After a harrowing walk among the fair weather hordes Friday near midday, I stayed in Saturday, and left the apartment by 6 am on Sunday, the time rabbits still nibble on grasses with little wariness and squirrels just begin to scamper.
A warm day already, so it was clear people would be abroad in force, but from 6 to 7, sheer heaven for the solitary walker. Very few people to pass, and very few cars to interfere with walking in the middle of the road anyway. I walked the back and side streets, then up one of the usually busier but now deserted shop streets all with the same bliss.
Morning light.
The air was warming and the birds were quietly going about their business, apart from a couple of Ring-billed Gulls that stood on the edge of usually crowded street lustily disputing a roll of bread. Chimney Swifts silently soared way above, but wait, those must be their chitters I hear, littering the air. A couple of Mourning Doves shot by, a Starling browsing an alley, House Sparrows up to their usual noise and springtime strutting, Pigeons aflutter, ubiquitous Robins seeking their breakfasts on the bits of grass and mud.
Unknown warblers sang above, requiring much patience and binoculars, the latter of which I certainly did not have. But the feeling of spring pervaded thanks to this and all the green and warmth and anticipation in the early morning air. Undercurrent to it, I kept thinking of Rebels & Redcoats, an old historical board game I used to play.
Maybe it was on warm spring like this, I used to go a suburb or two away, to Prosek’s greenhouse and game shop, once I was an older kid and could drive and the shops at the mall Kroch’s and Brentano’s and Hobbytown (or whatever it was called) dried up for board wargames. My mind’s turn to it made me wonder if it was a hint, that that time was the summit of my experience, quietly and excitedly browsing through all of the shrinkwrapped games with their historical enticements and images of maps and tiny square cardboard pieces representing the violent valor of ages past. Despite the mundaneness and evil of war, had there really ever been anything better than the imagination stirred by this intent browsing? I think of a René Magritte painting, Homesickness, when I think of the pride and futility of so much of what humans get up to, and how our better natures turn our backs on such things, but there was still that pull from Rebels & Redcoats and that shop in those early days of my life and that hobby.
I live now in a neighborhood with its own lovely garden center, complete with greenhouse for that luxurious smell of peat and loam or whatever it is, and an appended shop, in this case more a fancy gift shop than wargame and miniatures shop with a war vet guy sitting at the counter wearing a plaid shirt and breathing through tubes attached to an oxygen machine. I remember him telling me he’d game in the evenings, miniature soldiers laid out on lush green tables full of terrain, re-enacting Borodino, Gettysburg, The Bulge—the three battles he said any wargamer worth their salt had simulated.
As I walked down my street home, I found myself singing the chorus of De Sylva, Brown, and Henderson’s “Thank Your Father,” a female Cardinal perused a space of sidewalk, and quite surprising, a pair of Blue Jays with their whistling noise dashed high overhead. I can’t remember seeing Blue Jays around here.
Corot sky and trees, with that lovely sfumato.
When I got to my side street, where my car resides, another toss of a peanut, and a Crow welcoming and taking. Later that day, peering into the garden next door now and then, and the next morning walking out again, Common Yellowthroat, Hermit Thrush, Chickadee singing loudly, House Wren tittering it up and finally being spied when it flew across the street to another shrub. So many, the various summits of our experience.
Posted in My Life's Rich Pageant | Tagged 1920s, 1980s, 1990s, family / friends / personal, nature | Leave a Comment »
Well, it happened, and it had been such a long time since it had happened.
A couple of weeks ago, our current malaise brought me out into Google street views to walk around old neighborhoods I’d lived in and visited—including Australia, where I once took a fateful trip. Although there was a lot of nostalgia in the air during all of those virtual street visits, the feeling didn’t come to me with full force at that time.
The other day, though, I put on Temple of Low Men by Crowded House, and lay down to stretch, or was I standing to play air guitar? “I could feel you underneath my skin / as the wind rushed in, / sent the kitchen table crashing / she said nobody move.”
But it happened. “I Feel Possessed” came on, its pulsing, quavering opening. And by the time I got to the third song, “Into Temptation,” the feeling had settled in and stayed with me for the whole album. Images from my trip to Oz, with my special welcoming committee of one “crazy Aussie/Indo rep” waiting the other side of the customs gauntlet. I’ve never felt that way before or since; no poems written since the aftermath of that era played itself out.
It might have been, “You opened up your door / I couldn’t believe my luck / you in your new blue dress / taking away my breath” that really drove it home, zapped me from above and within. “Into your wide open arms / no way to break this spell.” The warmth I felt then from her, and the warmth I gave her.
