Surf's Up

The month of September is at my doorstep, but the summer is still trying to suck every last drop of life blood out of us, like a crazed vampire who doesn't know when to stop draining its victim.  Almost imperceptibly, the great wheel of the seasons is turning with tantalizing slowness, and the sun continues its languid, snail-like journey towards the south part of the sky.  I leave my weekly aerobics class at approximately the same time, 6:50pm, and I can tell it's getting a tiny little bit darker each time.  Used to be I would walk out of the gym into the bright sunlight of an early evening, but now the sun is hovering just above the western horizon, sinking a little more each day.  The equinox is about three weeks away, and before long I will exit the gym to a sky devoid of sunlight..

I so love autumn because it has always been a time of reflection and contemplation, a time to consider what has been done so far this year, and plan for the long cold winter nights.  Everything seems richer and more colorful; the air will soon carry a touch of chilliness in the morning, and there will be a fragrance that speaks of the harvest and coming-of-age, of promises fulfilled and lessons learned.  The nighttime sky, always an indication of things to come, shows the Scorpion slinking low across the south toward the faintly glowing western horizon, and gallant, regal Pegasus, the celestial flying horse, making a powerful leap into the eastern sky, taking its rightful place of honor in the starry firmament.

In the coming months, the Scorpion will disappear in the west just as Orion the Hunter throws his leg up over the eastern mountains and hoists himself sideways into the sky, his faithful dog beside him and Lepus the celestial rabbit underneath him.  The Scorpion and Orion are locked in a death pursuit, each chasing the other but never catching up.  Scorpion wants to sting Orion with its glittering tail, and Orion wants to kill Scorpion with his club.  They've been doing this for billions of years and will probably continue for billions more. Such is their fate, both of them hopelessly joined in titanic struggle that will never be resolved.  Orion will rise higher in the southern sky until around the winter solstice, when Orion will take his rightful place as Lord of the Sky, glistening in the cold, deep winter night, Master of Heaven and Earth, surveying his kingdom.  The Rabbit will still be underneath him, right above Columba the Dove.  And very late at night, right around the winter solstice, you will spot the star Canopus, the harbinger of spring, skimming barely above the southern deserts and wildly twinkling like an over-caffeinated, multicolored strobe light.

I have been listening to a lot of music from the 1960s recently.  XM satellite radio in my vehicle, along with the music channels on DirecTV, serves up an endless stream of great tunes from that amazing decade.  Some of the music still sounds incredibly fresh and new, as if recorded just last week.  The music and the vocal harmonies of a lot of the groups were startlingly complex and intricate.  Looking back over four decades, I have a new appreciation for the achievements of bands like The Mamas and The Papas, Spanky and Our Gang and the glorious "Jersey Boy" pop of the Four Seasons.  Even shallow contrivances like The Cowsills, a musical family whose members ranged from youngsters barely out of the toddler stage to the surprising youthful and hip (for the 60s) mother, recorded an amazing song called "The Rain The Park and Other Things."  The Cowsills were a manufactured pop group, a precursor to the ubiquitous "boy bands" of the 80s and 90s, and their short-lived success degenerated into a series of acrimonious lawsuits which ended up tearing the family apart.  Besides the reign of brash, revolutionary groups like The Beatles and the Jefferson Airplane, the 60s also saw the dawning of the singer-songwriter era with geniuses like Laura Nyro and Joni Mitchell, whose brilliance would continue into the new millennium. 

Sure, there was a lot of crap music from that era, something that is inescapable no matter which decade you examine.  The "bubblegum" music craze was particularly obnoxious, and unabashedly phony studio groups like "The Archies" and "The 1910 Fruitgum Company" sold millions of annoying records.  Reflecting the cultural war at the time, a lot of people snapped up faux-patriotic potboilers like "The Ballad of the Green Berets" by SSgt. Barry Sadler (1966) - and on the other end - whiny, overwrought polemics like "Eve of Destruction" by Barry McGuire (1965).  But all that was counterbalanced by Motown, the early Beatles, and the whole San Francisco psychedelic era, and those are the musical genres with real creativity, and real staying power.

