Harvey-Louis Krantz

watch AMERICAN GOTHIC - THE ROAD TO DAVID ACKLES

AMERICAN GOTHIC - THE ROAD TO

DAVID ACKLES

When WEA Records decided to reissue the David Ackles back-catalogue in February 1994 after a mere twenty years out of print, it signaled an immediate upturn in interest in this sadly neglected talent. Music biz gossip has it that the first two ‘phone calls WEA Big Cheese Rob Dickens received were from Elvis Costello and Phil Collins, each congratulating him on the renewed availability of Ackles’ albums. Collins, a long-time champion, included Ackles’ ‘Down River’ on a subsequent appearance on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Desert Island Discs’, and observed to Sue Lawley: “He taught me that writing songs didn’t have to be moon/spoon/June, that you could write intelligently about more serious subjects”. All this acclaim would have been rounded off nicely had the man himself been around to bask in the adulation. Which is where your sleuthing correspondent comes in.

•  When the first three albums, ‘David Ackles’, ‘Subway To The Country’ and ‘American Gothic’, came out on CD, I replaced my aging vinyl copies and set about tracking down the artist. Initial calls to WEA went unanswered, the vast monolith clearly under the impression they were dealing with a crank who would in time be found and returned to the bughouse. However, they at least established that Ackles was still alive, since they had received a letter from him expressing his delight at his work being freely available again (this was how the WEA press office put it. I suspect the tone of the call might have been more along the “Here’s-my-address-kids-I-look-forward-to-those-royalty-cheques-flooding-in” variety, but no matter). Next, I rang Elektra Records’ New York office, where they could unearth no-one who had even HEARD of David Ackles, displaying once again the record industry’s contempt for anyone not deemed to be an artist worth plugging at the precise moment. A friend in the business suggested that a call to MCPS, the music publishers, might bear fruit, since if Ackles was still getting royalties, someone somewhere would have to pass them on to him. The charming Sue Ellen in their Los Angeles branch did indeed have an address for him, but they were, understandably, unable to divulge such information. They did however promise to forward my ‘phone number to the address they had.
•  
•  The next step was the logical one (which is why I left it till last). I took some interestingly individual-looking names from the sleeves of the Ackles records, dug out a Los Angeles telephone directory and started disturbing people down the transatlantic wire. After a few false starts and a “Gee, yes, I did play on ‘Subway To The Country’, but I haven’t seen David for years”, I tracked down Fred Myrow, who arranged the second album. He proved a fascinating fellow in his own right, probably worthy of a whole separate feature: his father, Joseph, wrote the standard ‘You Make Me Feel So Young’ and he (Fred) was in the process of writing a musical with Jim Morrison (based, he said, on the Lizard King’s response to Myrow’s classical collection) when Morrison thoughtlessly checked out in Paris. Fred also claimed to be arranging some work-in-progress involving Van Dyke Parks’ songs, as sung by Brain Wilson! As fascinating as all this was, it got me no nearer to Ackles, Myrow being another case of “Oh yes we had such fun making that record, but I haven’t seen or heard anything about David since, woah, it must be...”
•  
•  Then, suddenly, everything clicked merrily into place. A bloke from WEA rang to say he’d just heard of my enquiries and had checked it out with Ackles, who’d given the OK to pass along his ‘phone number! Hallelujah! The following is an account of the conversation which followed after the preliminary niceties and grovelling had finished...
•  
• Ptolemaic Terrascope: It must be nice to realise that people are beating a path to record shop counters over here to replace their original copies of the albums.
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• David Ackles: Well, I’m not sure how beaten that path will be, to be frank! When I heard about the plans to re-issue these albums I really thought it was someone’s idea of a joke because they’ve been unavailable for so long. But I have to be honest and say listening to them again - they sent me some from London - was very interesting, even just from the point of view of hearing them in pristine clarity. I’d become so accustomed to the surface noise I thought it was part of the orchestration!
•  
• Of course, ‘American Gothic’ got all that praise at the time...
•  
• (Laughing) Oh yes, I remember! Could I forget! Derek Jewell in the Sunday Times said something about it being a milestone in popular music, all that kind of thing. Derek was trying to help, but it just rebounded. It got outrageous and undeserved praise, praise which put it in the category of being just impossible to follow up. Actually, it all seems kind of unreal now.
•  
• I suspect the part of your career up to ‘American Gothic’ is reasonably well-known, but what happened between it and ‘Five And Dime’? [perfectly-acceptable-lighter-toned-fourth-album on Columbia US, which sank without trace but is well worth tracking down]
•  
• Well, the thing was, I’d had three strikes at bat with Elektra and got nowhere. The records had all been well reviewed and hadn’t done much else, so Jac Holzman (head of Elektra) and I sat down and decided between us that it might be time to try somewhere new. It was thoroughly mutual. Jac was as frustrated at the lack of sales as I was, and we decided it was an opportune moment to move on. So off I went to Columbia and did ‘Five And Dime’.
• 
  
