Peter Ames Carlin

 BUT HOPE LIVES ON, if only because by the '90s Wilson's life seemed to become less awful. Years of terrible consumption, followed by nearly a decade of abuse at the hands of a live-in psychologist who bullied Wilson with bodyguards and a dizzying array of psychotropic drugs, had given way to something closer to stability.

Certainly there had been irreversible tragedy along the way. Wilson's brother Dennis, the only Beach Boy who really surfed, had fallen into a consumptive alcoholism that led to his drowning death in 1983. Baby brother Carl, the band's onstage leader for more than 30 years, died of cancer in 1998. (Touch that 'Read More' button down below, eh?)

You discover 'Smile' in 1976, in the middle of a Rolling Stone profile pegged to a Beach Boys revival that includes the first of Wilson's many comebacks. He is 34 then, and yet still adolescent in his shyness, his deceptive wit, the contrasting currents of brilliance and self-doubt. . . . . .follow the jump to read more, friends and neighbors....

 LET'S SAY YOUR LIFE IS A MESS.

Or maybe not a mess, exactly, but not quite what you imagined. You're 22 years old and living at home, with a stupid job, no prospects for anything better and, it all but goes without saying, no girlfriend.

It is the winter of 1985. The world around you doesn't look very encouraging either, tangled as it is in economic recession, Cold War saber-rattling and a popular culture that is defined increasingly by the Twin Dons of the Apocalypse, Henley and Johnson.

This is when some people turn to religion. Others study philosophy or punt everything and apply for law school. You, on the other hand, decide to go to a record store.
(follow the jump, yo)

MOTOYA NAKAMURA - Oregonian staffCunningham opens the door to his studio. But will he let his paintings out into the world?

In Jay Cunningham's paintings, the things that don't fit matter the most. 

It's the shiny gold key in the hand of the monkey who smiles cryptically as he unlocks a wooden door. It's the golden crown on the table next to the man watching his toddler play with a toy dinosaur. 

And it's the detached expression of the young man peering away from the mother bird feeding her two babies in a vine-tangled tree. 

That's the picture that gets to Jay Cunningham's mother, Sharon Vanderzanden, since she knows that the young man in the foreground is her son. The birds represent her family back when her two boys were navigating what Jay calls "the crucible" of their childhood. 

Crucibles can do the darndest things. When he was young, the Milwaukie-reared Cunningham retreated into his room, where he projected himself into the wide-open world of crayons and paper. Brushes, canvas and pigment came later, then art school. Then a shockingly fast rise to the upper ranks of Portland's most prevalent artists. 

By 1993, the average price of the 26-year-old painter's work had climbed more than 800 percent beyond what Cunningham's gallery charged at his first show in 1990. Then came the private commissions and repeated pleas from a prominent gallery just itching to help Cunningham break into Seattle's larger, more lucrative market. 

"He seemed to be going so good," recalls J.D. Perkin, a Portland sculptor and longtime friend. "I had no idea why he backed off." 

And yet, that's exactly what happened. After an exhibit in 1996, Cunningham's work slowed to a trickle. He managed another gallery show in 1999, but that was it. No matter the acclaim, the successful exhibitions and endless opportunities ahead, Cunningham closed his studio door and abandoned his art career. 

Life went on. He worked a job. He bought a house and got married. So many responsibilities, so many things to do. Art, he insists, remains his highest priority. But where is it? 

"I've had to make my peace with it," Cunningham says. "But I can't -- or won't -- compromise with art. And not doing it at all is a better alternative than doing it wrong." 

Still, at age 43, Cunningham is determined to make 2011 the year of his return. 

He's working on an illustrated book. He is a finalist in an upcoming art-themed TV series. He even has some paintings nearly ready to show. 

But the key word is "nearly." Because Cunningham needs every blade of grass to be just so. Every button and flyaway hair must have a specific look and meaning. 

"It's an impossible standard," he says. 

Once again, something in this picture doesn't fit. And until Cunningham resolves that disconnect, his renewed career, and his life, hang in the balance. 

hit the Read More if you do, in fact, want to read more...

