Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains
Some of them, just a few, in keeping with my Summer Slowdown of '23. More later.
Lovin' Spoonful, Summer in the City, 1966, with period-appropriate video.
Joe Cocker cover.
Johnny Rivers, Summer Rain
Bob Dylan, Summer Days
Eddie Cochran, Summertime Blues, 1959
From great music, music that appeals to the highest in us (Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart and a few others) to the people's music. My German neighbor when I lived in Freiburg im Breisgau, Frau Schmidt, upon hearing the strains of Beethoven, let loose with the expletive, Scheissmusik! There is no disputing (lack of) taste.
Hank Williams, You Win Again, 1952. Jerry Lee Lewis' 1979 interpretation. Flashy, but lacks the authenticity of the original.
Emmy Lou Harris, If I Could Only Win Your Love
Allman Bros., Win, Lose or Draw
Beatles, You're Gonna Lose that Girl
Beatles, I'm a Loser
Hank Williams, Lost Highway
So boys don't you start your ramblin' around/ On this road of sin are you sorrow bound/ Take my advice or you'll curse the day/ You started rollin' down that lost highway.
Tom Petty pays tribute to Hank.
Marty Robbins, Born to Lose
Steely Dan, Rikki Don't Lose that Number. Great guitar solo. It starts at 2:56.
New Lost City Ramblers, If I Lose, I Don't Care
Brenda Lee, Losing You
Salzburg, Austria, December 1971. A young Austrian girl, radiant and beautiful, walked into the kitchen. I lost all desire for the food I had prepared. My soul sprouted wings. The visible beauty triggered a memory of a timeless Beauty. Anamnesis pierced for a moment the amnesia induced by the bodily senses.
Dayton, Ohio, 1978. Gripped by the audible beauty of the Beethoven Violin Concerto in D major, the solo passage near the beginning of the Larghetto (26:33), upon return from a long, hard run, I could not eat the huge salad I had prepared. I set it down, my appetite gone.
Simone Weil (FLN, 318): "When once the whole of one's desire is turned toward God, one has no desire to eat when one is hungry."
The metaphysical elsewhere: beyond space, before time. Space- and time-bound as we are 'at present,' we must use spatial and temporal language to point beyond the spatiotemporal.
The intimations are rare. Don't ignore them, record them, honor and remember them. To dismiss them as the worldly are wont to do strikes me as the height of spiritual foolishness.
It transpired 56 summers ago, this June, the granddaddy of rock festivals, two years before Woodstock, in what is known as the Summer of Love. Your humble correspondent was on the scene. Some high school friends and I drove up from Los Angeles along Pacific Coast Highway. I can still call up olfactory memories of patchouli, sandalwood incense, not to mention the aroma of what was variously known as cannabis sativa, marijuana, reefer, tea, Miss Green, mary jane, pot, weed, grass, pacalolo (Hawaiian term), loco weed, and just plain dope. But my friends and I, students at an all-boys Catholic high school that enforced a strict dress code, were fairly straight: we partook of no orgies, smoked no dope, and slept in a motel. The wild stuff came later in our lives, when we were better able to handle it.
I have in my hand the program book of the Festival, in mint condition. Do I hear $1,000? On the first page there is a quotation from Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice:
How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank! Here we sit and let the sounds of music creep in our ears; soft stillness and the night, become the touches of sweet harmony.
Ah yes, I remember it well, the "sweet harmony" of the whining feedback of Jimi Hendrix's Fender Stratocaster plugged into his towering Marshall amps and the "soft stillness" of the The Who smashing their instruments to pieces. Not to be outdone, Jimi lit his Strat on fire with lighter fluid. The image is burned into my memory. It shocked my working-class frugality. I used to baby my Fender Mustang and I once got mad at a girl for placing a coke can on my Fender Deluxe Reverb amp.
