William Butler Yeats

As is my usual annual wont, in preparation for getting my Saint Paddy's Day game face on last week, I dragged out the music and literature I most closely associate with the old sod: Yeats, James Joyce, The Chieftains, The Boys of the Laugh, Brendan Behan, Planxty, the Clancy Brothers, Samuel Beckett, Solas, Flann O'Brien, Sean O'Casey, and a recent CD by Irish guitarist, singer, and songwriter John Doyle.

Of course, as the day itself neared, various spirits, some otherworldly, some distilled to their essence, also made their presences felt. Mesmerizing words, airs, reels, and potions combined with equal parts blarney to set the stage. The day was nigh and inner quarrels were afoot.

In past years, when I would embed myself in these collective Salt Lake shenanigans as a solo act, my entire prep consisted of brewing a thermos of coffee, flavoring it to taste, and shoving a copy of Joyce's "Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man" into my back pocket. There's something to be said for being able quote young Stephen Dedalus after the caffeine kicks in.

Of late, however, having joined an ensemble cast of equally effusive and quirky balderdashians, the preparation timeframe, by necessity, gets underway somewhat earlier. It's about the casual perusal of classic Irish literature with the sounds of pennywhistles, flutes, uilleann pipes, harps, bodhráns, fiddles, and such wafting overhead.

Although unable to acquire the Chieftains new 50th anniversary album, "Voice of Ages," in time to toss it into the mulligan, I did happen upon them on Letterman the other night performing a cut from the highly collaborative affair with The Low Anthem, probably my favorite band of recent acquaintance. So I had that going for me.

But, as I mentioned, I did successfully procure "Shadow and Light," the new John Doyle release, and that was quite sufficient to soothe my jones for something both historical and contemporary on the Irish front.

It was love at first sight with Doyle. I had stopped by the brand new Eccles Center a day shy of the Ides of March of 1999 with my brother McGee in tow to pick up our tickets for that night's performance by Solas on their first trip to Utah. It would be PCPAF's first-ever show at the venue and, as far as I was concerned, they couldn't have picked a more impressive opening act.

Upon entering the building, Teri Orr caught our attention and invited us into the auditorium to catch Solas' sound check and to show off the Eccles Center's state-of-the-art sound system and acoustic ambiance. It was mind-blowing all the way around.

And although it was the brilliant instrumental virtuosity of Seamus Egan that hit me like a shillelagh, I soon defaulted to the highly impressive rhythms forming the net over which Egan effortlessly embellished the melody line. And, both aurally and visually, it was John Doyle and his guitar fueling the ensemble.

If memory serves, by the next time I caught Solas opening for Mary Chapin Carpenter down at Red Butte Garden Doyle had moved on. I'd come upon mentions of his instructional Irish-style guitar tutorials on DVD every so often but not much else. So, lo these many years later, when I stumbled (there's that word again) upon news of the impending release of his latest solo effort, I wasted little time.

Dealing, in the main, with the great mid-19th century famine-fueled tide of Irish immigration to North America, it's immediately apparent what an accomplished composer Doyle has become over the years. Instrumentally, of course, it's all about serving the song, and, as usual, nobody does it better.

When St. Paddy's Day finally did arrive, however, the event proved more than worthy of the extensive preparations. Father Patrick Carley of the Utah Hibernian Society once again had the parade and Siamsa running as smoothly as ever, whether or not the revelers had gone through a deep cultural prep or not.

The icing on the cake being Father Pat's special guests, Tipperary fiddler Jim Ryan and the bevy of young instrumentalists and singers who accompanied him from Ireland to join in this year's post-parade festivities. It's become a holy day of obligation for those among us who wallow in the spirit(s) of Saint Patrick. Slàinte! Erin Go Bragh!

Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and an observer, participant, and chronicler of the Park City and Wasatch County social scenes for the past 40 years.

The post Core Samples appeared first on Park Record.

When all was said and done, having bagged nine documentary and four dramatic films, a ratio well within my recent festival wheelhouse, I came away totally enraptured with the entire process. Not to mention wrapping myself in three days of winterlude up the North Fork at the Sundance Resort itself. Over the years, the Screening Room and the Owl Bar have, collectively, become a comfort zone.

As it turned out, I caught at least one film each day of the festival. That's counting, however, one non-Sundance film, "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy," out at Redstone on opening day. I just had to check out filmdom's most recent attempt to adapt a John le Carré novel to the silver screen. Dark, gloomy, whispered dialogue, subtle and not so subtle betrayals in other words, perfect!

Speaking of which, "A Fierce Green Fire," a not-too-comforting but brilliant documentary dealing with both the history and current state of affairs within environmental activism, should be assigned viewing for all of us, especially those political leaders currently manning the helm of spaceship earth.

