My referrer logs indicate that much of the little traffic I get here is from folks looking for lyrics or chords to the songs I mention. Unfortunately, this is just a personal weblog: I don't maintain an archive of lead sheets or lyrics online.
Still, I'm happy to answer whatever questions I can. Feel free to e-mail me if there's anything I can help you with. It may take me a day or two to get back to you, but all mails will be answered.
This blog has gone dim, and will remain dormant for a while.
For various reasons, I have not played out since April 2004. I've been keeping busy (aside from gainful employment, I mean) with learning songs, working up new material, and giving lessons. With any luck, I'll be lining up some gigs for 2005, and posting about them here.
In the meantime, enjoy the other kinds of writing over at my main blog.
Thanks, and godspeed.
So the deal is this. Played my show at the rez last night, and it was remarkable—funny, raw, exciting. People who are poorly socialized can make a terrific audience, if you as a performer can keep a handle on the whole thing: they don't sit on their hands—the feedback you get is immediate and uncensored. And there were moments and incidents that left me quite moved.
Trouble is, I don't know if I can write about any of it.
See, when I signed up for this gig I signed a set of standard volunteer forms, including a confidentiality agreement—and although I'm not sure about the restrictions that are on me, I do know that I cannot do justice to any account of the show without mentioning specific residents and their histories. And I'm pretty sure I'm on soggy ethical (and legal) ground there.
I'll need to work on this. I'm going to type up some preliminary notes, then consult with my contact at the rez—the music therapist who organized the gig—and try to work out what's kosher and what isn't. With any luck, I'll have something up by the end of the week.
Sorry to disappoint—but I am loath to betray the trust and goodwill extended to me last night. Maybe you needed to be there. For all my trepidation leading up to the show, I'm certainly glad I was.
Adding a new song to the set for this show—another standard, and a song that everyone knows but that no-one really knows; one of the finest and saddest pieces of pop songcraft I know, but a song that nearly everybody remembers as being funny; and a reminder of a different era in pop—and of a different audience.
People of a certain age remember those awful Bob Hope TV specials. Each one ended with Hope singing “Thanks For The Memory,” his signature song, the familiar title phrase interspersed with newly-composed rhyming jokes that Hope didn’t even bother to pretend he wasn’t reading off cue cards. There are dozens—maybe hundreds—of variant lyrics. But what about the song itself—the song as it was before it became simply a hook on which to hang the latest set of allegedly-topical gag lines?
Looking to Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger’s original lyrics, we find a series of snapshots—after the soaring title line at the start of each verse, there’s a litany of funny images, tender moments, and the sort of private jokes that can only grow out of a long, intense relationship. So far, so familiar—with the version I find in my jazz songbooks, we’re safely in “These Foolish Things” territory.
But when I went looking for a recording of the song, I turned up a later permutation, with yet again different lyrics, and this is the version that slew me dead. I found it on a P2P service, so I know nothing about it, except that it seems to be from a film soundtrack—the orchestration is lush and sentimental in a Charlie Chaplin kind of way, and it’s got that scratchy, compressed quality to it—and it’s Hope, younger but unmistakable, alternating verses and phrases with a female co-star.
The lyric is just as funny and charming, but the laughter catches in your throat... because it’s a song about divorce—about two terribly civilized people who simply could not remain married, but who nonetheless cannot shake the feeling that they are still in love. It’s steeped in nostalgia and regret, but entirely without bitterness—even the hurt is suffused with fondness.
This is pop written about and for adults—and as such a relic of the pre-rock era, before the advent of the concept of the “teenager” as a demographic sector and (more importantly) as a target market. This is pop from an era when hit songs didn’t drop out of the sky and into the gloriously fractured heads of young boys on beaches—they were written in offices, by guys in suits who kissed their wives and kids goodbye before leaving for work, guys to the far side of thirty; from an era when youth was a handicap, when what you wanted from a songwriter was a little wisdom—not the inward-looking wisdom of the mystic or the junkie sage, but the empathy that comes from living a long time in a disappointing world, where there may be nothing left to look forward to but remembrance of a faded past.
Thanks for the memoryA breakup song that’s pained but gentle, that’s an expression of fundamental decency and kindness in the face of heartbreak: there’s nothing in rock songwriting to match it, with the possible exception of Ray Davies’s masterpiece “Days.”
