Vertigo…

Last night, I happened to be driving home from teaching my Wednesday night guitar class. The school that hosts the class is located on the East Side of Providence, Rhode Island.

The East Side is a venerable old neighborhood that’s roots go all the way back to the time of founder Roger Williams, circa late 1600′s.

I grew up in a working-class neighborhood not more than a mile from the East Side, but have lived in a different city for some time now. Until recently, it had been many years since I have had occasion to travel these streets. I have found myself rather enjoying it.

The East Side has changed dramatically over time, but still somehow magically retains its old-worldness. And I have surprised myself with how utterly familiar everything still is; the roots run very, very deep.

In 1952, my expectant mother, who had grown quite tired of trying to choose a name for me, finally decided to name me after the very next street-sign she drove past (a hopeless romantic, my mom ).  It so happened to be the one we lived on, Roger Williams Ave; thus making me into a namesake of sorts, even if in a somewhat second-hand  fashion. Better a tarnished pedigree than none at all; I accept it now in the spirit that it was offered. Street-sign royalty.

And if one drives down Roger Williams Ave to Massasoit Ave, and takes the bridge over the Seekonk River, one finds oneself on Angell St.; which will traverse the East Side until one finds oneself in view of the spire of the First Baptist Church. ( the actual very first Baptist church anywhere, hence the name; because Roger Williams was the very first Baptist- religious freedom, and all that…an extraordinarily dangerous idea in the 1600′s. And, he included the local natives under that umbrella, too- an absolutely alien idea at the time. )

In the 1600′s, Angell St. would have just been a woodland path connecting the original settlement at Providence with East Providence; Mr. Williams had recently moved to a choice spot  just across the river that he acquired from his friend Massasoit of the Wampanoags ( Half-acre plot w/ spectacular water view and fresh-water creek! Price just reduced! Financing available.)

This would have taken place well before King Philip’s War broke out, at which time a trip down that woodland path would have been precarious at best.

And last night…I found myself at the intersection of Hope and Angell, waiting for the light to change; when I was suddenly struck with the reality of how many  thousands of times I have done this same simple mundane task before, and how nothing had really changed over the likely twenty-five years since I had done this last; and how utterly comforting that was, like a favorite old flannel shirt on a cold winter day.

It just felt like home.

And as I sat there, a very sharp, vividly clear subterrannian memory suddenly snapped into focus…something I had not thought of since the day it happened, I imagine, like finding a cable channel you didn’t even know you had…

I remembered sitting at this very same light, on a bright summer morning. My father was driving his blue 1960 Chevy station wagon, the only non-Ford vehicle he ever owned. I was in the passenger’s seat.

I was about 16 at the time, and had been conscripted to spend the summer housepainting with my dad. We were on the way to work.

I was beyond miserable.

And my dad was telling me a story while waiting for the light to change. I clearly recall being thoroughly disrespectful and horribly rude… but he told me the story anyway.

When he was very young, around 8 or 9 years old ( circa 1923-24 ) he and his friends would ride their bikes over the bridge and up Angell St. to this very same traffic light…to watch the light change. They would sit for hours, and watch the light change. They couldn’t figure out how it knew when to change colors.

It was the first electric traffic signal ever used in the state of Rhode Island.

To Irish immigrant kids in the 1920′s, it was magic.

To the horrible teenager in 1968, it was an unwanted, unsolicited, extremely annoying anecdote.

To the  guitar teacher in 2013, it was a surprisingly potent and poignant uncovered memory.

Thanks for the visit, Dad…it’s good to be reminded of how things can, and should, change. Woodland paths, traffic lights…and especially the people who use them.

Sorry that it’s taken me forty years to connect those dots. And thank you for not leaving me on the side of the road that day, as I so truly deserved.

But I was, after all, named after a street sign…

Makes me wonder if Roger Williams ever had awful kids, and if he ever contemplated leaving them somewhere along the path leading to the old North Main St. settlement…

Bird’s Eye…

Loitering? Is that what they’re doing?

Another Sunday at work, and I am spending the morning watching local wildlife on security cameras. When people aren’t around, there is usually a remarkable variety to be able to observe.

Today, it’s turkeys. About 40 of them.

I think it must be mating season. The males are all circling and parading around in full plumage, very concerned as to who is standing where, and what the girls are doing.

The girls apparently couldn’t care less. They will allow themselves to be herded together, or gathered, or whatever this is. But as soon as the males circle out just a bit too far, they will either wander off, or will go and join another pre-herded group. The males are seemingly very territorial, and keep some sort of pre-measured distance from one another.

Which indicates… that the girls are doing it on purpose. This, I think, is the turkey equivalent of human girls in night clubs going to the bathroom together; it’s just meant to re-arrange the arrangements that the males think have already been made.

And even though the males are quite wary of one another, they are very suddenly now doing something that reminds me of a Civil-War era infantry line; an albino turkey has just arrived, and is literally being driven away from the group by four males who have formed a perfectly straight shoulder-to shoulder wall, and have forced the albino far off to one side.

This is extremely politically incorrect. There is apparently no level of equality among turkeys at all. I wonder what they are finding so objectionable.

Now they have returned to their original positions; the albino circles around for a flank approach; the girls have taken advantage of the interruption to disband completely, and it looks like the entire process begins anew.

That may have been the albino’s plan all along.

I wonder how long this elaborate process takes to complete; hours…days…weeks?

I also hope that what I’m observing is actually a formal process of some kind. It would be very weird to consider that they’re just hanging out on a Sunday, and this is what turkeys get up to when no one is around.

Well, they’re moving off into the woodline now. Maybe they just come out in the open for the sake of the dance, and then take the rest of the day off.

To do what, exactly?

A Day Late…

Better than never, I suppose.

Saturday morning at work, and I have the legacy of being able to run a laptop and do some stuff.

I just checked a few blog links, saw the ” Finish the Sentence ” I thought I was cool when” thing, and this immediately came to mind.

 

The year 2000; a bright sunny summer day. I am in the backyard with my 2-yr. old niece Olivia. She is in her bathing suit, and happily splashing away in her little round wading pool. There are pool toys everywhere, enough that they couldn’t all fit in there with her.

She had developed some sort of hierarchy to sort this out; only the special ones were allowed in the pool with her, and I never quite understood how certain ones made the cut. Should you try to put one of the bad ones in, she would immediately throw it as far away from the pool as she could. That’s not to say that you could put them away completely; they had their place in the outer perimeter, and that’s where they were supposed to be. Fair enough; the world order of a 2-year old is a very exacting place.

And because she would be in and out of the pool approximately 9000 times a day, we had gotten her a pair of  little red rubber-soled shoes to protect her while she was going back and forth. She liked them a lot, and wore them constantly.

I was always nearby, poking around in my garden, ever vigilant. My main function was to change the pool water out when too much grass got in there.

And because I was in and out of the garden about 9000 times a day, I had gotten myself a very inexpensive pair of rubber-soled shoes to keep from stepping on rocks and the occasional bit of glass. Other than being a different color, they were the same shoes that Olivia had.

And at one point, I was standing just outside the garden, and Olivia was standing just outside of her pool. She noticed my shoes.

She looked down at hers…then at mine…and again. And looking up, in a very matter-of -fact voice, said ” Nice shoes, Rog…” And then back into the pool.

Total acceptance and equality from a 2- year old.

Very cool.

What??….

I don’t even have a file for stuff like this.

Best I could do would be  a ” That is such a goddamned shame” file.

Or, the ” Are you %$#@#$%^ serious” file.

I have friend from where I work; I’ll call her Gina. I’ve known her there for over ten years.

Gina has a second job at a boutique jewelry shop called Alex and Ani. They specialize in eco-friendly, green, spirit-infused? jewelry.” Positive energy” in all their stuff. I’m not sure how that works at all.

A few nights ago, they were having a wine-and-cheese night for customers. It’s all pretty high-end stuff, so it’s in keeping with their approach.

Gina is 32, and is the oldest employee there. Mostly 20-somethings.

It was very busy; and among the customers were two women, aged about 50-ish and 70-ish.

Very suddenly, the older woman collapsed to the floor.

The younger woman went to her knees beside her, screaming “Mom! Mom!”

People stood around nervously; the 20-somethings giggled a lot.

After a minute or so, Gina called 911. Ten minutes later, EMTs arrived, and Gina went outside to hurry them inside; then kept other customers from entering while they worked. One actually became incensed at the inconvenience.

Ten minutes after that, their attempts in vain, they took the woman out; clearly expired.

In relating this to me the next morning, we talked about the horrific lack of involvement and lack of empathy of the bystanders, and especially  among the employees. No one knew what to do, and no one felt compelled to act at all.

Gina says that they all went back to the wine and cheese within a few minutes.

I asked if Alex and Ani, as a company, has any sort of emergency training available for employees. Gina said she would find out.

The next morning, she told me that her manager  had made some calls, and the company responded decisively to the possibility of future emergencies. But she was a little worried, and embarrassed, at what they actually did.

They called their shaman.

That is correct. Shaman.

The same one who had installed all the… crystals… behind the sheet rock… so that the store would be infused with positive energy…

No CPR/AED training, which Homeland Security will provide for free. Nothing like that.

Nope… a shaman. Because you need some big ju-ju to keep old ladies (eeeww) from coming in your store and dying ( triple eeeww). You have to clean out all the negativity and get some green, eco-friendly anti-old lady magic up in there. Plus, it wrecks it for the wine and cheese people, and that’s where your money is.

I suppose it’s me, but dammit…

That is so totally and tragically fucked up.

I don’t have a file for this.

 

 

Yet Another Doctrine Post…

” Never mind the maneuvers…just go straight at ‘em”

- Admiral Lord Nelson

This is a followup to my ” Another Doctrine Post ” of a few weeks ago.

In that piece, I advanced the idea that an internet dating site may very well comprise the perfect hunting ground for a typical scott. ( At this point, I must insist that readers refer back to the Wakefield Doctrine for explanations of these and other terms. This will simply make no sense whatever if you don’t.)

I described how my associate ( whom I will refer to as Ms. X ) has happily shredded her way through several relationships, all garnered through the use of internet dating sites.

Ms. X‘s most recent adventure came to my attention simply through our proximity in our shared work environment. I knew, for instance, that Mr. Z was a gourmet chef, the owner of several businesses, has an extensive gun collection, and makes his own ammo?…I half-jokingly put in a request for some Minie balls for an Enfield musket…you never know…can’t hurt to ask…

Their first date consisted of gourmet dinner at his house; followed by gourmet dinner at her house; followed by a day-trip on one of his shrimping boats… I lightly commented to Ms. X that nothing was taking place in a social or public venue, that she should know better than that, that the first rule of the hunt is to isolate the prey as soon as possible, that maybe she should be a little careful…

This would be somewhat like asking Dirty Harry to go out without the .44 Magnum. Not going to happen. Because she thinks that she is Dirty Harry in this, and every other scenario.

But in this, unlike other situations, Ms. X was very, very optimistic. Mr.Z was hitting all the right buttons, lighting up all the lights, playing all the right chords. She didn’t have to correct him on anything at all. Idyllic.

I found myself actually thinking that Ms.X would be all done with the dating sites because it finally worked, just like the E-Harmony guy said it would. Good for her, I thought. She’s had several crosses to bear, and has borne them all heroically. Fair play to the Queen.

That was two weeks ago.

Apparently, scotts can be hunted, too. The only thing a scott has to fear…is a bigger, faster scott.

On Monday, Ms.X came into work…an hour late. Parked in a different lot…in a different car…came in through a back entrance, stole into her office, and called to make sure there wasn’t a black Camaro visible on security cameras. Then came out to show me a photo, with instructions to refuse him admittance; we worked out a radio call in case he got in somehow, and to call 911 if he did. She notified her hometown police, and a few detectives she knows ( she is also a licensed private detective).

It is very disconcerting to observe a confident, card-carrying, fully functional scott who is suddenly genuinely terrified.

At some point, she’ll probably provide me some detail. I would like to have some key information just in case something terrible should happen. If she’s gone missing, then someone at work should be able to direct the authorities and possibly save some critical time.

Seems like every tragic story you hear of starts with ” no one ever thought…”

For now, I’ll just keep watch for black Camaros and gourmet chefs. ( The big white hat should be real easy to spot…)

Scotts hunting scotts…it’s enough to make you glad to be a roger.

Makes you want to get a little closer to the campfire, though, doesn’t it?

Take Five…

Have been sitting here for a while perusing different music videos and whatnot, just re-visiting old favorites ( D. Krall, M.Schenker, LA Guitar Quartet ( just to remind myself that even though I am now officially a Guitar Teacher, I still can’t play a goddamned thing ) Those who can’t do…

And watched an hour’s worth of Andres Segovia teaching a Master Class in 1965; this would have been right about the time that Chet Atkins wanted to attend one, and hang around and be famous and cool and stuff.

Segovia wouldn’t let him in… because ” electric guitar is an abomination.” In a way, he was actually right. There is still nothing to match the level of accomplishment that even a moderately capable classical guitar student must achieve. I think that anyone could actually do it if they set their mind to it, but most people simply cannot imagine the level of dedication necessary, and when they find out…they realize that it would take up the entirety of their lives. Simply, literally, no time for anything else. Ever. That’s probably why Segovia was still having kids when he was over 80; he finally had some time.

I also came across a video of Bobby McFerrin and Esmeralda Spaulding at a Grammy awards thing, doing something far, far more musical than anything that might have actually won an award that night.

And was reminded of another B. McFerrin video, recommended to me by a student when I introduced my class to the pentatonic scale. Just five notes, simpler even than the major scale that we have all known since we were four, courtesy of Richard Rogers and Julie Andrews…

Yes, you do. Here, I’ll prove it…

Doe, a deer…

Yeah. That one. That’s a major scale. The song teaches you the major scale, drills it in so effectively that you couldn’t get it out of your head if you wanted to. What a great hook that is.

But it hadn’t occurred to me that people inherently know the pentatonic scale on an even more fundamental level. This video illustrates this in a really neat way.

For good clear examples of pentatonics in use, listen to the blues. B.B King, Clapton, Stevie Ray, Hendrix…it’s a very long list. And they certainly don’t have to be guitar players…how about John Coltrane or Miles Davis? How about Ella Fitzgerald, scat-singing? How about Gregorian chant, the original use of a pentatonic scale?

OK. I’ll shut up now.

Another Doctrine post…

Every now and then, it behooves us to write a little something in regard to the Wakefield Doctrine, that giant conglomerate blog that presides across the virtual pond. The Doctrine is expanding and developing at a truly impressive rate, and is impacting people’s lives in ways that were unimaginable not so very long ago. Light-years away from the EL Freeman parking lot in beautiful downtown Wakefield RI, almost back to the time of the King Philip’s war. ( Philip was a scott, you see, and Roger Williams was a roger…a rose by the very same name… )

We are not at all sure why we have switched to the royal “we” in referring to ourselves. We are apparently feeling slightly detached and aloof. We will play along; we are feeling somewhat whimsical at the moment. We suspect that it may simply have been from using the word ” behooves.”

Well, onto the point. We are sure that we left one lying around here somewhere.

My boss is a scott; an absolutely atypical scott. I have worked for her for over two years now, and am often surprised by how well this has worked out. I only have a few scars to show for it, where many others  have found themselves transformed into interesting balloon-animal shapes. She once used her pure force of will to get someone fired; from another company, not ours. Banned from the kingdom, driven into the wilderness. ( A lot like the Roger Williams analogy, now that we think about it…)

I, the model employee, have become the perfect lieutenant to her napoleonic Grand Design. Of course, I can’t actually know what the Grand Design really is, because she would probably have to kill me. And I am OK with that. I have grown accustomed to my face, thank you. It almost makes the day begin. ( Pray that you are not old enough to get that reference.)

She is in her early forties, divorced, mother to a 15-yr.old girl. And for as long as I have known her, she has been very actively involved in internet dating. She sometimes keeps me in that loop; the stories are often very entertaining, in a kind of Saw VII way. An exhausting business, certainly; constant texting and emailing and scheduling…To me, it seems as if it all creates a culture in which people don’t bother to invest much energy into who’s in front of them, because they know there’s always another dozen or so in the wings. Sad, really.

She has a sort of rating system, and no one has ever lasted for more than two months. Most for considerably less, and when they fail..she tells them exactly what they did wrong. They must understand why they are being dismissed.

And recently, it has occurred to me that internet dating…is the absolutely perfect hunting ground for the active, modern scott.  Forget parties. Forget water coolers. Those are for beginners.

So what do E-Harmony, Plenty of Fish, and Omaha Steaks all have in common?  If you inherently know the answer, you’re a scott; if you don’t, you’re a roger; an innocent, doe-eyed roger.

Think on it. It will come to you.

Think faster.

“Hey…why is my soul mate carrying a bottle of A-1 Sauce?”

Mr. Monk and the Old Man…

I am the Old Man in question ( a reference to the last post ), and Mr. Monk refers to a wonderful TV series that ran from 2002- 2009. There was actually an episode titled ” Mr. Monk and the Old, Old Man”, so there’s a small inside joke there.

My niece Olivia would probably get it. Monk was one of our favorite programs. Even at her age then ( 8-9 ), she understood the humor.

It was premised on the idea of a retired police detective who serves as a consultant to the San Francisco PD;  who also suffers from an extreme case of OCD, along with several severe phobias.

Sure doesn’t sound very appealing; but in addition to being a very well-put-together detective show, Monk had a constant undercurrent of dark humor that was always understated, and never presented at the expense of the main character.

Tony Shaloub portrayed Adrian Monk, and was nominated for eight Emmys. He won three of them. The program received a great many awards.

The last episode still holds the record for viewership of a cable-tv program; 9.4 million.

We stopped watching after the finale, even though it has been in syndication ever since. But recently, we happened to watch a few ( more as a gentle reminder of Olivia, whom we don’t see as a result of estranged relations with her parents ).

I am pleased to report that Monk is always terrific, in a kind of Monty Python or Dress to Kill ( Eddie Izzard ) sort of way. You know it by heart, will recite favorite bits to other fans, and to anyone else who will put up with it.

If you have never indulged, may I heartily recommend it.

It carries a full five-star rating from Olivia.

I’ve Been Told….

Sunday morning, and I find myself surprised to sense my inner Baptist preacher clamoring for a bit of attention. It certainly has been a while….

He would just like to take a moment to remind us all that we are, as children, born into this world in a state of absolute purity and innocence. That seems to be our natural state of being, and that sadly, it generally doesn’t take very long for that inherent state of grace to be worn down and corrupted by something. Parental influence, siblings, XBoxes, the Disney channel ( I really have a thing about the damned Disney channel )…almost anything. And then, as we get older…the things that corrupt us become ever more complex.

It really is a jungle out there.

