Category Archives: Music

R.I.P Earl Scruggs

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Show of hands – how many here can sing “The Ballad of Jed Clampett” from memory?  Sigh – fewer of us than there used to be!  That was only one of the marvelous songs that banjo virtuoso, Earl Scruggs left us, though as the theme for The Beverly Hillbillies, it may be his best known piece.

Earl died Wednesday, at 88, of natural causes.  An Associated Press memorial says:

It may be impossible to overstate the importance of bluegrass legend Earl Scruggs to American music. A pioneering banjo player who helped create modern country music, his sound is instantly recognizable and as intrinsically wrapped in the tapestry of the genre as Johnny Cash’s baritone or Hank Williams’ heartbreak…The legacy he helped build with bandleader Bill Monroe, guitarist Lester Flatt and the rest of the Blue Grass Boys was evident all around Nashville, where he died in an area hospital. His string-bending, mind-blowing way of picking helped transform a regional sound into a national passion.

As an added bonus, at the bottom of this article, you can see a clip of Lester and Earl on a Hillbillies episode, singing a fun version of a great American folk song, “The Wreck of the Old 97.”  You get to hear Miss Jane sing a verse, and watch Jed dance!

http://news-briefs.ew.com/2012/03/29/earl-scruggs-dies-bluegrass/?iid=rcfooter-music-earl+scruggs%2C+bluegrass+pioneer%2C+dies

Music of Hope: “River’s Gonna Rise,” by Warren Haynes

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Last summer, I posted about how much I liked Warren Haynes new solo album, Man in Motion. http://wp.me/pYql4-RV . Haynes, one of Rolling Stone’s 25 Best Guitarists of All Time, is best known for his work with the Allman Brothers and The Dead (that’s the Grateful Dead, minus Jerry Garcia).

I still enjoy the whole album, but lately find myself singing one of the cuts in particular, “River’s Gonna Rise”, almost like an anthem or a mantra of hope.  No accident.  On a youTube clips made last summer, Haynes said, “This is for the Occupy Protestors all over the world.”  Here’s a great clip of him singing it solo in a studio.  Listen and enjoy!

River’s Gonna Rise

Darkness hides the faces
Of we who hold the power
We don’t need to be rich
We only need to be free
Chains of oppression
Never gonna break
But a day will come when we hold the key

Bells will be ringing
Flames reaching to the sky
Higher and higher
Fueled by the winds of change
Sweet taste of freedom
Fresh on the tips of our tongues
And the dust of the past is all that shall remain

Concerning Sleight of Hand and Blogging Goals for 2012

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Sleight of hand is the name most often used to describe the methods of stage magic.  Sleight of hand is composed of seven basic skills according to Penn and Teller (quoted on Wikipedia):

      1. Palm – To hold an object in an apparently empty hand.
      2. Ditch – To secretly dispose of an unneeded object.
      3. Steal – To secretly obtain a needed object.
      4. Load – To secretly move an object to where it is needed.
      5. Simulation – To give the impression that something has happened that has not.
      6. Misdirection – To lead attention away from a secret move.
      7. Switch – To secretly exchange one object for another.

Of all the illusionist’s tricks, “misdirection” may be the most important:   “The magician choreographs his actions so that all spectators are likely to look where he or she wants them to. More importantly, they do not look where the performer does not wish them to look.”  (Wikipedia)

I started thinking of stage magic after seeing Hugo, (http://wp.me/pYql4-1xT).   Research confirmed the movie’s account of pioneer filmmaker, George Melies, who was as stage magician before he turned to cinema.

But this post is not about good magic, since misdirection is such an apt metaphor for the way our institutions play us these days.  In this sense,  misdirection often means getting us to ask the wrong questions.

Over the last few days, I’ve found myself humming the title song of Bruce Springsteen’s album, Magic (2007), which he says concerns “the Orwellian times we live in,” and is “not about magic, but tricks – and their consequences:”

Trust none of what you hear,
Less of what you see,
This is what will be.
This is what will be.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDI37gJbUOo

***

I don’t think we can resist misdirection unless we are engaged in finding our own truths.  It is also very hard to go it alone.  In a famous psychology experiment, test subjects would disown their own perceptions and agree to a lie if everyone else in the room did, but if even one other person stood up for the truth, so would most of the volunteers.

In addition to the kindred spirits we find where we live, we have our online communities.  We also have the searchers of past generations who travelled this road and left their discoveries in books.

I hope I did my part on this blog to write of things and people that matter.  To try to discern and point to the truth.  I’m still too close to 2011 to say.  I did the best I could at the time, and I hope to do better in 2012 because we are really going to need it.  On the eve of an election year, I sometimes think the end of the world on 12/21/12 would be the easy way out!

***

Still, to end the year on an upbeat note, here is a neat clip of Penn and Teller demonstrating the core elements of sleight of hand.  Not only does it evoke the fun of a magic set I had as a kid, but it’s filled with metaphorical possibilities!

Happy New Year to all of you!

