One of the dominant players in the AI audiobook narration field recently offered access to its platform at a deep discount.
As an author, it behooves me to keep up with such things, even when I have my doubts. I have long been skeptical of the much-ballyhooed AI panacea. But I thought I should try AI narration before I completely wrote it off.
And like I said: the company was offering a deep discount.
I gave the whiz-bang AI narration platform a try. It does indeed output a narration from text.
Amadeus, the biographical drama about the life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, was one of the most critically acclaimed movies of the mid-1980s. Starring F. Murray Abraham, Tom Hulce, and Elizabeth Berridge, Amadeus brought the famed 18th-century composer and his times to life.
Amadeus remains one of my favorite movies of all time. But when I saw it for the first time, as a teenager in the 1980s, I was inspired: I had a sudden desire to learn more about classical music, or at least about Mozart.
This was more than a little out of character for me at the time. As a teenager, my musical tastes ran the gamut from Journey to Iron Maiden, usually settling on Rush and Def Leppard.
So I read a Mozart biography. I was already an avid reader, after all. Then it came time to listen to the actual music. That’s when my inspiration fell flat.
I found that Mozart the man was a lot more interesting than his music. At least to my then 17-year-old ears. Nothing would dethrone rock music, with its more accessible themes and pounding rhythms.
Almost 40 years later, I still prefer rock music. In fact, I still mostly prefer the rock music I listened to in the 1980s.
Recently, however, I took another dive into classical music.
Classical music, like popular, contemporary music, is a mixed bag. Some of it is turgid and simply too dense for modern ears. Some pieces, though, are well worth listening to, even if they were composed in another era.
Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” is one such piece. For the longest time, I mistakenly assumed that this arrangement was written for the 1986 Vietnam War movie, Platoon, in which it is prominently figured.
I was wrong about that. “Adagio for Strings” was composed in 1938, long before either Platoon or the Vietnam War.
“Adagio for Strings” is practically dripping with pathos. It is the perfect song to listen to when you are coping with sadness or tragedy. This music simultaneously amplifies your grief and gives it catharsis. You feel both better and worse after listening.
“Adagio for Strings” was broadcast over the radio in the USA upon the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945. It was played at the funeral of Albert Einstein ten years later. The composition was one of JFK’s favorites; and it was played at his funeral, too, in 1963.
Most of the time, though, you’ll be in the mood for something more uplifting. That will mean digging into the oeuvre of one or more of the classical composers.
While the best-known composers (Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, etc.) all have their merits, I am going to steer you toward Czech composer Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904) instead.
Dvorak was born almost a century after Mozart and Beethoven, and longer than that after Bach. To my philistine ear, Dvorak’s music sounds more modern, while still falling within the realm of the classical.
Antonin Dvorak
I would recommend starting with Symphony Number 9, Aus der Neuen Welt (“From the New World”). This is arguably Dvorak’s most accessible work, and my personal favorite at present. Symphony Number 9 contains a lot of moods. It takes you up and down, and round again.
This is not the story of an older adult turning away from the pop culture of his youth for more sophisticated fare. Far from it. Dvorak is not going to replace Def Leppard on my personal playlist. Bach and Mozart have not supplanted Rush and AC/DC.
But time has made me more musically open-minded. Almost 40 years after I was inspired by the movie Amadeus, I have, at long last, developed a genuine appreciation for classical music.
But that is a qualified appreciation, for an art form that I still prefer in measured doses.
Regular readers will know that language learning is one of my lifelong pursuits and hobbies.
I’ve received some emails of late about the prospect of learning Ukrainian. Do I plan to study it? Should you be studying it?
First, the obvious disclaimers. If you’re learning Ukrainian for reasons of love, or heritage, or a desire to move to Kharkiv at some point in the future, then by all means learn Ukrainian.
And if you just really like the idea of learning Ukrainian, that’s okay, too. But if you’re reading this (or asking me about it), you probably have a more practical turn of mind.
Ukrainian has a base of about 27 million speakers. Numerically, that places it on the same level as Thai, Tagalog, or Dutch. Ukrainian isn’t Latvian (1.5 million speakers). But it isn’t Spanish, French, or Russian, either.
