music | dual personalities

May 31, 2013

You can see it in the trees; You can smell it in the breeze

by chuckofish

June is bustin’ out all over!

Look around! Look around! Look around!

The feelin’ is gettin’ so intense,
That the young Virginia creepers
Hev been huggin’ the bejeepers
Outa all the mornin’ glories on the fence!

This may be true in New England, where Carousel takes place, but sadly, things have been bustin’ out all over our flyover state for a month already. Indeed, everything starts to droop here in June. The peonies have gone by as have the irises. They were lovely.

We put off as long as we can turning on the old AC, but finally the heat gets to be too much for us, and we seal off the house. Sigh. It won’t be long now.

Oh well. I have a new calendar page for the new month–with sparkly fishes!

I have roses inside.

And roses outside.

Plus…

It was June, and the world smelled of roses. The sunshine was like powdered gold over the grassy hillside. (Maud Hart Lovelace, Betsy-Tacy and Tib, 1941)

Have a good weekend! A dear friend is visiting our flyover town from the east coast this weekend and my old man is celebrating his 40th high school reunion, so this introvert will be working overtime.

Happy Birthday to Clint Eastwood who turns 83 today! I do not think I own one of his movies (except a VHS copy of Paint Your Wagon!), but if I did, I’d watch one! Here he is singing “I Talk to the Trees”. I spent a good deal of 8th grade daydreaming about him. Can you blame me?

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May 28, 2013

A little Bob Dylan for Tuesday

by chuckofish

We did not wish Bob Dylan a happy birthday last Friday, because we were all caught up celebrating John Wayne’s birthday.

So happy belated birthday, Bob! (This is a two-minute song he sang on the Johnny Cash Show in 1969. He looks so clean-cut.)

3 Comments

May 14, 2013

Oh, the shark, babe

by chuckofish

Today is Bobby Darin’s birthday!

Darin (May 14, 1936 – December 20, 1973), you will recall, was an American singer, songwriter, and actor of film and television. He performed in a range of music genres, including pop, rock, jazz, folk, and country.

When I was growing up, we had a 45-record of Darin’s 1959 hit “Mack the Knife”, which our mother loved. We accused her of listening to it too much and teased her about her uncharacteristic affection for Bobby Darin. My sister and I even had a dance routine worked out with specific hand gestures, which we would perform for years to come (and may have as recently as the boy’s wedding). Of course, we thought it was spectacularly silly and made much fun of Bobby Darin. But truth be told, we secretly liked him a lot.

He made some not-so-classic films with his wife Sandra Dee, but I do love Come September (1960), which stars Rock Hudson and Gina Lollobrigida and, in a small part, Leslie Howard’s son, Ronald Howard.

Awkward, to say the least…

Bobby Darin was best when playing young, finger-snapping hipsters and he was not so great in serious roles. He memorably over-acted in the part of a shell-shocked soldier in Captain Newman, M.D. (1963) with Gregory Peck and Angie Dickinson, and was even nominated for an Academy Award. He didn’t win, of course, but it must have been a thrill for him. (At the Cannes Film Festival he won the French Film Critics Award for best actor. Zut alors!)

Singing was his real forte though and he became world famous for such hits as “Splish Splash”, “Dream Lover” and “Beyond the Sea”. He died much too young at age 37. Here he is singing his great #1 hit “Mack the Knife”.

P.S. Darin had a custom car built called the “Dream Car”, designed by Andy DiDia, which is on display at the St. Louis Museum of Transportation. It is, like its owner, pretty darn cool.

4 Comments

May 3, 2013

A blast from the past

by chuckofish

On this day in 1960 The Fantasticks opened at the Sullivan Street Playhouse, a small off-Broadway theatre in New York City’s Greenwich Village. A musical with music by Harvey Schmidt and lyrics by Tom Jones, it tells an allegorical story, loosely based on the play “The Romancers” (“Les Romanesques”) by Edmond Rostand, concerning two neighboring fathers who trick their children, Luisa and Matt, into falling in love by pretending to feud. The show’s original off-Broadway production ran a total of 42 years (!) and 17,162 performances, making it the world’s longest-running musical.

Hard to believe I know, but I have never seen The Fantasticks! I know the famous song Try to Remember–I mean how many people sang that song in Talent Shows in the 1960s? And I know that the original cast included one of our favorites, Jerry Orbach, alias “Lenny”.

Here he is singing Try to Remember.

Interesting side note: Jerry was born to a Jewish father and a Catholic mother and raised Catholic. However, he died an Episcopalian and is buried at Trinity Church Cemetery (located in Upper Manhattan between Broadway and Riverside Drive, at the Church of the Intercession, New York) along with Clement Clark Moore, John James Audubon, and many members of New York’s social elite. Way to go, Jerry!

