Profiling: John Jacob Niles

It is now, when certain elements of the near-past are being continually strip-mined for inspiration, when our greatest fear is the wave of unnecessary nostalgia for the early 1990s that is in it's beginning stages (see the most atrocious example of it thus far, "The Wackness" ), that we salute John Jacob Niles.


Niles was an American folk singer and songwriter active in the first decades of the 20th century, known as "The Dean of American Balladeers", and a student and compiler of traditional Appalachian folk music . Hearing him for the first time one's mind immediately begins working backwards, scanning it's music memory, straining to recall latter day folk musicians whom he is reminiscent of (Antony of Antony and the Johnsons, for one, though he was not familiar with Niles until recently). Then you must catch yourself and remember that none of the others would exist if not for Niles. Bob Dylan admits as much, as does Joan Baez, as should any other folk musician worth anything at all. In fact, we're willing to propose that all folk musicians of every stripe active from the 1950s on ought to be calling him Papa. Papa with the best falsetto we've ever heard.



Read more On "Profiling: John Jacob Niles"!

In the Court of Plasic Crimewave

Steve Krakow AKA Plastic Crimewave. Mr. Krakow is leader of the band Plastic Crimewave Sound, the man behind the communal happening known as the Guitarkestra, and also is an illustrator whose work regularly appears in such distinguished underground publications as Arthur and Stop Smiling. As well as a continuous strip in the Chicago Reader that chronicles the history of forgotten Chicago rock n' roll, and if that is not enough, his own homage to all things cosmic culture Galactic Zoo Dossier. An almost entirely hand drawn affair that Krakow tells me takes about a year to produce.
He is a native to the city that for 8 months out of the year, seems to be colored perpetually gray, and in such a place Krakow has painted his own universe based on a love for comic books, nick-knacks and psychedelic rock. One second in the apartment he has occupied for over a decade proves that point. The walls are adorned with show posters of 60's garage bands, shelves and shelves of vinyl, toys from the 60's and 70's that come in every color of the rainbow, and a row of records that Krakow tells me is part of the "silver wall." It includes album covers of Silver Apples, Hawkwind, Blue Cheer, and various others. It's in the room referred to as the "fun room." As I wandered through the apartment, I kept asking myself which room ISN'T a fun room in this place?

For some the more suburban existence can usually equal an acceptance of the mundane side of life. From Krakow's point of view, those years indeed helped shape the artist that he is today. His formative years were spent growing up in Hoffman Estates, an area now populated with several mall's and various chain's spread all across the landscape. The entire time, I had believed the formative years of my subject would have looked something like the film Over the Edge. All suburban teenage angst, getting high and listening to Rush. I tell this to Krakow, and he replies "hardly." Thinking for a second, he continues "when we moved out to the suburbs in the 70's it was more rural. It was space, more room to run around. I have this theory of Midwestern openness that you're landlocked, and it's flat so your mind has to reach out to different thing. Like all the kid's I knew loved prog rock, and Tolkien, all this fantasy, because I think where you are is so not fantastic that you have all this time to think about it, so you go to different places with it."
Maybe in those open spaces the seed was planted for some of Krakow's more out there ideas, such as the Guitarkestra. An idea that Steve had played with since the 90's to get as many guitar players together to strum the E Chord in all together, in unison. Chicago journalist, Miles Raymer who participated in the event said "it had crossed the line from an auditory phenomenon into something almost purely bodily. It was the loudest thing I've ever experienced."
That might be the sort of thing that it's creator wants to get out of the happening. But when does it become excessive?
"Oh its ALL about excessive." I'm told by my host.
Maybe it's the sort of excess the world needs? In an e-mail sent out to potential recruits (anybody) Krakow summed up his idea by stating that he wanted to "send vibrations and ripples into the multiverse for positive change."
If positive change through loud noise is the Plastic Crimewave philosophy, his band Plastic Crimewave Sound have been spreading the gospel for about 7 years now. They are children of all of the great names of loud and trippy rockers that came before them. The Velvets at their worst/best, and the sound Hawkwind's Silver Machine makes as it is Sex Bombed to the ground by Flipper. These are just a few examples that can describe Plastic Crimewave Sound. With the name of the band pointing out the obvious, the group centers around Krakow.
"People think that that I like psych-rock that we are going to sound like Donavan or something, then they hear us and they're like "woah, this sounds more like Motorhead!" We think EXACTLY!"
It would seem Steve Krakow is directly in tune with the past. He drops names like Arthur Lee or Skip Spence like he is talking about old friends whose legacy he is here to carry on. He talks about the understanding that an artist isn't around to get rich, but the idea of recognition, and the ability to live off the art work isn't such a bad thought either. "When I was really little, I wanted to drawn children books. Then I was trying to draw comic books, but then I got caught in wage slavery."
My last thought seems almost hard to ask. I wonder to myself if such a deep interest and kinship with these artists of the past, many of whom didn't gain critical notoriety until long after their finest days were behind them, would it bother Krakow in the long run, the same fate awaited him? An artist that produces such a large body of work that goes unnoticed by the mainstream for so long, then creeps into the wide world of pop culture many years later?
"NOOOOO! There are so many of my hero's that are like that, so I wouldn't be let down if that were the worst case scenario."
Read more On "In the Court of Plasic Crimewave"!

