An unreadable paeon to James Joyce and the Beatles disguised as a raucous meditation on human atrocity. What is he going on about? -- Sir Percy Thrillington
This is an interminable story about an autistic pubescent girl and her fat dad which builds a powerful case against the idea of ever having children (or buying a house). -- Angelina Jolie
Everybody dies! I'd rather watch a snuff flick with my first two wives than read this again. -- Larry King
I thought this book was to be about Simone Weil and the intersection between the Holocaust and the Inquisition, but it's actually an abortive attempt to understand particle physics and the dimensions which inform the cross-section of existence we call reality in space and time. -- Elaine Pagels
The author would have been well advised to publish the children's stories separately. At least that way he would not have insulted the intelligence of those of us who take our Judeo-Christian heritage as a serious birthright.--Stephen Colbert
Panzica's agonizingly awkward attempts at shriveled humor only underscore the bleakness which both underlies and suffocatingly envelopes this twisted set piece of tangled tales. -- Malcolm Muggeridge
A young girl loses each and every member of her immediate family to death and despair (or both). Then she and her trust fund settle in with some childless blues state slackers. There! We just read this so you don’t have to. -- Reviews R Us
The nihilism and despair which led to and emanate from "civilization scale" atrocities like the Holocaust pulse through every passage especially those concerning "Chelonialism" which is the jejune attempt by the fat dad of the title to craft a set of iconic images concerning the creative power of nothingness. -- Peter Higgs
"Seinfeld" was an entertaining (to some) series of incidents about "nothing". Fortunately, that series was canceled by the deep state Jewish conspiracy. Turning off Seinfeld required one to make the exertion of reaching for the remote. Fortunately, for once again American Greatness, no effort at all is required to NOT buy or read this pathetic excuse for a book. Sad! -- Donald J. Trump
John Lennon was already assassinated once. If I have to relive that again, I rather do it while drinking absynthe and listening to Syd Barrett bootlegs. -- Roger Waters
I find myself vaguely resenting each and every reference to me and my mates. We really don’t deserve this sort of treatment, you know. -- Sir Paul McCartney
Mercifully, there are quite many more references to turtles than to chimpanzees. -- Jane Goodall
“Paganism”? Too retrograde! “Transcendence v immanence”? Too limiting!
The awaited “Aquarian” epoch is stocked chock full of TURTLES (all the way out, all the way in)! So unSHELL yourself and REJOICE! “There are no edges!” Only infinite ChelonianCREATION!
As scribbed Paul to the Liverpudlians, “Don’t be a DRAG, man!”
“Let us have a conversation where we don’t have to contradict in public the statistics that you put forth,” Little Nancy urged the fulminating cantaloupe, as his vice presidential* throw pillow gripped, grunted, and bore down on his stool. The data Mr. Trump turned to “are not factual” she said. “We have to have an evidence-based conversation.”
And sad Alice took another limp swig of Luv Potion #9 and tried to remember where she last flicked her ruby slippers. “Show me the way to go home, Scottie” she spat into her communicator, but the USS MythsandLies was too busy strafing Yemeni children with its desiccating Freedom Rays and the Munchkins, having nearly run outta ginger spiced rum balls, were readying a riot.
NAZIs march in Charlottesville and Boston. Obby, her favorite grandfather has just died. Her other grandfather is probably a criminal. Her dad is obese and increasingly absurd. Her mother's ashes bounce around inside her knapsack. Streamly Gredible can't stay in school. She can't keep a friend, and everything seems to be just getting worse.
They must empty her grandfather's house, rummaging through all his stuff, deciding what to sell, what to keep, what to give away, and what to trash. And Streamly Gredible must soon confront what no one has yet come to terms with.
She knew by his tattoo that Obby had survived Auschwitz. So had her other Zeyde. Since becoming an adult, her restless mom had been pressed to ensure nothing like that would ever happen again. But no one had really told Grettie the straight story. No one ever knew how. (No one ever does.)
While alive, Obby and her mom had worked to tell others. They wrote books and gave talks everywhere – to everyone else. They would have told Streamly Gredible long ago, but her Fat Dad could bellow them both into silence. That's something nobody else could ever have done. Sometimes she had to be sent away to stay with friends.