Some kids have a much better chance ( based on their environment ) of retaining some of that purity as they go along, but they will likely succumb to something, eventually. But with a good base and a  support system, they’ll manage to hold onto a few threads of that purity, and slowly, slowly…begin to work their way back. It may very well take a while, but those few threads are tough as hell, and will never surrender.

With that said, it seems entirely fitting for people of all ages to be walking around being fully aware of that tiny thread of purity in themselves that may have survived the onslaught. That, I believe, is where the heart of a true personality lies. Not in any of the myriad stages of corruption that we have to try to survive, but in the realization that you started out good, were drawn away through no initial fault of your own, and just want to get back on track while you still have time.

And there’s always time.

Ok. He’s done. He needs to do that every now and then. But let me tell you what triggered all that…

Yesterday, I was walking through the produce section of the local market and, as always, smiling to myself ( see ” Peaches“ , under Olivia Stories, SecRag II ). I had to make a quick stop in the rest room, which is nearby. Another person entered shortly afterward, with a very small boy in tow; about age four, or so.

As I was stepping towards the sink, I noticed that the boy ( who was waiting impatiently for the parental figure ) was, as  four-year- olds always are, intrigued by everything else in the room. He couldn’t reach the  sink, couldn’t reach the towel dispenser ( which was broken anyway)…wanting to know what Dad was doing…( Dad wasn’t doing a particularly good job of watching him just then…)

I thought I would slow down a bit and be able to keep an eye on him until the parental unit was available.

So, I washed my hands…twice… and noticed the boy. His attention was riveted on me.

I was using the sink, and he couldn’t.

Quite a conundrum. You could actually see the issue playing through his mind. He couldn’t speak to the stranger, but…how did the sink thing work? I gave him a reassuring smile, but he would have none of that.

Thankfully, the parental unit emerged.

I now moved over to the air dryer, and Dad went to the sink. But now, the boy was riveted on me again…apparently, the air dryer was by far more amazing than the sink. How did that work?

I am ever appreciative of displays of childlike innocence…

The boy moved over to stand behind his father’s legs while he washed, and started bombarding him with questions. Dad…where did you go? What are you doing? Dad…what is that man doing?

No response from Dad.

So he pulls hard on Dad’s pants leg, finally gets his attention…points at me…and says…

” Dad! What is that old man doing?”

I actually turned, to see who he was referring to.

No one else there…

OMG.

March 09, 2013; 1430 hrs. It is apparently official.

There’s a signpost up ahead… no, actually. I just went by it…it’s in the rear-view now. And somewhere, somehow…

Rod Serling is smiling.

But that’s OK. I still have a few threads that I’ve held onto all these years, and I’m trying to work my way back…to being more like a four-year-old.

 

 

 

C,G,D,A,E…

Here’s something you don’t hear every day…

Jimi Hendrix was one hell of a good…rythym player.

He really was. Where his solo playing was all blues/ pentatonic scale- based (much like everyone else), his chording had a very delicate and decorative flair to it. Lots of Baroque-style trills and flairs added to chord suspensions, and a very melodic sensibility. Very J.S. Bach.

C,G,D,A,E.

This is the final exam for my three Learning Connection guitar students. Kind of advanced for a 101 course, but they surprised me by not exactly being beginners; hence the not-exactly-for-beginners final.

Five major chords, one measure each, keep the rythym smooth and steady. It’s not so much the chords themselves but the changing from one to the next, in proper time, that causes the crying and knashing of teeth.

Those chords also happen to be the changes to Hey Joe, from Jimi’s first album ( Are You Experienced, Reprise Records, 1967 ) The students are aware of that, and that I certainly didn’t expect anyone to cover Jimi’s version; just give me five chords, first position, keep a nice even tempo, …and repeat…

I was pondering whether to make CD copies for them to practice with, and then said…oh hell, they can get that themselves, if they’re interested. I really just meant it to be an exercise, anyway.

The crying and knashing will commence this evening, 6 pm sharp.

But it did serve to get me listening to the old chestnut again, in never-ending appreciation. Jimi was freaking awesome. A little dated, naturally, but the creative spark is just timeless.

It also served to get me to ponder the lyrics to Hey, Joe…

Mother of God. It’s a song about a guy who kills his girlfriend and tries to escape to Mexico.

Why was that OK in 1967?… no one said a word about it….nowadays, the guy who wrote that would be on a Homeland Security watchlist. He couldn’t get on a plane. He couldn’t get off a plane. There’d be a mandatory background check, and Dr. Phil would do a two-day taping to examine him.

And what about the first line? ” Hey Joe, where you going with that gun in your hand?” In 1967, apparently just a pleasant bit of conversation…today, a Senate sub-committee demanding to know why he didn’t call 911…was it because he knew him? Was it because he was involved? Was he a Democrat? Where is his birth certificate?

But to just listen to the song… the dynamics build very slowly to a wonderful crescendo… gloriously angelic background singing…spirited rythym section…great soloing… hell , by the end of this thing, I’d go shoot her myself if it would help him get across the border any sooner. “ No, you go ahead, Joe, I’ve got this…and here, take my Rosetta Stone Spanish Edition…and shoot the guy, too? Well sure, might as well…seeing as how I’m out already…you take care, now. Buh-by.”

Yep. That Jimi Hendrix sure had a way with a song…

11 Questions?…

Well this sounds like fun. Kind of a chain letter. Sadly, though, the chain breaks with me because I don’t even know 11 other bloggers to send questions to. I will nonetheless answer the 11 and try to think of 11 more.

I suppose I would know 11 others if I were on Facebook, but I am likely the only person on the planet right now who believes that Facebook will be the straw that destroys Western civilization.

I know that sounds kind of right-wing nutjob, and if anything I’m more like a left-wing nutjob, but I aspire to become more of a centrist nutjob.

Still, anyone that I make that statement to always agrees …then goes on Facebook to gossip about the nutjob they just talked to. Then they show you their vacation photos, tell you what they are about to have for lunch, then describe just about where yesterday’s lunch is in their intestinal tract, then it’s a list of pharmaceuticals that Jimmy the paper boy has in stock this week, and then finally who the real father is to the pregnant 15-year old from three doors down.

Now, I don’t know, but I’ve been told…she gets her pharmaceuticals for free. Just sayin.’ Child support, 21st century-style. Caring, responsible parenthood.

I know they’ll be good parents because their parents said so on Facebook. Course, they’re all divorced now…but they met on Facebook, so they’ll always be in touch.

And, I’m getting really tired of people who keep sayin’ ” just sayin.” So I’m not sayin’ anymore.

And… I really do sound like a nutjob. A well-balanced one, though. Centrist.

Anyhow… on to the 11 questions.

1) Rodney Graham. Until the day I caught two consecutive line drives of his playing baseball, and he punched me several times. End of our friendship, and my baseball career.

2) Richard Boyce. Truly the worst bass player who has ever lived, yet he continued on valiantly. An inspirational example of perseverance.

3) After hiring Richard as their new bass player, they disappeared.

4) Zen and the Art of Bass Playing. Seriously. Because it really and truly is all about the journey, not the end result.

5) Yes.

6) Glory ( 1989, Denzel, Matthew, Cary, Morgan)

7) Twilight Zone ( but who gets to be Rod…)

8) None. Hard to believe, but there it is.

9) One…as always…

10) The ones with the bathtubs. I just don’t get the bathtub thing.

11) I’ll take the fifth on that one.

My 11 soon to follow…

 

Outpost…

Friday night at 2000 hrs ( 8 pm for civilians), and I’m at work. I’ve been doing Friday 3-11′s lately. One of the few who is maniacally responsible enough to show up for duty with a blizzard en route. There are 5 of us here tonight; 2 security, 2 maintenance, 1 engineer. On my security cameras, I’m watching payloaders, backhoes, and a Bobcat ( I so really want one of those…only$ 36,000) trying to keep the connector roads and parking lots clear. Better to move 6 inches of snow 8 times rather than move 3 feet all at once. Have to feel bad for those guys, though. They’ll be going straight through all day tomorrow, at least. It’s snowing sideways at about 60 mph. The building was just officially closed through Monday morning, and there is a full road ban in place ( arrests, fines, and prison time?!! ) Security’s relief has already called out to report for work ( no surprises there )-which means we will certainly be here until the world re-opens. The power is dipping on and off, but there is a huge backup diesel generator that’s supposed to be able to run for a few days. Otherwise, Metlife would would not only lose fax and phone lines, but there would be a threat to the data center. That would be the downside to having converted the acres of paper files to electronic storage. Snoopy will be really pissed. That damned thing better kick in when it’s supposed to. We’ll find out shortly. A large tree just came down and blocked one of the roads off. One less to plow. On the plus side; us security guys brought enough supplies to live through a nuclear strike, and I also brought a fold-up cot, two woolen blankets and a wheat-hull pillow. So no one has to sleep sitting up in an office chair. ( I am such a mother hen- old re-enactor habits.) And, the Chief Engineer phoned in permission giving us access to the full kitchen. So, I’m thinking… fire up a grill, maybe sirloin steaks with sauteed mushroom and onion in a white garlic sauce. Maybe special details aren’t so bad after all. Always wanted to try cooking on a commercial grill. Grill’s hot. Check with you later.

****

A little ambitious on the sirloin steak idea; but did manage shaved steak with mushroom/onion/hot Italian peppers/ melted provolone on toasted rolls.

Pretty damned good. Breakfast, I believe, will be omelettes with hash browns.

Not the big puffy American- style ones…the thin French ones ala Julia Child. With their choice of fillings, of course. That’s the whole idea. Thank you, Julia…

I’d like to be able to say ” do you want fries with that”, but I’m not sure how to get one of the deep- fryers working. Wouldn’t want to mess up and accidentally summon the fire department on a night like this. Not to mention being summarily dismissed from security.

But then maybe I could work in the kitchen…

Maybe we’ll just go with chips instead. And I’d better get started on a lunch menu…

Coffee Lingo…

I love Starbucks. I hate Starbucks. But I really do love Starbucks. I mostly despise Starbucks.

I am apparently ambivalent in regard to Starbucks.

I like their coffee a lot. It is generally very strong  ( as opposed to the anemic Dunkin Donuts) and would raise the dead, if only the dead could get their hands on some. The retail stores have a wonderful aroma when you go in, and no matter how resolved I am to not succumb, I always do. So after a few pounds of exotic beans, a few cds, and a large dark roast… that comes to 36.50, sir..will that be all for you today?

Good Lord….yes, that will be all for me today. For several days, actually. And I hate you and your snarky attitude, little miss. And your smock. And that you sell coffee mugs for 12.00…and that people apparently buy them.

But not me. I have lost many a good mug off the roof of my car, and if I lost a 12.00 coffee mug, I would be on my hands and knees in the breakdown lane searching for all the pieces. Then to the nearest Target for Super Glue…and later that same day, a trip to the emergency room with acute Super Glue poisoning; or ASGP, as the ER nurses like to call it.

So I thought I would just try the drive-up window this morning, skip the aromas and cds and all that…just get the death coffee and go. I usually make my own at home and transport it in a thermos, but alas…a broken carafe emergency puts me once again at the mercy of snarky little Miss Starbucks poster girl 2013.

Now this really ticks me off…

I pull up and order a large dark roast, regular…

And the first thing they do is translate your order into a language that they find acceptable; so that will be a Vente Grande, sir? Will I be leaving room for cream and sugar?

I refuse to answer in their Italo/Hispanic hybrid language…

No…regular… is fine, thanks. ( This is the universal indicator for ” will you please put the damned cream and sugar in”…hence the term…) Why don’t they know that? Why??

So the coffee comes out with about three molecules of cream, and no sugar at all. ( I generally do not use sugar in coffee, but their Vente Sumatran Death blend does require it ) That will be 2.24 sir…will that be all for you today?

So I have to pull around to the front, go in, and fix it myself. Turbinado sugar, of course…( There is a Starbucks in Virginia that once actually removed all the brown sugar packets when they saw me come in again…sadly, I’m not even embarrassed by that…Starbucks owes me, don’t you see?? They owe everyone…yes, I’d like a dark Vente Grande with 76 Turbinado sugars, please…bitch….

And another 6.99 for a closeout Christmas cd of nuns singing in 16th- century French, a must-have for any civilized music collection…with the Boston Camerata doing biblical readings in Middle English- what great natural reverb you get from the pulpit of a cathedral… who could resist?

And one pound of Sumatran Death that was on sale ( only 11.99…and a slice of blueberry crumb cake, dammit…)

That will be 36.50, sir…will that be all for you today?

Why is it always exactly 36.50?

They’re probably just trying to make their money back on all the sugar. Well, two can play at that game. I happen to know exactly how many packets of Turbinado you can get for 36.50. Who’s smirking now, little miss?

And of course I was late for work.

*****

Starbucks Update; Later that same day, and I have just tried  the Jamaica Blue Mountain. I must admit that it is wonderful. Smooth, earthy, complex…  certainly no cream or sugar needed… All is forgiven. I might have to bring back a few ( hundred) packets of Turbinado, as a sign of redemptive good will. That should confuse them.

I love Starbucks again.

 

 

 

Now would you look at that…

I’ve been away for some time now.

But it’s Sunday morning, and I’m at work; covering a call-out shift. And it’s very quiet. I’ve been printing out some materials from both my security companies’ files, and Homeland Security. I expect to get notification tomorrow to do it anyway, so I’ll save myself some time.

And what I’ve been thinking while I go over this stuff myself and set it up for my roster of guards to go over this week…has to do with the Wakefield Doctrine.

So I’m going to write a Doctrine post; but I’ll do it here, because this kind of thing is generally not appreciated on that side of the pond. But nonetheless…a WD post over here? Didn’t see that coming.

The thing about the Doctrine…is that it simply works. If you take every imaginable type of classification or conceivable way to group or categorize humans away…if all you’ve got left is three naked cavemen ( or cave people…sorry ) and a stick, lying on the ground…there it is. The goddamned Doctrine.

Which one interacted with the stick first, and why? And then what?

Three fundamental personality types, and how they interact. That is literally the whole thing. Everything else is adornment.

But, as opposed to the general tone of things over at the Doctrine site, things are not always fun. If the WD is true and real, then it must cover the entire span of human interaction, or admit that it’s flawed somehow.

So…a Doctrine post for your perusal, but of a decidedly different tone.

The horrific shootings in Connecticut leave me with a totally empty void. As opposed to 911, there isn’t even a definable enemy to associate the event to. Just a typical profile of a typical shooter. It just happened, and now it’s over. I, personally, would much prefer to have a definitive enemy; something that your mind can address it’s need to respond to.

But no…just a sadly twisted loner kid, and a mother with guns.

The materials I’m preparing are emergency instructions; the subject matter in this case is specifically how to respond to an active shooter.

And there are additional materials that address the psychological profiles of active shooters.

And I’m wondering, because it’s hard to read into this clearly. Which WD type would an active shooter most likely stem from? Is it possible for it to vary? And what factors would combine to create such a profile?

At first, I thought that they’re probably scotts; being the type that would most likely see violence or aggression as a viable outlet. But then again…scotts are also most likely to act immediately, and therefore have the highest likelihood of a usable release valve for their perceived resentments.

They just don’t fit the profile.

Clarks? They define themselves as outsiders, are only comfortable, if at all, in the outer perimeters of interactive groups; are certainly capable of holding and fostering deep resentments, not just over months ( as the profile reads) but over decades. They would be extremely capable of assembling a detailed plan to address their perceived resentments. And yet is is still difficult to determine what the final trigger to act would actually be. But overall…much closer to the profile.

But… I think that the closest type would have to be among rogers. I sense that the very prolonged alienation from social groups combined with ultra-personal incidental resentments could create the justification that would be needed. The victims are actually completely random, but are chosen from the social group that must be punished; and always seems to be supplemented with very particular punishment for a few particular individuals.

I therefore say that they’re most likely rogers, probably every time. In the end, I think it’s not about the targets at all. It’s about the importance of healthy socialization at a very young age. Just look what can happen when kids are abandoned at a societies’ outer perimeters for too long.

Should this be read by any interested parties ( especially amongst the Doctrine readership ) I would be most intrigued to receive your comments. For those that are entirely unfamiliar with the idea of the Wakefield Doctrine, please click the link in the right-side margin.

And though this isn’t pleasant subject matter, it’s nice to be back.

New Stuff…

Just a quick note.

Diana Krall just released a new album titled ” Glad Rag Doll.”

It’s based on music from the 1920′s; produced by T-Bone Burnett.

In an interview posted on her website, Diana said that rather than try to re-create the time period, they just went in and worked on the songs as if they’d been written yesterday.

It worked very, very nicely. ( See? I’m retaining composure. I didn’t write ‘ it worked beautifully’)

And as always, I’m trying to learn to control my seething resentment of Elvis Costello.

Maybe that part isn’t going so well.

So You Think You’re a Guitar Player…

( A pleasant exchange about dancing in kitchens and big- band music led to this one; thanks, Girlie! )

My guitar student has been working on several jazz standards for some time now, and making remarkable progress.

Lately, we’ve been working on ” Take the A Train ” by Duke Ellington.  As are the others we’ve tried, it sounds very simple and accessible to listen to, but on closer examination have discovered the hidden complexities.

The ‘A Train‘ is very smooth and easy to listen ( or dance! ) to, and the chord progression seems very easy and playable at a glance; that’s why I chose it.

But then… we found that all these alternate chord voicings were being used, and that they actually frame the melody so well that you have to learn them, or just give up. Not just C, but C6; not just Dm7, but Dm7+9b5. And you have to, or it’s just wrong. And there are usually two different fingerings being used in different places for each of several chords.

You had better not get on the ‘ A Train’ unless you’ve got your tuxedo on, or at least a damned good suit. These guys played for blood.

This is Freddie Green.

He spent most of his life playing in Duke Ellington’s rhythm section.

He was known to play only one single- note solo in his entire life. He was a chord guy. He was the chord guy.

He played full-bodied acoustic guitars  ( Gretsch, Stromberg, Gibson) with heavy-gauge strings, and the bridge raised to about 1 inch high; and played with the instrument almost flat in his lap.

Which means he could leap tall buildings if he wanted to. He would have had the hand strength of any ten normal guitar guys.

The other jazz guitar guys were scared of him. He not only knew a lot more chords than they did, he would do really cool stuff with them, like accent different notes in the chords to get different shadings and tones.

Most typical light-gauge-strings-Les Paul- Strat- have-to-play-loud-or-you-can’t-hear-me guys don’t even know about this stuff. Freddie played an acoustic guitar with no amp, surrounded by horn players.  And cut through just fine, when Ellington wanted him to. Freddie liked to mix in with the bass and drums so smoothly that you couldn’t tell them apart.

So put down ‘Back in Black’, and try on the ‘ A Train’ …

Yeah, I know. You’ve got a lot to learn.

Got to go now…have to move the kitchen table out of the way…

70,000…

A conservative casualty estimate. There were many conflicting versions of events, and the Russians could marginally get away with calling it a victory simply because they stopped Napoleon from advancing any further.

