Happy birthday, James Bond!

Forget all the publicity last fall about James Bond turning 50. That was hype for the movies, the first of which came out in 1962. Bond's REAL birthday -- his initial appearance in Ian Fleming's debut novel, "Casino Royale" -- came in spring 1953, which makes him 60.

The book reads a lot more like a precursor to John LeCarre's novels about weary, self-doubting spies than the macho adventures Fleming would later write. Bond sleeps with just one woman, whom he intends to marry. He's in one fistfight, which he loses. He cries. He's described as looking like American pop composer Hoagy Carmichael, pictured here.

His big triumph comes at the gambling table, where he breaks the porcine Le Chiffre with money lent to him by the American CIA, after he has lost the 20 million francs supplied by British intelligence. Later, he falls into Le Chiffre's trap and screams through a torture session. At the moment he's about to be executed, an agent from SMERSH saves his life by putting a bullet between his torturer's eyes. He spares Bond only because he hasn't been told to shoot anyone else. Yes, SMERSH, the Soviet Secret Service that Bond will try to destroy in subsequent books! (The name abbreviates Smyert Shpionam, or "smash spies.")

Bond talks this way: "It's not difficult to get a Double-O number, if you're prepared to kill people. That's all the meaning it has. It's nothing to be particularly proud of...It's a confusing business, but if it's one's profession, one does what one's told." By the end of the book, he's disgusted with his life and contemplates quitting the world of espionage, which he describes as "playing Red Indians." He doesn't harden until the last two pages, when something happens to stiffen his resolve.

Eventually, Fleming turned him into a car-smashing, bed-hopping manhunter, a slightly calmer version of the  guy we've come to know through the most popular franchise in movie history. But he began as a recognizable human being who acknowledged pain and fear and loneliness. Movies made about THAT guy wouldn't have grossed one-fiftieth of the total Bond has earned producers around the world, but I'd like to have seen them.

The wrong of spring

The last time I saw Paris, I visited the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées -- which, for reasons I don't get, isn't on the Champs-Élysées. (It's on Avenue Montaigne, down near the Seine.) Nothing about this dignified Art Deco building screams "I am the site of one of the most famous riots in the history of the performing arts." But it is.

The hall was closed when I approached the ticket window and said in broken French, "Is it possible to enter? I have come from the United States and would like to look for a moment." The woman eyed me as if I were a spy who had forgotten the code word for a proper contact.

"Le Sacre?" she asked with a sigh.

"Oui," I said, smiling. "Le Sacre."

She waited a moment, beckoned some kind of security person/custodian over, and he unlocked a door. I peeped in, thanked her and him, then left. The pilgrimage was over. But I'd seen the place where the "The Rite of Spring" debuted in May 1913, during the opening season of the venue.

Reports about that night differ. They mention fisticuffs, obscene catcalls, derisive laughter and  objects thrown at the orchestra, which was trying to keep up with Igor Stravinsky's ever-changing tempo markings. (If you're curious, you can read more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rite_of_Spring). But all agree that Sergei Diaghilev's Ballet Russes became the talk of the dance world and created a discussion about what modern art ought to be.

Le Sacre du Printemps (to use the original title) has long since joined the established repertoire in dance and concert versions. It still has the power to shock, as I realized when excerpts of Pina Bausch's version showed up in the 2011 documentary "Pina." But we've absorbed the music's ever-changing forms into our bones.

So I'm sad that Charlotte's performing groups did nothing to mark the 100th anniversary, as far as I know. Nobody played it. Nobody danced it. (N.C. Dance Theater used to perform a frighteningly fresh version choreographed by Sal Aiello, but the company rarely does work by its former artistic director now.) 

Carolina Performing Arts and the University of North Carolina put together a multi-faceted celebration of the piece, with performances and critical analysis that lasted throughout recent months. I didn't need that level of commitment, but I was surprised that nobody in Mecklenburg County awakened to the possibility at all. Is "Rite" still too tough for Charlotte audiences to take, 100 years later? 

The most annoying musicians in Charlotte

If you've been to an event at the Belk or Knight theaters in the last couple of years, you may be able to guess the group I mean: That gaggle of brass players who squawk and bleat as soon as the first patron hits the sidewalk after a show.

You may just have had your spirit lifted by "Les Miserables" or your soul plumbed by a Mahler symphony. You may be lost in your thoughts or in conversation with a friend. They couldn't care less. As soon as they see anyone who might give them a dollar, they split the air with tuneless roaring.