Profile: Fern Knight

My location sitting in a churchyard seemed quite appropriate as I gave the eponymous full-length of Philadelphia group Fern Knight., released on the VHF label, one last listen before my conversation with Margaret Wienk, the group's primary singer/songwriter. It's Fern Knight's third LP, and without a doubt, it is their most focused and textured album to date. The album's sound calls to my mind movie scenes such as those from the original pagan mystery classic, Wicker Man (not the awful Nick Cage one) and Werner Herzog's 70's output, especially films that made use of German prog group Popol Vuh. Wienk tells me that those are without a doubt an influence on her songwriting.

The film connection goes even further, as my conversation with Wienk takes place during some downtime performing with The Valerie Project, a traveling showing of 1970 Czech film Valerie and her Week of Wonders. The show includes live soundtrack performed by Margaret and members of other Philadelphia folks from Espers and Fursaxa.

"We were in Toronto the other night, and the head of the Czech consulate was there. All of us were worried they weren't going to like us."

In the end, the show was a sold out hit, and the crowd who, had seen the film in its homeland, had a great appreciation for the show.

Pt. 2
"I gravitate towards quieter acoustic stuff like the blend of harp, acoustic guitar and cello," Wienk tells me after I ask her the broad question of what music influences her in day to day life. It's not a shocking answer, but it brings to mind the earlier recordings of Fern Knight. On this self-titled release, the Philadelphia four piece (who brings contributors into the fold on a normal basis), play quiet songs that create a bombastic kind of mellow. The production, done by Greg Weeks of Espers, captures each instrument and gives purpose to every note.

If you must have a comparison, moments are spent recalling King Crimson, and other times English folks of yesteryear like Comus and Mellow Candle who haunt the recording as friendly ghosts gawking in appreciation. Evolution continues as Fern Knight has plans to tour more and a proposed covers album is in the works with their interpretations of songs by The Stooges, Fresh Maggots, Townes Van Zandt ,and a piece from a Franz Schubert song cycle.

"My German is really bad though," Margaret mentions.

German be damned! As Fern Knight seems to master just about everything else they put their minds to, it will be worth it to hear Wienk sing songs from das Vaterland.

Read more On "Profile: Fern Knight"!

Profiles: The Adult World of Shel Silverstein

Today Shel Silverstein is almost exclusively remembered as an author of playful, subversive, and spectacularly successful children's books. Books like The Giving Tree and A Light In The Attic have become hardwired into the subconscious of youths of several generations, and for good reason. Silverstein's whimsically twisted children's tales never pander to children or discount their intelligence: it's difficult to imagine a child born in the last few decades that isn't familiar with the swirling imagination and instantly recognizable creaking and bending drawing style of his children's books. Silverstein, however, deserves to be remembered for much more than his children's literature.
A Man Named Shel.
Written by M. Anthony.
Upon his death in 1999, he left behind a substantial body of work spread across a wide variety of mediums, work informed by his own skewed primal energy and unwillingness to bend in his vision of the wonderfully absurd, and at times wistful and tragic, existence of humanity. From cartoons to poetry, in songwriting, playwriting, and even painting, Silverstein did it all. It's no coincidence that Shel was considered a Renaissance man by many of those who knew him best, including the svengali of all manliness himself, Hugh Hefner.



Silverstein was born on the South Side of Chicago in 1933, the grandson of Eastern European Jewish immigrants, and endured a lonely childhood. In a rare formal interview, given in 1974, Silverstein discusses his adolescence:



"When I was a kid—12, 14, around there—I would much rather have been a good baseball player or a hit with the girls. But I couldn't play ball, I couldn't dance. Luckily, the girls didn't want me; not much I could do about that. So, I started to draw and to write. I was also lucky that I didn't have anybody to copy, be impressed by. I had developed my own style..."



Silverstein continued his stylistic development during his time in the U.S. Army in the 1950s, serving in Korea and Japan during the Korean War as cartoonist for the Pacific military newspaper, The Stars and Stripes. During this time he gained his first fame with his subtly subversive and satirical takes on Army life, and established the pattern he would follow throughout his life, of restlessness and constant travel, unwilling to allow himself to stagnate in one place. After his discharge from the Army, Shel wasted little time in establishing his professional and personal reputation as a talented cartoonist and man of the world, beginning his association with Playboy Magazine in 1957.