• After which, nothing.
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• Yes, nothing. They (Columbia) just didn’t know what to do with me and after nothing happened with ‘Five And Dime’ they released me. And I just found it was hard to get a deal. A part of it, I would have to say, was my own doing. I didn’t come away from Columbia thinking “well, by God I’m going to go elsewhere!”. There was so little support that I thought to myself, maybe this isn’t what you’re intended to do. Of course, I should have been more aggressive, but in retrospect I took it as more of a sign than I should have. It was kind of hard to get motivated but I kept at it. Finally I decided I had to make a living and started to look at other things.
•  
• All music related?
•  
• Oh yes. I did the music for a couple of movies, one called ‘Word of Honour’ starring Karl Malden [described as “an above-average TV movie” in my guide - Ed.], another called ‘Father Of The Year’, nothing particularly great. I did a children’s TV series, anything, really, rather than teaching... the dreaded T-word! But I have to confess that I did teach commercial songwriting for a while. The odd thing is that, although the records were never big successes, the royalty squelches come in once a year. From time to time they even creep into five figures.
•  
• Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, there are a couple of things I’d like to ask you about your early years. Most of them come from an early Elektra press-release, and they sound, frankly, a bit fanciful. Can I go through it?
•  
• Sure. I might say before you begin I think I know the one you mean and it certainly does sound as though it was the product of some fevered PR man...
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• You were the star of a series of B movies about a dog called Rusty?
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• Oh yes, that’s true. They were second features. This was in the late forties. It was good fun, we did about nine of them. But by the age of about 13 or 14 I was getting too old.
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• Security guard in a toilet paper factory? Private detective?
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• Yes, both of those are true. They were just bit-jobs while I was writing music scores, anything to keep going.
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• It also claims ‘Blue Ribbons’ from the first album was written for Cher?
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• Yes, that’s right. You have to remember this was in the mid-sixties. Cher looked and sounded a lot, um, different to the way she does now.
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• It also says you studied at Edinburgh University?
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• Oh yes, that’s true as well. This was in 1957, ’58, my junior year in college.
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• What were you studying?
•  
• I was studying West Saxon, the origins of the English language. If you know of any gathering which requires to hear the Lord’s Prayer recited in West Saxon, I’m their man. I have fond memories of being in Scotland. My father’s family came from Aberdeen, and most of my mother’s family are from England. I still have some distant cousins around Ting in Hertfordshire.
•  
• Can we bring things a bit more up to date? Have you kept writing?
•  
• Absolutely. I’ve written stage pieces, musicals, things that play in community treatises. I’ve just finished a new musical and I’ve spoken with Rob (Dickens) about perhaps doing an album of that, which would be fun. Oh yes, I’ve kept on writing - very much so.
•  
• I tracked down some people who worked on the records and they all seemed to lose track of you around the early 80s.
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• Well, that would make sense, because I was out of commission for a long time. In 1981 I was in a near-fatal car crash when a drunk diver furloughed into my car. My wife was outside the heather door shouting “Don’t cut off his arm! He plays the piano!” I was in a wheelchair for six months with a badly damaged hip, and it was 18 months before I could play again. Then last year I was diagnosed as having lung cancer and had part of my left lung removed. But I’m fine now.
•  
• Is your wife the girl on the back of ‘American Gothic’?
•  
• Yes, indeed. Janice. We’ve been married 21 years and we have a 16 year old son, George, who plays bass in a band called Tuesday’s Child. I’m 57 now and I look nowadays like a really bad drivers license picture from that time.
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• I have to say, David, that given the things that have happened both professionally and privately, you remain a very up-sounding guy.
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• Well, you know, things happen because of timing. I’m not bitter about a thing that’s happened to me. I would hate for people to think I’m over here getting all twisted up about what happened 20 years ago. All that feels like another life, lived by someone else.
•  
• So what’s an average day for David Ackles?
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• Well, in the morning I usually go to a gym where I’m a member, just to get the blood moving. I write songs. I work at my computer. I play the piano every day. In the afternoons I’ll sometimes go for a hike in the hills around my home. I live at 2000 feet, just North of Los Angeles. In fact the wind blew the roof off my stable a month or two ago. I’m sitting here at my kitchen table talking to you and it’s a beautiful sunny morning. The hills have some snow on them, it’s lovely. I’m not despondent, not in any way. I have a wonderful life.
•  
• For the record, your correspondent was taken aback by Ackles, and I admit confusing the artist with his art. For a man whose work is usually described as ‘brooding’, ‘melancholy’ or ‘elegant’, Ackles’ speech is frequently punctuated by hearty chuckles. There’s nothing gloomy about him, despite the hand dealt to him by the record industry. And it would be nice to think the revitalization of interest through the reissues will lead to ‘Five And Dime’ also reappearing (although, as the first three haven’t been released in America, this seems unlikely), and that his new musical will also be released. It’s a nice thought. Write to Rob Dickens and encourage him to make it happen.
•  
• (Written and directed by Kenny MacDonald, produced by Phil McMullen. Copyright: Ptolemaic Terrascope, August 1998)
•  
• 
  