Streamly Gredible didn't need to flee her parents to find silence. Born profoundly deaf, she needed only to remove her implant. Away from parents she could taste peace, but when does peace ever last?
There is no straight story.
Her Obby had tried to console himself writing storybooks for children, but they weren't stories parents would buy. They are stories Streamly Gredible will never forget because she helped create them. Her fat dad also wrote, striving to forge a new religion not confounded by science.
But even her dad could bite off more than he could digest. And then he dies, overcome by his own weight, shadow battling lurking NAZIs. Or against those who empower NAZIs by the way they’re oblivious - or even by trying their desperate best to do the opposite? There is no straight story.
Streamly Gredible’s other grandfather was never warm and comforting like Obby was. With his grim smiles, always cold and feral, he was disturbing - and not just to young Gretty. Bony and angular as her fat dad was blubbery and rotund, he would have scorned to justify the way he survived by being more than a victim. But he was also more than a villain.
There is no straight story. Just many stories swirling through the mind of a girl whose mother never wanted her since the day she was born. Streamly Grdible doesn’t know all that she knows or how she knows it. But everything that brought her here keeps pushing her forward into the exhilarating uncertainty of creation which continues forever within and without us.
Kisses on the bottom I’ll be glad I got ‘em Fred E. Ahlert and Joe Young
Shawn Colvin, a singer songwriter of merited repute, reports witnessing a friend interview Paul, describing herself as “devastated with joy” just to be in the presence. . .
How reasonable is it to apply the lofty term “art” to the craft of writing popular song? Surely it might have contemporaneously been employed to describe the works of Gilbert and Sullivan or George Gershwin? Was it too hastily adhered to the wizards of the recording studio who, with some art school sensibilities, began creating culture in the 1960s? But of course if one accepts the premise Dylan and the Beatles were indeed “creating culture, the question readily answers itself.
Paul McCartney has just done what his most exacting fans have always demanded - and often despaired of. With “Egypt Station”, if he hasn’t symbolically resurrected The Beatles, he’s embodied a spirit that, through a breathtaking combination of boldness, whimsy, and sheer creativity, somehow transcended “fab” only a few short years before the group spun itself off into four wildly successful solo acts which despite their glittering accomplishments left many longing for decades for whatever some reunion might have wrought.
When ranking the works of “The Beatles” it’s simply so much easier to focus on choosing the weaker songs than at picking favorites. The Fabs make “top ten lists” excruciatingly unsatisfying because the definition offers no way to cram in forty titles. And, of course, their “worst” songs, even those which could never have been “hits”, still tend to present multiple dimensions of wistful charm or experimental exoticism.
That said, I don’t know which is the weakest track on “Egypt Station”. Is it “Back in Brazil”? Well, that song reminds us that, unlike Bob Dylan who still mines the spiritual “old weird America” folk anthologies of the like collected by Harry Smith and the Lomaxes, The Beatles were mostly inspired by contemporary oracles, never seeming to listen much further back in time than the dance hall recordings (lightly?) cherished by their parent’s generation with their own so much more urgent concerns. Studiedly unstudied, innocent of musical notation, and blithely surprised by classical comparisons their music evoked, they just rocked on. But fifty years since the White Album, Paul now has his own traditions to mine. One is the “expropriation” of ethnically diverse traditions, subsuming their accents and rhythms into chirpy O Bla Di celebrations of everyday joys and challenges. Paul also has tropes from his “Wings” days to “recycle”. But then, in “Back in Brazil come some finalizing lyrics:
So we raise a family as the clouds roll by
making pictures of us in the sky The kids are happy and they don’t know why. . .
Quaint cuteness is eclipsed.
Maybe the weakest song is “Come On to Me”? But that seems to be a featured single. Paul, now in his mid 70s, is apparently just never going to stop writing songs about ‘young’ urgencies of love and sex, the type of songs which launched his long career. Which brings us to “Fuh You” what Paul calls a “raunchy love song”. Was that John simulating sex sounds on “Lovely Rita”? Well, it was Paul’s song, and it came between the titillations on “Drive My Car Down Penny Lane” and “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road”. But “Fuh You” is a bright sparkly pop tune intended to end up up making ya laugh. And anyway, whatyagonnado?