Also central to the 60s sound were the Beach Boys, whose music and sophisticated vocal arrangements are still universally regarded as the best of the best.  Brian Wilson's perfectly crafted masterpieces such as "Good Vibrations," "Wouldn't It Be Nice," and the shimmering, transcendent "Surf's Up" are unforgettable.  The Boys, along with lesser lights such as Jan and Dean, created the entire California youth scene, an eternal playground full of fast cars, surfing and beautiful girls in bikinis frolicking on a golden beach in an endless summer (recently given a garish, playfully hallucinogenic update by Katy Perry in her "California Gurls" video).  As someone just entering their teenage years, I was completely captivated by this perfect vision of a happy, carefree world drenched in lemon-yellow sunlight where you didn't have to work, and the biggest problem you had to worry about was catching the perfect wave.  Growing up as I did in a gritty steel-mill town near Pittsburgh, life could get oppressively dull and dreary.  The nearest body of water was the dirty Allegheny river which absent-mindedly meandered nearby, definitely not conducive to surfing.  The "beach" (derisively called the "Polish Riviera") consisted of a tiny strip of land on the other side of the river made up of smooth, round river rock, which was incredibly uncomfortable to walk or lay on.  Wintertime could be long, harsh and very depressing, often not seeing the sun for two weeks at a time, the trees devoid of green leaves, and the world locked in a frigid grip of icy, frozen ground and heavy, leaden skies.  But gods help me, that was my home, and I loved it.  Truth be told, sometimes I miss those incredibly dismal, cheerless winter days.

When conditions outside become difficult or unpleasant, either emotionally or because of the weather, the natural urge is to turn inward for solace.  Whether it's 10 or 110 degrees outside, it's the same thing, two sides of the same coin.  Memories are important stepping-stones back to a world with which you are intimately familiar, and that can be a very comforting thing.  It's endlessly fascinating to me how a song or a piece of music can evoke such rich, detailed memories of who you were and what you were doing when you first heard it.  I can remember all the words to songs I have not heard in 40 years, yet I can't remember what I did last week.  Funny how such seemingly trivial things make such an enormous impression on you.  Memories are funny, precious and remarkable milestones on the journey of your life.

Signpost to Senility No. 4,298

Getting older is not for the faint of heart or the easily frightened, as I'm finding out on an almost daily basis. It pretty much sucks on every level and should be avoided at all costs. Try as we might to press onward and live our lives as we have done for the past 30 or so years, stuff comes up that definitively lets us know that we are no longer in our mid-20s. Time does indeed march on, and we are either along for the ride or destined for the off-ramp.

I had one of those moments last night as I attended the Roger Waters The Wall Live Tour. Formerly a member of Pink Floyd, one of my all-time favorite groups, Waters created this magnum opus thirty years ago. About the alienation and isolation fame can bring, the original live show centered around a huge wall built on stage, separating musician from audience. At the time Waters felt at first a real disconnect from the people who came to see them, which eventually grew into a disdain and then hostility. He transferred these feelings onto his main character, Pink, who lived a hellish rock-star life of great excess but also great pain and sadness. Searching for the sources of this sadness, Waters heaps blame on a smothering, overbearing mother-figure, an unfaithful harpy of a wife, and a brittle, psychotic schoolmaster straight out of a Dickens novel.

Performed by the original Pink Floyd members, it was staged in 4 cities only. In later years the band broke up, and The Wall was never performed that way again. Resurrected in Berlin after the fall of the Berlin wall and in some other venues after, the show grew and changed, but the construction of a giant wall and its subsequent destruction on stage was always the one part that didn't change.

So this latest reincarnation is a high-tech tour-de-force that has to be one of the most elaborate and expensive shows ever. The Wall is still there, and is now used extensively as a screen for a huge amount of high-definition graphics. Gigantic puppets, probably 50 or 60 feet high, loom above the stage as grotesque symbols of all the horrible things that have happened in Pink's life. A model World War II plane glided high above the audience as it crossed the USAirways Center and crashed behind the Wall in a huge ball of flame. A giant inflatable pig floated around the arena, much to everyone's delight. It was total batshit-craziness from beginning to end, and was an amazing concert. Roger Waters was in fine voice and looked like he was having a really good time.

