Tuesday, January 28, 2014
Take a bow, Pete
Even a non-fan of folkies, like meeself who never much went for the earnest, sing-a-along message songs finally had to concede Pete Seeger was a Great American Musical Institution. If he leaned on his vast repertoire of old songs, well, he was always placing them in the service of change in the present, of contemporary causes, good causes. The right detested him from start to finish, what better endorsement than that? They couldn't shut the guy up no matter how they tried to silence him. Pete was 94. His beloved wife Toshi, his rock, died last summer.
Labels: music, obituary, video
Thursday, December 05, 2013
Goodbye, Madiba
When we think of Nelson Mandela, he is usually smiling (a trait he shares with Bishop Tutu & Mahatma Gandhi). It isn't the pasted smile of a celebrity or the smile of someone intending to deceive you. It is the smile of a man more accustomed to smiling than frowning. Despite the great trials he had endured. His smile reached people before his words did. It communicated his irrepressible hope.
Sunday, October 27, 2013
Lewis Allan "Lou" Reed (March 2, 1942 – October 27, 2013)
Bradley Beach NJ
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Eydie Gorme on the Steve Allen Show
Steve Allen Show as he is joined by Ann Sothern, Steve Lawrence, Eydie Gorme, Dinah Shore and a special mystery guest singing Steve's theme "This Could be the Start of Something Big". An incredible tracking shot from 1958, using a large, heavy TV camera on wheels with all kinds of wires connected to it. It must have been very difficult to pull off. But Steve was a pioneer in those kinds of things.
I watched two episodes of What's My Line" (a classy Sunday night show, came on I think at 10:30, I never got to see it until its final years in the Sixties) with Steve & Eydie as the Mystery Guests (panel blindfolded). The first episode, around this time, they were guessed fairly quickly, & on the way out they only shook the hands of the panelists. Host John Daly referred to them as "young people." A few years later, 1964, Steve headlining a Broadway show (& having been a panelist five times), both having had hit records, they baffled the panel for a longer time; as established show biz stars, Eydie & Steve cheek-kissed Dorothy Kilgallen & Arlene Francis, & Eydie blew a kiss at the audience.
Steve & Eydie came out of the old tradition, such as was available to them when big bands were going away, the night club & Catskills circuit shrinking, caught between the emergence of rock & roll on one side & on the other the novelty songs fine singers like Patti Page, Dean Martin & Rosemary Clooney were often made to record (the independent Peggy Lee composed her own). They used television to great advantage. Their big pop hits were good by the standards of the time, if not quite Great American Songbook material. Eydie had a special feel for Latin music. She spoke Spanish fluently from childhood. Not conventionally pretty, but very attractive, it was impossible to guess her heritage (Sephardic Jewish via Sicily, Turkey & The Bronx). If her passing results in a new appreciation of her talent - I'm just discovering her - it will make Steve Lawrence very happy.
I watched two episodes of What's My Line" (a classy Sunday night show, came on I think at 10:30, I never got to see it until its final years in the Sixties) with Steve & Eydie as the Mystery Guests (panel blindfolded). The first episode, around this time, they were guessed fairly quickly, & on the way out they only shook the hands of the panelists. Host John Daly referred to them as "young people." A few years later, 1964, Steve headlining a Broadway show (& having been a panelist five times), both having had hit records, they baffled the panel for a longer time; as established show biz stars, Eydie & Steve cheek-kissed Dorothy Kilgallen & Arlene Francis, & Eydie blew a kiss at the audience.
Steve & Eydie came out of the old tradition, such as was available to them when big bands were going away, the night club & Catskills circuit shrinking, caught between the emergence of rock & roll on one side & on the other the novelty songs fine singers like Patti Page, Dean Martin & Rosemary Clooney were often made to record (the independent Peggy Lee composed her own). They used television to great advantage. Their big pop hits were good by the standards of the time, if not quite Great American Songbook material. Eydie had a special feel for Latin music. She spoke Spanish fluently from childhood. Not conventionally pretty, but very attractive, it was impossible to guess her heritage (Sephardic Jewish via Sicily, Turkey & The Bronx). If her passing results in a new appreciation of her talent - I'm just discovering her - it will make Steve Lawrence very happy.
Labels: music, obituary, TV, video
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
James Gandolfini, age 51
Wonderfully talented actor with a conscience.
Every character James Gandolfini played looked unhealthy, & he looked unhealthy in person, too. My first reaction to The Sopranos was a shock of recognition, that I had met & heard people like them many times in real life in New Jersey. I had. So had Gandolfini.
When I saw him in Crimson Tide I thought, that's the guy from True Romance. I still didn't know his name. With Get Shorty, I wanted to know who he was, he played the part of Bear so true to Elmore Leonard's written character.
