I attempted to explain that turning 90 degrees would align his body with the patch of sunlight, but Benny was having none of it. Either he’s indifferent or simply doesn’t understand geometry. I’m going with indifferent. July 2024.
6th grade was better…
About a month ago I posted about how 1966 proved seminal in my life for appreciating music, a year when I ‘woke up’ musically. Virtually every song in the Top Ten made me smile and say, “yeah…” and almost every one of them wound up on a 1966 playlist. Today I thought, “let’s see what 1972 held for me as I approached graduation from high school.” Holy. Crap. No wonder I felt adrift for much of the year–and I had thought it could be chalked up to teenaged ennui. In the Top Ten for the first week of January I encountered artists I still don’t like more than 50 years later: the really young Michael Jackson; David Cassidy; Donny Osmond. One song I had never heard before today: “Scorpio” by Dennis Coffey and the Detroit Guitar Band. I did get to add the top four songs to my new list: “Brand New Key” by Melanie; “American Pie (Parts 1 and 2) by Don McLean; “Family Affair” by Sly and the Family Stone; and “An Old Fashioned Love Song” by Three Dog Night.
By the second week of January the Top 40 contained two versions of “I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing (In Perfect Harmony)” now known forevermore as The Coke Song. A last gasp Sonny and Cher song, “All I Ever Need Is You” didn’t make the cut. Likewise anything by The Stylistics, Al Green, and who the heck is Betty Wright? Thankfully other artists were riding high or coming into their own: Van Morrison, Rod Stewart, Rare Earth, Three Dog Night, Bread, Grand Funk, The Who, T. Rex, and Elton John. Oh, yeah, and this group called Led Zeppelin put out its fourth album. “Black Dog” hit the January 8th chart.
It will be interesting to continue through the year. I distinctly remember Alice Cooper put out “I’m Eighteen” when I turned 18 myself. Just after graduation I picked up a free copy of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars wondering who the heck this David Bowie guy was. At least there’s that to look forward too. Oh, and Neil Young…and Humble Pie…hmmm…maybe this won’t be so sad after all.
The annual lily surprise
Every year this lily pops out in the middle of a row of azaleas, bringing a surprised smile. July 2024.
I’ve been thinking about Pop Music a bit the past week or two, prompted by being forced to listen to my wife’s choice of music in our car one day. It’s some “hits of the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s” piece of something-or-other…unless you like that sort of thing, then it’s a wonderful FM station which plays all the greatest songs you know and love. I’ve assiduously avoided listening to radio from the first opportunity I had to not listen to it, sometime in my late teens or early 20’s. I suppose some readers don’t understand what I’m talking about. Through high school we listened to music in two places, basically: cars and our bedrooms. We had AM radio in the cars and vinyl records in our bedrooms. If you really got into it and had deep pockets, you bought a big Wollensak reel-to-reel tape machine, but if you were a wannabe like my brother and me, you bought a cheap little portable recorder and stuck the painfully crappy microphone in front of a tiny transistor radio speaker to record “off the air”.
In small-market Spokane only two radio stations catered to young people and their shocking tastes in music: KNEW (neé KJRB by the time I left high school), and KXLY. All popular music of whatever genre mixed freely on these stations. No FM station played popular music until around the time I entered college when KREM-FM suddenly started an “underground” playlist. Underground radio featured stoned out DJ’s: “Hi, I’m John. Yeah. We’ll be playing some heavy tunes for a while. I hope you like them.” We programmed the buttons on the radio–oh Lord, do I have to explain how car radios worked back then? Those too?–to the two AM stations and became adept at punching the button for whichever one wasn’t playing a song we loathed, which happened frequently. You’ll understand in another paragraph.
But back to that moment a week ago when I listened to many songs I hadn’t heard in years. The one which sticks in my head is “If This Is It” by Huey Lewis and the News. I’m going to hate myself for looking that up and reminding my brain about it: I had a viral ear-worm for days after hearing that song. It’s not that I don’t appreciate Mr Lewis, it’s that I don’t particularly like that specific song. “I Wanna New Drug” has sentiment I can get behind. “The Heart of Rock & Roll” zips along quite nicely. But a slow near-ballad which basically says, “do you see this going where I think it’s going” struck me then and continues to as ridiculously mundane. Maybe you like it. Fine, you’re entitled because we all ask music to deliver different things and if the song delivers, great…for you. I like absolutely stupid songs because of a bass line or because the singer’s voice seems to mock the very words being sung, or because it has a frenetic beat, or a multitude of other reasons. I’m not going to mention two extremely popular groups which demographics say I should love, and I can’t stand them. I lost a friend over that once.
