Showing posts with label roy orbison. Show all posts
Showing posts with label roy orbison. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 21, 2020

Record Collections

Ever know someone who's a collector? These are guys (and trust me, they're always guys) who relish the hunt, not the plunder. Of their approximately 978 record albums, they probably play five, tops.

That's how it is with collections. I'm guilty. I've collected thousands of individual tracks and full CD's through the years, but I mostly surf over to SiriusXM to be surprised. I recently retrieved my personal PC after months of working on a loaned company computer (thanks, COVID), and today I decided to remind myself of all the tracks I'd ripped.

After hours of deleting duplicates (one of the joys of retirement is infinite time), I decided to bestow stars upon the songs I like best...today. The dilemma is choosing between three and four stars. "I really like this track, but does it deserve a superior ranking?"

Five stars can be intimidating as well. Do I go with songs that are classic or just honor my gut and choose the ones I love? I went with love.

The interesting outcome of this experiment is the number of really mediocre tracks I ripped. I think I just wanted to own them. In case. In case a nuclear incident transpired and all I was left with (remarkably) was my personal computer. In the ragged aftermath I might have a hankering to hear Barbara Fairchild.

I own hundreds of physical CD's, but if I ever chose to pop one into my disc drive, I would need to be suffering from one-song withdrawals.



Instead I rely on my uploads.

My Windows Media Player is a really fun app -- it no longer allows me to rip CD's, so if I don't have something on my computer I really really need, I am forced to purchase it from Amazon, even though it's here, sitting on my shelf. Microsoft rocks. Today, in fact, I purchased "Dreaming My Dreams" by Waylon. I have no cognizance of why I never ripped it when my WMP worked, but clearly I did not. However, it was vital that I added it to my collection, because it is a five-star single.

The results of my star ratings? Well, there are approximately three Beatle tracks that merit five stars, although not the ones anyone but me would pick. Elton, too, represents. California Girls shows up as first on the list. Otherwise, I'm stone country.  George Strait has at least three; Gene Watson is a treasure. Then it's an eclectic mix, demonstrating my superior musical taste. Jerry Lee, Gordon Lightfoot, Johnny Bush, Highway 101, Mark Chesnutt, Marty Robbins, Ray Price. Roy Orbison.




Face it, it doesn't get much better than this:





I'm feeling good that I chose wisely.














Tuesday, May 21, 2019

My Sixty-Four Year Musical Journey


The problem with only being able to get one's music from AM radio was that once a song became a hit, the disc jockey played it at least once an hour. This is the primary reason why baby boomers hate certain songs with a passion (Take "Ode To Billy Joe", for instance. Plus Bobbie Gentry never once said what was being thrown off the bridge, and it probably wasn't even anything interesting anyway.) Conversely, if there happened to be a song you really liked but wasn't in the top ten, good luck catching it on the airwaves. If I did happen to catch it, I'd be in the backseat of the car and my dad wouldn't stop yapping long enough for me to actually hear it.

Plus I didn't know what most of these artists looked like. There were some fan magazines with tiny black and white photos of the top groups, and sometimes network variety shows would feature a pop act "for all you kids out there". I always felt sorry for the bands who were just looking for a little promotion and had to endure the mocking of the eighty-year-old host who'd made his name in the vaudeville days.

On a Wednesday night in the fall of 1964, however, a wondrous thing happened ~ and that thing was called "Shindig". Suddenly I could see all the artists who had previously only existed in my brain as breathtaking sounds emitting from a tinny speaker and tiny one-by-two-inch black and white promotional snapshots in celebrity mags. Yes, the show was in black and white, too, but why quibble? Sometime during the show's run, I switched music teachers and had accordion lessons (yes) on Wednesday nights. By the skin of my teeth I made it home by 7:00 p.m. each week, but it was incredibly stressful.

Shindig had its go-go dancers in white-fringe mini-skirts doing the jerk and...well, that's the only dance I remember...but it wasn't overly distracting, and far superior to a geriatric comedian chewing on a fat cigar and spouting, "Take my wife....please." Everyone who was anyone appeared on Shindig ~ The Beach Boys, The Beau Brummels, The Lovin' Spoonful, The Sir Douglas Quintet, The Dave Clark Five, The Supremes, Roy Orbison; even The Beatles. However, the act that still resonates with me from Shindig all these years later is The Righteous Brothers.


I'm guessing The Righteous Brothers probably made more appearances on the show than anyone aside from Bobby Sherman (I guess you had to be there.) Watching Shindig, I was in heaven.

I still had my 45's, too; and my brother's. In retrospect, the singles I liked the best had a couple of requirements ~ an awesome beat was a given. Then either a great production (yea, even at age nine I recognized the great ones) or something a little off-kilter.

These are the ones I loved then:



I have no explanation as to why that song grabbed me, but it most certainly did. I really didn't know anything about Motown. I didn't know about The Temptations or Smokey Robinson and The Miracles. I did know The Supremes, but I had no inkling that this was a huge Detroit conglomerate. I just liked the song.

This one is (and always will be) a marvel. It's the intro. How was I to know that the creator of this song was a musical genius? I didn't know who Brian Wilson was. I didn't even know that most of the guys in the group were named Wilson. I did know that they all wore red and white striped shirts. I loved this song so much that I wrote my own version, called "English Boys" (it was the British Invasion era, after all.) Just like with the album "Help!", ripping off someone else's creation is the sincerest form of flattery:


This is a mostly forgotten song that is amazing. I love, love this song. And it meets my requirement of being a little off-kilter. The lead singer's voice is quirky, almost artificial; the beat (laid down by Honey Lantree) is magnificent, and the rest of the group was instructed to stomp on the floor to enhance the rhythm during the recording process. The Honeycombs only had one hit, but oh, what a hit it was:


The British Invasion was rife in the mid-sixties. The Animals, Freddy and The Dreamers, Gerry and The Pacemakers, Herman's Hermits, The Yardbirds, The Kinks, The Hollies, Manfred Mann. People think that The Stones were the natural rivals to The Beatles, but that's not how it went down in '64. Everybody was saying it was this group that offered The Beatles the most competition. Creatively, no; but one must remember the times and the songs The Beatles were releasing. The Dave Clark Five weren't that far off the mark. And I liked them. And Mike Smith (rest his soul) was a cutie.