The unveiling of The Sopranos, prior to the Radio City official debut, was at Union County Arts Center in Rahway. The Sopranos had the most buzz for a TV show since Twin Peaks. From my point of view, Steven Van Zant was the "name." My employer at the time, a close friend of one of Gandolfini's Rutgers roommates, managed to obtain an invitation. I walked over to the theater - I lived across the street - but could not find a way into the event. They had that place locked down.
There are only two star-celebrities Jerseyans really embraced & owned, Springsteen & Gandolfini.
My friend Jim Ruggia posted this great tribute. I don't think he'll mind me using it:
Every character James Gandolfini played looked unhealthy, & he looked unhealthy in person, too. My first reaction to The Sopranos was a shock of recognition, that I had met & heard people like them many times in real life in New Jersey. I had. So had Gandolfini.
When I saw him in Crimson Tide I thought, that's the guy from True Romance. I still didn't know his name. With Get Shorty, I wanted to know who he was, he played the part of Bear so true to Elmore Leonard's written character.
The unveiling of The Sopranos, prior to the Radio City official debut, was at Union County Arts Center in Rahway. The Sopranos had the most buzz for a TV show since Twin Peaks. From my point of view, Steven Van Zant was the "name." My employer at the time, a close friend of one of Gandolfini's Rutgers roommates, managed to obtain an invitation. I walked over to the theater - I lived across the street - but could not find a way into the event. They had that place locked down.
There are only two star-celebrities Jerseyans really embraced & owned, Springsteen & Gandolfini.
My friend Jim Ruggia posted this great tribute. I don't think he'll mind me using it:
I went to see Streetcar Named Desire with a then young Jessica Lang & Alec Baldwin as Stanley. Baldwin called in sick & Gandolfini, who was young and svelte then filled in. He brought all that power of impending explosion to the play. It was obvious he was much more than an understudy. There were times as Tony Soprano when he was able to fully communicate a terrifying vacuity in his gaze, that registered with me as what true nihilism actually looks like. He was a giant.
Labels: movies, New Jersey, obituary, TV
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Ray Manzarek 1939-2013.
It's an uncomplicated story. Takes bit of telling. In fall of 1966 I bought a cheap portable organ & got myself into a garage rock band. Garage rock bands needed organs. I hardly knew what I was doing, but I didn't need to know much. The band had two guitars, bass, drums, organ, & a jerk lead singer. "96 Tears" was my featured spot. We were really awful.
The Doors released their first LP in January 1967. I probably had heard of the band- they had made some noise in L.A. that got their name into magazines, but I can't recall hearing anything from them until "Light My Fire" was released as a single. It was an extraordinarily distinctive record in its full version. They sounded like a garage band, but not my band or any other local band I had heard. & what was with that long organ solo? The organist clearly was not a virtuoso, but it was an interesting long solo. I bought the LP & loved it, except for the silly, long song conveniently placed last on side 2.
I still don't think we learned "Light My Fire." We changed jerk lead singers. The rhythm guitarist left - band was interfering with his night job pumping gas, & his car was expensively high maintenance. We were still really awful.
That summer, The Doors were hastily booked into Convention Hall in Asbury Park, one show, not widely promoted, supplanting one of two Lou Rawls shows there. My girlfriend & I went to see them. We were impressed. She, of course, loved Jim Morrison in his leather suit. He was one sexy guy. What I noticed was the leanness of the band, that although Jimbo was the "star" of the show, the four band members were working as equals. There was no bass player - the organist played simple figures on a keyboard bass (something is lost without a bassist, as both they & The Rascals knew), The Doors were a true collective creative enterprise, & they sounded it. Jim Morrison was not the "leader" of the band. As each member had their musical moment in the spotlight, Jim got out of the way (usually. He rubbed up against Ray Manzarek during the "LMF" solo).
Below me (I was in the front row of the balcony, the venue about 1/3rd empty seats), were members of Lou Rawls' ace touring band looking on uncomprehendingly; "We were bumped for this?"
Asbury Park Convention Hall was probably the largest type of venue in which The Doors could be really effective as the kind of band they were,. a "chamber rock band" (a rock critic term) designed for the rock clubs that nurtured them. There had always been rock bands like this, back to rockabilly trios, or The Velvet Underground in NYC, of which I had only a passing awareness because I knew they were "hip" in the city.
Ray Manzarek was inviting garage band organists like me to step up & play with intelligence even if we were largely self-taught, on the instruments we had. I felt liberated from the examples of Booker T & The Young Rascals' Felix Cavaliere (an almost god-like presence in Jersey rock), with their Hammond B3s, & from Matthew Fisher of Procol Harum, who would become a favorite as "A Whiter Shade of Pale" climbed up the charts that summer.