September 7, 1812; the battle of Borodino. This is an event of great national significance for the Russians, akin to Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg for Americans. They can practically see the future of their country escaping drastic change by just a hair’s breadth.

Napoleon, by today’s standards, was a total nutjob. So were the Russians, of course; any day that these guys put troops in the field, they would probably lose 25,000 on an average. But that was OK.  Soldiers were considered the scum of the earth, and were expected to be more than happy to march in formation into a horrific death to please an emperor/ czar/ etc. They were easily replacable.  Many soldiers were conscripts, and they generally would rather serve in the army than rot in prison or be executed.

Napoleon was also considered to be a military genius, and his tactics were the practical standard well into the 1860′s.  He was especially fond of massed infantry attacks in column formations. They could move very quickly across open ground, but only the front rank could fire their weapons.  Artillery would rip huge gouges in the approaching columns, and if they could then be penetrated by cavalry, the formations would fall apart completely; but if they could manage to get across, then they would usually win the battle.

The Russians apparently make a huge deal out of the Borodino anniversaries. They have re-enactors. I am simply amazed at this. I can’t help but wonder who in the Russian economy can manage the disposable income to outfit themselves for this pastime. ( I speak from bitter experience.)  Putin, I suppose, all his staff, friends, family…that must be about a hundred  guys right there. But where do the rest come from?

Hmm…if the kids will work in the gulag for just a few more years, I’ll be able to get that snappy new shako hat I’ve been needing…

Actually, I understand this completely. I’m just glad to see that we’re not the only ones. Even if the kids have to double up in the gulag bunks for body heat…

Just kidding. They don’t have to do that. I’d send them sub-zero sleeping bags from LL Bean.

But then they’d have to work off the price of those too, so maybe another six months?…

Thanks, WordPress!…

I was just re-reading a few of my recent posts, and realizing why it seems so very unlikely that too many readers would ever leave a comment. Comments are appreciated because they help to validate the writer; we have made contact with the aliens, and they are glad to see us. What a relief!

That’s one of my biggest problems right there. I can barely resist the urge to slide in a cryptic reference or two, and very often, a post will take on a life of its own based on that; and gleefully change direction completely. I seldom seem to ever make the point that I originally had in mind.

But it’s an awful lot of fun anyway, at the end of the day, and I would certainly recommend this sort of thing to anyone who’s ever been enticed by the notion of writing. Just throw some stuff at the wall, and see what sticks. It’s a terrific form of therapy. Oh, the places you’ll go…

See? A more seasoned and mature writer would have left that out…there just was no need for that. None whatsoever.

I’ve also taken note recently that the more successful mainstream blogs are very specific in their content. They’re about THE NEWS, or about POETRY, or about POPULAR MUSIC. That only stands to reason, but it seems that if you don’t loudly proclaim yourself as a SERIOUS WRITER somehow, then you haven’t much chance of gaining an audience. ( I have apparently discovered the ‘shift’ key. I will refrain from overuse.)

So the world seems to care not about my two treasured old brown coffee cups, each of which flew off the roof of my car. That post was fun to write; you start off with coffee cups, and end up having a disturbing conversation with St. Peter about your chances of getting into heaven. You can’t make this stuff up.

Actually, you can, and you should. It’s marvelous fun, and we should offer many thanks to WordPress, who literally makes all this happen. Aspiring puddle writers the world over all get a chance to get their feet wet, and some pretty damned good material comes about as a result. One needs to conquer one’s fear of the ‘ publish’ button…

So I’ll keep at it…and many thousands of others will, too. I’ll read yours, and you’ll read mine;  but I’m not sure how we might ever find one another in this gigantic blogoshpere.

But this is for sure…if I read yours, I’m almost certain to leave a comment…

 

 

Not E Major…

For the last few days, I’ve had yet another old Band song running through my head. This one’s titled ” Sleeping “, from the Stage Fright album. It’s quite catchy, and, as I do, I find myself not only enjoying the pleasant companionship but also slowly taking the piece apart as it runs and looking at it from the inside.

” Sleeping” is in 3/4 time; that’s fairly unusual right there. Richard Manuel had such an expressive voice, and the chorus is not only catchy, but actually swings, the way an old big band song would. Very cool.

But what really caught me was not being able to quite determine what key it’s in. I can typically get that pretty easily, just from hearing a few guitar chords in use. This one seemed to have E Major written all over it… a favorite of bluesy/rockabilly/ country guys. It plays very easily on guitar, and Robbie Robertson is a classic Fender Tele/ TwinReverb guy all the way.

But still…not quite. I finally gave up, and looked it up on a few websites.

It’s in F major. Now that’s only one half-step higher, but means that guitar and bass both have to work bit harder, and that’s why E major usually wins out in the end. But it does offer a very different dynamic.

As I poked around a bit more, I noticed that a lot of Band stuff was in F major; curious and interesting.

And, as I was leafing through some old photos, I came across this;

This is the handout from Rick‘s memorial service.

Now that’s even cooler than playing in F, when you might just as easily have chosen E.

I wonder what will start playing next…

Potpourri…

” I’ll take ‘ potpourri’ for a thousand, Alex…”

Answer: Four really good coffee cups, a cherished old gray felt planter’s hat with a bullet hole in it, a Sony Car Discman, a 36. cal. Remington revolver, several umbrellas, a Craftsman ratchet set, a small Hawaiian pizza, a sleeve of CD-Rs, a Teletubbie ( LaLa ), a Toro electric hedge trimmer, and a Blue’s Clue’s pad with erasable magic marker.

Question: Things that have rolled off the top of R.Coyne’s car and ended up in the road?…

It’s tough being me sometimes. On a good day, I’m sharp, precise, well-organized, witty, funny, boyishly charming….on a bad day, I’ll wander from one room to another, only to wonder why I left the room I was just in; and hoping that if I just wait a few seconds, the neurons will finally fire and I’ll know why I’m there.

It seems, however, that I’m waiting longer than ever these days… I’ve even taken to patiently looking around for something else I might attend to in the new location, seeing as how I’ve already gone to the trouble of going there. And there’s always a chance that the new thing actually could be the same as the original thing, whatever the hell that was.

And if I’m at all in a hurry ( always…) I’m liable to leave anything smaller than a pony on the roof of the car as I drive off in my haste. I put the item there while I unlock the car door, very time-efficiently get in, and off I go; only to notice said item flying away from the vehicle in the rear-view a few minutes later. ( Not entirely true; I have actually lost things that are larger than a pony; a 12×12 ft. wall tent, for instance, with ropes, stakes, poles, and all. Forgot to put the damned bungee cords on.)

Most of the items were recovered, some none the worse for it. The revolver was holstered and unloaded, the Discman skipped a lot anyway, about half of the ratchet set… the food items are a complete loss, of course; the five-second rule just doesn’t work in these cases. Alas, pineapple chunks that have flown into the breakdown lane cannot be retrieved. They just don’t make pizza boxes like they used to.

I sadly remember once glancing in the rear view as my then -two-year old niece Olivia was fretting in her carseat; she had only three of her precious Tubbies clutched to her bosom, and at that very moment I watched LaLa fly off the roof and into the grill of a UPS truck behind us. Olivia never knew the truth, and LaLa recovered nicely in the wash; and if I can someday manage to just slide past St. Peter with my part Catholic/ part Baptist E-Z Pass ( available at the DMV! ) then all might yet be forgiven.

” Hey, hold on there…You! Yes you, in the oddly stylish infantry jacket…you’re the guy! The Tubbies guy! Get back here! And stop crying! This is Heaven, for God’s sake! Haven’t you read anything? Where are you from, Rhode Island? …Oh, well that explains it…and BTW, we also saw you pick up the pizza…five seconds, my sainted ass…and not to mention lying… right in the middle of one of your own stupid blog posts. Just step off to the side there and wait for the shuttle bus. We’ll have to open up your case file…yes, your mom and dad are here…no…they’re not picking up right now. They’ve had quite enough of your crap, thank you. A lifetimes’ worth, actually, and enough is enough. We say that a lot up here. You’ll probably be hearing that all day… now stop sniveling and get on the damned bus. Yes…that is why it says ” Damned Bus.” And that is an ex of yours driving it…Wow. Your case file has been partitioned. Son of a bitch…Dude, you are totally …like…screwed. But you didn’t hear that from me…

Did You Freaking See That??

I’m a bit long in the tooth for this, but…

I think I have some brand- new heroes.

Nope. Not guitar players. Nobody musical.

Admittedly nothing to match the scale set by Generals T. Jackson or P. Cleburne.

Not Bird/ McHale/ Parrish/ Ainge/ Johnson, either.  They seem a bit pedestrian in comparison. Nope…

It’s girls.

Young girls.

Young girls playing soccer.

In the Olympics.

Just watched the US and Canada in the semi- final match; the winner plays Japan.

I don’t quite understand this game. In American football, at least there are shoulder pads, and rules that offer some level of protection. These people don’t need no stinking protection.

I’ve honestly never seen anything like that.

And I’ve been here for quite a while now.

I’d recommend watching a replay of that game, even if ( like me ) you don’t know much about it.

And the final is on Thursday.

It should be just a little less dramatic than Okinawa.

 

One More…

Here’s another interesting bit about making use of resources.

One Sunday morning at some long-distant re-enactment, the BadGuy camp ( the Confederates ) decided to all pitch in on a communal breakfast because everyone seemed to be running low on stuff, but we could put up a pretty good table if everyone contributed; so ten separate campfires all kicked in together.

All I had to offer was a pound of bacon and four large sweet potatoes. I had used up all my other stuff in making a what-should-have-been a terrific chicken stew the night before in my three-legged pot ( one day old ). But I had thrown in a few cayenne peppers from the garden, and it was so hot that it had to be declared inedible. I tried diluting the broth, but then had to wait hours for it all to reheat. In the meantime, the pale and wan faces of all the battalion’s privates had taken on a truly pathetic countenance. ( Many people will show up for two or three nights of camping with a canteen of tap water and a box of Cheez-its. ) We had one young man whose tent would be littered with Killian’s bottles, pepperoni, and Twinkies wrappers by Sunday; he was often visited by the local wildlife ( the bear, raccoon, and we-hope- that -was- not-what-we-thought-it-was whisperer.

I  cooked the bacon, of course; and then tried frying thickly sliced sweet potatoes in the renderings. This turned out wonderfully, but had heart attack written all over it.

But the discovery ended up being very well-received, and was therefore usually repeated on consequent Sunday mornings. I would typically make something for the camp on Sundays anyway, being a bit of a mother hen; after all, I would likely be leading them once again to their deaths later in the day.

A Yankee contingency even began to make unusual regular Sunday visits; I suspected that the now re-knowned sweet potatoes might have been at the root of this. We would have cups of black camp coffee, bacon, eggs, biscuits, and fried sweet potatoes with the godless Yankees, who once even brought strawberry short-cake; apparently, even a black Yankee soul might yet be redeemed through the whipping of fresh cream for the strawberries.

And then it was off to an open-air church service to see if one’s last functioning artery might still be spared.

On yet another side note, I recall my first Sunday service; the regular pastor was not in attendance, and the senior captain had been called on to conduct the service. After some truly terrible singing, it turned into an impromptu AA meeting.

The best of times.

Update ( Leadville )…

The other day, I happened to see a movie.

It sported the usual array of primary and secondary characters and a somewhat fantastical main plot.

The thing that caught my attention about this one in particular; its uncanny resemblance to our old Leadville novel, in one regard.

It was set against the same outline and framework; what happens to normal people in a small-town setting when extraordinary things begin to happen all around them. Of course it all works out nicely in the end, as they do.

It’s called Super 8.

More Soup…

It all started with the French Onion soup.

I was enjoying this perennial favorite one day, and was pondering why it is always recommended that the bread used should be a day old. ” Why not use fresh bread? ” I thought. ” What’s the difference, it’s going to be in the broth, under the cheese anyway…”

So I ate and thought. I’m much better at one than at the other, so understandably this could take a while. And there may be an awful lot of soup involved.

There was an awful lot of soup involved. All kinds of soup…months of diligent research…and finally, as I was enjoying yet another wonderful French Onion…

There was a Soup Revelation. The fuzzy cloud that my brain spends most of its time suspended in parted, and the Truth About Soup came shining through.

Starkly, shockingly simple. I dropped my spoon and gaped into the bowl; beyond the melted cheese, through the bread, and straight into the onion broth.

It’s not about a classic refined French recipe. There was never a damned recipe.

You used lots of onions because you had lots of onions; you used old bread while it was still barely usable. And you scraped the mold from old cheese and melted the usable part over the top… or maybe just used it all. A little mold never killed anyone…or has it?  There was only one way to find out.

It’s about not wasting resources.

The further back you go in history, the more important that edict becomes; people had to work harder and harder to acquire their food items. And frontiersmen and farmers were still only a few steps removed from the immediate risks that the early hunters had to take.

Food was  not just vital, but eminently sacred; a failed hunt or crop meant that people died. And saying grace over food was a heartfelt thanks, because they had risked everything to get it. To waste it would be…dare we use such an arcane word in the 21st century…a sin.

Soup goes back in history about 6000 years; as soon as clay pots became usable over fire. There was just one recipe; anything in danger of going to waste that would fit in the pot went into the pot. Actual recipes probably took centuries to become what they are today.

And why is soup always the first course served? Because you always used the leftovers first; less chance of waste. Nothing very refined about it. Don’t waste food.

I have tested my Ancient Soup Theory. I have a three- legged black wrought iron cooking pot that goes to re-enactments with me. I have successfully made French Onion soup over an open fire, using old onions, old cheese, old bread. It came out beautifully.

I absorbed all this from a bowl of soup ( my little French Onion joke) and might I suggest that you also try staring deeply and intently at your next meal. There’s a lot going on there. Your lunch may be trying to tell you something. Even if it’s from a drive-up window. Just make sure to take it out of the bag first, because staring at a bag is just weird.

And don’t even mention pizza…pizza just won’t shut up.

 

“Pease Porridge hot, Pease Porridge cold…Pease Porridge in the pot, Nine Days Old…”

Soup in the Wild…

Oddly, many of my most vivid recollections and memories are anchored to food.

Should I happen across an ice cream sandwich, parslied potatoes, chocolate cake with white icing, pizza strips…I am reminded instantly of steel cafeteria trays, small glass bottles of milk that cost 4 cents each…and of course, the angst that goes along with being 12 years old in junior high school. Girls, who previously seemed OK with my existence, had apparently had a meeting…

 I have been known to make a chocolate sheet cake with white icing, cut it into proper squares, and serve them on waxed paper, but only in September; one wants also to recollect the additional angst of the summer being over, and returning to school. The Full Angst Effect.

And here is a similar story from adulthood; this one is angst-free.

I’ve spent several years in the oddly satisfying hobby of civil war re-enacting. I’m sort of retired now, but I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone who enjoys the outdoors. It is especially good for families with kids; it provides a perfect environment for them to spend whole days running and playing in complete freedom, with someone nearby at all times.

On one October weekend years ago, I was attending an event in Uxbridge, Mass. The weather was spectacular; clear blue sky, brilliant maple leaves everywhere; the air was perfectly warm and perfectly cool at the same time. Food prepared over an open fire, and fine comfortable conditions for sleeping in camp.

Saturday nights were the very best. A  roaring fire, encircled by good friends, all with beverage of choice in hand; tucked into your woolen greatcoat against the chill. Music, sudden bursts of standup comedy, good stories…

But this particular Saturday had brought sudden rain, which quickly turned to a full gale. All the campfires were drowned out, tents were pulled up by the wind, and many chose the better part of valor and packed it in. In my company, the 21st Mississippi, we decided that we’d be just as drowned in breaking camp, so opted to hold on. Tent floors were all washed through, and for those who slept on the ground it would be a truly miserable night. I was an officer, and could get away with a folding cot; I would be fine as long as the tent held on.

By late afternoon, we were huddled miserably under our tent fly. There was no hope of supper; we were reduced to crackers and cold coffee ( with a bit of Jameson’s, strictly for emergency use only…)

And then, in the distance… a lone SUV was seen climbing the long road up to our camp. All who were going were long gone, so we wondered who might be unhinged enough to be driving towards this mess of their own free will.

It was Paulette, Gary‘s wife. Gary was one of our privates ( and a VP of Putnam Investments in the real world ) Paulette usually attended events, but never stayed in camp; day-trip only. Gary slept in two woolen blankets on the ground, and that was a bit too far for her.

She backed her SUV into camp, opened the hatch…and started unloading dutch ovens. Five altogether; piping hot, they traveled on cooling racks and didn’t lose a drop in transport.

I’m sure that the Berlin Airlift never received a warmer welcome.

She had made us supper, all from scratch; knew that we would not have gone home, and drove it all out to us.

She also had a fever of 104 the whole time.

One oven had apple cobbler; another two with corn bread made with corn cut right off the cob, and jalapenos; one with biscuits, and one with the main course; a chunky butternut squash soup, with butter beans and ham; and a half-gallon of hot mulled cider.

We were all saved; we devoured that meal with Pentecostal abandon. We praised Paulette to the very skies. We even shared some with a few Yankee friends who wondered what all the ruckus was about; they, in turn, worshipped at Paulette’s fevered feet.

It was really, really good.

And when it was all gone, Pvt. Gary drove her 20 miles home, saw her safely to bed; then drove 20 miles back…and slept in two wet woolen blankets in the mud.

Some people…always seem to rise above circumstance.

I have actually dreamt about that soup. That soup has been fondly recalled over many campfires since, and people still speak of the cornbread in hushed tones. Paulette launched herself into culinary history that day, and when asked for the recipes…she doesn’t exactly recall. She was winging it.

That actually makes it even better.

 

In The Beginning…( Posts About Food )

 

…there was really only one all-purpose recipe. It served everyone equally well.

- Chase it, catch it, kill it, eat it. And since they didn’t have index cards yet, I’m sure that there was a lot of memorization going on; with the occasional pop quiz. ( Dammit, what was number three again? )

Or, the equally viable alternative;

- It chases you, it catches you, it kills you, it eats you.

Most days, it could go either way.

Early dining may not have been terribly sophisticated, but it was certainly dramatic enough. On a good day, you were only one step removed from your food source; on a bad day, there were no steps at all, because you were the food source.

And then there was fire ( along with National Grid to regulate it, I suppose )… and life got much better.

Because now… there was roasting. Food tasted better, was much safer, and would keep longer. Survival rates went way up. National Grid instituted their first rate increase…

But now, early people were two steps removed from their food source;  procurement, and preparation.

