Eric Woolfson dies

So, thanks to Jim Lowder (thanks Jim) I learned last week that Eric Woolfson died earlier this month (December 4th) at the age of 64. Better known as Alan Parsons' partner, co-founder of The Alan Parsons Project and co-writer with Parsons of all ten of the group's albums, he was a driving creative force behind one of my all-time favorite groups and helped them create some of the finest concept albums rock music has to offer (I ROBOT, TALES OF MYSTERY & IMAGINATION, PYRAMID, and possibly TURN OF A FRIENDLY CARD and EYE IN THE SKY as well).*

Starting with their fifth album, he also sang one or more songs on most of their later albums,** including "Time", "Eye in the Sky", "Don't Answer Me", and "Separate Lives". Since going their separate ways (after GAUDI [1987], Parsons has put out four new albums, one of which (ON AIR) is good enough not just to have been an Alan Parson Project album but to have ranked among their best, while Woolfson drifted more into writing musicals and, recently, revisiting past glories. Of his three solo albums, by far the best (and the only one to feature Parsons) is the first, FREUDIANA [1990], an eccentric collection of songs from the points of view of Freud's various patients.*** The outstanding song here is "Upper Me" (which for years I thought was called "The Other Me"), though "Funny You Should Say That" and "You're On Your Own" have their appeal. If you wondered what an Alan Parsons album would sound like with Leo Sayer and Kiki Dee joining the usual suspects (like Chris Rainbow and John Miles, both of whom are also present), here's your answer: surprisingly enough, it works.

The same cannot be said of POE: MORE TALES OF MYSTERY AND IMAGINATION [2003], which attempts to revisit the Project's first and most ambitious album with a 'part two' -- but most of the songs here have nothing to do with Poe; "Murders in the Rue Morgue" recaptures the goofy charm of "Funny You Should Say That", but only "The Pit and the Pendulum" is worthy to have been included on the old album. By far the best song is "Train to Freedom", which manages to capture a faux-spiritual vibe somehow.

And just earlier this year I got his latest, rather awkwardly titled ERIC WOOLFSON SINGS THE ALAN PARSONS PROJECT THAT NEVER WAS [2009], where he re-records some of songs from MORE TALES along with some rejects from Alan Parsons Project days and newer songs he said would have been on Project albums had the Project not disbanded some twenty years before. Despite its name, this is most emphatically not a genuine Alan Parsons Project album -- for one thing, it lacks any input from Alan Parsons. For another, it lacks one of the hallmarks of the Project and part of their appeal: having a wide range of singers appear on the same album to have a contrast of voices and styles. Instead, all ten songs here are sung by Woolfson in his high, pleasant voice. No standouts at all, I'm afraid.

So, it seems unlikely we'd have gotten another good album out of Woolfson if he'd been spared (by contrast, even the latest and quirkiest Alan Parsons album still has one or two good pieces on it, like "More and More Lost Without You"). But it's sad to see the passing of someone who contributed so much to some of my favorite music. Many thanks, and Rest in Peace.

--John R.

*although my favorite concept album, bar none, remains TARKUS by Emerson, Lake, & Palmer [1971].

**thirteen in all, by my count, over the course of five albums.

*** I owe my discovery of this one to Rich Baker, who loaned me a cassette of it back in our early days together at TSR; it took me the better part of a decade to find the cd (which had to be imported from Germany); Woolfson's later albums I had to order directly from his website.

The Visitors (Hawk & Swans)

So, Sunday we were rather surprised to see a hawk in the maple tree outside our dining room/kitchen. Clearly it'd noticed our finch feeder and suet feeder and interpreted this as a buffet for a hungry hawk (not that there are any other kind). Unfortunately for it, word had obviously gotten out and all the finches, chickadees, juncos, red-wing blackbirds, and less frequent visitors had all made themselves conspicuous by their absence. The hawk stayed a good half-hour, for a good bit of which it repeated the somewhat strange behavior of puffing out its wings over and over. I thought perhaps it'd been injured, but Janice was reminded of the way the hawks at the raptor exhibit at the zoo fluff out their feathers to cover prey once they've got it. Perhaps it was anticipating in hopeful fashion, perhaps it was just staying warm. In any case, the only bird it saw was our resident hummingbird, whom I've recently dubbed Goliath (who spent the whole of a bitterly cold week sitting on the dowel beside his feeder, scanning the sky for rivals -- whom I've collectively given the name 'Godot'). Goliath didn't hide but simply got higher up in the same tree as the hawk to monitor the situation, apparently feeling confident that he cd outfly any hawk that didn't get the drop on him. I daresay he's right.