I determined at the Doors concert that my band had to change to better accommodate me. I must have done a pretty good selling job, as no one in the band was particularly creative or ambitious (the remaining guitarist began showing a good musical intelligence). We learned "Light My Fire." "Soul Kitchen" (the essence of their sound), Twentieth Century Fox." "I Looked At You," "Take It as It Comes." I upgraded to a Vox Continental (later added a Leslie speaker, I never did abandon a love of thick, Hammond textures). The bass player was pushed out. He was my best friend, but he was worse than really awful. My weak left hand was better than him. I bought a Rheem key bass. We picked up four songs from the second LP, including the complete "When the Music's Over." We struggled on into 1968, a very bad year in America & in my own life. The drummer eventually moved on. He had graduated high school & his real love was accounting. We somehow found a replacement,. & a new lead singer was right in front of us, a guy we hung out with, rather bookish-looking but who sang well & was completely transformed at the front of a band. Girls loved him.
We milked one good year out of this band, which didn't sound like The Doors or The Rascals; we didn't try. We raised our level from really awful to just awful (Joe Walsh considers this the natural transition, that the important part was getting out of the garage & before an audience). Some of our music & arrangements were relatively adventurous. We jammed too much & too tediously, but that was characteristic of most garage bands.
Ray, by some accounts, was not always a nice guy (a friend has direct experience of it). In '67 he was somewhat older than the average rock musician with a first hit. This was to his advantage. He had a college degree (economics), was in film school. He hadn't scuffled up through bar bands. Either consciously or intuitively (I haven't read his autobiography) he had a vision of a band as a complete conceptual package, like the art school-influenced bands of New York, London, & later New Wave. They covered a Kurt Weill / Bertolt Brecht song on their first LP (it wasn't "Mack the Knife"). This was very attractive to an 18 year-old garage band organist who read poetry. Jimbo wasn't a great poet but he certainly understood it as a concept.
One night in 1968 several of us from the band went to midtown New York just to hang out, a common pastime for bored Jersey kids. We were walking on a side street by the Americana Hotel when a couple came around the corner ahead of us & walked toward us, an attractive woman & a familiar man. As they came closer, the man looked more & more like Ray Manzarek. "Are The Doors in town?" I asked my friends. One said he thought so. It was Ray Manzarek. As they passed (she was a very attractive woman) I said, "How yah doin', Ray" He said, "Good" & they walked on.
The Doors released their first LP in January 1967. I probably had heard of the band- they had made some noise in L.A. that got their name into magazines, but I can't recall hearing anything from them until "Light My Fire" was released as a single. It was an extraordinarily distinctive record in its full version. They sounded like a garage band, but not my band or any other local band I had heard. & what was with that long organ solo? The organist clearly was not a virtuoso, but it was an interesting long solo. I bought the LP & loved it, except for the silly, long song conveniently placed last on side 2.
I still don't think we learned "Light My Fire." We changed jerk lead singers. The rhythm guitarist left - band was interfering with his night job pumping gas, & his car was expensively high maintenance. We were still really awful.
Below me (I was in the front row of the balcony, the venue about 1/3rd empty seats), were members of Lou Rawls' ace touring band looking on uncomprehendingly; "We were bumped for this?"
Asbury Park Convention Hall was probably the largest type of venue in which The Doors could be really effective as the kind of band they were,. a "chamber rock band" (a rock critic term) designed for the rock clubs that nurtured them. There had always been rock bands like this, back to rockabilly trios, or The Velvet Underground in NYC, of which I had only a passing awareness because I knew they were "hip" in the city.
Ray Manzarek was inviting garage band organists like me to step up & play with intelligence even if we were largely self-taught, on the instruments we had. I felt liberated from the examples of Booker T & The Young Rascals' Felix Cavaliere (an almost god-like presence in Jersey rock), with their Hammond B3s, & from Matthew Fisher of Procol Harum, who would become a favorite as "A Whiter Shade of Pale" climbed up the charts that summer.
I determined at the Doors concert that my band had to change to better accommodate me. I must have done a pretty good selling job, as no one in the band was particularly creative or ambitious (the remaining guitarist began showing a good musical intelligence). We learned "Light My Fire." "Soul Kitchen" (the essence of their sound), Twentieth Century Fox." "I Looked At You," "Take It as It Comes." I upgraded to a Vox Continental (later added a Leslie speaker, I never did abandon a love of thick, Hammond textures). The bass player was pushed out. He was my best friend, but he was worse than really awful. My weak left hand was better than him. I bought a Rheem key bass. We picked up four songs from the second LP, including the complete "When the Music's Over." We struggled on into 1968, a very bad year in America & in my own life. The drummer eventually moved on. He had graduated high school & his real love was accounting. We somehow found a replacement,. & a new lead singer was right in front of us, a guy we hung out with, rather bookish-looking but who sang well & was completely transformed at the front of a band. Girls loved him.
