AND THE SPLENDID BOHO GOES TO.- EPISODE THREE - NED BEATTY FOR "NETWORK" (1976) - THE SPLENDID BOHEMIANS PRESENT A NEW SERIES WHERE THEY AWARD A NOTED CHARACTER ACTOR WHOSE CONTRIBUTION TO A FILM ENHANCED IT'S GREATNESS

Today The Splendid Bohemians pay homage to three not only consummate artists of the guitar, but teachers of their craft as well - responsible for passing on the mysteries of their music to generations of thankful acolytes. 

ARLEN ROTH:

Arlen Roth is the ultimate sideman and guitar teacher who has played with everybody. His first book, Slide Guitar, was published by Oak Publications when he was 21. Roth is a Telecaster enthusiast who wrote the book Masters of the Telecaster detailing the techniques of many famous Telecaster guitarists.He has been called "Master of the Telecaster.”

THE REVEREND GARY DAVIS: 

A Piedmont style guitar master, The Reverend Gary Davis was a player who became a gospel singer, Christian minister, and teacher.The folk revival of the 1960s invigorated his performing career, when he performed at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. Peter, Paul and Mary recorded Davis' version of “Samson and Delilah”, also known as "If I Had My Way", a song by Blind Willie Johnson, which Davis had popularized. The resulting royalties allowed Davis to buy a house and live comfortably for the rest of his life, and Davis referred to the house as "the house that Peter, Paul and Mary built.

RY COODER: 

He is a multi-instrumentalist, but is best known for his slide work, his interest in traditional music, and his collaborations with traditional musicians from many countries. He is a much sought after film soundtrack artist, and he produced the Cuban music album sensation - Buena Vista Social Club (1997), which became a worldwide hit; Wim Wenders directed the documentary film of the same name (1999), which was nominated for an Academy Award in 2000. Cooder was ranked at No. 8 on Rolling Stone magazine's 2003 list of "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.”

There was nobody like Lou Reed, and there is no Sunny Song like Dirty Blvd: a black and white hellscape, described by a cynic past being surprised by any indignity - yet, still managing to extract beauty and hope out of the filthy miasma. When the Statue of Bigotry says: “give me your hungry, your tired, your poor, I’ll piss on them” you know this Jeremiah is decrying the bitter truth about our present times. Still, at the very last moments of his life, Lou was doing poetic Tai Chi moves on his deathbed to ease himself into the portal of eternity.

In the song, the cursed, downtrodden boy, Pedro finds a book of magic in a trashcan and dreams of flying away from the dirty blvd. For an urban portrait this grim, it’s amazing how uplifting the song becomes, and as the final chorus swells and Dion jumps in to add: “fly, fly away…” my spirit is soaring.  

Lou was a Rock n Roll Animal through and through, but he was also a serious artist who aspired to lift the genre to the heights of great literature. And, on Dirty Blvd., those two poles are fused and magnetized, creating a Dante-esque journey from hell to heaven.  He had gotten to the place artistically where he could say anything, in language so direct and stark, and still get you to sing along. 

Richard Lewis
"This is Joyce, Richard’s wife. Thank you for your loving tributes. He would be beyond thrilled and so touched, as am I. In response to the many queries , I know Richard would appreciate donations in his memory to the Los Angeles based charity http://comedygivesback.com or the charity of your choice."

"If you wish to know who Richard Lewis truly was, I urge you to see his greatest dramatic achievement, a 1995 motion picture titled “Drunks”.
As a comedian there were few who could match his Lenny Bruce inspired delivery.
Lenny's daughter Kitty was a  friend of Mr. Lewis as she respected his comedic bravery.
The film is an enduring creation combining all of the creative and complicated parts that made this man one of the most unique artists of our time.
Richard was a grateful, kind and beloved recovering alcoholic and drug addict with 30 plus years of sobriety at the time of his death.
Lewis had been sober since the mid-1990s after ending up in the ER, feeling near death. He went on to become an advocate for others treading the same path, including actress Jamie Lee Curtis.“He helped me. I am forever grateful for him for that act of grace alone,” Curtis said in a series of Instagram posts paying tribute to her co-star in the sitcom “Anything But Love,” which aired on ABC from 1989-1992."
- Rich Buckland

