you dropped a bomb on me

For the past few summers, Mrs. Pincus and I, along with a couple of friends, have spent our evenings attending various free concerts hosted by nearby Camden County in New Jersey. At the beginning of the summer, a series of upcoming concerts at various outdoor venues are announced on the public website. The concerts have featured a wide range of performers and musical genres from folk rock, Tex-Mex, blues, experimental, jazz and a few I have forgotten. The performers are local acts, popular national acts, as well as once-popular national acts. Sprinkled among these are niche performers including a trio of young ladies we saw as the summer came to a close.

I have loved music from the Big Band era since I was a little kid. My mom was a huge fan of swing music and she introduced me to the likes of Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller and the Dorsey Brothers. My mom was partial to Frank Sinatra, that skinny kid from Hoboken, as well as America's "girl next door," Doris Day. My mom had a stack of big band albums and they were played often in the Pincus house. She tried to teach me to jitterbug, a dance she loved. She even was able to coax my stick-in-the-mud father to "cut a rug" at weddings and bar mitzvahs over the years. One of my mom's favorites from the World War II era was The Andrews Sisters. I have to admit, my first exposure to The Andrews Sisters was Bette Midler's 1973 cover of "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy." I remember hearing this catchy ditty on the radio and my mom — as my mom often did — explained that the song was originally done by The Andrews Sisters in the 1941 Abbot & Costello war farce Buck Privates. She then produced a load of Andrews Sisters albums and — even though I was deeply immersed in the music of Elton John and Alice Cooper — I was in heaven. The Andrews Sisters were the shit! Tight harmonies, infectious wordplay, and a boogie-woogie jump beat that defied your feet to keep still. And hits? The Andrews Sisters recorded over 600 tunes — six hundred! They sold over one hundred million records. They charted 113 songs, including 23 with crooner Bing Crosby. They appeared in 17 movies. And they served as ambassadors and "cheerleaders" for the war effort, stirring patriotic pride in a time when actual patriotic pride had a meaning.

So, when I saw that Camden County was welcoming "American Bombshells" as part of the 2024 Free Concert series, I marked it off on my calendar and did my best convincing to get my wife and our concert friends to go. "It's a tribute to The Andrews Sisters!," I cajoled, reciting the promo lines verbatim from the website. That fact that it was free, it was a beautiful night and we'd be picnicking on local hoagies all worked in my favor. 

We met at the lakeside park and set up our camp chairs. We ate our hoagies and chatted before show time. I noticed that the crowd was particularly lighter than the throng that attended a free Spin Doctors show earlier in the summer. Despite not having a charting hit in over thirty years, The Spin Doctors commanded a huge crowd with folding camp chairs and territory-claiming blankets covering the ground for as far as the eye could see. The American Bombshells, however... not so much. With just minutes to go before the scheduled 7 PM start, the area reserved for seating showed more grass than patrons.

After a few awkward stage announcements by some Camden County officials, the three young ladies of the American Bombshells took the stage. They sported tight military uniforms with their olive drab garrison caps tilted at a jaunty angle. They were doing their best to mimic the familiar look of The Andrews Sisters. They introduced themselves and launched into "Don't Sit Under The Apple Tree" with near-perfect Andrews Sisters harmony. The crowd was immediately receptive. A few older couples even popped up to jitterbug in front of the stage. 

As cute as it was, this was somewhat puzzling to me.

My mother and father were the target audience for the Andrews Sisters and all music of the Swing Era. My father entered the United States Navy in 1944. He was 18 years old. My father passed away in 1993 at the age of 66. If he were still alive, he would be 98 — hardly an age at which jitterbugging would be advisable or even possible. If my mother were still with us, she would be 101. As agile and vivacious as my mom was, I think her boogieing days would be looooong behind her. The few couples who were showing off their fancy footwork to the jump-blues stylings of this Andrews Sisters homage looked to be in their 70s.  This means they were born around ten years after World War II ended and around the time that the Andrews Sisters were embarking on solo careers. Sure, I am in the minority in my love of the Swing Era, but these impromptu dancers were too young to have experienced a war-time visit from Bob Hope or a trip to the Hollywood Canteen.

Nevertheless, we were there to enjoy an evening of 40s nostalgia — just like the website advertising promised. The singers treated us to the hits "Bei Mir Bist Du Schön" and their take on "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy." They moved on to songs popularized by Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald. Then, for some reason, they jumped ahead to some hits from the 1950s. They sang "Mr. Sandman" and "Please Mr, Postman." They paused the music to thank our servicemen and women and offered a flag-waving salute while singing a medley of service branch songs — "Anchors Aweigh," "The Caisson Song" (with different lyrics from the ones my dad sang around the house when I was little), "The Marine Corps Hymn." The young ladies proceeded to sing some folk-rock songs of the 1960s before launching into a full-blown vocal tribute to all things America, including "My Country 'Tis of Thee" and "God Bless America." They capped the evening with the Toby Keith musical "line drawn in the sand" threat "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue" and the right-wing "pick a fight with me" anthem "God Bless The USA."

