my dad in the 1940s, when he fell in love with swing music and all these Western jazz musicians (which the Soviets quickly made illegal).
One man who was a foreign correspondent based in Prague [that spring] told me this anecdote illustrating how he understood something important was happening in Czechoslovak society:
While he was sitting at a café on the bank of the Vltava River, a few days after the 1967 Writers' Congress, an elderly man wearing a chef's hat and white uniform emerged from the basement kitchen. The cook confidently strode across the terrace, sat down at a piano and began to play and sing Cikanko ty krasna (Oh, My Beautiful Gypsy), a song from his youth, which at the time was still banned as bourgeois deviationism.
A doctor by training and a member of the social elite, he had been relegated to the margins of society and was forced to take menial jobs when the Communists took over in Czechoslovakia in 1948. Twenty years later, with the new ferment in society, the foreign correspondent told me, the doctor-turned-cook felt he could publicly reclaim his identity.
Life don't mean a thing, if it ain't got that swing.
No really, I did. Back in June. And if I don't jot my impressions down soon, I'll forget the highlights. KayO probably already gave up on me. ... I've been jotting some down off and on and then running away, so it's time to post at least the first half of them. Part II to come next week. Feel free to add yours.
Waits' strict anti-scalping policy only lets you get two tickets per household, which scuttled my plans to recruit a crew of attendees. But at least, our group of four lucked out by getting two pairs right behind each other. Tragically, one of our friends was MIA and moving furniture on the day of the concert: He had the wrong date for the concert by one day, and we had his ticket. Frantic attempts to contact him failed.
(Now is when we recall that Waits last came to town with the late Frank Zappa, before I was born, in a building that itself was demolished and rebuilt 15 years ago. Ouch.)
But all was not lost: The oversight let Mrs. Fall of Because come along instead. She doesn't know Tom Waits very well, so come ticket-buying time she didn't want me to use one of our two precious household allotments on her. But this last-minute snafu gave her a second chance, and boy was she lucky.
The experience starts with the crowd outside. It was a hot-but-not-miserable St. Louis summer evening, so a great time to soak up some air on our walk before entering climate-controlled comfort inside. Because of the anti-scalping measures that require showing your ID and DNA sequence upon entry, the crowd was lined up around both sides of the long block that holds the Fox.
On one side of the block, we walked by the will call line. It was filled with men who try hard to live and dress the part of Tom Waits emulators: Bowler-type hats, cigarettes a plenty, blazer coats, and general NOTICE ME: I AM QUIRKY attire.
Our line, the non-will call line, snaked around the other half of the block. Generally speaking, the non-will call folk had spent less on their tickets. And it showed: same Waits-imitator aesthetic, same chain-smoking, but peppered with less designer-brand quirky attire, more gregarious tattoos, and more people who knew they were in for a good night but also knew their life did not depend on it. Still, either line would have been a good candidate for a brawl over obscure authors.
I myself was psyched for a great night, but my expectations were refreshingly undefined. Waits has been at it for so long, and his style is so singularly rough that you can't listen to it all the time, so I've probably never even heard half of his material. I just expected a curious, amusing, quasi-theatrical show.
Which is what I got. Waits' style and his protagonists are all over the map, but one word that always comes to my mind is "soul." Not "soul music," exactly. But all of his music, even the older, more by-the-numbers tunes, has soul. Sometimes it's mourning, sometimes it's regret, sometimes it's goofy humor, sometimes it's riddles or bursts of rage. But it always depicts the "soul" of a protagonist, or that protagonist's creator, just dealing with life or conjuring the humor necessary to digest it all. A lot of protagonists you'd probably hate personally, but Waits' package of song and music prompts bemused empathy for them. Or else point-and-mock laughter, which is just as fun.