On the last page of the program book, a more fitting quotation: the lyrics of Dylan's The Times They Are A'Changin', perhaps the numero uno '60s anthem to youth and social ferment. (Click on the link; great piano version. Live 1964 guitar version.) Were the utopian fantasies of the '60s just a load of rubbish? Mostly, but not entirely.
"Lately it occurs to me, what a long strange trip it's been."
The Who, My Generation. "I hope I die before I get old."
Mamas and Papas, California Dreamin'
Mamas and Papas, I Call Your Name
Canned Heat, Rollin' and Tumblin'
Byrds, Chimes of Freedom
Otis Redding, Try a Little Tenderness
Scott MacKenzie, San Francisco
Jefferson Airplane, Embryonic Journey
YouTuber comment:
For all the people getting sad nostalgia from this, whether it’s from missing friends or missing the good days, please don’t be sad, be happy that you got to live through this time and experience it with your friends, I’m 16 and feel so out of place in this generation, yes I have lots friends but for them fun is crammed in someone’s basement blasting dubstep and fighting over games of pong, you guys did well, be proud of it.
Thanks. We're proud. Perhaps too proud.
The hipster-monk Tom Merton would have found good things to say about the festival. He was 52 in '67.
Astrud Gilberto, the Girl from Ipanema, has passed on at age 83. The genre, Bossa Nova, was popular from the late '50s to the mid-'60s.
"Blame It on the Bossa Nova" is a song written by Cynthia Weil (lyrics) and Barry Mann which was a 1963 hit single for Eydie Gormé, reaching number 7 on the Hot 100 in Billboard in March 1963.
'Route 66' actor George Maharis is dead at 94.
Jack Kerouac in a letter from 17 January 1962: "Everybody is making money off my ideas, like those "Route 66" TV producers, everybody except me . . . ." (Selected Letters 1957-1969, ed. Charters, Viking 1999, p. 326; see also p. 461 and pp. 301-302.)
Here is the Nelson Riddle theme music from the TV series. And here is part of an episode from the series which ran from 1960-1964. George Maharis bears a striking resemblance to Jack, wouldn't you say? And notice Maharis is riding shotgun. Kerouac wasn't a driver. Neal Cassady (The Dean Moriarty of OTR) was the driver.
Now dig Bobby Troup. Chuck Berry, the Rolling Stones, Dr. Feelgood, and others have covered the tune. How should we describe the good doctor's performance? Energetic? Nay, manic. Makes this old man want to hit the road, which he will be doing before too long. Every true American loves the open road. And if you don't? Then you are not a true American. The version by Asleep at the Wheel is especially good. "Four on the road, one in the hand," as Neal Cassady says somewhere.
Tina Turner died recently at 83. Some of us remember her mainly in connection with the abusive Ike.
Enough death for one night.
This is a re-post from 21 September 2011. I dust it off in dedication to my friend Dr. Vito Caiati, historian and old-school scholar who is excessively worried about typographical errors in his missives to me. He is not alone; he has recently been joined by long-time blogger buddy Tony Flood who shares Vito's worry. I forebear to mention still others. We scholarly types are punctilious, and rightly so; but this here's a blog, and a dedicated blogger maintains a pace that allows for stumbles and falls.
Don't get me wrong: love and respect for our alma mater, our dear mother, the English language, mistress and muse, enabler of our thoughts, demands that we try to avoid errors typographical and otherwise. But let's not obsess over them.
Transmission of sense is the name of the game, and if that has occurred, then communication has taken place.
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An old friend from college, who has a Masters in English, regularly sends me stuff like this which I have no trouble understanding:
Continue reading “Why Typos Don’t Matter Much and the Musical Watershed of the ‘Fifties”
I'm a serious man, as serious as cancer some would say. But it's Saturday night, a night on which I allow myself a drink or two and some nostalgic indulgence. Tonight, the unseriousness of nonsense titles and lyrics.