 Norm McDonald
 Over the years Norm McDonald made numerous appearances on various late-night shows, including Late Night with David Letterman and Conan, eventually assuming a revered “comedian’s comedian” stature as he routinely left Letterman, O’Brien and anyone within earshot in stitches. In one memorable 2014 appearance on Conan — which O’Brien’s Team Coco later posted on YouTube under the title “Norm Macdonald Tells the Most Convoluted Joke Ever” — Macdonald reduces the talk show host and his sidekick Andy Richter to tears of laughter and frustration with a rambling, shaggy-dog tale about Quebec, beluga whales, baby dolphins and an outrageous pun that prompts O’Brien to admit, “I love you, I really do.”

Shecky Greene
Among the many notable stories about Greene's life used for material, perhaps his most famous include him driving his car into the the fountain in front of Caesars Palace and Sinatra saving his life when five men were beating him, per The New York Times.

On television, Greene starred as Pvt. Braddock in ABC's Combat! for eight episodes, and later made appearances in The Fall Guy and The A-Team in the '80s. His film work includes appearances in 1971's The Love Machine, 1976's Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood and Mel Brooks' 1981 hit History of the World: Part I, in which he played Marcus Vindictus.

Leo Gorcey
Leo  was every bit as recognizable to the average man and woman as Cary Grant, Clark Gable, Jimmy Cagney, Humphrey Bogart and Bob Hope.
The leader of the Dead End Kids, the Bowery Boys or the Eastside Kids, depending on the year, the diminutive Gorcey was the reason the series were successful. They sputtered and died after Leo opted out of Hollywood around 1956 and headed for his “ranch” on the Sacramento River near Los Molinos, living there for a good part of the time until his death, three wives and a dozen years later.

Noel Coward (1899-1973), that epitome of British sophistication, was an invention. He was entirely self educated, having left school at 9 years old to pursue a career on the stage. After a modest success as an actor, he switched to playwriting in 1924 with The Vortex - (in order to write a good part for himself) - and set the theatrical world on fire. The combination of his jaw-dropping verbal dexterity, bravado verging on ballsiness, and tender insight into the frailty of humanity bordered on the supernatural. In the 1920s he became the brightest of “The Bright Young Things,” the Beatles of his era.

His life story (too enormous to recount here) encompasses a litany of glittering highs, gut wrenching lows, dramatic intrigues, and an unparalleled output of creative work that would crash a computer. Yet, through it all the manufactured elan, the stylish ease with which he presented himself - as he encapsulated it his: “talent to amuse” never failed him.

This parody of Riviera society, recorded towards the end of his career, was written in 1938 for the Broadway revue Set To Music, and originally performed by Beatrice Lillie, a frequent collaborator. What’s amazing to me as I drink it in, is that despite being so specific in subject matter and execution, Coward’s universal appeal is undeniable.

THE NERVE REUNION

This is Bill Mesnik of the Splendid Bohemians with a musical tale that could Hit A Nerve with you:

Sometimes life surprises you, and families are created and sustained where you don’t expect. I belong to a garage band brotherhood, consisting of five late-life Peter Pans, swaddled in the moon-glow of teenage rock n roll dreams, and dedicated to the proposition that all musical talent, although not necessarily created equal, can restore rejuvenation to those who practice together. 

We call ourselves The Nerve (as in: “of all the…”), and we are: Steve Rockwell (guitar and vocals); Rees Pugh (drums and vocals); Preston Maybank (bass and vocals); myself - they call me “Professor” (guitar and vocals); and our harmonica emeritus Bob Pescovitz, who relocated to Bellingham, WA. We’ve played in bars, bowling alleys, house parties, and street fairs….. for over 25 years, and I love them dearly. 

When I retired and moved and hour and a half away, I thought, “Ok, that’s the end of that”, and even when our eternally optimistic leader Rocky vowed to organize a jam to anoint my new garage I have to admit I doubted that it would ever happen. But, lo, the waters parted last weekend and the Nerve reunited. 