The following day up at the Sundance Screening Room, I took in "How to Survive a Plague," another riveting documentary about the fruits of street activism in the face of inaction by the powers that be.

This time, the film-in-question turned on the total absence of progress in the search for a cure for the HIV virus and the action taken by those most threatened to reverse the trend. A quite-gripping film that, well, you've just got to see to believe. I think social-action docs are quickly becoming my new favorite genre.

"5 Broken Cameras," another engaging human-rights documentary dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts over settlements on the West Bank (I wrote about "The Law in These Parts" last week) ended up winning this year's World Cinema Documentary Directing Award."

Talk about raising the bar for this award: director Emad Burnat continually placed himself in harm's way while acquiring bullet wounds and hundreds of stitches, not to mention camera fatalities, on the way to documenting Israeli encroachment on his Palastinian village. "The Law in These Parts" walked away with the prestigious World Cinema Grand Jury Prize in Documentary at this year's festival.

My final pre-award ceremony competition screening and one I waited until the final Saturday to see was "Violeta Went to Heaven." A true world project, having been made through the combined production efforts of Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and Spain, the film traces the life of Chilean folksinger and artist Violeta Parra utilizing mood and ambiance to wondrous effect.

As proof their effort was not lost on those who judge artistic merit in such endeavors, "Violeta" garnered the much-sought-after World Cinema Grand Jury Prize, Dramatic at Saturday night's award ceremony.

And that brings us to my 13th and final film of Sundance 2012, "Searching for Sugarman," which I caught Sunday at a screening of the World Cinema Audience Award,

Documentary winner. Did I mention that it also won a Special Jury Prize for its celebration of the artistic spirit?

The manner in which we meet the saintly music man and manual laborer "Rodriguez" and, through interview-driven footage, learn the hard-to-fathom story of his iconic musical status in South Africa (and nowhere else), are nothing short of awe inspiring. This is certainly the most compelling film I've seen in years, and maybe ever.

The singular negative I will most likely take away from what played out to be my favorite Sundance Film Festival ever just has to be leaving the Music Café early on the day Rodriguez performed at the venue. Had I taken in the film beforehand, I very much doubt I would have walked out the door when I did.

Another piece of good news from the fest was the announcement by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that the fine Canadian film "Monsieur Lazhar" is an Oscar finalist in the "Best Foreign Language Film" category.

Thanks, Sundance! It's a wrap!

Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and an observer, participant, and chronicler of the Park City and Wasatch County social scenes for the past 40 years.

The post Core Samples appeared first on Park Record.

Opening day found me embedded with the usual suspects at festival HQ, semi-splayed out in what began as a sitting position but morphed more to the horizontal as the morning wore on. I find it nearly impossible to map out a proper Sundance itinerary without assuming the semi-supine.

The next two days were up at Sundance Resort negotiating the trail between the Screening Room and the Owl Bar. It's become a quite comfortable mode of operation over the years with its slower vibe, familiar faces, crackling fireplace, and cushy couches making for a much less harried insinuation into the festival proper.

It was there, up the North Fork, nestled against the base of stately Timpanogos, that I came upon two films that I have no doubt will stick to my ribs for quite some time. With both being of the dramatic persuasion and me being a staunch doc-head, there is a bit of irony at play here, I suppose. The fact that they were both foreign language films, however, no doubt made the transition somewhat easier.

The first, "Monsieur Lazhar," totally captivated your humble scribe. Shot in the mother tongue in French Quebec, the narrative touches upon immigration, loss of loved ones, suicide, loneliness, abandonment, and other joys that are part and parcel to an elementary school setting.

Actually, you come away infused with love and light. The Algerian title character and co-protagonist, during the process of seeking political asylum in Canada and with absolutely no background in the field whatsoever, takes over a classroom that has very recently lost the regular teacher to depression and suicide.

Bachir Lazhar, portrayed with just the right amount of quirkiness by Mohamed Fellag, is dazzling, as is young Sophie Nélisse as his most insightful student. I really can't say enough about the beauty and depth of "Monsieur Lazhar." Filmmaker Philippe Falardeau should be getting word this week from the Motion Picture Academy on whether his picture made the cut and is a finalist in the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar category.

And then, with a shape shift from French to Spanish and from a classroom to a bathroom, there is "Madrid 1987." With a seemingly most outlandish plot premise and some of the smartest dialogue to hit the big screen since Louis Malle gave us "My Dinner with Andre" back in 1981, Filmmaker David Trueba has concocted one beautiful and imaginative film.

The fact that most of the footage takes place in a mistakenly-locked bathroom with an aging male newspaper columnist and a beautiful young student, both without clothes, I might add, does nothing to detract from the film's brilliance.

