I post a weekly diary of historical notes, arts & science items, foreign news (often receiving little notice in the US) and whimsical pieces from the outside world that I often feature in "Cheers & Jeers".
OK, you've been warned - here is this week's tomfoolery material that I posted.
CHEERS to Bill and Michael in PWM, our Laramie, Wyoming-based friend Irish Patti and ...... well, each of you at Cheers and Jeers. Have a fabulous weekend .... and week ahead.
ART NOTES— an exhibition entitled Art and Race Matters: The Career of Robert Colescott is at the Portland, Oregon Museum of Art through December 13th.
HAIL and FAREWELL to the geographer Marvin Creamer— the first documented person to sail around the world without a compass, sextant, clock, radio or even a wristwatch (only by observing the wind, waves and the sun by day, and the moon and stars by night) — who has died at the age of one hundred and four.
YOUR WEEKEND READ #1 is this comprehensive essay from New York magazine’s Olivia Nuzzi, on the Trump ground game (such as it is) — with a passage about trying to go to Trump campaign volunteer trainings/events in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania advertised by the campaign, only to find … that they did not exist.
THURSDAY's CHILD is named Fluffy the Hero Cat— a Michigan kitteh who was able to rescue an eighty-four year old man who had fallen …. by fetching his mobile phone after he (in desperation) called to him, “Ring-a-ding, Fluffy”.
YOUR WEEKEND READ #2 is this Politico interview with former GOP strategist Stuart Stevens (about his It Was all a Lie book) where he goes so far in assigning blame for those who helped create the present-day GOP ….. yet just so far.
FRIDAY's CHILD is named Vitani the Cat— yes, from the Lion King series — an Ohio kitten who was just what an eighteen year-old man with Asperger’s Syndrome needed: after his sixteen year-old cat Tabby had died (whom he had considered “his daughter”).
YOUR WEEKEND READ #3 is this short excerpt in Vanity Fair from Brian Stelter’s upcoming book about Fox (that Rachel profiled on Friday night) — how Sean Hannity privately callsyou-know-who crazy in private — yet has access to the POTUS (with Sean often unable to get in a word during his rants) that historically: most reporters would have been glad for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to have.
BRAIN TEASER— try this Quiz of the Week's News from the BBC ...… and the usually easier (less UK-centered) New York Times quiz.
FATHER-SON?— the late English film star Alan Rickman (in the Harry Potter role of Professor Severus Snape) and the Canadian film star Keanu Reeves.
...... and finally, for a song of the week ...........................… a few weeks ago, I had on TV in the background one of the Music Choice cable channels: this time, for the jazz one (I also use the blues or other categories). An interesting tune came on: and when I looked at the screen to see who it was, it said “Robby Krieger”. The Doors guitarist, perhaps?
And a search revealed that …. indeed it was, although his first CD release in ten years (from which that tune came from) was being delayed until mid-August (and just now released). As someone who thought the three instrumentalists of The Doors had a great interplay (and were not simply Jim Morrison’s back-up band) it is good to know that there is one active musician among the surviving two members (with drummer John Densmore semi-retired due to health issues). Robby Krieger duly deserves a career retrospective.
Born in Los Angeles in 1946, he was described in a Jim Morrison bio as having “vague green eyes”…. giving him a somewhat dazed look, attributed to either drugs (or ill-fitting contact lenses). Yet there was a quick mind: who after learning the guitar in his teens bought a flamenco guitar …. travelling to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico to obtain it and studying flamenco music (to play a key role a few years later). He briefly joined a jug band in high school (the Back Bay Chamber Pot Terriers) before he began school at UC Santa Barbara (where he discovered jazz) and then transferred to UCLA, where he was in a meditation class with both Ray Manzarek and John Densmore. Their band was losing members and the nineteen year-old Krieger was enlisted as the final member of The Doors.
After the band had (briefly) been signed (then later dropped, without a session) by Columbia: they were wary of where they might go next … then when Jac Holzman of Elektra sought them out, Robby was favorably impressed: as that label had a flamenco music roster, several albums of which he had learned from.
Suffice it to say, he spent several memorable years in The Doors …. and the first song he ever wrote(!) was the international best-seller Light My Fire— in this 1998 Fresh Air show at the time he released his memoirs, Ray Manzarek describes how the song was assembled in the studio (at the 12:45 mark of this interview) with Robby’s flamenco chords as the main theme..
Krieger had one more Latin-flavored song (Spanish Caravan) during the band’s heyday, and also wrote the music to several other Doors tunes: such as Love Me Two Times, You’re Lost Little Girl, Wintertime Love, Tell all the People, Touch Me, Runnin’ Blue as well as my other favorite of his: Wishful Sinful. One additional song was Love Her Madly— an ode to his wife Lynn, whom he married in 1972 and it chronicled how they survived some stormy years. Ray Manzarek wrote in his memoirs that he and Robby were lucky: their marriages survived over the years, while drummer John Densmore suffered some protracted (and expensive) divorces.
After the death of Jim Morrison, the remaining members carried on for two albums before calling it a day in 1973. Ever since, Robby has been both a guest musician for other bands (everyone from Blue Öyster Cult to Eric Burdon to Government Mule to X … to even Alice in Chains) and toured with Ray Manzarek earlier this century (before Ray’s 2013 death) to play anew some Doors songs.
He has also had a solo career: with albums such as Robby Krieger & Friends (in 1977), 1983’s Versions (with Manzarek and Densmore joining on The Crystal Ship), 1989’s No Habla, then Cinematix from 2000 and from ten years ago, Singularity.
For most of his solo albums: he has utilized as his producer the former Frank Zappa bassist Arthur Barrow— and he recruited several Zappa alumni for the new release The Ritual Begins at Sundown, even recording Zappa’s Chunga’s Revenge as well as Hot Head— with a sound based not only upon Zappa yet also (as with previous recordings) echoes of Steely Dan, Boz Scaggs and Jeff Beck (during his Blow by Blow era).
At age seventy-four, Robby Krieger does not have a tour currently scheduled, yet it is likely in time that he will. Back in 2011, Rolling Stone ranked him as #76 in its 100 Greatest Guitarists listing.
His album has a re-make of a contemplative song he wrote for the Doors’ 1968 album “Waiting for the Sun”— the original of which (Yes, the River Knows) you can hear at this link— and below, as an instrumental … in a more up-tempo version.