Of sentimental verse
Nothing in my purse
And chuckles when the preacher said, “for better or for worse”—
How lovely it was!Thanks for the memory
Of Schubert serenades,
Little things of jade
Of traffic jams, and anagrams, and bills we never paid—
How lovely it was!Many’s the time that we feasted
And many’s the time that we fasted—
Oh well, it was swell while it lasted—
We did have fun,
And no harm done...Thanks for the memory
Of faults that you forgave,
Rainbows on a wave
And stockings in the basin when a fellow needs a shave—
How lovely it was!Thanks for the memory
Of tinkling temple bells,
Alma mater yells,
And Cuban rum and towels from the very best hotels—
How lovely it was!We, who could laugh over big things,
Were parted by only a slight thing:
I wonder if we did the right thing—
That’s life, I guess—
So long, God bless—Thanks for the memory
Of rainy afternoons,
Swingy Harlem tunes
And motor trips and burning lips and burning toast and prunes—
How lovely it was!Thanks for the memory
Of sunburns at the shore, nights in Singapore—
You might have been a headache, but you never were a bore—
How lovely it was!We said goodbye with a highball
Then I got as high as a steeple—
But we were intelligent people:
No tears, no fuss—hooray for us......And strictly entre nous,
Darling, how are you?
And how are all those little dreams that never did come true?
Awfully glad I knew you—
Cheerio, toodle-oo—
Thank you... so much.
Into which, conveniently enough, we segue directly. See how it works?
The bitch, of course, about gearing up to learn the Great American Songbook is that the more I learn, the more I want to learn—the parameters keep expanding, in directions both practical (i.e., knowing these songs will help me get gigs) and devotional.
Library research inevitably leads me down strange, unexpected paths; indeed, that's the beauty of it. Blurring boundaries accounts for much of it—the hazy borders between jazz and blues, country and pop. The best music (or at least the music I love best) lives comfortably in the no-go zones in between. When Norah Jones does "Cold, Cold Heart" on her debut album, how do you define it? As a pop cover (with jazz signifiers) of a country song itself heavily blues-influenced? Inasmuch as it defies categorization, how much of that is due to what Norah brings to it, and what was inherent in the song itself?
In the end, it's Norah Jones Music™, a wholly new thing. Creating the New is a worthy goal—maybe the only worthy goal. And it's a tricky process, consisting of both selection and interpretation. In other words, it's both what you do and the way that you do it—that's what gets results.
Anyway: to the list already posted, add these...
Ain't Misbehavin'Notes:
Barb'ra Allen
Black Coffee
Bonnie and Clyde
Champagne Charlie
Cold, Cold Heart
El Paso
Fever
Folsom Prison Blues
Ghost Riders In The Sky
Glow Worm
Grandfather's Clock
I Got It Bad (And That Ain't Good)
Ice Cream Man
In The Gloaming
It Makes No Difference Now
Last Date
The Letter Edged In Black
Maple Leaf Rag
Mighty Lak' A Rose
Nine Below Zero
Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out
On The Road Again
The Orange Blossom Special
Paying The Cost To Be The Boss
A Perfect Day
Poor Wayfaring Stranger
Pride And Joy
The Rosary
Silver Threads Among The Gold
Stella By Starlight
Stormy Weather
Sweet Georgia Brown
Things Ain't What They Used To Be
This Ol' House
Tobacco Road
The Touch Of God's Hand
Wildwood Flower
Woke Up Cold In Hand
"Bonnie and Clyde" is the Serge Gainsbourg tune, by the bye. (Not that I have anything against Eminem, of course.) I've wanted to add some Gainsbourg to the set for a while now, and after long consideration, given the format, I think this is the one to do—although if I thought I could do justice to "Who Is 'In,' Who Is 'Out'," I'd be on that like a heartbeat.
(Parenthetical aside: Fans and novices alike could do worse than to check out the CDs Intoxicated Man and Pink Elephants, both consisting of Gainsbourg songs performed in English by Mick Harvey, who runs amusingly through a variety of Sixties pop styles throughout.)
"Stella By Starlight," "The Orange Blossom Special," "Last Date," and "Maple Leaf Rag" all point towards something I find oddly appealing: all are best known as instrumentals (as is "Tuxedo Junction," which I performed last year as a slow blues)—and, in the case of these four, had lyrics added after the fact. "Maple Leaf Rag" is the real oddity here—Scott Joplin's signature piece adapted by vaudevillean Sydney Brown, who used it as a showpiece: Brown's lyrics (as boastful as any gangsta rap) ballyhoo his dancing prowess. which he then proceeds to demonstrate in a tap-dance routine to the second half of the tune.