Meanwhile, back in Park City, the seats in the Temple Theater itself are quite adequate. For hanging out between films, however, the accommodations, or lack thereof, work better as penance for some Old Testament indiscretion. If that indeed is the case, then Stacy Peralta's excellent skateboard documentary, "Bones Brigade," must have been a reward for a lifetime of good works.

Fun film! Big air and some insane freestyle skateboarding. It's probably the psychological component of the various "Bones Brigade" teammates that most infuses the film with its passion, however. It flat-out blew me away!

Another documentary that I caught at the Yarrow also proved downright delectable. Now if a hotel lobby isn't "couchy" enough for the average plopper, what's the distinction? Being a total music-doc junkie, I knew "Under African Skies" would be in my wheelhouse before I even saw it.

Intermixing archival footage of Paul Simon's original trip to South Africa to record his signature "Graceland" album with contemporary shots of his recent visit there to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the event made for an interesting film. Especially when coupled with the political turmoil that accompanied the album's release back in the day. And dare I mention some of the finest music mixes ever associated with film.

Still out there keepin' the festival faith and looking forward to Sundance 2012's second act. More great docs, more Owl Bar, more music cafés, and more couches to plop upon.

Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and an observer, participant, and chronicler of the Park City and Wasatch County social scenes for the past 40 years.

The post Core Samples appeared first on Park Record.

Doing them both at once, of course with the option of manipulating font size in cyberspace while rapidly flipping from one hot spot to another in the print-media guide really turns my crank. That is what the hipsters mean by a ménage-a-trois, isn't it?

Like most all Sundance film junkies, I first peruse the various categories to compile an overall list that I can pare down once I plug in screening times, venues, and personal availability. There is also the old Frank Normile axiom of identifying film-guide reviews written by the festival director then Geoff Gilmore, now John Cooper for special consideration.

First and foremost, I'm a "doc-head," a documentary-film junkie, especially with this particular annual celluloid orgy. No one does docs like Sundance. So I initially check out the U.S. Documentary Competition, World Cinema Documentary Competition, and the newly-added Documentary Premieres categories.

A couple of films screening in the latter classification quickly got my attention: "Under African Skies," which follows musician-composer extraordinaire Paul Simon on his return trip to South Africa for a reunion concert on the 25th anniversary of the release of his "politically-incorrect" blockbuster album, "Graceland;" and "A Fierce Green Fire" from filmmaker Mark Kitchell, which, according to the film guide, "documents crucial moments in the history of environmental activism." Back in 1990, Kitchell's "Berkeley in the Sixties" walked off with the little-known-but-highly-regarded "Jay Meehan Gas Mask" award.

The Spotlight section is also one I totally get into. Featuring films that impressed Sundance staffers during the year but didn't fit into existing categories, Spotlight also includes selections chosen by various foreign countries to represent them as their lone submission for Oscar consideration.

Canada's entry from 2011, "Monsieur Lazhar," a film from Quebecois filmmaker Philippe Falardeau that adds renewed vigor to the substitute-teacher genre, fits perfectly. As does "The Orator," the first Samoan feature film ever and New Zealand's entry into this years "Best Foreign Language Film" Oscar competition.

Other films screening in Spotlight that made my rough-draft list were "Corpo Celeste," an Italian feature that flaunts deeper contexts than your run-of-the-mill coming-of-age yarn, and France's official 2011 Academy Award entry, "Declaration of War," which, with a guy named Romeo meeting a gal named Juliette at a party, just has to be some kind of love story.

Two films from the World Cinema Dramatic Competition category that caught my attention were "Madrid, 1987" (hey, I'm a sucker for storylines pitting an older journalist with a beautiful young student) and "Violeta went to Heaven," which dramatizes the swirling, magnetic life of iconic Chilean folksinger Violeta Parra (Edith Piaf meets Bob Dylan).

"Something From Nothing: The Art of Rap," another seemingly quite interesting music-doc, features a "hook" quote if I ever heard one: "Hip-hop didn't invent anything hip hop reinvented everything!" Grandmaster Caz.

Then there are the panels. "Power of Story: How Docs Changed Change" features the president of HBO Documentary Films, the commissioning editor of Storyville Films, and someone named Redford who has, at least according to buzz on the street, a passing familiarity with both the festival and its mission.

Power of Story: "In the Beginning " is a panel featuring a quartet of screenwriters who have been invited to "explore the mystique of the creative process and how ideas travel from the brain to the page, and to share some of the work they admire. There's also a music and film roundtable discussion featuring various composer and filmmaker teams.