So rudimentary society began to form around campfires, and soon after, recipes were being exchanged. Tribes were formed based on one’s preference for barbecue sauce or a dry rub. Early cave drawings in the south of France included a Samsung 24-c.u. side-by-side with water and ice on the door, packaged with a Jenn-Air cooktop ( free delivery w/ rebate, once the wheel is invented; special order only, once Sears is invented)  Bobby Flay’s ancestors began a rough draft of the first grilling cookbook ( The Joy of Killing ) and the first Food Network series went into pre- production ( Iron Chef  Caught Your Dog…Sorry! ) Admittedly, plating was going to be an issue.

And nowadays, there are so many steps separating modern man from his food sources that we no longer even care that there are steps involved at all. It’s traumatic enough just having to keep track of all the new kinds of Oreos. ( Gluten-free lo-carb whole wheat double-stuffed with flaxseed and zesty guacamole filling…)

Personally, I don’t want to live in a world where Oreos are good for you. Oreos may be the last dignified form of suicide that we have left.  And, I’ll have whole milk with ‘em, too.  I just don’t care anymore…

Rumor has it that Jack Kevorkian owned stock in Hostess Twinkies…just an urban legend, I suppose. But they found six cases in the trunk of his car…

Recipe tip: 4 oreos= 1 twinkie.

In Texas, you can get deep- fried twinkies at the state fair. Mother of God, you would have had better odds of survival if you were defending the Alamo…

*****

And on our next food-oriented post…Paulette, the Soup Angel.

Update…

For those of you who might care…

Jerry Gaskill ( King’s X ) has recovered well enough from his heart attack to be declared ok to go back to work by his doctors. Yay!!

King’s X will be touring with Kansas, have three gigs booked and adding more. This would prove to be an excellent show if they happen to play through your respective necks of the woods. Come on, dammit, let some of those moths out of that papyrus wallet of  yours and show some support…just sayin’.

On the home front, the hair is filling back in around my styling mishap of last week. Children have stopped racing for the protection of their mother’s aprons ( difficult, there just aren’t that many aprons around any more; typical to see one apron with 46 kids crowded in behind it).

 Not nearly as traumatic as a heart incident, but I still get a little verklempt just thinking about it…

Very good to know that Msrs. Gaskill/Tabor/Pinnock will continue to be out there fighting the good fight.

End transmission.

Now everyone will want one…

All is vanity.

Especially hair.

Or rather the lack of it, in particular places.

No one ever seems overly concerned with the abundance of it in other places.

So it’s not a ‘ quantity’ thing.

It’s purely a vanity thing.

But when you wake up to realize that you suddenly have Flock of Seagulls hair, then it’s best to address the problematic protein before the authorities are summoned.

The authorities would presume that such a thing came into being on purpose; they  would never suspect that Flock of Seagulls hair descends on the innocent like a thief in the night, poisoning relationships, altering career paths, and traumatizing children. Dogs bark…cats begin to howl…

I drove quickly and with determination to the local barber guy. He’s a bit older than I am, always cuts a bit too starkly short, but that’s all right. All is vanity, remember. I got past all that a while ago.

He wasn’t there.

His kid was. The one who started working there about a year ago; the one who cuts all the young guys’ hair, and somehow messes up anyone else. Been there, done that.

I drove home again. Not today, Kanye West…not today.

Long story short…Barber in a Box. One of the many thousands of gizmos that my living quarters are overrun with; every kitchen counter-top device known to man, assembled for posterity by She Who Is Driven To Purchase Every Kitchen Counter-Top Device Known To Man for Posterity.

It’s been lurking for years, just like the Salad Shooters and Onion Smashers, the Panini Makers, the Crockpots of various sizes and shapes…Dr. Seuss gone completely mad.

Of course, my junk is not included. My stuff has an elegantly engineered and divinely inspired Purpose. That much is obvious.

It was going surprisingly well. I did it myself; it’s actually quite a practical little device, and really easy to use. It has these little ‘spacer’ things that go over the blade, so that you can only cut to that particular length. Pretty simple. And I was really enjoying getting the upper hand on Kanye the Fake Barber.

Almost done, and there was just a small bit in the back that I couldn’t quite get to…so I asked Sandra to assist ( SWIDTPECTDKTMP).

She did so; reluctantly, hesitantly.

She was apparently going to trim two atoms of hair off at a time. This could take weeks.

I took the device from her, meaning to show her just how much pressure could be applied; the little spacer thingie was designed to prevent unfortunate mistakes. Says so right on the box; it even shows a little kid using it.

But…as I brought it up behind my head, the little spacer thingie slipped off. I didn’t see that, and I ran the last pass right up the back with a bare blade.

In almost twenty years time, I have certainly heard the poor girl scream, cry, and laugh…but never all at the same time.

I laughed too, at first. It kind of looks like a crop circle from a distance. Up close, it has more of a reddish, mangy hue. Diseased.

But now… I’ll have to saunter past the barber shop, desperately hoping that the fake barber might spot a new trend on the rise. Kanye wouldn’t want to be seen as uncool, would he? I’ll tell him that I got it in New York for only $200.

It could work.

All is vanity.

Was That a Signpost, Rod?

” Yes, it was”, says Rod, speaking from within the everpresent cloud of cigarette smoke. ” And could you please try to read them before we’ve gone past?  It sort of defeats the whole purpose. Plus, you could just check the rearview instead of craning your neck out the window like that. Very dangerous.”

” Well, if you could maybe cut back on the smoking to say, only four packs a day, I might actually be able to see out the rearview mirror. And could you please sit down? Why do you have to try to stand up in the back seat?  What are you, five?”

” Hey, pal…the signposts are supposed to be for your enlightenment. I’ve been down this road a few times. And, I wrote the signposts. And, I’m writing the episode you’re in right now. And, I’m considering editing your cranky ass out of this one. And, is shocked the only acting chop you’ve got? How did you even get a gig like this?  How about…remorse…fear…loathing…resentment? Anything? I guess not. Although…If I were you, I’d be shocked too. This might actually make for a pretty good segment after all. Can we back up, roll by the sign again, and can you at least ramp shocked up to horrified?  Should be easy, with this being real and all…even for you…

                                                                      *****

One of my functions where I work is to receive in Metlife insurance customers who are referred to as ” walk-ins.”  They are typically elderly, are exasperated with 1-800 menus, and demand to talk to a ” real agent.”

They are further exasperated by my polite but firm insistence that I am no such thing; but I am in position to get one that’s kept nearby ( I suspect as a form of punishment, in the insurance industry )

Last week marked the visit of one such patron; he comes in twice a year. He claims to be either 87 or 90 years old; his wife passed away 15 years ago.

He’s always dressed the same way; camoflage pants, black boots, and a black Army parade kepi adorned with little flag buttons, regiment insignia, WWII and Korean medals; white tee shirt and a jean vest.

Of all the myriad of walk-ins, he’s a favorite. Eminently polite and respectful, but friendly in a warm way that can only be attributed to wisdom. He’s like an Army-issue Yoda.

I’m always glad to see him come in, and he’s always glad that I’m there to process him. We always manage a few minutes of conversation before he’s seen, and it’s just a pleasant experience. There is a depth and sharpness in his eyes that belies his age.

Have you ever sensed, perchance, that the milestone markers in your life sometimes slip by with hardly a notice? A signpost that you barely caught from the corner of your eye as you rode past?

Well, my elderly vet friend hit me upside the head with one that day, and I’ve yet to quite sort it all out.

It was an unusually busy day, and I told him that he may have to wait for about a half-hour or so.

In his way, he replied; ” Oh, that’s all right. I’ve got plenty of time.” ( A very atypical response among elderly insurance customers, I can assure you. )

And then…with that hundred-mile deep look in his eye, he somehow managed to smile warmly…inclusively…and added…

” Guys like us…all we’ve got left is time.”

I was at once …honored, some how. I had just been included… in something that remains totally beyond my comprehension.

I just haven’t the slightest idea what really transpired just then.

 There wasn’t the smallest hint of condescension, or sarcasm. He was being absolutely and purely straightforward. Very disarming, in this day and age.

One should not be sent reeling by a 90-year old Korean War vet. This guy has likely seen things that would reduce me to a fetal position. I am simply not worthy.

And yet he chooses to include me.

He concluded his business, and we bade a warm farewell. Disarming yet again; I truly do hope to see him one more time.

I’ve had a few days to ponder this…and all I’ve come up with so far…

I wonder how much time I have to figure it out.

                                                                          *****

Rod wants me to back up to before the signpost, and go by it again; but this time, instead of shock…try for calm acceptance.

 

He Never Said Two Words…

…never had to, really…

This is Garth Hudson.

He was the keyboard player in The Band.

In those days, that was kind of like saying you were the ‘ part-time backup school-bus driver.’ Many people thought there wasn’t much need for keyboards in rock and roll bands. They were decorative, mostly.

But I’ ve been listening to an awful lot of Band stuff recently, and have come to this conclusion; in spite of how truly good everyone was respectively, it was the keyboards that really knit everything together. You don’t necessarily get that at first. Between Garth and Richard ( who also played piano), there was a ton of keyboards in their stuff.

My best description of Garth’s style is ‘ demented Appalachian Baptist Church Choir Director.’

If you listen for it, you’ll see what I mean. Very masterful, but with a definitive 19-th century flavor.

For instance, there is a part in ‘ Up On Cripple Creek” that the entire world believed was a jaw harp, until finding out that it was a clavinet being played through a wah pedal.

At the Hall of Fame Induction ceremony in ’94, Garth actually spoke…a lot. Most unusual. Making up for lost time, I suppose. I suspect that he might have just been making R.Robertson wait…but it was good to hear from him at last.

Seems like Garth was always the last one mentioned in the liner notes, and in the end, he was much more the foundation of the whole thing.

Garth has done much since the Band days, too; several other projects, solo albums, a million collaborations, web sites all over the place.

He was ‘ the guy’ who made the Band’s material work so well. The real guy. And the best thing about that?

The ‘real guy’ never has to say much about anything. No need.

P.S. … On April 27th, Levon Helm was buried in Woodstock, NY; not far from Rick Danko. In Arkansas, they still flew the flags at half-mast.

Connected Dots…

Why are repressed memories repressed to begin with?

Well…I suppose that if we knew the answer to that, there wouldn’t be any repressed memories at all.

There will be a point to this, I promise. Not right up front, but more towards the back end. Please be patient, and allow me to set a scene for you.

The summer of ’69, as Mr. Adams would say; although mine was not nearly as intriguing, and would never stand as backdrop for a smash radio hit of the ’80′s. I was to spend the summer painting houses with my dad; housepainting was a secondary income for him.

He had decided to attempt to infuse me with something resembling an actual work ethic; my days as a lump of shiftless protoplasm were apparently numbered. ( For those among you who know me well… please insert crass and sarcastic comment here. )

So…here’s the scene. A spectacularly beautiful early summer morning in Seekonk, Massachusetts. We were painting the exterior of a very impressively large Victorian on the banks of the Seekonk Reservoir. Dad was painting the peak, having used two precariously placed ladders to get there. I was on a lower level, about ten feet off the ground, painting in and around some kitchen windows that had a very ornately carved outer housing. I was charged with the task of painting the housing without getting paint all over the windows.

That was not working out very well. Protoplasm generally does not respond to requests, even the strident ones.

But finally, after several hours…it was accomplished, and there was only one spot left to paint; the eaves underneath the housing itself. I had left that for the very last, because protoplasm will always hold out the forlorn hope that someone will come along and do the sticky bits for them at the last minute.

I had been instructed to clean out the eaves before painting; and as any blob of teenaged protoplasm would, I completely ignored that order. I thought that I would rather paint under the eaves so heavily that Dad would never notice that they had not been cleaned at all. This was a very highly advanced train of logic for protoplasm.

So…I went up the  ladder with more paint. I smugly jammed a full brushful  into the underside of the housing, gloating to myself about the lesson in work ethic that I would show him.

And was met with a furious attack from a huge brown spider, with a torso roughly the size of a ping-pong ball. ( And yes, that is an accurate scaling of the dinosaur’s torso. If I had recounted this story to you say, even ten years ago, he would have been volley-ball sized; ten years previous, basketball-sized. Allow some small credit where it is due.)

Apparently, when under duress, blobs of protoplasm have been known to emit high- pitched girlish shreiks in  the barely audible range of almost 20khz, purely as a defense mechanism. And also to levitate up and down ladders, knocking paint cans out of the way as need be.

Paint was everywhere; my spiffy bell-bottoms had been seriously compromised. ( Yes, with paint, thank you. Mostly.)

And as I got up off the ground…there was Dad. Hearing the 20khz shreiking, he had apparently utilized his far superior abilities of levitation.

Dad was not a terribly well-adjusted camper just then. There was more paint on the windows than I had actually gotten on the house all day. He was rather vocal in his observations, in that ‘ex-Navy WWII vet’  way of his. I was not aware that the lineage of my birth had ever been in question.

I pleaded my case, to no effect. The beast should just as well have been the size of a basketball.

Dad was up the ladder in a flash; against my extraordinarily high-pitched objections, he reached into the basketball’s lair.

He grabbed hold of it, bare-handed; came two rungs down the ladder, and pitched it over the stockade fence into the adjacent realm.

I will always recall the image of a paint-sodden arachnid flying into space, forever etched against the perfect June sky.

I spent several days cleaning paint from those windows. Even less fun than painting, if one can imagine.

And now…why did all this suddenly become un-repressed?

Because early this morning…as I rose for work…the background music in my head abruptly changed tracks.

As I mentioned the other day, word of  Levon Helm’s passing had caused ” Daniel and the Sacred Harp” to start playing in my head. This morning, it suddenly changed over to ” Across the Great Divide”, which in turn has led to the entire ” Band” album ( also known as the ‘brown’ album) playing non-stop in its place. This is actually quite pleasant, and not nearly as borderline scizophrenic as it sounds.

And now, the overall point, as earlier promised;

 I spent that Summer of the Arachnid with that Band album playing in my head, too. I had committed it entirely to memory, after playing it through easily  a dozen times a day.

So the entire incident occurred, as did everything else that summer, with a  backing soundtrack. The hateful beast is forever aligned with oil-based grey housepaint, deep parental resentment, gorgeous summer mornings, and the Band. A convoluted series of dots, but there it is.

When the ‘brown’ album runs its course, I hope it switches over to ‘ Stage Fright‘ next. There’s some great stuff on that one. Highly recommended, but be careful; these songs all have a tendency to stick.

Oh, and along the way… I did manage to aquire a respectable work ethic. Thanks, Dad…but I still couldn’t manage the spider-throwing trick.

I

Levon…

Levon Helm passed away yesterday from throat cancer.

He had been wrestling with it for some time, but as often happens, it doubled back around and got him anyway.

Levon had a storybook career in music. He was the original singing drummer in rock; a founding member of  The Band, an extraordinarily eclectic project from the ’60′s. He was proficient on several instruments.

About ten years ago, he wrote a book called ” This Wheel’s On Fire” which documented the early years of his career through the Band period, and well beyond. Should you ever happen to read it, you will find any concurrent viewings of ” The Last Waltz” ( the Scorcese- directed documentary of their farewell tour) in an entirely unanticipated light.

But you’d have to be a dinosaur, and a pretty old one at that, to even care.

The Band was a completely eclectic mix of early American roots music, with a seasoning of blues, ragtime, sacred harp, gospel….everything under the sun. All written and performed with an undeniable early- American authenticity.

Especially since they were Canadian.

Except for Levon. He was from Arkansas.

And all this happened in the ’60′s, a time when music consisted generally of over- indulgent guitar players who would likely ramble on endlessly in a guitar solo until someone shot them.

The Band was my first experience of  musicians who wrote and performed songs purely for the song’s sake. That was quite a revelation to a fledgeling over-indulger like me.

Unfortunately, Robbie Robertson always tried to position himself as a hot guitar player ( hence much of the footage in “The Last Waltz”). He was not, and is not. The posturing was unnecessary and harmful, and had much to do with The Band’s demise.

But in spite of a few negatives, The Band had a spectacularly successful run, and were widely influential. As with all superlative songwriters, a Band song only needed to be heard once or twice to be eternally cemented into your brainstem. Since hearing this news, ” Daniel and the Sacred Harp” has been running in my head non-stop; that’s fine with me, it’s one of my favorites.

Levon Helm, Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel, Garth Hudson.

Absolute timeless magic.

Richard and Rick have already passed on, now joined by Levon.

Rest in peace, brothers.

We who remain behind are much diminished.

db(2)+ 1.5 ml He = db(2) – 1.5 ml Co2 (a dead balloon is a dead balloon)

There are two things in this world that kids certainly don’t know a damned thing about; Shakespearian allegory, and the physical properties of most common gases. Any and every K12 teacher will attest to this.

They are also blissfully unaware of the poignantly poetic connection between the two. And just as well; such sobering and irrefutable philosophic evidence should well be kept from them, easily until the seventh grade, if not even beyond that. Let ‘em be kids for as long as they can, I say; a rose will still be a rose, regardless of when we each get around to actually contemplating them, whatever they’re being called by.

And as to helium and carbon monoxide, I keep a particularly fond childhood memory; kept in my file for ” particularly fond childhood memories”, located just behind my left ear, near the hairline ( or what was once known as such. ) It’s either that, or a hopefully benign nodule. I just know that if I poke at it long enough, it will release a flood of pleasant early recollections. There is also a corresponding file behind my right ear which I have long since learned to avoid at all cost. And, there’s one forming right smack in the middle of my forehead, indicating a possible new career as a Hindu mystic; in which case I will certainly need a set of proper lily-white pajamas. The old green plaid ones will not do, I suppose…but apparently I digress.

Right. Back to the childhood memory file.

This wonderful warm-and-fuzzy collection includes early TV shows ( Bonanza, Rawhide, the Addams Family ( I still count Mrs. Addams as being the very first Goth female ); seeing the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show, at which point life as I had known it took a sudden left turn; sandlot baseball, and the smell of the six gallons of saddle soap that my glove was marinated in; the brown woolen snowsuit that Mom would stuff me into, and then throw me into a snowbank to await the Spring thaw; sledding, until it was too dark to be able to see the tree you were about to crash into; wars of attrition, otherwise known as snowball fights; catching fireflies in jars on hot summer nights; Joyce Stamp ( my first actual taking notice of a female ) in the third grade ( alas, we could not marry; I was Catholic, and she was Protestant ( neither had any idea what that actually meant ); the inexplicably satisfying sound of baseball cards that have been clothes-pinned onto bicycle spokes; the wonderful rubber-ish ’ thwock’ sound you make when you flick a balloon back into the air ( because it must remain airborne at all costs ).

This last one needs further explanation; because many balloons are in fact airborne, and need tethering, lest they escape our grasp altogether. And yet many do not. This posits quite the physics problem for children the world over, wherever a balloon is to be had.

To the child, it may seem a simple enough solution. The store-bought balloon always manages its escape into the atmosphere; therefore, get your own balloons, blow them up with your own air, and …voila.

Nothing. Just the opposite, in fact. But…air is air…a rose is a rose… balloons are balloons. Why isn’t this working?