Listening to my wife’s radio station, I had a startling realization. I had been getting pretty egotistic about how broad my musical horizons are. I like country, blues, rock, blues-rock, folk, world/ethnic, jazz of various ilks, classical, a little bit of hip-hop and…pop. My enforced listening session in the car showed me I don’t really like pop per se, I like it very selectively. I protested to myself about all that pop music I liked from my youth. That’s when it hit me: we like all those songs which formed us as we left childhood, negotiated adolescence, and became adults. After that? Not so much. We went in different directions. Some folks I’ve met never went anywhere. They only listen to songs from the oeuvre when they were 10-25.
Today proves my point. Yesterday I finished chores and declared it to be Birthday Week. I’ve decided one day isn’t big enough to handle 70 years. Until Tuesday June 11th, I’m celebrating. Today unfolded at a leisurely pace, pointed toward some music listening, writing, and a Phillies game. I decided to listen to music from the beginning of my listening life, and then realized “the beginning” eludes definition. I settled for the year my pre-teen fan-tasy grew into musical appreciation: 1966. Until then I’d focused on whatever TV and radio served up: The Beatles, early The Rolling Stones, The Monkees. In 1965 my brother and I began buying a few different bands on 45rpm records, and in 1966 I got my first 33rpm LP, The Young Rascals. It coincided with my birthday and the end of the school year. I ran out of the schoolroom never to return to elementary school, and I ran into adolescence with a newfound appreciation for the melding of pop, soul, and rock which had started to occur.
I decided to re-introduce myself to 1966 by looking at the Top 40 lists for the year and selecting songs to listen to from it. Locating a wonderful site called Top 40 Weekly, I selected 1966 to be presented with the Top 40 chart for every single week in 1966! Wow. Here’s the beginning of the first one from January of that year:
Top 40 Weekly’s chart for the beginning of 1966.
This proves my point. (Of course, it’s self-referential, but nevermind.) I look at the first song and start singing the lyrics. I look at the second one and smile and hear Paul singing the title words. Likewise with #3 and #4. I’ll admit #5 threw me for a minute–I’m more familiar with “Catch Us If You Can” by that group, as heard on the Lloyd Thaxton show. Giving it a play, though, it came back to mind. How about #6? Check. And #7? Check. Not until #8 did I say to myself, “punch the button.” I like a few Righteous Brothers songs, but they carried a crooning 50’s style of music into the 60’s, and it didn’t play well. But who can’t smile listening to #9?
Then we hit #10. Lord knows how Eddy Arnold managed to get a charting song out of that number. I felt the revulsion rise up. Today’s form of button-pushing, the skip-track button on the streaming service came into play quickly. The remaining songs? I smiled again at #11; sang the lyrics to #12 with my wife; and wondered how #’s 13 and 14 got on the list. I don’t recall ever hearing them. The Shangri-Las managed to push out a charting song in 1966? You gotta admire that, even if the song was horrible. (I never heard that one either.) Gary Lewis’s song typified his talentless group, but made me remember “This Diamond Ring” so it wasn’t worthless. I couldn’t find #17 on Tidal, and then a relaxed wide smile–the Beatles again. Before there were LP’s in my life, there were 45’s:
Both songs in the top 20 starting January 1966.
I couldn’t find Ramsey Lewis Trio’s version of “Hang On Sloopy” and wonder what the heck a jazz trio could’ve done with The McCoys’ big hit. The Beach Boys were a selective thing for me, and #20 didn’t hit the spot. I continued through the list until I hit #40. It kinda made the whole journey worthwhile: “Lies” by The Knickerbockers. I loved that song; still do. They had another great one as shown at the top of this post.
The final 45 I bought occurred in 1976. I bought it only because I knew I would never like the album, but I wanted the song for posterity’s sake:
“The king is dead but not forgotten…this is a song about Johnny Rotten” –from “My My, Hey Hey” by Neil Young.
Our musical likes have more to do with where we grew up and what we listened to at the time, than anything objectively wonderful about the music. We like what we like, and we don’t what we don’t. Objective criticism fails precisely because it rejects subjectivity. Do I like “bad” songs? You bet. Do I dislike “good” ones? True. Are you totally inexplicable to me because you like “A White Shade Of Pale”? Abso-effing-lutely.