I love jazz: My collection stretches from Louis Armstrong to Wynton Marsalis, with a hundred stops in between. But this bunch doesn't play jazz: They simply make sounds. Their repertoire includes nothing that's quiet, nothing that's slow, nothing that sounds like variations on any kind of theme, nothing that has a tinge of melody. They simply smash away at drums and blast us with brass.

I asked someone familiar with city busking rules how this could go on night after night, and she told me the group doesn't need to apply for a noise permit, as long as they don't amplify their instruments. (Someone making half as much noise with an amp would have to get a permit. Go figure.) As long as they don't stand on private property -- which they're careful not to do -- nothing but a formal complaint with the police would dispel them, and even then they'd probably show up the next day.

Patrons are used to them by now, the way one gets used to an ingrown toenail that occasionally flares up. Most people simply pass them by, collars shrugged up over their ears to avoid the rain of sound. (Though you can't avoid them by leaving the Belk via a side door; they're audible through every part of the lobby.)

I'll be at the season-ending Charlotte Symphony concert tonight, listening to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. I already dread the moment I'll walk away from this sublime music, trying to absorb the last echoes, and be confronted by the brassy screeching. I'll try to remember the sentiment expressed in the final Ode to Joy: "Alle menschen werden bruder," or "All men will be brothers." But I'm likelier to be thinking about its opening line: "O freunde, nicht diese tone." Oh, friends, not THESE sounds!

Beethoven drained my wallet

When I was a kid, I needed only one recording of a great piece of music. I didn't want to hear anybody but The Beatles play "A Day in the Life." Only Patsy Cline could really sing "Walkin' After Midnight."  Who but Frank Sinatra should croon "Strangers in the Night"?

But as a teenager, I experimented with classical music. (I know that verb suggests a drug. It became a drug, and my addiction continues today.) I happened to buy a recording of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, the piece with which the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra will conclude its classics season this weekend. It was by George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra, and it sounded just right to my innocent ears: vigorous, clean, precise, sung with fervor.

Now, a lot of people would call this the most memorable symphony ever written. It's so popular that the CSO has scheduled a rare third performance, a Sunday matinee where moms attend free. (Details: charlottesymphony.org.) So soon enough, I bought a second recording, this one conducted by a long-dead guy named Wilhelm Furtwangler whom a music teacher recommended. It was slow, powerful, a huge block of musical granite at which he and the orchestra slowly chipped away. And it sounded right, too.

How could this be? I picked up Leonard Bernstein's hyper-emotional version -- also, in its own way, an experience that did justice to Beethoven. Uh-oh. This meant that all of Beethoven's symphonies, indeed all of Beethoven and therefore most of the classical music written over 350 years could be interpreted in different ways, many of them valid.

Thus began a lifetime of exploration and expenditure. I don't want to guess at the extent of the latter, except to reassure myself that I'd have spent more if I'd smoked a pack a day. And the public library can always use the non-keepers.

This explains the half-dozen Beethoven Ninths and Fifths and Sevenths on my shelves, the multiple Mozart "Don Giovannis" (hate to be without that live Pinza recording from the Old Met), the supplementary Shostakovich and repeated Ravel and extra Elgar.

I made a deal with my wife that we'd buy no more furniture to hold this stuff, so I'll have to get rid of music whenever I run out of room. I haven't come to the fatal full-up day, but that reckoning awaits. In the meantime, I wonder what Charles Munch made of the Ninth....

Arturo Sandoval is WHAT?

He's coming to Charlotte to play Wednesday, May 15, from 7 to 9 p.m. In the courtyard of Phillips Place. For free. You don't even need to RSVP to an invitation.

I'm not going to speculate on why the great Cuban trumpeter, who has won nine Grammys and an Emmy, would be playing a free outdoor concert at a shopping center. (An upscale shopping center, in a gig sponsored by Windsor Jewellers, but still....) Who cares? I just expect to hear at least a little of it, weather permitting.

I've been a fan since I saw the 2000 TV movie "For Love Or Country: The Arturo Sandoval Story," in which Andy Garcia played the title role. (I commend the soundtrack to you, if you want a sampler of his music.) Sandoval's 63 now, but he still records: Last year, he cut a tribute to his idol, Dizzy Gillespie, titled "Dear Diz (Every Day I Think of You)."

I draw two conclusions from finding out about this event in a haphazard way. First, I have to read the paper more closely. I haven't seen a single poster for the show, read a promotional e-mail or heard word-of-mouth about this gig; I found out only because it was printed on the back side of an advertisement for Windsor that had been shoved into the ads inserted loosely in my Observer Thursday morning. I saw it when it fell on my porch floor, as I was putting the paper in the recycling bin.