There's a tempting notion... but given the complexity of Joplin's music—and the difficulties of translating eighty-eight keys to six strings—even with the simplified transcription I'm using, I'll be fortunate if I can play the tune with any accuracy while singing; it's gonna take a hell of a lot of practice, even without adding hoofing to the agenda.
Since the "John Barleycorn" debacle of last Fall, I've shied away from traditional material—which is both odd and a shame, since I became something of a scholar in the brief days of We Saw The Wolf v3.0. I'll have to be cautious integrating it into the set, which is a gimpy mongrel to begin with: but "Poor Wayfaring Stranger," "Wildwood Flower" and "The Letter Edged In Black" are just too pretty to not have on deck. Boston band Abunai! used to do a roaring psychedelic version of "Barb'ra Allen" that's going to take some beating.
"On The Road Again" is the Canned Heat boogie tune, not the Willie Nelson twanger of the same name... although I'll doubtless end up covering Willie some day: a seriously underappreciated songwriter, that man... even (for a long time) by me.
Although Rosemary Clooney's pop version is the best-known, "This Ol' House" is a gorgeous country ballad. I keep thinking I should do it as a segue into Richard Thompson's "Dimming Of The Day," with its opening line This old house is falling down around my ears...
Then again, just about everything makes me want to segue into a Richard Thompson song: imagine "Ice Cream Man" into "Hokey Pokey," for instance, or Bryan Ferry's giddy-up take on "Let's Stick Together" into "Don't Renege On Our Love." I'm starting to think there are only two kinds of music in this world: Richard Thompson songs, and songs that remind me of Richard Thompson songs.
Finally: "The Rosary" is a Gilded Age parlor ballad—in fact, a secular love song, albeit one with a heavy religious metaphor—and blessed with a gorgeous, floating melody. "A Perfect Day," from the same era, is the work of Carrie Jacobs-Bond, one of the few professional women songwriters of the time; and if you think I won't be playing it in medley with the Lou Reed song of similar name, then you overestimate my capacity for shame.
Sources: the Hal Leonard Company's Blues Fake Book, the Reader's Digest Country and Western Songbook, and Denes Agay's collection Best-Loved Songs of the American People.
Did I ever tell you about the time I tried to brazen my way into rock'n'roll history—well, into a footnote, at least?
No?
That's because I myself hadn't thought about it in years. And it took a Mark Wahlberg movie to jog my memory.
Rock Star was on VH1 the other day. It's a pretty standard "small town boy achieves stardom and must deal with the attendant temptations" kind of picture, but it's interesting in that it's sort of a roman à clef, loosely based on one of the weirder incidents in the annals of rock—the story of Tim Owens, lead singer for a Judas Priest tribute band, who got called up to the majors (as it were) when JP's lead singer quit.
It's an adequate film—Wahlberg gives his amiable-if-a-tad-self-important lunkhead a weightless charm, and there are a couple of bits that nicely convey the creepy obsessiveness of the tribute-band scene. There's a recurring motif in the movie, though, that struck me hard. In two key scenes, a rock star prowls the proscenium, while below a young, charismatic imitator sings along, eyes heavenward, body language joyous—We are sharing this moment, my idol and I—but also supplicant, pleading to be noticed; to touch the hem, desperate for some of the magic to rub off, hoping against hope to somehow be assumed into this world, to be plucked from the shadows of the orchestra pit and up into the somehow-far-realer world of the stage.
That yearning came right off the screen, and it split me wide open: This was me, a long time ago.
It was at the Orpheum Theatre in Boston, and the Pogues were playing. Shane MacGowan had either quit the band, or been fired, or was—the official explanation—"too ill to travel" (ahem). Joe Strummer was fronting this tour, but the band's future was very much up in the air. As far as anybody knew, the Pogues were in the market for a new lead singer.
Now, I've written about this show before: but I neglected to mention that we'd made our way out of our second-row orchestra seats and up to the lip of stage right, close enough to count the lace-holes on Philip Chevron's shoes. And that in the inside pocket of my jacket, next to my heart, was an audiocassette—hissy, amateurish, recorded mostly in my mother's basement—of me singing and playing my own songs.