However, I am now officially done with huge concerts like that. No more for me. The crowd there was really obnoxious, loud and inconsiderate. There was an idiot sitting behind me who screamed and hollered throughout the entire show, as if he were carrying on a personal conversation with Roger Waters. This douchebag started shrieking "TEAR DOWN THE WALL!" in the first 20 minutes of the show, something that doesn't happen until the very end, two hours later. I didn't know one person could be so loud, this goon was really giving me a headache. He also did some whistling thing with his fingers that was extremely loud and shrill. But he didn't care who he bothered or annoyed with his actions, he was having a good time and that was it. Also a number of people around me smoked pot during the show. I don't have any problem with marijuana use, but not offering to share? Unforgivable and tacky.

Time was, I loved to go to concerts like that. I attended my first rock concert sometime during the 60's at the now-defunct Civic Arena in Pittsburgh. While I forget who it was that I went to see, I remember having a lot of trouble coming up with the $8 ticket price, a far cry from the $125 ticket price for The Wall. But it was an atmosphere of anything-goes as thousands of crazed music lovers like myself were in one place for the sole purpose of listening to a live performance by a favorite band. It was an awesome and amazing time and I loved every second of it. I went to many, many concerts over the next couple of decades, and it was something I loved almost more than anything else.

Now, not so much. The noise, the sheer volume of the music, and the machine-gun-like barrage of visuals and graphics became almost overwhelming. It was great fun to hear the live versions of the songs from the album that I listened to hundreds of times and to which I knew every single word, but the loud, obnoxious crowd just got to be too much. I know it's impossible for some people to just sit and enjoy a show, but having to ruin the experience of everyone around them due to their selfishness was a real turn-off for me.

So, Roger Waters, you did good. The genius of your work shined through at every turn, and putting together such an incredible show is nothing short of a miracle. I'm glad the last big concert I will go to see was yours.

The Last Day of The Last Year of the First Decade

Here we are on December 31, 2009. A Thursday night, and from all indications tonight is going to slink away quietly, tail tucked between its legs, as if it were somehow sorry or embarrassed for what had gone on before on its watch.

Yes, we did end the year with a Christmas Day terrorist scare. A Nigerian man got on a Northwest Airlines plane in Schipol Airport, Amsterdam, with explosives in his underwear. I suppose that was only a natural progression from the rectum bomb that nearly took out a Saudi Arabian prince earlier this year, but just how delusional to you have to be to place dangerous chemicals next to your naughty bits? I don't think that this whole suicide bomber thing was properly explained to that dimwit. I mean, if you do blow your junk off, exactly what are you going to do with the 70 virgins that are supposedly waiting for you on the other side? Luckily for everyone, the bomb did not ignite, and amazingly this Al Qaeda group somewhere claimed credit for the failed bombing and even made some boastful comment about building the "sophisticated detonator." Well I guess it was too "sophisticated" to actually "work," better check that out a little more next time.

And there will be a next time, unfortunately. What this failed attempt did show is that the much-ballyhooed post-911 air travel security system has more than a few gaping holes. That Nigerian man should never had had a visa or been allowed to board, there were plenty of indications of his intent. Information was not shared, conclusions were not drawn and preemptive actions were not taken. Next time, we might not be so lucky.

This hasn't been the best of years; so many depressing, disappointing things happened. Sarah Palin refuses to go away, just like the worst case of irritable bowel syndrome you could imagine. So many people who should know better just continue to say and do the most outrageously stupid, destructive and embarrassing things possible. Dick Cheney continues to be one of the scariest and most evil people who used to be alive. Like they say, the good die young but evil is forever. If Cheney had his way the nuclear bombs would be falling from the sky like raindrops in Seattle and he would be King of Necrotopia forever.

Did anything good at all happen this year? I suppose we can say the fact that we made it through this year and are still around to gripe and moan about it is something good. But this has been a very difficult year to get through for a lot of people, including me. The job situation is still horrendously bad, with unemployment at 10%. Property values are still in the toilet, foreclosures still raging. The U.S. economy is showing some meager signs of recovery but is still very, very sick, and can relapse at any time. Greed and avarice continue unabated. There have been a number of news stories indicating that year-end bonuses on Wall Street are going to be as outrageous as ever, almost as if the financial meltdown earlier this year was just an unpleasant fever dream, the kind you get from eating tainted lobster or bad caviar or something.