Some artists are flashes in the pan; some stand the test of time. The Beatles (naturally) stood the test of time. The Beach Boys, too. The Honeycombs ~ not so much.

Then there are the masters. In a time capsule a hundred years from now, somebody smart will include this guy:


I don't take lightly the fact that I was present for the dawn of a new age of music. I'm lucky. Generally I'm not a lucky person, but on this one I hit the jackpot. I'll always have that. 

And I won't let it slip through my fingers.


Thursday, February 7, 2019

Kids

 (I was the one with crooked bangs on the lower right. K is behind me.)

I didn't know that life was stark when I was a kid. I never felt poor ~ my mom made sure I had all the same things that kids in my classroom had. The early sixties weren't the age of conspicuous consumption. Sure, the clothes she picked out for me must have been clearance items, because they were so ugly. Either that, or Mom had really bad taste. But I never cared about clothes anyway.

We lived in an old farmhouse that was eighty years old (that would be about one hundred and forty years old now, if it's still standing.) I liked it. It had a hard wooden winding staircase leading up to the second floor and there was a cross-hatched vent about midway down that I could peek through and see everything happening in our living room (not that anything was happening). It had a scary unfinished basement that is a prerequisite for kids ~ scary things are de rigueur. How else would we ever learn to navigate life if it weren't for being scared so much that our breath catches in our chest?

I was lousy at making friends. Granted, living in the country precluded sleepovers. I never even had a best friend until I was in the fourth grade, and I met her on a walking bridge on the way to Wednesday catechism. My only real friend 'til then was my cousin K. K's dad was my dad's much younger brother, and Uncle A worshiped my dad (who wouldn't?), so our families spent an inordinate amount of time together. It was one of those rare perfect storms in which my mom and her mom actually liked one another. You know how couple friendships are ~ either the women are best pals and one guy learns to tolerate the other, or through family, the married pairs are thrown together and everybody decides to make the best of it. K's mom brought out the best in Mom ~ taught her to loosen up; not be such a prickly thorn.

K was one year older than me, which was acceptable in the annals of little-kid approval. From about age five, we tagged along together, creating tiny-girl mayhem.

She was one of those flawless beings ~ golden-haired and sky-blue-eyed ~ who couldn't do anything wrong even if the notion had flitted like a fat bumblebee into her mind. I, on the other hand, was a mess of dense red hair with a tangled desire to create something, but no earthly idea how to do it.

My mom actually preferred K to me. It didn't hurt my feelings ~ much. I would prefer K to me. In later years, Mom actually took vacations with her. Nevertheless, my cousin and I bonded over Ricky Nelson songs, like this:


Our eight-year-old paths converged. 

My dad got it into his head that I should take accordion lessons (I was apparently the experimental kid in the family), and thus, K and her brother took lessons, too. Our music teacher thought it would be neat to form a little trio with the three of us. (Of course, K played her accordion perfectly while I was admonished for dragging my basses). 

Somehow we were coerced into buying matching bandolero outfits, with Cordobes hats, white-fringed black felt skirts, and plastic cowboy boots. We may have even had neckerchiefs. Our mothers paraded us out to local nursing homes to ply our trade. By then I had been relegated to snapping brushes against a snare drum (because my accordion skills were so lacking). K's brother claimed the accordion spot and K strummed a guitar. We were the complete package. Our big number was "Bye Bye Love", on which I somehow snagged the solo on the opening verse. We eventually harvested more money than any eight-and-nine-year-olds could dream of reaping ~ through drunken tips ~ not from nursing home residents! (see below).

K and I (and her big brother) actually ended up living together for half a year. Our bachelor uncle had purchased a triple-threat establishment in a small town that featured a bar, a restaurant and a service station; and he sorely needed a cook. So my mom and K's mom rotated weeks of short-order hash-slinging for extra seed money; and thus it only made sense to move us kids there permanently and enroll us in the local parochial school. We were ensconced in Uncle Howard's attached apartment and plied our trade as traveling minstrels, holed up in the service station lobby as drunks exiting the bar threw quarters and dollar bills at us. The three of us purchased glass piggy banks at the local mercantile and stuffed those hogs with loose cash and coin. K and I periodically raided our stash and bought colorful beaded necklaces and miscellaneous scraps at the five-and-dime.

Our first day at Catholic school, K, naturally, was a big hit; while I wanted to crawl inside a culvert. I think I eventually made one friendship ~ a girl who was as mousy as I. K was effervescent. Complete strangers would amass at her feet. She instantly became the most popular girl in her fifth-grade class. At home, she and I were best buds, but out in the real world K had many universes to command, and she precisely ignored me. I didn't have enough friends that I could afford to diss any of them. K was a princess in any company.

Our life in Uncle Howard's apartment was a cornucopia of new rock and roll sounds and images on the black and white TV. There was a syndicated program called The Lloyd Thaxton Show that was the poor itinerant's alternative to Bandstand, but, holy cow, was it great!

Here is what our eyeballs witnessed on our cathode-ray tube:










I guess you had to be there:


Albeit not rock and roll, this guy was everywhere in 1964:


Yep, The Beatles didn't appear on Lloyd Thaxton's show in '64. I guess Lloyd just didn't pay enough. Not that we didn't know who The Beatles were. We had to appease ourselves with our pocket-friendly transistor radios to hear the most influential band of all time.

The last time I saw K, I was eighteen and not quite moved out of my house, and she and some friends came to visit my mom. Not me. My mom.

But one can't sweep away what once was. K was a huge part of my life; at least a very momentous piece of it. 

I bet she's still out there, sweeping strangers off their feet.