We milked one good year out of this band, which didn't sound like The Doors or The Rascals; we didn't try. We raised our level from really awful to just awful (Joe Walsh considers this the natural transition, that the important part was getting out of the garage & before an audience). Some of our music & arrangements were relatively adventurous. We jammed too much & too tediously, but that was characteristic of most garage bands.
Ray, by some accounts, was not always a nice guy (a friend has direct experience of it). In '67 he was somewhat older than the average rock musician with a first hit. This was to his advantage. He had a college degree (economics), was in film school. He hadn't scuffled up through bar bands. Either consciously or intuitively (I haven't read his autobiography) he had a vision of a band as a complete conceptual package, like the art school-influenced bands of New York, London, & later New Wave. They covered a Kurt Weill / Bertolt Brecht song on their first LP (it wasn't "Mack the Knife"). This was very attractive to an 18 year-old garage band organist who read poetry. Jimbo wasn't a great poet but he certainly understood it as a concept.
One night in 1968 several of us from the band went to midtown New York just to hang out, a common pastime for bored Jersey kids. We were walking on a side street by the Americana Hotel when a couple came around the corner ahead of us & walked toward us, an attractive woman & a familiar man. As they came closer, the man looked more & more like Ray Manzarek. "Are The Doors in town?" I asked my friends. One said he thought so. It was Ray Manzarek. As they passed (she was a very attractive woman) I said, "How yah doin', Ray" He said, "Good" & they walked on.
Labels: Asbury Park, growing up, music, obituary
Friday, April 26, 2013
George Jones
If George wasn't the greatest at his art & craft, well, I can't think of anyone greater.
Monday, April 22, 2013
Richie Havens, 1941-2013
In the late Sixties there were three popular, influential black artists performing mainly for young white audiences: Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone, Richie Havens. All three gave extraordinary performances at Woodstock, & all three became influential with other African-American musicians as well. They were all musically adventurous. Sly & Jimi were largely stage inventions; Sly a record producer & businessman, Jimi a brooding bluesman at heart. Richie was Richie, the most accessible, shaped by large family in Brooklyn & the diverse, tolerant, politicized Greenwich Village of the Fifties & Sixties. His music was both gentle & ferocious. He had only one hit single, a cover of "Here Comes the Sun," but many songs are associated with him. I always liked this sitar-flavored folk-rock song from a studio/live double LP, released shortly before his Woodstock appearance made him really famous. He already had a solid following. He stayed in for the long haul, which ended today.
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Jamaica Ska with Annette
Annette, at age 44 now one of the great Italian beauties, with Fishbone in Back to the Beach (1987)
Labels: music, obituary, video
Monday, April 08, 2013
Everyone Loved Annette
Frankie & Annette visit the Diving Bell on the Steel Pier, Atlantic City NJ.
Frankie & Annette. No last names needed.
The first Beach Party movie was released in 1963, just as I was entering full teenhood. There were plenty of good songs on the radio in 1963, but even I knew what passed for teen culture was generally bogus, product created by adults for teen consumption. The rock & roll Revolution of the mid-Fifties had been suppressed, the crazy rockers tamed or banished to country music & the Black radio stations. The Beach Party movies had little connection to the teen culture I was becoming part of at the time, except that they happened to be part of teen culture merely by existing & being shown in local theaters. They were staples of late night weekend TV for decades afterward. Frankie & Annette were hardly Southern California surfer types (they were "greasers," although we didn't use that term*), were musically irrelevant (as was Elvis, for that matter), We laughed at Annette's frozen doos & obsession with protecting her "virtue," but she was never an object of scorn. Everyone loved Annette. We'd all been fans of the Mickey Mouse Club. The movies themselves were harmless, funny - Harvey Lembeck's biker outlaw character Eric Von Zipper was great, & they were filled with Hollywood's best jiggly go go dancers.
By the summer of '64 everything had changed, with the assassination of JFK & the arrival of The Beatles & the Brits. The change was so great that something like a generation gap opened up between my sister & I, & she was only two years older, Class of '64. But the beach party movies & the various spinoffs & imitations went on until 1967.
In 1987 Frankie & Annette reunited in a funny parody of their old movies, Back to the Beach. According to Frankie, Annette was showing early symptoms of multiple sclerosis, but he didn't know she had the disease & she may not have known it yet. She announced she had it in 1992, to counter rumors she was an alcoholic.
It might seem that Annette's immense talent was underused. But she herself chose not to become an "adult" performer. She could have made sitcoms & dozens of made-for-TV movies & had a great Vegas & nightclub career for sure - definitely in tandem with Frankie Avalon, who still works Atlantic City. She just dabbled - specials with Frankie, guest appearances on Love, American Style & Fantasy Island. Apparently Annette really was Annette, not someone playing a character named Annette. I'm sure she ate Skippy Peanut Butter, & sold a lot of it.
Annette Funicello, died of complications from m.s., age 70.