It is precisely then  that the balloon-thwocking starts. At the risk of life, limb, the pursuit of happiness…liberty will certainly be compromised. After all, your little sister went careening out a second-story window, and was only saved by landing in your mother’s prize rosebushes; you will consequently be grounded until the ripe old age of eight. Potted geraniums ended up in aquarium tanks; chairs broken, drapes pulled down, dogs and cats trod upon. All because it is entirely possible to blow up the entire package of balloons, and keep them all airborne at the same time…at all costs. This feat requires much, much thwocking, several children…and a mother who is slightly and temporarily preoccupied.

She may be preparing dinner…or seeing to an outside chore…or on the phone…again.

The phone calls seem to go on forever. It feels like you were five when she started, and now you’re…well..still five, but it seems like seven. And a lot can happen in even a relative two years time, when there are balloons afoot. When you’re not getting the attention you want/need; when there are no snacks within reach; when there’ s no feedback.

And finally…the balloons have begun to lose pressure. The thwocking becomes tiresome…and still…in exasperation, you bring her an expiring, wheezing, thoroughly thwocked- out balloon, and ask her for help. To make them better, to bring them back…that’s what she does. Her Prime Directive…to fix stuff.

But she is still on the phone.

So, as your last resort, you try the old standby method; whining piteously. It works a good percentage of the time. But this time, her response is stoic, and unmoving in its harsh implication. Apparently… air is not always just air, but a rose is always a rose; sisters don’t always land in beds of roses…but a dead balloon is always, always a dead balloon.

And in spite of the lesson supposedly learned, the next balloon- based project didn’t fare much better; fashion a parachute from a large bath towel and pieces of clothesline ( yes, you must chop up your mother’s clothesline first, and poke holes into monogrammed bath towels ); blow up 12 new balloons, attach string to each; climb the old apple tree to the highest reachable limb; and use the wonders of science to float safely to the ground. Or maybe, if you can catch the wind just right, to sail over the chain link fence into uncharted territory.

Or not.

The List…

For your convenience:

Reap what you Sow

As Above, So Below

Yin/ Yang

An Eye for An Eye

Action/ Re-Action

Karma

Do Unto Others

And a quick re-cap:

Having discussed the first five list items previously, I had hoped to somehow illustrate that the fundamental elements of those five are so fundamental that they actually reflect the exact same thing, the same root value; and that we chronically and consistently miss the point. We overshoot the mark by our very nature, and will insist on overcomplication at every turn.

Because it can’t possibly be that simple.
And rather than strive to reach a level of understanding by always extrapolating on those themes, we should be doing just exactly the opposite. We should be trying to break it all down and make it simpler; admittedly, an almost impossible task.

After all; little kids, babies, and animals already know this stuff cold.  Because their tendency is to trust, to take things according to what they already know, and nothing more. It takes a while for that pristine innocence to be corrupted; but we adults are good at what we do, and we’ll get to all of them in time. We’ll spoil the babies, corrupt the toddlers, alienate the teenagers, and slaughter the animals.

But there is still a ray of hope left on this list. The last two items have connotations that leave the others pale in comparison.

Karma…Quite exactly like the others, the concept of karma is rooted in balance. If something is out of balance, it will right itself. It’s not an abstraction. It’s more of a math equation with teeth.

It does have that somewhat foreboding moral overtone, and this is where it differs from the first five items.

It’s awfully simple; set good energy in motion, get good energy back, and typically with more to spare. There’s a regenerative element associated with this, but in an entirely neutral  manner; set bad energy in motion…and you will have your ignorant ass handed back  to you, cut into beautiful julienne strips. Exquisite knife work; any chef would be proud.

The seed of the moral lesson here is, as always, so disarmingly simple that many/ most people will miss it; and spend much valuable time trying to sort out what seems to be wrong. You have choices ; you should make your choices responsibly; karma will ultimately restore everything to its original state of balance.

The lesson? Do good stuff, get even more good stuff in return. Do bad stuff, get pounded relentlessly. It  has always been in plain sight; it has always been just that simple.

And we have, every last one of us, known that…all along.

Last on the list…Do Unto Others.

Black the Sky…

A few weeks ago, I was making one of my rummage runs through Salvation Army, looking for old audio, albums, old cd’s…you know…stuff.

I found a nice old pair of AKG K140 headphones ( 79.99 in 1974…) for $3.00. Nice little find. They needed a bit of a polish, but worked just fine.

And being an ex-poster boy for OCD, I took them home and started listening to all kinds of stuff, just to see how nice things can sound on a good set of cans; listening for production and engineering value,  even more so than the artists. Not just geek; this is dinosaur geek. Old Dinosaur Guy Finds Headphones in Box, Misses Two Weeks of Work. Story at Eleven.

I wish.

And anyway, about three days in, I ran some King’s X.

And kept right on, for about another week. Sure was nice to wallow in the old magic. This is absolutely the most underrated band in our universe. How could they not have gotten what they deserved?

I went to the website after years and years away, just to see what might be going on with them. I was a bit afraid that they might be gone altogether by now.

I found that they had planned a tour for this year, new material in the works, but no New England dates scheduled. Bummer. The last time I had seen them was at the Station in West Warwick, and I remember being crushed against the outside wall and thinking that all that cheap foam that lined the walls and ceiling was just Hell waiting to happen. And not three months later…

Spent this evening listening to ” Gretchen Goes To Nebraska” and just marveling at the recording. It ‘s just so great to get to listen to people having the time of their lives, and careers. Then I thought I would check the website again to see if their were any additions or schedule changes for the tour.

The tour has been cancelled.

Jerry Gaskill has had a heart attack. He’s supposedly doing OK after an operation, and is still in ICU.

The band is offering a download of an old Boston show from 1991 in exchange for donations to defray medical expenses. Here’s a link;http://molkenmusic.com/store/shop/details.php?id=50

If you can help, please do. There couldn’t be a King’s X without Jerry, and I wouldn’t want to fathom a musical world that didn’t have King’s X in it.

Re: the List…

Here’s what I know for sure. ( No…stop that.)

Here’s what I think I know for sure. ( Better…keep going…)

Here’s what I would really like to know for sure. ( Closer…good…)

Here’s what I would really like to believe I once knew for sure. ( That’s it!!)

*****

All right then. It’s time to have another crack at the list.

*****

Here it is again;

Reap What You Sow

As Above, So Below

Yin/Yang

An Eye for an Eye

Action/Re-action

Karma

Do Unto Others

*****

And here is a bit of background concerning how this list seems to have assembled itself. Over a rather long period of time, I began to take note of things ( list items ) that all seemed to have some obtuse quality in common; that inherent echo of what most would perceive as ‘truth.’

And in spite of all the list items being from a very widely different array of sources, they all hold that ‘ echo’ quality in common; hence the saying ‘ it rings true’ ?

That’s how the list started. And what is most important is not what historic era or culture they derive from, but the discernable echo that each provides. This also indicates that the list is not complete, and by nature could never be. There are likely many things that could make it onto such a list; but this one is mine ( so far…)

 I suspect that we like people all have our own personally tailored  ways of perceiving those echoes, and also of interpreting them. And that is precisely when things usually begin to get very dicy and complicated. So; I’ll jump right in while there’s a bit of clarity to be had.

***** 

All the list items come from very widely diverse sources. ” Reap what You Sow” and “An Eye for an Eye” both stem from the Old Testament; ” As Above, So Below” is a reference from Aleister Crowley in regard to the use of magic; ” Yin/ Yang”  is from Taoism; ” Action/ Reaction” refers to Newton’s Third Law of Motion.

These five items in particular have much in common.

They share what I’ve come to think of as a presumption of balance. What I mean by that is this;

If something occurs that sets forces in motion, then those forces will ultimately return to a state of rest, of passivity. To be in a passive state of resolved motion, of resolved energies, of resolved anything is their natural order, and they will return to that balance.

 

To properly consider any of those first five items, you must begin with the observation that, in each case, a state of passivity and balance was disturbed. The inherent implication of each is that the restoration of balance is an absolute.

In this regard, each list item could be seen to be structured as a simple mathematical equation. An equation is not considered ‘solved’ unless the elements on each side of  “=” are resolved to one another; in balance once again.

It’s quite the same for those first five items; they’re all about balance being restored. The inherent ‘ truth’ that they share is founded on you ( the observer) being absolutely cognizant of that certainty. That’s what ‘echoes’ back to us when we consider any of them from a philosophic or moral standpoint ( even though some of them had very different connotations when they were first known.)  They all presume your observation of the state of rest or passivity as being the original state, as the natural state.

And they each in their own way instruct that the state of balance and rest will be absolutely restored, if in fact it has been disturbed.

The thread that I’ve been trying to get to in regard to these five is very elusive. I’ve long since decided for myself that the evidence of spiritual or philosophic truths lies in their utter stark simplicity, and the crux of the human condition is rooted in our tendency to chronically overlook the obvious.  Humans have always shown a tendency to extrapolate on such matters, constantly moving away from the source of the ‘ echo’ ; constantly adding complexities to our perceptions.

These five items are all taken from widely differing cultures and applications; that is of no value here. The thread they have in common is much, much more important than any other aspect. And it is so very disarmingly simple that you will miss it, go back and look for it again and again, feel it to be ever just out of your grasp. Occult.

All things will resolve themselves whether we understand their process or not. Our understanding is not prerequisite to anything at all.

Some of the items come from religion; some from philosophy; some from physics and science; one from ” occult studies’ ( for lack of a better term).

And with all this in mind, allow me to make an outlandish claim;

They’re all describing exactly the same thing.

The differences, if you see any, are in your own perceptions and prejudices.

I know you don’t agree. How could you? That’s preposterous.

Just allow me a few indulgences, if you can.

Give yourself a few minutes to gather all your objections together, whatever they are.

Now visualize yourself putting them all into a paper bag.

Now, visualize putting the bag down on the ground at your feet.

Now turn and walk away.

Now… think of the items on the list again. If you can look past your objections, then you’ll stand a much better chance of seeing beyond the items themselves, to the thread in common.

And if that happens, I suppose you might find a few chestnuts of your own, for your own list. If you do, please let me know; send me a comment. I’d be very intrigued to see what other people find.

After a brief respite, I’ll have a look at the heavy artillery on my list; Karma and Do Unto Others. Neither seems primarily concerned with balance, per se, but with consequences.

And don’t I know it…

Mystified…

It seemed to start off so well.

It had the potential to be sublimely balanced, well thought out, almost poetic. It took a while to complete, and as my habit is to write things rather quickly to avoid excessive rumination, I was actually quite worn out at the end.

And I decided to do something that I had not done before in this blog-writing thing; I waited.

It didn’t seem quite right anyway. It felt a little rushed, a little forced at the end. And as I had always heard that ‘ real ‘ writers always hold off, I thought I would too. Just this once. I was done, I’d just hit the ‘ publish ‘ button in the morning, maybe a bit of a tweak just before sending it into the cosmos.

The next morning, I sat down to go over it. No anticipated issues; I usually really like my own stuff and enjoy looking it over again. So I started to read.

It started with a list. The items on the list all had a very key element in common, and that element was the core of the piece. After stylistically illuminating the core theme, the piece moved on to frame an exquisitely delicate philosophic conclusion based on the core theme.

In an alternate universe, that may very well have happened. I certainly hope to God it did.

Because what I was looking at was just….bloody freaking awful. And I don’t mean ” oh, this just needs a little something over here…or ” I’ll just rephrase that…”

No, no. I mean ” Oh Mother of God someone got into this and changed it what happened to this and how did they get in here I”ll kill the fuckers I hate computers I will find them the bastards will die…”

That sort of thing. And a lot of nervous looking around and making little high-pitched squeaks in your throat. And looking out the windows. For what, for God’s sake?? Russian spies sitting in an old car with smoke pouring out the windows? For my evil sister-in-law, sitting behind a newspaper on a park bench… that wasn’t there yesterday?

Oh no… that would have made some small, if unlikely, shred of linear…sense…sort of…

No. This was just me, alone in a room and reading what I put up there the day before.

It was terrible. It read like Jane Fonda, Newt Gingrich, Hitler, and Dr Seuss had all gotten together to form a cult, and elected Ayn Rand to run it. Atlas would have shrugged, but he didn’t want anything to do with this pile. He was probably down the street hanging with the Russian spies.

In panicked-embarassed-hurry-up-before-anyone-sees-this mode, I started to edit. I never edit. I edit as I go along, if at all. I took out a sentence, then two, then a paragraph… and finally ended up with the list that I started with.

I feel like a kid who’s had three violin lessons, and suddenly decides to go for the Paganini. What could go wrong?

Here’s the list.

- Reap what you Sow

- As Above, So Below

- Yin/ Yang

- An Eye for an Eye

- Action/ Reaction ( Newton’s Third Law )

- Karma

-Do Unto Others

It’s a good list. There is some serious ju-ju going on in that list. It just needs somebody with the right chops to have at it. What is the one factor that they all have in common? And if someone else can see it too, then by all means…

Anyone out there is welcome to try. I’ll have another go myself, when the blog-post gods think I can handle it.

Just make sure the windows are drawn, doors locked… no old cars outside…

And count the park benches.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How Did I…

     Today, I found myself thinking…about how damned good Eric Clapton is. And why…which led , in turn, to why I actually like any of the stuff that I do…

     And realized, to my discredit, that I’ve never mentioned Maria McKee. After all the musical stuff that I’ve stuck up on the blogwall here…

     Explanation? Sure. I’m a bonehead. Just ask around a bit; people will generally concur, sometimes rather adamantly. Almost gleefully…

     I have a CD of Clapton doing covers of old Robert Johnson. It’s awfully good. Clapton has a way of really getting through to the spirit of things. Clinically precise, meticulously performed and perfectly recorded. Very impressive…almost all the way there.

     Almost. Because when Robert himself does the songs, there is a palpable difference. And it has not to do with recording quality at all. Robert was not just a talented blues guy who could write good songs and convey them to an audience effectively. He wasn’t just close to his source material.

     He was in it. He was inside those songs, looking out. He owned those songs, and they owned him right back. He probably would have liked to have a more normal and comfortable life, with two kids and a nice house in suburban Jackson. But there was a hellhound after him, and it finally caught up.

     And in spite of being recorded on a single-track monaural reel-to-reel in a wooden shack in Mississippi, you can hear that difference.

     It’s hard to pinpoint that quality, that ” inside” perspective. But it infuses what it touches with an authority that can’t be denied. And that is precisely what Robert Johnson, Diana Krall, Johhny Winter, Michael Schenker, JS Bach, Beethoven ( especially Beethoven ), Jeff Beck, and all the other stuff I gravitate towards has in common. It’s not just that I like it, it’s that it has that authority.

     And here’s another to add; Maria McKee.

     She was in an 80′s LA band called Lone Justice. They were called ” cowpunk”, presumably for lack of a better term. She was just 21 then, and managed to survive the entire thing. Now, she works occasionally on an independent label.

     She has the authority thing going. She sings songs from the inside out somehow. She owns them. I remember seeing Lone Justice at the old Lupo’s in Providence ( on Empire St.!! ), across from the old Living Room ( on Empire St.!! ). ( Aside; this is a peculiar Rhode Island oddity. We tend to describe things not by where they are, but by where they used to be.)

     I recall standing behind the mixing console, watching the sound guy constantly changing her levels, because her dynamics changed constantly. He couldn’t keep up, and should have known better than to even try it. At one point, she really increased her volume…spiked all the levels, and blew out the circuit breakers. She put Lupo’s in the dark for ten minutes. A very odd sensation…standing in the dark, and hoping that no one does anything stupid. No one did…and Maria was very apologetic. A few minutes later, she did it again.

     I’m surprised that there is so much of her on Youtube; I didn’t expect that there would be much at all. I have two Lone Justice albums that get regular rotation again when I bring them out now and then, and a few solo albums.

     This girl was like a demented Elvis in a female body. So much energy poured off her that she barely knew which direction to point it in.

     She’s always been on my list, and she ought to be on yours too. She’s got that authority thing.

     That’s provided, of course, that you keep a list…

My Tuxedo is from K-Mart…

Back around mid- November, I put up a really gushy post about how impressed I was by Lionel Hampton and Johnny Mercer.

Well, it turns out that I was right.

Just after that post, I got the great idea of charting out ” Midnight Sun” and burdening  a guitar student with it as a next assignment; thought it would make for a pretty decent guitar duet.

So did Bucky and John Pizzarrelli, about five years ago. Beautiful version. Way, way out of my pay grade, though. So I decided to go online, find a manageable arrangement, and work from that.

And found, to my surprise, that all printable sheet versions are still under copyright.

This freaking thing is sixty-five years old. And still makes money….

So. Being the deeply dedicated, tenacious, highly creative, sublimely talented mild psychopath that my mother raised me to be….I kept digging until I found one that was free. It really wasn’t sheet music, it was just a chord chart with lyrics; but it was in D major ( as is D. Krall’s version, and if D. Krall says D major…well, I just say ” how high.” And be thankful that I don’t have to go get her dry cleaning and a Starbucks coffee, and the highly questionable strapping of a mailman to the car roof and driving to Manhattan; which I have come to deeply regret. The poor sod…and it started raining halfway there.

( Stage aside; one of the truly fun things about writing blog posts is that you can make obscure references to your own previous post’s obscure references, which were pretty damned obscure to begin with. But I’ve absolutely no interest in clarification, it’s all about fun with words. )

So, back to today’s riveting tale.

I worked out a quick chart for a single-line melody and supporting chords, and we started to work on it.

Three weeks later, and what little progress we had made was disappearing in big chunks, like watching a glacier fall apart. I just can’t “hear” this chord progression; must be the ” pay grade” thing again. And, the chord chart I had found had way, way too many chords to it; a chord for every damned syllable. And not just C, F and G7 chords, either. E#m7dim5+9, divided by 4…

So. Back to the drawing board.

And we found Lionel’s ( Tuxedo #1) original version on Youtube; instrumental, with a big band arrangement. Very fast and upbeat-sounding, not at all like what came along afterwards.

And…we also found something very curious about Lionel’s original version. He plays the melody out as one big, long continuous phrase. ( It’s fun to watch Lionel’s responses, though. He keeps looking up at the audience to see how much they like it. Must have been one of the first things ever recorded for TV use. )

And the legend has it that Lionel wrote it in 1947, with J. Mercer ( Tuxedo #2 ) adding lyrics in 1953.

But on much closer inspection; he didn’t just add lyrics. He fixed it.

He cut the long phrase in half, and added an extra bar at each end of  what is now two phrases ( the first two lines of each verse. ) This gives the singer time to catch a breath, seems to slow the natural tempo down considerably, and converts a somewhat complex jazz composition that likely would have sunk to the bottom of the East River with lots of other complex jazz compositions into a timeless classic. And, the legend has it, while driving.

Not to take anything away from Tuxedo#1, though. He still came up with one of the prettiest melodies ever, and an absolutely brilliant chord progression to hang it on.