As I only have actual hard tickets to four of the events mentioned in this column, waiting lines will most assuredly come into play a state of being which mandates plenty of water, energy bars, and a good book in the backpack. Happy Festival, folks! And don't forget to wink at your friends who don't "get it."

Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and an observer, participant, and chronicler of the Park City and Wasatch County social scenes for the past 40 years.

The post Core Samples appeared first on Park Record.

In the sense that, at any one time, you can usually find probably a dozen books, magazines, and newspapers flipped open in random fashion in various rooms of my current asylum over here in the Heber foothills, it wouldn't be a stab in the dark to assume that some form of attention deficit disorder has taken up residency.

The mags and rags, of course, recycle much quicker than the hard covers. That's a given. The symptoms basically are manifested in books, of which there is usually at least a quartet in competition for my favors. Until recently, that is. For the past few weeks, I've been undergoing a "healing" of sorts in this area.

Allow me to set the stage. For reasons that become less clear each succeeding day, a little over a month ago, while still working through B. Traven's "The Rebellion of the Hanged" and Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita," I began both "The Iliad of Homer" and Shakespeare's "The Tragedy of King Lear" on the same day. Go figure.

Actually, you don't need to. Here's the step-by-step thought evolution that led to such behavioral weirdness. On a Book TV panel discussion on the 50th anniversary of the publication of "Catch-22," more than one of the participants mentioned that author Joseph Heller's favorite book was "The Iliad." And, if that wasn't enough, in summation, panel member Robert Gottlieb, editor of "Catch-22," stated with emphasis that as far as he was concerned the only books any of us needed to read were "The Iliad" and King Lear."

Being in possession of both, I immediately plucked them off their respective shelves and, not unlike top-40 records, put them into a "heavy rotation" with Traven and Nabokov.

Then came word that Luis Alberto Urrea's "Queen of America" was due to come out of the chute and it wasn't long before I held a copy in my grimy little hands. Deeming five books to be too unwieldy, even for me, I put away the Nabokov, finished the Traven, and hungrily began feasting on the Queen.

But, try as I might, I couldn't go cold turkey! As alluring as Urrea's sequel to "The Hummingbird's Daughter" resonated within my psyche's lust centers, I still couldn't remain faithful. From the moment Achilles turns his back on Agamemnon in a dispute over the lovely Briseis in the Iliad, I lost all sense of loyalty. And it was the same when King Lear banished his equally quite lovely youngest daughter Cordelia from inheriting his crown.

Whereas both Briseis and Cordelia needed me to watch out for them in their respective sagas and tragedies, I was the one in need when it came to Teresita, the "hummingbird's daughter" and now "Queen of America." So when literary push came to shove, it was Urrea standing triumphant over both Homer and Shakespeare.

And that's where the healing came in through Urrea's great aunt Teresita, the saintly Yaqui-mestizo with a touch like warm honey that melts pain and suffering. With her help, I was able to set aside both Briseis and Cordelia for the time being and keep the faith with the saint of Cabora, Sinaloa, Mexico, a landscape quite familiar to my '60s California tribe.

Although the pull of the sequel is somewhat less than the original, due, in the main, to a change of venue from Mexico to the U.S., it is the internal landscape of Teresita that is most honored by Urrea's fans. One of the most transcendental and unassuming of any protagonist to come down the historical-fiction road in many a year, this queen has little use for crowns.

She is a human, however, with all the frailties of her species raising their heads without warning in this new work as she attempts to negotiate the culture of early-20th century America both in the wild-and-wooly West and with the straw-hat bowler set of New York City.

Luis Alberto Urrea, of course, is also the author of "The Devil's Highway," another great work of the U.S. and Mexico borderland, and, it should be noted, is one of the coolest cats currently plying the literary trade both here and abroad. Most of all, as a sinner without focus, I thank him for the healing touch of Teresita Urrea, the saint of Caborra. But, as they say in the song, "Luis Luis ohhh no me gotta go now."

Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and an observer, participant, and chronicler of the Park City and Wasatch County social scenes for the past 40 years.

The post Core Samples appeared first on Park Record.

The seeming dichotomy of "existentialist" and "spiritual" notwithstanding, the wall flat-out turns my crank, especially in the morning when I awake and click on my reading lamp to illuminate this mural of seemingly haphazardly plastered relics. Rapture has been known to enter the room.

The process began a while back when, after digging into my personal archives and lending relevant artifacts from the 1970s to the Park City Museum for its exhibition on local music history, I dropped by to check out their display for myself. It was like meeting them for the first time.

Once back in my possession, the photographs from the borrowed memorabilia in question were immediately affixed to one of my living-room walls. How much better they looked than during their previous existence stuffed inside various containers in the back of a closet.