• 
  
• Postscript: Sadly, David Ackles died less than a year after this interview took place, on March 2^nd 1999. He was just 62.
• 
  
• LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - He could have been another Leonard Cohen or Randy Newman, but when he died earlier this month in complete obscurity, American singer-songwriter David Ackles had to be content with the vague appellation "an artist's artist."' 
• 
  
• As often happens in such cases, major pop stars have issued glowing tributes to Ackles. Between 1968 and 1974, he released four albums (on Elektra and Columbia) that bombed. Ignored in America, he enjoyed a cult following in Britain, where it seems the people who bought his albums turned out to be huge in their own right. 
• 
  
• Elton John and his lyricist, Bernie Taupin, Phil Collins and Elvis Costello have hailed Ackles as nothing short of a genius. 
•  
• "He is one of the best that America had to offer,'' says John, for whom Ackles was the opening act when he made his triumphant American debut at Los Angeles' Troubadour club in 1970. 
• 
  
• "It is a mystery to me why his wonderful songs are not better known,'' Costello says. 
• 
  
• Indeed, as the obituary in Britain's Independent newspaper noted, "Many of Ackles' songs related to the downtrodden or to those who had created difficult situations for themselves. His music ranged from simple melodies to complex arrangements that could have come from the pen of Bernstein or Gershwin.'' 
•  
• Not exactly the stuff of top 40 radio. But Ackles, who had tasted stardom as a child actor during the 1940s (Tuck Worden in four "Rusty'' features), turned his attention to other pursuits. 
• 
  
• He became a Christian, wrote scripts and scores, and spent the last seven years of his life as executive director of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Society of Fund-Raising Executives. 
• 
  
• Ackles died of cancer on March 2. He was 66. A memorial service will be held Saturday at Pasadena's All Saints Church at 1p.m.   

Robert Christgau: Great Books of Fire: Tosches' Hellfire feels like it was written fast

