Music – Page 28 – Maverick Philosopher

I Feel the Earth Move Under my Feet

I missed Saturday Night at the Oldies because I was in La Mirada, California, for a conference at Biola University. Ed Feser gave the keynote address and I was the commentator. More about the proceedings later, perhaps. But for now a quick make-up:

Carole KIng, I Feel the Earth Move, from her 1971 Tapestry album.

An appropriate selection given the seismic events of Friday and Saturday in LaLaLand. On Friday evening I was quietly and comfortably ensconced in an easy chair in the guest suite of the Biola Philosophy House reading the Bible and Feser's Scholastic Metaphysics back and forth, when I felt the chair shift. I was puzzled for a second until I realized that I was in Southern Calfornia, earthquake country. I thought: no big deal. As a native Californian, this was nothing new to my experience. (I remember in particular the early morning San Fernando/Sylmar quake of February '71.)

Later that night, in bed, it was a bigger deal: the bed began moving back and forth. I reflected that the Philosophy House was single-story and that egress was quick and easy should that be necessary. So I went back to sleep.

The third tremor I recall was near the end of the conference, and the fourth, rather more serious, occurred on Saturday night while David Limbaugh, Adam Omelianchuk, Ed Feser and I were enjoying a nice quiet conversation over beer in the Philosophy House.

It is good to be back on (relative) terra firma, here in Arizona, where earthquakes are infrequent and mild. I've been out here 23 years and I don't recall experiencing even one.

There is no absolute terra firma. All terrestrial things must pass.

All hylomorphic compounds are subject to dissolution, and you are a hylomorphic compound. Work out your salvation with diligence.

UPDATE:

Experts say a bigger earthquake along the lesser-known fault that gave Southern California a moderate shake could do more damage to the region than the long-dreaded "Big One" from the more famous San Andreas Fault.

The Puente Hills thrust fault, which brought Friday night's magnitude-5.1 quake centered in La Habra and well over 100 aftershocks by Sunday, stretches from northern Orange County under downtown Los Angeles into Hollywood — a heavily populated swath of the Los Angeles area.

A magnitude-7.5 earthquake along that fault could prove more catastrophic than one along the San Andreas, which runs along the outskirts of metropolitan Southern California, seismologists said.

The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that such a quake along the Puente Hills fault could kill 3,000 to 18,000 people and cause up to $250 billion in damage. In contrast, a larger magnitude 8 quake along the San Andreas would cause an estimated 1,800 deaths. [. . .]

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Water High, Wide, Dirty, Troubled, and Moody

Bob Dylan, High Water. This is a late-career Dylan gem from Love and Theft (2001). A tribute to Charley Patton. Demonstrates Dylan's mastery of the arcana of Americana. Our greatest and deepest singer-songwriter. Here is some fairly good analysis by Kees de Graaf:

“I got a cravin’ love for blazing speed, got a hopped-up Mustang Ford, jump into the wagon, love, throw your panties overboard. I can write you poems, make a strong man lose his mind, I’m no pig without a wig, I hope you treat me kind, things are breakin’ up out there, high water everywhere”. When the world is under threat of being wiped out, one may expect that man will repent. But that is usually not the case. On the contrary, in the Apocalypse, the low natural tendencies of man seem to thrive like never before. The saying “let’s eat and drink and be merry, because tomorrow we die” (1 Corinthians 15:32) rings true. This is expressed in various ways in the song. First in “a cravin’ love for blazing speed”; the word ‘craving’ indicates that this love for blazing speed has something of a compulsion neurosis. The words “A hopped up Mustang Ford” in combination with “craving love” and “blazing speed” is a brilliant pun. A Mustang Ford is said to be a “speedy car, but “speed” is also a drug for which you may be “craving”. So you may be “craving” for the drug “speed”, but you may also have a craving love for blazing “speed”” – that is for driving very fast. The reason why the Mustang Ford is called “hopped up” is because it is a very “speed-y”, fast car. By the way, speed (methamphetamine) is a dangerous and unpredictable drug, sometimes lethal, representing the fastest growing drug abuse threat in America today. Speed is a potent and addictive central nervous system stimulant, closely related chemically to amphetamine, but with greater central nervous system effects. “Hopped up” means ‘high’ or ‘stoned’, the word is derived from “hop", a nickname for heroin and/or opium, but it can refer to the effects of any drug. . . .

