In my posts these last few weeks, I've been somewhat flippant, while also being reflective about my own life. Call it smartass solipsism, which I do really well, I think. But while writing those pieces, about profanity, about aging, about Neanderthal attitudes towards sex and human rights, I came across a sentence that absolutely stunned and floored me. In an article in The New Yorker that shines a bright light on Rape Culture, epidemic around the world, about the horrible and horrifying rape case in Steubenville, Ohio (Dean Martin's hometown, btw) in 2012, in which a 16 year old girl became intoxicated and went to several parties where various social media captured images of her being carried around while passed out, and many texts and Tweets discussed whether she had or had not been raped and otherwise violated while being totally incapacitated, came a paragraph which said, among other things, that one in five American women have been raped or experienced attempted rape, and that approximately 25% of women in the US armed forces have been sexually assaulted. The stat that hit me the hardest, though, says that, "Worldwide, women between fifteen and forty-four are more likely to be injured or die from male violence than from traffic accidents, cancer, malaria, and the effects of war combined (my emphasis)."
We live in a culture which simultaneously exalts women sexually and almost totally dismisses their value as whole human beings. If they aren't "pretty" or "hot," then they must be prepared to be "good sports" whenever male conversation turns to those attributes in others; they must smile and accept that they may not fit mass (male) culture's definitions of what is valuable and desirable, no matter how smart, talented or able in any field or facet of society they may be. Beauty and sex appeal, after all, are paramount in a male-dominated society, and if you ain't got 'em by acclamation, then you really don't exist.
What frustrates, embarrasses and infuriates me the most is, I guess, the fact that all men have mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers and beyond in the past, and most have aunts, sisters, girlfriends, wives, daughters and on and on through the generations, and yet we can so easily revere our own women progenitors while we simultaneously objectify, violate and ignore/dismiss the mothers, wives, daughters, etc. of others. Zen Buddhism holds that one way enlightenment can be achieved is by holding two contradictory thoughts in the mind simultaneously; I'm pretty sure that our misogynistic attitudes aren't what they had in mind.
I'm uncomfortable, as a product of that beauty/sexual-desirability-above-all-other attributes culture, to be writing about it: what the hell do I really know about what it means, or feels like? Nonetheless, I'm forging ahead. I'm also iffy about selecting songs that address women's issues and struggles; many were written by men and, however good their intentions, can't possibly get to the core of what it means to be a woman today or, for that matter, any day. And some of them likely flat-out miss the point entirely. Even a song by a woman, like Sippie Wallace's "Women Be Wise," sung by Bonnie Raitt, is concerned with women being careful about talking about how great their man is, lest he be stolen by another woman; hardly seems like a feminist anthem, and yet.... Nevertheless, here goes: the songs I'm playing this week are
Covenant Woman Bob Dylan
Woman's Intuition Ben Arnold
Mysterious Woman Christine Lavin
She's A Woman Jeff Beck
Woman's Got Soul Curtis Mayfield
Mojo Woman Mose Allison
Woman's Work Tracy Chapman
The Woman's Boat Toni Childs
Superwoman Stevie Wonder
Ain't I A Woman Rory Block
Man Smart, Woman Smarter Robert Palmer
I'm A Woman Maria Muldaur
Woman Of The Phoenix Nancy Griffith
Woman's Lament Maria Muldaur
Happy Woman Blues Lucinda Williams
Woman Of Heart And Mind Joni Mitchell
Woman Is The Nigger Of The World John Lennon
A Woman Left Lonely Janis Joplin
Women John Stewart
Women In War Danny Thompson
Women Who Cheat On The World Tanita Tikaram
Men And Women Tanita Tikaram
Women Will Rule The World Ry Cooder
Women And Men Josh Rouse
Women Be Wise Bonnie Raitt
Women's Love Rights Laura Lee
Do Right Woman, Do Right Man Aretha Franklin
A Woman Of The World Laura Nyro
Mighty Tight Woman Bonnie Raitt
Any Day Woman Bonnie Raitt
A Woman, A Lover, A Friend Booker T. & The MG's
(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman Carole King
Ain't No Woman (Like The One I've Got) The Four Tops
Hope to see you on the radio, Tuesday from noon til two at WOOL.fm.
And, even though the five top elective offices in NH, for example, are held by women, just imagine the sort of stuff Hillary's gonna have to contend with in 2016....
Sunday, August 25, 2013
Sunday, August 18, 2013
Unnatural Axe; Looks Like Saw T'Me
Ken Cuccinelli is running for governor of Virginia. He's a Republican. If he is elected--and he is right now neck-and-neck, as it were, with the likely Democratic nominee--then Virginia will have to, among other things, change its unofficial state motto. Virginia will not be for lovers, or at least not for un-policed, unregulated lovers.
Ken Cuccinelli, you see, is another one of those politicians who wants to get government out of our lives, except where he thinks it should be firmly and deeply (foreshadowing, there) in our lives. And in Cuccinelli's case, as is true for so many Republicans, where they want the government to be involved is in our bedrooms, or at least in our sex lives. Cuccinelli has vowed that, if elected governor (he is currently VA's attorney general [!]), he will work to enact a law that will make oral sex a felony, under any circumstances--consensual, between married couples, between humans and animals (well, you know that that's what same-sex marriage is bound to lead us to, right?). And this view is unconstitutional even according to this Supreme Court (Scalia, Alioto, Thomas, et al), of course. It doesn't matter to Ken: he just wants it all to be illegal.