Hellfire feels like it was written fast, too--but not ground out like a quickie, really written, in what I envision as a month or two of icy lyric fury. Even at the end, when what begins as heroic narrative breaks down into a string of clipped little items that might just as well have been lifted whole from the trades, the police blotter, and the secret diary of Oral Roberts Jr., the book has the kind of trancelike coherence that has overtaken every writer at the dawn of a specially blessed all-nighter. Basically the tale of the archetypal Southern backslider, it's been described as Biblical and Faulknerian, and it should be. But Tosches, who has Iots of just-the-facts hack in him, sustains a page-turning pace that intensifies its of-a-pieceness. And his tone partakes of the grand, inexorable distance of a genuine epic as well.
Such things cannot be, of course--the epic is of the past. All the oral tradition south of the Mason-Dixon line can't bring it back unspoiled, and anybody who thinks different is ignorant, pretentious, or both. So Hellfire can only succeed as some kind of mock epic, the chronicle of a would-be hero in an antiheroic age. And indeed, Tosches does cut King James's English with journalese; he does mix straight reporting and bent faction with the stuff of legend; he does disfigure his story with the mean details of Lewis's vanity, cruelty, and crazed sense of humor. But Hellfire isn't mock anything. Without hewing foolishly to the usages of a dead form or trying to write like someone he isn't, and without presenting Lewis's excesses as merely cool, colorful, or demidivine, Tosches limns the life of a doomed hero as if that hero deserved our respect, and his. As a dedicated classicist who is also a former snake hunter and a contributing editor to Penthouse, he rejects the notion that there's something debased or devalued about the mongrel rhetoric he exploits. It's just there, with all its peculiar virtues and drawbacks, and it's Jerry Lee Lewis's mother tongue.
Not that this avowed Pindar fan doesn't respect the past--not even that he doesn't believe there-were-giants-in-those-days. Like most rock critics with a specialty in roots music, he disdains most of today's pop, and his Jerry Lee is driven by his heritage as "the final wild son" (Tosches's phrase) of a family with "a big history" (Lewis's). Nor is Hellfire at all solemn--in fact, it's very funny indeed. Lewis's excesses aren't merely cool or colorful, but they're at least that--this wild son has done a lot of exorbitant things in his life, and he's some interview: I mean Elvis this. Elvis that. What the shit did Elvis do except take dope that I couldn't git ahold of? That's very discouraging, anybody that had that much power to git ahold of that much dope.'" Furthermore, Tosches does play his story for laughs, often finding punch lines in the grand rhythms of his rhetoric itself: "She caressed Jerry Lee and soon told him that she was pregnant. He told her that it was no seed of his that had rendered her so. They lifted their hands in anger anew." Nevertheless, Tosches never makes fun. This is a humor not of derision but of delight.
I'm making big claims for Tosches's complexity of tone, and I'm sure not everyone will read him that way. His elevated periods can be dismissed as rodomontade, his jokes as sarcasm, his compact narrative and penchant for interior monologue as proof that he didn't do his homework. Then again, you can also dismiss Jerry Lee Lewis as one more unholy roller, or pigeonhole his achievement as a couple of classic rock and roll songs, a piano insignia, and a fling as a country star. But I would argue--having listened long and hard, I would swear--that there's a lot more there. Lewis's offhand arrogance, candid insincerity, and unshakable sense of destiny are not qualities commonly found in any artist. He's very much a modern, set apart not so much by the elementary truth and transcendent power of his singing and playing as by his self-consciousness itself. His distance from his own show of fervor can seem positively eerie upon reflection, yet it in no way diminishes that fervor--if anything, the distance helps the fervor penetrate and endure. Tosches has absorbed this sensibility if he didn't share it all along. In Country, he avers (pace Bird and JB) that Jerry Lee Lewis's mastery of 20th century rhythm is rivaled only by Faulkner's, but what author has learned from subject hardly stops there, and where it ends is with that same synthesis of distance and fervor. This is why Albert Goldman's half-truths about rock's attitudinal roots in "the put-on and the take-off" are so irrelevant--it's radically unlike "Mad or the routines of Sid Caesar" because its formal roots are in the ecstatic, vernacular music of the American South, just as Tosches, who is touched with the spirit, is radically unlike Goldman, who has all the largesse of an unemployed gagwriter.
Lewis believes that the source of his fervor is beyond question. "I got the Devil in me," he told Sam Philips just before cutting "Great Balls of Fire." "If I didn't have, I'd be a Christian." And while he's hardly the first Southerner possessed by such a notion, no one else has ever had the genius to dramatize Christ's defeat so graphically. Not only is Jerry Lee a sinner, he's a proud sinner, and not only is he a proud sinner, he's a bored sinner; he's always interpreted the breakup songs, for instance, as if no suffering would ever bring him around. You win again, he seemed to say--and you'll win again after that. And what does it matter? I'm still the Killer. Grrrrrr.
What Tosches believes is harder to know. I suspect, however, that the source of his own fervor isn't second-hand--isn't just his passion for Jerry Lee Lewis. Tosches's account of Pentecostal fundamentalism maintains an objective if not skeptical tone. But like everything else in this terse, intense book, it never gets theoretical, never sociologizes, and though nothing else would be formally appropriate I'm left wondering. Not only does it seem that Tosches envies Lewis the simplicity of his Manicheanism, which is bad enough, but it also seems that in a less literal way he counts himself in thrall to the same dichotomies. Tosches makes no bones about the wages of this belief, always linked so intimately with romantic agony in extremis--he leaves Lewis unloved and without male issue, his career and his IRS account in tatters. His judgment, however, is muted. If Lewis has traded an eternity in Hellfire for some great music, you can't help but feel that Tosches has gotten a fairly great book at similar cost.
As a skeptic in the matter of eternity, I don't really believe that myself, of course, and Hellfire is fairly great indeed--the finest rockstar bio ever and up with Mystery Train among all rockbooks. But as such it raises philosophical questions, for it reminds us that even the much more reflective Mystery Train is rooted in--and perhaps limited by--the Puritan tradition and/or the Great Awakening, which between them sometimes seem to ground all American culture. Because Nick Tosches, Greil Marcus, and Jerry Lee Lewis each takes this heritage seriously, each creates work that isn't mock anything, that connects us with an epic, heroic, deeply felt past. But in escaping modernism's cul-de-sac they don't escape modernity, which is why it's worth remembering that in the end both Hellfire and Mystery Train aren't epic all. They're tragedies of damnation. I'm not lodging a complaint--these aren't just fine rockbooks, they're fine books, a lot finer and more durable than most of what passes for literature and criticism these days. But one reason for that is that neither of them is content with such achievements. To the either-or--and beyond.