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April 24, 2013

She’s a pilgrim living in the modern time

by chuckofish

Oh my goodness. I got some good new music for my birthday! Thank you to my dual personality who gave me This Empty Northern Hemisphere by Gregory Alan Isakov.

Gregory Alan Isakov is a singer-songwriter. Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, he emigrated to the United States as a child, and was raised in Philadelphia. I sure do like him!

Meanwhile Calhoun County has been declared a disaster area. (Flooding on the line.)

And this guy is under water again:

UPI.com

Here is the statue of Lewis and Clark and their big ol’ dog when the river is not flooding:

“Captain’s Return,” by Harry Weber

Ah, but where was I? Good music for my birthday. But don’t worry–I will tie it all together:

“The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers and cities; but to know someone who thinks and feels with us, and who, though distant, is close to us in spirit, this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden.”

― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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April 8, 2013

Note to self

by chuckofish

It is Monday morning. Need some morning inspiration? Here is Dame Kiri Te Kanawa singing Richard Strauss’ “Beim Schlafengehen” from “Vier Letzte Lieder”. It is one of those pieces that is impossible to hear without choking up (as I did this morning). But it is inspiring and beautiful. Listen to the whole thing.

Remember Linda Hunt as Billy Kwan in Peter Weir’s great movie The Year of Living Dangerously (1982)? Billy listens to this music obsessively during an important juncture of the story. I remember buying the Strauss LP after seeing the movie and listening to it over and over. Yes. Nerd. C’est la vie.

3 Comments

March 29, 2013

The heart in thee

by chuckofish

“Ineffable is the union of man and God in every act of the soul. The simplest person who in his integrity worships God, becomes God; yet for ever and ever the influx of this better and universal self is new and unsearchable. It inspires awe and astonishment. How dear, how soothing to man, arises the idea of God, peopling the lonely place, effacing the scars of our mistakes and disappointments! When we have broken our god of tradition and ceased from our god of rhetoric, then may God fire the heart with his presence. It is the doubling of the heart itself, nay, the infinite enlargement of the heart with a power of growth to a new infinity on every side. It inspires in man an infallible trust. He has not the conviction, but the sight, that the best is the true, and may in that thought easily dismiss all particular uncertainties and fears, and adjourn to the sure revelation of time the solution of his private riddles. He is sure that his welfare is dear to the heart of being. In the presence of law to his mind he is overflowed with a reliance so universal that it sweeps away all cherished hopes and the most stable projects of mortal condition in its flood. He believes that he cannot escape from his good. The things that are really for thee gravitate to thee. You are running to seek your friend. Let your feet run, but your mind need not. If you do not find him, will you not acquiesce that it is best you should not find him? for there is a power, which, as it is in you, is in him also, and could therefore very well bring you together, if it were for the best. You are preparing with eagerness to go and render a service to which your talent and your taste invite you, the love of men and the hope of fame. Has it not occurred to you that you have no right to go, unless you are equally willing to be prevented from going? O, believe, as thou livest, that every sound that is spoken over the round world, which thou oughtest to hear, will vibrate on thine ear! Every proverb, every book, every byword that belongs to thee for aid or comfort, shall surely come home through open or winding passages. Every friend whom not thy fantastic will but the great and tender heart in thee craveth, shall lock thee in his embrace. And this because the heart in thee is the heart of all; not a valve, not a wall, not an intersection is there anywhere in nature, but one blood rolls uninterruptedly an endless circulation through all men, as the water of the globe is all one sea, and, truly seen, its tide is one.”

–Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The Over-Soul”

This is a long quote, but I hope you read the whole thing and did not skim. Dear daughter #2 shared this quote with me yesterday with the suggestion that “it’s nice to fall back on the Transcendentalist ideas if the institution of the church is failing you.” I guess my recent posts had her a little worried. But fear not, my relationship with the Episcopal Church, though a love/hate one, is a long-term one. From time to time I threaten to leave, but I probably won’t. I just continue to lower my expectations!

Thanks also to daughter #2 for sending her old mama some new music!

Josh Ritter and Trampled by Turtles! Great choices for me, especially the TBT–nothing gets me going in the morning like 21st century bluegrass! Here is my favorite song, titled appropriately “Walt Whitman”:

This song gets my Barbara Stanwyck alter ego all charged up and ready to go. Sometimes I think my driving may suffer, but so far so good.

Happy Easter and have a great weekend!