And then, yesterday as I was coming home, I noticed four large white birds in the nearby lake that gives The Lakes their name. It was dusk and I cd only see them briefly as I drove by, but they looked like swans to me -- it might just be possible that they were white geese, but from the way they towered over the ducks they were swimming among I thought not. Then today I saw them again -- except this time there were ten in all. I pulled over and walked back to have a better look: despite the distance, my bad eyesight, and the fading light there was no doubt. I'm didn't know swans were gregarious -- I'd always thought them fiercely territorial, but maybe when they migrating the flock together. Now I'm hoping they stay around for a few days so Janice gets a chance to see them.

In the words of Fats Waller, it just goes to show: one never knows, do one?

--John R.

current reading: THE DREAM OF JOHN BALL, THE WOMAN IN BLACK, THE HOBBITONIAN ANTHOLOGY, THE LOST STRADIVARIUS

How Would Gollum Vote?

So, here's an odd one -- a love/hate self-debate on the Senate health care bill expressed in Gollum fashion, Stinker vs. Slinker. Just another sign of Tolkien's ubiquity as part of our culture, with his characters becoming as familiar as Ebenezer Scrooge or Doctor Watson.

If, like Janice, you'd prefer not to hear more about the health care debate after all these months, better to stop after the opening paragraphs under the following link.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-lux/that-gollum-like-feeling_b_398034.html

Amusing in a different way was this post a few days back by Viggo Mortensen, who played Strider in the LotR movies but who turns out to have totally internalized Tolkien's message that it's the little people, not the great kings, who really matter, the small hands that turn the wheels of the world:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/viggo-mortensen/great-man-theory-history_b_388490.html

--John R.

A Christmas Billboard

So, recently I came across a mention of a deliberately controversial billboard put up by a liberal Anglican church (St. Matthew-in-the-City) in Auckland, New Zealand. It's not so much the billboard itself, which was both funny and extremely disrespectful of Joseph and Mary, that's interesting as has been the response to it. Within hours it'd been defaced, and the comments about it on their website, while including thanks from a few who found its challenge to Biblical literalism* thought-provoking, was dominated by vicious denunciations by self-identified Xians from around the world, not just of the image but specifically of the pastor (which in turn sparked a fair number of smug, condescending responses from Skeptical Inquirer-types). I find it fascinating that people who think they're Xian have no problem putting up controversial signs and billboards all around the country that present their views in the most gruesome, graphic, and in-your-face terms, yet explode in a fit of indignation when anyone who holds a contrary view presents it in the same formats. Or, in this case, the vehemence of those who believe, in contradiction of the Gospels, that Joseph and Mary never consummated their marriage.

At any rate, if you'd like to see an image of the billboard (before it was vandalized), and also to hear the accompanying sermon, or skim over some of the (many, many) comments, here's the link. I'd advise not clicking on it, though, if you're easily offended by irreverent religious cartoons:

http://www.stmatthews.org.nz/index.php

Somewhat less controversially, tied to this is a second story about the ongoing collapse of Xianity in England: the number of people who identify themselves as Xians is now just over half the population, and of that half less than a quarter (23%) are Anglicans (that is, about 12-13% of the total population). For a church that used to be mandatory for all English, that's quite a fall, and helps explain much of the turmoil

http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/10860

Lucky for us that Madison won his war to prevent us from having any Established church over here (though he failed in his effort to make churches pay tax like everyone else). And yet the recent move to bar someone who wrote a book blasting Billy Graham from serving as a city councilman in Asheville North Carolina is a reminder that the fights of the 'founding fathers' are never really over.

http://www.citizen-times.com/article/20091208/NEWS01/912080327

--John R.

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*e.g., the idea that God is white, male, has a beard, and lives in the sky. actually, I must say the explanations by the folks behind the poster show they have as little idea what Biblical literalists believe as vice-versa.

C. S. Lewis College

So, thanks to a posting on the MythSoc list today, I learned about plans to launch "C. S. Lewis College" on the campus of what is currently the Northfield Mount Hermon school in Northfield, Massachusetts* -- a place with no CSL connection (but then Wheaton, home of the Wade Center, had no Lewis connection before Kilby started the Center there, and that's worked out really well for everyone concerned). The campus was originally founded back in the 1870s by Dwight Moody (of Moody Bible Institute fame) as a seminary for young women --ironic, given Lewis's contempt for women's higher education. This new venture is a curious joint venture between the C. S. Lewis Institute, run by Stanley Mattson,** and Hobby Lobby, an Oklahoma City based arts & crafts store, who are bankrolling the purchase. The college will be non-denominational Xian ("Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants of all kinds") and focus on a 'Great Books' approach (a la Bloom or Adler); they hope to have the college up and running for the Fall 2012 semester.