*In my school the guys favored leather jackets, high roll collars, tight Italian cut pants & leather jackets, styled haircuts, in contrast to the "collegiate" madras shirts & khaki pants & "dry" look hair cuts that came in with the Beach Boys. They were often called "hoods," an inaccurate, disparaging term, since most were just regular guys & we mixed quite freely in sports & socially, some of them were good musicians I later played with in garage bands.
Labels: culture, growing up, movies, music, obituary
Monday, March 04, 2013
Armando Trovajoli
age 95, composed scores for over 300 movies, nearly all of them Italian. From the same generation that gave us Nino Rota. Very little of his music was available in the USA, but dozens of his soundtrack LPs were released in Italy. Trovajoli composed music for all kinds of films, including spaghetti westerns. But Italian sex comedies & crime caper movies were his forte. His Sixties music for these movies is as identifiable with the era as Burt Bacharach's, with organ, often a samba or bossa nova beat, & wordless chorus; or something approximating rock music.
Labels: music, obituary, video
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Cindy McCready
On the suicide of talented, troubled Cindy McCready, I posted on FB:
My old friend, poet Jim Ruggia, always a more descriptive writer than I, commented on my post (in part):
What Jim wrote is what happened to Cindy. She went to Nashville at age 18 with her great voice, good looks & ambition. She brought whatever demons she had with her. Part of the ambition, perhaps even the strongest part, was a belief she could escape them if she became a success, a star. Fame only compounded her problems in the sense that they were writ large for all to see. She would have screwed up her life just as much & in much the same way by staying home. She might have, however, been less isolated in her out-of-control misery. Maybe even had fewer enablers & few more genuinely helpful friends.
A couple of other FB friends were critical of her for what I think were the wrong reasons. Why do we believe celebrities ought to be better at handling their demons than we are? Because they have money to throw at them? Because they can afford expensive lawyers & luxurious rehabs?
Yes she did abandon her kids &, as Jim also noted, shot her dog "in one last contemptuous act before shutting out the lights. " But coming from Jim, this is more observation than judgment. He understands there's more important causes for outrage. & if one must choose a symbol of wealthy arrogance as madness, Cindy McCready is not a good one. She was just someone who fucked up her life, & got a chance to do it in a very public way, & when she decided she couldn't unfuck it, she angrily ended it. We can mourn her.
"R.I.P. It's a terrible thing to realize your demons are driving you & you're just along for the ride."
My old friend, poet Jim Ruggia, always a more descriptive writer than I, commented on my post (in part):
"For a lot of people it's a highway at night out there, lights and flashers careening and strange half lit figures on the road side."
What Jim wrote is what happened to Cindy. She went to Nashville at age 18 with her great voice, good looks & ambition. She brought whatever demons she had with her. Part of the ambition, perhaps even the strongest part, was a belief she could escape them if she became a success, a star. Fame only compounded her problems in the sense that they were writ large for all to see. She would have screwed up her life just as much & in much the same way by staying home. She might have, however, been less isolated in her out-of-control misery. Maybe even had fewer enablers & few more genuinely helpful friends.
A couple of other FB friends were critical of her for what I think were the wrong reasons. Why do we believe celebrities ought to be better at handling their demons than we are? Because they have money to throw at them? Because they can afford expensive lawyers & luxurious rehabs?
Yes she did abandon her kids &, as Jim also noted, shot her dog "in one last contemptuous act before shutting out the lights. " But coming from Jim, this is more observation than judgment. He understands there's more important causes for outrage. & if one must choose a symbol of wealthy arrogance as madness, Cindy McCready is not a good one. She was just someone who fucked up her life, & got a chance to do it in a very public way, & when she decided she couldn't unfuck it, she angrily ended it. We can mourn her.
Labels: mental health, music, obituary
Friday, February 08, 2013
Donald Byrd
I can't even choose a favorite cut by this great trumpet player & band leader. Go to You Tube search his name. He was a giant of straight ahead jazz & a funk innovator. Most hip hop fans probably never heard of him, but I can almost guarantee that if you looked at a hip hop artist's record collection, you'd find a stack of Donald Byrd in it, in vinyl.
Monday, February 04, 2013
The rest is a pop song
. It was obvious to others back then that I found her beautiful, smart & talented & loved her.
The rest is a pop song & I play with the lyrics., my right as a poet.
We were small town ambitious. We believed one or the other of us, or both, might become famous. Although neither of us was a great social butterfly, we were sociable & enjoyed being seen together.
I've always been grateful for her family, her mom especially, how I was taken into that crowded, chaotic house on Hemlock Street during a turbulent period in my own family. I was "Karen's boyfriend," & with that came meal privileges & use of the old upright piano.