This year more than ever, stupidity reigned in this country. Whether it was the "balloon boy" supposedly drifting across the Colorado landscape in a silver spaceship, or former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich doing and saying the dumbest things he could possibly think of, or Kanye West creating a cultural firestorm by stomping all over Taylor Swift's first American Music Award, or boring Barbie doll Carrie Prejean posing as some conservative Christian pillar of morality passing judgment on the marital arrangements of others while sitting on a homemade sex tape, it does seem like the idiots are really taking over this country. But there were little touches of welcome relief, such as Susan Boyle's stunning debut on a British talent show, when a studio audience (and later the world) morphed from cynical derision to enraptured adoration in the time it took her to sing the words, "I dreamed a dream of times gone by...." or the surprising success of Lady Gaga, who is a fairly good singer and musician once you get past all the junior-college-art-class costumes and posturing. She seems like what would happen if Icelandic pop star Bjork dyed her hair platinum blonde and got a hold of some bad drugs.

I may or may not be awake when the clock strikes midnight tonight. If I am I'm sure I'll be serenaded by the sound of automatic weapons fire coming from the cheap apartment complexes to the south of me. Just another indication that in spite of all my deepest, most sincere wishes and prayers, we will still have to deal with stupid people next year. Is there any hope for 2010 to be any better than 2009? It's so hard to judge at this point. I remember on January 1, 2009, no one was holding out any hope that the year would be any good. And it certainly lived down to our expectations. Maybe we should try the opposite approach, and start thinking good thoughts about 2010. Perhaps if we do things will work out and the year will return prosperity, security and hope to everyone. I wish that does happen, but just in case, I'm going to start working on Plan B tomorrow.

Be My Baby, Ellie Greenwich

A couple of days ago it was announced that songwriter Ellie Greenwich passed away at age 68. She is one of those people whose name is not instantly recognizable but the influence she had on early sixties pop music was enormous. You may have not heard of her, but you've certainly heard the songs she crafted.

Ellie worked in the famous Brill Building in Manhattan in the early sixties. What an amazing, astonishing place that must have been in its heyday. Imagine walking from office to office, floor to floor and hearing fantastic music and singing coming from everywhere. There were a number of record producers, arrangers and composers who had office space there, and some of the leading girl-group acts of the day could be heard trying out new songs and melodies. Talk about being in the right place at the right time - the Brill Building in the early 60s was ground zero for some of the most listenable and enduring pop music ever produced.

Greenwich worked on some of the landmark pop songs of that era. Who can resist a perfect confection like the Dixie Cups' "Chapel of Love," or the earnest optimism of "(Today I Met) The Boy I'm Gonna Marry" by Darlene Love? This was back in the day when marriage was an ultimate goal and the highest accomplishment to which one could aspire. Ellie Greenwich had her hand in a number of hit records by some of the quintessential sixties girl groups. Tunes like "Then He Kissed Me" and the jaunty "Da Doo Ron Ron" by The Crystals, and "Baby I Love You" and the flawless gem "Be My Baby" by The Ronettes. This last song in particular was a perfect storm of great songwriting, great performing and artful musical craftsmanship. It's doubtful that Phil Spector's legendary "Wall of Sound" would have seemed quite as good without Ronnie Spector's soulful vocals and that ideal vehicle of a song. Ronnie Spector's singing was so good she reprised her unforgettable stylings to great effect on Eddie Money's 80s hit, "Take Me Home Tonight."

Then there was The Shangri-La's "Leader of the Pack," a marvelously overwrought teen-angst classic. A three-minute Wagner opera created for twelve-year-old girls, it had everything that makes your teenage years appalling and exhilarating the the same time: an uncomfortable, slightly illicit teenage attraction, parental disapproval, a motorcycle rebel, and a tough-chick attitude captured perfectly by the vocals. It started like the dialogue in a play, a girl and her friends discussing a new boyfriend when the lead vocalist rips into the melody:

"I met him at the candy store,
He turned around and smiled at me -
You get the picture?"
"Yes, we see!"
"That's how I fell for
the Leader of the Pack!"

The song goes deliciously off the rails as the love affair tanks and the cycle rebel gets into a traffic accident, the vocalist shrieking out a frantic "Lookout! Lookout! Lookout! Lookout!" at the last minute followed by horrendous skidding and crashing sound effects. And after all the histrionics and carrying-on, the song fades out with a howling, never-ending screech of tires over an evocative vocal phrase repeated over and over like a prayer: "Leader of the Pack, now he's gone, No, No, No..." You could not ask for more in a song.