Life goes on, it does.
Could the weakest be “People Want Peace”? Maybe that’s it . . . because when it comes to political anthems, Paul was always secondbested by John Lennon. But Paul does not relent, nor should he. Will this one make stadiums sway, or will it simply persist, somewhat sadly in our mind’s ear, reminding us what we tend to settle for? Then there’s “Despite Repeated Warnings” claimed to be about climate change and its buffoonish deniers. But this is another orchestral McCartney sound collage urging us to Grab the keys and lock him up, the answer to How can we stop him? Well, maybe this is the worst song - for trimp supporters anyway.
Yes we can do it.
The last likely candidate for the least strong song is “Who Cares”. Could it come across as easy preachings from an insufferable naif? Is bullying too topical a subject? Could it matter to some young victims that the illustrious Sir Paul claims to care about their lonely plight? Such questions defy selfish facile dismissals and force one to ask again, “What’s So ‘Funny’ bout Peace, Love and Understanding?” What’s so shameful about earnestness? Why wouldn’t someone, if they could, want to “fill the world with silly love songs”?
Maybe people really don’t want peace? But if that’s the case, then there’s nothing obvious about this type of song.
I don’t know.
If I don’t know the worst, it’s even harder to pick the best. “I Don’t Know” is perhaps not the best song on this album. It’s definitely not the best song ever to feature the lyric. That might go to George’s “Something”, but on this specific criterion my favorite is Paul’s “London Town”. But isn’t “not knowing” absolutely fundamental to wonder and awe?
Another great one that may not be this collection’s best is “Caesar Rocks”. But it’s a hot rocker with “matching teeth” that, aside from Paul’s still reliable Little Richard vocalization, stands strong on its own without invoking many old comparisons. The same might be said for the album’s concluding medley especially it’s opening segment “Hunt You Down”. Well, maybe this assemblage will never rival Side 2 of Abbey Road, but it’s a fresh new Paul McCartney medley whose second segment might make you wonder under what particular circumstances he might be “taken for his younger brother”? And though in the backs of our minds we may know this man lost his mother and the mother of his children to the same gruesome malady, we don’t often tend to think of him “broken in so many places”. Nor may many of us like to think of ourselves as one in a “sea of faces” but some things are worth trying to hold together. So are some people - even if that means all of us.
For me “the best” McCartney songs still have to be those which extend (through silliness or rapture) the beatitudes of the legacy he helped create. One candidate for this is “Confidante” which I originally took to be about the “secret friends” of some childhoods. And I’ll think hold to that interpretation despite Paul’s claim it’s about his old guitars.
where serpents turned to bits of string
and played like kittens in my hand
OK. Maybe there IS a guitar reference after all. But it makes me think of Harry Potter, the fabled British franchise of famous books and in the movies. And, speaking of movies, how was Ringo never invited to appear in at least a cameo? And was Paul really never asked to write a score? What exactly is the point of having a pompous monarchy if the Queen can’t simply call in the right people and set them straight on such obvious matters?
I don’t know
“Confidant” could be the best song, but “Happy with You” might never make it mostly because of the competition. Still it’s the kind of catchy simple little thing that just might grow on you until who knows? I got to admit it’s getting better, just a little better every time . . . and who even listens to albums now, much less over and over again? Well . . .
So that leaves only “Hand in Hand”, “Dominoes” and “Do It Now”. The first two are set together on the album in that order. The first with piano, falsetto, and flutes. The second with guitars and harmonies. You can’t help but feel Paul trying to engage his original fans, like him no longer young but still feeling eager and able to be stirred, looking both rearward and forward.
It’s been a blast.
Hasn’t it?
The third, “Do It Now” seems more forward looking but deftly conflates leaving and arriving with every beautiful trick afforded by parts and rounds and harmonies.
The term “craft” implies skills and the possibility of exerting mastery over one’s materials. The term “art” is associated with abilities to inspire awe and wonder. When images and ideas are the materials at hand, one is crafting with the emanations of culture. When the materials at hand also include melody and rhythm, the crafter may be working at the very rudiments of human culture writhing deep beneath language and constructed symbols.