Friday, September 21, 2018

Mundane '62


In 1962 all everybody cared about was space. Not me, mind you. I know everyone was supposed to be in awe of space travel, but all I knew was that the "astronaut" zipped through the sky in a "capsule", of which my only frame of reference was an Excedrin my mom took for a headache. When I was still in first grade that winter, my teacher wheeled a portable TV into our classroom so we could watch John Glenn do whatever he was doing. I was more fascinated by the diorama of songbirds Mrs. Fisher had built in a back corner of the room.

I wasn't completely disinterested in space. I did like this:


My interests were simple at age seven-going-on-eight. I got a sparkly paint set for Christmas and I liked dabbing it into my coloring book--sapphires and emeralds and rubies. I loved my phonograph. I had paper dolls-- cardboard cutouts of (generally) girls or sometimes someone older, like Patty Duke, for which one would cut outfits out of the book and drape them on the cardboard figure with little paper tabs that folded across the model's shoulders and hips. 

I liked TV. I never gave a second thought to the fact all the actors on television were black and white, whereas the real world bloomed with color. I would watch anything, which included my mom's soap operas. I learned that doctors led really melodramatic lives; at least Dr. Kildare and Ben Casey did. Matt Dillon was a sheriff of few words; Alfred Hitchcock was a fat scary man. Ed Sullivan had a lot of really crappy acts on his show, even a guy who talked with his hand and one whose claim to fame was spinning plates in the air. Lawrence Welk was woefully out of date, but my dad liked him. Game shows were a staple of prime time--they required you to "guess" something--what someone's job was or which one, out of three gamesters, was actually telling the truth. I lay on my stomach right in front of our big TV and absorbed every single thing that flashed on the screen. My favorite shows, by far, were Dick Van Dyke and The Andy Griffith Show.

In the fall, when I entered second grade, I transferred to Valley Elementary, which was a brand-spanking new school. I would spend four and a half years at Valley; years that would shape me into a semblance of a human person. Valley was where I would write and perform a play at the Hootenanny. Valley was where I would be chosen by my teacher to become part of the safety patrol, an awesomely responsible post in which I got to carry an official flag. Valley was where I blossomed, albeit temporarily, and learned to embrace my creativity.

In second grade, though, life was terribly mundane. I did worksheets and printed words on rough double-lined paper tablets, when I really preferred to write in cursive, which we weren't allowed to "learn" yet. I was a bit ahead of most of my classmates because my big sister had already taught me how to read and write before I even began kindergarten. However, one was not permitted to outdistance one's peers, so I was bored and fidgety. I did discover the school library, which flowered a whole new world. I devoured Laura Ingalls Wilder books, all eight of them; and then moved on to other biographies. I read every book in the library that was worth reading.

My mom bought me a lunch ticket every month, which the lunch matron punched each time I alighted the line of horizontal aluminum bars and plastic trays. I understand now why I was so skinny. Some people have fond memories of school lunches. Those people are freaks. I dumped more food in the giant trash receptacle than I ever ate. Nothing in the line ever looked appetizing--hamburger mush, gloppy mashed potatoes, possibly accompanied by carrot sticks, which were at least edible. Mini-cartons of milk were the only saving grace. Fridays were always fish sticks, in honor of the Lord. Granted, I was a very picky eater, but "Spanish rice" combined all the ingredients of horror.

The most consequential event of my second grade year was when the school caught on fire. It was a dreary sun-deprived winter day. I don't remember even smelling smoke, but our teacher hastily informed us that the "superintendent" (which was what the head janitor was called) had informed her that fire had broken out somewhere in the vicinity of the furnace room. We were all shepherded out to waiting buses (single file, of course), and a gaggle of teachers alighted the open bus doors and dumped cardboard boxes of rubber snow boots onto the slippery stairs, from which we confusedly tried to snatch a matching pair. I arrived home with two red boots, one of them two sizes too large for my feet. I guess I was lucky to escape the (supposedly) roaring blaze, but I was mostly upset that I couldn't gracefully clomp through snowbanks wearing one jumbo boot.

Apparently the school was grievously damaged, because my class ended up attending class in the hallway of a neighboring elementary building for two very long weeks, with kids who belonged there staring derisively at us as they made their way to the lavatory.

In music, my tastes were influenced by my big sisters -- actually one big sister. My oldest sister was mercurial. She flitted in and out of the house like a sprite, mostly unseen. She was eighteen after all, and soon to march down the aisle. My sisters shared a record collection, however -- all '45's. My brother had yet to blow my mind with actual reams of astounding LP's. So I lived in a world of little vinyl discs. And unlike my brother, my sister didn't care if I played her collection. Her tastes, however, leaned heavily toward Elvis Presley, who I always wanted to like, but for the life of me just couldn't.



I think my favorite record my sister owned in 1962 was this, and I don't quite remember why:


One of the few times I remember my oldest sister being around, she and Rosemary did a little demo on our kitchen linoleum in front of Mom and me of this dance; and Mom, by the way, was mightily impressed (although in reality, it's a pretty easy dance, and I don't know why they called him "chubby"):


But, as the early sixties could do, popular music often devolved into syrup. I don't know anything about Bobby Vinton, except that he recorded the cheesiest songs this side of Bobby Goldsboro. But, hey, it worked for him. Bobby Vinton was an early-sixties phenomenon, with recordings like this:


One artist Rosemary liked a lot that I could get on board with was Dion. She had good taste.


My sisters shared an album that was, I think, one of two long-playing records they owned (I wonder how they divided their record collection once Carole was married). It's sort of funny in hindsight that this was considered pop music, when in actuality it foreshadowed my immersion into country, but, truly, it was pop in 1962:


This was neither pop nor country nor anything other than, I guess, Broadway, but Gene Pitney was a sensation in 1962. And rightfully so:


Every era produces timeless artists (so they say). My sister can claim these as hers:



The truth is, we and radio were a bit behind the times. So the hits of 1962 were probably not on any of our radar until '63. Not that it matters. My family owned a circular cardboard ice cream container of 45-RPM records, some of which I have no doubt my parents picked up at rummage sales, and we played them all on a scratchy phonograph.