Speaking of Russian: Most Ukrainian speakers also speak Russian—for now, at least. Prior to the current conflict, many Ukrainians used Russian as their language of daily life, a remnant of Soviet times.
There is an active campaign within Ukraine to extirpate the Russian language and replace it with Ukrainian. The outcome of those efforts will likely hinge on the outcome of the war.
But what about you, an English-speaker who (presumably) wants to learn a Slavic language? Going by the numbers, Russian—with 258 million speakers worldwide—makes a lot more sense.
Not all of those speakers are in Russia. I recently met a young woman from Uzbekistan. Her English was minimal, but she spoke fluent Russian. (Uzbekistan is a former Soviet Republic.)
Another consideration is the availability of learning materials. Russian language pedagogy in the West goes back decades. When I was a college student in the 1980s, you could find textbooks and cassette courses to help you learn Russian. Every major language learning app (Pimsleur, Duolingo, Rosetta Stone, etc.) has developed Russian language learning materials in considerable depth and breadth.
Ukrainian, on the other hand, was an almost-never-studied language in the West until 2022. That too, may change. But such a change will take years.
I have the impression that some language learners in the West are choosing Ukrainian over Russian as a self-congratulatory political statement. Kind of like putting the Ukrainian flag on your social media profile.
Once again: you be you. As for me, though: “Russia” has been many things in my lifetime. When I was a kid, Russia was the center of the USSR. Then it was Boris Yeltsin’s Russia. Now it’s Putin’s Russia.
In ten years, Russia will probably be something else. But my guess is: there will still be more Russian speakers than speakers of any other Slavic language. (Even Polish only has 41 million speakers.)
I’ve lived long enough to have learned that while politics change, languages don’t. (At least, they don’t change that much within any human lifespan.)
If I were going to learn a Middle Eastern language, I would pick Arabic (373 million speakers) over Hebrew (9 million speakers). This has nothing to do with my feelings about the Arab-Israeli conflict, which—like Russia—has changed significantly within my lifetime. I would pick Arabic because Arabic is spoken in at least twenty countries, while Modern Hebrew is spoken in only one.
After I learned Arabic, then I might take on Hebrew. I have nothing against Hebrew, mind you. But when approaching a language family, I say: all things being equal, learn the major ones first. Spanish before Italian. Mandarin before Cantonese. German before Norwegian, Swedish, or Dutch.
And yes, Russian before Ukrainian, without strong motivating factors to the contrary. You won’t be drafted into the Russian Army as a result. I promise.
The Consultant is the story of an American marketing consultant who takes a business trip to Osaka, Japan, and talks to the wrong woman in a bar.
One thing leads to another, and he ends up in North Korea.
The story is loosely (I emphasize loosely) based on real events.
The North Korean government has carried out targeted kidnapping campaigns of civilians over the years. Most of the known targets have been South Koreans and Japanese. But there is no reason why an American couldn’t be the target of such a kidnapping. This novel explores that scenario.
The Consultant is a good read for Tom Clancy fans who also like James Clavell…or James Clavell fans who also like a bit of action.
Unlike some people who write books, I’m not hostile to television, especially good television.
And Netflix’s Ozark is very good television. I’m now binge-watching the series, and I’m already in the fourth season.
I’m sort of dreading the end of the fourth season, because that’s all there is! Netflix has already announced that there will be no fifth season of Ozark.
Here’s the premise of Ozark, briefly stated. Marty Byrde (played by Jason Bateman) is a Chicago-based financial advisor. Despite being a whiz with money, he’s never quite been able to keep his head above water.
Then Marty is courted by the Navarro drug cartel as a money launderer. After extensive discussions with his wife, Wendy (Laura Linney), Marty reluctantly agrees to the proposition.
But Marty’s old college friend and business partner, Bruce (Josh Randall), makes a fatal mistake. Bruce attempts to cheat the cartel, by skimming some of the laundered cash.
And as we all know, cheating Mexican drug cartels is never a good idea. The cartel eventually finds out what Bruce is up to. Cartel operatives show up in Chicago. They execute Bruce, along with his fiancée, and the father-son trucking company owners who were also involved in the theft.