Now this was all fine and dandy, but I still had all these posters, newspaper clippings, concert and special-event flyers, blow-ups of iconic Richard Avedon photos, esoteric bumper stickers, and 8x10 glossies from Park City's past to go along with a vast assortment of equally-arcane cultural "treasures." What to do with all that, I wondered?

Figuring that adding them to an already book-cluttered living room would not help its overall impoverished aesthetics, I opted for the spacious unused canvas afforded by a wall in the bedroom. It proved perfect. The keystone to the project was obvious: a poster that came with the deluxe edition of Bob Dylan's "Together Through Life" album.

Surrounding it went a classic poster for Dylan's "Theme Time Radio Hour," old photos of Ramblin' Jack, first with Woody Guthrie and then with Dylan in Greenwich Village circa 1964, the same summer I passed through. With a bedspread full of dumped-out boxes, briefcases, and backpacks worth of items to choose from, the muse and a small stapler had little trouble filling the space.

Soon, a pic of my favorite poet, Alex Caldiero of Orem, Utah (of all places), and a Ralph Steadman interpretation of "sodbuster poet" Ed Abbey had joined a couple of group shots of my Compton, California, tribe, one at the Long Bar in Tijuana and the other on a Marsac Avenue porch taken once we'd all moved to Park City.

The shot of legendary Wyoming barkeep Stan Taggart looks to have been taken back about the time he won the "Mr. Utah" competition. Stan would dig being in close proximity to the likes of guitarist Clarence White, Western singer Ian Tyson, and poet Allen Ginsberg.

Then there's the iconic clipping from the front page of The Park Record of my brother O.D. McGee's run for mayor in 1975 residing not far from a piece I wrote in the winter of 1978 for the second issue of Lodestar (now Park City Magazine) prophesying the coming of the as yet unnamed KPCW.

McGee, with my then-toddler son Smokey in his arms, also shows up in the 14x11 photo of the actual shuffleboard table Norm Hall had just dragged out of The Club and across Main Street to repose between the Post Office and the "Electric Company."

A collection of flyers from the old Blue Note Concert Hall in Salt Lake advertising separate upcoming November 1977 shows with John Lee Hooker, Michael Bloomfield, Albert King and Herbie Mann serves as a stark reminder to the good old days.

As does Pat McDowall's iconic group photo of our bunch of Merle Haggard "freaks" just off the bus in front of the Salt Palace and the vintage Clown Day shot where the stairs of the old Alpine Prospector Lodge are packed with costumed and over-prepped buffoons on their way to the slopes.

Classic stuff, all right, not to mention bumper stickers touting Kauai's Pono Market, the all-girl Sister Wives band ("No Toms, No Harrys and No Dicks"), and New Orleans radio station WWOZ, as well as full-sized posters of John Trudell, Alejandro Escovedo and Doug Sahm, and Richard Avedon portraits of performing artist Patti Smith, author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and "weatherman" Bernadine Dohrn.

The wall contains many other holy relics, as Proust would say, to trigger remembrances of things past; but all in all, existential spirituality remains in the eye of the, seemingly neurotic, beholder. Be careful what you throw away. There is absolution in a staple gun.

Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and an observer, participant, and chronicler of the Park City and Wasatch County social scenes for the past 40 years.

The post Core Samples appeared first on Park Record.

Hadn't we already lived with news of his advanced-esophageal-cancer diagnosis for over a year, that determination arriving on the heels of the publication of his brilliant memoir, "Hitch-22?" And then the long death watch that commenced in earnest once the disease took away his facility for speech, which for a majority of his flock had proven as addictive as his provocative prose.

Many of us weren't fans of "Hitch" in the sense that he spoke for us gave voice to our philosophical opinions or anything. Rather, it was his overall intellectual brilliance in skewering our sacred cows, as a devil's advocate, a contrarian, a champion of the controversial argument, that so endeared him to our collective psyche.

We figured anyone who could take on God ("God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything") and Mother Teresa ("The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice"), righteously defend the invasion of Iraq, plus volunteer for waterboarding and Brazilian bikini-waxing, while accomplishing it all with aloofness and flair, had to be paid attention to.

Hitch, a British Trotskyite and former editor of "The Nation" who had famously swung to the political right following the Ayatollah Khomeini-proclaimed fatwah on his friend Salman Rushdie, found waterboarding to be "very much more frightening though less painful than the bikini wax." His essay on the subject, "Believe Me, It's Torture," was published in "Vanity Fair."

An avowed atheist, much of his work centered on his long-held conviction that "human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it." That's just one of many examples of Hitch's total mastery of the quick, erudite, off-the-cuff remark, especially as a retort.

Irony or metaphor didn't scare him much either: "Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are God. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods."

