BLOW ME A SONG!

Every time I take out my harmonica, my girlfriend, Magpie, shrinks away in utter revulsion.She never passes up the opportunity to remind me that I stink as a musician.OK, I stink.Never mind that I was trained by Robert Sherwin, a great New York studio musician, whose estimation of my musical ability was rather more flattering than hers, or that I have had my share of petty triumphs before live audiences.

Nevertheless, I can appreciate good musicianship when I hear it, and the miracle of recorded music technology that has evolved over the last century has enabled me to feast on a cornucopia of sonority that kings and queens never had.

People might well ask, why waste your attentions on a five dollar piece of junk like the harmonica when you can listen to the Moscow Symphony Orchestra play Swan Lake, or a magnificent pop group like The Gypsy Kings?Because sometimes the greatest pleasures come from the simplest things.I get off more blowing a five dollar harmonica than any dork with a $500 iPhone.The immortal blues composer and musician Robert Johnson developed his slide guitar technique by pounding nails into the wall of his sharecropper cabin and stringing wires between them, which he then twanged away at.

Any reflective person understands that things are never as deceptively simple as they might seem.Art consists of the triumph of technique over content, as Flaubert and Proust demonstrated when they created great literary masterpieces writing about essentially nothing, or when Picasso filled a whole museum with works of art he had nailed together from pieces of junk he scrounged from the scrap yard.

The harmonica looks deceptively simple but it is actually one of the hardest instruments to master.Unlike the saxophone or trumpet, notes are created by the rush of air in both directions.Bending notes, creating chords by blocking out the middle holes with the tongue while giving play only to the holes at either end of the scale, creating an echo chamber in the mouth to make a larger sound, these are some to the tricks of the trade which are only learned by dedicated application.

Whosoever scorns the harmonica does so out of ignorance and stupidity.It is an orchestra that fits in your pocket.Attach it to an electric pickup and it creates a thundering sound that stimulates a vivid range of emotions every bit as cataclysmic as a symphonic assault by Wagner or Grieg.

World culture is full of great harmonica masters, each of whom developed his individual technique for conveying a message of towering power.Most people are familiar with the American greats like James Cotton, or Stanley Clarke, who transformed their feelings of desperation and longing into triumphant messages of survival and resurgence.

One such artist was Larry Adler of Baltimore, who got his start in the burlesque houses during the early part of the twentieth century.But as Adler’s art developed he came to realize that he could jam more into a harmonica than just the popular tunes of the day, and he reached for classical and symphonic music, eventually arriving at Carnegie Hall and Royal Albert Hall in London.After hearing Larry Adler’s performance of “Rhapsody in Blue,” the composer of the symphony, George Gershwin told Adler that his was the greatest performance of the piece that Gershwin had ever heard.The Queen of England, flush with meeting Adler backstage at Royal Albert Hall after a command performance, joked to an acquaintance, “He let me hold his organ!”

So why was this historic musician forced to end his days as an exile, living in London?Because once he removed the harmonica from his mouth, he would speak his mind about the issues of the day, notably left-wing politics.In this he was joined by innumerable other artists, writers and film directors who were forced into exile by a venomous domestic political climate orchestrated by ambitious heartland Republicans eager to make a name for themselves by destroying the lives of artists in the course of congressional witch hunts.Of course, if you ran afoul of these pricks by not supplicating and betraying your friends you could stay in the states and have your reputation and livelihood destroyed, or serve time in federal prison for contempt of congress or if they caught you in a lie.

But the smart people just left for Europe and never came back.Names like Charlie Chaplin, Stanley Kubrick, Larry Adler…

But there’s another Larry, who blows a different kind of mouth organ, Larry Craig.Only this Larry doesn’t play beautiful music, he blows a symphony of right-wing repression and adherence to the same kind of cornpone totalitarianism that drove another generation into exile.Because Larry Craig was playing a double game of repressing homosexuals during the day and blowing guys at night, the same as former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover used to harass gay guys and then wear party dresses.

Some idealistic people believe that Larry Craig should get let off the hook out of a spirit of generosity and idealism.To them I say: what if the situation had been reversed and instead of the world sitting in judgment of Larry Craig, Larry Craig sat in judgment of the world?Do you think he would let you off the hook, or would he ruin your life and send your ass off to jail in time for him to get down to the airport men’s room to play a saliva symphony on the skin flute?

This might sound brutal, but as the eminent political theorist Mr. Dooley once observed, “Politics ain’t beanbag,” and with all the loot at stake in this country, the Republicans aren’t averse to knocking a few heads together.

So don’t cry for Larry Craig.What’s being done to him, he would gladly do to you.The guy’s a swine.And remember; if you happen to be in the airport men’s room don’t pick up the soap.



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Posted on 9/10/2007 ( Permanent Link )
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