Is Your Dream Better Than Mine?
Now Playing: Ronnie Lane--"The Poacher"
So then, blogging. Hm.

In the midst of an awful work week (my boss is on crack) it helps to remember the good things--fronds, friends, hanging out with the latter at Cafe Felix over a couple of beers and flagrantly ogling the more attractive passersby, and the arts ain't bad either.

La Traviata: I went to see Carmen at the Baton Rouge Opera when I was a kid--yes, there is such a thing (not that I remembered much, the lot of us busily discussing the previous night's episode of V--remember V?--through most of Bizet's masterpiece*)--and that had been my sole exposure to live opera for many years, until I got interested in the form a year or two ago. Missing local productions of Mozart's Cosi fan tutte and Smetana's The Bartered Bride, I resolved not to miss Giuseppe Verdi's perenially popular prophecy of emo. Think about it--the heroine's wasting away from pastiness and has to deal with lecherous, possessive "heroes." Ostentatiously coughing (I was put in mind way too many times of Paulie in The Godfather), she eventually succumbs preciously and artistically. Tosca's much more my style of heroine, but I did enjoy the show, and the supertitles broadcast above the stage were just about as distracting as subtitles in a movie (which is to say, not very). After listening to so many operas on CD, it was a revelation to see one on stage, when you get to see the set design and action as well (this being the Arbor Opera, the former was pretty minimal, but it wasn't exactly the Met or La Scala). Entertainingly enough, during the finale of the second act, the supertitles sped up to a breakneck degree, getting to the end of the opera in about a minute. They'd fixed it by the third act, but it was fun to see it "raw" for a few minutes. Unfortunately, it looks like they'll be showing La Boheme in the fall, so I guess this is the year to plug the consumptives. Still, it was a great evening out, and once I left the Mendelssohn Theatre, I even got to catch the last fifteen minutes or so of Nomo's set at Top of the Park. Thoroughly satisfying.

Ronnie Lane (1946-97): Legendary bassist, songwriter, and artistic inspiration, the cofounder of both the Small Faces and the Faces carried out his own beguiling projects in the 1970s before succumbing to the ravages of multiple sclerosis and dying of pneumonia in the late 90s. For the longest time I only knew the Small Faces as the British Invasion band responsible for the 1967 hit "Itchycoo Park." After running across a few other references, I got their CD compilation Darlings of Wapping Wharf Laundrette on a whim and found that "Itchycoo Park" came near to being the least of their achievements. These included a long string of near-perfect pop singles and an early concept album, Ogden's Nut Gone Flake (1968). Lead singer Steve Marriott eventually left to form Humble Pie with Peter Frampton, leaving Lane and bandmates Kenney Jones and Ian McLagan in the lurch until joined by Ron Wood and Rod Stewart to form the Faces. The Faces are probably famous these days more than anything for "Stay With Me," the Rushmore soundtrack mainstay "Ooh La La," and helping to propel Stewart to solo stardom, but were a magnificent group in their own right, with superb songs like "Three Button Hand Me Down," "Sweet Lady Mary," Lane's wonderful "Debris," the elegiac "Glad and Sorry," and the propulsive "Borstal Boys." Lane eventually left after the destabilizing effect Stewart's growing celebrity had on the group (eventually to lead to its dissolution in 1975). What happened next was the primary subject of The Passing Show: The Life and Music of Ronnie Lane (2006), a fascinating documentary made for BBC 4 in the UK. Featuring interviews with band members, friends and relatives, as well as luminaries like Pete Townshend and Eric Clapton, it looks at Lane's remarkable 70s band the Slim Chance, who toured around England as a modern-day gypsy caravan (and had as much financial success) in a back-to-earth style that reflected Lane's disillusionment with the rockstar way of life. Personal and financial pressures led to the band's evaporation by 1980, but not before leaving behind some wonderful music, much of it collected in the compilation Just For A Moment, highlights being "How Come," "32nd Street," "One For The Road," "Kuschty Rye," and the eponymous track. Lane's dogged (and occasionally harmful) determination to stick to his guns can inspire you no matter what art form you follow.

*Not that it was exactly unprofitable--I caught it again a few years ago when I first moved to Ann Arbor. We had a pretty exhaustive cable package and got the Action Network, which was showing the entire original miniseries. What looked to me in third grade like a cool alien-invasion epic with flying Winnebagos and evil lizard infiltrators turned out to be a surprisingly thought-provoking and daring (for Reagan-era America) class-based satire on fascism and conformity (They Live would make some of the same points, only much less subtly and with Rowdy Roddy "I have come to kick ass and chew bubblegum--and I'm all out of bubblegum" Piper). So we weren't really stinting on the cultural front even if we didn't actually pay much attention to Carmen.