The idea was that, at some ideal moment, I would fling the tape onto the stage; from there it would make its way to the band, and the contents—the evidence of my talent and dedication—would do the rest.
I never threw the cassette. The moment never came. I don't really know why, even now: I was intimidated, I suppose—by the security goons, by Strummer's huge presence, by my own sudden, crippling doubt. And until now, when I have remembered that show, I have chosen not to remember the agony and ecstasy of wanting in which I watched it unfold.
Were I there now, would I throw the tape? Sure. What's there to lose? Nothing but my dignity—which meant a great deal to me then, but a great deal less, now.
I just sealed a deal to play a free gig: a coffee hour at an adult-care facility for patients with long-term mental illnesses.
The jokes just write themselves, don't they?
This happens in early April. And of course you'll hear about it here.
Long years ago, when D was still at school, I lived with her in the basement apartment on University Avenue, below West Campus. Ithaca is a city of hills: the ground drops away so steeply in places that the city fathers in their wisdom built stairways instead of footpaths.
One warm, sunny day in early Fall, having spent the morning in the library, I was homeward bound down one of those staircases following a ramble down the Slope. It was about noon, and the day was growing hot. I passed Llenroc and the Boneyard and picked up the stairs. The stairway cuts a Z-track down the hill; as you round the bend, there's a sort of mezzanine—a walled platform of paving-stones jutting out from the hillside and overlooking the street. On the mezzanine, partly blocking my way down the stairs, stood a man playing a marimba.
I can't imagine it could have been a full concert-size instrument. Still, it seemed improbably huge and unlikely in this context—like a subway busker playing a grand piano. The man was about my age, perhaps a bit older. He moved gracefully, bronzed and shirtless in the sun, four mallets dancing over the rosewood bars of his instrument as if by their own volition. The music had a Baroque precision, with a Spanish tinge. I paused on the steps to listen.
He finished the piece, and we talked a little. He was a student at Ithaca College, he said, working on a degree in performance. "Is there much of a repertoire for solo marimba?" I asked. He smiled, and admitted that he was building his repertoire largely from scratch. Much of what he played consisted of his own transcriptions of pieces written for classical guitar; the two instruments, seemingly so dissimilar, share certain tonal qualities—a sharp attack, a swift decay, a way their notes have of seeming to linger in the air even when the instrument is silent.
I forgot his name almost immediately, registering it only as something WASPy and faintly absurd. My memory of the entire encounter seemed suspect, as if I had been drinking (I had not). He was a bright, intense fellow, and if, in retrospect, he seems like a bit of an attention-seeking prick—lugging a marimba across the street and up those stairs is the act of a man begging to be noticed—his talent was such that surely a bit of ego was surely permissible.
Over the years, I have thought often about that strange encounter. It was, it seemed to me, one of those random things that can only happen in the hothouse environment of a college town. But until today, it had never occurred to me to try to find the man on the landing. After some time sifting through Google results (Ithaca College connections apparently run deep in the world of professional marimbists, thanks to the residency of renowned percussion professor Gordon Stout) I think I've found my man. He no longer looks like a surfer, but I'd be willing to bet that the guy on the landing all those years ago was Gifford Howarth.
And by God, he lives just a few towns over, even teaching at Nazareth, right here in Rochester.
Gifford—if you read this, drop me a line. If you are indeed my man, then at the very least I owe you a beer for all the times I've remembered that afternoon and shook my head with wonderment.
Indulge me, if you will, in a moment of avarice; for things, yes, just as it seems, but moreso for states of being, for selves I never was—but may yet be: for Blesséd George tells us it is never too late; and Blesséd Shakti points the way; and Blesséd Julia advises us to surround ourselves with these "images of abundance," on the theory that seeing leads to being.
The National Reso-Phonic Style "O" is simply one of the most beautiful and strange musical instruments ever crafted. And a tool (which is what a guitar is, after all) should be pleasing as well as functional.
Now, in days gone by, O Best Beloved, when this world was young and I had all my hair, I wore gaudy shirts and listened to The Church and dreamed of music that roared like the ocean and sang like the wind. I dreamed of '68 Fender Custom Telecasters. Perhaps you've seen the Pink Paisley model—James Burton played one for years—but I've always had a soft spot for its lesser-known companion, the Floral Blue. It brings out my eyes, don'cha know.
