Ralston Creek Review

Ireland has produced some fantabulous poets over the centuries.  Keeping to fairly modern times, we think of William Butler Yeats, James Joyce, Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde, Brendan Behan – and the list goes on.  Come October, when the leaves on the trees are falling to the sound of the breezes that blow, we are reminded to include Van Morrison on that list.

“Moondance” is a great song from sort of turning point in the life of Sir George Ivan “Van” Morrison, Jr.  He had been immensely popular in Belfast as a founding member of Them (which was the seminal Irish band for two years, much as U2 has been for the past several decades).  Then, in 1966, Morrison left the group to pursue a solo career.  His first solo single, “Brown Eyed Girl,” has become one of the most popular rock and roll songs of all time.  However, due to contractual issues, he received almost no payment, and was nearly destitute when he left Bang Records and began recording for Warner Brothers.

It seems that Warner signed him because it believed, based on songs like “Gloria” and “Brown Eyed Girl,” that Morrison would create commercially successful pop music.  However, his first album for the new label was Astral Weeks, a complicated enigmatic song cycle that is recognized as a work of genius; but did not sell well when it was released in 1968.  Within a few months, though, listeners began to appreciate the gift he had given them, and that album presaged his marvelous career that followed.

His next album was Moondance, released in 1970.  As dark and mystical as Astral Weeks had seemed, this one was optimistic and upbeat; and it continued the display of Morrison’s genius.  Many critics have named it to lists of the greatest albums of all time – and deservedly so.  It has sold millions of copies over the years, and many of its songs continue to be popular today, 45 years later (“It Stoned Me,” “Caravan,” “Into the Mystic,” “Crazy Love,” “These Dreams of You”).

The most popular of them all is the title track.  Everyone knows that song; and obviously I was thinking of it here under the cover of October skies.  Listening to the song, I felt I should choose one of the many hundreds of great songs Morrison has recorded to be the Song of the Week.

I spent the day doing Fall cleaning and maintenance chores around the house, so I thought a good choice might be “Cleaning Windows,” which is another feeling good song about a working man in his prime, and is based on memories of one of Morrison’s early jobs.

I also considered “Rough God Goes Riding.”  I have thought that to be a great song since it was included on Morrison’s 1997 album, The Healing Game; and earlier this year he gave us a new version, singing with his daughter Shana on his Duets album.

An obvious feature of the “Moondance” song is its jazzy feel and arrangement.  To follow up on that aspect, I thought maybe it would be good to listen to “Lonely Avenue,” which is a great cover he did of a song recorded by Ray Charles in 1956.

Those are all terrific songs.  However, this is the time of year when “Moondance” seems perfect. So, popular and well-known as it may be, it is the Song of the Week.

Van Morrison has never given many interviews, so it is not easy to find great insight into the background of his compositions.  It seems that “Moondance” was written about the time he married his first wife, Janet Planet, and moved to Woodstock, New York.  He has said that the tune came to him first.  For several weeks he would play it whenever he picked up his saxophone.  When it came time to make an album, he added words.

Here it is:

Continue reading “SONG OF THE WEEK – MOONDANCE”

It’s Saturday night and I am sitting at my keyboard, listening to the rain and thunder outside.¹ I am hoping it won’t turn to hail.  It could, of course; it’s been that kind of a week.

I won’t bore anyone by recounting the myriad of little things that made this past week “that kind of a week.”  Instead, I will move straight to the conclusion, which, taken here from Hank Williams, is “Everything’s Okay.”

Hank Williams and his life story are pretty well known.  He began his career in 1937, when he was 14 years old.  By the time he died, on January 1, 1953 (at age 29), he had become the most popular country singer in the USA.  He had his demons, along with his successes.  Those demons included alcoholism, abuse of prescription drugs and a failed marriage.  Hank was born with a type of spina bifida – a spinal disorder – that caused him back pain throughout his life; and that was one of the reasons he sought relief in painkillers and alcohol.

The pain was also evident in many of Hank’s songs, though at a tempo that made the listener feel good – songs like “Hey, Good Lookin'”; “Jambalaya (On the Bayou)”; “Your Cheatin’ Heart” and “Lovesick Blues.”

During the last three years of his life, Hank recorded some songs with a different feel to them, under the name of Luke the Drifter.  Luke was a character that he and his producer created, envisioning a haggard drifter moving along from place to place and collecting the stories of the people he meets and the things he sees.  Many of the Luke the Drifter songs are spoken rather than sung; and nearly all are moralisitic, and stand out as religious or philosophical cautionary  tales.