A very happy Epiphany to y’all. I’ll refer you to many other sources online which will explain all the nuances of the day–suffice to say it generally is associated with the Three Wise Men/Three Kings who visited the Christ Child a bit after his birth. Think gold, frankincense, and myrrh. For me it means I listen to Amahl and the Night Visitors, a one-act opera by Gian Carlo Menotti. In it, Amahl is a young boy, lame, who no longer watches sheep because his mother and he are so poor that she has sold the sheep to buy food. There is no father. They are visited by the three wise men who are on their way to Bethlehem. Amahl’s mother is unable to withstand temptation with all that gold, and she takes a piece whereupon she is caught. All is quickly forgiven, Amahl experiences a miracle healing, and he receives his mother’s permission to accompany the three kings on the rest of their journey so that he can pay homage to Jesus (and presumably give thanks for being healed).
This opera amazes me, not because of its performance (which I love) but because in 1951 NBC commissioned it, by the “director of NBC’s new opera programming” no less! Imagine that. Today reality TV masquerades as intentional, thoughtful programming; 70 years ago, NBC not only telecast an opera but commissioned it. I have listened to this on or around Epiphany every year for more than 30 years after I purchased it from the Musical Heritage Society in the late 80’s. My version is the 1986 London production which occurred under Menotti’s supervision, and which I digitized during the Great Musical Digitization Project I performed on my music from 2006-2014. (Eight years? In my defense there was a lot of music, and I kept buying more. In fact, I have a few hundred recordings which never made it, mostly jazz and classical.) Imagine my distress when I couldn’t locate this file on my computer today. Something must have happened–files do corrupt for various reasons–and I deleted it? I had to ‘make do’ with the version I found on Tidal which featured the original cast of the NBC telecast shown on Christmas Eve in 1951. I couldn’t determine if it was the actual broadcast or just “featured” those performers. If you go looking for it, the director of this recording was Thomas Schippers. It was very good, but not as good as the one I purchased in 1987 or 1988 from MHS. The latter has clearer vocals which make the words easier to understand. In my opinion, it also features a bit more drama in the performances.
This is an opera for children because it tries to recapture my own childhood. You see, when I was a child I lived in Italy, and in Italy we have no Santa Claus. I suppose that Santa Claus is much too busy with American children to be able to handle Italian children as well. Our gifts were brought to us by the Three Kings, instead.
I actually never met the Three Kings—it didn’t matter how hard my little brother and I tried to keep awake at night to catch a glimpse of the Three Royal Visitors, we would always fall asleep just before they arrived. But I do remember hearing them. I remember the weird cadence of their song in the dark distance; I remember the brittle sound of the camel’s hooves crushing the frozen snow; and I remember the mysterious tinkling of their silver bridles.
Gian-Carlo Menotti, from the liner notes to the original cast recording (Wikipedia)
I miss MHS. It would usually take obscure or under-appreciated (but very decent) recordings, add its own liner notes, and press them. In addition to Amahl and the Night Visitors I purchased many wonderful albums of Christmas music alone: A Tapestry of Carols by Maddy Prior and the Carnival Band, listed first because it is my absolute favorite Christmas album; Christmas Carols by the Scottish National Orchestra, rated by several critics as one of the best Christmas albums ever; Christmas Now Is Drawing Nigh by Sneaks Noyse, an attempt to recreate what the carols sounded like centuries ago; Carols from New College by the Choir of New College, Oxford; Merry Christmas by the Vienna Boys Choir; and A Festival of Christmas which appears to be a combination of two commercial albums, one by the Huddersfield Choral Society and one by The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir.
And so we bid goodbye to Christmastide and Epiphany. In a moment, I shall pray for all those who enter our house and chalk that blessing on the lintel of our front door. I’m not worried about getting the decorations down before sundown: they will start to come down tomorrow. And we will segue into Ordinary Time, an odd naming for the time which is neither Lent/Easter- or Advent/Christmas-oriented. Bless you all who come through the virtual doorway to this blog.
…gave to me…we’re going with drummers drumming which have occupied ninth through twelfth places in all versions of the past century. In 1980 I attended a Japanese Festival at the Seattle Center. The highlight for me occurred with a show of taiko drumming which had been preceded with a film about the religious origins of the drumming-based music. It’s impossible to describe it other than to say it was a lot of drumming.
Small and medium-sized taiko drums with drummers. Seattle, 1980.Largest taiko drum with two drummers who do not always beat the same rhythm if I recall correctly. Seattle 1980.