The Rivingtons, Papa Oom Mow Mow
The Trashmen, The Bird is the Word. It is not about Bird's Opening. A partial rip-off of the Rivingtons. Cultural appropriation?
Shirley Ellis, The Nitty Gritty
Shirley Ellis, The Name Game, long version. You didn't know there was a long version? Another reason you need my blog.
The Crystals, Da Doo Ron Ron
Captain Beefheart, Abba Zaba. I'd like to see a transcription of these lyrics. California's Mojave desert can do some strange things to your head.
Manfred Mann, Doo Wah Diddy Diddy
Arthur "Blind" Blake, Diddy Wah Diddy, 1929. Very nice guitar work. "I wish someone would tell me what 'Diddy Wah Diddy' means."
Little Richard, Tutti Frutti
The Chips, Rubber Biscuit, 1956
Beatles, Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da
Eric Clapton, Hootchie Kootchie Man. This one goes out to Ed Buckner. Solo starts at 2:45. Cultural appropriation at its finest.
Buffy Sainte-Marie, I'm Gonna be a Country Girl Again
Hoyt Axton, Greenback Dollar
Nanci Griffith, Boots of Spanish Leather
16 Horsepower, Wayfaring Stranger
Stanley Bros., Rank Strangers
Bob Dylan, I am a Lonesome Hobo. Have you heard this version?
Bob Dylan, As I Went Out One Morning
Highwaymen, The City of New Orleans
Kenny Rogers, The Gambler
Buffy Sainte-Marie, Cod'ine
Bob Dylan, Only a Hobo, 1963
Highwaymen, Ghost Riders in the Sky
As the riders loped on by him
He heard one call his name
'If you wanna save your soul
From hell a-riding on our range
Then, cowboy change your ways today
Or with us you will ride
Trying to catch the devil's herd
Across these endless skies.'
We've gotten used to living under the Sword of Damocles:
One of its more famous [invocations] came in 1961 during the Cold War, when President John F. Kennedy gave a speech before the United Nations in which he said that “Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness.”
We seem not too worried these days. If anything, the threat of nuclear war is greater now than it was in '61 and this, in no small measure, because we now have a doofus for POTUS. I shudder to think what would have become of us had Joey B. been president in October of 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis. People were worried back then, but now we have worse threats to worry about such as white supremacy and climate change. In those days people were so worried that they built fallout shelters. There was much discussion of their efficacy and of the mentality of their builders. Rod Serling provided memorable commentary in the Twilight Zone episode, The Shelter, that aired on 29 September, 1961.
Thomas Merton, in his journal entry of 16 August 1961, his former contemptus mundi on the wane and his new-found amor mundi on the rise, writes
The absurdity of American civil defense propaganda — for a shelter in the cellar – "come out in two weeks and resume the American way of life."
. . . I see no reason why I should go out of my way to survive a thermonuclear attack on the U. S. A. It seems to me nobler and simpler to share, with all consent and love, in what is bound to be the lot of the majority . . . . (Vol. 4, 152)
In the entry of 31 May 1962 (Ascension Day), Merton reports that a friend
Sent a clipping about the Fallout shelter the Trappists at O. L. [Our Lady] of the Genesee have built for themselves. It is sickening to to think that my writing against nuclear war is regarded as scandalous, and this folly of building a shelter for monks is accepted without question as quite fitting. We no longer know what a monk is. (Italics in original. Vol. 4, 222)
Now today is Bob Dylan's birthday. Born in 1941, he turns 82. As you know, Merton, though born in 1915, was by the mid-'60s a big Dylan fan. And so in honor of both of these acolytes of the '60s Zeitgeist, I introduce to you young guys Dylan's Let Me Die in My Footsteps which evokes that far-off and fabulous time with as much authority as do Rod Serling and Tom Merton. A Joan Baez rendition. The Steep Canyon Rangers do an impressive job with it.