There is obviously so much room here for satire, parody, incredulity and fear that one hardly knows where to begin. About the only place I want to go with this, I think, is the scene in Woody Allen's classic film Manhattan, wherein Allen's character eavesdrops on a conversation among a group of women at a tony Manhattan soiree and hears one woman tell the group that she finally had an orgasm, but "my doctor told me it was the wrong kind." Woody's character interjects--or maybe ejaculates--that "my worst one was right on the money." Which leads one (at least me) naturally to marvel at how anyone who had ever experienced the wonders and pleasures in those certain acts could even consider banning them, which leads to "well, maybe his experience was bad," which leads back to the lines cited above, and around, and around.
Do you wonder, as I do, how such a law would be enforced? Is it really a jobs-creation plan couched in Puritanically moralistic views (we'd hire cops to peer in every window and door of every building everywhere), or a creative new use for the burgeoning drone technology (a mechanical hummeringbird hovering outside every aperture)? Whichever, Cooch (can we use that as a nickname for him?) may be ahead of the curve or, hopefully more likely, about to crash head-on (foreshadowing, or simply self-reference) into it.
Cuccinelli claims that his intent was to restrict the law's application to minors, in hopes of using it as a weapon against child pornographers. That's a noble goal, but Please: if you Google him and see his track record in espousing various extreme right-wing views, your suspicions, at least, ought to be aroused. As Scottish sociologist R.M. MacIver (no, it wasn't MLK Jr. or any other more contemporary thinkers who said it, in spite of what we may believe) wrote, in 1926, "Law cannot prescribe morality." I always thought of it as "You can't legislate morality;" close, but sometimes no cigar is just no cigar.
So, while I really can't discuss the theme of this week's show openly on the air (Damn you, FCC), can just play the songs and let the listener figure it out, you, faithful reader, will be privy to the secret. Here are the songs I've chosen for this week's show:
Chelsea Hotel #2 Leonard Cohen
Head Prince
Head moe.
Head and Heart John Martyn
Head Keeper Dave Mason
Heads or Tails Booker T. & The MG's
Down on Me Janis Joplin
Jeepster T.Rex
Walk On The Wild Side Lou Reed
I Got The News Steely Dan
Going Down Jeff Beck Group
Don't Bite The Head NRBQ
Ol' 55 Tom Waits
Going Down Slowly Pointer Sisters
Golden Rollin' Belly John Stewart
Go Down Easy John Martyn
Summer Child John Stewart
Pearl Necklace ZZ Top
Sucker Like You Ben Sidran
You Go To My Head Chet Baker
Water With The Wine Joan Armatrading
Blow Away George Harrison
Crush Dave Matthews Band
Mouth Full Of Suck Dirk hamilton
You Run Your Mouth (I'll Run My Business) Joe Jackson
Open Mouth Kaki King
Goin' Down For The Third Time Phoebe Snow
Goin' Down Slow Howlin' Wolf
I'm Goin' Down Bruce Springsteen
Maybe it's simply a case of arrested development, maybe I'm just reacting to the passage of my life, but I think, in spite of the apparent ludicrousness of this story, that there's a serious issue here to think about, regarding who gets to tell us how to live. If we want government out of our lives, it's got to be across-the-board, doesn't it? Anyway, I hope you can join me on Tuesday from noon till two on wool.fm.
Oh, just read the second part of the post's title quickly....
Ken Cuccinelli, you see, is another one of those politicians who wants to get government out of our lives, except where he thinks it should be firmly and deeply (foreshadowing, there) in our lives. And in Cuccinelli's case, as is true for so many Republicans, where they want the government to be involved is in our bedrooms, or at least in our sex lives. Cuccinelli has vowed that, if elected governor (he is currently VA's attorney general [!]), he will work to enact a law that will make oral sex a felony, under any circumstances--consensual, between married couples, between humans and animals (well, you know that that's what same-sex marriage is bound to lead us to, right?). And this view is unconstitutional even according to this Supreme Court (Scalia, Alioto, Thomas, et al), of course. It doesn't matter to Ken: he just wants it all to be illegal.
There is obviously so much room here for satire, parody, incredulity and fear that one hardly knows where to begin. About the only place I want to go with this, I think, is the scene in Woody Allen's classic film Manhattan, wherein Allen's character eavesdrops on a conversation among a group of women at a tony Manhattan soiree and hears one woman tell the group that she finally had an orgasm, but "my doctor told me it was the wrong kind." Woody's character interjects--or maybe ejaculates--that "my worst one was right on the money." Which leads one (at least me) naturally to marvel at how anyone who had ever experienced the wonders and pleasures in those certain acts could even consider banning them, which leads to "well, maybe his experience was bad," which leads back to the lines cited above, and around, and around.