It wasn't so much a year as a feeling. A reminiscence of soot and red rubber snow boots and twisting in the kitchen. 
 
Music was always there.

Tuesday, September 11, 2018

One Song


Everybody has one song.

I'm not saying they only have one song, but there's one that seers their heart. They probably don't even know what song it is until they hear it on the radio.

It's the rare artist who has many songs that live up to the lofty promise of a weighty career. For me, I can only name a few -- the Beatles, George Strait, Dwight Yoakam, Roy Orbison -- these are the artists who trip off my tongue.

An age-old question is, "If you were stranded on a desert island and could only possess one album (and apparently something to play it on), what would it be?" I always think, well, I'd get tired of it really fast. But if I had to choose only one album to take with me to that castaway experience, I'd most likely pick an artist whose voice soothed me (because being stranded, with no hope, on an isolated mound of terra firma could, I imagine, rapidly plunge me into a deep depression). I'd rather take a mix-tape of songs I like best, although that's not a panacea, either. Hearing the same songs ten thousand times will quickly devolve into utter hatred.

I was thinking about artists who had just one good song. If an artist has one good song, that's quite enough. That's more than the other quadrillion artists out there have ever accomplished. It's not that they were necessarily one-hit wonders -- they most likely had other songs -- but maybe they just had that one good one.

I can't possibly list all my favorite one good songs, but here are a few:


















These are some of my "ones". Kind of a lot, as I peruse them, but that's how music goes. I could write a completely separate post with my "ones". I like ones, though. I like songs -- good songs. 

I need a long-playing tape for my desert island playlist.



Saturday, July 7, 2018

Sleepless






I'm a chronic non-sleeper.

When I was thirty, I had to work the day shift at the hospital on alternating weekends. My normal schedule was second shift, 3:30 p.m to 10:00 p.m. Invariably on Friday nights before that seven a.m. call, I remained excruciatingly conscious. I'm a guilt-ridden Catholic soul who has an aversion to calling in. However, for the majority of my first shift obligations, I staggered off the sofa sometime around four in the morning, dialed the automated mailbox number and declared that I was "sick". In retrospect, I could have sucked it up and just went to work (like I do now). At that time, though, I regarded sleeplessness as such a dire condition that at one point I actually considered killing myself.

I remember arising from my agonizing cocoon on the sofa, switching on the tiny kitchen nightlight and thumbing through the Yellow Pages to find the Suicide Hotline number. I was all ready to dial it, but then I imagined the conversation.

"Why do you want to kill yourself?"

"Well, I can't sleep."

Long pause.

"That's it?"

I didn't kill myself because I thought my reason wasn't good enough. That, plus I really had no means of accomplishing it. What was I going to use? Aspirin? How many tablets does one need to take to get the job done? There was no internet, so it would have been just a guess, and what if I guessed wrong?

Now here I am, thirty years later, and the scourge continues. The difference is, while it's still unbearable at three in the morning, I've accepted it as a fact of my life. And I buck up and plow through.

I used to think I was all alone, but I've since learned through offhand conversations that more people than not suffer right along with me. Selfishly, that makes me feel a little bit better. Nobody wants to feel alone.

I'll say right now that all the advice about how to sleep is utterly worthless. These "experts" a) never in their lives have had a sleeping problem; and b) are just spouting nonsense.

  • Don't consume caffeine after 12:00 noon.
         Okay.

  • Use your bedroom only for sleep.
          Fine.

  • Meditate or "journal" fifteen minutes prior to bedtime.
         I neither meditate nor jot thoughts down in a little notebook, and
         why would anyone do that? 

Here is the only advice that might work:  drugs. But good luck there. My doctor won't prescribe anything, such as Ambien, and I admit I'm not keen on that anyway. I don't want to find myself in the kitchen at 2:30 a.m., baking up a late-night entree of roasted boot. Or driving around aimlessly, firing up a cigarette and stubbing it out on my car's leather upholstery. Or even worse, posting nonsensical comments on social media, inadvertently starting a Twitter war over my professed hatred of Ariana Grande's shoes.

My doctor actually told me I'm going to bed too early. She said I should stay up until 11:30. I get up at 4:30 a.m. for work! Following her advice, assuming I fell asleep the minute my cranium alighted the pillow, I would get four complete hours of sleep.

The things I have tried:

Watching TV until my eyes flutter closed.
         
The way this works for me is, sure, I catch thirty seconds of snooze time; then a commercial jars me awake. I am then bleary-eyed for approximately three hours.

NOT watching TV. 
         
The whir of my bedroom fan, initially soothing, begins to grate on my nerves. The longer I lie awake, the more irritating it becomes. I get up and switch it off; but soon the room turns infuriatingly quiet.

Don ear plugs and a sleep mask.
        
Now I'm left alone with my thoughts. Plus my back hurts.  My mind WILL NOT SHUT OFF. I eventually begin to drift off, but the snort that wheezes through my nostrils jolts me awake and the cycle begins anew.

I only fall asleep after four or so hours once my body has acquiesced to utter exhaustion.

I believe I am genetically melatonin-deficient. And speaking of melatonin, ingest it at your peril. I tried it ONCE. I lay awake, bug-eyed, for an entire night.

My remedy is, there is no remedy.  Perhaps alcohol, but I can't function at my job while hungover. Thus, the real remedy is acceptance. Accept the things I cannot change.

I haven't tried these, and maybe they would work (but I doubt it):
















These songs make sleep seem so romantic, wistful, enveloping; don't they? I wouldn't know.