A half century is probably not enough time for any serious conclusion regarding the lasting cultural significance of The Beatles. We, their rough contemporaries, cannot be trusted to determine whether their tugs are penetrating anywhere deeper than the superficialities of our mediated shared experiences. Perhaps, a century from now, if our civilization manages to survive that long, their work will be nothing more than a delightful set of intricacies, treasured only by semi sophisticated eccentrics in the way Gilbert and Sullivan are appreciated today.
But that’s far beyond us. Here today The Beatles, a term which should now include all their solo works, are about creativity itself. After mastering the rhythm, blues, and rockabilly that inspired them, driven by ambition, lust and a horror for boredom, they found themselves at the forefront of generating whole new ways of crafting global musical experiences. And somehow, riding a tumultuous crest, they survived and thrived until they didn’t - except in Egypt Station and Paul they still drive on. Or are still driven. Their creations, exemplars of recording studio techniques they exploited, developed and refined, remain a shining standard no matter the extent to which they may someday be subsumed into future forms of expression in sound and word.
The sound collage completing this album starts again at some indeterminate “station” where, somehow, someone plugs a guitar into an electric amplifier and we’re launched again into a hunt for some elusive incarnation of love, playing again a game we may not even want to play. And then, again we’re naked, trying to sleep, but kept on waking and being waked again and again. Then again he, we, plays the blues.
Life’s a basket but we have no other.
I Don’t Know
And in the end creativity is not something we can possess. It’s whatever generates and possesses all of us along with everything we know and don’t know.
This is it (this is it), here and now (here and now)
Uncle Stan just called from the Boston hospital. Daddusch fell down, but they’re giving him a drip and he’s gonna get better. Carol Ann says everybody has to take care of their health, their weight, and always drink enough water, not soda.
My dad acts like a dummy, but I know he cares for me even if it pees me off. Sometimes he makes me let him check what’s in my pack like he did yesterday morning so I don’t get scoliosis like Mrs. Kirshner. Now I only gots my boxes, my tablet, a bathing suit, a flip-flop because I lost one but it's somewhere, a towel, The Robe by Lloyd C. Dickless and Quo Vadis by Enrique Chinkavitz.
I wanted The Illustrated Children’s Bible but Carol Ann said no and it wouldn’t fit anyway.The night before Daddu Jewdoo said I wuz gettin to be a regular C-Moon Vile so we started singing it. Then I wisht we had a piano and someone who could plunk it so we plugged in his smellphone and played it. And he did his Fat Daddy dance and I did my Cool Girl one.
And Paul McCartney could be a proton because a proton can still be anywhere even when it’s in a hydrogen that’s in a water that’s in a blood cell that’s in a turtle that’s in an ocean that’s on a planet that’s in a solar system that’s in a galaxy that’s in a cluster that’s in a supercluster that’s in in a universe that’s in a turtle that’s in another turtle that’s in the mind of Ja, the turtle inside and outside all turtles.
That’s in. That’s out. That’s in. And everything is always changing. And everything is always the same. And he doesn't have a mother so everybody has to love him.
“That’s it! Cops just hustled them all into a van.” Stan held his shaky friend's elbow, guiding him quietly toward tree shade.
“Adolph, we hardly knew ye!”
“Surely we couldn't hear ye. Maybe we could get a pizza and something to drink?”
"I didn't see any NAZIs. Did you?"
“Fifty miserable little trimpulists?"
"Should've let 'em hadda mic. What they wanna speech free about anyways?”
“Guess you'll have to check em out on YouTube.”
“Right. But I been sweltering here. At least I stopped sweating."
Stan leaned in catch all Abe's words. "Ok, Abe. Goody. But let's just keep walking now."
"Pimply organizers said they weren't lettin no NAZI Klansmen speak. So whud they wanna say?”
“So. Ok. Abe! Let's go sit in the shade. Search ‘Free Speech’, ‘Boston Common’, ‘Bandstand’.”
“Wait! Dey gots water over there.”
“I dunno Abe. They're pretty amped still.”
“Yo! Hello! That water for anyone? Or jest the warrior class?”
“We're out of full small ones. Can I pour?” A young man in black tights held out a gallon jug and offered a clear empty pint.