Do you wonder, as I do, how such a law would be enforced? Is it really a jobs-creation plan couched in Puritanically moralistic views (we'd hire cops to peer in every window and door of every building everywhere), or a creative new use for the burgeoning drone technology (a mechanical hummeringbird hovering outside every aperture)? Whichever, Cooch (can we use that as a nickname for him?) may be ahead of the curve or, hopefully more likely, about to crash head-on (foreshadowing, or simply self-reference) into it.
Cuccinelli claims that his intent was to restrict the law's application to minors, in hopes of using it as a weapon against child pornographers. That's a noble goal, but Please: if you Google him and see his track record in espousing various extreme right-wing views, your suspicions, at least, ought to be aroused. As Scottish sociologist R.M. MacIver (no, it wasn't MLK Jr. or any other more contemporary thinkers who said it, in spite of what we may believe) wrote, in 1926, "Law cannot prescribe morality." I always thought of it as "You can't legislate morality;" close, but sometimes no cigar is just no cigar.
So, while I really can't discuss the theme of this week's show openly on the air (Damn you, FCC), can just play the songs and let the listener figure it out, you, faithful reader, will be privy to the secret. Here are the songs I've chosen for this week's show:
Chelsea Hotel #2 Leonard Cohen
Head Prince
Head moe.
Head and Heart John Martyn
Head Keeper Dave Mason
Heads or Tails Booker T. & The MG's
Down on Me Janis Joplin
Jeepster T.Rex
Walk On The Wild Side Lou Reed
I Got The News Steely Dan
Going Down Jeff Beck Group
Don't Bite The Head NRBQ
Ol' 55 Tom Waits
Going Down Slowly Pointer Sisters
Golden Rollin' Belly John Stewart
Go Down Easy John Martyn
Summer Child John Stewart
Pearl Necklace ZZ Top
Sucker Like You Ben Sidran
You Go To My Head Chet Baker
Water With The Wine Joan Armatrading
Blow Away George Harrison
Crush Dave Matthews Band
Mouth Full Of Suck Dirk hamilton
You Run Your Mouth (I'll Run My Business) Joe Jackson
Open Mouth Kaki King
Goin' Down For The Third Time Phoebe Snow
Goin' Down Slow Howlin' Wolf
I'm Goin' Down Bruce Springsteen
Maybe it's simply a case of arrested development, maybe I'm just reacting to the passage of my life, but I think, in spite of the apparent ludicrousness of this story, that there's a serious issue here to think about, regarding who gets to tell us how to live. If we want government out of our lives, it's got to be across-the-board, doesn't it? Anyway, I hope you can join me on Tuesday from noon till two on wool.fm.
Oh, just read the second part of the post's title quickly....
Sunday, August 11, 2013
Onanistic Exegesis
Way back in the day--Sept. 16, 2012, to be precise--I mentioned, in a post titled "I Never Meta-Post...," that one of my earlier posts was going to be used in a textbook called 21 Genres and How to Write Them, written by a former colleague of mine at UNH who is now the Director of the Composition Program at Utah State U. And lo, it came to pass. Then a couple of weeks ago I had a note from the author, Brock Dethier, asking if I'd gotten the book. As I was responding about how cool it felt to be published, I got a second note from him which said "I think it was only in the teachers' edition that we called blogging "verbal masturbation." Maybe I didn't feel so cool, after all.
So, as my now former friend (aw, that's probably too harsh--besides, I'm not quite sure how blogging differs from any other type of writing in that regard, unless maybe you're writing grants for orphanages or leper colonies) would have it, I'm gonna pleasure myself on the page again, about my favorite topic: me. They always tell you to write about yourself, and even if they don't, you do, you know.
I told you last week that I'm turning 60, and spent some time reflecting about what's happened in the time I've been here, and I touched on the way technology has changed music delivery systems, but not really about music itself. This week, then, that.
My friend Mike Kolodziej (the younger), who is 30ish, has remarked on the fact that my generation was really the Golden Age of sport, with, really, the most talented (non-juiced) athletes, greatest coaches, innovations, and individual games of any period in history. I tend to agree with that, and I feel similarly, probably even more strongly, about what happened in music when I was growing up.
Basically, the world exploded. In just a couple of years we went from the white-buck wearing, Brylcreem-coiffed Pat Boones (who were of course ripping off the scary black creators of the music, like and especially Little Richard) who made that threatening "race music" safe as milk, as Don Van Vliet had it, to people like Dion, who had an edge and some street cred, to the British Invasion. Suddenly all of these scary "long haired" thugs like The Beatles (and really, check out photos of them from 1964, when they'd been Brian Epsteined into suits and boots--people really found them threatening!?), and the Rolling Stones (okay, maybe you're a little more careful wif yer daughters around those blokes) and The Animals ( I totally get why parents were freaked by Eric Burdon) showed up, and things turned upside down.
My first favorite record was "Eustace the Useless Rabbit," about which I remember nothing but the title and the fact that I played it incessantly, followed in fairly short order by "Big Bad John," "The Monster Mash," and "Dream Lover." I like to think that my taste soon became a little hipper, if not more sophisticated. But music was always there in my life; it was my first-- and remains, I think, my only--addiction.