Of Greensleeves and Christmas Carol Karma

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Regular readers will recall that at the start of the  season, I posted a wee diatribe on how much I hate what passes for Christmas music in most of the stores. http://wp.me/pYql4-1tv

Here’s where karma part comes in:  Mary is organizing a Christmas dinner for a large number of people at a local church.  I already volunteered to help with food prep, but the other day she gave me a further assignment.   “I need you to make a three hour playlist of Christmas music, and it has to be respectful.”

That actually is not a problem.  I love Christmas music – if I didn’t, the stuff in the stores wouldn’t bother me.  As I started to rummage through what I have on iTunes, I got caught up in listening to various versions of “Greensleeves,” and wondering – even though I love the song – what it has to do with Christmas.  Tracking its origins was not unlike researching a folktale.  I also found that everyone from Homer Simpson to John Coltrane has covered it, so I invite you to have a listen as I share a bit of what I learned about this haunting song.  Let’s begin with Homer (relax – his clip is only 14 seconds long).

Greensleeves is a traditional English folksong, of the sort known as a “romanesca.”  A broadside ballad of this name was registered at the London Stationer’s Company in Sept., 1580, as “A New Northern Dittye of the Lady Greene Sleeves”.  A broadside was a ballad or poem, printed on one side of a cheap sheet of paper and common between the 15th and 19th centuries.  Here is a traditional version, sung by Méav Ní Mhaolchatha’s on the Celtic Woman tour:

There’s a persistant rumor that Henry VIII wrote the song while courting Anne Boleyn, since at first she apparently “cast [him] off discourteously,” but music experts dismiss the legend.  Greensleeves is an Elizabethan song, composed in an Italianate style that did not reach England until after Henry’s death.

Another common interpretation is that the song refers to a promiscuous woman or a prostitute.  At the time, the color green had sexual connotations.  One translator of Chaucer notes that in the Canterbury Tales, green “was the colour of lightness in love.”  I tend to agree with this interpretation based on what I know of pre-Christian nature religion in the British isles, and the Pan-like “Green Man,” whose face still peeks out at worshipers in many British churches and cathedrals:

Green Man at Dore Abbey, Herefordshire

A reference to Greensleeves in The Merry Wives of Windsor, 1602, suggests both the popularity of the song, and coming from Falstaff, a bawdy interpretation.  The popularity of the song has continued unbroken to the present day.  Here my favorite modern interpretation, by Jethro Tull:

In 1865, William Chatterton Dix wrote “What Child is This,” to the tune of Greensleeves, which made both songs popular during the Christmas season.  Here is the version I’m going to use for the Christmas dinner project.  Josh Groban knows how to stir the soul, and that is something we really need this year.  Elizabethan renditions of Greensleeves have historical interest but tend to be slow and even lugubrious.  Much as I love ballads of trials and woe, this year we need all the hope we can get and the kind of music that can awaken it.

***

I wish each and every one of you a joyous holiday in whatever way you celebrate it.  I’m going to take a blogging break for a week or so, to walk, to read, to meditate, to catch some of the great year end movies, and in general, to simply kick back for R&R.  I will be back right around the new year.

Peace to all of you!

Music (?) of the Season

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Caution: entering Grinch zone.

Silence makes a lot of people uncomfortable, so in stores, you often hear music intended to be soft and inoffensive.  Most of the time, it’s pretty innocuous.  Now and then the muzak version of “Light My Fire” will force me to confront the passage of time, but that isn’t really a bad thing.

So why do stores at this time of year feel compelled to play the musical equivalent of leaf blowers on a Saturday morning?  I’m talking about all the denatured “Christmas” songs, the fluff ones, the ones designed not to offend, which wind up offending everybody because they are so insipid.  Do you like hearing, “Jingle Bell Rock?”  Or “Rocking around the Christmas Tree?”  If so, post a comment.  I probably won’t believe you and will assume you’re pulling my chain, but comment anyway.  Pa rum pum pum pum.

Today I ventured out to several stores, and I’ll share some of my findings.  My current working hypothesis is that stupid music confuses our brains and makes us less rational shoppers.  Let’s see how the data holds up.

First stop was JC Penny’s.  I like Penny’s, and they also shot up in my esteem for opting out of the Black Friday midnight madness.  I was hunting for a specific gift.  When I didn’t find it, I thought about browsing, but just then, “Holly Jolly Christmas,” came over the sound system.  I hurried for the exit.

Next I went to a Best Buy.  I went to look at DVD players and noticed there was no music at all – I could actually hear myself think!   In the end, I wasn’t sure which model to get, so I decided to think it over and come back later.  As I was leaving the store, after that moment of clarity, I began to wonder if that is not the point of obnoxious holiday music – to befuddle our minds and rob us of clarity?  What happens to your brain when you hear “Little St. Nick?”  All I can think is, “Make it stop,”  and I’m ready to throw down a credit card if that will do the trick!

Next stop was OSH, for a string of tree lights. No Christmas songs, for which they get kudos, but their music was equally strange – the worst of old time rock, with songs like, “Sugar Shack,” and “These Boots are Made for Walking?” I did as the lyric suggested and walked right out of there.  The strange thing is, I go to OSH throughout the year for minor hardware needs, and they never play music like that.  What possessed them to do it now?