The album entitled Hank Williams as Luke the Drifter was not released until after his death.  All of those songs in one place is an overpowering recognition of the essential goodness of humanity, but The Drifter did not sugar coat the pain that allowed such recognition.  If a depressed person sat down and listened to the entire album, he could potentially be pushed “over the edge.”  It is difficult to think of sadder songs than “Men With Broken Hearts” or “Pictures from Life’s Other Side” or “The Funeral.”

One of the most upbeat songs on The Drifter’s album is this week’s Song of the Week, “Everything’s Okay.”

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I have a book called The Worst Rock n’ Roll Records of All Time (1991), in which the authors give their opinions of Rock’s worst singles and albums, as well as the worst rock and roll performers.  According to Jerry Guterman and Owen O’Donnell, the Number One all-time worst rock and roller is Billy Joel.  That is probably not true, but I can’t say for sure because my ears are still ringing.

Billy Joel was extremely popular from 1973 to 1983, but in the past 32 years he has released only three albums – and none since 2001.  Still, Joel is currently on tour, playing very large venues. Cathy and I saw him last Wednesday at the Pepsi Center in Denver.  We went because we got free tickets to watch the concert from a “suite.”  We could get up and walk around whenever we wanted, and the tickets included free beer, soft drinks, bottled water, chips and peanuts.

It was an interesting concert:  Just the Piano Man up there under a spotlight, tickling the ivories, accompanied by another keyboard player, some electric guitars and bass guitars, percussion, saxophones, a trumpet, dozens of amplifiers and huge speakers, 20,000 fans and a turntable that moved him and his piano in slow circles as he played, so that everyone could get a good look at him.

That instrumentation, combined with the fact that all of his well known songs are about 40 years old, gave Joel the opportunity to reinterpret his music.  And reinterpret he did.  Rather than trying to describe the subtleties of the new arrangements, let me simply say that one song by another artist that was covered during the concert was AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell,”¹ and it fit right in.  Every song (including the pop standard “New York State of Mind”) was played at very high volume and “enhanced” by the nearly perfect acoustics of the Pepsi Center – nearly perfect for ice hockey, that is.  My ears are still ringing; but it was fun.

I was reminded, as I listened, of a concert I attended probably 45 years ago:  Quicksilver Messenger Service at the University of Colorado.  Quicksilver was one of the original psychedelic rock bands from San Francisco.  Although the group did not have the commercial success of the Grateful Dead or the Jefferson Airplane, they were very talented and influential.

The Quicksilver concert at CU was held outdoors, by the field house and the stadium.  The stage was set up in front of a wall of speakers that dwarfed even what Billy Joel brought to the Pepsi Center.  When the performance began, the sound was so loud that it was almost impossible to recognize the songs.  Only a few words could be understood, from time to time.  After about the third song, the people I was with decided to leave the fenced area where the concert was being held and move back about two blocks, where we sat on a lawn to listen to the rest of the show.  From there, the music sounded great.  We had a good time.

Although it was not their most popular work, my favorite Quicksilver song is probably “Pride of Man”; and I would rather talk about that one for a few minutes than go on about Billy Joel or loud music.

“Pride of Man” was written in 1964 by Hamilton Camp, and it always had sort of an aura of prophecy hanging around its lyrics.  Camp’s version was included on a 1964 album.  The song became better known when it was covered by Gordon Lightfoot in 1966.  Both of those versions, though, tend to diminish the prophetic feel by almost rushing some of the lyrics, and sounding distinctly “folksy.”

Quicksilver Messenger Service released its version as the very first song on its 1968 debut album.  There, the combination of the electric instruments and a more distinctive delivery make the listener feel that something very important is being conveyed.

I have a feeling that Camp, himself, may have considered this song prophetic.  He started his career as Bob Camp and performed for years with Bob Gibson (not the baseball player), who was a key figure in the folk music revival of the late 1950s and 1960s.  Then, shortly before writing “Pride of Man,” he was initiated into Subud, an Indonesian spiritual movement.  The leader of that movement, Muhammad Subuh Sumohadiwidjojo, encouraged the members to adopt names that resonated with the Universe and their places in it.  Camp changed his first name from Bob to Hamilton.  A few years later, Jim McGuinn of the Byrds became involved in Subud and changed his name to Roger.

Camp did not write all that many songs.  He earned his living more as an actor – appearing in hundreds of movies and TV shows – and most of his recordings were either traditional folk tunes or covers of songs written by others.  The fact that “Pride of Man” was written shortly after undertaking a new spiritual course is at least some evidence that it was intended as prophesy.