As a pre-teenager growing up in relative cultural isolation in a small western Pennsylvania steel-mill town, I remember many summer nights laying in bed listening to my transistor radio through an earplug, and if the atmospheric conditions were right I was able to tune in an AM radio station from distant New York City. Cousin Brucie on WABC had a nighttime program where he spun all the current hits, and to me it was an audio window to another world, so exotic and different from my life it might as well have been coming from the other side of the planet. Even the commercials were fascinating to me, because they referenced places like Brooklyn, Queens, Madison Avenue, and Broadway, places I had only heard about. The radio signal would phase in and out, and the hissing static would almost sound like hypnotic waves of an ethereal ocean, just adding to the mesmerizing and surreal quality of the experience. I never forgot those wondrous summer nights, and the incredible music coming in through the night from a far-off, glittering city I could only dream about.

Alas, something this brilliant and creative burns out quickly, and Greenwich saw her career eclipsed by the British invasion several years later, which ushered in the era of the singer-songwriter. With talents like Joni Mitchell on the west coast and Laura Nyro on the east coast, and the Beatles coming over from England, artists were now writing and performing their own music, and Ellie found less demand for her skills. She did help Neil Diamond with his first couple of hits, and even penned the naughty, salacious "(My Baby Does The) Hanky Panky" by the mega-cheesy Tommy James and the Shondells. Her career enjoyed a brief resurgence in the eighties as a Broadway musical, "Leader of the Pack," introduced her meticulously crafted music to a new generation.

Now Ellie is gone, but her music is not. It will endure as long as there are teenagers growing up and listening to impossibly beautiful music, written especially for them and drifting in over the radio waves on warm, still, summer nights, speaking directly to their hearts.

Won't you please be my baby, Ellie Greenwich?

The Man in the Mirror

Yesterday the world was shocked to hear of the death of Michael Jackson. It certainly came as a surprise to me, since he was apparently readying a 50-concert stand in London, which was sold out in hours. The tributes have started in earnest, in every media, and deservedly so. Even National Public Radio is airing a tribute as I type this.

Michael Jackson truly was a stellar talent. His songwriting, singing, dancing and all-around performing skills were hard to equal. From humble beginnings in Gary, Indiana, he became one of the most widely-known people in history. Everybody in practically all corners of the world knew him and his music. After millions in album sales, acclaimed videos and performances, his career was derailed by his personal foibles and demons but he seemed poised to make a comeback, starting next month.

But his personal troubles were almost as staggering as his triumphs. For those of us possessed of a certain maturity (translate: old enough) we remember the round-faced nine-year-old with the high, perfectly-pitched voice belting out "A-B-C" and busting some great dance moves, fronting for his family band. You couldn't help but like him, and his immense natural talent was a wonder to behold. But there was a dark side to his personality which increasingly manifested itself as he transitioned to adulthood. He seemed preoccupied with children and youth and unnaturally so, much to his detriment. Obsessed with the story of Peter Pan, he truly was the young boy who refused to grow up. This had so much to do with the fact that he was denied anything resembling a normal childhood. From all accounts his father was an insanely abusive and strict martinet with all his children, beating them and driving them to achieve almost impossible tasks or face dire physical consequences. Thrust on stage at a very early age, he never really left it. It became so much a part of his life; the constant scrutiny, being in the public eye, being on stage vulnerable for the world to see. But as long as the money came pouring in from the records and concerts, it was certain that on stage is where he would stay. His family certainly bears the brunt of the blame for this, along with record labels and concert producers. Unavoidably, Jackson himself shares some complicity in the making of an extremely public life and the ultimate unraveling of that life. You can't help thinking so many warning signs were deliberately ignored for the sake of making millions of dollars. That is a very powerful incentive which obliterates and obscures everything else.

Through his music Jackson sought to erase the dividing lines between race, gender, ethnicity and sexuality, reaching for a truly barrier-free world. In fact he altered his own body to a nearly-unbelievable degree as he tried to merge all races and genders into one person, himself. As this personal transformation careened out of control, instead of becoming a person encompassing all variations of race, ethnicities or genders, he descended into a nether world, a limbo between the races and genders which increasingly isolated him and turned him into somewhat of a freak of nature. He tried to get past the barriers that our differences create for us, but I have always felt that was the wrong thing to do. Our differences should not be ignored or glossed over or blurred away - they should be celebrated and embraced. They are what makes us different and unique, and human beings are meant to be different and unique. It would be very boring if everyone looked and acted the same. Our differences are our strengths, they are what make us human. Jackson tried to circumvent them, and ended up alone, sad and very troubled. Instead of being everything, he very nearly ended up being nothing.