That question launched my backup theory of holiday music – mass possession of store managers by evil entities.  Perhaps I should save that one for another occasion…

By then it was time for lunch, so I stopped at Fresh Choice, one of those make-your-own-salad restaurants.  I like eating there, but never again at this time of year!  The music was one part Dean Martin – Christmas songs you could tap dance to – and one part “The Little Drummer Boy,” which played twice while I was there.  Twice!!!  I am not making this up!

After I bolted my food and hurried out of the restaurant, I remembered the New Age adage that we attract to ourselves what we dwell upon. I did my best to clear my mind before my final stop of the day, at Beverly’s, a crafts store.

However you want to explain it, something worked.  Not only did I find exactly the gift I was looking for, but the music was nice instrumental Christmas songs.  I caught the sound of a harpsichord as I stood in the check out line, and I made a point of telling the clerk how much I enjoyed their civilized music.

So here are a few more Grinchly survival tips for the season, not necessarily in order of importance:

1)  Humor is everything.  Actually, this is number one in importance.

2)  If someone is doing something right, let them know.

3)  Earbuds are not a bad idea.  You may look silly if you’re not a teen, but I’m going to carry them next time.

I’ll be back with more tips as the season drags on, but meanwhile,  Be careful out there!

In Flanders Field the Poppies Blow

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At 11:00am, on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the insanity of the First World War came to an end. Though the United States holiday was renamed to Veterans Day after World War II, it is still known as Armistice Day in France and Belgium. It is known as the Day of Peace in Flanders Field, where many of the dead from the western front are buried and one of the most famous poems of this war or any war was written.

Poppies near the Connaught British cemetery on the western front

Poppies are an annual, summer-blooming wildflower whose seeds are carried on the wind.  They can lie dormant for a long time but will bloom if the earth is disturbed – as it was, of course, during the years of trench warfare.  In many parts of the line, in the summers of 1915, 1916, 1917, and 1918, the little poppies shone as the only symbol of life amid the devastation of no-mans land.

In May, 1915, Major John McCrae, a Canadian military doctor and artillery commander, noticed the poppies growing in the disturbed ground between the graves that surrounded his artillery position near Ypres.  When the chaplain was called away, McCrae was asked to conduct the burial service for a friend.  We think he began his famous poem that evening.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

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Even more than McCrae’s poem, Armistice Day / Veterans’ Day brings to mind a song by the Scottish musician, Andy Stewart.  His song, “Young Jimmy in Flanders,” commemorates his uncle James who served as a piper during the war, and miraculously survived.  More than any other picture or poem or story, this ballad evokes for me the terrible sadness and anger at this conflict where boys playing bagpipes led troops against machine guns and poison gas:

He played his pipes to battle,
and the laddies died like cattle,
and the brandy was drunk in Whitehall,
a million miles away.

This song is recorded on Stewart’s fine album, “Fire in the Glen,” 1991.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-IhN7IVQdk

R.I.P. Jerry Garcia, Aug. 1, 1942 – Aug. 9, 1995

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In February, 1961,, when Jerry Garcia was 18 years old, he was a passenger in a car that flew off a curve at 90 mph.  One passenger died and two others were badly injured.  Garcia was thrown into a field and sustained only a broken collarbone.  He later said, “That’s where my life began. Before then I was always living at less than capacity. I was idling. That was the slingshot for the rest of my life. It was like a second chance. Then I got serious”

One thing he got very serious about was music, which he had practiced since early childhood.  Two months after the accident, he met Robert Hunter, a musician and poet who would become the chief lyricist for the Grateful Dead.  The two of them found a local gig and made $5 each, which helped Garcia, who was living out of his car in Palo Alto.

The story I heard was that several other key members of band met in the parking lot of Palo Alto music store in 1965.  They first played as The Warlocks in a Menlo Park pizza parlor.  After learning that another group called The Warlocks had signed a record contract, Jerry Garcia picked the name, Grateful Dead by flipping open a dictionary.  There are several accounts, but according to Phil Lesh, the bass player, the definition was:  the soul of a dead person, or his angel, showing gratitude to someone who, as an act of charity, arranged their burial.

The Skull and Roses logo

For the next thirty years, the Grateful Dead were a cultural and musical phenomenon.  You pretty much loved them or hated them.  Back when Cal Expo was open, half my department at work would show up in their t-shirts and tie dye and take the afternoon off whenever the band came to town.  The other half of my co-workers would shake their heads.  At its best, a Grateful Dead show was a unique and extravagant celebration of life.

In August, 1995, Garcia, who was overweight, diabetic, and exhausted from touring, checked into rehab to detox from heroin.  Sometime in the early morning of August 9, his heart stopped beating.  He was 53 years old.

This is one of my favorite concert clips, for it hints at the joy the musicians could evoke in a crowd.  It’s from the Bill Graham Memorial Concert in Golden Gate Park in November, 1991.

I know the rent is in arrears,
Dog has not been fed in years,
It’s even worse than it appears,
But it’s all right.

Oh well a touch of gray,
Kinda suits you anyway,
That was all I had to say,
And it’s all right.