My favorite verse:

Well, George Lewis told the Englishman, the Italian and the Jew
You can't open up your mind, boys, to every conceivable point of view
They got Charles Darwin trapped out there on Highway 5
Judge says to the High Sheriff, "I want them dead or alive"
Either one, I don't care, high water everywhere.

Nosiree, Bob, you can't open up your mind to every conceivable point of view, especially when its not dark yet, but it's getting there.

Charley Patton, High Water Everywhere. Nice slide show.

The Band, Up on Cripple Creek

Jimi Hendrix, May This Be Love. I had forgotten the wonderful guitar solo.

Karla Bonoff, The Water is Wide. I listened to a lot of Bonoff in the early '80s. She does a great job with this traditional song.

Bill Monroe and Doc Watson, Banks of the Ohio. Joan Baez's version from an obscure 1959 album, Folksingers 'Round Harvard Square.

Similar theme though not water-related: Doc Watson, Tom Dooley. Doc and family in a BBC clip.

Standells, Dirty Water. Boston and the River Charles. My mecca in the '70s, the Athens of America, the Hub of the Universe, etc. A great town to be young in. But when it comes time to own property and pay taxes, then a right-thinking man high tails it for the West.

Simon and Garfunkel, Bridge Over Troubled Water. A beautiful song. May it provide some solace for New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.

Henry Mancini, Moon River. This was Jack Kerouac's favorite song. Ellis Amburn, Subterranean Kerouac (St. Martin's 1998), p. 324:

One night he [Kerouac, during a 1962 visit to Lowell, Mass.] left a bar called Chuck's with Huck Finneral, a reedy, behatted eccentric who carried a business card that read: "Professional killer . . . virgins fixed . . . orgies organized, dinosaurs neutered, contracts & leases broken." Huck's philosophy of life was: "Better a wise madness than a foolish sanity." They drove to a friend's house in Merrimack, New Hampshire, and on the way, Jack sang "Moon River," calling it his favorite song. Composed by Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer, "Moon River" was the theme song of the popular Audrey Hepburn movie Breakfast at Tiffany's. Sobbed by a harmonica, later swelling with strings and chorus, the plaintive tune's gentle but epic-like lyrics describe a dreamer and roamer not unlike Kerouac.

Indeed they do. A restless dreamer, a lonesome traveller, a dharma seeker, a desolation angel passing through this vale of mist, a drifter on the river of samsara hoping one day to cross to the Far Shore. Here is another version of the tune with some beautiful images.

Doc Watson, Moody River. A moodier version than the Pat Boone hit. Clever YouTube comment: "It might be a little early in the day for an Am7." But this here's Saturday night and I'm working on my second wine spodiodi. Chords minor and melancholy go good 'long about now.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Unrequited and Lost Love

Here a few of many I like.

The Left Banke, Walk Away Renee, 1966. This song is the personal soundtrack to 40-year-old memories of a woman, older than me, whom I loved from afar, a love never revealed to its object. Does hidden love count as unrequited love?

The Left Banke, Pretty Ballerina, 1967

Don Gibson, Sea of a Heartbreak, a country-rock crossover hit from 1961, and one of the best. Underplayed. I heard it in '61, and didn't hear it again until '89.

Elvis Presley, Return to Sender

Lenny Welch, Since I Fell for You, 1963. You say it's sentimental? Well, what would life be without sentiment and feeling? Qualia are what make life worth living, as a philosopher might put it. It would be interesting to try to figure out just what sentimentality is, and what is wrong with it.