Marty witnesses the massacre. Needless to say, he is shaken…but alive.
The cartel allows Marty to go on living, but his life is still on the line. Marty and Wendy, along with their two children, must leave Chicago for the Lake of the Ozarks in central Missouri. There they must launder cartel money through local businesses. Or else.
Hijinks ensue, along with numerous compelling storylines.
How compelling? Ozark is the first TV series I’ve seen in a long time that makes me forget I’m watching TV. I’ve even been having dreams about the show. And I never dream about television. Or at least I haven’t since I was a little kid.
But how does the show pull this off? There is an old debate in storytelling circles. Which is more important: a big, original idea (aka “high concept”), or competent execution?
Ozark lands a decisive vote on the side of execution being important.
Think about it: how many movies, novels, and television series have we seen about ordinary people getting involved with Mexican drug cartels? This is one of the most common go-to storylines in crime film, TV, and fiction.
Ozark is also a fish-out-of-water story. A Chicago family coping with life in rural Missouri. These, too, are as old as television: The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, Northern Exposure. Need I go on?
Fish-out-of-water crime and espionage stories are nothing new, either. For example, Ray Donovan was a series about a low-level Boston mobster in Los Angeles. The Americans told the story of deep-cover Soviet assets in Washington D.C., posing as ordinary American citizens (hence the name of the show) during the final decade of the Cold War.
That the Byrdes are transported from Chicago to Missouri makes for an interesting setup, but nothing earth-shattering, in itself. It’s really just a variation on a tried-and-true storytelling technique.
What about killer plot twists? Well, there are some of those, too. And while the plotting in Ozark is very strong, it’s a long way from perfect. There are a few twists that strain credibility just a bit. I even noticed one twist that might be assessed as an instance of the dreaded jumping the shark.
Lovable characters? Not so much. Marty and Wendy Byrde are deeply drawn characters. (A long series leaves plenty of time and space for that.) But Marty is too much of a milquetoast for my tastes, and Wendy is simply too much of a loose cannon.
Ruth Langmore (played by the talented Julia Garner) is certainly memorable. She’s also lifelike. Although I’ve never been to Missouri, there are young women here in Ohio, and neighboring Kentucky, who are similarly combative and profane. Ruth’s circumstances, moreover, invite sympathy. But in real life, her constant cantankerousness and never-ending stream of F-bombs would grow wearisome.
The idea of spending a week with any of the Ozark characters in real life would leave me distinctly unenthusiastic. I suspect I’m not alone in this opinion.
Nor can Ozark lean on its setting much. Unlike Magnum P.I. or Miami Vice, Ozark isn’t set in any vacation spots. Most of the show takes place in the rural American South and Chicago.
Ozark is also set against a background of poverty. (Much of the show literally takes place in a trailer park.) That’s supposed to be a no-no for any filmmaker or novelist who seeks mass appeal.
Ozark holds our attention not with high concept, nor with avante garde originality, nor with airtight, ingenious plot twists. And no—not with settings we’d like to visit, or with characters whom we’d love to meet in real life.
Ozark holds us in thrall with what literary agent and editor Donald Maass once dubbed microtension.
What is “micro tension”? In Maass’s words, microtension is:
“the moment-by-moment tension that keeps readers in a constant state of suspense over what will happen—not in the (overall) story, but in the next few seconds.“
That’s what Ozark does best. Once again, I’ll avoid any spoilers here. But suffice it to say that in each scene in Ozark, there are multiple open questions, and multiple opportunities for the viewer to be surprised.
By maintaining this constant tension in each scene, and by constantly weaving new, intersecting plot threads, Ozark grabs hold of you at the outset, and never lets you go. You are always on-guard, always tense, because you really never know what will happen next.
Ozark’s writers, directors, and actors make you experience the show’s real-life dangers, but without the real-life consequences. They pull you in as much as is possible through the medium of television. That’s why the show is so popular, and has been nominated for so many awards.
I’m just a few episodes from the end of Ozark, and like I said: I’m dreading it—just like I’m dreading the moment-to-moment question of “what will happen next?” that grips me in practically every scene.
The language situation in India is complicated. Indians speak many different languages and dialects. Imagine driving from one state to another, and the language being different. That’s the way it often is in India, depending on where you are.