—no, wait! I’m not Eastern rite. I can’t just reorient the Twelve Days to suit my fancy, even if it does seem a bit ambiguous who really counts Christmas as Day One and who doesn’t. We’re going to have to acknowledge the Fourth Day of Christmas too. Hmmmmm…..
On the Third Day of Christmas someone brought to me:
Commemorative T-shirt design for my wife’s birthday. August 2018.
When I met the woman who became my wife, I knew (vaguely) that she possessed triplet sisters. One of them sang in the choir with us, after all, and the day I got to know my wife for the first time, I also spent time with that sister and her fiancée. My new-found love interest wouldn’t let me meet her family for weeks because it’s large: one of eight children who by that point were all having children too. We’re nearing the 30th anniversary of that meeting. I’m used to the triplets now, and I like everything about them (almost–their ability to slip into a ‘triplet-speak’ that’s difficult to understand remains a bit off-putting). All three gathered on our back deck in 2018 with tiaras and T’s, firmly convinced the slogan on the front told the truth. At least it’s better than their 50th birthday slogan: “150 Years of Perfection”!
For “four” I’m going with “Four Day Creep” performed by Humble Pie on their album Performance Rockin’ The Fillmore: The Complete Recordings. I discovered this complete version this year to my delight. The original took performances from four distinct shows over two days and ‘smooshed’ them onto one album. “Four Day Creep” gets the billing here because it’s the first song of each set, there are four sets, and the song has a decidedly different treatment in each performance. Here’s one of the three other performances I experienced. Turn it up. No, really up. “upper” than that. There ya go. (you’re going to need a tissue–your ears are bleeding.)
Anecdotal backstory: my first real roommate at college–I ditched the first one–name of Motorhead, introduced me to the Humble Pie Performance album. Being from New Jersey, he had attended a Humble Pie concert. “They had these big Altec Lansing Voice of the Theatre speakers,” he said. “You know those? Just like the little ones with the two curved cuts to the front plates? These suckers were so big you could crawl inside of them…which the junkies did. The sheer volume of the bass would vibrate them out and they’d crawl back in!” Yeah. I remember stuff like that. As you listen to the song above, hopefully at a loud volume on a sound system with large speakers, imagine being inside a speaker while the songs were played.
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.
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….
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.
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….
…kinda reminds me of that time I tried to drive a car while tripping…had to pull over and say to my friends, “I can’t tell which one is the traffic light, guys.”
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.
This has nothing to do with the Rolling Stones except it’s stone–so there’s that.
I’m listening to Hackney Diamonds the new release by The Rolling Stones as fed to me by Tidal’s FLAC version. It’s stunning considering the age of the performers. I get a little bit of Black and Blue out of some of it, but several of the tracks just rock, straight ahead, ma’am, thanks. I hear a nice big fat and fuzzy bass on “Bite My Head Off” and whaddaya know? It’s Sir Paul McCartney on that one! I like that Keith Richards gets to sing “Tell Me Straight.” Lady Gaga joins them on “Sweet Sounds Of Heaven”…and Mick Jagger sounds just as good at bending a blues note as he ever did. (Reminds me a bit of JJ Grey & Mofro.) Look at the credits for this one! Stevie Wonder on piano? Ronnie Wood on guitar and backing vocals? Keith is playing bass? Oh HALE YEAH! And what a great tribute to their roots at the end of the album: “Rolling Stone Blues” by Muddy Waters, most of it performed with just an acoustic guitar and a harmonica.
When the album was announced, I read that this is the first studio album of original material since A Bigger Bang. “Surely that can’t be right,” I thought. “I listened to a new album in the last ten years or so.” Ah, but that was a bunch of blues covers, not original stuff (Blue & Lonesome, 2016). Shee-it. I was stuck in yet another unsatisfying job in 2005, the year that one came out. I had no inkling I was headed to North Carolina, that two more tension-producing jobs awaited, or that I would score a professional jackpot by entering the consulting world. Eighteen years is a long time, even for old people…like me and the Rolling Stones. (Maybe I should write a memoir called that–except I came to the Stones late.)
Whatever. It’s Rolling Stones Retrospective this afternoon. Streaming Aftermath which starts with these: “Paint It, Black”, “Stupid Girl” [the B-side to Paint It, Black if I recall correctly], “Lady Jane”, and “Under My Thumb”. There are signature movements in the music industry–Big Band, Rock N Roll, Hip Hop–and I’m glad to have grown up with one. Cheers, folks.
all the voices in my head 