His series of travel cartoons for Playboy from 1957 to 1969 (Collected as Shel Around The World, published in 2007) rank among the very best in 20th century humor for their hilarious and idiosyncratic insights into cultural interplay, in particular cultural isolation and the hunt for sex, helping to solidify Playboy's ground-breaking status as the hippest magazine of the mid-20th century. Hefner, himself an aspiring cartoonist before founding Playboy and editor of the magazine's early cartoons, immediately recognized the brilliance of Shel's brutally honest frames, and convinced Silverstein to embark on a series of cartoon dispatches created during his international travels beginning in Japan in 1957. In a stroke of brilliance, Hefner persuaded a reluctant Silverstein to include himself in his cartoons; this autobiographical dimension lends the cartoons an authentic immediacy, and is interesting because it is the last and only time Silverstein used himself directly in his work. During this time Shel also published adult humor books under the pseudonym Uncle Shelby (Uncle Shelby's ABZ Book in 1961 and Uncle Shelby's Zoo in 1964), satirizing in form and style children's instructional books, delivering strictly adult humor in vignettes urging 'children' to take candy from strangers and report their father's infidelities to their mothers.



In addition to bringing Silverstein a substantial amount of fame, his association with Playboy placed him at the public forefront of the sexual revolution that enveloped America in the 1950s and 1960s, seeking to liberate women from the vestiges of stifling Victorian attitudes towards sex that were still widespread in America during the postwar era. This was no put-on or mere opportunism for Silverstein, however. Responding only to the primal urges that drove him, Shel in the late 1950s and 1960s lived the life of an international bachelor, traveling around the globe and bedding (or at least trying his hardest: see Shel Around The World's amazing photographs of Shel in action at the Playboy Mansion in Chicago) as many women as possible in the pursuit of life. Do not mistake Shel for a chauvinistic playboy; his pursuit of women, as is clear in the many of his Playboy cartoons that deal with the subjects of women and sex, was very clearly a two-way interaction. Silverstein truly treated women as equal partners in sexual pursuit: he made no promises, but never expected any of the women he was involved with, and is in this manner that his role in sexual revolution should be considered. Silverstein was far from being a reformed misogynist assuming the opportunistic attitude of the enlightened man in order to get laid.



Shel branched out to different media, recording his first record in 1959, the manic romp Hairy Jazz. His growing interest in country music led to sporadic relocations to Nashville throughout the 1960s, where Shel developed a reputation the only bald and bearded Chicago Jew in town, and as a brilliant composer and performer of biting, crazed outlaw country songs. Johnny Cash owes the defining moment of the defining performance of his career to Shel, his rendition of Silverstein's "A Boy Named Sue" during his Folsom Prison concert in 1969, and other Silverstein compositions became hits for Loretta Lynn, Bobby Bare, Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show, and Emmylou Harris, among others. It is in his songwriting and recorded performances that Silverstein allowed himself to fully explore the darker regions of human psychology, and gave himself his freest reign in indulging in the manic energy that lies slightly submerged beneath the surface of his work in other mediums. A glance at the titles of his songs says as much: "Polly In A Porny", "I Got Stoned and I Missed It", and "Don't Give A Dose To The One You Love The Most" give an idea of the truly unhinged quality of Silverstein's songs. Undoubtedly the parents of the millions of children whose bookshelves are lined with Shel would cringe at knowing that the man from whose mind sprung work so beloved by their children (and by them for that matter) produced songs concerning such taboo subjects.



Silverstein continued recording music through the 1970s and 1980s, in addition to scoring films and writing poetry, screenplays, and one-act plays. He was nominated for an Oscar for his score of the film Postcards From The Edge in 1987, and co-wrote the screenplay to the film Things Change with David Mamet in 1988, a film set in the world of the Chicago Mafia. His one-act plays are tightly packaged vignettes that focus on darker aspects of the human psyche, for example, "Smile", where shadowy underworld types capture and seek revenge on the man who coined the phrase "have a nice day". Among his later adult-oriented writing, however, The Devil and Billy Markham deserves particular mention as the most forceful and perhaps the best expression of the nature of Shel Silverstein. Originally appearing as a six-part epic poem in Playboy Magazine in 1979, and adapted for the stage as a one-act play in New York in 1989 (in conjunction with Mamet's Bobby Gould In Hell), The Devil And Billy Markham presents the failed blues man and drifter Billy Markham's gamble with the Devil in a seedy Nashville bar. After accepting, and losing, the Devil's challenge of a dice game and forfeiting his soul, Billy Markham strolls out of the bar arm in arm with the Devil:


"But I really must say 'fore we go our way that I really do like your style.
Of all the fools I've played and beat, you're the first one who lost with a smile."



And, so, sometimes we must lose and walk with the Devil, and we must smile: Silverstein's unrivaled imagination and unique vision of humanity in all it's humorously absurd, beautiful, dark, and powerful glory. He lived and created according to the only philosophy he thought possible and desirable for the artist: in a straightforward and utterly unapologetic manner. Silverstein did not apologize for his whirlwind personality or frank sexuality, he did not compromise himself and his art for the sake of any ego other than his own. There was nothing dishonest about him. He was Shel Silverstein, he did what he thought Shel Silverstein ought to do in the way he thought Shel Silverstein ought to do it. And in a time when artists are often embarrassingly self-aware and sensitive to cultural pressure, Silverstein and his work emerge as a welcome and sorely needed beacon of freedom in existence and self-expression.

Read more On "Profiles: The Adult World of Shel Silverstein"!