Karen, of course, always wanted to get out of the house if it wasn't a school night, or if it was, at least go sit on the front porch or on the back seat of an old but functioning 1948 Desoto, a Battell heirloom called "The Turtle" kept in the garage. She would be annoyed with me If I settled on the couch, watching TV with three or four kids crawling over me. But I felt love in the chaos, & I sensed the love was emanating from the frazzled woman in the kitchen who welcomed me if I went in there, sat down & chatted with her. As long as mom liked me, I'd be o.k. with her dad & we'd get a longer leash. I liked talking with her mom. I suspected her dad secretly hoped we'd elope the day after Karen graduated high school just to get her out of a crowded house lacking in space & privacy.
It was my job as a writer to fit Karen into my narrative. Where I fit into her's was of small concern to me. I hoped only that she carried no hurtful memories, & in our few conversations later she never gave the impression she had.. You won't find her in my poems, except invisibly in a group I wrote in 1990 which drew from every romance & break up I'd gone through up to that point.
Karen passed at age 62, a tragic fact. I have only two early years of those 62 & I wish she had lived until my small percentage was much smaller. But they were two adolescent years filled with the kinds of days & nights everyone remembers as the rest of our days & nights & years speed by faster & faster. My poetry mentor, Joel Oppenheimer, taught by example that there are memories a poet holds in trust. He was passing down an old tradition. One might never bring those memories to a poem or story, but they are held & treasured all the same. It is a privilege.
Remembering how Karen, the most beautiful teenage girl I every knew, entered a party, a dance, a brightly lit diner, a wedding reception (we went to at least two), my dad's living room, whatever occasion called for it. She always did this if she was wearing something new from Daffy Dan's. She would walk through the entry, quickly survey the occupants, tilt her regal nose up & slightly to one side just so, & pose for a moment. Yes, people looked. Always. I'd be standing behind her or off to one side, thinking, "Wow! I'm sure she rehearses that." To me she was dancing.
In Memory of Karen Battell Silva, 1950-2012
The rest is a pop song & I play with the lyrics., my right as a poet.
We were small town ambitious. We believed one or the other of us, or both, might become famous. Although neither of us was a great social butterfly, we were sociable & enjoyed being seen together.
I've always been grateful for her family, her mom especially, how I was taken into that crowded, chaotic house on Hemlock Street during a turbulent period in my own family. I was "Karen's boyfriend," & with that came meal privileges & use of the old upright piano.
Karen, of course, always wanted to get out of the house if it wasn't a school night, or if it was, at least go sit on the front porch or on the back seat of an old but functioning 1948 Desoto, a Battell heirloom called "The Turtle" kept in the garage. She would be annoyed with me If I settled on the couch, watching TV with three or four kids crawling over me. But I felt love in the chaos, & I sensed the love was emanating from the frazzled woman in the kitchen who welcomed me if I went in there, sat down & chatted with her. As long as mom liked me, I'd be o.k. with her dad & we'd get a longer leash. I liked talking with her mom. I suspected her dad secretly hoped we'd elope the day after Karen graduated high school just to get her out of a crowded house lacking in space & privacy.
It was my job as a writer to fit Karen into my narrative. Where I fit into her's was of small concern to me. I hoped only that she carried no hurtful memories, & in our few conversations later she never gave the impression she had.. You won't find her in my poems, except invisibly in a group I wrote in 1990 which drew from every romance & break up I'd gone through up to that point.
Karen passed at age 62, a tragic fact. I have only two early years of those 62 & I wish she had lived until my small percentage was much smaller. But they were two adolescent years filled with the kinds of days & nights everyone remembers as the rest of our days & nights & years speed by faster & faster. My poetry mentor, Joel Oppenheimer, taught by example that there are memories a poet holds in trust. He was passing down an old tradition. One might never bring those memories to a poem or story, but they are held & treasured all the same. It is a privilege.
Remembering how Karen, the most beautiful teenage girl I every knew, entered a party, a dance, a brightly lit diner, a wedding reception (we went to at least two), my dad's living room, whatever occasion called for it. She always did this if she was wearing something new from Daffy Dan's. She would walk through the entry, quickly survey the occupants, tilt her regal nose up & slightly to one side just so, & pose for a moment. Yes, people looked. Always. I'd be standing behind her or off to one side, thinking, "Wow! I'm sure she rehearses that." To me she was dancing.
In Memory of Karen Battell Silva, 1950-2012
Labels: growing up, Karen Battell, love, Mahalo, obituary, Roselle Park
Thursday, January 03, 2013
Patti Page
Night. Fifties. Long ride back from South Jersey shore or Lake Mohawk. Squeezed between Dad & Mom in the front seat or, when we had a modest station wagon, in the back seat or cargo space. Three older siblings & a small, panting, carsick dog. Dad twiddling with the radio dial. What is he looking for? Operetta? Music from the TV show Victory at Sea? I catch intriguing snippets of doo wop, R&B, distant baseball games, religious blabbermouths. As often as not Dad turns off the radio in frustration. If he lands on the lovely, evocative "Old Cape Cod" & stays there, I know that's the best we're gonna get. Who wouldn't rather be on Cape Cod instead of riding in this car?
