The Language and the Music of the Wolves
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
"The Language and the Music of the Wolves" books as adventure stories rather than biography, as indeed they classify Parkinson's Law as humor rather than a study in administration. Well, it's always...
...It has turned my mind, impelling me to revise my earlier low estimate of serious rock...
...Frankly, I do not understand it...
...It is the masterful outpouring of an anonymous group of authentic geniuses, prowling about for new modes of artistic expression...
...The openhng band features a long, high-pitched kind of howl (my intent is not to cast aspersion, but as such a recent cor~ert to pop music I do not yet know all the rich terminology...
...It is history's horselaugh on the doltish neemaniacs who whooped it up everytime the Beatles released a foot stomper...
...It consists of eleven bands of arias by several artists of whose sex I am unsure...
...The young people who put together this triumphant recording have had access to the finest education ever available...
...The cultural nabobs were right, this is very high art...
...Admittedly this is a much more advanced form than Miss Joplin's work, yet there are lraces of that old inimitable primitivism...
...16 The Alternative February, 1972 books as adventure stories rather than biography, as indeed they classify Parkinson's Law as humor rather than a study in administration...
...Notwithstanding the claims of Leonard Bernstein and like-minded aficionadoes, the Beatles' art has never impressed me as being much above that of - - say - - Mr...
...This, then, is a very advanced stage of musical expression...
...Let us remember how the critics sneered at Mozart, and how they drove poor Schumann mad...
...But I do not despise all modern music...
...Bob DyLan...
...The whole'of side two is taken up by a piece entitled "The Wolf You Never Knew," narrated b_y Robert Redford...
...At first acid rock, unlike early pop, did not even amuse me...
...R. Emmett TyrreU, Jr...
...Band nine, "Distant and Close-Up Howling Ending in Group Howl," is a melodic bridge between the existential penury of the urban soul, and the great sense of fulfillment to be found in Encounter Group Experience...
...Conway Twitty...
...Band two, entitled "First Gi'owls of Wolf Pups Inside the Den," begins with a lilting concatenation of pantings, evocative of all the youthful idealism and earnestness which have come to prefigure the young of what we call Consciousness III...
...It is not for us, the creatures of a day, to decide what part of the heritage of the ages we will preserve, what part we will remodel or destroy...
...In view of the historical importance of the new biography, these points ought to be cleared up...
...Here Mr...
...For that matter, even the most knowledgeable reader will find it hard to fight off the impression some sort of spoof is being carried off here...
...Tyrrell's January editorial...
...Otherwise, too many readers, under the influence of those librarians, are likely to think Hornblower a figment of the Forester-Parkinson imagination...
...Well, it's always nice to find the persnickety librarians proved wrong again...
...Robert Bartley Robert Bartley is a journalist From Washington, D. C. Beer and Beethoven Dig It, Man The Language and Music oF the Wolves, anonymous,Columbia...
...Hence, today suitably arranged versions of the pop sounds' earliest masterpieces are performed in daily concerts for thousands of nonchalant grocery store goers in search of the perfect melon, choicest lump of beef and cheapest nylons...
...Glen Miller or Mr...
...But these people are aware of what is going on in this sorely afflicted nation of ours...
...Band four, cryptically entitled "Barking," combines the tempo and raucous expressiveness of the various social movements struggling for the soul of modern America...
...And anyone who, like me, doubted the important things taking place on the pop scene should listen to it very carefully...
...It is something to think about...
...It is the finest solo I have heard in some time, bringing to mind the late Miss Janis Joplin at her best...
...I expect "The Language and Music of the Wolves" is only part of the good news...
...This historic performance is not the work of a mediocre college boy...
...Redford discusses the life of an average wolf in America's vanishing wilderness...
...The finest performances rendered on this disc, however, are bands two, three and nine...
...Burke appreciated the enduring damage of politicians when he wrote: "Each generation is but one link in a lengthening chain...
...Ending with an innocent sniff and tragic screech, this...
...This was not always the case...
...Though I doubted for years that the Beatles and the virtuoses of acid rock would ever chisel out any achievement wliatsoever, I am now man enough to confess how wrong I was...
...All eleven performances are without instrumental accompaniment, and I take it, this is "back to the roots" - - a genre recently made popular by Mr...
...It would be presumption on our part to discard old customs and institutions because their purpose is not clear to us...
...I considered its sales popularity merely another monument to the gullibility of the middle-class automaton who has convinced himself that his production line scrounginess is an heroic affirmation of self...
...no one generation should set itself up as a judge of society's future needs...
...We are not the owners, but only the custodians, of humanity's baggage...
...Thank s to Columbia Records, I have become a roaring enthusiast of acid rock or serious contemporary music, as it is called...
...Thek work is hound to be superior and defiant of facile comprehension...
...After a palmy celebrity beginning in avant campus salons of the new Kultur and amongst the aging American dopes who feast off the fads of that Kultur, it reigns for a while in the mossy hearts of sorority gh-ls, finally graduating with them and slipping ignominiously .into the repertoire of the A&P Symphony Orchestra...
...But even so, there is an unmistakable element of fiction in lhe character of C. Northcote Parkinson...
...F OR SEVERAL years now I have suffered with increasing revulsion the evolving "pop sound" as it is called...
...The case of Edmund Burke comes to mind, especially when I compare his thoughts with some of the idotic legislation of today which deranges our heritage of freedom and enthralls future generations...
...The Columbia Record Company has brought forth from the welter of pop a timeless achievement, 'q'he Language and Music of the Wolves...
...Whoever this artist is - - male or female - - his is a bestial magnetism...
...For certainly, there are too many well authenticated reports to doubt we are dealing with a man who has actually lived and walked...
...However I wish to remind him that there have been "educated men of intellect" in politics before...
...Nor is it the expression of a mental defective...
...It is pleasant stuff but only momentarily...
...From the claims made for it by the self-styled critics of pop music I concluded it was probably pretentious and embarrasing...
...CORRESPONDENCETo the editor: I could not agree more with Mr...
...The tempo is driving, the lyrics not readily intelligible, the violence and frustration just beneath the surface...
...Their heritage is this towering work, "The Language and Music of the Wolves," and its performers deserve everything they get...
...Perhaps it is only living in an age when journalists write scoops ex nihilo...
...I take it, is a song with a message...
...This is a chorus for our time, and I dig...
...the ties which knit together a state or a people have a mystical sanctity, and the rationalist who strikes right and left in a fanatical desire for progress may end by destroying the vital but intangible forces which preserve a civilization...
...But even in the ages of darkest barbarism a modest flowering of artistic merit appears - - and so I listened to a record of acid rock, and how glad I am...
...When people such as Leonard Bernstein and William Sloan Coffin began stomping and clapping, I should have realized that there was something quite extraordinary occurring...
...Stan Delacey Oxford, Mississippi...
...C30769...
...And no doubt there is an easy explanation for Burke's skipping the present viscount, probably a contemporary scandal related to his removal to South Africa...
Vol. 5 • February 1972 • No. 5