Music set me free, let me travel from my provincial, prosaic, bourgeois small-town upbringing both physically, in some senses but, more importantly, spiritually/emotionally--or at least travel as much as I could, and as much as I dared. I was not, am not, personally adventurous, and I'm at something of a loss to know why. But I'd buy an album or two every week, pore over the liner notes, know every band member, backup singer (you all have to see "20 Feet From Stardom," the new documentary about the life of the backup singer--people like Darlene Love, Merry Clayton ("rape, murder, it's just a shot away" from Gimme Shelter) and Claudia Lennear (the inspiration for "Brown Sugar," whose names I saw on, it seemed, every album from the late sixties to the late seventies), producer, engineer, you name it. And what was really interesting to me, and cool and frustrating at the same time, was that my friends were always a week behind. We'd hang out, I'd put on a new album, and they'd say "This sucks; play that album from last week." The next week, same conversation, but then they were asking for that album they'd hated the previous week but I'd forced them to listen to.
I always had that sense of contradiction from my musical addiction, of apartness and connection: always hungry for more, for different, yet able and willing to connect through shared likes. And though music fed and completed me somehow, it was only through listening to the records and sounds made by others. I never had the discipline or, likely, talent to learn to play anything myself. I lived an exciting, excited and vicarious life in the realm of rock 'n' roll.
And maybe that's why I found particularly compelling those songs which exposed people's raw nerves, heartaches, and even self-loathing. When Adam Duritz sings "I am an idiot walking a tightrope of fortune and fame," when Van Morrison interjects "I can't stand myself," when Neil Young says "All my problems are meaningless, but that don't make them go away," I could be right there, I could live with them through that: the need for expression, connection, communication, and the fear that it's not enough, it's never enough, and maybe, worst of all, it's not good enough. The hero never gets the girl, or the boy, or the dog, or whatever, no matter how deserving: the world just doesn't see it.
And all of that fed me as I sat in my room, listening to the words and sounds and thoughts and ideas and lives of others, a smalltown middle class white kid filled with all of these feelings and desires and unable (read: "afraid") to live a life of daring and difference myself. I should have left home in 1969, gone to Woodstock or Laurel Canyon or San Francisco, but I didn't have the guts. I seem to have been born with the soul and sensibilities of an artist, but without any artistic abilities. And that's not a good combination. But records, and my total immersion in them, let me, at least temporarily, slough off those psychological shackles and chains that, in a way I can't say, bound a soul I can't define.
In 1977, I discovered an album by a now-unknown group, The Alpha Band, which was made up of a few members of Dylan's Rolling Thunder Review (the one name you may recognize is T-Bone Burnett, who has gone on to quite a nice career, primarily as a producer), which I grew to love and two of whose songs I include here--including lyrics. Why the lyrics of these two? Not sure, except that I think that they showed the sort of thought and expression that I dug. And dig.
Born In Captivity
Born in captivity
Born in captivity
Born in captivity
We're all born in captivity
Born in captivity
They make you stand in line for the first grade
They make you kneel in the hall to the air raid
They say the saucer's coming any day
To take you and all your friends away
But thirty times it never comes
And still the natives beat the drums
And we're born in captivity
We're all born in captivity
Yes, we're born in captivity
Cossack children of the bourgeoisie
And they burn their images in your brain
And tell you what is valuable
Till it all looks pretty much the same
And you are totally malleable
And it works like magic on everyone
'Cause the camera's mightier than the cannon
And we're born in captivity
We're all born in captivity
And we're born in captivity
Cossack children of the bourgeoisie
Awaiting our delivery
Spark In The Dark (On the Moody Existentialist)
The word is blurred
You don't connect the flame with the pain
The word is blurred
And you make the same mistakes again
You listen to reason
Till you worship it like a god
You better keep your eyes open
For the spark in the dark
Your fear is clear
Through your magic and your mysteries
Your fear is clear
Through your raiment and your jewelry
From the sun that burns inside you
Out to your beauty mark
You better look out for
The spark in the dark
Your truth's reduced
To an organ of technology
Your truth's reduced
To nefarious hypocrisy
Your captor is your comfort
You're tyrannized by credit cards
You better keep your mind open
For the spark in the dark.
I was never really able to be an external Cossack, although inside I was laying waste to all I hated about what was happening in the world. And I think that's what I'm doing in a lot of my blog posts still, a little more externally, even at this late stage in my life. But I've tried to keep my mind open to that spark in the dark.
This week's theme is, then, simply "Some stuff that I've really liked, really been affected by, maybe lived through." And some of it, me still being me, will have a level of irony to it, like Tower of Power's "You're Still A Young Man," which of course I am not. Herewith, then, a representative sampling subject, of course, to change:
These Days Jackson Browne
Sing My Songs To Me/For Everyman Jackson Browne
Jokerman Bob Dylan
On The Beach Neil Young
You're Still A Young Man Tower of Power
Keep That Same Old Feeling The Crusaders
Compared To What Les McCann & Eddie Harris
And The Healing Has Begun Van Morrison
For Mr. Thomas Van Morrison
Take It Where You Find It Van Morrison
Mrs. Potter's Lullaby Counting Crows
Covered Up In Aces Elizabeth Barraclough
Born In Captivity Alpha Band
Spark In The Dark Alpha Band
Ticket To The Stars John Stewart
Please Fall In Love With Me John Martyn
In My Life The Beatles
Everybody's Cryin' Mercy Mose Allison
Hallelujah Leonard Cohen
Love And Affection Joan Armatrading
Gentle On My Mind John Hartford
Your Gold Teeth II Steely Dan
All Things Must Pass George Harrison
Be Here Now George Harrison
Living In The Material World George Harrison
Queen of Hearts Gregg Allman
Ain't Gwine Whistle Dixie (Any Mo') Taj Mahal
So maybe I'll see you Tuesday on the radio, from noon till two, on WOOL.fm. D'ya think?