Fifties pop was not generally good. One realizes how exceptional Sinatra's Capitol recordings were, & why Peggy Lee worked so stubbornly to control her career. One appreciates that Count Basie held a band together, changed to the magnificent "atomic" lineup & style. One may even appreciate the pernicious influence of record label executive Mitch Miller & his ilk, wasting the talents of great singers but driving millions of teenagers to embrace rock & roll,
Fifties pop was not generally good. One realizes how exceptional Sinatra's Capitol recordings were, & why Peggy Lee worked so stubbornly to control her career. One appreciates that Count Basie held a band together, changed to the magnificent "atomic" lineup & style. One may even appreciate the pernicious influence of record label executive Mitch Miller & his ilk, wasting the talents of great singers but driving millions of teenagers to embrace rock & roll,
Labels: growing up, music, obituary, video
Wednesday, December 05, 2012
Dave Brubeck, 1920 - 2012
Dave Brubeck was most famous to me for what he was most famous for: "Take Five" & the "Time" albums, Time Out, Time Further Out, & Countdown - Time in Outer Space, with their eye-catching abstract art LP jackets. Later, I became familiar with his earlier recordings. His concert hall & religious works have never interested me all that much, although I know they were made with care & sincerity. When I got serious about jazz, the music had already moved into a much more experimental & politicized expression than Dave was doing. Still, he never stopped learning, growing & caring. He was a great soul. Died one day short of his 92nd birthday. His one & only wife, Iola, survives him. They were married in 1942. Dave promised her she would never be bored.
Springsteen was the "star" of the 2009 Kennedy Center Honors, but Dave received the classier musical tribute. It features an all-star quintet, the Jazz Ambassadors of the United States Army Field Band (Dave had played in a jazz band attached to Patton's Third Army during the Battle of the Bulge, the only integrated unit in the army at the time), & his four sons, fine musicians all who often performed with their dad.
Springsteen was the "star" of the 2009 Kennedy Center Honors, but Dave received the classier musical tribute. It features an all-star quintet, the Jazz Ambassadors of the United States Army Field Band (Dave had played in a jazz band attached to Patton's Third Army during the Battle of the Bulge, the only integrated unit in the army at the time), & his four sons, fine musicians all who often performed with their dad.
Labels: music, obituary, video
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Andy Williams
Sheese, Andy, the only reminder you were getting old was you were talking right wingnut screwy there toward the end, embarrassing for a friend of Bobby Kennedy, you were too far gone to realize how embarrassing. I loved this one, untypical for you, seemed more an Engelbert or Tom Jones kind of number:
Labels: music, obituary, video
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Radio twiddling, mental health, the Haitian woman, & Bruce Longstreet
Cabbie radio dial twiddler on way back from clinic. Right wing crap when I got in the taxi. He twiddled, Let's Hang On by the Four Seasons came on, I started grooving to that, Halfway through he twiddled to the news station.
My shrink is not a therapist. He has a young MSW assistant who likes to get conversations going in the waiting room. If there's other clients present, I don't tell her much. How are you, Robert? My best friend died last week. That chat was not happening today. Three others there, I wasn't bringing them into it. It's no group. But I try to bring any emotionally fraught situations to the shrink, if they're happening about the time of our bimonthly appts. I also want to convince him I'm handling it. I have about five minutes to do this. My best friend died. He was in California. I wasn't his only best friend. I haven't been sleeping well the past few nights, it's starting to catch up. I'm not really grieving yet, I will, I can handle it.
We went through the death of my first girlfriend in February, but that was a whole other thing. I hadn't seen her in decades. I had to reach back & make a claim on the two years I had with her, & what it meant to me & maybe to her. It was on the whole a nice project for a poet. I enjoyed revisiting young love. Let it glow. It doesn't require realism, only a carefulness regarding nostalgia. This is different. I feel a vacuum.
The shrink poked around a bit. Known me a long time, He seemed to think I was o.k. I wasn't ducking it.
Oh yeah, here's something I noticed & noted in part because it was the kind of thing Bruce Longstreet noticed. An older Haitian woman, immigrant, was in the waiting room. She was talking about her new job as a home health aid. She worked 34 hours per week, averaging two hours each for her clients. She makes $9 an hour. She needs a car for the job. The 34 hours are spread across more than 40 hours. She doesn't receive health insurance from the job. She's receiving Medicare & SSD. SSD permits a certain amount of additional income in occupations not impacted by one's disability, & encourages these jobs to eventually become a path out of SSD. However, if she were on Medicaid or a Medicaid HMO, the additional income would disqualify her from Supplementary Security Income & she would lose Medicaid. Sometimes SSI pays only a couple of dollars but is crucial for the Medicaid. This woman liked her new work. Also, the additional income affects her Section 8 housing & Food Stamps, if she is receiving those. All additional income must be reported for those services. She'll pay higher rent & receive a smaller allotment of food stamps. In reality, it might be very difficult for her to use her new income to raise herself up. She says she will need a more reliable car "in a year." It's very positive in the mental game to think that far ahead.