Dreaming also of an acoustic-electric nylon-string classical, with a single cutaway and a full-scale neck. I love the classical guitar; I love the snap of the strings beneath the fingers, the sweetness of the tone, the finger-stretching broadness of the neck—it's so responsive, but requires such delicacy and discipline. As my playing has developed over the years from hard, primitive strumming to a more deft, almost pianistic approach, it's become clear to me that this is the instrument I've been working towards.
There's no picture now, because I haven't found it yet. But I'll know when I see it. Or, more properly, when I play it. And I'll know me, when I am who I should be.
So on my way home from the video store last night, I decide on a whim to stop into this place I've played a couple of times, to check out who's on tonight. In part this is because I've got seven dollars in my pocket from Friday's efforts, and karma demands that I put some of it in someone else's bucket; in part it's because I'm curious as to what kinds of acts the owner's booking when he's not booking me.
Mostly, though, it's because (as noted before) I'm looking for perspective on how I'm doing at this gig business, and the best way to get that perspective is by comparison. So while I'm watching and enjoying the gig on one level, I'm very much taking my own measure, as well.
There's a Brazilian fellow on tonight, playing guitar and singing. "Have you seen this guy? This guy's fantastic," the owner tells me as he hands me a decaf latte. Certainly the crowd seems to dig him; there's a raucous little cluster near him as he whomps his way through "Just Like Heaven," a couple of Beatles tunes, "Garota de Ipanema," and a few songs em Portuguese.
And, you know, he's not bad—but he's far from great. He makes his way through the jazzy changes of the Jobim okay, but is clearly flummoxed by the waltz rhythm of "Hide Your Love Away." Mostly, though, he sounds—well, kinda like me. Me with a Brazilian accent.
Except that, frankly, I think I put on a better show. For one thing, I have a better sound mix; he's using a single mic, aimed roughly at his sternum, to capture both guitar and vocals. It works close-up, but it doesn't fill the room—it's thin and trebly towards the back. (For the record, I mix my CC67's horrible tinny pickup signal with a mic close to the soundhole, which gives me a serviceable balance of warmth and punch.)
Also, he sits throughout. I suppose he has to—he's playing a nylon-string classical on some numbers, and, as is traditional, there's no strap—but it robs the show of energy. I've tried sitting for gigs, and I just end up tired and depressed: I need to be up and bopping. Personal preference, I guess.
And the pauses between songs are interminable. When I don't actually segue song-into-song—and I'm doing a lot more of that these days, crafting my set lists as a series of mini-medleys—I'm always engaging the audience with jokes and stories. Some nights it's hard for me, but I make myself do it. Why? Because I can't afford to lose them.
My Brazilian compatriot just stops dead, takes a while to change instruments or tune up (insight: the appeal of my electronic tuner is not primarily its greater accuracy, but the way it speeds up my tuning process), squirming in his seat, sipping his drink, staring into the middle distance. The seconds drip by. Five seconds is an eternity in stage time; the gaucho lets a full minute elapse before unleashing another three-minute pop blast. And so it goes.
In a typical hour, I'll play twelve or fourteen songs. This guy averages, I'd say, ten. Bang for your buck? Advantage = Fear. ( All right, so no one pays to get in. Still.)
Two peculiarities: the Brazilian pins me instantly as a fellow player when he sees me staring at his technique—he's a lefty but plays a standard right-handed guitar upside-down, brushing the bass strings with his fingertips and the treble strings with his thumb, Libba Cotton-style.
Secondly: his girlfriend (or wife) sits stone-faced in the armchair closest to him throughout the performance, reading a magazine in Portuguese and studiously ignoring him as he plays. Occasionally he murmurs to her in the long pauses between songs. God only knows why she's there: her impassive presence is strange and uncomfortable.
D rarely comes to my gigs: it's not her duty, she says, to gaze at me adoringly all night. This once distressed me, but dammit, she's got a point. And her absence, if anything, forces me to extend myself more fully to the audience, instead of retreating into a hermetic solitude à deux. A lesson, there? Maybe.
In the end, I have a good time. I enjoy the show for what it is, have a few useful insights, and come away with a set of new questions to chew on: Am I trying too hard to engage the crowd? Is eclecticism a viable strategy after all (let's face it, Brazilian pop in Portuguese is as obscure to the wholly-Anglo audience as anything I'd ever play)? Where's the proper balance between the familiar and the exotic? Et bleedin' cetera.
Overanalyzing? What else is new?