One self-indulgently 'wallows' in a sentimental song, giving into its 'cheap' emotions. The emotions are 'false' and 'faked.' The melody and lyrics are formulaic and predictable, 'catchy.' The listener allows himself to be manipulated by the songwriter who is out to 'push the listener's buttons.' The aesthetic experience is not authentic but vicarious. And so on. Adorno would not approve.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Kayo Dot and Captain Beefheart

Giving the familiar a rest this Saturday night, we venture into the far out and experimental. A young friend recommends the following as among the more accessible pieces by Kayo Dot:

Whisper Ineffable

Calonyction Girl

Symmetrical Arizona

Here are three from the '60s by Captain Beefheart:

Electricity

Pachuco Cadaver

Abba Zabba

Suze Rotolo Remembered

Suze Rotolo, who inspired a number of great Dylan songs, died on this date three years ago.

Joan Baez, One Too Many Mornings

Nanci Griffith, Boots of Spanish Leather

Peter, Paul and Mary, Don't Think Twice, It's Alright

Ian and Sylvia, Tomorrow is a Long Time

Jeff Leach, Ballad in Plain D

Saturday Night at the Oldies: British Invasion, G-H

Continuing alphabetically through the list of 'invaders' from the mother country.

Gerry and the Pacemakers, Ferry Cross the Mersey These boys must have pacemakers by now. Better to be one than have one.

Herman's Hermits, I'm into Something Good

____________, Henry the VIII

____________, Kind of Hush

Hollies, Bus Stop

Honeycombs, Have I the Right?

Hullaballoos, I'm Gonna Love You Too

Saturday Night at the Oldies: British Invasion ‘Fs’

Marianne Faithfull, As Tears Go By. A lovely tune by a lovely lass in a stock chord progression. In the key of C: C, Am7, Dm7, G7.

Freddie and the Dreamers, I'm Telling You Now. A goofy act, hard on the knees as the boys must be experiencing long about now.

Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders, The Game of Love

________________, Groovy Kind of Love. Still sounds good. I stopped saying 'groovy' at the end of the '60s. So why are you Gen-X slackers still saying 'awesome'?

The Fortunes, You've Got Your Troubles, I've Got Mine. This one holds up well, too.

The Fortunes, Here Comes That Rainy Day Feeling Again

Georgie Fame, Sunny. Excellent cover of the Bobby Hebb song. Fame says "A to Zed" which wrecks the rhyme.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: The 50th Anniversary of the Beatles’ Ed Sullivan Appearance

It was 50 years ago tomorrow. Your humble correspondent was among the 73 million Americans who tuned in to see the Lads from Liverpool, the Four Moptops, the Fab Four, as they were variously known. Later, in '64 or '65 I saw them live at the Hollywood Bowl. What remains are all those great tunes, hundreds of them. So pour yourself a stiff one, and give a listen.

Thank You, Girl, 1963

In My Life, 1965

Something, 1969. Although not as prolific as Lennon and McCartney, George Harrison here proves he can write a song as good as anything they wrote. Frank Sinatra considered it the greatest love song ever written. A Sinatra version.

The Night Before, 1965

Tomorrow Never Knows, 1966. A long way from Perry Como.

Eleanor Rigby, 1966

I'm Looking Through You, 1965

When I'm 64, 1967. The boys must have thought that 64 is really old!

Penny Lane, 1967.

Rain, 1966.

Abbey Road Medley, 1969. This is how the boys' last album ends.

0:00 – You Never Give Me Your Money
4:03 – Sun King
6:29 – Mean Mr. Mustard
7:35 – Polythene Pam
8:48 – She Came in Through the Bathroom Window
10:47 – Golden Slumbers
12:19 – Carry That Weight
13:55 – The End

February 3rd, 1959

The day the music died. Three days before, Bobby Zimmerman of Hibbing, Minnesota heard Holly and friends play the Duluth Armoury, died, and was reborn as Bob Dylan. Or so the story goes.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Pete Seeger (1919-2014)

According to Ron Radosh, ". . . 'The Hammer Song,' known by most as “If I Had a Hammer,” was written by Lee Hays (not Seeger) as a song to be used in defense of the indicted Communists, and not as a clarion call for brotherhood." May of us were fooled way back when, we who heard it first in the Peter, Paul, and Mary version. The Seeger version.