And all the sounds: There's funky percussion, nightclub upright bass, meandering piano, jazzy horns, folksy harmonica -- and relentlessly irregular time signatures. A lot of his songs you hear trotting down the road before they burst through the swinging doors of the saloon in your head. Others stay far away, like a train you watch wind through winding mountains as its chug comes to you on a one-second delay. Sometimes the whole tunes stops just when you thought it would take off. And sometimes the background sounds make you think it was recorded or performed in a primitive workshop. It all keeps you concentrating and a wee bit disoriented.
Then of course there is the voice. Some musicians' peculiar voices turn me off; others' throw talons around my flesh and rip me into their strange world.
James Hetfield's vocals always kept me from getting fully into Metallica. Bob Dylan's has long been a toss-up for me. But for some reason, Thom Yorke's of Radiohead -- a melodic but harsh instrument in itself -- and Tom Wait's shards of dust-and-smoke voice, those please me juuuust right.
After the show, I imitated this voice for days until receiving a cease-and-desist order from the Mrs.
At the show, I had trouble hearing his vocals for the first few songs -- and I don't know if that was me or the acoustics -- but I was familiar enough with those songs to not worry, and the whole visual/audio experience was enough that it didn't matter.
He came out in front of a backdrop of old megaphone-like speakers of various sizes, which gave the set a claymation feel. He stomped joyously (well, he didn't look joyous, but no one puts on this sort of show without reveling in the fun) on an acoustic wood platform that was raised perhaps a foot above the rest of the stage. He used a foot pedal to clang a bell whenever he damn well wanted the accent.
Aside: I have always been teased by my family for my in-shower body percussion, which I've done for as long as I've heard music and taken showers. The slaps on your chest/sternum (deep notes), side of the bum (snare), hollow of the side of the bum (tom), and any other body part make for great percussion in the resonance of a tile-walled bathroom. Granted, it leaves the flesh a little red after a particularly rocking shower "gig," but it's worth it for the life/music/joy cocktail of it all, and occasionally a fan even throws a bra at you ... Anyway, watching Waits on stage turn everything and every limb into a percussion device, I thought, "This guy HAS to play the body drum in the shower!"
On the subject of percussion, it was cool to see Waits' son handle the drumset, and handle it ably. As the son of a jazz drummer who I only saw play with a Czech band a handful of too-young-too-appreciate times, I can't think of many cooler ways to go on tour that by playing drums for your dad and his expert musician friends.
As usual, Waits peppered the show with random meanderings to the audience that reflect a mix of his humor (as seen in several of the film roles he's taken) and the quasi-character he plays on stage. Just one example (you have to picture-hear it in Waits' "isn't that interesting?" gravel voice:
"Every time a male ejaculates -- I know, I know, that's a tough word -- but every time it happens ... OK let's just say 'it' now ... But each time 'it' happens, he releases 250 million sperm. And only one of those sperm fertilizes the egg. So before we even get here, we're already winners." *wild applause* "That's the way I see it."
It was great concert experience. It obviously bewildered me by striking a mix of humor, musical awe and sincere sentiments in me. In Part II, I'll actually talk about some of the specific songs he played.
As you may have noticed, the site has changed. Sampa, the free-site host, did a version 2 of some sort.
Despite an FAQ that made it sound like allowing one's site to go through v.2 surgery would be okay, there were several flexibilities that surprisingly disappeared with the click of a button. (e.g. I cannot believe sidebars like this one are even narrower than before.)
And I'm told -- miraculously! -- that the conversion cannot be undone. Truth be told, I'm actually quite pissed. But free is free. Sampa has otherwise been good to me.
So I need to sort through site "features" to see how I can make do. Except that I don't have the time at the moment, in the middle of graduate classes and Lighthousehockey.com. (btw, I've removed that Lighthouse RSS feed so that you're not clogged with random Islanders hockey gibberish).
But I promise to touch up the accessories when I get a chance, and return to irregularly scheduled blogging.
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today is really good. I hear my dad's voice in the audio clips of the Czech intellectuals they interviewed. NPR also has 
February, 2008