India has 22 official languages. One of these is English, that being a remnant of India’s years as the jewel in the crown of the British Empire. English is usually sufficient if you only want to communicate with the Indian programmers in your company’s IT department. Beware, however. According to India’s 2011 census, only 10 percent of the Indian population claims to speak English, and almost all of these speak English as a second language, with varying degrees of fluency.
Major languages in India include Punjabi, Tamil, and Gujarati. But if you’re going to learn an indigenous Indian language, Hindi is definitely the one to start with. 57 percent of India speaks Hindi. 43 percent of Indians claim Hindi as their native language. No other Indian language really comes close in raw percentages.
As some of you may know, foreign languages are one of my hobbies and passions. For many years, I used several languages in my corporate work.
Almost all languages interest me, to one degree or another, but I don’t dare attempt to take on all of them. Some I actively avoid, because they’re difficult and the numerical incentives simply aren’t there.
Take Finnish, for example. Finnish is a very challenging language for native English speakers to learn, and no one really speaks it outside of Finland, a country with a population roughly equivalent to that of Wisconsin.
Spanish makes a lot more sense. Spanish is much easier, and is spoken in 20 different countries around the world, with 475 million native speakers.
Hindi is a major language, even though it’s only spoken in India. But Hindi is not an easy language. And until recently, there weren’t many resources for learning it.
Some Americans are rising to the challenge, nonetheless. Margaret MacLeod, a US State Department official, speaks Hindi and has recently become something of a sensation in the Indian media.
According to her State Department biography, MacLeod speaks and reads both Hindi and Urdu. Since I don’t speak Hindi, I can’t personally assess her skill level. But she seems to be fluent, as she fields questions from Indian government officials and journalists with visible ease. Indian commenters in the YouTube videos in which she appears give her high marks, too. I’m therefore willing to assume that she knows Hindi very well.
Yet further evidence that mastery of a foreign language is neither impractical nor infeasible just because one’s native language is English.
Not far from where I live, there is a stretch of Ohio State Route 125 that has been dubbed Dead Man’s Curve.
The spot is just a few miles from my house, in fact. I’ve been by there many times.
According to the urban legend, if you drive this section of rural highway a little after 1 a.m., you might see the faceless hitchhiker. From a distance, this male figure may look relatively normal. Once you get close, though, you’ll see that he has no face.
Sometimes the hitchhiker isn’t content to stand there by the side of the road and watch you. There have been reports of the phantom actually attacking cars.
Creepy, right?
Yeah, I think so, too….
Dead Man’s Curve on Ohio State Route 125 has a long and macabre history. Route 125 is the main road that connects the suburbs and small towns east of Cincinnati with the city. But much of the road (including Dead Man’s Curve) was originally part of the Ohio Turnpike, which was built in 1831. (Andrew Jackson was president in 1831, just to put that date in perspective.)
That section of the Ohio Turnpike was the scene of many accidents (some of them fatal), even in the horse-and-buggy days. The downward sloping curve became particularly treacherous when rain turned the road to mud. Horses and carriages would sometimes loose their footing, sending them over the adjacent hillside.
In the twentieth century, the Ohio Turnpike was paved and reconfigured into State Route 125. In 1968 the road was expanded into four lanes.
As part of the expansion, the spot known as Dead Man’s Curve was leveled and straightened. (As a result, the curve doesn’t look so daunting today…unless you know its history.) This was supposed to be the end of “Dead Man’s Curve”.
But it wasn’t.
In 1969, there was a horrible accident at the spot. The driver of a green Roadrunner—traveling at a speed of 100 mph—slammed into an Impala carrying five teenagers. There was only one survivor of the tragic accident.
Shortly after that, witnesses began to report sightings of the faceless hitchhiker during the wee hours. (The hitchhiker is said to be most active during the twenty-minutes between 1:20 and 1:40 a.m.) There have also been reports of a ghostly green Roadrunner that will chase drivers late at night.
Oh, and Dead Man’s Curve remains deadly, despite the leveling and straightening done in 1968. In the five decades since the accident involving the Roadrunner and the Impala, around seventy people have been killed there.