So, as my now former friend (aw, that's probably too harsh--besides, I'm not quite sure how blogging differs from any other type of writing in that regard, unless maybe you're writing grants for orphanages or leper colonies) would have it, I'm gonna pleasure myself on the page again, about my favorite topic: me. They always tell you to write about yourself, and even if they don't, you do, you know.
I told you last week that I'm turning 60, and spent some time reflecting about what's happened in the time I've been here, and I touched on the way technology has changed music delivery systems, but not really about music itself. This week, then, that.
My friend Mike Kolodziej (the younger), who is 30ish, has remarked on the fact that my generation was really the Golden Age of sport, with, really, the most talented (non-juiced) athletes, greatest coaches, innovations, and individual games of any period in history. I tend to agree with that, and I feel similarly, probably even more strongly, about what happened in music when I was growing up.
Basically, the world exploded. In just a couple of years we went from the white-buck wearing, Brylcreem-coiffed Pat Boones (who were of course ripping off the scary black creators of the music, like and especially Little Richard) who made that threatening "race music" safe as milk, as Don Van Vliet had it, to people like Dion, who had an edge and some street cred, to the British Invasion. Suddenly all of these scary "long haired" thugs like The Beatles (and really, check out photos of them from 1964, when they'd been Brian Epsteined into suits and boots--people really found them threatening!?), and the Rolling Stones (okay, maybe you're a little more careful wif yer daughters around those blokes) and The Animals ( I totally get why parents were freaked by Eric Burdon) showed up, and things turned upside down.
My first favorite record was "Eustace the Useless Rabbit," about which I remember nothing but the title and the fact that I played it incessantly, followed in fairly short order by "Big Bad John," "The Monster Mash," and "Dream Lover." I like to think that my taste soon became a little hipper, if not more sophisticated. But music was always there in my life; it was my first-- and remains, I think, my only--addiction.
Music set me free, let me travel from my provincial, prosaic, bourgeois small-town upbringing both physically, in some senses but, more importantly, spiritually/emotionally--or at least travel as much as I could, and as much as I dared. I was not, am not, personally adventurous, and I'm at something of a loss to know why. But I'd buy an album or two every week, pore over the liner notes, know every band member, backup singer (you all have to see "20 Feet From Stardom," the new documentary about the life of the backup singer--people like Darlene Love, Merry Clayton ("rape, murder, it's just a shot away" from Gimme Shelter) and Claudia Lennear (the inspiration for "Brown Sugar," whose names I saw on, it seemed, every album from the late sixties to the late seventies), producer, engineer, you name it. And what was really interesting to me, and cool and frustrating at the same time, was that my friends were always a week behind. We'd hang out, I'd put on a new album, and they'd say "This sucks; play that album from last week." The next week, same conversation, but then they were asking for that album they'd hated the previous week but I'd forced them to listen to.
I always had that sense of contradiction from my musical addiction, of apartness and connection: always hungry for more, for different, yet able and willing to connect through shared likes. And though music fed and completed me somehow, it was only through listening to the records and sounds made by others. I never had the discipline or, likely, talent to learn to play anything myself. I lived an exciting, excited and vicarious life in the realm of rock 'n' roll.
And maybe that's why I found particularly compelling those songs which exposed people's raw nerves, heartaches, and even self-loathing. When Adam Duritz sings "I am an idiot walking a tightrope of fortune and fame," when Van Morrison interjects "I can't stand myself," when Neil Young says "All my problems are meaningless, but that don't make them go away," I could be right there, I could live with them through that: the need for expression, connection, communication, and the fear that it's not enough, it's never enough, and maybe, worst of all, it's not good enough. The hero never gets the girl, or the boy, or the dog, or whatever, no matter how deserving: the world just doesn't see it.
And all of that fed me as I sat in my room, listening to the words and sounds and thoughts and ideas and lives of others, a smalltown middle class white kid filled with all of these feelings and desires and unable (read: "afraid") to live a life of daring and difference myself. I should have left home in 1969, gone to Woodstock or Laurel Canyon or San Francisco, but I didn't have the guts. I seem to have been born with the soul and sensibilities of an artist, but without any artistic abilities. And that's not a good combination. But records, and my total immersion in them, let me, at least temporarily, slough off those psychological shackles and chains that, in a way I can't say, bound a soul I can't define.
