Welcome to the blog of writer and musician Andrew Martin. Here I'll post original photographs and observations as I encounter the history and culture of the San Fernando Valley, the City of the Angels, Alta California and the far-flung Pacific Rim… but mostly the Valley.
Here’s a charming Richard Rodgers waltz you don’t know; but like his best work, hear it once and you’ll not only think you’ve known it for years, you’ll find you have it by heart thenceforth. It’s from 1967’s Androcles And The Lion; one of those extravagant, made-for-live television fairy tale adaptations that made the golden age of TV into a kind of Twilight of the Gods for Broadway song writers. Click for my video starring the fabulous Ito, while Norman Wisdom sings the Act II reprise of Velvet Paws. https://drive.google.com/file/d/10IFs3fPuTeTs53JKb4WHgnZNvwYx-ivG/view?usp=drivesdk
Noel and DIck wondering where it’s all bloody gone.
Richard Rodgers had lost Hammerstein, and was in this period doing his own lyrics — as he did for No Strings. This Shaw show is pretty damn good, judging by the cast album, with Noel Coward particularly sparkling as Caesar. Apparently Geoffrey Holder played the Lion! The show seems adult and unusual and provocative and experimental — not musically, but morally. (The Broadway opening of Hair, after all, was only weeks away; Androcles may be the last gasp of the Old Guard.) It left reviewers cold; and indeed, the album starts a bit slowly and quietly and uncertainly, which is death for TV. Peter Stone’s (!) adaptation does pick up steam as it goes, and it treats the implications of Shaw’s myth with humor, but also doesn’t dodge the serious issues of pacifism, minority rights, capital punishment, and of living one’s religious convictions to their fullest conclusions. I’d love to see it staged to get its real effect. It’s only by gay grace that this RARE album — an industry-promotional-only copy at that — came into the right hands (mine!) at where else? Out of the Closet Thrift. This is major American art by major American artists, an album and show that deserves to be heard and appreciated.
Many years ago we had the honor of being dinner guests of Inge Swenson and her husband in their beautiful house in Santa Monica Canyon, thanks to David Eidenberg of fond memory. This recording shows off her crystal voice the way it deserves to be heard. John Cullum, too — he must have been a stripling but his baritone already swells like a Wurlitzer, and together they weave magic spells.I wish I had the server space to upload the whole album.
7/7 — The Night of the Celestial Lovers — Qixi Festival
In traditional Chinese astrology: on the night of the seventh of the seventh, Niulang the Cowherd (Altair) reaches across the darkness to embrace his lucky star, Zhinu the Weaver Girl (Vega).
“Niulang was an orphan who lived with his brother and sister-in-law. He was often abused by his sister-in-law. They eventually kicked him out of the house, and gave him nothing but an old cow. One day, the old cow suddenly spoke out, telling Niulang that a fairy will come, and that she is Zhinu, the heavenly weaver. It said the fairy will stay here if she fails to go back to heaven before morning. In accordance with what the old cow said, Niulang saw Zhinu, and fell in love with her, and they got married. The Emperor of Heaven, the Jade Emperor, found out about this and was furious; so he sent minions to escort the heavenly weaver back to heaven. Niulang was heartbroken and decided to chase after them. However, the Queen Mother of the West drew a Silver River (The Milky Way) in the sky and blocked his way. Meanwhile, the love between Niulang and Zhinu moved the Magpies; who built a Bridge of Magpies over the Silver River so the couple could meet. The Jade Emperor was moved by the sight, and allowed this couple to meet on the Magpie Bridge once a year on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month. That was the origin of the Qixi Festival.”
The New Cold War between the West and China, as Danny Haiphong rightly dubs it, is a disgrace. Click above for his barn-burner of an essay. The sudden whiplash-turn of the National Security State back to Full Tactical Alert On the Threat of China, has amplified indeed weaponized, Pres. Trump’s lazy scattershot calumnies. This isn’t good. The chicken hawks peddle sly, vague hints that somehow China is destabilizing the world, or that China is already on the warpath, a rampant aggressor on the world stage. It is assumed and then circularly re-argued, that they are bent upon nefariously stealing Americans’ future of capitalism by cheats and dodges. It’s the same old prejudice but it is keeping the MIC gravy-train going — though the Pentagon is already vomiting from gorging on the surfeit of its own indigestible sickpiles of previously gluttonized phantom wealth. What’s next, now that Afghanistan is lost?
This New Cold War is cynical and expedient; a gesture, and a Vaudevillian one — a spook-haunted arm-wave from the Deep State meant to distract and decoy from the fact that China and the U.S. are natural allies and partners. The main-stream media children appear to have either swallowed the State Department’s rattling sabre whole; or, and/a, also, just pulled a Big Stick out of their collective ass, by their own little selves. On the wheezing Sunday talk shows, it saves both the pols and the hacks from even having to leak anymore, by endlessly answering the question their non-viewers aren’t even bothering to care to ask anymore: namely, what-the-hell is Bidenism, anyway. Turns out, it’s that He’s Tough On China. He isn’t the One Who Lost It! He told them to Knock It Off! He’s sending gunboats to the Straits of Taiwan. Look, UFO’S!