WATCH Tim Parrish (known racist) Censors White People Too

Tim Parrish...I could have been Dylann Roof - Southern Connecticut State Univ. Prof. Censors Critical Post in his Facebook Group, Red Stick Punk

Tim Parrish,​ so you know what censorship feels like?

hey, after reading this ridiculous story/discography/indulgent piece by tim parrish, i had always been meaning to ask you, when this group which i like btw, was actually working toward a goal, why in the fuck you and the librarian picked Tim, possibly the last person anyone even remotely involved in the scene would ever have heard, seen or remembered? besides harry dog and the fleas, i can honestly not think of a guy with three successively worse, frat, comedy, pretentious bands/music than this person. i mean, my question at this point is always: did he have a lot of money or some money to start the project? i just scrolled down the posts, and it seems like it turned into a vanity project for someone who is bored of teaching and wants to relive his days in a band, and fulfill some huge ego trip of a band which as far as i can tell has no history. but i'm going to tell you since you probably don't know. he was a joke. nobody i know ever saw him play at all. so how did he become the spokesman for a documentary of which he would otherwise not be included? i just want to know the story of the genesis of the project. and if it's totally shitcanned . i wrote this after doing a little harmless sparring with him. it was fun.

6:38am

your assessment is similar to mine of TP. rest assured he isn't driving this project. it just may seem like he is involved. so don't worry bout him. enjoyed your jabbing. MF needs to be called out.

6:09pm

 i'm laughing, but you didn't describe how he did get involved to the point that his joke band headlined your benefit show. i mean you don't have to tell me, but what else have you got to do.

9:21pm

oh, well, not laughing anymore. i guess he does run things. my post has magically disappeared. he must have gotten scared at how many people were liking it, including himself. i'm done with him. i hate censorship more than lies and mediocrity. tell him to go fuck himself.

Tim Parrish seriously, are you off your meds? I didn't delete anything. If that post is gone, then Rebecca Hamilton likely did it because bullshit accusations and baiting aren't the purpose of that site. Frankly, you aren't worthy of my time, because I really believe you're mentally ill. It's no shock that you seem to have no friends and that Spicer and seemingly everybody else has cut from you. It's not a joke that you accuse me of lying, particularly since it ain't true, so quit acting like it is a joke, loser. What stands have you taken? Absolutely zero. I truly feel sorry for you, and I won't be communicating with you anymore cause you ain't worth it, bro. I hope you get some help.