I don’t think that fact was lost on Quicksilver Messenger Service, either.  Camp’s 1964 album that introduced “Pride of Man” also included one of the very first versions of the song “Get Together,” which was written by Dino Valenti (née Chester William “Chet” Powers, Jr.).  Valenti was one of the founding members of Quicksilver.  I don’t know what his relationship was with Hamilton Camp, but they seem to have known each other.  Choosing “Pride of Man” as first song on their first album, and doing such a good job with it, indicates that Quicksilver understood it to be important.

Several decades later – after September 11, 2001 – many people began to wonder about the prophesy.  The lyrics tell of a tower falling, made into a “pyre of flame.”  Was that the Tower of Babel or the World Trade Center?  The song begins with the admonition, “Turn around, go back down” and tells us that the “mighty men are beaten down.”  Could that refer to New York City firefighters losing their lives in the 9/11 rescue effort?  The lyrics also say that “Babylon is laid to waste,” and “terror is on every side.”  Babylon, of course, is an ancient city that is in modern Iraq; and the news media keep telling us that terror really is on every side.

I could go on, but any interpretation of a song like this is speculative.  Personally, I believe Camp was concerned about the potential for a nuclear holocaust in the context of humanity’s proclivity to cause God to want to destroy us, at least since Biblical times. You, the reader, can look at the lyrics and reach your own conclusions (or speculations)

Continue reading “SONG OF THE WEEK – PRIDE OF MAN”

I want to start with a brief essay on music appreciation.  Skipping ahead to the conclusion, it seems that different people appreciate music for different reasons.

There are some who see musicians as celebrities.  They can tell you what Lady Gaga has been wearing or what Justin Bieber has been drinking; or who has been arrested for shoplifting or hit and run.

Of course, many musicians are also celebrated for the good they do.  Depending on their age, thousands of fans know about Michael Franti’s support for human rights or Neil Young’s efforts to bring attention to environmental issues or that Bob Geldof proved that music and musicians can save the world (although most folks cannot name a single song he has done since the Boomtown Rats broke up in 1986).

Others appreciate the poetry of lyrics and are interested in where the words come from and what they meant to the songwriter.

To still others, words are secondary to the music that is made.  Certainly that can be an important aspect of music appreciation.  An example of the importance of music to music came to me recently at a church service.  A few months ago, the liturgical music at our parish changed.  Until then, most of the songs seemed to either be written with no sharps or flats (which I am told is the C Major key) or with one flat (F major).  With the new music, all the staffs begin by showing two sharps (D Major).  There was probably some good reason for changing it.  It certainly gives the service a different – though not necessarily better – feel.

Then, there are people like my wife, Cathy.  Whenever I mention something about a song I have researched, she tells me that she doesn’t care who wrote it, who sings it, what instruments are played or what the words mean.  If she likes a song she will listen to it.  If she doesn’t, she won’t.  It is a very pragmatic form of musical solipsism that works quite well for her.

Others, of course appreciate great technique – like that of the “guitar gods” or the obligatory Grateful Dead drum solo or the great keyboard players.  Back when I was in high school I was hoping that one day fans would appreciate the artistry of the French horn gods.  I thought music was moving in that direction with the Who’s Tommy; but, no.  Horn players are pretty much left with the 1812 Overture.

Different people appreciate music for different reasons.

Having said that, let us move on to a song that will provide a good introduction to the French horn and help explain music, no matter the basis of one’s appreciation.  The song is “The Music Goes Round and Round,” written in 1935 by Edward Farley and Mike Riley (a trumpet player and trombonist, respectively), with lyrics by Red Hodgson (about whom I know nothing).

A version of the song was recorded in 1935 by Riley-Farley and the Onyx Club Boys (though some record labels show it as “Reilly-Farley”).  The most famous and popular rendition was done the following year by Tommy Dorsey, with Edythe Wright on vocals.  The version here was also recorded in 1936, but by the Boswell Sisters.

The Boswell Sisters were interesting.  They were three sisters who grew up in a middle class family in New Orleans.  As children they played classical piano, violin and cello, studying under a professor from Tulane University.  Their parents also often took them to shows by African-American performers, whom these Caucasian girls imitated as they began to participate in the New Orleans jazz scene.  They achieved local fame and began recording in 1925.  By the 1930s, they were nationally known, appearing in movies and releasing many popular recordings.

In 1935, they had a Number One national hit with “The Object of My Affection.”  In January of 1936, they released perhaps their best known song, “I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter,” and their version of “The Music Goes Round and Round.”  A month later they quit recording as a group.  It seems they all had married and wanted to settle down to their personal lives and families.  That’s sort of how it was for women in those days.