But J. Mercer…Tuxedo#2…where does that come from?

So…in desperation, I went back online to pay the piper. Had to get a reliable version of this thing before my last three hairs fell out. But, it wouldn’t be that easy…

I found it in Dmaj, Fmaj, Aflat, Bflat, and Cmaj. We had already started working in D, so I had a look at that one.

Impossible, for guitar players, at least. As always, singers move stuff around at will to suit their needs, and D was just a nightmare. ( Apologies to D. Krall. I will atone at some other time; please, just leave the federal employees alone. Maybe I can sweep the steps at the brownstone? )

And finally decided on good old C major. It’s almost understandable; I’m beginning to ” hear” it. My life is a bit easier for that, but sadly, my student’s is not. The melody is actually more challenging to execute in C than in D. He is not aware, and I’m betting that he will not be reading this post. He also does not know that the second half of his assignment is for us to switch parts once he’s comfortable with what’s on his plate right now, and do it all over again. Beware the guitar teacher in the cheap tuxedo…

So, in defeat, I paid the $5.25 for one legal download, and promptly broke several copyright laws by duplicating it. I’m sure that’ll be worth 2-5 years at the ACI, and with my luck, I’m sure that the big scary guy in the upper bunk will want…guitar lessons. Thank you, Jesus.

But who will get Diana’s dry cleaning??

It Helps A Little…

It started on the way to work today; something on the radio news program that set me to thinking about the state of the world at large.

And once at work, I run my morning routine; and then, with a bit of luck, I might have a few minutes where I can check a few blogs, maybe even put up a comment; do a few things before my boss arrives.

So I checked up on the story I had just heard on the radio; heard yet another from the desk radio behind me; checked on that one too, and then popped in to the Wakefield Doctrine; an unfortunate sequence of events.

The ” evil clown” seemed to reinforce a thread that I had to admit has been building up in my head for a while; a rant in the making.

The thread’s theme? I am very, very worried about the world that my niece Olivia is growing into. The one that she’s inheriting, and will have to find some way to be a functioning member of. She’s thirteen; it won’t be long now.

I am very worried for her sake. And my particular form of worry is to focus on things that I perceive as being especially and pointlessly insidious. I cannot prevent any of them from potentially harming her, and that in itself  somehow becomes all the more reason to have to focus on them.

The clown did not help.

Steel Panther helped even less; just knowing that the bastard spawn of Poison’s road crew? and some faceless groupies could possibly intrude on Olivia’s worldview is more than I could stand. Let’s provide those millions of hopelessly impressionable boys with yet another graphic example of how to victimize females. This is not rock and roll, it’s Rape 101.  I’d rather skewer the bastards on the point of an Enfield bayonet. And the clown. Enfields need love, too.

The two news items that began all this?

A video clip of a guy in LA, standing in an intersection and randomly shooting at anything.

Juliette Dunne and Lisa Jefferson. Sitting in a park in Bridgeport, Conn.; police found them force-feeding beer to Juliette’s children, ages 4 years and…10 months. The boy told police that he had to drink beer every day, and preferred Natural Ice over “the dogbite beer.” Both children tested positive for alchohol, and the baby also tested positive for cocaine.

2 Broke Girls. This is a CBS sitcom that airs at 8 pm. I have taken lately to seeing how long it takes the writers to insert a dirty joke into the dialogue. They started off with one truly objectionable joke per episode, but have quickly sped things up. Last night, they got a joke in about a threesome in under 10 seconds, followed by a line about batteries for dildoes by 20 seconds in. That must be some sort of record. This is not late-night cable; it’s prime-time network, and there are millions of innocent kids being exposed to this overtly graphic stuff. And that’s just one example.

  They will be slowly and irrevocably affected over time. Innocence can only be destroyed once. Olivia will invariably be touched by this and all the other offerings like it, the programs, rap videos,  Rihanna ( being beaten by her boyfriend…no, not the famous one, I mean the guy in her last video. ) Of all people…and why aren’t there any advocates for women anymore? Politically incorrect? Why isn’t anyone outraged? Why don’t they even notice?

 It seems that everything in popular culture these days is designed to undermine and destroy any semblance of innocence. Kids don’t have the slightest chance of escaping.

Mexican drug cartels. An interesting statistic; so far, 35,000 people have died in the drug wars. 1,000 of them have been children. Apparently, when one cartel attacks another, they’ve taken to killing  any children that they find at home if the prime target is not available. And the guns used are mostly from the U.S.; private-sector suppliers.

And speaking of private- sectors; if Newt Gingrich somehow manages to get into the White House, I swear I’ll head for Canada. I haven’t a very high opinion of politicians generally, but this revoltingly criminal slimeball may well be the only guy the Republicans have left standing. Whenever he’s questioned about any of  his dealings, he replies that” that happened when I was in the private sector.”

What I want for Christmas. I want to be Bob Newhart. In the office of the inn in Vermont. My spouse is tending the front counter, and Olivia is taking breakfast orders in the dining room. Life is sane, well-ordered, and safe. Humor is low-key and very tasteful. My comic timing is impeccable, and I just love it when the phone rings. Olivia dates a pleasant young man from nearby, and he’s quite respectful.

 It may be because he’s seen the Enfield in the corner behind Bob’s desk. And the clown mask hanging on the point of the bayonet. 

Thank you for listening. I can’t do anything about any of these things, but I always feel more grounded after I’ve released some angst. And I suppose that socks and underwear will once again suffice in lieu of an inn in Vermont.

It’s New To Me, So…

I feel bad for Humphrey Bogart. And Clifton Webb. And Peter Lorre.

Guys who had to spend their entire existences wearing a tuxedo.

Can you picture H. Bogart in a polo shirt?

No, of course not. ( Immaterial that they didn’t exist yet. )

Can you picture those guys as little kids, doing little kid stuff?  Playing sandlot baseball?

No. They would have been standing along the third-base line, smoking cigarettes and gazing wistfully at the horizon; poignantly longing for the childhood that never was.  ( Immaterial that they are still children in this scenario. )

And of course, in their tuxedos. White for summer, black for winter. There may very well have been tuxedos of a wild array of colors available, but all rendered ineffective in the world of film noir.

And now I’ve found two more. Guys who were probably born in a tuxedo, which I’m sure their mothers could well have done without at the time. ” Yes, mother and baby are both fine, but there were some…well…complications…”

I speak of  Lionel Hampton and Johnny Mercer.

I’ ll not bother to trumpet their accomplishments. You have access to the same resources that I do. You would do well to make their acquaintance. Extremely old-school, and so impossibly good at what they did that they managed to define both themselves and their chosen art forms as they went along. And were perfectly comfortable in their own skins, which were, of course, tuxedos.

Lionel was a jazz musician. He played the vibraphone.

Johnny was a songwriter and lyricist.

In 1947, Lionel wrote an instrumental tune he titled ” Midnight Sun.”

In 1953, Johnny wrote lyrics for it.

It is , in a word, gorgeous. Over the years, everybody in jazz has done a cover of it. Dozens of renditions.

And here’s what is so good about it.

It’s sort of… backwards. Most songwriters will start with a bit of lyric, and structure a chord progression to support it; conventional wisdom, usually with conventional results.

Johnny took a very unconventional song, one that utilizes a unique song form, unique chordal movements, and chromatic scales as a base for the melody, and wrote a seamlessly sophisticated set of lyrics for it. This is an extremely difficult thing to accomplish, especially because it’s being done in reverse; music first, lyrics later.

You’d better have your tuxedo on if you’re going to try something like that.

I have the Diana Krall cover of this song. It’s on my” top-ten best of all time” list.

And because I’m such a devoted special fan, I’ve followed the subliminal instructions hidden in the second verse to the letter. ( Diana put them there, not Johnny Mercer. )

A) Kidnap your local mailman, and duct-tape him to the roof rack of your car

B) Then stop and do Diana’s grocery shopping ( she is obviously too busy to do it herself, and that pesky Elvis fellow seems to be awfully self-involved )

C) Hold up either a 7-11 or a gas station; your choice. The mailman will need money for his train fare home.

D) Finally, stop and get Diana a Cinnamon Grande Latte at Starbucks, and be at a certain Manhattan address by 4 pm.

I was 10 minutes early.

Ghost Story…sort of…

Another Veteran’s Day ceremony at Greenwood cemetery in West Warwick RI, where lies the only Confederate veteran in New England; one Pvt. Samuel Postlethwaite of the 21st Mississippi. The re-constituted 21st commemorates him every year. This year’s turnout was exceptional, with a line officer ( moi ), a first sergeant, four infantrymen, and two artillerymen ( from the local Morton’s Battery).

We had about a dozen spectators on hand, and a reporter from the Providence Journal; and although he meant well, I would much doubt if anything featuring us would make it past an editor’s desk.

One of those spectators was a woman whom we recognized from attending in previous years. We finally got around to making her acquaintance, and she agreed to join us for breakfast at the nearby Phenix Restaurant after the ceremony. The Phenix is used to seeing us by now, and already had a large table arranged for us; a benefit of minor celebrity.

In her mid-seventies, Cindy describes herself as a psychic and a medium. She says that she always stops by the Greenwood cemetery because it’s ” always busy there.”  She’ll also tell you in detail all about stones, crystals, herbs and spices; what they all do, and why they don’t work for almost everyone;” because people always say that they want positive energy in their lives but really aren’t willing to do a damned thing to find it, get it, or keep it.”

I found myself  liking her a lot. Completely insane, but in a very grounded sort of way. She said that she could come with us to breakfast because she had her lucky scarf on, which she only wears on trips to cemeteries.

And through the course of  pleasant breakfast conversation, we found that Cindy likes to attend our Veteran’s day rites because she has been trying for years to determine who the little girl is.

Little girl?

Yes, she says; the one who is always playing amongst the gravestones while we are commemorating Sam. She only sees her occassionally, but always while we are there.

A few people were being supportive of Cindy in general; a few others were harshly skeptic. I remained neutral, enjoying her dismissal of the skeptics with a short-tempered backward wave of her hand, as if Queen Victoria had been suddenly accosted by a commoner.

When pressed for details, Cindy described again the little girl in a white dress, cavorting between the graves across the somewhat small cemetery while we held our ceremony. She always brings a camera, but really knows better than to think that would work. Still, it’s worth the try, she thinks.

And we always thought she was taking shots of us; more benefits of very pitifully minor celebrity.

The table’s general response was to the effect that, after several years, no one had ever seen a little girl in a white dress doing anything at all.

She understood completely, but begged to differ. She knows what she knows, and she knows about these things.

I personally thought that Cindy’s description of the little girl was very typically 19th- century stereotype, and was wondering why pleasantly insane people never seemed to come up with anything a bit more creative than this. This sounded like a movie trailer.

And then someone asked her where in the cemetery she had actually seen her; and she said she was always in the same small area; and described that in detail, too. ” Why, that’s the Sprague family plots” said our own Sgt. Salisbury.

And then…  dots suddenly connected in my head, dots which until just then had absolutely no reason to ever cross paths. I lost interest in my corned beef hash and eggs, and believe me, those who know me would attest to the gravity of any situation that might cause such a culinary calamity. The room spun a little bit, an actual sensation of vertigo.

I have my own story to tell about those gravesites. I told a lot of people about it when it happened, and I sat there in realization that their response to me back then was only marginally more civilized than what poor Cindy was getting right now. At the time , I considered myself a perfectly viable witness; and I suppose that Cindy has always considered herself equally viable. But she is obviously pleasantly bonkers, and I am, of course, not. At all. I am viable if nothing else.

My story goes back to yet another Veteran’s day, eight years ago. Same people, same place, same reason. It was a very cold and snowy day; I remember getting there very early and searching for Sam’s grave marker under the snow with a broom; and then putting up the 21st’s newly-made flag, thinking that Sam would appreciate seeing the old company colors again. ( A rather un-viable sentiment, in retrospect…)

I was a lieutenant in the company then, and during the ceremony, I stood at the left end of the company line; the captain was standing by sam’s grave while speaking to the assembly. We were at attention.

And while I stood and listened, I noticed something moving in the distance beyond where Capt. Wrona stood. It was situated so that I could watch both him and the movement simultaneously.

Across the cemetery and over the captain’s shoulder, I watched what I took to be a large piece of black crepe paper being blown back and forth between some gravestones. I thought that it was likely the remnants of a Halloween decoration that had broken loose. I stood and pondered the idea of such decorations in a cemetery, and thought it no less likely than the Christmas decorations, photographs, toys, and teddy bears that you would find in the newer section of Greenwood.

But shortly, I realized that there was something very odd about the paper. There was nothing at all random about its movement. It moved slowly and methodically from one point to another, and back again. It stayed at the same height, probably a foot or so off the ground. It would appear between the grave markers, and was not visible while it was behind the markers.

I was watching carefully, and trying to determine how a sheet of paper adrift in the wind could move in such a way; and starkly realized that there was no wind to speak of.

And then…I realized that what I was seeing couldn’t be paper at all. There was no fluttering motion of any kind.

It was a flat, non-reflective, black square. It was like a black opening in the daylight. And it was moving, back and forth, behind a particular group of markers.

I glanced at the others; there was seemingly no recognition in their faces, and the captain stood with his back to it. It continued for the rest of our ceremony. As we marched from the area to our cars, I noticed then that it was gone.

As we broke formation, I made a few jokes and comments, but no one bit for it. I was apparently the only one who noticed anything.

I begged off breakfast. I really just wanted to get away from there. Something was very wrong.

So what was it, then, that made me go back? After I knew that everyone else was gone…I drove back. I wanted to find the crepe paper. I wanted to find something rational.

I walked to the grave markers…and realized that it was a family grouping, with marble markers on the corners; with a large central marker. Very elaborate.

It was the grave of Elisha Harris, surrounded by several later generations, very well- organized.

He had been a governor of Rhode Island, was a very successful businessman, had both prominent ancestors and descendants; he passed away in 1861.

There was no sign of black crepe paper anywhere. There was nothing at all out of place.

And I was very suddenly struck with a vicious back spasm. I tried to steady myself on the nearest marker, but had to fall to the ground. These were not unknown to me at that time, but the intensity of this one was beyond my experience.

The pain was blinding, but usually would subside after a few minutes; but there was always an indeterminate period afterward where you had to be very careful of any movement, because just the right motion could set it all off again.

I had no choice but to lie there. A guy in a Confederate uniform, struck down in the middle of the Harris family burial plot. Whimsical…maybe. Ironic, yes.

What I really was… was terrified. That the black square would come back. I was lying right in the path of where it had been  moving. It would go right over me. Or through me.

I have never been, before or since, so frightened. In spite of the pain it caused, I slowly crawled away from the graves and into the road. There was no one around. I might just as well have been on the dark side of the moon. I had a cell phone, but it was in the car.

It took me over an hour to crawl to the car. It was only about two hundred feet away. I did not dare to once look back towards where I had been, or even peripherally glance to the side, for fear of it being right beside me.

I made it back. No black squares. And got home.

I told a lot of people about that incident. It never once occurred to me how completely impossible it sounds. And if they all patronized me, I never once actually noticed.

But sitting across from Cindy this morning changed all that. She sees a little girl… I see black squares…but in the same exact place?

I have tremendous respect for Governor Harris, and his entire family. There is some big magic going on over there. I might actually take a walk over there again sometime, if I’m not alone. And dressed appropriately. I’m honestly a little nervous about having even downloaded the photo of his gravestone. It’s as close as I’ve been in a long time.

And I like Cindy, and would never dare to patronize her, because I think she might have a little ju-ju of her own.

Maybe she can help me find a lucky scarf.

And I know it really does sound crazy…but I know what I know.

Humble Pie…

There can never be enough of a good thing.

And with that said, here is yet another intriguing tale from my community college career. There is no dream sequence attached to this; this is just a damned fun story. So sit right back, and you’ll hear a tale…

Two other courses that I took at CCRI back then were ” Jazz History” and ” Fundamentals of Rythym”; both taught by Prof. Lloyd Kaplan. He had also just published a book titled ” Who’s Who in Rhode Island Jazz”.

Professor Kaplan ( now retired ) was the penultimate gentleman. He was meticulously polite, very old-school; he wore a bow tie and/or suspenders with a sharply starched shirt every day. He was very soft-spoken in a Garrison Keillor sort of style with a similarly droll sense of humor. He was a local mainstay during the jazz years and played clarinet and sax.

His courses were listed as 3-credit electives, and consequently drew many students who were looking for easy courses to float through (once the finger-painting electives were all filled). Lots of sports kids, basketball players especially. Timberlands as far as the eye could see.

He would begin his courses by asking that people please keep to the same seat each day, so that he could assimilate their names. He referred to all as “Mr” or” Ms”, last names only; but in a very relaxed and familiar way. He would then joke a bit about his “easy 3-credit finger-painting courses”, and then politely warn those people to vacate while there was still time. No harm done. But if you chose to stay…

 The music kids would mostly be clustered in the front rows, with the sports kids sleeping in the back. It has ever been thus.

Once we were under way, it didn’t take long for the finger-painters to try anything and everything to escape. Their dogs regularly ate their homework; they had been yet again abducted by aliens and left along Rt. 80w in Nebraska; or, there was a big important game that took precedence.

None of it worked. He just expected everyone to keep a good attitude and work. If so, then he would certainly pass you just for the honest attempt. If not…

He taught the Jazz History course from memory. There was no textbook. If you took good notes, you had a chance. If you didn’t, you sank like a stone.

The ” fundamentals” course was extrememly challenging. Based on the concept that musical rythyms can be divorced from the other aspects of music ( key signatures, melodies, scale use ), he wrote the book for the course. It was made up of hundreds of examples of rythym only( no key signatures, no particular instrument). The first example was: quarter notes in 4/4 time. You could use any verbal syllable that you were comfortable with ( da da, la la, do do, whatever ), but you had to verbalize the example; sing the rythym, as it were.

So, Ex.1 might sound like ” da da da da “( quarter notes in 4/4 time, 1 measure). The text included examples of every conceivable rythym pattern, in every time signature. Hundreds of them.

Mr. Kaplan went over everything in great detail, but ultimately could only tell if you were getting any of it by; calling out an example number, pointing to someone, and having them sing the pattern.

Most found it to be excruciating and embarrassing ( not to mention difficult.) The music -oriented kids caught on pretty quickly, but the others found themselves in a particularly awful purgatory.

It actually worked very well; you didn’t have to be musical at all, and you could learn to conquer the hardest single aspect of reading music.

Testing was done by dictation; he sang a pattern, you wrote it down. But the exams were a complex combination of things, and you could survive only if you had honestly worked at it.

Mr. Kaplan and I became friends somehow along the way. One day during the Jazz history course, he was trying to explain the idea of blues guitar ala Robert Johnson, and asked me if I might take my guitar out for a second and play a slide lick. I had the use of an old Epiphone classical, and played a few bars of ” Dust My Broom” with a Coke bottle. It did not work at all, but he and I were good after that.