It doesn't surprise me that the tributes being aired everywhere today all seem to focus on his disturbed and chaotic personal life. That certainly cannot be ignored but there is so much more to appreciate with his music and his artistic accomplishments instead. Everyone mentions his Thriller album and that indeed was a blockbuster, but my personal favorite album of his was Off The Wall, which seemed to me a much more personal and intimate account of the transitions and changes he was going through, as he vainly tried to get control of his personal life and move into adulthood. Thriller was the birth of Michael Jackson, Superstar and Cultural Icon, while Off The Wall was the birth of Jackson the performer, the visionary and the all-too-human boy trapped in a man's body yearning to take the next step to being an adult, and for the briefest of time periods, it was almost within his grasp.

He left the world an enormous legacy of music and art, and I really hope he has found the peace which so tragically eluded him during his fifty years on earth.

Go Ride The Music

Had an opportunity this morning to take another stroll down Memory Lane. An email from Wolfgang's Vault arrived and pointed the way to a tape-recorded concert of Jefferson Airplane, circa 1967. Wolfgang's Vault is an amazing website where an unbelievable number of concert tapes, made at countless Bill Graham (Graham's actual first name was "Wolfgang") musical events, are available to listen to for free. Check out their roster of artists - you are guaranteed to find someone you like and may spend a lot of time reliving some very great music.

Good music of that kind has an enormous capacity to transport you back to when you originally heard it. Music can embody a certain time, a specific place, who you were with at the time, and more importantly who you WERE when you heard it. Music can perfectly encapsulate an entire era or a part of your life. It does more than capture a moment - it captures a spirit, a consciousness, an essence. You can feel young and idealistic again - the world can once more explode with hope, possibilities, passion and potential.

The late sixties were a singular, pivotal point in time. American culture went through a drastic, radical, relatively instantaneous change. From the stodgy, stifling musical conformity of the previous decade, the Beatles and the British Invasion were a breath of fresh air against the blandness that went before them (except, of course, for Motown in the early sixties which still is and forever will be totally awesome). This set the stage for the Psychedelic Sixties, an immense blast of color and music and art and light that illuminated this country from coast to coast. Everything was new, fresh, wonderful and exciting. It was like a Great Awakening, a new Renaissance, a blossoming and opening of the mind, a time when you really, truly believed that anything was possible.

And the music! The music that was happening in California on the San Francisco/Los Angeles axis was a magnet that pulled everyone's attention to the west coast. For me the Jefferson Airplane was the first and only band for me. I played all their albums until they were worn smooth (I actually went through 3 copies of "After Bathing At Baxter's" - I'm talking vinyl here). Their music was powerful, soaring, uplifting and inspiring to me. Along with some friends, I hitchhiked in the dead of winter from Pittsburgh to Cleveland in 1970 to see them in concert. I was never so cold in my life but it was so worth it.

So many artists did fantastic, career-defining work in that era. The first Crosby, Stills and Nash album was simply amazing; the music and harmonies were so pristine and pure, just like sunlight in the "garden in the morning after it rained," to quote a line from the song "Guinevere." Joni Mitchell's "Ladies of the Canyon" is a perfect time capsule for me. Listening to those songs is like going on a mini-vacation for me. I can forget about whatever problems or issues I'm dealing with at the time and for a while I'm 18 years old again. But maybe my favorite album from that era is David Crosby's luminous, transcendent solo effort "If I Could Only Remember My Name." Unbelievably good from start to finish, it's almost too perfect and wonderful to be true. We may never hear music of that quality and beauty again.

Jefferson Airplane's majestic anthem to future times, "Wooden Ships," ends with the soaring voices of the singers chanting, "Go Ride The Music" over and over. It really is music that will literally and figuratively pick you up and carry you away. The sixties were like that - anything was possible - and you can still feel the power and hear the echoes at Wolfgang's Vault.