Is there any truth to the legend of Dead Man’s Curve?
I can’t say for sure. What I can tell you is that I’ve heard many eyewitness accounts from local residents who claim to have seen the hitchhiker. (Keep in mind, I live very close to Dead Man’s Curve, and it’s a local topic of discussion and speculation.) Almost none of these eyewitnesses have struck me as mentally imbalanced or deceitful.
I know what your last question is going to be: Have I ever driven Dead Man’s Curve between 1:20 and 1:40 a.m. myself?
Uh, no. But perhaps I’ll get around to it someday, and I’ll let you know in a subsequent blog post!
**When walking down lonely roads at night, beware the hellhounds!**
Jason Kelley is a college filmmaker who has accepted a challenge: walk eleven miles down the most haunted road in rural Ohio, the so-called Shaman’s Highway.
If Jason completes his task, he’ll win a $2,000 prize.
But before he reaches his destination, he’ll have to cope with evil spirits, trees that come to life, an undead witch, and packs of roving hellhounds!
A creepy supernatural thriller! Not for the faint of heart!
One day in the early spring of 2018 I traveled to a rural part of southern Indiana to attend to some family matters. (I live in Ohio, but I’m half Hoosier. My dad grew up in nearby Lawrenceburg.)
I spent most of that day in Switzerland County. You’ve probably never been there. Switzerland County, Indiana looks nothing like Switzerland. In early spring, that part of Indiana, along the Ohio River, can look a little bleak.
(Portions of the 1988 Molly Ringwald/Andrew McCarthy movie, Fresh Horses, were filmed in Switzerland County. McCarthy said of the area, “There’s the whole starkness up there; it helped the mood of the movie.” )
Southern, rural Indiana is home to several large casinos. I ordinarily have no interest in gambling venues. I ate lunch at the nearby Belterra Casino that day, though, because…there weren’t many other dining options in the vicinity.
My visit to the casino got me thinking: What if a young couple in debt visited the casino in a make-or-break effort to get ahead financially? What if they were lured there by a special offer? $300 worth of ‘free’ gaming chips?
What if their beginner’s foray into gambling went horribly wrong, and they fell further in the hole? Then suppose that a narcotics kingpin offers them an alternative plan…another way to get ahead.
All they have to do is run an errand for him. What could possibly go wrong?
That’s the premise behind my 2020 casino novel, Venetian Springs. Set in a fictional version of Belterra Casino, Venetian Springs is a story of two down-on-their-luck high school teachers who succumb to the lure of easy money. They soon discover that easy money doesn’t exist. But this is a lesson that may cost them both their lives.
Members of my generation lived to see plenty of changes in the ways popular music is consumed. We were born in the golden age of the vinyl album. As adults, many of us are learning to cope with streaming music services.
Throughout most of the 1980s, the audio cassette tape was the most popular means of buying music and listening to it. When I see nostalgic Facebook posts about physical music media from the 1980s, the cassette tape is most often the subject.
But there was another musical format that was already dying out as the 1980s began, but which was actually quite good, by the standards of the time. I’m talking about the venerable 8-track tape.
The 8-track was a plastic cartridge that had dimensions of 5.25 x 4 x 0.8 inches. Like the audio cassette, the 8-track contained a magnetic tape. But unlike the audio cassette, the 8-track was much less prone to kinking and tangling.
The 8-track was actually 1960s technology. The 8-track took off in the middle of that decade, when auto manufacturers began offering 8-track players as factory-installed options in new vehicles. Throughout the 1970s, 8-track players were popular options on new cars. 8-tracks were further popularized by subscription music services like Columbia House.
Columbia House magazine ad from the late 1970s/early 1980s
I purchased my first home stereo system for my bedroom in 1982, with money I had saved from my grass-cutting job. I bought it at Sears, which was one of the best places to buy mid-level home audio equipment at that time. The stereo included an AM/FM radio, a turntable for vinyl records, a cassette deck, and an 8-track player.
I quickly discovered that I liked the 8-track format the best, because of its relatively compact size and ease of use. That spring I bought 8-track versions of Foreigner 4, Styx’s Paradise Theater, and the Eagles Live album. All of these produced good sound (again, by the standards of that era), and none of them ever jammed or tangled. I was convinced that I had found my musical format.