I offer this document as proof that miracles, even ragged ones, can come true. The cuts are: Kansas City, Tough Enough (with Ben Math sitting in) , Go to Work, Go to Church (my original), and Clyde Played Bass - worked up by Preston in honor of my new grandson.  

                                                             Welcome To Hotel Bohemia

Eccentric. Rebellious. Amoral, quite often. But bohemianism was, maybe still is, about much more than just frightening the horses.

The writer Virginia Nicholson recently told the Today programme that "in a sense, we are all bohemians today".

But what is a bohemian, how do you spot one, and might you be a boho, too?

"Bohemian" was originally a term with pejorative undertones given to Roma gypsies, commonly believed by the French to have originated in Bohemia, in central Europe.

The Oxford English Dictionary's definition mentions someone "especially an artist, literary man, or actor, who leads a free, vagabond, or irregular life, not being particular as to the society he frequents, and despising conventionalities generally".

But the connotation rapidly became a romantic one. From its birth in Paris in the 1850s, and the huge success of Murgier's play Scenes de la vie de Boheme, the ethic spread rapidly.

Gypsy clothes became all the fashion, sparking a style which lives on today through lovers of boho-chic like Sienna Miller and Kate Moss. And artists and poets from Baudelaire to van Gogh characterised bohemian ideals.

Its foundations in the Romantic movement of the 19th Century imbued bohemians with an almost quasi-religious sense of purpose.

In Puccini's opera La Boheme, the poet Rodolfo and his friends do not shiver in their Parisian garret where Mimi's hand is famously frozen merely because of their poverty. Theirs, as Rodolfo has it, is a higher, if more sensual, calling.

I am a poet!

What's my employment? Writing.

Is that a living? Hardly.

I've wit though wealth be wanting,

Ladies of rank and fashion

All inspire me with passion;

In dreams and fond illusions,

Or castles in the air,

Richer is none on earth than I.

Although steeped in its French roots, the bohemian ideal transferred easily to many countries and cultures.

In Britain, the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the aesthetic movement of the 19th Century imbued bohemianism with a dangerous, dashing, social cachet. Later, the exploits of the Bloomsbury group - one of whom was Nicholson's grandmother, Vanessa Bell - thrust it into the cultural limelight.
Across the Atlantic, poets and writers like Jack Kerouac, William S Burroughs and Paul Bowles led their own offshoot. And the playwright Arthur Miller's prose conjures the musty essence of that temple of American bohemia, Manhattan's Chelsea Hotel, where "there are no vacuum cleaners, no rules and shame".

"Everyone has a view of what the bohemian is," says Nicholson. "The bohemian is an outsider, defines themselves as an outsider and is defined by the world as an outsider... A lot of people regard them as subversive, elitist and possibly just a little bit immature."

Bohemians were typically urban, liberal in outlook, but with few visible political passions and, above all, creative. Though critical of organised religion, they were keen - witness the pre-Raphaelites and Oscar Wilde - to defend and explore the religious spirit.

Above all, they defied the constrictions of hearth and home and the false morality which they believed underpinned it.

In essence, bohemianism represented a personal, cultural and social reaction to the bourgeois life. And, once the latter was all but swept away by the maelstrom that was the 1960s, the former was doomed, too.

UNTIL NOW!!!!

&a

David Lindley was one of a kind - The ultimate sideman.  “The Prince of Polyester” played a mind-boggling array of exotic stringed instruments and musical genres with swing and inventiveness. One of the pillars of the Southern California folk-rock sound that dominated the airwaves in the 70s, this Sancho Panza to the dueling Quixotes of Jackson Browne and Ry Cooder was founder of the legendary 1960s world music pioneers Kaleidoscope, and deeply beloved. 

When he went solo I guess it was too hard to pin him down commercially. For example, this satirical Hawaiian Slack-Key pastiche is one of several styles covered in his “Very Greasy” album - which also includes a cover of the Temptations Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone and Bobby Freeman’s Do You Wanna Dance (in a Ska rhythm). It’s a brilliant evocation of a drunken, middle-class, luau themed office party.