My friend and I could have been Dylann Roof

Tim Parrish​, i haven't read anything so sleazy, so tabloid, so thirsty or cringeworthy since Ben Carson's memoir of delusional thug life. 

you played this right down the middle, in order to keep your job and get your 15 minutes.


So it comes off as neither hot, nor cold, just tepid.


Throwing stars?


You need to cut back on the narcissism and self-aggrandizement for us, yourself, and bands you used to be in for a second which no one has ever heard of today or 30 years ago.


you had no business insinuating yourself into a project, which if not for your participation, wouldn't have included you. 


it seems that everything you do is motivated by your need to be legitimized; from your self-confessed, watered down racist upbringing and miraculous redemption, to your stunted dilemma of choosing between being a Baton Rouge rock 'n' roll footnote or a career in academia.

stick with academia, at least until someone googles you and has your ass booted out of University for your faux-brags about being the 'almost' Dylann Roof​.

Tim Parrish,​ so you know what censorship feels like?  what a coward to delete a post whose only defect was criticizing your character.  but administrators get to protect themselves from awkward, career-damaging free speech, even when you persist in providing ammunition all over the internet.  you're a terrible example for your students at Southern Connecticut State University​ first, and to its faculty, ultimately. 

The C.O.W.S. with Timothy Parrish (Admitted Racist)

Host: Gus T Renegade Time: 20th December 2013 Synopsis:The Context of White Supremacy welcomes Timothy Parrish (Racist Suspect). Professor Parrish is an English instructor in the MFA Program at Southern Connecticut State University. His compositions have been published in over thirty literary reviews and he recently completed a novel, The Jumper. We'll discuss his 2013 offering, Fear And What Follows: The Violent Education of a Christian Racist. Professor Parrish details his 1960's Louisiana childhood. He constructs an authentic, striking account of his Racist parents and Racist siblings. He narrates his father celebrating the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his mother asking him to only reference black people as jigaboos while at home. Professor Parrish contrasts the hypocrisy of a family professing to follow the doctrines of Christianity, while their daily beliefs and conduct illustrated dedication to the Religion of White Supremacy. The C.O.W.S broadcast , hosted by Gus T Renegade. Is dedicated to sharing constructive information on what White Supremacy/Racism is and how it works. The C.O.W.S exchange views with White People, Admitted Racists, and non-white people on the global enterprise of White Supremacy/Terrorism

this post is in response to Tim Parrish, an administrator, censoring and deleting a criticism of his memoir in a Facebook group called,

Red Stick Punk

Rockadoozy DIY

Tim Parrish, M.F.A.

Professor of English, MFA

Fiction and Memoir Writing
Office: Engleman Hall D235
Phone: 203.392.6745

Email: parrisht1@southernct.edu

---

Education

MFA in Creative Writing, University of Alabama, 1991
Master's in Secondary Reading Education, Louisiana State University, 1982
Bachelor's in Secondary English Education, minor in math, LSU, 1981

About Professor Parrish

I grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and in 1994 made my way to Southern Connecticut State, where my colleagues and I have helped the university evolve into a top-notch, student-centered place of learning. Previously, I taught at LSU, Scotlandville Magnet High School, and the University of Alabama, and think of myself as a teacher who tries hard to meet my students where they are, push them to learn, and make class entertaining and rigorous simultaneously. One of my proudest accomplishments is helping found the first and only full-residence MFA in Creative Writing in Connecticut, and I'm proud to stay that our program has drawn outstanding students from twelve states. We base both our excellent undergraduate and graduate curricula on the idea of community, and I believe we have created a welcoming, smart, talented, ambitious community!

Selected Publications and Presentations

Fear and What Follows: The Violent Education of a Christian Racist, A Memoir (University Press of Mississippi, 2013)
The Jumper, a novel, winner of Texas Review Press's 2012 George Garrett Prize for Fiction (2013)
Red Stick Men, short story collection (University Press of Mississippi, 2000, 2001)
Partial list of anthologies in which work is included:

Alive and Awake in the Pelican State (LSU Press)
Best of LSU Fiction (Southern Review Press)
French Quarter Fiction (Light of New Orleans Press)
Louisiana in Words (Pelican Press)
Walking on Water (University of Alabama Press)
Rules of Thumb (Writer's Digest Press)