Bruce & I were very tight for about six years. I came to think of him as my best friend. I thought of him as my best friend until he died. Yet, I was aware Bruce was likely a best friend to a number of people. Jim C, certainly, since high school. I trust Jim every bit as much as I trusted Bruce. I didn't hang out with Jim as much. That they were best friends endorsed the both of them to me. There were others. three or four people, college friends of his who had scattered to other places. Bruce & I were dissimilar people with similar backgrounds. White, middle class, not affluent. He also may have had two brothers & a sister. Bruce had a much better relationship with his father. Jim & I struggled with our strong, admirable dads. Jim's father, fortunately, lived a lot longer than mine. My parents divorced when I was a teenager. Bruce's & Jim's parents stayed married. Jim & I were accustomed to being in relationships with women. Bruce was stuck on unrequited love all the time I knew him in Jersey. He did better in other states.
All three of us had what philosopher Alan Watts called, "The irreducible element of rascality."
My shrink is not a therapist. He has a young MSW assistant who likes to get conversations going in the waiting room. If there's other clients present, I don't tell her much. How are you, Robert? My best friend died last week. That chat was not happening today. Three others there, I wasn't bringing them into it. It's no group. But I try to bring any emotionally fraught situations to the shrink, if they're happening about the time of our bimonthly appts. I also want to convince him I'm handling it. I have about five minutes to do this. My best friend died. He was in California. I wasn't his only best friend. I haven't been sleeping well the past few nights, it's starting to catch up. I'm not really grieving yet, I will, I can handle it.
We went through the death of my first girlfriend in February, but that was a whole other thing. I hadn't seen her in decades. I had to reach back & make a claim on the two years I had with her, & what it meant to me & maybe to her. It was on the whole a nice project for a poet. I enjoyed revisiting young love. Let it glow. It doesn't require realism, only a carefulness regarding nostalgia. This is different. I feel a vacuum.
The shrink poked around a bit. Known me a long time, He seemed to think I was o.k. I wasn't ducking it.
Oh yeah, here's something I noticed & noted in part because it was the kind of thing Bruce Longstreet noticed. An older Haitian woman, immigrant, was in the waiting room. She was talking about her new job as a home health aid. She worked 34 hours per week, averaging two hours each for her clients. She makes $9 an hour. She needs a car for the job. The 34 hours are spread across more than 40 hours. She doesn't receive health insurance from the job. She's receiving Medicare & SSD. SSD permits a certain amount of additional income in occupations not impacted by one's disability, & encourages these jobs to eventually become a path out of SSD. However, if she were on Medicaid or a Medicaid HMO, the additional income would disqualify her from Supplementary Security Income & she would lose Medicaid. Sometimes SSI pays only a couple of dollars but is crucial for the Medicaid. This woman liked her new work. Also, the additional income affects her Section 8 housing & Food Stamps, if she is receiving those. All additional income must be reported for those services. She'll pay higher rent & receive a smaller allotment of food stamps. In reality, it might be very difficult for her to use her new income to raise herself up. She says she will need a more reliable car "in a year." It's very positive in the mental game to think that far ahead.
Bruce & I were very tight for about six years. I came to think of him as my best friend. I thought of him as my best friend until he died. Yet, I was aware Bruce was likely a best friend to a number of people. Jim C, certainly, since high school. I trust Jim every bit as much as I trusted Bruce. I didn't hang out with Jim as much. That they were best friends endorsed the both of them to me. There were others. three or four people, college friends of his who had scattered to other places. Bruce & I were dissimilar people with similar backgrounds. White, middle class, not affluent. He also may have had two brothers & a sister. Bruce had a much better relationship with his father. Jim & I struggled with our strong, admirable dads. Jim's father, fortunately, lived a lot longer than mine. My parents divorced when I was a teenager. Bruce's & Jim's parents stayed married. Jim & I were accustomed to being in relationships with women. Bruce was stuck on unrequited love all the time I knew him in Jersey. He did better in other states.
All three of us had what philosopher Alan Watts called, "The irreducible element of rascality."
Labels: Elizabeth NJ, Mahalo, mental health, obituary
Sunday, September 23, 2012
Sandy Hook NJ
From a Spring-like afternoon in late December a few years back, wintry surf, enjoying Sandy Hook with Bruce Longstreet, a pair of old poet friends strolling together, what we always wanted to become for each other.
Labels: jersey shore, Mahalo, obituary, photograph, postcard, sandy hook