Midway through the 1950s segment of the performance, I lost interest. By the time they reached their nationalistic frenzy, I was ready to leave.

At the risk of starting a political debate, the current state of our country is fragile. The less it is discussed in non-political situations the better. A night of music and reminiscing is not the place to stir up polarizing feelings among an audience of unknown political leanings. Just sing and leave your political affiliations behind. I found the progression of the evening to be very uncomfortable and I think I was not alone.

The hoagies were good, though.

www.joshpincusiscrying.com

monster mash

I love horror movies. Or rather.... I loved horror movies. Frankenstein, Dracula, The Wolf Man, The Mummy... all of them. I watched them as a kid on my family's black-and-white TV on Saturday afternoons. They were campy and creepy at the same time. Since most of them were made in the 40s, they all had this strange — yet endearing — quality. Like the actors knew they were in a movie and were delivering scripted lines. It was like watching a play. It made things fun and not too scary. 

My love of horror movies progressed to the low-budget camp of the 1950s with beings from outer space and teenage werewolves. The acting was bad. The make-up was bad. The special effects were amateurish. But I loved them just the same. In some of the Japanese imports of the late 50s and early 60s, I swear I could see the metal pull of a zipper at the base of Godzilla's neck and he tore down an obviously miniature elevated train set in a faux downtown Tokyo.

The 60s, however, brought the real horror. England's notorious Hammer Studios offered garish takes on classic tales. Under the capable lead of Christopher Lee, Dracula, Prince of Darkness splashed vivid red blood across  the screen at a Saturday afternoon matinee, the likes of which I had never seen before. On television, I cowered with my mom as we watched the shadow of Norman Bates slash poor Marion Crane to bits in her shower in Psycho. I still maintain that Psycho is among the scariest movies I have even seen.

Of course, horror films grew more provocative and more daring and more bloody as directors pushed their limits and audiences demanded more. So-called "slasher films" became the norm with Halloween and Friday the 13th and A Nightmare of Elm Street (and all of their imitators) monopolizing theatres. Anti-heroes Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers became icons, beloved among horror movie fans. I enjoyed the initial entries into these long-running (and lucrative) film franchises, but I lost interest after the umpteenth sequel presented essentially a retelling of the original movie.

I like an interesting and clever story. That grabs my attention. I don't care to see someone getting their limbs slowly separated from their torso by a crazed madman with unexplained super-human strength and an even less concise non-sensical backstory. The current trends in horror movies tend to present a skimpy outline of a plot and rely more heavily on overly gory, in-your-face exercise in torture, sadism and suffering.

Years ago, I saw a movie called Hostel. Actually, I saw part of a movie called Hostel. I was only able to stick with it until a man was strapped into a chair and various parts of his body were removed by a masked man wielding a power saw. I don't know how Hostel ended and I really don't care. Hostel, no thanks to me, was very popular. It spawned sequels and copycats — none of which I have seen or have any intention of seeing.

There have been a few recent horror movies I have enjoyed. The Ring was clever. I didn't find it particularly scary, but I appreciated the intelligent story telling. Silence of the Lambs, if that can even be considered a "horror" movie, was taut and spine-tingling, another example of a good story being executed by good actors. Even the Japanese import Audition with its hard-to-watch climax, was well-done and suspenseful in its presentation.

It seems that today's horror movie lover is not particularly discerning. Every new release (and there are a lot of 'em) boasts a similar synopsis as other recent films. A mysterious killer that kills for the sake of killing. A variety of killing methods each designed to produce the most blood, viscera and humiliation of the victim. Overly and gratuitously explicit scenes unfairly and disturbingly equating sex with mutilation. I read a capsulized plot of a recent horror "hit" called Terrifier about a murderous clown named "Art." Art seems to have joined, if not overtaken, the ranks of Freddy and Jason as the new slasher icon. The plot was nauseating, as were the similar plots of Terrifier's two sequels. I have no plans to see Terrifier, Terrifier 2 or Terrifier 3 (when it's released in early October). As long as all the right boxes are checked, the film should do well.

I just want a good old-fashioned horror movie with a monster and a good story and good acting and not a reservoir's worth of blood and guts.

Is that too much to ask?

www.joshpincusiscrying.com