It has often been my destiny to jump on a trend just as it is nearing its end. Little did I know that my beloved 8-track was already in steep decline.
8-track sales in the USA peaked in 1978, and began falling after that. The culprit was the slightly more compact, but far more error-prone audio cassette. This was the format that all the retailers were suddenly pushing. By the early 1980s, cassette players were also replacing 8-track players in cars.
I would like to say that I yielded to the march of technological progress, but this wouldn’t be truly accurate. The audio cassette, invented in 1963, was slightly older technology than the 8-track.
I did, however, yield to the march of commercial trends, simply because I had no choice. Nineteen-eighty-three was the year that retailers began phasing out 8-tracks in stores. You could still purchase them from subscription services, but they were disappearing from the shelves of mall record stores and general merchandisers like K-Mart. By early 1984, the venerable 8-track had completely vanished.
In recent years, there has been a movement to resurrect the vinyl record. I’ve noticed no similar trend aimed at bringing back the 8-track. At this point, in the early- to mid-2020s, I may be the only person left on the planet who still fondly remembers this bygone musical medium.
As many of you will know, I recently wrapped upThe Cairo Deception, my 5-book World War II series.
One of the final chapters of the book depicts the Beatles performing in Hamburg, West Germany in December 1962. (I won’t go into more story detail than that, so as to avoid spoilers.)
This is actually true. When I discovered this lesser known piece of rock music history, I just couldn’t resist putting it in the book, as an Easter egg for Beatles fans.
The Beatles both resided and performed in Hamburg from August 1960 to December 1962. The Beatles’ Hamburg residence took place shortly before they became a global phenomenon. The band also performed at a music venue in Hamburg called The Star-Club, as described in Postwar: Book 5 of The Cairo Deception.
The Beatles of the Hamburg period involved a slightly different lineup of the band: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Stuart Sutcliffe and Pete Best. After the group returned to England at the end of 1962, Sutcliffe and Best left the band, and Ringo Starr was hired on as the new drummer.
Led Zeppelin formed in 1968, the year I was born, and disbanded in 1980, when I was twelve.
I was therefore too young to become a Led Zeppelin fan while the band was still a going concern. But Led Zeppelin was still enormously popular when I discovered rock music as a teenager in the early to mid-1980s. Lead singer Robert Plant, moreover, was then launching a solo career, and making use of the new medium of MTV.
Most of my musical interests lie in the past. I admittedly lack the patience to sort through the chaotic indie music scene on the Internet, and I shake my head disdainfully at the overhyped mediocrity of Taylor Swift. When I listen to music, I listen to the old stuff: Rush, Def Leppard, Led Zeppelin, and a handful of others.
Led Zeppelin is very close to the top of my list. I listen to Led Zeppelin differently than I did in the old days, though. The lyrics of “Stairway to Heaven” sound less profound to me at 55 than they did when I was 15. I now appreciate Led Zeppelin when they’re doing what they did best: raucous, bluesy rock-n-roll that had only a hint of deeper meaning: “Black Dog”, “Whole Lotta Love”, “Kashmir”, etc.
And of course, reading remains my first passion. I’m still waiting for an in-depth, definitive biography of Canadian rock band Rush. (I suspect that someone, somewhere is working on that, following the 2020 passing of Rush’s chief lyricist and drummer, Neil Peart.) But a well-researched and highly readable biography of Led Zeppelin already exists: Bob Spitz’s Led Zeppelin: The Biography.
At 688 pages and approximately 238,000 words, this is no biography for the casual reader. But if you really want to understand Led Zeppelin, its music, and the band’s cultural impact, you simply can’t beat this volume. I highly recommend it for the serious fan.
Kansas was one of my favorite bands while growing up. But this was always something of a minority viewpoint. Sadly, Kansas is a band that never reached its full potential.
Kansas, like the Canadian rock trio Rush, always had an intellectual, progressive streak. Kansas always wanted to make rock music “something more”.
Here’s an example: the band’s debut, self-titled album contains a song called “Journey from Mariabronn.”