 

This is how he comes out on stage. A disembodied voice (stage manager Al Santos) recites a short, but unbelievably odd interpretation of the artist's 50-year career, which goes pretty much exactly like this:

“The poet laureate of rock 'n' roll. The voice of the promise of the '60s counterculture. The guy who forced folk into bed with rock, who donned makeup in the '70s and disappeared into a haze of substance abuse, who emerged to 'find Jesus,' who was written off as a has-been by the end of the '80s, and who suddenly shifted gears and released some of the strongest music of his career beginning in the late '90s. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Columbia recording artist Bob Dylan."

The words of a rock critic from Buffalo, constructing a career epitaph that is equal parts hyperbole, cliche, rumor, truth and stone cold absurdity. It appeared originally in 2002. Along with the "Columbia recording artist" part (a contractual obligation going back to his first contract with Columbia back in 1961) it's arguably the most bizarre, confusing intro-of-an-icon ever. And seeing as this is Bob Dylan we're talking about, it is also utterly perfect.

Ultimately Dylan is whatever you imagine him to be. Genius, charlatan, lunatic, poetic, thief, rocker, loser. Believe whatever you want, but realize this for damn sure: He is a recording artist. Maybe that's everything you need to know. So close your moth and listen.

He and the band emerge dressed like a showbiz cowboy bandfrom 1951, Dylan differentiated by what appears to be a 10-gallon hat, glimmering white in the stage lights. The band kicks into a rolling blues riff, guitars blazing, and when Dylan (standing hunched behind a keyboard) bark-croaks the opening line it only takes a moment to realize, ah yes, "Leopard-Skin Pillbox Hat." 

His voice. He prefers that dirt-deep growl these days, a testament to the burden he's carried (think it's easy to conduct that much electricity through your nervous system?) and the wisdom of the years. When he's not sing-croaking, Dylan leans into the keys and locks his eyes on lead guitarist Charlie Sexton, who kneels during his solos, either to emphasize the Atlas-like burden he's taken on (playing beneath thte gaze of Dylan) or simply prostrating himself before the boss whose dense, swooping organ lines wrap, tangle, support and sometimes subverts the shimmery melodies he's hurling into the air.

Dylan switches to 2nd lead guitar for "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," riffing with and sometimes against Sexton's lines, then comes "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" and a crystalline "Just Like A Woman" (god, Sexton's guitar chimes and rings like Easter Sunday) and the song is all aching beauty, from the rich guitars to Dylan's churchly organ riffs and his wisdom-of-the-ages recitation of the lyrics, whose undercurrent of contempt collapses beneath a new generosity - underscored by the singalong he conducts on the choruses (and beaming happily each time the audience belts the title in perfect, even harmonized unison).

He played 14 songs. Warhorses, by and large (save for "Workingman's Blues #2," a Dolly Parton cover and one or so other less-familiar tunes) except for the fact that what he plays has virtually nothing to do with the songs you think you know. The central riff is now off-kilter. The rhythm has been swiveled on its axis, the melody bears no resemblance. The magic moment came halfway through with "Tangled Up in Blue."  But this was the moment when it all came together. Dylan standing at center-stage, harmonica in one hand, the lyrics torn from somewhere in the most desolate corner of his soul.

But mostly it was Dylan and his keyboard, Dylan and his guitar, Dylan rolling and thrusting his shoulders to emphasize the push-and-pull of his harmonica lines. The secret, as ever, is to forget about what you think you came to hear. Poet laureate, blah-blah-blah. Listen to the guy play. Listen to his thick, evocative organ lines. Listen to his guitar leads. He's playing that whole band, too - pushing and goading them to wherever the fuck his imagination wanders. That's what you're after. That moment of creation. The lightning explodes from the skies and the aged man lights up again, eyes on fire just like they were in '63, '64, '65, '66. He's a natural wonder. Experience him while you can.

Not new, but I only just found it on the 'net. It's the dual finger-point that makes it for me.

 
In the worldview of the Eagles, the scope of femininity divides into roughly two categories: The women who give the Eagles cocaine and the women who will give anything - anything - to snort the Eagles' cocaine. The former are demons (with the moon in their eyes; their lyin' eyes, their terminal prettiness, their Tiffany twistedness, et. al) the latter just sort of sad and pathetic (they should be home but they're not; they wonder how it ever got so crazy, they're afraid it's all just wasted time, their need to either own or stone the Eagles, with the single exception who is just a friend).

Which would feel a lot more like the warm smell of misogyny rising up through the air were it not for the contempt the Eagles have for other men, what with their brutal handsomeness, their thirst for the blood of certain heroic gunfighter/guitarists; their inaibility to buy the love of the lyin' eyes woman, their mass production of ugly little homes in the once-sylvan hills surounding the Eagles' luxe aeries, and on and on).