The truth of the matter is, like John Lennon, who, from his songs I suspect was an inveterate non-sleeper like me, this is what it's really like at 3:00 a.m.:


I've decided I'm going to call it a "personality quirk"; one that I can regale strangers with for hours. If someone at work greets me brightly in the morning, instead of replying offhandedly, I will say, "Well, you know I only got two hours of sleep last night." Then I will sigh dejectedly. Granted, people will search for an excuse to slink away, but hey, spread the pain, I say. If I have to hear tales of your 2006 Alaskan cruise every freakin' day and how you spied a seal reposing on an ice floe, well, it's time to share MY world. And by the way, can you sit at my bedside and repeat those stories again? 

That just might work.












Saturday, January 20, 2018

A Year Lost To Time -- 1962

(all cars looked like this)

My sisters could tell you more about 1962 than I am able to. It's not that I wasn't around -- I was -- I was seven, which is an age when one is barely conscious of the world around them. I was confused, trying to feel my way in the vast universe that primarily consisted of my school bus, home, and Valley Elementary School. 

In second grade my school caught on fire. That was something different. It was mid-winter, and all of us kids were stuffed into waiting buses, and then the teachers exited the school carrying boxes of snow boots and pressed them into our confused hands. I went home with one boot that fit and another red rubber boot that was two sizes too big. I don't recall being traumatized. Little kids tend to accept whatever happens to pop up. I had to go to a different school while mine was being rehabilitated. There were only three elementary schools in my town -- Riverside, Valley, and Crestwood. My class got bused to Crestwood, where my teacher commenced to instruct us in the hallway. Again, I was not unnerved by having to squat on the hard linoleum floor for six hours a day as the regular Crestwood kids stomped past on their way to the lunch room and stared at us. 

This went on for approximately six-to-twelve weeks, and then we returned to Valley, which looked brand-spankin'-fine, like a blazing inferno had never engulfed the furnace room. I tend to think everyone over-reacted. I had a boyfriend, who I liked but didn't like, Jon Bush, and I got mixed up the day we moved back to Valley, and pushed him away. I thought my teacher had only wanted me to correct one classmate's paper, but she had meant for me to correct everybody's. She got mad when she saw me give Jon a shove and she reprimanded me sternly. Last time in my life I ever shoved anyone. 

The big event in my seven-year-old life was Valentine's Day. We crafted our Valentine receptacles out of shoe boxes; decorated them with bric-a-brac from Mom's sewing box and festooned them with red Crayola hearts. Everybody had to give everybody a valentine. There was no quibbling. Mom chose the valentine pack based upon the number of students in my class. It was a difficult decision, however, determining which valentine to bestow upon whom. If a girl was a good friend, I gave her the prettiest sparkly heart. For Jon, I didn't really want to lead him on, but I did need to distinguish him from the other boys in my class. The sentiments printed on the cards contained subtle differences. For example, "You've Roped My Heart Podner" was far more meaningful than "Hi Cookie!" Choosing the appropriate valentine for each person in my class was a very serious undertaking. In retrospect, perhaps I placed too much significance on the process.

On Valentine's Day, when I got home with my shoe box stuffed full of hand-printed hearts, I perched on the top of the stairs and sorted and categorized my cards and created little songs to accompany them as I danced them about. I was a bit too invested in Valentine's Day.

That, in a nutshell, is my memory of 1962.

Music was haphazard. Granted, music was filtered through my sisters' tastes. My oldest sister was kind of flighty -- one could never pin her down as far as what she truly liked. My second oldest sister was damn moody. I didn't dare ask her what music she preferred, or anything, really; because she might just fly off the handle. I was her mangy mutt -- someone she was forced to tolerate, but really a giant pain in the ass.

I'm guessing my sisters didn't really like this song, but it was a giant hit. This is because radio in 1962 wasn't radio as we know it today (if anyone actually listens to radio today). Singles weren't slotted into crisp categories. There wasn't rock ('n roll) and country (western) and easy listening. The DJ played them all! And mixed them up! Right after Jay and the Americans came Frank Sinatra! Yes, disc jockeys didn't just stab a button and up came a whole pre-fab playlist. DJ's actually played real records and they picked them out themselves. They also gauged local hits by how many call-in requests they received -- yes. Ahh, so antiquated.

Anyway, this single, I'm guessing, was for the "old folks", because we all listened to the same radio station (in my case, KRAD), be we seven or seventy-seven.


Much like this:


Yes, there was a common thread running through the old folks' songs. Lots of violins and a rhythm that was sort of a "slow gait". Connie Francis was a mega-star in 1962. I remember playing at my cousin's house when one of those "be the first caller to guess this singer" blurbs came on the radio. My aunt hollered to my cousin, "Connie Francis!" and my cousin dialed the radio station's number. "Is it Connie Francis?" she asked. "You're our winner!" My cousin won the black MGM single and all she had to do was have her mom drive her to the station to pick it up. I played that game, too, except all the songs I knew were records I already owned, and I did my own guessing without my mom's help. I often ended up with double copies of the same '45, but it was the notoriety that counted. 

To be frank, there were only two renowned female singers in '62 -- Connie Francis and Brenda Lee -- so there was a fifty-fifty chance my cousin aunt would get it right. Sadly, I can find no live performance videos of this song (Connie is shy):



You can see why I had such a laissez-faire attitude toward music. Well, toward everything, really, but that's kind of a seven-year-old thing.

There were a few more rockin' hits in 1962; songs that my sisters much preferred. Face it, it was a new world. JFK was president and he was young. Ike probably liked Nat King Cole, but it was time to rocket into the second half of the twentieth century. Sputnik was being launched into space, whatever Sputnik was, and John Glenn had climbed inside a "capsule" and putted across the sky.

Yep, this was more like it:


Dang it, I loved this song in '62. I danced and sang in front of the upstairs bedroom mirror to it. It had a nonsense intro and harmony and a good beat (you could dance to it). What's not to love for a little kid?


In 1962 "twisting" was of supreme importance. My sisters did a masterful rendition of the dance in our kitchen one winter evening, to the family's delight and consternation. I've featured Chubby Checker's version here too many times, so here is a variation:


The "peppermint" twist was what all the cool cats did, especially in New York. You know, people like Truman Capote and Lee Radziwell. And their martinis.

