{"id":19745,"date":"2013-08-08T08:52:12","date_gmt":"2013-08-08T12:52:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=19745"},"modified":"2013-08-08T08:52:12","modified_gmt":"2013-08-08T12:52:12","slug":"i-cant-stand-it-anymore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/i-cant-stand-it-anymore\/","title":{"rendered":"I Can’t Stand It Anymore"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Genius.\"<\/a>

Genius.<\/p><\/div>\n

I check in on the ESPN cultural offshoot site Grantland<\/em> on a regular basis. I don’t always agree with their writers’ points of view and I often find their pieces even more ponderous and self-involved than stuff I like to read and write, but I much prefer reading overwrought articles on subjects like sports and the arts than the short, publicist-driven blurbs that fill up too much of the media. Last week Grantland<\/em> waived a tempting piece in my face:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Deconstructing Harry<\/a><\/h1>\n

I couldn’t help but be aware that some new Harry Nilsson box set was on the market. Some headlines and Facebook mentions had been flying around. I skipped clicking on any of the links. The Genius of Harry Nilsson<\/em> is a topic that drives me to call my close, personal friend, E. Pluribus Gergely<\/strong>, once a year to find a sympathetic ear for a well-needed rant over how disappointing I find this artist’s genius status. I’ve been trying to catch up with EPG, and it was tempting to click on the link to the Grantland<\/em> piece as fuel for our coming dinner plans. But I couldn’t make that click. I can’t stand reading another thing about The Genius of Harry Nilsson<\/em>, not after watching a documentary on him a few months ago.<\/p>\n

Maybe I complained about this after watching that doc. I spent 2 hours of my life learning about a bright kid from a screwed-up family who grew up to hold a real job before showing early promise as a songwriter, singing a smash movie soundtrack hit song that he didn’t write, and writing a couple of catchy songs and making a precious solo album that was pretty much overlooked thanks to the singer’s odd, high-pitched voice and Nordic, thoroughly non-rocking looks. Next he was befriended by members of The Beatles and The Who, at which point he would make his greatest impact on rock ‘n roll: dragging John Lennon, Ringo Starr, and Keith Moon through the early ’70s LA club scene. From this point the documentary explicitly kept the focus on Nilsson’s largely ignored, quirky solo albums, but the implied focus was that he could really party for a fairly “square” guy whose increasingly sporadic artistic efforts were focused on making an album of American pop standards, a precursor, it might be argued, to Rod Stewart’s groundbreaking, late-career works.<\/p>\n

The final third of the movie involved an ever-expanding circle of cool music and movie friends celebrating and lamenting Harry’s ability to drink a fifth of vodka and wet the bed. I don’t mean to be too harsh on the guy and his fans, but a brief creative flare followed by decades of \u00a0horrendous decline no longer stimulate my rock-doc appetites. I can’t stand it anymore.<\/p>\n

\"Tormented<\/a>

Tormented or tormentor?<\/p><\/div>\n

On a related note, I recently watched that Ginger Baker<\/strong> documentary. Have you seen it? I’m still not sure that I ever dig his drumming on Cream records, but he’s also considered a Tormented Genius. The documentary moves from his 18 minutes of fame drumming for Cream to a lifetime of misery and bad vibes. For being a complete prick who briefly drummed for an overrated psych band I am expected to watch a 2-hour documentary on Ginger Baker. As if I ever cared. No one ever called my prick of a dad a tormented genius.<\/p>\n

Well, I watched the Ginger Baker documentary through the end. The joke was on me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I check in on the ESPN cultural offshoot site Grantland on a regular basis. I don’t always agree with their writers’ points of view and I often find their pieces even more ponderous and self-involved than stuff I like to read and write, but I much prefer reading overwrought articles on subjects like sports and […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[127],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19745"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19745\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}