Lying back listening, standing up singing along, my mind drifting during the lesser songs that make the excellence of the album even greater sometimes. As it played, there were a bunch of thoughts and feelings, but what predominates is love—it was a pure feeling of love for this person and that time, all happening to me at that moment, and that’s not a bad thing. “Not asking for anything / I just want to be there when it happens again.”
“As I turn to go / you looked at me for half a second.”
More photos here.
Posted in Music, My Life's Rich Pageant | Tagged 1980s, aesthetics / beauty, albums, altie / alternative, family / friends / personal | Leave a Comment »
These days, the mind has time to range every which way in time, and my thoughts recently turned to those who influenced my taste in music. Here are the major ones, all well before I graduated from college.
First must be my dad, who used to strum his acoustic guitar and sing for us from his Sing Out! magazines of folk music. “Big Rock Candy Mountain,” “Reuben James,” “The Wabash Cannonball,” “Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream,” and all of that great stuff. He also spun a lot of Beatles records and turned us on to classical music.
My elementary school music teacher, Mrs. H, with her wide eyes, also stirred classical imaginings in us. Portraits of the great composers graced the wall she stood in front of while she taught us to play “Hot Cross Buns” on the recorder and xylophone, or guided us on the most atmospheric of experiences, the “Danse Macabre” of Saint-Saëns, which we played out every Halloween.
There were her Christmas/Holiday Programs, where each class took their turn on the risers performing a holiday classic, or something new. We sang “Winter Wonderland,” “Jingle Bell Rock,” complete with top hats and white gloves. And in 5th grade, we sang an original composition that started with, “The little lord Jesus asleep on the hay…”. There were feature songs where my clarinet-ing was even allowed; they conjured up images of winter and Hanukkah. After each class performed their song, they filed over to the holiday tree and placed ornaments we’d made in Mrs. S’s art class. Oh the glitter and the glue!
We had songs in our textbooks too, going back to first and second grades, “I’m gonna put put put on my walking shoes / I’m gonna but but button up my coat / I’m gonna walk right across the land there’s lots of things to see / And if you want to you can walk with me / Walk with me, walk with me, walk with………me!”
Classical also benefitted from the Hooked on Classics record series. I had no idea this guy was the conductor and arranger for ELO’s orchestral elements! Melodies still pop into my head and segue into the melodies they segued into on those records, often having no idea what the pieces are. They’re just stamped on my brain.
My mom had her share of influence too, driving us as the did on various errands throughout the day. It was 70s and early 80s radio—Carly Simon, Kool & The Gang, Ambrosia, &c.—that was soundtrack to trips to soccer and tennis lessons, Jewel-Osco, Nichols Library, the Y. Imagine something like this.
We’d stay at my grandparents’ in Ohio, and eventually one got to spinning the records stored indoors or in my grandpa’s workshop attached to the garage. My grandpa might have suggested Louis Armstrong, and he had a few brittle Big Band 78s I still possess, but it was more the records left behind by my aunt and uncles—Chad & Jeremy, Marianne Faithfull, Paul Mauriat, The Kingston Trio that scintillated my ears.
Beautiful cover from the U.S. release of her first album (from discogs.com)
There was also a great double album Glenn Miller memorial collection, opening the way for Big Band music galore a little down the road.
Somehow or another I got to buying 45s and LP records too, gleaned from radio listening. I remember mowing the lawn with my Walkman headphones on my ears, listening to Casey Kasem’s Top 40 countdown. Early MTV had its place too. 104.3 and its oldies; 94.3 and its even olders. The cassettes I recorded direct from radio with songs like “Sugar Shack” by Jimmy Gilmer and The Fireballs and “Cinnamon” by Derek!
Just as important, my friends BB and DH, who got me into rap in a big way. That first tentative buy of Raising Hell by Run-DMC, the sophomoric sonic boom of License To Ill, scouring record shops for discs by spray-paint-scrawl Techno Hop records and the endless appreciation for record scratching, including trying to imitate it. Cool creations by Mantronix. Public Enemy. Some conventionality arose as well, as someone kept playing Milli Vanilli and such things.
One of a few great Techno Hop records (from discogs.com)
Later, as high school ended, a new awakening. Alternative music groups too many to even begin naming. Two seminal, immortal “miscellany” tapes from MD, different schools of thought embodied by EJ, RJ, GU, and the rest. My sister’s equally immortal mix tapes, she and her best friend lending me tapes, copying music for me.
A smattering of tapes from the time
What heady Curefriend days those were! This carried forward into college, accentuated by school breaks and dozens of letters and little packages sent back and forth. And I can’t forget the colorful reference books I inhaled, on British beat groups of the 60s, on alternative rock. I’d just roll the names of the groups and songs over in my head time and again, and sometime was even able to listen to the actual music. A trek to Woodfield Mall to buy (and hear) my first Jam album was one such incident.
What a wonderful time. No wonder my heart and mind still return to it, and all of those that went before.