Interviewers from the political right were also seldom spared his verbal scalpel if they proved less than worthy to their task. Responding to Sean Hannity, Hitch dismissed the attraction of an "all-seeing God" with: "It would be like living in North Korea."

Hitch, as you would imagine, rode with a quite literate posse, with novelists Ian McEwan ("Atonement," "Solar") and Martin Amis ("Money," "London Fields") being two of his closest brothers-in-arms.

Pundit Christopher Buckley, son of the late conservative publisher and television host William F. Buckley, also found longtime favor within his aura. Not that, at one time or another, even they wouldn't be denied a "hall pass" and find themselves scurrying for shelter from the master's scathing wit and philosophical barbs.

Although a lifetime of heavy smoking and drinking played into the pneumonia that complicated the cancer and brought on the too-soon end for Hitch, regret never received an invite to the endgame.

As he told Charlie Rose only last year: "Writing is what's important to me, and anything that helps me do that or enhances and prolongs and deepens and sometimes intensifies argument and conversation is worth it to me. It is impossible for me to imagine having my life without going to those parties, without having those late nights, without that second bottle."

In that Houston hospital, as his days dwindled down to a precious few, Ian McEwan helped Hitch out of bed and sat him in front of a two-way Internet connection with a packed house at London Festival Hall where "A Celebration of the Life and Times of Christopher Hitchens" was just getting underway.

McEwan noticed how young many of them looked. He guessed nearly all of them would have opposed Hitch over Iraq. "But here they were, and in cinemas all over the country, turning out for him," he mused.

Indeed, many of us may have opposed him on specific content, but in no way could it detract from our longtime love affair with his impeccable form. You stuck to our ribs, Hitch! Thanks for the ride!

Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and an observer, participant, and chronicler of the Park City and Wasatch County social scenes for the past 40 years.

The post Core Samples appeared first on Park Record.

It started out when my friend Chris McLaughlin came into possession of three free tickets to a k.d. lang show out at Park West and offered one of them to me. Well, that was a no-brainer! Being a big fan of the quirky multi-octave Canadian song-belter, I was all in! Also committed, as it turned out, were looming thunderstorm and monsoon warnings for the hillside in question.

So, when promoters reacted to the forecast with a change of venue, we adapted and headed on down to Abravanel Hall in Salt Lake, arguably at the time the most acoustically pure concert hall in the state. Arriving way earlier than we needed, we opted to kill some time across the street at the Dead Goat Saloon, a favorite blues-oriented haunt where the evening's plot would very much thicken.

When I caught sight of owner-proprietor-impresario John Paul Brophy heading over to our table, I had no idea that events were about to unfold that I would be recalling these nearly 20 years later. Bending over the table, he informed us in tones one would normally associate with the Second Coming that he had a not-to-miss retro-jazz combo out of Austin booked for later that evening and that we should, under no circumstances, let this one go by.

You don't ignore John Paul when he gets that look in his eye, even to this day, long after the Dead Goat's demise. Promising we'd be back directly following k.d. lang's final encore, we slipped out the door. We got away easy. I thought he was going to ask for a blood oath.

So, following yet another brilliant performance by Ms. lang, we hustled back across the street to "the Goat." Obviously, Brophy had got the word out, as the stage area in back began filling up with the usual suspects. Longtime local music junkie Randy Montgomery arrived just before the band got underway.

"8½ Souvenirs," as the group was called, was the most casually-hip ensemble I'd seen probably since stalking Miles Davis in L.A. back in the '60s. Their modus operandi was to channel Django Reinhardt's Quintette of the Hot Club of France in a most-rambunctious yet subtle musical fashion not a small instrumental order by any stretch.

They would become my favorite band of the '90s. Readjusting my logistics even further, I followed them to their next set of gigs in Southern California. And it would be at the Blue Café in Long Beach where I would bump smack dab into the "neo-swing" explosion, which, I quickly got the feeling, was "neo" only to me.

The girls, seemingly just off-shift from the WWII Douglas Aircraft B-17 plant down the road, flaunted a "Rosie the Riveter" look replete with hairnets and bright red lipstick while the gents "Lindy-hopped" them around the dance floor in zoot suits and fedoras. The SoCal swing revival was firmly in bloom!

I would learn about the "swing-set grapevine" that would keep all the hipsters appraised as to which clubs would be hosting which bands on which nights around the southland. Other swing-revival groups such as the Royal Crown Revue, which kind of started it all, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, and the Squirrel Nut Zippers could also pack them in on a moments notice.

The movement spread all over the country, of course, as was proven on the banks of the Great Salt Lake a few months later when 8½ Souvenirs returned to Utah to open for The Brian Setzer Orchestra out at Saltair. The local swing-scene getups and overall Lindy-hop jitterbugging was very much the equal of that we had come upon in L.A.

