When gathering background information for George Henry Lewes' "Seaside Stories," in 1858 Mary Ann Evans (abbreviated to Marian in 1850) accompanied her common-law partner to the quiet resort town of Ilfracombe in Devon. While there for his research, it was Evans who collected volumes of observations about the organization of life there. Back to London and her job editing scientific journals for publisher John Chapman (although unnamed,) Evans began to apply the same stratification process to her memories of life in the Midlands.
While the Midlands was already a relatively pastoral home to history, Evans' new philosophies and life in London allowed her to visualize her bucolic childhood as a place redolent to the dramatic change elsewhere. Like Evans gazing into an Ilfracombe rockpool, her previous time in both Griff House and finally down the road to slightly more modern Coventry was somehow unaffected by two major events: the Catholic emancipation of 1829 and the Great Reform Act of 1832.
After years of professing to finally take the plunge into novel writing, Evans said farewell to her post at The Westminster Review with a column called "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists." Published anonymously, Evans cites several successful women authors and their lucrative series of "mind and millinery" novels that are wholly unrealistic. Evans states that these writers are guilty of being well-read but mistake "vagueness for depth, bombast for eloquence, and affectation for originality." This is not only her final act of criticism but her personal manifesto.
As she and Lewes had also spent some time in Europe, Evans sought to employ more realism in her writing as the authors she discovered there. This task would be hard as female writers were actually the best-sellers of this day (Charlotte Bronte, for example.) So, Evans adopted a nom de plume that as she put it was "a good mouth-filling, easily-pronounced word," George Eliot. Eliot's first novel 1859's "Adam Bede" was highly praised. Charles Dickens wrote, "The whole country life that the story is set in, is so real, and so droll and genuine, and yet so selected and polished by art, that I cannot praise it enough to you." (Later that same year, Dickens published "A Tale of Two Cities." Sending a copy to Eliot, in their private communication, Dickens was the first to possibly deduce that Eliot was a woman.)
Working on her sixth novel, Eliot found herself inspired by Dickens. Much like her final essay for The Westminster Review, Eliot criticized Dickens' work for failing to actually illustrate life in the various classes taking shape in England. Since the Age of Reform, Eliot noted that those who once worked in agrarian jobs were forced to move to the cities as the Industrial Revolution took hold. As a result of losing their farms, they were relegated to even lower-wage high-risk factory jobs and living in near anonymity in the growing urban centers.
So with a straight line drawn to her past, Eliot began drawing together religion and hypocrisy, modernization and political reform, education, and the changing roles of women. Furthermore, she would write these "episodes" in installments that would be sold (in some places for as much as a week's pay to lower echelon workers.) After almost being slighted by the leading lending library in England, Moody's, Eliot saw that "ownership" of her stories would encourage deep and repeated readings to excise all the different levels of culture in her fictional ecosystem. As Eliot wrote "Middlemarch," she painstakingly researched every event for historical accuracy and carefully chose epigraphs that would serve as possible prompts for this new generation of readers to explore Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and more.
"Middlemarch" begins with one of two unfinished parts that Eliot had been working on in 1869. By December, she had survived one stoppage (to care for Lewes' son Thornie who suffered with and died from tuberculosis) and cobbled together one hundred pages on her major character Dorothea. Dorothea is a 19-year-old orphan with eyes open to this new world unfolding before her eyes. Trains will soon unite the cities and towns. Catholics are no longer seen as the enemy. England is so afraid of revolution (like the Americans and French,) it will tolerate anything as long as it does not impede the growth of the industry.
Dorothea is wealthy and successful at remodeling her father's cottages. While she dresses plainly, she looks dignified. While her sister Celia seems to be more grounded, Dorothea is seen as smarter. There is no aristocracy in provincial life, but Dorothea's habit of quoting famous poems or the Bible seems to place her naturally above the fray. She is the picture of Midlands fashion, a good Christian life, and a wide-eyed idealist ready to change the world. "Miss Brooke" was published in December 1871 and dubbed an immediate sensation. With the passing of Thackeray and Dickens, Eliot became the preeminent English novelist and audiences hungry for the second book would have to wait.
Mik Davis is the record store manager at T-Bones Records & Cafe in Hattiesburg.
New This Week
MELANIE MARTINEZ - P O R T A L S [LP/CD/CS](Atlantic)
Martinez graduates from budding Pop star to performance artist on a grandiose R&B-infused album. Declaring that her persona Crybaby is gone on the opening "Death" is very Bowie-circa-Ziggy Stardust-like, but "P O R T A L S" remains thoroughly modern only throwing back to Nine Inch Nails. Martinez is not content to be yet another artist going through an artistic rebirth. " P O R T A L S" is structured with the same rising action/climax/denouement as a film, purposefully packing the single-worthy cuts toward the end.
boygenius - The Record [LP/CD](Interscope)
In 2018, Julien Baker, Lucy Dacus, and Phoebe Bridgers were newly-minted singer/songwriters who as fans of each other formed an "Indie Rock supergroup." In the five years that have followed, each of them has become more successful on their own. Boygenius' debut EP now pales in comparison to say: Baker's "Heatwave," Dacus' "Brando," and Bridgers' "Kyoto." So "The Record" wisely trades in a lack of ego (the peril of most supergroups) for full-force collaboration. All the cuts are credited to boygenius, and the songs are almost seamless in how they dissolve into one another avoiding the trappings of "this is Phoebe's, or Lucy's, or Julien's song." "Not Strong Enough" is one of the best singles of the year so far. boygenius wisely combines the edge of Post-Punk with a whispery Fleetwood Mac-ish sway and unleash an emotional chorus that swells on its high notes. The heartbreaking "True Blue" is another stellar song that is hard to shake. The purposeful delivery of the verses is chilling, especially how certain consonants are bitten off - but never harsh enough to break the song's spell. When they all come together to "help" with the chorus, it truly is a thing of beauty. For "The Record," boygenius as a group and as individual contributors leap to the head of the class as the best singer/songwriters of today.