He was a humble genius, I suspect. When my wife went to see him in Santa Monica I asked her to have him sign my Kaleidoscope CD. She told me that when he saw it he was touched, remarking that he was surprised that anybody still listened to it. On the contrary, it remains a precious reminder of a musical giant who once bestrode the earth.

The earth shifted for me when I heard Uncle Dave Macon for the first time. This was when the Harry Smith Anthology was released on CD in 1997. The energy of this man, swingin’ his claw hammer banjo and elating me with his infectious humor, brought the sepia-toned 19th century to boisterous life, and I was smitten. 

I began listening to, and reading, as much as I could get my hands on, and although the “Dixie Dewdrop” died the year before I was born, he was kinetically alive for me, lifting me out of whatever funk I happened to have been in, into a realm of pure joy. 

What an inspiration for an aging aspirant: He was discovered by accident by Marcus Loew of the Loews Theatre chain at the age of 50, and elevated to the heights of radio stardom on the Grand Old Opry, and national recording acclaim. How fortunate that these technologies, though in their infancy, were around to document the power of this entertainment fireball.

He was a beloved amateur (in the truest sense of the word), who had simply enjoyed entertaining customers along his freight hauling mule line. This exemplifies Joseph Campbell’s  assertion that if you just follow your bliss, everything will flow from that. This was simply how he lived, and as one of his band members attested: “all day long, from morning til midnight, it was a show.” And, what a show it was!

HOTEL BOHEMIA IS DESIGNED TO LEAD YOU TO A DESTINATION CONSTRUCTED WITH THE HOPE OF EXAMINING THE HOLY PAST, THE PUZZLING PRESENT AND THE POSSIBILITIES OF OUR IMPENDING FORTUNES.
THIS PROGRAM IS DEDICATED WITH LOVE TO THOSE WHO INSPIRED THE ARCHITECTURE OF THIS HOTEL BOHEMIA PREVIEW:

MEL BLANC, PHIL OCHS, ANDY DEVINE, SAM LAY, EUGENE O'NEILL, ROBERT RYAN, NICK GRAVENITES, BEN WEBSTER, DAVID MAMET, AL PACINO, LEON FUCHS, CHUBBY CHECKER,  BUDD SCHULBERG , ROD STEIGER, MARLON BRANDO, ELIA KAZAN, AL JOLSON, MURRAY 'THE K" KAUFMAN, TRACEY DEY, THE ROCK, JOHN BELUSHI, DON RICKLES, FRANK SINATRA, JOHNNY CARSON, JEFF LYNNE, RODNEY DANGERFIELD, DIANA KRALL, EDWARD R. MURROW, ROBERT THOM, ED BEGLEY,  SYLVESTER STALLONE AND BILL MESNIK.

"I am a determinist. As such, I do not believe in free will...Practically, I am, nevertheless, compelled to act as if freedom of the will existed. If I wish to live in a civilized community, I must act as if man is a responsible being."
- Albert Einstein,

"Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future."
— John F. Kennedy.

1) All Going Down Together – Bobby Stevens of The Checkmates LTD-
From The 1971 Album "Life".
2) Down We Go- Kaleo-
By The Icelandic rock band Kaleo  in 2016 and released as the second single for their second studio album on Elektra Records.
3) Mr. Nasty – The Remars-
Written in 2016 by Film Director Steve Karras  ("About Face: The Story of the Jewish Refugee Soldiers of World War II") and performed By The Remars.
4) They Watered My Whiskey Down – Phil Burdett-
 Recorded in 1993 By United Kingdom Singer and Songwriter Phil Burdett And The New World Troubadours -From The Album Diesel Poems.
5) Oh Baby Don’t You Weep – Part One – James Brown and His Famous Flames
6) Oh Baby Don’t You Weep – Part Two – James Brown and His Famous Flames
Recorded in 1964 and based  upon the spiritual "Mary, Don't You Weep" it was recorded as an extended-length track and released as the first two-part 45 RPM  of Brown's recording career.
7) The End Is Not In Sight- Russell Smith
Written and Performed  by Russell Smith of The Amazing Rhythm Aces in 2002,  this song was first released by Jesse Winchester in 1974.