The Connecticut (or Hartford or Wicked) Wits were a group of late-18th-century poets who first attempted to write a distinctly American literature. THEY FAILED.
Starting with his
first album in 1968 and continuing through his most recent release in 2011
(as well as many of his very popular film
soundtracks), Randy Newman has populated his music with a series of characters
that reflect the complexities and contradictions of the late-20th-century
and early 21st-century United States.
Often
misunderstood because of his preference for dramatic monologues (as opposed to
the more personal/confessional approach of the rock/pop/folk
singer-songwriter), Newman – steeped in our national, musical and cinematic
history – offers his audience unflinching
portraits of an array of outcasts, patriots, bigots, dreamers, simpletons,
loners, and lovers struggling to understand our world, even as its very
foundation seems to be shifting beneath them.
So my younger daughter balked when I said that I wasn't a big fan of murder mysteries.
"What?!," she said, "but you LOVE Law and Order."
And that's true, I do love the Law and Order (only, it should be known, the original series -- no matter the cast -- and not SUV, CI, LA or any other combination of acronymic subtitles). But, as I told her, Law and Order is a cop and lawyer show combined not a murder-mystery, i.e., it's more about the official process of bringing a criminal to justice than it is about finding the murderer. It's got public officials, not private and/or amateur sleuths, doing the investigating.
So then I got to thinking about popular television shows and how they fall within this spectrum:
Kojak Cop Show
Adam 12 Cop Show
Dragnet Cop Show
Cagney and Lacey Cop Show
Police Woman Cop Show
Hill Street Blues Cop Show
Murder She Wrote Murder Mystery
Matlock , Quincy, and Barnaby Jones are all Murder Mysteries because none of them, as lawyer, medical examiner, or RETIRED P.I., should ever have been in danger of getting offed by the bad guy.
McMillan and Wife Murder Mystery because even though he was the Chief of Police, they were a mystery-solving duo not unlike the Harts of Hart to Hart.
McCloud Murder Mystery because, even though he is a police detective (albeit on loan to NYC from Texas), he's unorthodox and is getting into as much trouble with the higher-ups as those hippy Italian-American detectives Barretta, Toma, and the short-lived television incarnation of Serpico did! In short they're really no different than the private dicks, like...
MannixWho the hell cares if it's an m.m. or a cop show? Joe Mannix was just so cool you wanted not just to watch Mannix, you wanted to BE Mannix!
Rockford Files See Mannix.
Columbo is the truly odd duck in this discussion (as would be the far-less-effective Law and Order: Criminal Intent) since the show, which is about a police detective, is not really about the murder at all, since the good detective usually figures out the identity of the culprit early on in any episode (and we the viewers then know who too), it's then just a question of how he knows what he knows.
We won't comment on the current trend of "psychic" detectives (e.g. Mentalist, Medium, or the one with the redhead with the photographic memory) since that's just cheatin.'
And Randy Newman's Cop Rock, well, Cop Rock was just brilliant!
Times-Picayune, that noble paper mentioned in Randy Newman's wonderful "New Orleans Wins the War" from his 1988 album Land of Dreams:
Momma used to take me to Audubon Park Show me the ways of the world She
said, "Here comes a white boy;
There goes a black one; That one's an
octoroon. This little cookie here's a macaroon.
That big round thing's a
red balloon. And the paper down here's called the Picayune. And here's a New
Orleans tune..."
...is there a more insightful -- and melodic -- depiction and critique of racism, alienation, and corruption in the South than Randy Newman's 1974 Good Old Boys album?
If there is, I'd LOVE to hear it.
"Let me tell you a story about Rahm Emanuel," Massa started. "I was a congressman in my first eight weeks, and I was in the congressional gym, and I went down and I worked out and I went into the showers...I'm sitting there showering, naked as a jaybird and here comes Rahm Emanuel not even with a towel wrapped around his tush, poking his finger in my chest, yelling at me because I wasn't going to vote for the president's budget. Do you know how awkward it is to have a political argument with a naked man?"
You can blog alone, or with somebody else, or blog with all of us, together. If you can believe in something bigger than yourself, you can follow the blog forever.
They say it's just a dream some dreamers dreamed, that it's an empty thing that really has no meaning. They it's all a lie, but it's not a lie. I'm going to follow the blog 'til I die.
Into every life a little spam must fall, but it's not gonna be forever. You can rise above -- you can rise above it all: We will follow the blog together. We will follow the blog together.
(based upon "Follow the Flag" by Randy Newman, from Land of Dreams, 1988)
.jpg)