‘You’ve Got To Be Taught’ The New Cold War is coincident, coincidentally, with a sharp rise in street violence against Asian-Americans. The attacks and the diplomatic fury are emotional steam valves for American people boiling and spoiling for an ugly fight with the Other. But these ignorant fights leave deep scars. A recent correspondent couldn’t recall the song from South Pacific about Anti-Asian prejudice. Hear it again, it still packs a wallop. Oscar Hammerstein took the trouble to introduce the song himself (in a newsreel celebrating “National Brotherhood Week,” believe it or not.)
Economic justifications for bashing China or for distrusting Chinese people as a business culture, are completely non-existent, now or ever. Around the Pacific Rim and the Globe, Chinese trading colonies have been the most efficient and enterprising merchant-handlers of goods in world history. And remember, they’re not even Communists any more, folks, remember? They’re not communists, whatever that might mean today, any more than English are Monarchists whatever that might mean today. That is, psts..psst…they aren’t really anymore. China is our Number One trading partner, manufactory of all our bling, and they own the notes on most of our increasingly worthless, rapidly deflating, paper money. The only threat, really, is that they’ll dump all those debt-junked petrodollars one day soon for a rational trading currency of their own, and…glug glug glug for the American Dream, whatever that might mean today.
ON GOLD MOUNTAIN — One of the most remarkable family and social histories I’ve ever read is Lisa See’s story of her Chinese-Anglo California family, which started in America around the time of the Gold Rush, 1856. Hilarious, shocking, it offers wide windows on revealing subjects — like how really-existing global economics operate at family level, across decades — and the roots of American and Chinese mutual prejudice. Only skim some pages for nuggets that suggest the gold buried in See’s story.
“Slow cooking a brisket as Texas Barbecue!” — Stockton’s Top Chef, Ken Albala
The View has correspondents all over, and this weekend we honor America with some snapshots of Life, As She Is Lived, Here, Now. Happy Independence Day from the View!
That beautiful shot of the Ben Franklin Bridge over the Delaware towards Camden’s fireworks, was taken by Bobbi Block — who also sent Philadelphia’s Fireworks Over the Delaware, Live From Penn’s Landing! VIDEO CLICK BELOW. Can’t you just inhale that thick, smoky, rusty, July on the Delaware Air? What a way to celebrate Independence!
Fancy a 20-year snooze? Fall under the enchantment of the CatskillMountains, America’s magical forest, as depicted by Mr. Jocelyn:
CICADAS: You thought it was all over with the Cicadas? Nightlife is back in the swing — Kayre Morrison and Damon Kirsche and Dean Mora’s Orchestra brought LA’s Cicada Club throbbing back to life this weekend.
THE DESPERATE WATCH: C. Butterman, our man in Florida, witnesses the awful scene in Surfside this holiday weekend.
Meanwhile, in the middle of another landfill island, in the middle of another bay on another coast…View Chris Martin’s alluring and colorfulback garden in Alameda.
ASHOT IN THE ARM for the U.S. state that ranks 50th in tourism: Larry Freedman!
“Bully! Bully!” After Medora, Larry winds up his Twister Tour of North Dakota at Jamestown!
CRUISING VALLEY VILLAGE: 1949
VV was developed by Bob Symonds beginning in 1947. The style he chose epitomized post-War America; a mix of LA’s homegrown Hollywood Regency, with a progressively popular Bauhaus element brought experimentally to the Valley by Jews fleeing fascism; while the third, and binding, element of the Valley Village style is Moderne, which was largely a culmination of the economies and miniaturizing of Wartime design, much of that work done locally at Lockheed. For better or worse, a Mid-Century Middle Class paradise for the automobile.
Cities back east have their bunting and their hansom cabs in the park, or Tall Ships in the Harbor, to help citizens celebrate the summeriest day of American yore. Seeing things like horses and ships, or hearing a town-crier’s bell, where they once were and suddenly are again, is part of our continuing theatre of living history. In California, nothing recalls “the Good Old Days of Summer” so much as a car parade of vintage roadsters, hipped-up, souped-up, dropped-down, cherried-out, taking over downtown and luring the local kids to (ahem) jump in each others’ back seats to take a ride. Well, wouldn’t you, if the cars looked like this?
The name of the chop shop is First Class, and I’ve never seen prettier low-riders in my life. These sleek cars are from the Mid-Century, late-‘Forties through the ‘Sixties, when our neighborhood was built. They so perfectly match Valley Village, and seem so at home on Magnolia, and so perfectly Doris Day-parked there, I figured it must be a commercial film-shoot. I looked around for the Art Director but there was no crew, nobody filming except the View. Still the First Class family must have carefully chosen this spot to show off their cars. The point is, these cars were made too look good cruising Magnolia Boulevard. And they still show it off to fine advantage — even if one or two of the booths are Covid-marked by “American Grafitti.”
What happened to cruising? Nancy Reagan moved to Sacramento, ‘nuff said.
The Valley Village View 