Buffy Sainte Marie and Pete Seeger, Cindy

Pete Seeger and Donovan, Colours

Pete Seeger, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGee, Rock Island Line

Pete Seeger and Doc Watson, You've Got to Walk that Lonesome Valley

Pete Seeger and Johnny Cash, Worried Man Blues

Back to Radosh for context, and to stem the deluge of uncritical praise (bolding added):

Pete Seeger’s death at the age of 94 has brought forth scores of celebratory tributes. America had long ago showered him with honors, which all but made up for the scorn with which he was once held in the age of the blacklist. Seeger received the National Medal of the Arts from President Bill Clinton and the Kennedy Center Honors in 1994, as well as multiple Grammys. He was named one of America’s “living legends” by the Library of Congress, was asked to sing at the 2009 inauguration of President Obama, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He had become, as a Washington Post story once put it, “America’s Best Loved Commie.”

Without Seeger’s influence and sponsorship of folk music, from traditional Appalachian ballads to slave songs of the Old South, many would never have appreciated folk music, nor would it have become a genre whose influence has spread far and wide. He experimented with “world music” long before anyone had used that term; when abroad, he collected songs and brought them back to the United States. “Wimoweh (The Lion Sleeps Tonight),” written by Solomon Linda and used in The Lion King, is a major example of a South African song Seeger brought here generations before Paul Simon.

What other artist would receive a statement from the president of the United States honoring him, not to speak of the scores of senators and members of Congress who found inspiration in his voice and his singing?

Yet, an honest appreciation of Pete Seeger cannot be left at what most accolades have done. Indeed, since his political vision, his service over the decades to the brutality of Soviet-era Stalinism and to all of the post-Cold War leftist tyrannies, was inseparable from the music he made, it simply cannot be overlooked. For, more often than not, Seeger’s voice was heard in defense of causes in which only fools could still believe. As Paul Berman put it, “Let us sing ‘If I Had a Hammer,’ then, and, at every third verse, let our hammers bop Pete Seeger on the head for having been a fool and an idiot.”

And calling him a fool and an idiot is, indeed, not too harsh a judgment to make about Pete Seeger. I say that sadly, as a person for whom Pete was a childhood hero. I studied banjo with him, got to know him, and visited him at the legendary home he built from scrap in Beacon, New York.

For years, all that Pete Seeger said about Joseph Stalin, whose regime he served without a blink for decades, was that the Soviet leader was a “hard driver.”

[. . .]

During the Nazi-Soviet Pact (1939-41), Seeger sang antiwar songs that, in effect, called for the support of Hitler. When the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, he withdrew the songs he had just recorded and suddenly supported the “antifascist alliance” between the United States and the Soviets. During the Cold War, he supported unilateral American disarmament and backed one Soviet propaganda campaign after the other. “Put My Name Down, Brother, Where Do I Sign?” he sang, calling for signatures on the Stockholm Peace Petition developed by KGB fronts in Europe.

During the Vietnam war, Seeger not only helped lead the antiwar movement, he also sang in praise of the brutal Ho Chi Minh. Lyndon B. Johnson was called “a big fool” in one of his most famous songs, while he sang of Ho Chi Minh: He educated all the people, / He demonstrated to the world, / If a man will stand for his own land, / He’s got the strength of ten.

In 1999, Seeger traveled to Cuba to receive an award from the Castro regime. The fading Cuban tyrants honored him with their highest cultural award, given for “humanistic and artistic work in defense of the environment and against racism,” which was in and of itself a travesty. Accepting an award from Fidel Castro should make it clear that Seeger’s would-be humanism and protest was aimed at one side only: his own country, which he clearly thought was led by the world’s sole oppressors.

One cannot hope to be thought of as a defender of human rights and also accept an award from the Cuban police state. That, too, must be taken into consideration when evaluating what Pete Seeger really learned from his own Stalinist past.

In his last years, Seeger, who, in the period when the Soviet Union was briefly pro-Israel, sang songs in both Hebrew and Yiddish (including Israeli songs), gave his support to boycott-divestment-sanctions (BDS) against Israel, even to the extent that he handed over royalties from “Turn, Turn, Turn” to the movement.