The main announcement is here (the gravestones you see at the start of the little film turn out to belong to Dwight Moody and his wife):

http://www.cslewiscollege.org/

For more details about their plans for the college, check here:

http://www.cslewiscollege.org/site/documents/CSLewis_12109_FAQ.pdf

And for a nice set of photos of what turns out to be a v. pleasant campus, set alongside the Connecticut River, see here:

http://www.cslewiscollege.org/site/gallery/clsc/gallerycslc1.html

--John R.

..............

*Northfield is in north-central Massachusetts, not far from the fictional Dunwich.

**the same people who own the Kilns, CSL's old home outside of Oxford, which they run as a sort of Xian boarding house; for more on the C. S. Lewis Institute & their work, see http://www.cslewis.org/

Evil Emanating (Tolkien on Ireland)

So, occasionally Tolkien gets quoted as saying something that strikes me as downright weird. Usually when I come across one of these, I back up and read the context, whereupon I see what he's getting at, and most of the apparent oddity goes away. But sometimes that's not an option.

Case in point: recently for a piece I've been working on, I went back to one of Tolkien's statements we don't know first hand, or even second hand, but only third hand. I first learned about it from a quote in Marjorie Burns' excellent book PERILOUS REALMS, in which she quotes George Sayer as saying the following about "[Tolkien's] reaction to the Irish landscape":

"In a 1979 transcription of a discussion

on J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis,

George Sayer tells a remarkable story

about Tolkien describing Ireland as

'naturally evil.' He could 'feel,' Sayer relates,

'evil coming up from the earth,

from the peat bogs, from the clumps of trees,

even from the cliffs, and this evil

was only held in check by the great

devotion of the southern Irish

to their religion.' "

--Burns, PERILOUS REALMS, page 19*

Unfortunately, as I said, we don't have any place where Tolkien himself wrote down anything like this, at least not that I know of. Nor did Sayer ever put this in his books or one of his memoirs, that I've been able to find. Our sole source for this seems to be a three-way discussion between Sayer, Humphrey Carpenter, and Clyde Kilby that took place at Wheaton in September 1979 -- and, just to complicate things a little further, no copy of the original audiotape of the event seems to survive, only a transcription published in a fanzine a few months later (the January 1980 issue of MINAS TIRITH EVENING STAR).

So there it is: a striking statement, entirely devoid of context, which we only have by a somewhat indirect route. No way to tell how serious Tolkien was when he said it, or how accurately our third-hand record of it represents his thought. But intriguing nonetheless.

--John R.

The New Arrivals: The Tolkien Collector

So, yesterday's mail brought the welcome sight of a well-stuffed packet from Christina Scull which, when opened, turned out to include not one but two new issues of THE TOLKIEN COLLECTOR (#29 & #30). The first covers new* and re-released books by Tolkien and new books about him, while the second is mainly devoted to translations and an extensive piece by Steven Frisby.

In her editorial, Christina talks about their decision not to collect e-books, including the recent & ongoing release of Tolkien's books in e-format: "Sooner or later, limits of money or space force most collectors to redefine the parameters of what they collect. Wayne and I . . . love books as physical objects as much as for their contents, and do not plan to collect e-books if we can help it". She also discusses the death of Pauline Baynes last year and the transfer of Baynes' sketches and working library to Williams College.

I've been a subscriber since issue one, and looking through this digest I always find things I'd not heard about before -- including, this time, the separate publication of the first chapter of THE HOBBIT by itself as a little booklet in 2003. It's also interesting to see how, having been translated into the major European languages, THE HOBBIT is now working its way into an array of less-widely-spoken languages such as Breton, Basque, Georgian, and Luxembourgese, among others, as well as major Mid-Eastern languages like Arabic and Persian (two separate versions).

The books about Tolkien section also rewards the reader: I was unaware that David Collins' young-adult biography of JRRT came in two distinct versions (1992 & 2005), the latter having been re-written by a third party to its detriment. And it would certainly have saved me shelf-space if I'd known ahead of time that Stratford Caldecott's two books SECRET FIRE and THE POWER OF THE RING are actually the same book under two different titles, with the latter having an additional eight-page appendix about the films.

The main interest of issue 30 for most will be Frisby's essay, written in 2003 and finally published here in its entirety, explaining in great detail how to distinguish between the various early printings of THE HOBBIT. This is exactly the sort of thing the late Dr. Blackwelder, who assembled a collection that had every printing of all the Ballantine JRRT paperbacks he cd find, would have loved.

In short, both issues live up to the high standards of the journal's entire run. If you like this sort of thing, you'll be all the happier to get a double-dose at once.

--JDR

*for example, SIGURD & GUDRUN alone accounts for four separate entries