In 1977, I discovered an album by a now-unknown group, The Alpha Band, which was made up of a few members of Dylan's Rolling Thunder Review (the one name you may recognize is T-Bone Burnett, who has gone on to quite a nice career, primarily as a producer), which I grew to love and two of whose songs I include here--including lyrics. Why the lyrics of these two? Not sure, except that I think that they showed the sort of thought and expression that I dug. And dig.
Born In Captivity
Born in captivity
Born in captivity
Born in captivity
We're all born in captivity
Born in captivity
They make you stand in line for the first grade
They make you kneel in the hall to the air raid
They say the saucer's coming any day
To take you and all your friends away
But thirty times it never comes
And still the natives beat the drums
And we're born in captivity
We're all born in captivity
Yes, we're born in captivity
Cossack children of the bourgeoisie
And they burn their images in your brain
And tell you what is valuable
Till it all looks pretty much the same
And you are totally malleable
And it works like magic on everyone
'Cause the camera's mightier than the cannon
And we're born in captivity
We're all born in captivity
And we're born in captivity
Cossack children of the bourgeoisie
Awaiting our delivery
Spark In The Dark (On the Moody Existentialist)
The word is blurred
You don't connect the flame with the pain
The word is blurred
And you make the same mistakes again
You listen to reason
Till you worship it like a god
You better keep your eyes open
For the spark in the dark
Your fear is clear
Through your magic and your mysteries
Your fear is clear
Through your raiment and your jewelry
From the sun that burns inside you
Out to your beauty mark
You better look out for
The spark in the dark
Your truth's reduced
To an organ of technology
Your truth's reduced
To nefarious hypocrisy
Your captor is your comfort
You're tyrannized by credit cards
You better keep your mind open
For the spark in the dark.
I was never really able to be an external Cossack, although inside I was laying waste to all I hated about what was happening in the world. And I think that's what I'm doing in a lot of my blog posts still, a little more externally, even at this late stage in my life. But I've tried to keep my mind open to that spark in the dark.
This week's theme is, then, simply "Some stuff that I've really liked, really been affected by, maybe lived through." And some of it, me still being me, will have a level of irony to it, like Tower of Power's "You're Still A Young Man," which of course I am not. Herewith, then, a representative sampling subject, of course, to change:
These Days Jackson Browne
Sing My Songs To Me/For Everyman Jackson Browne
Jokerman Bob Dylan
On The Beach Neil Young
You're Still A Young Man Tower of Power
Keep That Same Old Feeling The Crusaders
Compared To What Les McCann & Eddie Harris
And The Healing Has Begun Van Morrison
For Mr. Thomas Van Morrison
Take It Where You Find It Van Morrison
Mrs. Potter's Lullaby Counting Crows
Covered Up In Aces Elizabeth Barraclough
Born In Captivity Alpha Band
Spark In The Dark Alpha Band
Ticket To The Stars John Stewart
Please Fall In Love With Me John Martyn
In My Life The Beatles
Everybody's Cryin' Mercy Mose Allison
Hallelujah Leonard Cohen
Love And Affection Joan Armatrading
Gentle On My Mind John Hartford
Your Gold Teeth II Steely Dan
All Things Must Pass George Harrison
Be Here Now George Harrison
Living In The Material World George Harrison
Queen of Hearts Gregg Allman
Ain't Gwine Whistle Dixie (Any Mo') Taj Mahal
So maybe I'll see you Tuesday on the radio, from noon till two, on WOOL.fm. D'ya think?
Sunday, August 4, 2013
A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu
I haven't got a clue what that gobbledygook means, I just thought I'd try to class-up the joint with some fancy multi- or at least bi-lingual stuff. Here's some more: sotto-voce, dziekuje, dolce vita, schadenfreude, na zdrovie.
Nooo, of course I know what that title means, and you likely do, too; it's usually translated into English as In Search of Lost Time or, more commonly, Remembrance of Things Past, Marcel Proust's epic, seven volume memoir. Three people alive on the planet have actually read it all (turns out, of course, that Alice B. Fogel is one of them); I fully intend to do so sometime before I die--or after, if I don't get to it soon enough. I guess I'll probably read it in translation (English, I think), as I haven't been involved with French since 1969, in Monsieur (miss-SEAR) Jules (zhool) Cote's (ko-TAYz)--hey, this phonetic stuff is fun--French II class. In our Language Lab sessions, we'd sit in little cubicles wearing headphones which piped in someone saying phrases in French, which we were supposed to repeat. The thing is, you could clearly hear when M. Cote clicked in to your particular headphone, so I'd usually just sit there daydreaming--while all about me more conscientious students mumbled away in mangled French--until I heard that "click," at which point I'd begin to mumble something too. My wife and daughter are both very gifted linguistically; they're gonna be mortified to read this.
All of this is pretty typically Markian preamble to the real topic, only maybe even more so. I turn 60 in a week, and I'm finding that pretty sobering. Not so much for what it is now; sure, I notice more aches and pains, less flexibility and stamina, stuff like that, but other than that I don't feel all that different either physically or mentally (Still hangin' right around 14 in that department). What is hugely different is to look ahead. How far, exactly, is ahead? Once it was easy to look forward to a self in 15, 20, even 30 years, and make plans, have hopes and inspirations. Now? Probly not so much.