Oh, and have you voted in the Signac puzzle piece poll yet?
Posted in Music, My Life's Rich Pageant | Tagged 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, altie / alternative, classical music, family / friends / personal, lists | 1 Comment »
One of the cooler conservation organizations out there, the Center for Biological Diversity, sent me a postcard with a beautiful red fox looking at me with the poem “Keeping Quiet” beside. It’s by Pablo Neruda and I hope you’ll read it and mull it over, maybe even recognize it as your natural state, one that seems to have been forced upon many people these days who are so used to unceasing hustling. Without going on about it, I had never read this poem before, and it perfectly reflects the way to combat this gospel of profit margin, of anthropocentric growth, of getting ahead that so pervades human endeavor.
Speaking of celebrating the profitless, have you voted in the Signac puzzle piece poll yet?
I’ve been spending some more time with Divine Discontent by Sixpence None The Richer, listening more closely and associations that were vague now register.
There is the Crowded House cover, track 4, and one that brings to mind Alanis Morissette (5), early late Beatles (10), Bacharach or Alpert (11), and not sure, but someone (12), all delivered with Leigh Nash’s rich vocals and Matt Slocum’s rich orchestration and deft (along with Sean Kelly) guitar playing.
As usual, the best songs are the ones penned by Slocum alone. There’s even a developing “hat trick,” as I call a wonderful succession of three songs that lead off the somber festivities: “Breathe Your Name,” “Tonight,” and “Down and Out of Time.” This last is my favorite song at this point, and one Nash also contributed to.
Slocum’s songwriting remains at the high level of their big hit album, and his vulnerability and confessional knowledge of his own weaknesses remains as well. “I’ve Been Waiting” hooks you in and takes the breath away. “Down and Out of Time” captures some of the song that began their previous album—“We Have Forgotten” has this lashing out: “don’t go, I’ll shoot you down.” “Down and Out of Time” says, “I aim my cannon at you ready or not / You’re gonna feel my pain like it or not.”
There’s no nicer song to sing along with. And it’s perfect for this time when so much is grounded and, despite all the pain for so many, there is much to be found in exactly that—being grounded. “Perhaps this earth can teach us / as when everything seems dead / and later proves to be alive.”
Posted in Music, My Life's Rich Pageant, Non-Music | Tagged 2000s, albums, altie / alternative, hat trick, ideas / philosophy, poetry | Leave a Comment »
I remember little public service announcements for kids with the above title back in the Afterschool Special and Snipets days. This post is about Divine Discontent, an album by Sixpence None The Richer that recently grew on me, melding into my mind in a big way.
I’d been going through albums while working the Signac puzzle, often picking lesser ones in my collection I’d not listened to in a while. These kinds of filler albums are pleasant enough, and sometimes they hurdle themselves into the other category, that of featured listen where I start singing along to every song. Such is Divine Discontent. It’s one of those albums where the song titles aren’t even clear or material, where each song seems like the beginning and finale of the album, beautiful dramas unto themselves. The exception is the respectful cover of Crowded House’s “Don’t Dream It’s Over,” which luckily fits in pretty well. I found myself catching interesting, touching elements in each and every song as I worked on my puzzle.
Sixpence’s eponymous album, from which their hit “Kiss Me” was harvested, is an all-time fave, one I pull out and enjoy every fall. It’s an album with high peaks and a couple of lulls; but it sets a mood immediately and carries it forward throughout—a rare thing. And now something rarer, another album by the same group that almost matches it, the same combination of writing by Matt Slocum and singing by Leigh Nash. Gorgeous avian cover art too.
I have albums by Shelleyan Orphan on a regular seasonal rotation, playing the same one each spring, summer, &c. I wonder if I might end up doing the same for Sixpence None The Richer now that I have fall and spring covered. Have they become a major group for me? We’ll see. It may take a good while, but I’ll be checking out Lost in Transition, The Fatherless & The Widow, Tickets for a Prayer Wheel, and This Beautiful Mess to find out.
Posted in Music | Tagged 1990s, 2000s, albums, altie / alternative | 1 Comment »
Last post I shared a song from Peter & Gordon, a great duo to come out of the British Invasion, music I grew up with despite my age (thank you, Magic 104!). I first heard their songs on the radio, while another duo, Chad & Jeremy was more a product of a record album found at my grandparents’ (thank you, whichever aunt or uncle owned it!).
Chad Stuart, Jeremy Clyde, Peter Asher, and Gordon Waller (of Aberdeenshire, where I once spent considerable time). Two duos, with a maddening amount in common, but I have never heard of any rivalry, or even the two compared, although when Gordon passed away, the remaining three began performing together.