The Boswell Sisters were a major influence on the music of the Andrews Sisters and Ella Fitzgerald (who also did a fine version of “The Music Goes Round and Round” in 1961), among others.  I find it interesting that these ladies recorded a song called “Rock and Roll” 20-some years before Bill Halley was rocking around the clock, and one called “If I Had a Million Dollars” more than 50 years before Barenaked Ladies’ song of that name.  The old songs were much different from the newer ones, of course.  But that is how the music works.  It goes round and round.  Can you appreciate that?

Continue reading “SONG OF THE WEEK – THE MUSIC GOES ROUND AND ROUND”

I just finished reading a book called Natural Born Heroes by Christopher McDougall.  It is about how a group of Cretan resistance fighters and British agents kidnapped a German general during World War II … and about nutrition … and Wing Chun … and Pankration … and the Natural Movement movement … and Parkour … and metabolism …  I found all the various parts to be fascinating, although they did not eventually come together in the pages as they must have in the author’s mind.

I know that my writing is often in that mode.  I tend to digress so that those with not enough time on their hands say, “Get to the point, already.”  Well, as a warning, this week’s look at the “Remember Song” is not a metaphoric straight line going directly to a defined and specific point.

In a comment to last week’s Song of the Week, I mentioned forgetting where I had put a hammer.  Then I sort of remembered a song called “The Remember Song,” but I couldn’t remember too much about it except that I had only ever heard it performed by Tom Rush a few years ago.

I did a bit of research and learned that a lot of other people know about the song because it has “gone viral” on YouTube with nearly 7 million viewings.  Tom Rush said that when he first heard about the popularity he was afraid that he had contracted Ebola, though his daughters finally convinced him that “going viral” is a good thing.

Various articles about the song say that it was written by Steve or Steven or Stephen Walters.  I did not know who that was, so I did a bit more research and found Mr. Walters’ website, where one can hear him sing the first verse of the song under the title “Remember?”.

More interesting than the song was the following information from his biography:

“For twenty years he enjoyed a career on the road as a professional guitarist and vocalist in blues and country music bands. In 1993, after being diagnosed with leukemia and told he had 24 hours to live, Steven began a period of intensive meditation. Miraculously, he became strong enough to receive a bone marrow transplant and make a full recovery. Inspired by this second chance, in 1995 Steven began to truly live his dream, giving up the smoky bars and club circuit to perform his original music”  [Emphasis added.]

The Ralston Creek Review website was begun in August of 2011 to record, for the benefit of whomever may have the opportunity to donate stem cells for another person, my experience in being a stem cell donor for my brother.  He had a condition known as myelofibrosis in which bone marrow cells are replaced with fibrous tissues.  This affects the body’s ability to make blood cells since that is one of the functions of the bone marrow.  For many years, the only possible cure was a bone marrow transplant.  More recently, a stem cell transplant has been the preferred procedure.  For someone over the age of 55 (as my brother was) there is about a 50-50 chance of living for more than a year after the transplant and somewhat less of a chance to surviving for two years.  If a patient can get through those first two years, the odds are quite good that he or she may have a normal lifespan.

The scariest thing about the transplant for the recipient is that before receiving the donor cells, he or she must undergo intense chemotherapy to kill essentially all bone marrow cells, whether normal or fibrous.  When that is completed the the donor cells are transplanted with the hope that they will soon engraft.

My brother went through all of that, achieved engraftment and began to recover quite well.  However, at the end of the first year, he learned that he had developed acute myeloid leukemia, probably as a result of the chemotherapy and continuing medications he had had to suffer.  The leukemia ultimately ended his life a few months later.

This is the first Song of the Week post for September 2015, so I would like you all to remember that September is National  DNA, Genomics and Stem Cell Education and Awareness Month.  There is a wealth of material available on the internet about stem cells and their use in treatment of various conditions.  You can learn a few things by going to the “Stem Cell Donor” category on this website.

And speaking of things remember, we return to this week’s “The Remember Song.”

What would you say is the theme song for Baby Boomer’s?  Is it “Born To Be Wild” or “Get Together?  Perhaps “My Generation” or “When I’m 64”?  Anymore, I am thinking that it might be “The Remember Song,” but I really can’t recall.

 

Continue reading “SONG OF THE WEEK – THE REMEMBER SONG”

Here it is, the end of August.  Labor Day is just a week away.  All of the local schools started back up over the past week or two.  Pete Seeger singing “What Did You Learn in School Today”  seems a good choice for the Song of the Week.