The twist was by far not the only dance craze of the time. No. There was any stupid dance that any dunce could do, even if just by accident. The twist was really good exercise, but if one was tired, they could always do the mashed potato, which essentially involved simply contorting one's feet in and out. The remainder of the body could rest. Hey, I'm not a snob when it comes to dances. My generation had the jerk, which was ordinary arm exertion, as opposed to foot movement, but the result was the same. One could be their regular lazy self and still "dance".



Believe it or not, this single hit number five on the charts. You may think this is a tired old saw; the song that pops up every time a movie scene demands it, but there was a time when this was new. Of course, at seven I didn't know what a "stripper" was. My big brother knew. You gotta admit, it had a good beat.


Aside from the kitsch, music was beginning to show signs of what was to come. 


There was this new group that not many people paid attention to. They wore matching plaid shirts. So hokey. I don't know whatever happened to them. Maybe I should do a Google search.


I'm including this simply because it's good:



Gene Pitney was a rock star in the days before there was such a thing as rock stars. I suspect he probably really wanted to be on Broadway, but nevertheless. This guy could sing. And he had the look -- the early sixties Anthony Perkins look.



Yea, goofball was around. Sorry, I mean Elvis Presley. My sisters liked him a lot. I almost wish I liked him, but I'm not sure why. In '62 I frankly thought Ricky Nelson was better. Aside from being a caricature, it struck me that Elvis tried too hard.


My sisters had this album. I wonder if they remember. It seems, in my recollection, that my two sisters shared singles and albums. I'm averse to that. I think music should be the possession of one person. The reason I like this song is because it foreshadowed the direction my life would go, musically. It's not rock (or rock 'n roll). It's country. They called it rock 'n roll in 1962. It wasn't:



To sum up, at age seven I was confused, befuddled. I had the beginning of an inkling of what music was -- good music and bad music. Music wasn't the sum of my existence then. 

It soon would be.

Thursday, January 18, 2018

Your Future Has Been Decided


Don't you love those stories about how someone abandoned their staid old life and embarked on an entirely new career at age fifty?

Sorry, I'm not buying it.

I'm a believer that what we will become has been decided for us by age five. We can fight against it, but we can't change the essence of ourselves. There may be detours along the way, but most of us come back to our real nature eventually.

When I was five, my career goal was to be "in charge". Rather a nebulous ambition, I admit, but there is a logical rationale behind it. I was a shy kid (which, by the way, is not a fun way to be); timid; scared of making a wrong move and drawing others' eyes to me. A darkened corner was my preferred resting place. Shy kids aren't wobbly toothpicks -- they do have a strong spirit, but it stays hidden. Shy kids are probably more resilient than most people. They depend on themselves -- for comfort, for validation. They know their talents, but take them for granted. I was a kid who drew pictures and made up stories and songs. These weren't pursuits I needed to "learn"; they were just what I did.

Alone in the clammy basement of our farmhouse, the games I played were those of a teacher instructing her class (of empty chairs I'd set up in front of my card table "desk"), or of a priest saying mass -- again in front of my card table altar. Mass was said in Latin at that time, so I just made up words as I held my chalice high -- "Domini...something..."

The thread that tied these games together was that I was at the front of the room and I was in charge.

Shy kids want to be in charge; be noticed; be the center of attention -- but only if they are in control.

I suppose I was, too, a bit of a ham. I craved attention, but only at my behest. You can look at me when I tell you it's okay to look at me.

Today, all these years later, I am a teacher, so to speak. I like parts of my job -- those that put me in front of the room. I can walk among my students and lecture extemporaneously. In real life, I'm generally tongue-tied, my words sputtering forth in fits and starts; but in front of a group, I'm transformed. There is no explanation for it, and I don't spend any minutes pondering it. It is what it is.

It's me. The essence of me.

I bided my time for a lot of years, functioning as a clerk-typist or another button-pusher -- a cashier -- working quietly; unobtrusively, before the opportunity presented itself, or perhaps before I made my own opportunity. It's difficult to say after all this time if the possibility found me or if I found the possibility. However, once I became "in charge", I was at home. And that's when I shined. All that practice at age five paid off, finally.

I could tell you about my kids and how what they were at age five turned out to be what they became, but trust me on this -- I was there. I saw it, and I know it.

I'm not saying that our life experiences after age five don't shape us. Everything shapes us. But those experiences are the extra cheese atop our pizza. They enhance, but they don't create.

Musically, at age five, I was adrift. There were good records released, but music confused me. It was schizophrenic. Some of it was as dull as the test pattern on our big console TV; some of it my big brother informed me was good music. The only song I made up my own mind about; the only one I definitively knew was good, was this:


The number one hit of 1960 is one that Don Draper would really like; one that Adrian Cronauer made fun of:



My most lingering memory of 1960 is that Connie Francis was the girl singer. One could win a free 45 RPM single from the local radio station by being the first caller to identify who sang this song:


As girl singers went, I preferred this: 


Yep, taste is not acquired, but born.

In 1960 it was the battle of the girl singers -- Connie Francis versus Brenda Lee. We know who ultimately came out on top, don't we?

This song sucked, but that didn't stop the DJ's from playing it over and over. We were bereft of decent music in the midpoint of the twentieth century . Even at my tender age, I knew this song was just wrong:




My brother informed me this was good music. He was not wrong:


My older sisters were such slaves to pop fads. I'm so glad that never, ever, happened to me. I mean, I never once did The Jerk or The Watusi. Never.


My dad liked this song. I was never an Elvis fan (sorry; still am not), but if my dad liked something, that carried even more weight than my brother's opinion:


I missed this song in 1960 and only caught up with it later. At least the five-year-old me doesn't remember it. My loss. This guy would see me clear through the eighties. And...whoa...


This musical interlude not withstanding, remember the five-year-old you. The five-year-old you is who you really are.

Don't try to deny it.