So I'm in a pretty reflective mood, lately, thinking about my past and the people and events who inhabited it with me. I was born on my great-grandmother Arabelle's 86th birthday. I'll do the math for you: she was born in 1867, and lived to be 102. I have sat on the lap of, talked with, eaten foods canned and prepared by, someone who was born two years after the Civil War ended. In my 30s and early 40s, when I was teaching writing to college freshpeople, I used to talk about that with them as a way to get them to think about their own histories (a surprising number didn't even know their mother's name when she'd been a maiden), to think about how close to us the past really is, how, in Faulkner's famous quote "The past isn't dead. It isn't even past." They already thought that I was older than dirt myself, so that had little effect on them, but I'm still stunned by it.
I think that my great-grandmother's lifetime encompassed the most sweeping and largest changes in human life of any hundred-year period in human history. From horse-and-buggy to lunar modules, icehouses to refrigerator/freezers in private homes, plays to kinescopes to silent films to talkies (and in color!), live music to wax cylinders to 78s to The Beatles; sulfa drugs to penicillin, vaccines, and on and on. What must it have been like to witness all of that?
But then, my own time here has certainly seen its share of the amazing and once-miraculous, although much of it is certainly of questionable value. More medical miracles, robots on Mars, men walking on the moon, computers, the whole digital revolution. The changes in music delivery systems is maybe the most amazing series of developments to me, relatively unimportant though they may be. To have gone from taping quarters on the tone arms of stereos to keep scratched or warped records from skipping, to incredibly sophisticated and sensitive turntables, amps, pre-amps, tuners, to tapes, to Walkmen, to boomboxes to iPods is stunning. Music, again for better or for worse, has become totally portable and ubiquitous. When I was 16, 18, 20, I was totally at the mercy of whatever radio station I could tune in at a given time in a given area when I was away from my home music system. I now have an incredibly small device that I can take anywhere with me, and that contains almost 22,000 songs. Who ever woulda thunk it?
Then there are the social changes although, given the current climate in much of the country, we must be constantly vigilant to hope to maintain them: blacks became people, women became people and gained, at least for the time being, some semblance of control over their bodies and reproductive rights, gays became people to such an extent that they can even marry. Pot is apparently going to become legal within the next decade or so. All of these things would have seemed impossible at the end of my first decade, had I been aware enough to consider them in that context.
So here I sit, Sixty years on, looking back at more time and space than I ever could have imagined, looking forward to an indeterminate, yet assuredly much smaller, chunk of life. What's weird is that, sometimes, I'm not even sure who I am. I find myself sitting with leg thrown over the arm of an easy chair, or hands placed just so on the arms, head held at a certain tilt, looking out a window or at my hands, especially whose thumbs, oddly enough, are my father's, and wonder: am I me, sitting as I'd seen him sit a thousand times, looking out his eyes, somehow, or is it him in me, looking out mine? Those genes, those associations, those images are incredibly powerful and in lots of ways inescapable. Not only is the past not dead: as long as we live, the dead from our pasts aren't either.
Well, if you can stand it after all of that maudlin stuff (and I do maudlin with the best of 'em), here are the songs I'll be playing on Tuesday:
Reflection George Winston
Reflections Dianne Reeves
Reflections Michael McDonald
Reflections Of My Life The Marmalade
Reflections Thelonius Monk
Reflections in D Duke Ellington
Reflections On Me Golden Smog
Retrospection Duke Ellington
Them Changes Band of Gypsys
Changes David Bowie
Recollection Phoenix Willie Nelson
Changes Loggins and Messina
Changes Come Over The Rhine
Changes IV Cat Stevens
Going Through Changes The Samples
Heavy Changes Jeb Loy Nichols
See The Changes CSNY
Sixty Years On Elton John
World In Changes Dave Mason
All Our Past Times Eric Clapton
As The Years Go Passing By Boz Scaggs
As Time Goes By Harry Nilsson
Time Boz Scaggs
Time Is Moving In The Hallway Michael Smith
Time Passes On Orleans
Time Run Like A Freight Train Eric Andersen
Time Waits For No One Rolling Stones
Time Won't Let Me The Outsiders
Who Knows Where The Time Goes? Sandy Denny
Time Sly & The Family Stone
Time Tom Waits
Fading Memory Eilen Jewell
Memories Van Morrison
Precious Memories Bob Dylan
Old Devil Time Claudia Schmidt
Optima dies...prima fugit.
Nooo, of course I know what that title means, and you likely do, too; it's usually translated into English as In Search of Lost Time or, more commonly, Remembrance of Things Past, Marcel Proust's epic, seven volume memoir. Three people alive on the planet have actually read it all (turns out, of course, that Alice B. Fogel is one of them); I fully intend to do so sometime before I die--or after, if I don't get to it soon enough. I guess I'll probably read it in translation (English, I think), as I haven't been involved with French since 1969, in Monsieur (miss-SEAR) Jules (zhool) Cote's (ko-TAYz)--hey, this phonetic stuff is fun--French II class. In our Language Lab sessions, we'd sit in little cubicles wearing headphones which piped in someone saying phrases in French, which we were supposed to repeat. The thing is, you could clearly hear when M. Cote clicked in to your particular headphone, so I'd usually just sit there daydreaming--while all about me more conscientious students mumbled away in mangled French--until I heard that "click," at which point I'd begin to mumble something too. My wife and daughter are both very gifted linguistically; they're gonna be mortified to read this.