Second, culture must be happening all over Charlotte all of the time, and the average person hears about only a fraction of it. (Even I, who am paid to keep up with many branches of it, can't begin to fathom it all.) The Arts & Science Council has a slogan that says something like "Hundreds of things to do, zero excuses not to do them." That has never been truer in Charlotte.

Goodbye, George Jones

You can well believe a kid growing up in New Jersey in the 1960s took heat for listening to George Jones. "She Thinks I Still Care" came out when I was about to turn eight, and that twangy, soulful voice grabbed me at once. (Might have been the song, too. I've never heard a bad version, and I especially like the ones by Leon Russell and Patti Loveless.)

I followed Mr. Jones through "The Race Is On", "Love Bug" and song after song. By high school, he occupied space on my (alphabetical) shelves next to the Joplins, Janis and Scott. I've always been a sucker for sincerity in any art form, and he had plenty.

That was his defining quality, I think. No matter how corny a song may have been -- say, "He Stopped Loving Her Today," which belongs on any collection of great country recordings -- George Jones sang it so intently that you can't laugh at the sentimentality of it. I believed he was the son of a moonshine-maker in "White Lightning" and the heartbroken husband of a departed wife in "The Grand Tour."

I went to see him in concert in the mid '80s, shortly after "She's My Rock" hit the charts. He didn't have a lot of stage presence; he spoke quietly, sang the music the way it had been written and didn't encourage his band to jam. I can't say I was disappointed -- what else would I have expected him to do? -- but I realized he'd already made the songs as good as they could ever be in the studio, where engineers could mix his pining voice with instruments in exactly the right blend.

Though he's not my favorite country singer (that'd be Hank Williams), I'd say he encompasses a wide variety of moods better than anybody since Hank: giddy, mournful, rueful, cheery, even self-mocking. How many singers would have performed a song such as "No-Show Jones," written about his well-publicized failure to turn up at concert venues?

The country music stations that mourned his passing last week don't play his music now, any more than pop stations play Frank Sinatra or Dean Martin. (I caught flak for listening to them, too. My friends couldn't see beyond the Rolling Stones and The Beatles.) So I don't know that anybody under 40 will get a chance to share my passion for Mr. Jones, unless they stumble on their parents' CDs in a closet. I hope they do.

Still waiting for God(ot)

It occurred to me this weekend, as I was reading a book about Samuel Beckett, that modern theater was born 60 years ago this winter, when "Waiting for Godot" premiered in Paris. It doesn't say much for the English-speaking world that it took two and a half years to get to England and three to reach America, where its initial production (in Coconut Grove, Fla.) bombed.

Before this play, naturalistic theater dominated Broadway: "The Diary of Anne Frank" won the Tony for best play of 1955, and "A Long Day's Journey Into Night" won in 1956. Beckett didn't care about linear narratives or valuable morals or credible behavior. His two tramps, stranded in a wilderness they neither recognize nor escape, wait for the unseen title character to provide some meaning for their lives. (I hope it's not a spoiler to say he doesn't come.)

Beckett refused to explain the play, though he did say Godot wasn't God. On the other hand, he insisted the word be pronounced GOD-oh, not God-OH. And the Irish have a habit of putting an "oh" sound at the end of a familiar word, such as "boyo" for "boy."

He wrote the play in French just a few years after World War II had ended, and his view -- that there was no meaning to be found in life, but that we had to struggle forward whether we found one or not -- came as a shock to people who wanted to believe that the defeat of the Nazis meant God was in is heaven.

"They give birth astride of a grave," says the harsh Pozzo, after he goes blind. "The light gleams an instant, then it's night once more." One of the tramps sadly acknowledges that "We are all born mad. Some remain so." These were not sentiments Americans and Brits wanted to hear after making the world safe for democracy.

Actors love to play these parts: Robin Williams and Steve Martin starred as the tramps in a 1988 Lincoln Center revival, while Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart took those roles in the West End of London in 2009. That same year, Nathan Lane and Bill Irwin starred in a Broadway revival; poor old "Godot" was finally nominated for a Tony as best revival but lost to "The Norman Conquests."

I own a recording of the play but have never seen it. If it has been performed in Charlotte since I came back on the theater beat five years ago, I haven't heard about it. (Theatre Charlotte did a version I didn't see in winter 2007.) Producer Don Cook wanted to do an all-female version recently, but the Beckett estate is a stickler for following his stage directions and nixed the idea.

We've seen Beckett's influence many times over the intervening decades, through works as diverse as Tom Stoppard's play "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" and Kevin Smith's movie "Clerks." But I'm still waiting for "Godot" on my theatrical watch.