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?
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