They arose independently of each other, coming along at about the same time. Each had a bespectacled, higher-pitched redheaded member, each a lower-voiced dark-haired one. Chad & Jeremy goofed around on episodes of Batman and the Dick Van Dyke Show, and Peter & Gordon knew the Beatles, thanks to Peter’s sister, Jane, being Paul’s famed pre-Linda romance.
Chad & Jeremy had a more elegant, hushed approach to singing and orchestration, while Peter & Gordon often sinking into overproduced histrionics—“THIS LAND IS MINE!!”—but both had a bunch of wonderful tunes before fading as the decade ended. To get to know them, here are five songs worth checking out from each:
Chad & Jeremy
A Summer Song—One of the finest songs to come out of the British 60s.
Dirty Old Town—A Ewan MacColl song—something you might not expect. And it packs a punch, with its gentle descriptions giving way to menace.
Willow Weep For Me—Meditative, jazzy blue companion to A Summer Song.
Donna, Donna—Another beautiful, defiant folk song.
Can’t Get Used To Losing You—Although they wrote some catchy album tracks, there are so many great covers by this duo, and they made their versions definitive ones. Here’s one from the Andy Williams catalogue that they zipped up a bit, still keeping it touching. Those harmonies, the hummed ending.
Peter & Gordon
Nobody I Know—The slightly poorer cousin of I Go To Pieces, with that same jangly guitar. Its writer makes it noteworthy to some. For me, it’s just a great song in the Billy J. Kramer & The Dakotas mode. They had two other big hits in this vein.
If I Were You—A delectable minor key obscurity where the oboe line reels you in.
Don’t Pity Me—Gordon with some vocals that seem plucked out of late 70s/early 80s post-punk altie times.
Woman—The orchestration works here.
Lady Godiva—While C&J took a psychedelic turn later in their career, P&G went music hall for a spell, much like Herman’s Hermits did for at least half an album. “It’ll be funny,” said Gordon, and he was right. Super catchy too.
And now a splendid, understated bonus track from Chad and Jane Stuart. Jane is Chad’s wife, and she’s not Jane Asher, Peter’s sister! I believe Chad played guitar on this one—I Can’t Talk To You.
I’ve been singing I Go To Pieces and a few of these others for a few days now; thank you for joining me in this reminiscence of two great duos, whether you know them well, or have just discovered them.
Posted in Music | Tagged 1960s, greatest hits, lists | Leave a Comment »
My last post celebrated Paul Signac’s glorious Blessing of the Tuna Fleet at Groix, a puzzle of which I completed not long ago, however long ago it feels.
One thing that made this experience special were the pieces, jigsawed into many shapes and betraying the minute detail that Signac lavished on his work. You can see details in my last post, and here are a few isolated shots that give a small feeling of what it was like as I worked on the puzzle (click to enlarge):
Click the image on the left and take a close look. Which piece do you find the most fascinating? The one that heightens your respect for Signac’s skill? Vote now!
Yes, this post was named after this song by Peter & Gordon. It has one of my favorite openings ever, and apparently was banned for a time after 9/11. We’re not the only decade that knows strange times.
Posted in Non-Music | Tagged aesthetics / beauty, art / paintings, polls | 2 Comments »
A friend of mine was questing for a puzzle the other day, turning up none after combing of her locale. I sent her an eBay link for the one I just completed, Paul Signac’s “Blessing of the Tuna Fleet at Groix,” brought to us by The Minneapolis Institute of Arts and publisher Museum & Wildlife Collections. I very much took my time, snapping a photo from time to time.
It all started in mid-November, building the border, and yes that’s Orange Caramel of “Lipstick” fame, a poster underneath a sheet of plastic. It was hard not to buy a CD when visiting Seoul without having posters and other ephemera thrust upon one. Cute.
11/17/19
My parents love puzzles these days, board games having been usurped, and my late uncle did them for many years, getting hooked on them during a hospital stay—he had a special affinity for 1,000 piece ones, which I find rather amazing.
Work progressed bit by bit, and a month later:
12/18/19
On two card tables in the second bedroom, I worked to music and a lot of singing resulted. It was a great way to enjoy my whole music collection. And I even fit some pieces together.
2/11/20
In mid-March, a certain album revealed itself to me in a depth I’d never noticed as rapid progress was made.
Until all was complete:
3/19/20
How satisfying! It’s hard to imagine wanting to do a different puzzle. This one is perfect, with insight into classic art in an Impressionist, semi-Pointillist style where each piece sheds light on the artist’s loving detail, plus the pieces are cut in a huge variety, so it’s exciting to track them down and piece them together. I’ll probably take some board games for a spin next, but I am tempted to just take the puzzle apart and then start all over again!
Posted in Non-Music | Tagged aesthetics / beauty, art / paintings | 1 Comment »
stevesunusual...music and more 