He mentioned in passing one Friday that he had a gig that weekend, at the Larchwood Inn in Wakefield.

I asked about it, and he said he worked in a jazz quartet that had been doing that gig for the last three thousand years or so. I poked around a bit and was asking about how jazz guys ” did stuff ” and what would be different from what I usually did.

He invited me to come down and sit in.

I accepted. This is where the “pompous and delusional” part kicks in. I expected to go down there and easily shred the old jazz guys, show them what a modern Schenker-esque rock guy could do to them. Scare the tuxedos off them.

So I took a Strat that I had use of and a small amp, and set out that night to show those old guys what for. I felt like I was in a Clint Eastwood western; I wished someone could play that little flute lick that Clint always gets when he goes through the saloon doors.

The Larchwood Inn was a very quiet, dark and subdued setting, with lots of regular patrons. It was like parachuting into the middle of ” Casablanca”. Mr. Kaplan was kind of surprised that I actually came, and set me up sitting right alongside of him. Besides his clarinet and sax, there was a piano guy, a standup bass, and a drummer ( with just a snare, hi-hat, and one cymbal; playing with brushes only) Everyone in a tuxedo.

I sat and listened for a set, absorbing the vibes.

I of course listened for ways to fit in and integrate, but still thought that I was going to have to hurt these people. I didn’t know much of what they were playing, but knew that I could rely on my uncanny ability to improvise, to ” comp” as the old jazz guys would say. No worries. And, I had an inside edge with the sax player.

I sat in on the second set.  Sitting by Mr. Kaplan, I noticed that he kept a small bright lamp by his chair that had a rolodex file by it; chord charts on file cards, I thought. What a good idea. Instant access. Sad, though, that he doesn’t just remember stuff anymore…

I played softly through a few numbers, just touching on a chord here and there, being cool, plotting my attack…

They played some pretty complicated stuff, and did it all very, very adeptly; chord progressions that changed so smoothly that you could hardly even notice them.I had to admit that the old guys were really good at this, and I was suddenly having some trouble keeping up. I finally leaned over to Mr. Kaplan and asked what the chord progression was.

His answer triggered in me one of the many ” OMG” moments that sometimes happens in my musical education, where the clouds may as well open up and hit me in the forehead with a sunbeam. Or more to the point, a band of angels pointing down and laughing.

He said; ” I don’t know. I’m a reed player, I don’t care about chords. You want chords, ask the piano player.”

While he spoke, I was squinting past him at the rolodex file that was there beside him.

No chords there. Little snippets of melodies written out.

I was not dead yet, but there was a distinct possibility. I was entirely on my own. These guys were good, and I was an alien on their planet.

I panicked, but just a little. Think, think…

I recovered by locking onto the piano guy. He played very expressively and flowery with his right hand, and the left kept touching on little chord bits here and there. I zoned completely on what his left was doing.

That helped a bit; I was not totally lost, but the music was complex and hard to track. And this had somehow become very hard work. I suddenly realized that I might not be shredding the old guys after all.

And then… Mr. Kaplan leaned over and said…” why don’t you take the next solo”…

I started off ok. I kept close to the progression that I had caught from the piano; the bike was a little shaky, but still upright and moving forward.

And suddenly; the old guys all took a very slick and sophisticated left turn, to a place that I could not hear any little bit of. No one of them even blinked or looked up; they were just suddenly somewhere else. And it was in a galaxy far, far away.

And I, Wile E. Coyote, with a stick of  Acme dynamite taped to my head, went straight off the cliff on the bicycle, stopped and looked wistfully into the camera, and plunged to my musical death. I had absolutely nothing.

 The chord progression came back around again to where it had been, but it did not matter. I was dead by then. They all knew it. The bartender, the band, all the ancient Larchwood Inn patrons. They all looked away, not wishing to stare at the horrific accident that had just smeared the nicely appointed carpet before them. I appreciated their sense of civility.

But being pompous and delusional, I had to try again. And again.

And finally begged off in the middle of the set for a rest. That was ok with them.

And then begged off for the rest of the night. I could not hang with these guys, and I’m sure that they were glad of my absence.

I had not just been outplayed a little by the old jazz guys; I had been completely and totally destroyed. In their tuxedos, and bowties. Ripped to bits.

It was a long drive home.

On Monday, back in class, we joked about it a bit. He was very gracious, and even asked me back, saying it was certainly not that bad; he had seen worse.

There was no way in hell that I would ever go near those guys again.

Later on, I chose to write about it in my term paper for the Jazz History class, and he enjoyed that so much that he gave me an A+ for the course; said that he never saw anyone learn to appreciate jazz so fast…

Deserted Cities of the Heart…

On a short (er) note;

This is the title of a favorite old “Cream” song, produced by Felix Papallardi. Felix was a phenomenal producer; he really knew how to infuse a recording with a sense of atmosphere. He was also the bassist in Mountain, using an old Gibson EB-1 bass when most of the world used Fender. Gibson was always a bit late to the party, and especially so where electric bass was concerned. At any rate, poor Felix was accidently… shot to death by his wife Gail in 1983.

 Hmm…not that short of a note after all. Sorry. How thoroughly pompous, to start writing a piece without mentioning what it’s actually about; and how delusional, to presume that readers will see how it ties in later on.

And now, on to the actual topic. Relax, this is only semi- delusional.

There are certain specific places, my ” deserted cities”, that I visit in dreams.
I attempted to describe one such place in a previous post, and even though the description was lacking, I still felt much better for the attempt. This is important stuff, and it is has apparently become imperative that I get this across to someone somewhere somehow. I haven’t a clue as to why. ( See? Only semi-delusional. If I were completely delusional, I couldn’t have written that at all.)

I was very pleased to re-visit this particular spot; it was only for the second time, and was very gratified to be back. It had been several years since.
An actual description of it might make more sense with a few details provided beforehand, so please allow me to back-fill a little back-story.

On a few different occasions over the years, I attended the local community college ( CCRI ); and partook of most of the music department’s offerings. The music department there is small and of course underfunded, and yet they manage great things at the hands of some truly inspired teaching.
One of my courses was Chamber Ensemble; we had piano, three violins, three guitars, two cellos, three flutes, and a trumpet. The instructor ( Cherie Markward ) managed to find suitable music for everyone, and a few pieces that utilized all of us.
One particular day ( when the guitars didn’t have anything to do), she asked me if I could play bass. Of course I answered in the affirmative. She then instructed me to venture into the instrument storage area and get one out.
Being the pompous delusional fool that I was, I got the keys, opened the door, flipped on the lights, and located the back closet where they were kept. I opened the door supposing an old Fender Precision or Jazz bass would greet me, with an old Bassman amp to supplement.
No, no, no.
There were two full-scale standup basses in there.
I was shocked, aghast; this had not occurred to me. Pompous fools always expect electric basses at such times. Why wouldn’t a chamber orchestra have an electric bass, said fool thought to himself. Could it be because all the other instruments were acoustic, and it had been thus for hundreds of years with chamber music?
I had never seen one of these things in close proximity before. I could only play electric bass, and therefore I should have been gaping at an electric bass just then; such is the tragic chain of logic of the pompously delusional.
And after the gasping, and the panicked short breathing, and the cold fear racing through my intestinal tract; I got one out. I figured; it has four strings, and they’re sideways, and there aren’t any frets, but so what? I can handle this. A bass is a bass.
Poor delusional ass. An ass is an ass.

Minutes later, Ms. Markward raised her conductor’s baton, and we began to play. Four bars in, and she stopped. And stared. At me. She lowered the baton.
Were there pizzicato marks on my score, she asked, or was I just in a ” jazz frame of mind”? I craftily decided not to answer, not having the vaguest notion of what pizzicato was, or what a pizzicato mark was, or what one actually looked like. Or what it would have meant anyway.
She craftily asked me to go back into storage and get a bow. Because there weren’t any pizzicato marks in this piece. Now, please…
A what?? A Bow???

A few minutes later…she stops again, to ask me if I could play just a little louder. Because I couldn’t produce anything at all. Absolute silence.

 I declared confidently that something was wrong or must be broken, because I was sawing away as hard as I could…

I then learned about bow rosin, at the assist of an adorable eighteen-year-old violinist, who led a hearty round of laughter at my expense.

And once again…eight bars in, Ms. Markward stops…and stares. Again.
What’s left, I thought to myself… really…

Is my score in E-flat? she asks. Yes, I reply…
Do I have issues with E-flat? Because the John Cage bass line is not working for Haydn.
Honestly, I said,… E-flat is tough for guitar players. ( Truth be told, we’d rather open up a vein and bleed out than play in E-flat.)
But it’s a walk in the park for string players…and you said you could play bass…
She asked me to check my tuning…which I did…
And discovered ( again with the smirky violinist’s help ) that string instruments( violin/viola/cello/bass ) are all tuned in fifths, not fourths…like an electric bass…
So, for me, the notes were all in the wrong places.
The class thankfully ended right about then, and I and my intestinal tract barely got out of the room alive.
A very tough day at the community college.

Over the next few weeks, I persisted, and could finally play a few simple parts. My bow technique was atrocious; apparently, they’re all supposed to move forward and back at the same rate. And, I had to make little chalk marks on the fingerboard where the frets should have been… The cool rock-and-roll guy was getting mangled daily by sarcastic children and a woman with a pointy stick. But I didn’t run.
And then…at the Christmas break…
Ms. Pointystick asked me if I would want to take the bass home over the break. Get some practice time in. Couldn’t hurt.
I was very surprised that she would allow that, and gratefully agreed.
I practiced a lot, and by the end of the two weeks…
I discovered that the double bass was the coolest instrument ever. Even though I was terrible, I still came to realize that the sound of a bowed upright bass was just the most sonorous, strident, and purely musical instrument of all.

I went back after the break, worked even harder, played the recitals, played the end-of-semester concerts, and aced the course. I played in a really neat Vivaldi trio reworked for three guitars, played my bass parts, and even got to play tympani a little. A great experience overall, and I took several more courses there. All wonderful; and there are certainly a few more entertaining stories buried in that bone lot. The tympani thing was fun all of itself; the monkey-with-a-screwdriver syndrome at its absolute worst. Seems that you can’t just pound away at will; they expect you to exhibit a sense of decorum.

And that’s all the backwash we need. On to the dream.

Not too much of anything happens in this dream. It’s where it takes place that holds significance.
The setting is a gigantic cathedral. Not so much of the old medieval stone variety, but more of a Westminster Abbey kind of place. It’s circular in shape, with acres of wooden partition seating arranged around a central open area, with a large ornate stairway that leads up to an enclosed platform with a dais. The outer walls are very high and very dark; the windows comprise the roof, which are of stained glass in a circular pattern. There are no doors, but the outer walls have heavy black drapery where the doors might otherwise be. Everything slants downward towards the central open area.
In the dream, I find myself walking down an aisle towards the lower central part; I stop about halfway down, and realize that there are many people in the seats all around. The partitions are all actually closed off from each other, each with just a  small door that opens onto the aisle. There are students in the partitions, each with an instrument, a music stand, and a small bright light to illuminate the stand. They are all practicing to prepare for some very important event. They are working very intently. Some of them get up and leave the cathedral through the black draperies, and as many others enter the same way. Bright sunlight shines through when the drapes are opened.
Not far from where I stop to look around and observe, I see a partition with a bass in it. I’m not sure if it’s mine or not. I walk towards it slowly, and stand just outside the partition door. A girl with a violin in the next partition says hello, and reaches over to open the door for me. I want to play the bass, to sit in the partition and quietly work in preparation, as all the others are. But I cannot.
The overwhelming feeling in this dream is that I do not belong. Everything about this environment reflects order, quiet, a silent joyous knowledge of belonging, and of sharing an appreciation of the entire environment. I cannot partake; my life has been too tumultuous, too painful and erratic; I am not qualified, or ready.
I can visit as long as I want, I can play the bass for a while. I notice that they are working on a Bach piece; even the sheet music moves in long, graceful flowing lines. Pastoral; civilized.
But ultimately, I have to leave. I walk upwards to the outer wall, and open one of the black draperies and step outside into the blazing sunlight.

There are trees of varying heights all around; and from each branch, there are three pieces of rope, attached to a triangular cloth seat. There is a student in each seat, lying backwards as if in freefall. This is what they are coming outside for, and going back in again when they are rested.
I stand there amazed at the sight of such a large structure surrounded by sleeping musicians in freefall; and while I stand there, I quietly dissipate in the sunlight.

I first dreamed this many years ago; but went back just the other night. I played the bass again, and played a little better than the first time.  I didn’t remember leaving, but I seemed to sense that I’ll be allowed another visit…maybe when I’m a bit less pompous and delusional.

Or know what the hell pizzicato marks are for…

E before I…

E before I…except after… Pie? I before E, except after … My?

I used to know, really, and it didn’t even have to rhyme. But no longer.

Seems that one of the first things to slip out the back door without much fanfare is spelling. I used to be on a quite firm footing here, and didn’t have to look up correct spelling very often. Never, actually. Things just looked right or not.

But now…an ever- lenghthening list of things I’m just not sure of anymore. At worst, I would find myself taking an occasional 80/20 shot at a word, and just use the instinct; did it look right? Good, then go with it.

And now… I’ll have to sit and stare at recieve/receive, or…occasion/occassion…or embarass/ embarrass/ embarras ( I’m going to go with Door #2, Alex, but it’s down to about a 25/75 probability…)

This is quite annoying. I recall the Desiderata counseling that I should gracefully surrender the things of youth, but I really thought they would be talking about things ( at least initially)  that you wouldn’t mind giving up anyway, like drinking a bottle of Southern Comfort and waking up on some guy’s lawn at dawn, in a rainstorm, face-down in wet leaves. ( Yes, it did. No, I’m not. I might have been at the time.)

But spelling?? Come on, I kind of need that. Can’t we start with something a bit more colorful, say? I’ve already sworn off trying to make my own hot sauce ( because of the Incident)…

A quick description, then, and this stands as an excellent example of something that age and experience teaches one to avoid at any cost. Here’s the recipe:

Roger’s Five-Minute Homemade Habanero Sauce:

First, grow gorgeous ( I think that’s spelled right…) backyard tomatoes; the first homegrown attempt at habanero peppers ( they were so adorable, just little orange puffy things) and onion ( Vidalia, if possible ). Before starting, drink a lot of your favorite beverage, so that you”ll really, really have to go to the rest room quickly. ( An enlarged prostate gland is helpful here…one more thing I’d rather not surrender gracefully, thank you…)

Now, for this part, you’ll need a timer; set it to five minutes, and …begin.

Get all your diced ingredients into a large serving bowl, and while dicing the habaneros make sure not to wear any protective gloves or anything like that. They’re orange, for God’s sake, aren’t they just the cutest things? Then, mix tomatoes, peppers and onions thoroughly, and test immediately with your favorite brand of corn chips.

We should be a few minutes in now…plenty of time yet…

Notice that it’s not very hot at all. Very mild, really. Add more peppers.

Two minutes to go.

Things I Didn’t Know At The Time;

The substance in peppers that makes them hot is called capsaicin;

Habaneros have a capsaicin level that is 100 times higher than a jalapeno or a cayenne pepper. High- capsaicin level peppers are…orange…not red, as most people would think.

Now the fun part.

You have sampled heavily, shared some with your spouse; and are now dicing more habaneros to add. You’re secretly a bit disappointed, because you had heard that these peppers were very spicy. That’s why you grew some, after all. And while considering even adding a few jalapenos to remedy this rather pedestrian sauce…

Your face explodes.

Aparently, it takes high levels of capsaicin a few minutes to engage fully.

Your sinuses have decided to abandon all hope, and are trying to crawl out your nose. There is absolutely no passage of air, because your throat is completely constricted and your lungs are not functioning. There is a searing fiery pain spreading through your bronchial tubes. You cannot see. Liquids of several forms are streaming from your eyes and nose. Your fingers hurt; capsaicin sinks right through the skin.

You start rubbing your eyes frantically. At first, your spouse is laughing…but then, not so much. Share and share alike…

The pain is excruciating. The panic is mounting. You really can’t breathe. You can’t gather enough breath to shout “911.”  And then…the pressure is too great. You must race immediately to the rest room; because there are still a few body parts that have not yet been contaminated…

Now they are. Notice that when you scream in a bathroom, the acoustics are actually very good.

You plunge your hands into cold water and wash everything frantically. You splash water in your eyes. You gulp down cold water.

The pain actually intensifies. ( One more thing that I didn’t know about capsaicin.)

Blinded, suffocating and panic-stricken, you realize  that the high-pitched shreiking/ shrieking you hear must be coming from you somehow. Your genitals are trying to recede into your intestinal tract. Your intestinal tract wants nothing to do with this whole thing, and is barring entry. Your eyes have turned into gelatinous muck.

And once again, you find yourself on the lawn, face down in wet leaves, pleading for a merciful death. But no…you will survive, and live to write a blog post to warn the others.

And…stop.  Time’s up.

Five minutes, start to finish. You did not die, although if there were a gloriously bright tunnel of light like there’s supposed to be, you would have run straight into it, screaming for help.

*****

They’re in your local produce section…lurking. Right there, in plain sight. They mix them right in with the others, the big friendly green and red peppers. They’ll sit right beside the jalapenos and cayennes, the ones that people are wary of. They’re small, and orange, and very unassuming. They may not kill you, but they will do their level best to change the course of your life. Not bad for $2.99 a pound.

Hey…maybe it’s the capsaicin that ‘s affecting my capacity to spell. Or do I mean effecting…

Smell That??

About a year ago, I wrote a post about how certain things smell.

It had to do with re-enacting, a favorite pastime of mine ( although not so much lately ), and that if I could make a cologne out of the combined odors of sweat, dirt, wet wool, woodsmoke, and harness leather, I’d pour a cup of it over my head every morning and probably have a pretty good day.

Or the smell of fallen maple leaves in October and November; and even deeper and much further back, the smell of burning leaves. The tradition was that once the leaves had been thoroughly played in by the kids, parents from all over New England would rake the leaves into huge piles, and burn them. Not the most environmentally friendly solution, but there were an awful, awful lot of leaves. Now completely illegal. ( I resist the urge to follow that up with some vaguely supportive, simperingly politically correct, pro-environment sentiment. It was what it was. Live with it). That smell would make one hell of an after-shave.

And now, here’s one more.

I was talking today with a MetLife VP who has a favorite hobby/ pastime, and also has the funding to be able to comfortably indulge in it. He’s a car guy, and he will tell you about his latest acquisition whether you want hear or not. ( God, why doesn’t he care about Lawyers, Guns, and Money, like a normal person would? Doesn’t know the difference between a gold-top Les Paul and a tree branch. Doesn’t even realize the global significance of Jackson’s flanking march at Chancellorsville. Can you even believe such a thing? ) In a world completely of his own. The absolute nerve…

Anyway… he drove up today in an orange 1956 Thunderbird convertible. I offered my compliments; it was gorgeous, after all. And, I somehow knew it as a ’56. My mistake. I then learned the particulars of Thunderbird engines, transmissions, overhead cams, and all manner of stuff that might well have been in Mandarin Chinese.

