With quite a bit of back and forth about cellos, popular/rock music, and such, it got me thinking about the earlier practitioners of bowing strings for rock and roll effect. Here is one of the first Jimmy Page performances of “Dazed and Confused” (written by Jake Holmes in 1967), when Page still played for The Yardbirds. They never put it on a studio album, but it appeared on a live album Epic released called Live Yardbirds which came out in 1971 and quickly disappeared due to the fact Jimmy Page now played for a group called Led Zeppelin and had some misgivings which he resolved through legalities (i.e., he sued their ass). I happened to get a copy of that album, however, and it is quite strange. Here is a very similar performance to the recording on the album I’ve got, complete with Jimmy using a bow on his guitar about halfway through the song.
Category: blog
NC Chinese Lantern Festival
Yesterday four of us experienced the annual Chinese Lantern Festival at the Koka Booth Amphitheatre (which sits at the southern edge of Cary and the eastern edge of Apex in the Raleigh-Cary-Durham Triangle area). I entered with moderate expectations but left with a big appreciation for the spectacle. We purchased the “early twilight entry” tickets for a variety of reasons: chief among them being we’re old, and anything that promises an Early Bird special appeals to oldsters. We wandered for an hour, and then we fulfilled a sudden hankering for East Asian food by driving to a pan-Asian restaurant near our home.
Bogue Sunset
I hope I didn’t post this last year, but I’m too busy to check right now. [Well, I checked a week later, and I did publish it last year just after Thanksgiving 2022…but it was edited slightly differently. Oh well.] Our friends’ family owns a place on Bogue Sound, a portion of the Intracoastal Waterway on the shores of North Carolina. When my friend is down there, he habitually walks to the end of the dock to capture the sun’s rising, no matter the time of day. Each evening he watches and captures images of it as it leaves the sky. This reminds me of a movie with Harvey Keitel (can’t remember the name of it) where every day he walks across a busy NYC street and shoots a photo of his deli to place in a growing library of scrapbooks. It’s a form of time-lapse photography, but on a different scale. In my friend’s case, I think it’s less “time-lapse” and more a capture of the moods invoked by each unique astronomical event. When I’m down there, I more or less attempt the same thing, except my body sometimes refuses to rise around 0500!
Nothing to hear here
No soundtracks…well, OK, I reacquainted myself with The Black Keys, El Camino and Delta Kream. I won’t be posting regularly for a short while–this is the beginning of my holiday-panic season. It begins with procrastinating my very first task: writing the stories to go into my holiday newsletter. As a former reporter/editor and swelled by my self-image of Writer, my newsletter is a real NEWS-letter. As one of my wife’s sisters said, “I like your guys’ newsletter. Everyone else writes long paragraphs about how wonderful their lives and family are. Yours has things like ‘our cat died’.”
Page one (of four) looked like this in 2022:
Holiday Stress Daily Soundtrack
Technically today’s soundtrack started with mass this morning and our choir’s rendition of “God Omnipotent Reigneth” written by Charles Wood. The performance occurs at 1:07:25 in the cathedral’s weekly YouTube broadcast . I wish the microphones could pick up the resonance provided by one of the largest cathedral spaces in the United States. Perhaps search out an alternate performance on your streaming platform of choice.
Today’s soundtrack continues with “Goof Balls” by Keller & The Keels, which perfectly describes how I feel when I volunteer for an extra time-sucking task on top of all the Christmas stuff on top of all the daily things I can’t seem to get done! (Hence my image up top of a years-old meme.)
That put me in the mood and I’m going to listen to Keller & The Keels’ album Grass from 2006 which leads off with “Goof Balls”. It’s much clearer on the studio cut. After that who knows? Oh wait–it just hit me. Teenage Depression by Eddie & The Hot Rods. It has just the right combo of nihilism, resignation, and the feeling of being strapped to the cowcatcher of a train. Suits me to a tee.
As Herman Hesse said when playing Dr. Johnny Fever on WKRP in Cincinnati, “The doctor over-medicated last night, babies.” (or something like that) I feel the need of some medication coming on….
Liturgical year endnotes
In the Roman Catholic Church tomorrow is The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe. This begins the final week of the year…as far as liturgy is concerned. The new year begins with the First Sunday of Advent on December 3. This year Advent is three weeks and one day long, the shortest it can be, because the Fourth Sunday of Advent falls on Christmas Eve Day. It can be four weeks long when Christmas falls on a Sunday as it did last year. Thus the end of the year prompts a bit of reflection for me before falling into the seasonal frenzy.
All of this by way of saying too many things dance in my head this moment to make this a coherent piece of writing. One of yesterday’s posts prompted a request for more “soundtrack” postings, and I’ve decided to play with that for a little bit.
Today’s soundtrack
I’m a bass in one of the choirs at the Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral in Raleigh, NC. There’s a lot of music coming down the road right now. We’ve a special liturgy full of music coming up, Lessons and Carols, and then there is the tradition of a musical presentation preceding the Midnight Mass on December 24-25. (The music begins between 11-11:30 p.m. to make sure the mass itself begins on Christmas Day–“midnight” mass.) This year’s music packet for the choir is nearly 100 pages. I’m not telling this to brag, convert, solicit sympathy, or narrate information about the church. I’m telling you this to explain that the soundtrack began with a lot ME practicing my music!
The remainder of it has been finishing Yessongs by Yes. Released in 1973, it’s more interesting than good. Large amounts of the two-hour album are better on the studio albums where the group could overdub to its heart’s content. I’m particularly not fond of some of the improvised melodic changes. They’re just not as good as the originals they’re meant to bring to their audience. But considering the large of amount of overdubbing and the intricate work which went into making the studio albums, it’s illuminating to hear how well that is conveyed in concert.