The Eagles, in short, are handsome, harmonizing, lushly melodic buzz-kills. Suntanned fingers wagging in your face; golden heads shaking; aryan chins turned up as they stalk off to the bathroom to blow their noses.Or nose their blow. Or something.

Odious. Except for the fact that a lot of those bitter, pissy songs also turn out to be so well-constructed, and so well-performed (in the recordings anyway) that it requires vast stores of intellectual discinpline to dislike them. And when it comes to  "Hotel California," the 1976 apotheosis of their creative careers, I can only say one thing: It's a great record. Each song a gem in its own particular way, the playing and singing all but flawless, one of those concept albums whose central idea (upscale SoCal showbiz society turns out to be one fucking decadent place) flows from its individual parts, and not the other way round (as per, say, "Desperado")

Just a smidge of context: "HC" featured three out of four founding Eagles from their earliest country-rock days, (Henley, Frey and bassist Randy Meisner. Guitarist/pedal steelist, mandoliner, etc., Bernie Leadon had already departed), lead guitarist Don Felder (in place since "On the Border" in 1974) and the unlikely, yet catalytic debut of the already-famous midwest rocker Joe Walsh as uber-lead guitarist. As musical mergers go, adding the slide guitar-wielding goofball among the sleek SoCal hipster cowboys was not just successful but actually catalytic. More than just a truly distinctive guitar player, Walsh (with his hangdog face and joker's timing) also added an element of soulfulness into the band. A parodist rather than a scold; a wiseass with a heart of gold. And on "Hotel California" all of that served as a kind of tonic, taking the edge off of the Henley/Frey nastiness, while also goading them to rock a little harder maybe even reveal a little of themselves in the process.

Whatever, it worked magnificently. "Hotel California" was a smash, and a pleasure to listen to, more or less nonstop, on the radio for months, years, decades.

"Hotel California": Cinematic in scope; epic in length; the "Citizen Kane" of decadence songs, "HC" kicks off the album with a puzzling, even maddening puzzle. What the hell is colitas? The image jumps out from the lyric's third line ("warm smell of colitas rising up through the air..."), clearly a central part of the narrator's experience of the elegant, awful world he (and we) are about to experience. So you wonder: Are we really talking about the same wild species of buckwheat known variously as James' buckwheat and Antelope Sage? Not quite. "During the writing of the song 'Hotel California' by Messrs, Henley, and Frey, the word `colitas' was translated for them by their Mexican-American road manager as 'little buds'," Eagles manager Irving Azoff wrote to whomever composed the Wikipedia entry for 'colitas.' "You have obviously already done the necessary extrapolation. Thank you for your inquiry."

To collect crayons is to draw a new sense of history.

The history of art, and the history of corporations. The history of pop culture and the history of history itself, which turns out to be far more fluid and up for grabs than you might think.

Ask Ed Welter about any of this. And while you're at it you can ask the Beaverton-based IT consultant and terrier-like collector of 2,400 (give or take) crayon containers about the relationship between collecting and a need for organization in a profoundly disorganized world.

"I suppose there's an element of control in there, too," Welter says, standing in front of a set of floor-to-ceiling shelves whose arrangement of crayon boxes, some dating back to the late 19th century, is what you might call orderly.

"My first wife thought I was obsessed," he says. His current wife finds it less unsettling. "She's into it, though she's not really a collector."

You either collect or you don't. And Welter, obviously, collects.

The rest of the story, with a ton of cool photographs by Oregonian photographer Michael Lloyd, is here.

I got to thinking about that Barefoot Bandit fellow, and the up-and-coming Beastie Boy kid, and the good ol' DB Cooper bandit, who may be alive and well and reading this right now. Or possibly not. Either way, I've got fresh new journalistic endeavors about all of the above and so, check it out. It's just like beer at the Delta house rush parties: Don't cost nothin'.

And when that was over I went downtown on Saturday to check out the 2nd annual Big Busk festival of movable performance artists. You can find that one, and along with references to pork pie hats and wicked cool Depression-era guitars, in this here story about the Big Busk.

Credit Ross W Hamilton for this cool shot of the Gone Fishin' group. Credit Mr. Randall for that awesome porkpie hat.