What the heck is Mariabronn, you ask? That’s a reference to German-Swiss author Herman Hesse’s 1930 novel, Narcissus and Goldmund.
Highbrow, yes. But a little too highbrow for popular music. Even in the artistically indulgent 1970s. How many 16-year-olds—either then or now—are conversant in mid-twentieth-century German classic literature?
Leftoverture contains the spiritual rock anthem “Carry On Wayward Son”. This song brought the band mainstream success. This is also the Kansas song that non-devotees are most likely to recognize.
On Point of Know Return you’ll find “Dust in the Wind”, another Kansas song that still gets a fair amount of airplay.
That was about it, as far as commercial success went for Kansas. Although the band soldiered on for years (a version of Kansas continues as a going concern today), the group was fading out by the mid-1980s.
Kansas’s songs are well-thought-out, often to the point of being abstruse. In short, most of the group’s music isn’t immediately accessible to the casual listener. And that’s a fatal flaw in rock music, where the competition is fierce, and audience attention spans are notoriously short.
Kansas was also riven by an internal philosophical dispute. Founding member and chief songwriter Kerry Livegren became a born-again Christian in 1979. He often infused Kansas’s lyrics with quasi-Christian themes. These were seldom preachy or bombastic, but their spiritual import was hard to miss.
The other members of the band weren’t on board with this new direction. Many of Kansas’s albums during the 1980s (Drastic Measures (1983), comes to mind here) contain songs that aren’t really enough of one thing or another. It wasn’t explicitly Christian music, but it wasn’t mainstream rock—or even progressive rock—either.
The last Kansas album I bought was Power (1986). Kerry Livegren had left the band by this time, and the remaining members cobbled together an album that was imitative of the commercial rock music that was popular at that time.
Power contained a few worthwhile songs. But by this time Kansas had simply become too unpredictable as a musical entity—even for fans like myself.
Kansas had a good run in the 1970s, but the band ultimately floundered because its members couldn’t agree on what the band was supposed to represent musically and artistically.
Kansas was never going to be Foreigner or Journey, let alone a Led Zeppelin. All the group’s movements in those mainstream directions were awkward stumbles.
Christian rock was a thing in the 1980s and beyond. (The Christian rock group Stryper, founded in 1983, still has a fan base.) But Kansas never fully cultivated that market, because at least half of the band’s members were uncomfortable with the “Christian rock” label.
So Kansas was ultimately a lot of half-hearted missteps in many competing directions. But not enough of any one thing.
What’s the lesson here? Creator, know thyself. That advice applies not only to rock bands, but to anyone trying to stand out in a marketplace filled with “me-too” offerings.
The other day, a reader asked me what I thought of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2005).
Yes, I read the book; and I saw the 2011 movie starring Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara.
Despite the name, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is mostly the story of a polyamorous middle-age journalist, Mikael Blomkvist, who tracks down Nazis with the occasional help of Lisbeth Salander, the eponymous young lady with the dragon tattoo.
Blomkvist is a stand-in for the novel’s author. Stieg Larsson (1954-2004) was a left-of-center Swedish journalist. Larsson flirted with the radical leftist movements of the 1960s at a very young age. He declared himself a Marxist at the age of 14.
To his credit, Larsson later disavowed outright Marxism. He longed, though, to wage a righteous battle against European Nazism. Never mind that most authentic European Nazis were in nursing homes and graveyards by the time he reached full adulthood.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo suggests a preoccupation with rightwing conspiracies. Not that there’s much of a risk in Larsson’s native land. Sweden, on the contrary, is one of the most “woke” countries on earth. The Swedes pioneered the use of the self-consciously “gender neutral” pronoun half a decade before such absurdities reached the English-speaking world.
There are also the cartoonish, over-the-top depictions of misogyny in the book and the movie. The original title of the novel was, Män som hatar kvinnor (“Men Who Hate Women”).
Was Larsson kidding? No, he wasn’t. Even in Sweden, though, there was enough common sense in commercial publishing to avoid saddling a book with an ideological title like that.
If you read the book and/or watched the movie, you’ll find that The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is fantasy fulfillment for its author. Mikael Blomkvist saves Lisbeth Sanders from the bad guys. He doesn’t really want to sleep with his much younger heroine. (According to the book, Blomkvist has always preferred middle-age women to “young girls” in their twenties.) But the twenty-something Salander comes on to him. So how can he say no?
Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, even though I saw it for what it was: fantasy fulfillment for a politically left-leaning journalist who had entered midlife crisis territory.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo isnot a bad novel, despite it’s flaws. By all means read and enjoy it. Just don’t take it literally; and realize that the book’s author, Stieg Larsson, had multiple axes to grind when he sat down at the keyboard.
Twenty-two years have passed now, since the concerted terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
As I’ve remarked in recent years on this date, I’m acutely aware that for the younger generation of adults, 9/11 is not memory, but history.
My grandparents and Pearl Harbor
While the date retains its significance for those of us who are old enough to remember it, I’m realistic about such matters. And hey, I was young once, too.
My grandparents often spoke of Pearl Harbor as if December 7, 1941 were yesterday. For me, though, Pearl Harbor was a historical event that took place 27 years before I was born. It simply didn’t carry the same weight for me.
It’s therefore okay if you’re in the under-thirty crowd, and find that talk of 9/11 doesn’t pack the same emotional wallop for you that it does for many older adults. I’m not here to lecture you on that.
The past makes the present
You should, however, learn about 9/11, just as I learned about Pearl Harbor and World War II. I learned about Pearl Harbor and World War II not because those events were immediately relevant to me, but because understanding those events helped me to better understand the world in which I was growing up, in the 1970s and 1980s. World War II, after all, shaped the “postwar” world. Hence the name.
And the same applies to you, coming of age in the post-9/11 world. You need to know about 9/11 not just for commemoration and respect, but also for understanding the somewhat messed-up country in which you are coming of age.
(And just for the record: I don’t envy you on that one.)
9/11 and the beginning of the culture wars
9/11 began a chain reaction that transformed the United States from a relatively optimistic and united country in the 1980s and 1990s, to a far more cynical, distrustful place riven by partisan divisions.
Here’s a very short explanation: In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Americans were initially united. Our nation had just been attacked, after all, and the 9/11 terrorists attacked all of us. The September 11th bombers didn’t care if you were a Democrat or a Republican. If you were an American (or, indeed, anyone who didn’t subscribe to their particular interpretation of Islam), they were willing to take your life in order to make a point.
After the attacks, though, we couldn’t agree on what should be done in response.
Should the US return to its mostly Western, mostly Christian roots, in a defensive posture? Or should it more assertively embrace multiculturalism and diversity?
Should we ban the Quran? Or teach it in schools (so that Americans will better understand Islam)?
Should we withdraw from the Middle East? Or remove bellicose dictators from countries like Iraq by force?
Questions like this are at the heart of what we now call the “culture wars”. Although we don’t argue very much about Islam nowadays, we are preoccupied with a similar raft of questions. For example:
Should we focus on what unites us as Americans? Or should we dwell on racial injustices of the past?
Should we accept the “heteronormativity” of human societies within a context of tolerance for all? Or should we take extraordinary steps to promote alternative interpretations of sexuality and gender?
Believe it or not, such questions were less prominent in 1993 or 1983. While these matters may have occupied the occasional university classroom debate, the vast majority of Americans would have looked at you cross-eyed if you’d posed such questions.
9/11 focused a quarter of the population on both real and imagined grievances (the “woke”), and a quarter of the population on both real and imagined external threats (the MAGA crowd).
The rest of us remained in the middle. But guess what? 9/11 also turned the term “centrist”—once something that most people aspired to be—into a pejorative. And now we have a culture in which almost anything can become a source of controversy or outrage. No one is listening to the centrists anymore.
9/11 weaved suspicion and fear into the fabric of daily life. I remember taking commercial flights in the 1990s with nothing more than a boarding pass and a quick show of my passport. No one was going to body-search you before you boarded a plane.
Until 9/11, that was.
America was not an “innocent” country before 9/11/2001. (Our innocence had ended in the 1960s.) But it was a country that was much more at ease with itself, and with its fellow citizens.
Everything changed on 9/11/2001, and mostly not for the better. That’s why you need to learn about 9/11, even if you are too young to actually remember it.