It is also pretty easy to write about.  The lyrics are satirical, but not very subtle.  Pete Seeger’s story is well known.

As a quick recap, Pete Seeger, who died in 2014, at 94 years of age, was an American treasure.  His ancestors came here on the Mayflower.  He grew up in a liberal and musical household – so liberal and musical that his father, a professor of music, had to leave his teaching job because he was too radical for the University of California at Berkeley (during World War I, anyway).  He was a musician, singer and songwriter; a folklorist, entertainer and labor organizer; an environmentalist, peace activist and humanitarian.

In 1940, Pete and Woody Guthrie helped form the Almanac Singers, which included, from time to time, such folk music luminaries as Brownie McGhee, Sonny Terry, Josh White, Burl Ives, Cisco Houston and Lee Hayes.  Eight years later, he formed another influential folk group, the Weavers.

The Weavers were initially quite successful, with hit songs like “Good Night, Irene”; but they ran into political and contractual problems because Pete and some of the other pacifist members had belonged to the American Communist Party during World War II.  He was “blacklisted” by the entertainment industry in the early 1950s, after which his music received very little airplay and he was not permitted to appear on television until 1968, when he was a very special guest on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.¹

Pete Seeger was a prolific songwriter, authoring or co-authoring songs like “If I Had a Hammer,” “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” “Turn, Turn, Turn,” “Bells of Rhymney” and many more.  His was a gentle but fiercely idealistic spirit that has influenced nearly every English language – and many musicians speaking other languages – musician for the past eight decades.

Even though, Pete was blacklisted for many years, his contributions to America and its music earned him the National Medal of the Arts from the National Endowment for the Arts, several Grammy Awards, membership in both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame and a Kennedy Center Honor.

To balance things out, he also received the Eugene V. Debs Award and the Felix Varela Medal, which is Cuba’s highest artistic recognition.

“What Did You Learn in School Today” is a song that has been associated with Pete Seeger for many years.  It was actually written, though, by Tom Paxton in 1964.  Paxton is another very interesting person, but I will put off writing about him to another day.

I could quit here.  I probably should.  However, I want to say a few words about the Board of Education here in Jefferson County, Colorado.

The Board of Education has five members.  Three of those seats were up for election in 2013, and each of the incumbents was ineligible to run because of term limits.  School board elections are, by law, nonpartisan.  In the weeks before the election, three of the candidates – Ken Witt, John Newkirk and Julie Williams – sent out a barrage of joint campaign material, essentially asking voters to vote for them as a group or a block (as opposed to a party).

If parties could have been mentioned, these candidates would have probably said they were in the Tea Party, or conservative Republican.

It was an off year election, with a mail-in ballot, and about 43% of the eligible voters actually voted.  Something like 55% of them voted for Witt, Newkirk and Williams, so each was elected on the mandate of less than one-quarter of the voters

Trouble began almost immediately.  The long-time superintendent of schools realized she could not work with the new Board majority and resigned.  The new members were not happy with the Board’s attorney, so they hired an additional attorney, at public expense, to represent the three of them.  A large number of teachers and staff expressed their disapproval of the new Board.

Matters became even worse near the beginning of the 2014-15 school year.  The national AP U. S. History curriculum had been changed and the Board majority seemed to think it too subversive for Jefferson County high school students.  A proposed committee was to look into the new curriculum because, according to Ms. Williams, “materials should not encourage or condone civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law.”  Rather, a curriculum like that which Pete Seeger sings about here is apparently the ideal.

The response to that perceived censorship was overwhelming – giving students a real lesson in civil disobedience.  Many teachers participated in a “sick out.”  Hundreds of students walked out of class several days in a row to protest.  The Board was deluged with angry emails and negative comments at Board meetings.

The Board majority backed off and did not censor anything, but not before enough of the community was so upset that talk of a recall election began.  Petitions were circulated and thousands of signatures obtained.  The petitions were submitted to the County Clerk in mid-August, they have been certified as sufficient and any protests must be filed by the first week in September.

Thus, it appears that the District is rapidly moving toward a recall election.  A group called Jeffco United for Action has recruited three candidates to run in that election, and if you go to its website you will be able to purchase t-shirts, coffee cups, bumper stickers and other campaign materials.  All those materials are nonpartisan, of course.

To quote another of Pete Seeger’s songs (“Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”):  “When will they ever learn?”

Continue reading “SONG OF THE WEEK – WHAT DID YOU LEARN IN SCHOOL TODAY”