Nationwide, however, the swing-revival band you'd hear the most buzz about back then was Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. By the end of the decade, they would share the Super Bowl XXXIII stage with Gloria Estefan, Stevie Wonder and 750 dancers. They flat-out got the joint a-jumpin' down in Miami, if you recall.

Now, lo these many years later, I finally get a chance to see them in person when they bring their "A Swinging Christmas" show to the Eccles Center this Saturday evening, December 17, at 7:30 p.m.

Word has it that we're in for a swinging musical evening, one that mixes BBVD's older hits with selections from their recent Cab Calloway tribute album and rockin' big-band arrangements from the American Christmas songbook. Obviously, in their hands, the swing revival lives! Go Daddy-O! Dig it!

Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and an observer, participant, and chronicler of the Park City and Wasatch County social scenes for the past 40 years.

The post Core Samples appeared first on Park Record.

One of the more rewarding perks that came with my entry-level position in the Mechanical Processing Department of the old Los Angeles Central Library proved to be an ongoing daily introduction to published authors and their works. Each copy of every book that entered the L.A. Library system came through our modest third-floor shop.

As a day job during the mid-'60s while I was attending radio school in Hollywood at night, it was ideal. Wandering the stacks was not unlike being in the medieval monastery of Umberto Eco's "Name of the Rose." You could bump into Charles Bukowski leafing through John Fante's "Ask the Dust" down in the Fiction Room.

Dr. Hunter S. Thompson and the advent of "gonzo journalism" stayed with me throughout the years. His bizarre rants, transmitted well after both midnight and deadline to Rolling Stone magazine via the "mojo wire," a 7-minute-per-page early-generation fax, continually left us habitual readers hungry for his next word assault on our planetary circus.

Speaking of which, although I came through it with both eyes mostly in their sockets, I had a fairly gonzo day myself recently. Not that flaming turquoise iguanas with 5-foot tongues or brilliant green and red Ralph Steadman exploding particle-accelerator illustrations weren't waiting in the wings for their cue.

My friend and I, totally alone in this particular screening room down at a Brewvies showing of "Rum Diaries," were busy reducing burgers and brews to their molecular levels and watching Johnny Depp channel a young, fresh-out-of-the-Air-Force Hunter Thompson when my phone decided to clear its throat.

The alert informed me that my recently ordered copy of "Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone: The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson," had arrived and was awaiting pickup.

Coincidence that his latest book showed up while I sat watching a film based on his earliest? I think not! On the way in, although I hadn't mentioned this to my co-conspirator, I'd caught a brief shadowy glimpse of a trench coat smoking a Dunhill in a cigarette holder while skulking behind a lamppost in the parking lot.

Having been only a half-dozen years since the mostly-flat trajectory of the .45 slug transected the arc of the good doctor's brain stem, I thought it entirely possible that Hunter had chosen this moment to reach out across the veil.

What drove me to acquire this latest anthology in hardcover had to do with its being a collection of all of Thompson's writing for Rolling Stone. As much as I loved his outrageously over-the-top fiction, his exquisitely slanted journalism was equally spot on! And most of this book, including a piece very much close to home, showcases that particular skill set brilliantly.

I had no doubt as to which story would first get my attention once I settled into a chair with the book and a beverage back home. Skipping both Jann Wenner's and Paul Scanlon's introductions and Hunter's first byline for Rolling Stone, a feature on freak-power politics and his 1970 run for sheriff of Aspen, I arrived at his story from the April 29, 1971, issue.

On August 29, 1970, a week or so before moving to Park City from L.A., my then wife Virginia and I had marched along Whittier Boulevard in opposition to the Vietnam War and its disproportionate number of Latino casualties. Known as the "Chicano Moratorium," the date resounds in many quarters to this day.

Before it ended, following some riveting oratory by Cesar Chavez and a police assault on the end-of-march rally at Laguna Park, we had snorted endless amounts of tear gas, run zigzag escape routes through the back alleys of East L.A., and heard that our favorite newspaper columnist, Ruben Salazar of the L.A. Times, had been found dead in the Silver Dollar Café, which we'd passed on the march.

Riots, of course, ensued. As did a Grand Jury investigation into Salazar's death by a sheriff's department tear-gas canister to the head. Chicano activist attorney Oscar "Zeta" Acosta would tip off his friend Hunter Thompson to the story, which, entitled "Strange Rumblings in Aztlan," would be his second byline for Rolling Stone.

The piece holds up extremely well forty years after the fact. And that's why I got the book, so all his midnight mojo-wired Rolling Stone stories would never be farther than arm's length away including the two-part November 1971 classic, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," which featured his buddy Oscar Acosta as Dr. Gonzo and morphed into the bestselling novel a year later.

Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and an observer, participant, and chronicler of the Park City and Wasatch County social scenes for the past 40 years.

The post Core Samples appeared first on Park Record.

-- O. D. McGee

What my esteemed younger brother had in mind when serving up that observation to friend and fellow musician Barry Garneau back in the day had to do with the fact that, although a lifelong music obsessive, I possessed no inherent abilities within the art form itself. I couldn't whistle or play a kazoo or carry a tune in a proverbial bucket, as they say.

Music, however, McGee insisted, held the power to reach even my bottom-of-the-food-chain melodic sensibility. I understood perfectly and not only bought into his perception back then but totally agree with it to this day. It's one of the Gospels according to McGee. Who am I to argue?

The memory of his philosophical barb came rushing back when I began listening to a recently acquired copy of the compilation CD, "The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams." My first reaction upon hearing the opening steel-guitar riff was an attempt to recall that quintessential tuning made famous by Hank's "Drifting Cowboys" band mate Don Helms.

Back in the '70s as a C&W DJ in Salt Lake, I felt that understanding the essence of the Hank Williams sound was as important to the trade as learning to negotiate the dance floor with a long-neck Budweiser over at the Mr. Lucky Club just off Redwood Road.

Other than his musicianship and soulful approach to the material, what differentiated Don Helm's signature sound from other steel-guitar players of the day were his special tunings and string configurations. All it ever took was just one note and you knew immediately that you were listening to "Hank Williams and the Drifting Cowboys." Even for Jay!

But back to the lost notebooks and the mythology still surrounding the late, great Hank Williams. It seems that for years preceding his untimely death at 29 in the back of his Cadillac on the way to a gig early on New Year's morning 1953, Hank had collected and stored sets of lyrics and notes on various song ideas.

As Michael McCall of the Country Music Hall of Fame writes in the album liner notes: "When Hank Williams died, he left behind a scuffed, embroidered brown leather briefcase. Like its owner, the briefcase appeared weathered beyond its years, yet it retained a dignified bearing that abuse couldn't erase."

McCall goes on to tell the convoluted tale of how the notebooks were initially put in safekeeping by Acuff-Rose, Hank's publisher, and then somehow survived the myriad of corporate buyouts that ensued, moving from one vault to another until, finally, coming into the possession of album producer Mary Martin.

Martin's idea was to entice Williams aficionado Bob Dylan to take the notebooks, add music and lyrics where needed, and record an album like Billy Bragg and Wilco had done a few years back with a cache of previously unrecorded Woody Guthrie lyrics.

Coming to the conclusion that others needed to be involved, Martin and Dylan assembled a cast of "usual suspects" and had each write music and "arrange" their selected song for the record. In that way, they all became co-writers with Hank Williams. How cool is that?

The posse, all songwriters in their own right, all "get their Hank on," to be sure, but Norah Jones, to these ears, is devastatingly brilliant on "How Many Times Have You Broken My Heart?" and Jakob Dylan's spare arrangement and vocal on "Oh Mama, Come Home" is heartbreakingly Hank.

Current Nashvillians such as Alan Jackson (You've Been Lonesome, Too") and Patty Loveless ("You're Through Fooling Me") demonstrate why they made the cut. Both of their vocal styles flaunt a "swing" component that works perfectly with their arrangements of these new Hank tunes.

The elder Dylan also swings through a down-tempo waltz-time arrangement of "The Love That Faded," recorded sometime back before Charlie Sexton rejoined his band. Levon Helm's rustic and recognizable vocal is in fine company with super-instrumentalist Larry Campbell from his Woodstock "Midnight Ramble" band "Hankin' it up" on "You'll Never Again Be Mine."

Lucinda Williams ("I'm So Happy I Found You") and Sheryl Crow ("Angel Mine"), who both appeared on the Grammy-award winning "Timeless" Hank tribute, prove once again to be perfectly at home in his dark and haunting lyrical landscapes.

Now I never would have thought that Jack White would show up here, but boy does he have his guitar-driven way with "You Know That I Know." Hank's granddaughter (and Hank Jr.'s daughter) Holly Williams nails "Blue is My Heart" and is a pure vocal delight, replete with every Hank nuance you could imagine.

And did I mention that, as part of the Vince Gill & Rodney Crowell take on the Luke-the-Drifter-ish "I Hope You Shed a Million Tears," that the actual, in-the-flesh, Don Helms played in his last session before passing away.

And then there's Merle Haggard. What can you say? Even Jay gets "the Hag."

Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and an observer, participant, and chronicler of the Park City and Wasatch County social scenes for the past 40 years.

The post Core Samples appeared first on Park Record.