Enough. It’s time to sip some cheer, consider stories for my annual Christmas newsletter (more on that later), and relax. For now I will leave you with an oakleaf hydrangea, a native plant in the southeastern USA (which I just learned!). Some lousy squirrels broke it off just above the ground last year because it’s almost directly under a bird feeder which they cannot reach. Thinking the entire thing was dead and gone, you can imagine my delight to see it sprout a small plant this spring. It has conical heads of white flowers which turn woody in the fall–literally, like little chips of wood. And of course the leaves! Worth trying to save.
Benny demands equal time
I can’t publish a photo of Charlie without giving equal time to his brother Benny. It’s an FCC rule, I think.
Black Friday hodgepodge #2
[don’t think I’ll get to #3…]
Black Friday is Un-Leap Day. Unlike February 29th which is Leap Day and disappears three-quarters of the time, Black Friday always comes around, promising a beautiful day of absolute disassociation with reality. Not for me streets, crowds, stores, obligatory family walks in the park, online shopping, chores, responsibilities, or anything that smacks of “have to” and “well, I really should.” Black Friday for the past 40 years means I have a day where Conventional Reality doesn’t exist. It is a day of nothing, a day of meandering in a mental (and sometimes physical) sense.
Black Friday is to Fridays what Black Holes are to holes. They both suck up time like a temporal vacuum cleaner and spit it out. I’ve no idea where Black Holes spit their time, but I know that Black Fridays spit it out onto The-Saturday-After-Thanksgiving, the day when life begins to engage me again.
Black Friday gets echoed by New Year’s Day, but I can’t totally disengage on NYD. Its ridiculous premise that something new is beginning grabs me every time, makes me believe I should be resetting my life, cleaning out files, organizing my bills, planning how I will be a better person in the coming 365 days (or 366, yes, I know Leap Day, there, there). Both Black Friday and NYD invite introspection, or at the very least, the last grasp at annual goals still unmet–but only in a laissez faire manner.
One strives little on this day. Breakfast is leftover pie from yesterday. Dinner reruns the big turkey thing of the day before. All food in-between consists of noshing all of Thanksgiving Day’s appetizers, crudités, snacks, etc., before turning to that leftover Halloween candy or the box of chocolates someone forgot to take with them when they left yesterday’s feast. Beer makes an early appearance…or not. It doesn’t matter. It’s Black Friday.
Black Friday hodgepodge #1
Though I’ve (semi-) resisted turning this into a long-winded version of Facebook, from which I fled two years ago, today I must succumb. Perforce….
Today’s soundtrack
Workingman’s Dead (2013 Remaster), The Grateful Dead.
It seems impossible to avoid these remasters in today’s streaming world. Thankfully, this one does justice to The Dead, pulling out voices with clarity and adding a high-fidelity punch to the guitar playing.
17-11-70 (UK-Release Mix), Elton John.
This has to be one of the best live albums from my teen-aged years (though the American version was titled 11-17-70 to reflect our peculiar dating system). Elton’s piano and vocals are accompanied only by Nigel Olsson on the drums and Dee Murray on bass. The performance occurred at A&R Recording Studios in front of fewer than 200 audience members, but was broadcast on radio. This mix has more reverb than my original vinyl–which I still have, by the way. I think the extra reverb mostly sounds better to my ears. The vocals are clearer than my overplayed vinyl too. After this Elton’s style began to change from a piano-ballad style; this represents the only live album of his to reflect what he sounded like in the early years. Wish I could stream the expanded version released a few years ago, 17-11-70+.
Captured Live At The Forum, Three Dog Night.
Sticking with the great live albums from that time, and predating Elton’s performance by a year, this album highlights an interesting vocal group of the time. One of the great concert lines occurs a short way into the recording: after listening to some shouts from the balcony, one of the stars (look, I don’t know who’s who) says, “what’s that? you can’t hear us?” and another bandmate steps forward to say, “See? You shoulda bought the five-fifty tickets up front!” Fresh humor and remarkable that front row seats cost only $5.50!
After that? I’m thinking to stick with live pop-oriented stuff, so I think one of the greatest live albums is out: Live At Leeds by The Who just rocks too much. Likewise for Near The Beginning by Vanilla Fudge or Steppenwolf’s Live! Hmmmm…. what about Yessongs? That should do nicely. Later, folks.
Dreaming of Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving for me begins with a way-too-early uncorking of some fine grain-based beverage. Lately this has meant something from Belgium or at the very least inspired by that country’s take on beer. Thank goodness Costco always seems to offer up Chimay Blue at a reduced price (though still expensive). Chimay Blue is dark, offering up the darker fruit tastes (currents, raisins) with an undercurrent of chocolate. Being Belgian, it has a surprisingly dry finish. Sure, it’s 9.0% ABV. Isn’t that what it’s all about on a holiday?
This holiday I hope to kindle our first fire in the fireplace. It predicts to be 38 at dawn, rising to ‘only’ 59 on a sunny day here in Raleigh, NC. That might qualify, especially if I leave the nearby door open to the outside deck–our cats will certainly want to enjoy the holiday sunshine.
Though we had thought, “hey, let’s do something different,” and purchased a couple brace of quail, the pull of tradition grabbed us. We’ve shelved those quail plans for another day, and in just moments we will plan our menu for the day, knowing it will revolve around a slow-roasted turkey in the oven. Our theme will still be Southern style: the brined shrimp will provide the midday sustenance needed to get to the main meal which will feature either cornbread or grits. A nod to the North will likely occur also. My wife introduced me to the concept of mashed rutabagas (or turnips) instead of potatoes. And the already-planned butternut squash pie still looks like a go. Licking my lips already…..
all the voices in my head 