REISSUES OF THE WEEK
IGGY AND THE STOOGES - Raw Power [GOLD LP](RSD Essentials/Columbia)
In the annals of Rock N'Roll history, the first three albums from the Stooges read like the ur-Punk rosetta stone. James Osterberg (not yet Iggy Pop) was at a party where he heard The Velvet Underground's "White Light White Heat" for the first time. Naturally, Osterberg was repelled. However, like all good confrontational pieces of art, the Velvets' skull-ringing, ear-buzzing, mind-bending music stayed on his mind. At first, it was "who would listen to that?" Then it became, "Let's listen to that again."
So after transferring between something like ten buses to get to the Asheton brothers' house to jam, Osterberg went from a sharp-suited drummer for The Iguanas to an oil-drum-pounding howler. Like all good Rock N'Roll brothers, Scott and Ron Asheton made the leap from Blues to Garage together. Their notion that music must be visceral and always primal fueled their blood-curdling, undeniably LOUD stabs of Rock.
Their early performances with Iggy prancing, strutting, shaking, and a hundred other gerunds informed their growing audience that the Stooges were less Psychedelic and more primeval. The lyrics were purposely simplified and "dumb." Surely when they wrote "I Wanna Be Your Dog," they knew its repetition and unsophisticated nature would communicate to a larger audience. What they did not know however was how much subtext could be implied through the guitar squalls, Iggy's grunts, and that headache-ready drum part.
And so it began. Signed to Elektra for the tidy sum of $5000 with the bigger fish, the MC5, The Stooges made a pair of landmark albums (1969's "The Stooges" and 1970's "Fun House") before imploding from drinking, drugging, and an awful van wreck. Critically reviled and so unsuccessful at Elektra they were done by July 9, 1971.
Pop's friendship with David Bowie led to the faint promise of a solo album. With his new right-hand man guitarist James Williamson, Pop decamped to Olympic Studios in London to audition players until they rediscovered that magic. When they ran out of contestants, a call was made to Detroit and the Ashetons were on the next plane over. "Raw Power" is violently different from the first pair of albums. The groove-oriented style of the past (say "No Fun" from the debut and "Dirt" from "Fun House") was replaced with a revved-up machine-like tightness. If Glam Rock did indeed have an influence over them, you could never tell because they soaked these songs in grease and grit.
"Search and Destroy" is the opening song to beat all others. Iggy's best set of lyrics yet are written to spit out like a machine gun ("street walkin' cheetah with a heart full of Naa-paaummm.") Fortunately, he continues to write in that Stones-y "word sound" manner. Williamson as a guitarist is all slice-and-dice from riffs to lead. "Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell" is old-style Rock N'Roll run through a busted Marshall amp with stinging melodies. "Penetration" shows their inventiveness at writing a ballad (at the label's command) but utilizing the Ashetons' rhythm section skills to push it along like a locomotive. If there is one song that hints at the past, it would be the title track. However, Iggy sings it like he believes it is the new national anthem. Years later, this would be hailed as one of the first true Punk songs.
Since Punk at its inception is truthfully built on the fumes of Fifties Rock N'Roll and its simplicity, "Shake Appeal" runs through its lithe riffage like Chuck Berry fronting The Stones. Unlike, the first two albums, Iggy And The Stooges summon the magic of the past but add-on to it. Williamson's blistering high-volume/high-distortion solo NEEDS that instrumental passage as recovery, so it is still Iggy's perfectly timed exhalation that best reflects how they not only rekindled their primal fire - but now communicate well with each other as players.
One of the main issues with the earlier albums is the "existence" of the ballad. The John Cale-produced debut turns in ten minutes of drone and moan as "We Will Fall" which still sounds uncharacteristic and overlong (whereas you can listen to Love's eighteen-minute "Revelation" because it feels like it fits into their cultural moment. But not every day.) The superior "Fun House" is only risk and leaves nothing for the frontal lobe. So, the label-requested ballads smartly choose a new weapon of choice: the acoustic guitar. "I Need Somebody" is definitely "Fun House"-style Blues but reformed around more of a sonic image. However, "Gimme Danger" is almost scored like haunting Power Pop opening with chiming acoustic guitar, celeste-like keyboard, and a perilous tambourine. As a result, when The Stooges do enter as a band it is to power the choruses and fuel Iggy to fight another round against this demon force. "Gimme Danger" is the album's crystal ball looking forward from New York Dolls, to Punk, to the Replacements, to Red Hot Chili Peppers. All drama summoned here feels too real. Most importantly, "Search" and "Danger" were designed to be singles, as they hoped to break the album commercially.
Nonetheless, the sweet smell eluded them again. Three weeks on the Billboard 200. Singles are only released in Japan. Dropped by Columbia and back on the skids until February 1974. But oh what a legacy. The Stooges are like that comet that blazed across the sky. Everyone still talks about that night and how after seeing its trail - we were never the same again.