A great folk singer who contributed much to the American story, he was fatally flawed by the leftism he imbibed with his mother’s milk. How telling that a man who sought social justice, peace, and a livable world could, at the same time, believe that serving leftist tyrants was somehow compatible with his dream of universality and solidarity.

So Long, Pete Seeger

Peter Seeger is dead at 94.

Never forget, we are all just passing through. A great song, my favorite version being this one.

More on Seeger on Saturday night. We'll have to get into his politics, but it would be a mistake to allow aversion to his political entanglements to detract from the enjoyment of his music.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: British Invasion, the Ds

Last time I left out one of the Cs, Petula Clark. A major omission, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Here's 1964's Downtown.

From the sweet to the Dionysian hard core of rock and roll, Spencer Davis, Gimme Some Lovin. A great driving song. Try not to pound a hole in the dashboard.

And from there to the folk strains of Donovan, Catch the Wind. Colours. Here is a dumbassed YouTube comment: "The singing style, the guitar style, even the cap: everything here screams, 'Dylan impersonator!'" You may as well argue that Dylan was a Woody Guthrie impersonator. Though not on Dylan's level, Donovan was a major ingredient in the flavor of the fabulous and far-off 'sixties.

Colours duet with Joan Baez at Newport Folk Festival. Here's another great duet version of Catch the Wind: Joan and Mimi Baez. Season of the Witch. Drifting psychedelic . . . .

And then there was the Dave Clark Five, Glad All Over. A little plastic . . . . 'Plastic' is '60s slang for fake, less than authentic, artificial. Here is a glossary of '60s slang. Not entirely accurate, but pretty good.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: British Invasion, A – C

This year we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the so-called British Invasion of 1964 – 1966. Here is one reasonably complete list of 'invaders.' Tonight, selections from A through C.

Animals, We Gotta Get Out of This Place

Animals, Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood

Beatles, You Can't Do That

Beatles, It Won't Be Long

Cilla Black, You're My World. Remember her? Few popular songs capture the delightful delusionality of romantic love as this one.

Cilla Black, Anyone Who Had a Heart

Chad and Jeremy, A Summer Song

Chad and Jeremy, Yesterday's Gone

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Bridge Songs

In consideration of Governor Christie's troubles over a bridge, it seems more than fitting that we should devote tonight's 'show' to any bridge songs there might be, starting, naturally, with

Bridge Over Troubled Waters, Simon and Garfunkel. The boys are getting old, but the magic is still there. On a lighter note,

59th Street Bridge Song, Simon and Garfunkel

Bridge on River Kwai Theme, Mitch Miller

The Bridges of Madison County Theme

Seven Bridges Road, Eagles

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Phil Everly (1939 – 2014)

Phil Everly of the Everly Brothers died on Friday at age 74. From the NYT:

The Everlys brought tradition, not rebellion, to their rock ’n’ roll. Their pop songs reached teenagers with Appalachian harmonies rooted in gospel and bluegrass. [. . .]

They often sang in close tandem, with Phil Everly on the higher note and the brothers’ two voices virtually inseparable. That sound was part of a long lineage of country “brother acts” like the Delmore Brothers, the Monroe Brothers and the Louvin Brothers. In an interview in November, Phil Everly said: “We’d grown up together, so we’d pronounce the words the same, with the same accent. All of that comes into play when you’re singing in harmony.”

Paul Simon, whose song “Graceland” includes vocals by Phil and Don Everly, said in an email on Saturday morning: “Phil and Don were the most beautiful sounding duo I ever heard. Both voices pristine and soulful. The Everlys were there at the crossroads of country and R&B. They witnessed and were part of the birth of rock and roll.”

You may remember it from Linda Ronstadt's version, but the Everlys did it first: When Will I be Loved?

Carole King wrote it, but Don and Phil made it a hit: Crying in the Rain.

Bye Bye Love

All I Have to Do is Dream. YouTuber comment:

RIP Phil Everly. We can never thank you enough for the music and memories of a bygone era, long past, when cars were chariots of Chrome gleaming in the moonlight and shades of neon in the heat of summer…I still remember the crackle of the AM radio with reverb….Nothing can replace Phil and those days.

Let It Be Me