He asked me what I had driven in to work today.

As if I had much choice.

Any choice at all.

The nerve.

I said that I had taken the ’03 Ford Focus, the red one.

He wasn’t terribly familiar with that one.

Really, Sherlock? Really??

I did manage to mention one thing; that there are only two cars on the planet that I would honestly go out of my way for.

One was the Mini-Cooper ( not bloody likely, on my pay range); and an old Volkswagen ( a restored one probably costs more than the Cooper).

He liked the Cooper comment, had bought a yellow one for his daughter to drive to college last year. Didn’t get the VW thing at all. Why would anyone want one of those?

Our conversation ended with my phone ringing, and me promising to keep a camera trained on the Thunderbird; he would only be an hour or so.

Pretty nice guy, actually. A bit disconnected from the masses, maybe, but 1.5 million dollar bonuses will do that to a person. Tough old world.

But all that set me to thinking… why would  I want an old Volkswagen?

The smell, of course. Not the 60-mph top speed ( downhill ), or the draftiness ( because the tiny little heat vents had rotted away) or the feeling of sheer terror when the clutch would slip on a steep hill.

The new ones don’t have it, I’ve checked. They smell like any new car. Nice, but you can get that anywhere.

The old ones all have it. That wonderful smell. I don’t know what it is, exactly. I know that it seemed to get stronger as time went on. It is a very, very particular thing, and I would pay a lot to be able to get it back. That smell would make a great after-shave. I’d make a spray mist for the ladies, too.

Eons ago, I bought my first old white VW from the Major for $50, and drove it to the ends of the earth; I would fill the tank for $5.00 and go everywhere, listening to the 8-track player I installed ( it worked when it wasn’t too cold out ). Engulfed in the VW aura; the particular ping of the engine, hoping that the hood latch stayed engaged, hoping that something resembling heat might waft its way in, all at 45, maybe 50 mph.

My dad wouldn’t ride in it. He was still mad at the Germans ( and the Japanese, too -very altruistic in his profiling). He didn’t like that the engine was in the back; something suspicious about that.

Yes, it’s definite now. I want that smell back.

I’m not a car guy at all, but I would find a way to pay as much as I could manage for that musty old smell.

And if I could actually drive it to work, all the better.

Would a real car guy get that, do you think?

Of Lobsters and Reynolds Wrap…

Was just listening to Adele‘s ” Rolling in the Deep“, and admiring the rootsy could-be-blues-gospel-bluegrass-country approach to it. Great voice with just one guitar and a kick drum for accompaniment, and when the background vocals come in, it’s damned close to glorious. Produced by Rick Rubin, who has an uncanny ability to just know where to” put stuff ” for best effectiveness. Real nice.

But that got me to thinking…in the last few days, I’ve heard some other really surprising vocal material, and I realized that the way I think of musical things is …changing. I’m supposed to be a music snob who derides everything ( almost ) and hates pop music. ( Well, that is generally true…have you seen some of the synthetic crap that is being fostered on the dumb-ass public? Come on…)

Well anyway. I recently found myself noticing something extraordinary about two musical projects that I never had any use for; the B52s and Abba.  I don’t like either in particular; have no interest in early New Wave, plastic lobsters or blondes wrapped in aluminum foil ( or was that the little guy with the electric Ovation -what a strange guitar that was). But I suddenly took notice of the vocals.

They both have in common  a two-female vocal structure. All their material is based on it. I don’t care much for the actual material or its respective production qualities; but the tone and texture of the female vocals is pretty amazing. Someone, somewhere knew what the hell they were doing. Those voices are phenomenal. Too bad they ended up doing what they were doing, when they were doing it. But in their defense, if anyone remembers anything about either of them, it’s only because of them.

Wouldn’t it be something if we could lift those signature vocals right out of their element, and find a better home for them? I could imagine the B52s girls working with T-Bone Burnett on all kinds of roots-based stuff. Or Adele, maybe…and the Abba girls would add significantly to anything. Just have to keep them away from the Reynolds Wrap.

So now, I’m listening for other stuff that might share in the Secret of the Two Girl Singers. There must be a whole lot out there.

I know…I’m weird. But this is fun for me. And I just thought of another one…Dark Side of the Moon. And how about…I Shot the Sheriff…who are all those  girls? Are they all in some kind of a union? Do you think they all know each other? Do they get together for holidays? Do they bring pie? Apple, maybe? Yeah, probably apple…with ice cream? Who makes the best pie? Who gets the ice cream? Baskin-Robbins? Ben and Gerry? You don’t think they get store-bought pie, do you? Well, do you?? They wouldn’t do that, would they? Could they? I’ll bet they’ve got a secret hand signal, too. Just like Spock’s, but with the middle finger bent…so that we’ll think they’re just flipping us off…hey,wait, I’ve seen that… a lot, actually…

Two Minutes!!

So, you say you don’t know a damned thing about music. Can’t carry a tune in a bucket across the back yard. A cloth-eared beet, as John Cleese would say.

Oh, everyone knows what they like, and most kind of have an idea as to why they like it; all well and good. But very few will admit to any actual formal training or schooling, and certainly not without an accompanying saga as to why none of it worked, and hence, we’re pretty much back to the ” tune in a bucket’ ‘ scenario.

But I’ll change that for you, if you can spare me two minutes of your life.  Starting now.

Do you know what a ” hook ” is? This is a widely-used word that is used to describe the particular part of a song that will force your brain to commit a small number of cells to its memory, very often against your will. It would be nice if we actually wanted to preserve all the little bits that we must ultimately keep in storage, but no… you will simply end up retaining very large amounts of useless data. Not recall, necessarily. Not until 3 am some morning, when the ” disco hits of the 70′s ” start playing back in your head, entirely uninvited. Or ” Wichita Lineman“… ” Rhinestone Cowboy?” Or maybe something you like, which is a little bit better…but still uninvited. ” Stairway to Heaven“…” Whole Lotta Love“…” 867-5309″… anything, really. The point is not what it is but that you can’t control it. That’s what a hook is. It’s in there, and it’s not ever leaving.

Ok, then. So you might not know much about music, but you’re still a walking Hook Storage Facility like everyone else.

I’ll wager, then, that you might not know who Guido of Arrizi was. I ‘ll double down and wager that you couldn’t possibly care any less, even if you did. I’ll see that bet, and raise you that you also don’t know what solfege is.

Guido of Arrizi came up with the concept of solfege in the eleventh century. It is a system of music designed for singers; it allows them to work not only with one another, but also to use their voices as instruments; it assigns syllables to particular musical tones, and hence becomes a very practical and useful language. Guitarists pluck strings, pianists play keys, clarinetists force wind through a reed, and singers sing a syllable attached to a note. May not seem like much to you, but if you’re in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, you are a very happy camper. Those days of making those embarrassing indiscriminate noises are finally over. ( I’ m a relatively happy camper, but alas; neither Mormon, tabernacled, nor choired. A good guitar player, but a voice like a cat in a garbage disposal… )

So freaking what, you say? The two minutes is almost up, is that all you’ve got?

Nope. Watch… now I’ll do a magic trick.

I’m going to say three words, and you’re going to sing a song. You may not want to… doesn’t matter. Sing it now, or later, or wait until 3 am when it starts up by itself.  Not my problem. I’ve been singing it for two days now, and I want to try to pass this on. You have to do it, so just resign yourself to it. Just hope to God that it stops…someday.

Ready?? Ok, here we go….

 

 

 

 

 

Doe, a deer…

Don’t fight it. Just walk towards the light. You haven’t sung it since you were three or four, I know. How could you have learned so much of it? All of it? And why do you have to keep repeating it? When will it stop??

I can’t help you with that. I don’t know. Again, not my problem. But it seems that you might have been fibbing a bit when you said you don’t know a damned thing about music.

 Turns out that you know all about solfege; and you know how to sing a major scale. You might have learned against your will, but still…And, ( I love this part)… you’ve known for decades.

Because that is such a great hook that it is absorbed immediately and permanently. See? You’ve been carrying that tune around in a bucket forever.

Pretty cool, huh? Makes you want to head down to sign up in the local Baptist church choir, doesn’t it? Well, at least you’ll know what they’re up to in there when you drive by…

For now, just let it run its course for a while, it’ll calm down after a few hours…

So let’s say a special” thanks” to Rogers and Hammerstein. And Julie Andrews!!

And  a big shout-out to Guido Arrizi, who started it all.

Please, God…let it stop soon…I’m so tired…please….

-

Related articles

• Lesson #1, Grade 3, Music Literacy (tuesdaymusic.wordpress.com)
• Mormon Tabernacle Choir Achieves Milestone — 100 Years of Recording (prweb.com)

What Dreams May Come…

I go back for a visit once or twice a year. It is always quite the same, but that is certainly not the purpose of a visit; to see how it’s changed. The purpose is to be reassured that it hasn’t.

It’s a very large, creaky old Victorian-era mansion that was long ago split up for apartments. I lived here the first time with a girlfriend, and the second time with a chocolate Labrador retriever. Sadly, I was apparently incapable of a sustained relationship with either.

I love this place. A huge and sprawling front yard that always seemed as if it should have a circular cobblestone driveway, but actually has a not-quite-straight walkway going up the center. Charming in a slightly Hobbit-esque fashion. There are elaborate wooden staircases on all sides, each to accommodate a different tenant; ours was on the right, and went to the top ( third) floor. Just the right half of the third floor, mind you.  Six rooms in a Victorian just-a-bit-too-small scale, with a wall taken out to create a less claustrophobic setting.

On the left of the massive house is a grove of trees beside a creek with some Adirondack chairs and a picnic table. The creek winds directly behind the house, where two old wooden rowboats are moored; they are for the use of the tenants. The creek leads on to a large freshwater pond.

I have always wondered at what it must have been like here for the original owners, possibly  the builders of this place. To create such a pastoral setting for themselves, and then have the rigors of life slowly remove it all from their grasp. But to their eternal credit, the place has a heart and soul entirely of its own. The sunlight, especially; it radiates throughout the structure with a vibrancy that defies reality.

I lived here a second time with the Labrador. In retrospect, that was a mistake. I had given in to the indulgence at seeing the ‘ for rent’ sign, and was surprised to be shown the very same apartment. I agreed through a sense of morbidity that I have never been able to define clearly. It was a year of placing my meager furniture in corners where things of ours once were, only to have to rearrange it endlessly; here was where the pink flowered lamp stood, here was the corner where the old guitar stood; as if a museum had had a wing vacated, only to be replaced with matchsticks and Wal-mart pre-fab.

It was a time of communing freely with ghosts. They are sometimes compassionate, but are more often driven to distraction by their own miseries. I suppose they thought much the same of me.

I will find myself standing at the end of the walkway, with my chocolate Lab at my right hand. He waits for my release so that he can race around the back of the house and leap into a rowboat, anticipating a trip out onto the pond. I will go up the side stairs again, where I know that the door will be open and the apartment empty. I will poignantly revisit each corner, check the wallpaper for signs of peeling, comment on the cleanliness of the last paint job. I will converse with the ghosts who must always choose  to remind me why I’ m there. I do not need to be welcomed; their reception is one of complete resignation.  I am, after all, one of them.

_______________________________

That wonderful old Victorian mansion, to my knowledge, does not exist. I have never lived there:  not once, let alone twice. I have never owned a Labrador retriever. And although the relationship was real, it never took place in that house.

I sometimes visit the house with a greatly poignant sense of loss, but just as often not. Sometimes the visits are very pleasant and pastoral in nature.

I have rowed with the Lab out onto the pond, and back again. I have lounged in the chairs by the creek and felt the spectacularly radiant sun sifting through the maple leaves. I have conversed with other tenants about how the old place is holding up, but can never recall who the tenants are. And have spent much time communing with the ghosts.

The one single element of these dream visits that is so very difficult to convey is the dramatically heightened sense of clarity that they take place in. If the dream is in high definition, then real life is an ambertype photograph by comparison.

I know every inch of that house and its grounds; the creek and pond, the dog eternally waiting in the rowboat. It all occurs on a plane  that is so sublimely enhanced, that I am utterly convinced of its existence. It is simply much more real there than it is here. I often wonder what my reaction would be if I ever came across the house in real life.

If it does really lie in some other plane, then its existence, for now, becomes an article of faith. I can be patient; I’m sure I’ll arrive there somehow. In the meantime, I’ll stop in every now and then, just to see how the old place is holding up.

Turnips??…

Well…it did not even remotely occur to me that people at large may not know what a turntable was.  But how about the cassette deck?  Reel-to- reel?  Signal-to -noise ratio?  Wow and flutter?  Line-level input?  THD? ( no, not THX ) but okay, how about THX?  DBX?  Dolby B/C/5.1/7.1?  Henry Kloss?  Tom Holman?  James B. Lansing?  Burr-Brown DACs?

Nope. Nothing. Crickets. Bored crickets; they can’t even be bothered to rub their legs together. What’s the point?

Tough crowd.  But let’s see if we can’t get a few chirps out of them.  How does a story about your parent’s sex lives sound?……

eeewwww…..

Yes , I know. We all have had to face this staggering reality at some point. Your parents once had a sex life, and they begat…you! Frighteningly, this is essentially what qualifies them as parents.  No one in the history of humankind has ever been at all comfortable with this, but there it is. Oops.

Of course, once they actually begot you, that was pretty much the end of all that.  As a matter of fact, once you arrived, you very meticulously dissembled any remote chance of such a thing ever occurring again.  It’s what kids do.  And you’re still at it, aren’t you?  Aren’t you??

So now…let’s set a scene. Picture this:

Your impossibly youthful- looking parents are at home.  It’s a pleasant summer night, with just a touch of a light breeze coming in off the bay. Dinner at Custy’s ( !! ) was very good, and there’s a bottle of Thunderbird ( !! ) on ice.  No, Ripple, ( !! ) because it was stacked near the door of that little red package store next to Custy’ s ( who’s name escapes me at the moment. )

And there’s music playing in the background.  Boz Scaggs just finished the ‘ Lido Shuffle‘,  and your dad gets up to put another album on.  This one is Bob Seger;  track 1 side A is ‘ Hollywood Nights’, followed by ‘ Her Strut’.  They never quite seem to get through the whole 12- minute side without distractions, but luckily, they have a Technics SL-DD22 turntable which is not only direct-drive, but fully automatic.  It’ll shut itself off.  What a great feature. ( At this point it would be best for you to disengage the visual, lest you never sleep properly again.)  Because yes, they did.

So you actually owe a debt of gratitude to the crafty engineers at Panasonic/ Matsushita/ Technics Corporation, for that nifty linear-tracking direct-drive full – auto turntable that night.  Because your dad might have gotten up again to flip the album over if it was a less desirable manual-operation model; and frankly, you may not be here now to tell, or rather hear, the tale.  So there it is; you’re here solely as a result of the combined efforts of Bob Seger and a Japanese audio engineer.   And your mom helped somewhat, too.  But don’t go there.

A turntable is a device that plays records. Records are 12-in. diameter vinyl discs that have music on them, pressed into tiny spiraled grooves. A record plays for about 25  minutes, with about 12 minutes on each side.  When Side A was over, you had to get up and flip it over.  And then, you would likely put on another record and do it again ( I know- you have better things to do.  So did your parents.  Don’t lose sight of the lesson here. )

So… turntables, then.  A motor- driven round platter with a small spindle pin in the center; you fit the little hole in the center of the record over it, and placed it flat on the platter.  It would revolve at a speed of exactly 33-1/3 rpm. ( Revolutions per minute. ) There were also smaller records that spun at 45 rpm, and had only one song on each side; they were called ” 45s.”  Years before even that, there were records that spun at 78 rpm.

So, in a world of hundreds of turntables, what made one better than another?  Several factors; the device that actually got the music out of the grooves was called a tonearm, and it had a very small needle attached to one end.  The needle rode over the record surface by fitting itself into the grooves.  How well the turntable did those things generally determined its retail price.

The least expensive good performer in those days was the Technics SL-BD 22.  It sold for 79.99.  It was a belt-driven semi-automatic model, and could be fitted with any one of several different cartridges, which housed the needle.  So-so needles were made of sapphire; the better ones were of diamond, and could also be upgraded by the precision of the shaping cut. ( A round-cut .07 diamond sold for 29.99; an  .03 x. 07 diamond sold at 99.99.

Upgrade- model turntables could be fully automatic, as opposed to semi or manual operation ( your dad obviously considered it money well spent…)  And the very expensive models would be made of very heavy and stable frame materials ( Solid wood, granite, etc. )  These would be immune to any external vibrations.  All of the competing companies at the time were equally capable of producing incredible turntables, but most opted to remain in the middle of the market range.  They all had to remain within a reasonable price-point  for the sake of the phenomenally expansive market.  They all did just that, and remained quite stable and competitive with one another.

Except for Nakamichi.  Nakamichi was a high-end company with a reputation for superb performance.  There were several other high-end companies too, and they all had a much smaller market share than the big corporations.  They didn’t try to cater to the masses.  They were after the ideal of perfectly recorded music, reproduced on perfectly engineered audio equipment.

Nakamichi never tried to invent new things, new mousetraps; their niche was to re-invent the existing mousetraps altogether.  In regard to the turntable, they marketed the Nakamichi Dragon ( not to be confused with their cassette deck of the same name- that is an epic story all of its own.  At another time.)

After extensive analysis, they determined that the only thing wrong with the conventional wisdom of the time was; the little hole.  The one in the center of the albums.  It was often not perfectly centered, and it caused all the other measurement parameters to distort.  Wow and flutter, channel separation, frequency response…all were compromised by the damned little hole not being perfectly centered.  And they couldn’t very well ask the record manufacturers to retool to a standard that didn’t yet exist.

So they invented a turntable that could deal with that.  They added a second tonearm that compensated for the albums being out of round; and now, the consumer could have a precision-cut diamond playing into the groove walls at the optimal angle, creating a wider soundstage and better performance right across the board; and also compensating for the little hole being off to begin with.  The numbers are comparable to any CD player, but without that upper-range digital tinniness that cds often have.

The Dragon retailed at $1300. That was a fortune at the time ( 1983).

A Dragon showed up on Ebay a few years ago, and sold for $12,000. People would have fought less over the cup that Jesus drank from…what was that called again?  What do you mean, you don’t know??

Now, do you see that, Mom and Dad?  Your little darling has learned two significant things today: we learned about the Holy Grail, and about the Nakamichi Dragon.  And you still wonder sometimes if maybe you shouldn’t have put that Bob Seger album on….