I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: FRANKIE SPARO-Welcome Crummy Mystics [CST023] (2003).

It’s a shame that Welcome Crummy Mystics proved to be Sparo’s last album, because it is by far his best.

This album has more sounds, sounds that accentuate the simplicity that Sparo has constructed.  So there are all kinds of unexpected instruments on th opener “Hospitalville” including horns and bass, And the whole thing has a noir feel that pervades much of the disc.  It was was completely absent on the debut (intentionally obviously).  There are harmony vocals on “Sleds to Moderne” and “Akzidenz Grotesk” has electric guitar and Sparo’s voice mixed a bit louder.  There’s more rocking out on “Back on Speed.”

But it’s not all uptempo.  “Bright Angel Park” is a pretty  instrumental with lots of piano while “My Sistr” is a menacing slow piece that begins with just bass and voice.  Although as more instruments are added the menace is replaced by a kind of jazz feel.

“Camera” is sung in French and has interesting electronics throughout and “City as it Might Have Been” has beautiful strings layered on top of each other as it builds to an epic conclusion.  “This Lie” ends the disc with piano and organ an excellent accompaniment to his lyrics.  And on this album you can really hear what a great lyricist he is.

It’s amazing what a change this is from the debut and that he packs all of this great music in to a mere 37 minutes.

[READ: April 15, 2014] “Loving Las Vegas”

I felt like I had read something else from Whitehead about gambling and it turns out he wrote an article for Grantland about the World Series of Poker in Atlantic City.  This essay is an excerpt from the upcoming book that he is writing about said World Series.

This is a story about Whitehead’s appreciation for Vegas from when he was young and dumb (well, not so dumb, really).  His friend Darren got a job writing for Let’s Go, the funky travel guide.  And the assignment was Vegas.  In 1991.  They were Gen X and they were going on a great road trip.  So naturally, the first thing to do was get new speakers for the crappy car.  [I have often felt a strong connection to Whitehead, feeling that we could have been soul mates if I were a little more daring and had lived in NY instead of NJ].

They go on a great road trip (Colson hadn’t gotten a license yet so he was a navigator).  They went to Chicago and saw the Sears Tower, they went to New Orleans to visit an old friend whose frat buddies wanted to know why he was “bringing niggers and Jews” into their chill-space (yikes).  Then they got out of there and went to the Grand Canyon and Lake Mead (which they wrote about).   And then it was on to Vegas.I love this idea: since they didn’t think they’d be doing much laundry, they went to the thrift store and bought lots of cheap suits (hipster before it was cool, man) to wear to the casinos.

Colson said he would not gamble and he sees the casinos much as I do: sucking the life out of the eldery who seem connected to their slot machines.  Although when he won $2 on a nickel slot, his intrigue was piqued and he “got it” (much as I did when I put a $25 chip on black and was instantly given $75).

But mostly they were there to do a job: to rewrite the mean spirited copy of the previous person’s write up about Vegas.  The previous person wrote:

Forget Hollywood images of Las Vegas glamor, the city at base is nothing but a desert Disneyland.  As a small, small world of mild, middle-aged debauchery, Vegas simply replaces Mickey and Minnie with overbright neon marquees monolithic hotel/casinos, besequined Ziegfieldesque [sic] entertainers, quickly marring them in rococo wedding chapels.

Colson’s reaction to this?  “Percy, where are my smelling slats?” and, more pertinently, what is the antecedent to “them” in the last sentence.

So he changed that to:

The magic formula of this oasis of mild, middle-aged debauchery–offer everything but the gambling cheaply, and, if you gild it, they will come–was hit upon by Bugsy Siegel in the 1940s.

Colson says that the key thing that most people think about Vegas is that it is out to destroy you.  But that isn’t true: “the destroyed do not return to redeem reward-card perks and lose more money.”

The amazing thing about this article is that the three friends involved were Colson, now a celebrated author, Dan who founded Look FX, the visual effects company who did animation for, among other films, Black Swan and Darren, who directed Black Swan (I’ll let you look up names if you care).  Not bad for a trio of guys who epoxied souvenirs to the hood of their car as they traveled around the country (I love the image of this very much and wish I had thought of it).

Just imagine what I’d be doing now if I’d hung around with them in 1991!