Saturday, December 16, 2017

Learning Music

(some guys)

I didn't begin to put it all together until I was around age nine. At nine I saw Manfred Mann and most importantly, Roy Orbison, on TV for the first time. "Oh, Pretty Woman" was the absolute, bar-none best song I'd ever heard in my whole life (to date).


And this song was profound (okay, not really), but I really, really liked it:



But I also lived in an apartment attached to a country-western bar, so I was confused. Buck Owens and Bobby Bare poured out of my uncle's juke box, while my little plastic table-side radio blasted out The Dave Clark Five and the Animals. I was warbling, "There goes my baby with someone new" as part of my little cousin trio. I had the Beatles, of course, tucked in my pocket. The Beatles were still my secret in 1964.

1964 was a Pop Rocks explosion of music. Once I moved back home to the farm, I had Shindig on ABC TV, where I saw the Righteous Brothers and Gerry and the Pacemakers and the Beach Boys. And I had my big brother -- the supreme arbiter of musical taste.

It wasn't until 1965, though, that it all became clear to me. In addition to my brother, I had a best friend who I discovered music with. I can't emphasize enough how important it is to discover music with somebody who shares your sensibilities. My brother was an expert, but my friend Cathy heard the same songs at the exact same time I did, and we reveled in our shared awe.

Music was joyous in 1965. Maybe it was partly me, but I really think the music was buoyant. It was a musical renaissance. Sort of like today's sensibilities, the music before '65 had been all message-driven. It wanted us to think (think!) about things. I blame Bob Dylan. I was too young to think! Think about what? I didn't even know what the heck the folkies were complaining about. But they sure were bitchy. That wasn't music to me. Music was supposed to be fun. That's why they were called "songs"; not "dissertations". Even today, I hate, hate when people try to preach to me. "The answer is blowin' in the wind". Okay, well, blow away, dammit! Leave me the F alone!

Even the sad, morose, songs in 1965 at least had a catchy beat.

And there were the songs that made no sense, and that was the point, A guy from Dallas, Texas, named Domingo Samudio could dress as an Arab sheik and do something like this:
 


I frankly thought "Sloopy" was an unattractive name for a girl. It sounded like "Sloppy", or like someone who dribbled a lot.


I wonder whatever happened to the McCoys. (I used to do The Jerk, too. Didn't everybody?)

I never could figure out why Sonny Bono dressed like Fred Flintstone. It was a fashion choice, yes, but not necessarily a wise one. I half-expected him to scuttle away in a car that was powered by his fat bare toes. Nevertheless, who hasn't attempted this song on karaoke night?


I never could quite get into the Rolling Stones. That still holds true today. I have honestly tried -- honestly. I want to like them. My husband reveres them. They just don't do it for me. 

My recollection of this song is me standing outside in my circular driveway, holding my tiny transistor to my ear, and hearing a guy talking about someone smoking cigarettes, which I could relate to, because my dad smoked cigarettes. But other than that, ehh.



Shindig loved the Righteous Brothers. I loved the Righteous Brothers. This track was produced by an insane killer, which unfortunately colors my memories of the song, but geez, it's Bill Medley:


The Beach Boys were gods. Still are. I didn't know which one was Brian, or which one was Carl or Dennis, and it didn't matter. What mattered were those overly-tight white pants (just kidding! But not a wise fashion choice.) This track is notable due to the fact that they finally let Al Jardine sing lead. Of course, I didn't know that then. To me, the Beach Boys were the Beach Boys. I was not obsessed with who sang what. I still liked Little Deuce Coupe the best, although that was like a foreign language to me. I thought they were singing, "little do scoop". Which has nothing to do with this song:


Back to my brother:  He liked this song. I'd never heard the term "boondocks" before (or frankly, since). I remember pondering that word. I finally settled on "boondocks" equals "woods". I think that's wrong. But at ten, I pictured Billy Joe Royal singing about his life living inside a grove of trees. You be the judge:



My brother also had this single. He informed me that Gary Lewis was Jerry Lewis's son, like that was supposed to be a big selling point. I thought Jerry Lewis was a whiny overgrown child who was definitely not funny. There was an actual child in my household who was three years old and he was funnier than Jerry Lewis. I didn't actually mind Gary Lewis, but his entire recording was a fake, recorded by the Wrecking Crew, with even someone in the studio "helping" Gary with his vocals. 

Of course, I didn't know that in 1965. I didn't even know, or think about, how records were made. I thought they appeared by magic. I had absolutely no conception of someone standing behind a mic in a studio. In my ten-year-old mind, a bunch of guys got together and sang. That was the entire process. It was like Elvis breaking into song on the beach -- no instruments; yet I heard them. No microphone -- his voice carried across the rolling waves with nothing but a trio of dancing "friends" behind him in the sand. It's sort of how food appears on one's plate. Somebody disappears behind a door and comes out with a platter. I love magic.



People's memories are selective. Sure, when we think about '65, we know about the Beach Boys and Bob Dylan and Blah-Blah and the Blah-Blahs. But do we remember the Beau Brummels?  Well, we should, because they were on the radio all the time. You couldn't click on your transistor or flip on the car radio without hearing this song:



Speaking of Dylan, here's the deal:  I didn't know who this guy was in '65. I liked Rainy Day Woman #12 and 35, because I found it weird, and weird was good at ten years old. My brother told me the guy's real name was Robert Zimmerman and that he was from Hibbing, Minnesota. Okay. Well, good. My brother bestowed this knowledge upon me like it was very important. That's why I remember it to this day. I guess you had to be nineteen to "get" Bob Dylan; not ten. 

I still think he is a bad singer -- I mean, come on. Nevertheless, the man can write. This became clear to me when I was watching a documentary about Duluth, Minnesota, and the narrator recited a line about the city that I thought, "Wow; great line!" and then she said, "This was written by Bob Dylan." That's when I finally got it. 