Dylan hails from Hibbing, Minnesota hard by the Canadian border near the Mesabi Iron Range. The young Dylan, old beyond his years, tells a tale from a woman's point of view in North Country Blues.
I have often wondered why there are so many Minnesotans where I live. Minnesota, gone 'woke,' is bleeding population. High taxes is one reason. Another is crime:
The second, and even more important reason I'm leaving Minnesota is that crime has destroyed much of what I used to enjoy in the Twin Cities. Up until a few years ago, I thought to avoid being a victim of violent crime all I needed to do was avoid being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But today in the metro area, every place could be the wrong place at any time of every day.
A few weeks ago, a resident of bucolic St. Anthony Park was shot dead outside his home at 7:30 a.m. on a Saturday. Car thefts are up 95% this year in Minneapolis, and carjackings, a crime seldom heard of before 2020, occur every week throughout the metro. At the recent Art-A-Whirl studio tour in northeast Minneapolis, a 70-year-old woman was sent to the hospital when she was randomly punched in the face as she crossed the street to go to a restaurant on a Friday evening.
Because of high crime, the downtown Minneapolis restaurants I used to enjoy are closing early or permanently. The Basilica Block Party is gone, and you couldn't pay me to attend the new Taste of Minnesota July 4th block party on Nicollet Mall after last year's July 4th mass shooting and private fireworks anarchy. Even the State Fair at night has become a risky proposition.
As Rep. Ilhan Omar asked recently, "What happens if I am killed?" But unlike her, I don't have armed security — instead, I have to rely on the police for protection. Yet Minneapolis remains more than 100 officers short of the minimum required by its charter, and the too-few applicants who do apply should be automatically rejected for bad judgment in wanting the job.
Again, contrast this with Southwest Florida, where the police ranks are full, the restaurants are open, and violent crime is still a rarity. It's a pretty easy decision to live in an area where I don't have to plan my exit from a concert as if I were leaving a Philadelphia Eagles home game wearing a Vikings jersey.
The last reason I'm leaving Minnesota is because of a lack of hope. I'm a realist, and realism tells me there's nothing more I can do to help prevent Minnesota's decline. Not only its declining public safety, but also its declining public schools, its hopelessly irrational light-rail transit system and its eroding future.
I know our current leaders won't solve these problems because they won't even acknowledge they exist. Minneapolis recently unveiled a new multimillion-dollar ad campaign to draw visitors into the city to "see what all the fuss is about" because "negative perceptions" have "overshadowed" the positive. Unfortunately for that campaign's credibility, the "fuss" on the day it was announced was about six people under the age of 18 shot in Brooklyn Center.
Do you like crime? Then vote Democrat early and often.
Lonnie Mack and Co.
Mack has been around a long time. I first picked up a guitar around the time this tune climbed the charts. "If I could only play like that!" Never got close. But I played in bands that got paid. If you get paid for doing something, then someone must think it's worth paying for. That's not saying much, but it's saying something.
The '60s rule, of course, since no decade in Anglospheric popular music was richer or more creative. I say Anglospheric because great stuff came out of the U. K., Canada, and Australia. I don't know about New Zealand. But let's not ignore the cream of the '70s.
Jackson Browne, The Pretender. This great song goes out to Darci M who introduced me to Jackson Browne. Darci was Lithuanian. Her mother told her, "Never bring an Italian home." So I never did meet the old lady. I never met any anti-Italian prejudice on the West coast whence I hail; the East is a different story.
Running on Empty. A great road song. There's nothing like the open road of the American West.
Gerry Rafferty, Right Down the Line
Baker Street. This was a big hit in the summer of '78. This one goes out to Charaine H and our road trip that summer.
Dave Mason, Only You Know and I Know
All Along the Watchtower (2013)
Roy Buchanan, Sweet Dreams
Patsy Cline, Sweet Dreams (1963)
Orleans, Dance with Me
Abba, Fernando. I first heard this in Ben's Gasthaus, Zaehringen, Freiburg im Breisgau ,' 76-'77. This one goes out to Rudolf, Helmut, Martin, Hans, und Herrmann, working class Germans who loved to drink the Ami under the table.