2 Comments

March 19, 2013

Here’s to the hearts an’ the hands of the men, that come with the dust and are gone with the wind*

by chuckofish

Today in 1962 Bob Dylan’s self-titled debut album was released by Columbia Records.

That was 51 years ago.

US sales totaled about 2500 copies. Bob Dylan remains Dylan’s only release not to chart at all in the US, though it eventually reached #13 in the UK charts in 1965. Despite the album’s poor performance, financially it was not disastrous because the album was very cheap to record.

Since then he has released something like 35 albums. He has won many awards throughout his career including 11 Grammy Awards, one Academy Award and one Golden Globe Award. He has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, and Songwriters Hall of Fame. Last year he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And still he is the same old Bob Dylan driving reporters crazy, refusing to tow the line and give them the answers they want to hear.

Your fans know you and love you, Bob. We know that the Holy Spirit did not tap you on the shoulder. He kicked you in the ass. And you have been praising the Lord ever since.

* Song to Woody

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March 13, 2013

Lost Highway

by chuckofish

The original rolling stone, you know, was not Bob Dylan or Mick Jagger. It was Hank Williams.

I’m a rolling stone, all alone and lost
For a life of sin, I have paid the cost
When I pass by, all the people say
“Just another guy on the lost highway”

Most people think old Hank Sr. wrote that song, since he wrote so many famous songs during his sad, short life, but he did not. Written by Leon Payne, “Lost Highway” was recorded by Hank Williams in 1949 at age 26 and he came to personify that “just another guy on the lost highway”.

I was listening to an old burned mix the other day and I heard Beck’s version of Williams’ poignant “Your Cheatin’ Heart” and that got me thinking about one of America’s greatest singer-songwriters.

What a great song! (I like Beck’s version.)

Widely considered country music’s first superstar, Hiram “Hank” Williams was born September 17, 1923, in Mount Olive, Alabama. Never much of a singer (in my opinion) he wrote many American classics, such as “Cold, Cold Heart,” “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” “Hey, Good Lookin'” and “Move It on Over,” as well as Christian classics like “I Saw the Light.” He died of a heart attack at the age of 29 in 1953 in the backseat of his Cadillac on the way to a show. It was really no surprise, since he had been abusing his poor, frail body for years with drugs and alcohol, trying to dull his constant back pain due to spinal bifida.

He packed a lot in to his short life span though, didn’t he? His mysterious talent has always interested me. How can the same man who wrote “Honky Tonkin'” and “You’re Gonna Change (Or I’m Gonna Leave)” –jarring, jangling chart-toppers–also have written the contemplative “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” and “Lost on the River”? Human beings are amazing.

Hear the lonesome whiperwill
He sounds too blue to fly
The midnight train is whining low
I’m so lonesome I could cry

I’ve never seen a night so long
When time goes crawling by
The moon just went behind a cloud
To hide its face and cry

Did you ever see a robin weep
When leaves begin to die
That means he’s lost the will to live
I’m so lonesome I could cry

The silence of a falling star
Lights up a purple sky
And as I wonder where you are
I’m so lonesome I could cry

Beautiful. I think John Keats would agree. He died at 25. Hopefully they are talking shop in heaven. I like to think so.

P.S. Hollywood made a movie of Williams’ made-to-order drama-filled life in 1964. It starred George Hamilton and was called Your Cheatin’ Heart. It was pretty homogenized and I think they could do a whole lot better. I’m surprised they haven’t tried again. James Franco? Ryan Gosling? It could be Academy Awardsville for you.

7 Comments

March 5, 2013

Things and the reason of things

by chuckofish

Whoever you are! motion and reflection are especially for you,
The divine ship sails the divine sea for you.

Whoever you are! you are he or she for whom the earth is solid and liquid,
You are he or she for whom the sun and moon hang in the sky,
For none more than you are the present and the past,
For none more than you is immortality.

Each man to himself and each woman to herself, is the word of the past and present, and the true word of immortality,
No one can acquire for another–not one,
Not one can grow for another–not one.

The song is to the singer, and comes back most to him,
The teaching is to the teacher, and comes back most to him,
The murder is to the murderer, and comes back most to him,
The theft is to the thief, and comes back most to him,
The love is to the lover, and comes back most to him,
The gift is to the giver, and comes back most to him–it cannot fail,
The oration is to the orator, the acting is to the actor and actress not to the audience,
And no man understands any greatness or goodness but his own, or the indication of his own.

–Walt Whitman, A Song of the Rolling Earth

And in other news: my friend Gary’s band Sun Volt was featured in the Wall Street Journal the other day. You can read the article here.

via Wall Street Journal

Gary is the cool dude on the far left.

3 Comments

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