This song is preternaturally long. The Beatles' tracks were 2:30, tops. It's not as long as "American Pie", which is like comparing "Achy Breaky Heart" to "Amarillo By Morning". Apples and putrefied oranges. But it's still long. Again, I did not understand at age ten that DJ's needed bathroom breaks. I thought they just sat there and listened to the records like I did. And every once in a while, they shouted out the station's call letters and the current temperature. But disc jockeys, just like real people, had to heed nature's call, so they really (really) liked this song:



I was fascinated by Roy Head when I saw him on Shindig. This was the most rubbery performer I'd ever seen! I remember worrying that his tight pants would split, but that could be just a false memory. Still, this guy was limber!




My boys were everywhere in '65. There was the Saturday morning cartoon, which was awful, but they played the songs, so, of course, I watched it. There were Beatles figurines. My mom bought me Ringo (thanks, Mom).

(notice that they all look basically the same)

 Of course, if I still had that figurine today, I would be a multi-millionaire! (Okay, maybe not.)

My boys had three records in the Billboard 100 in 1965. Here's one that doesn't get played a lot:



Another artist who's mostly forgotten, but shouldn't be, is Johnny Rivers. "Live At The Whisky A Go Go" was monumental. Never mind that they apparently didn't know how to spell "whiskey". In the early two thousands, I had the opportunity to see Johnny Rivers live, and he was still phenomenal. And everything that Jimmy Webb wrote in his awful book about Johnny means absolutely nothing to me. Mister Balloon Man.

Johnny hit the charts in 1965 with this:



Let me tell you about joyous music.

The first time I heard The Lovin' Spoonful was when "Daydream" wafted out of my transistor's speaker. What a day for a daydream. My best friend, Cathy, and I skipped along the streets of downtown Grand Forks with our radios pasted to our ears, warbling "I'm lost in a daydream, dreamin' 'bout my bundle of joy".

Then there was Zal Yankovsky. 

Zal knew that music was joyous. I don't even have to point him out to you in this video -- you'll know him. That's how music is to me.



1965 is when I learned music.








Saturday, October 7, 2017

Runnin' Down A Dream


I'm not a classic rock fan. I don't even know what the term, "classic rock" is supposed to mean. To me, classic rock is not the type of music they play on classic rock stations. Our local classic rock station has a playlist that consists of approximately nine songs. From what I can tell, classic rock consists of Aerosmith, ZZ Topp, The Who, and Tom Petty.

I am, however, a Tom Petty fan.

I honestly missed the Tom Petty era. The seventies were a lost decade of music for me. If it wasn't for my little sister, I wouldn't have any acquaintance with Tom at all. My sister turned me on to the album, "Full Moon Fever" in 1989. So I was only approximately ten years behind the times, in Tom Petty World.



What I knew about Tom Petty I could count on the fingers of one hand:  Full Moon Fever, his hat, The Traveling Wilburys. 

Lately I've been watching a Netflix documentary about Tom. I like him. He was a likeable guy. I was going along, liking him, and then he talked a bit about his childhood. And then I really liked him. I don't know why, but I'm continually surprised to learn that other people had crappy childhoods. I thought it was just me. I seriously did think that. Everybody I knew growing up seemed to live such serene lives. "Serene" is not a word I've used to describe myself -- ever. It makes me feel better to learn that somebody like Tom, who later touched the sky, started out as a messed-up kid. 

Musically, Tom will always be this to me:


Tom said, about this song, that each of the members of the group threw out lines, and they kept the best ones. I can pick out Dylan's words. Dylan's words, in general, are sublime. I would love to know which other words belonged to whom. 

George is gone, Roy (my heart) is long gone.

Now Tom is gone. It doesn't seem right somehow. It's too soon. I barely got to know him.

I'm ending this post this way, with joy. 






Saturday, July 29, 2017

What Is It About THAT Song?


Subliminally, I know the elements of a song that cause my heart to flutter. I choose, though, not to dissect it. A treatise on why humans love music would be supremely boring -- at least without a soundtrack.

I love lots of types of music. Sometimes my favorite song by a particular artist isn't the one that necessarily sears me. Generally, it's the one I hadn't thought about, at least consciously, in forever. But there it is, playing on my radio, and maybe it's the familiarity or maybe it evokes a memory I'd forgotten I had. Maybe it just feels like home, whatever home is.

Then there are the songs that I admit to liking, but not liking too much, but when I hear them, there's just something...

That's where the mystery lies. If someone was to ask me what my favorite Eagles song is, I would probably go with Take It To The Limit.

Except there's this one:


The best Roy Orbison song is "In Dreams", right? Then why do I always choose to play this one?


I don't know why, and I choose not to examine, why I like this next song so much. The nineteen seventies was an appalling decade for music. The nineteen seventies was an appalling decade, period. We had Jimmy Carter and Olivia Newton-John and Whip Inflation Now (WIN!) and seventeen per cent interest rates and disco. Men wearing polyester leisure suits with gold medallions. Jumpsuits. Platform shoes. Still, I like England Dan and John Ford Coley:


Country music is a category all its own. Yes, I have five-star favorites in country music, but let's be frank: country music doesn't fit with rock. You can't combine them. Country is a whole different vibe. Weird thing about music:  styles don't jibe. One must be in a particular frame of mind to listen to each of them. I'm a peculiar hybrid, and maybe lucky; because I love -- love -- both genres. But I don't feel comfortable featuring both of them here. So, perhaps in another post, I'll talk about the country songs that subliminally pierce my heart. 

But back to rock, here are the songs that don't:

1.  Brown-Eyed Girl
2.  American Pie
3.  Rose Garden
4.  Anything written by Jimmy Webb
5.  Honey

In closing, there is a song that has been my earworm for approximately two straight years. It was recently almost replaced by "Creeque Alley", for whatever reason. 

I am not saying that I love this song. I am saying that something is going on here. I don't think it's something good. Obviously a sociologist could discern why this particular song won't exit my brain. I've decided to label it an affliction. I'm hoping by posting it here, I may, one day, get relief. And I really like Trisha Yearwood (no offense).