These tunes in memory of my cat Zeno and the 'cat' he was named after, Zeno of Elea.
Sammy Davis, Jr., I Can't Get Started Bunny Berigan, 1937.
Don Gibson, I Can't Stop Loving You
Little Eva, Locomotion Eva was Carole King's housekeeper. Carole wrote her a song . . .
Sir Douglas Quintet, She's about a Mover (She's a body mover.)
Electric Flag, Groovin' is Easy
A contender for the greatest, tightest band of the '60s, featuring Mike Bloomfield on guitar, my second guitar hero. I saw him play at the Monterey Pop Festival in '67. The Jewish kid from an affluent Chicago suburb exemplifies cultural appropriation at its finest. His riffs derive from B. B. King but he outplays the King of the Blues. Is that a racist thing to say? It can't be racist if it's true.
From Dylan's Down in the Groove album, Ugliest Girl in the World. From racism to sexism. But it can't be sexist if it's true. For any X, it can't be X-ist if it is true. Is it speciesist to say that man is the crown of creation, or to prefer human beings to robots? Humanity first!
Here.
Were you draftable during the Vietnam era? What's your story?
UPDATE (4/23)
A correspondent and I both lament the non-inclusion of a certain period piece by Country Joe and the Fish. Said correspondent points out that the CJF tune is based on Louis Armstrong, Muskrat Ramble from 1926.
First, six definite decouplings of rock and roll from sex and drugs.
Norman Greenbaum, Spirit in the Sky
Johnny Cash, Personal Jesus. This is one powerful song.
Clapton and Winwood, Presence of the Lord.
Billy Preston, My Sweet Lord
George Harrison, Hear Me Lord
George Harrison, All Things Must Pass. Harrison was the Beatle with depth. Lennon the radical, McCartney the romantic, Starr the regular guy.
Bonus cuts
Stanley Bros., Rank Strangers
Bob Dylan, Gospel Plow
Bob Dylan, See that My Grave is Kept Clean
Bob Dylan, Father of Night
Iris Dement, Will the Circle be Unbroken?
Andrea Bocelli and Alison Krauss, Amazing Grace
Bob Dylan, Not Dark Yet
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JSO sends us to Will You Remember Me? by the Pine Box Boys. The dessicated soul of the secularist is incapable of understanding religion. He thinks he will eradicate it. But religion, like philosophy, always buries its undertakers.
These go out this April Fool's Day to all those who voted for Joey B and Kamala the Clown. WTF were you thinking? You weren't. But most of you are 'nice people.' Useful idiots are often very nice people. Would that being 'nice' were enough!
The Who, Won't Get Fooled Again
Sam Cooke, Fool's Paradise
Ray Charles, I'm a Fool to Care
Johnny Winter, Be Careful with a Fool. Cultural appropriation by an albino! White supremacy on stilts!
Beatles, The Fool on the Hill
Elvis Presley, A Fool Such as I
Ricky Nelson, Poor Little Fool. Those "carefree devil eyes" will do it every time.
Brenda Lee, Fool #1
The Shirelles, Foolish Little Girl
Ricky Nelson, Fools Rush In. "Fools rush in/Where wise men never go/But wise men never fall in love/So how are they to know?"
"Wise men say/Only fools rush in/ But I can't help/ Falling in love with you. Andrea Bocelli's live in Las Vegas version.
Elvin Bishop, Fooled Around and Fell in Love
Kingston Trio, Some Fool Made a Soldier of Me
Quicksilver Messenger Service, The Fool
Bill Evans, Foolish Heart
Connie Francis, Everybody's Somebody's Fool
Grateful Dead, Ship of Fools
"The fool who persists in his folly becomes wise" (William Blake)