All of this is pretty typically Markian preamble to the real topic, only maybe even more so. I turn 60 in a week, and I'm finding that pretty sobering. Not so much for what it is now; sure, I notice more aches and pains, less flexibility and stamina, stuff like that, but other than that I don't feel all that different either physically or mentally (Still hangin' right around 14 in that department). What is hugely different is to look ahead. How far, exactly, is ahead? Once it was easy to look forward to a self in 15, 20, even 30 years, and make plans, have hopes and inspirations. Now? Probly not so much.
So I'm in a pretty reflective mood, lately, thinking about my past and the people and events who inhabited it with me. I was born on my great-grandmother Arabelle's 86th birthday. I'll do the math for you: she was born in 1867, and lived to be 102. I have sat on the lap of, talked with, eaten foods canned and prepared by, someone who was born two years after the Civil War ended. In my 30s and early 40s, when I was teaching writing to college freshpeople, I used to talk about that with them as a way to get them to think about their own histories (a surprising number didn't even know their mother's name when she'd been a maiden), to think about how close to us the past really is, how, in Faulkner's famous quote "The past isn't dead. It isn't even past." They already thought that I was older than dirt myself, so that had little effect on them, but I'm still stunned by it.
I think that my great-grandmother's lifetime encompassed the most sweeping and largest changes in human life of any hundred-year period in human history. From horse-and-buggy to lunar modules, icehouses to refrigerator/freezers in private homes, plays to kinescopes to silent films to talkies (and in color!), live music to wax cylinders to 78s to The Beatles; sulfa drugs to penicillin, vaccines, and on and on. What must it have been like to witness all of that?
But then, my own time here has certainly seen its share of the amazing and once-miraculous, although much of it is certainly of questionable value. More medical miracles, robots on Mars, men walking on the moon, computers, the whole digital revolution. The changes in music delivery systems is maybe the most amazing series of developments to me, relatively unimportant though they may be. To have gone from taping quarters on the tone arms of stereos to keep scratched or warped records from skipping, to incredibly sophisticated and sensitive turntables, amps, pre-amps, tuners, to tapes, to Walkmen, to boomboxes to iPods is stunning. Music, again for better or for worse, has become totally portable and ubiquitous. When I was 16, 18, 20, I was totally at the mercy of whatever radio station I could tune in at a given time in a given area when I was away from my home music system. I now have an incredibly small device that I can take anywhere with me, and that contains almost 22,000 songs. Who ever woulda thunk it?
Then there are the social changes although, given the current climate in much of the country, we must be constantly vigilant to hope to maintain them: blacks became people, women became people and gained, at least for the time being, some semblance of control over their bodies and reproductive rights, gays became people to such an extent that they can even marry. Pot is apparently going to become legal within the next decade or so. All of these things would have seemed impossible at the end of my first decade, had I been aware enough to consider them in that context.
So here I sit, Sixty years on, looking back at more time and space than I ever could have imagined, looking forward to an indeterminate, yet assuredly much smaller, chunk of life. What's weird is that, sometimes, I'm not even sure who I am. I find myself sitting with leg thrown over the arm of an easy chair, or hands placed just so on the arms, head held at a certain tilt, looking out a window or at my hands, especially whose thumbs, oddly enough, are my father's, and wonder: am I me, sitting as I'd seen him sit a thousand times, looking out his eyes, somehow, or is it him in me, looking out mine? Those genes, those associations, those images are incredibly powerful and in lots of ways inescapable. Not only is the past not dead: as long as we live, the dead from our pasts aren't either.
Well, if you can stand it after all of that maudlin stuff (and I do maudlin with the best of 'em), here are the songs I'll be playing on Tuesday:
Reflection George Winston
Reflections Dianne Reeves
Reflections Michael McDonald
Reflections Of My Life The Marmalade
Reflections Thelonius Monk
Reflections in D Duke Ellington
Reflections On Me Golden Smog
Retrospection Duke Ellington
Them Changes Band of Gypsys
Changes David Bowie
Recollection Phoenix Willie Nelson
Changes Loggins and Messina
Changes Come Over The Rhine
Changes IV Cat Stevens
Going Through Changes The Samples
Heavy Changes Jeb Loy Nichols
See The Changes CSNY
Sixty Years On Elton John
World In Changes Dave Mason
All Our Past Times Eric Clapton
As The Years Go Passing By Boz Scaggs
As Time Goes By Harry Nilsson
Time Boz Scaggs
Time Is Moving In The Hallway Michael Smith
Time Passes On Orleans
Time Run Like A Freight Train Eric Andersen
Time Waits For No One Rolling Stones
Time Won't Let Me The Outsiders
Who Knows Where The Time Goes? Sandy Denny
Time Sly & The Family Stone
Time Tom Waits
Fading Memory Eilen Jewell
Memories Van Morrison
Precious Memories Bob Dylan
Old Devil Time Claudia Schmidt
Optima dies...prima fugit.
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