“Oh. Why thank you. A gentleman and a scholar you are. Much appreciated.”
“You don't have to pay.” A young woman, also blackclad, smiled.
“Yeah. But. Here ya go. Oops!” Abe, recovering from a partial stumble, returned her pleasant smile. “I dunno bout you, but I'm actually glad I didn't see no NAZIs.”
“They were here though," said someone through a Jesse James mask.
“Well, so were you. And so were . . . how many thousands? Overall a good day?”
From a lithe tree leaning desperado several dark paces away, "Hey didn't I see you on the bandstand?"
“Not me. Couldn't get near it. Wasn't allowed.”
"So you tried to get in there."
"I was curious. They said . . ."
From a young Errol Flynn with flowing Robin Hood hair and Captain Blood goatee, "Are you a NAZI?"
“What's who?”
“Are you a fucking NAZI? It's a simple fucking question.”
“It's an insulting fucking question . . .”
“You won't give a direct answer! That means you're a NAZI.”
“Well, Seig Heil to you too. How can you say . . .”
“We don't talk to NAZIs!. Get the fuck outta here.”
“And where should I go? Last I knew this was a public park here since Galileo last dropped a lead lump on his toe.”
“Shut up! Get the fuck outta here. We're asking you nicely.”
“Calling me a NAZI isn't ‘nicely’, strictly speaking.”
“Shut the fuck up! Are you gonna go peacefully?”
“What gives you the right to tell me where to go in any literal sense?”
“NAZI! NAZI here! We gotta a NAZI.” One started as others chorused. “NAZI here. NAZI over here!” More converged pointing, “NAZI! NAZI! Get your red-hot NAZI! Get your ice-cold fascist! Right here! NAZI!”
From a solemn, breathy covenmother came stern instruction, "I'm asking you to leave."
“Doncha see you're doing just what real NAZIs would do?”
From the spearpoint of an oncoming dark phalanx, “We don't take advice from NAZIs! Shut the fuck up!”
“How do you know I'm a NAZI? Just cuz this guy says so?”
“I trust him more than I'd trust a NAZI.”
“Abey. Let's go! Thank you for the water.”
“Wait a minute. I just found out I wuz a NAZI. Did you know that?”
“Abe! Let's go.”
“Better listen to your friend, NAZI!”
“Get outta here, NAZI!”
“Don’t make us make you, NAZI!”
It took a dozen blackshirts, some wearing masks, to ring the hulking mass, and begin hustling him backward.
Amused, alarmed, indignant, and just ornery, Abe let his mass bulk down to the ground as forceful as a frictionless feather.
Passerby's stopped bystanding. Press members pressed in snapping shots and Ninjas pushed back to block them. Abe crawled awkwardly pursuing tossed glasses, deftly grasping them from under a dark warrior's fleet bootstep. Then, self-satisfied, he lay back to survey the surrounding melee in some semblance of blissful serenity.
“Abe! Abe! Are you alright? Can you get up? Abe?”
But round Avram Ider, now nearly one with the ages, was also one with the tumult. He was the cry and the crier, the scuff and the scuffler, the sky and the lier downer. A mature triplet of women wafted through the scrum and floated in close. One held out a hand to gentle Abe who sat up smiling to take it - though it took Stan and a few others, including one blackshirt, to hoist his heft onto unsteady feet.
Sunstruck and perplexed, he let himself be led to a shade dappled bench.
“There wuzn't enough NAZIs so they had to make do!”
“Yup, Abe, I think you made their day!”
"To think I lived long enough to become Heil Hitler!"
“A shock trooper in a stupor. Abe, you don't look so good. Let's just rest a bit here.”
"I'm a Riefenstahling Gary Cooper!"
"Super Duper. Just sit."
“Wait! Wanna give them back their bottle!”
“What? Wait! No! Don't move, Abe!”
Waddling grey faced, the weighty man propelled himself toward the encircled card table.
“Here! This yours!" he said before falling forward. *************************************************** Click Here to Shop (or get a free e version of . . .)
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Democracy STRUGGLES is by Joe Panzica, the author of the currently unpublished Saint Gredible and Her Fat Dad's Mass(currently unpublished)
