Family matters...

I've been completely immersing myself in the XVIII. International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition that's been streamed online these past couple of weeks. I've never actually seen a piano competition live before, and to have one devoted entirely to the works of my very favorite piano composer is like a dream come true for me. It's so wonderful to be able to see others perform these Chopin pieces I love about a million times more exquisitely than I ever could play them!

I took 11 years of piano lessons when I was growing up, but I only performed in front of an audience one time, when I was 13. :) It was a junior high talent show, and because I loved the comic strip Peanuts so much, I dressed up as Schroeder with a red striped shirt and black short pants. I remember striding pompously onto the stage and performing this Chopin polonaise. (N.b. This was recorded at home, not at the talent show. And yes, I did post this here a while back, so you can skip it if you heard it then. I'm not going to subject you to it twice.) ;)

https://soundcloud.com/user-553167216/piano-recital-piece

Pretty terrible, I know, but I played it way better onstage; perfectly, as I recall. But what really surprised me was, after the show, several of my fellow students came up to me and expressed amazement at my piano performance, even girls, who practically never spoke to me. They all said, like, "I didn't know you could DO that!" My social status shot up overnight. I wasn't just the skinniest geek in school anymore who everybody looked down on or pushed around. After playing in that talent show, I was never bullied again. So, thanks, Mom! I guess I got some good out of those lessons after all.

Seriously, though, I really do have to say "Thank You, Mother," for making me take piano. I hated a lot of it – having to spend all that time practicing when I'd rather be playing with my friends – but it gave me an appreciation of music that enhanced the rest of my life tremendously, and for that, I am truly grateful. :)

PS: I'm sure either Liu or Garcia is going to get the Gold Medal this year. :) Both are absolutely brilliant interpreters of the maestro!

 

Just put together this playlist of tunes I was listening to 50 (?!) years ago during the summer of 1970. #1, 2, 4, 5 and 6 I remember buying as 45s at Wallichs Music City at Eastland. (Still have 'em, too!)

Wasted most of my vacation that year taking American History in summer school at Northview. As interested as I am in the subject now, you might think I loved that class, but I actually hated every hot, miserable minute of it.

Anyway, at least the music that summer was cool! Most of these songs still bring back very specific and happy memories, especially of the two weeks I spent with cousins in Washington state at the end of August. Will have more to say about that next month. :)

 

Captain Beefheart has died...



I'm so stunned, I don't even quite know what to say yet.

Most people have probably never heard of him, but Don Van Vliet was one of the most influential American musical artists of the 20th century.

He was also my neighbor. Sort of. He lived 6 miles away in Trinidad, California, where I studied my otters for two decades, and his house was right next door to my friend Sara's.

I almost feel like I grew up with Captain Beefheart. He was an extremely early musical influence on me. I discovered him in 1971, right after Zappa, who was my inspiration after The Beatles. In fact, Zappa and Beefheart actually did grow up together, in Lancaster, California, in the 1950s. Just two apparently ordinary teenagers playing instruments in a garage, who both went on to change the contemporary musical world as we know it.

I saw Beefheart and Zappa in concert together on April 11, 1975. Fucking blew me away.

Trout Mask Replica. Beefheart's magnum opus...




Rolling Stone ranked it #58 on their list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time." It was pure Dada/Surrealist rock. Produced by Frank Zappa, TMR is highly discordant and almost unlistenable at first, until you really pay attention to the incredibly complex arrangements and anarchistic rhythms and time signatures. And Beefheart's voice – apparently atonal and random, yet with a power and range I don't think I've ever heard the equal of. He sounded like an completely manic, lunatic black blues singer who'd just snorted a whole gram of coke. Absolutely unique...

This pretty much exactly mirrors my own experience with TMR:

Cartoonist and writer Matt Groening [The Simpsons] tells of listening to Trout Mask Replica at the age of 15 and thinking "that it was the worst thing I'd ever heard. I said to myself, they're not even trying! It was just a sloppy cacophony. Then I listened to it a couple more times, because I couldn't believe Frank Zappa could do this to me – and because a double album cost a lot of money. About the third time, I realized they were doing it on purpose; they meant it to sound exactly this way. About the sixth or seventh time, it clicked in, and I thought it was the greatest album I'd ever heard."

Beefheart's worsening multiple sclerosis forced his retirement from the music business in 1982. That's when he moved to Trinidad, and began in earnest his second artistic career as an expressionist painter. Beefheart had very craftily created an urban legend that he had retired back to the California high desert where he grew up. In reality, though, he lived the rest of his life in a quiet, secluded redwood forest grove overlooking beautiful Trinidad Bay.



In 1999, an Australian friend visited me for a few days. After otter-watching, we went to visit Sara. Tim was a big avant-garde music fan, and I had told him that Captain Beefheart was Sara's neighbor. I could tell he was dubious.

When we arrived at Sara's, I parked my car next to Beefheart's back fence. Their bathroom window was open. When we got out of the car, suddenly, from inside, came a booming, raunchy voice shouting: "GET THAT FUCKING THING OFF MY LAP!!" Tim, of course, instantly recognized the unmistakable tonalities of Beefheart's voice. I don't recall that we said anything, we just laughed out loud at what we'd just heard. Yep, that was Captain Beefheart alright!

 

December 8, 1980, was already over in most of the world when I was watching the last quarter of a boring football game on the TV in my bedroom. I was 26 at the time, still living at home with my parents. The last few moments of the game, though, would become probably my most memorable football memory ever. That moment took place 30 years ago tonight, right about now...

I think it's likely that this is how many if not most guys of my generation learned of John Lennon's death – hearing Howard Cosell announce it on Monday Night Football...

The news hit me like a ton of bricks. John Lennon? Murdered, assassinated? How? Why? Our family didn't have cable TV with its new CNN, so I had to go on my car radio to hear details, which were still sketchy at the time. Later on, I turned on Nightline to see the first real national TV news coverage of the event...

I was numb for days afterward. On December 14, Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, called for ten minutes of silence worldwide. I followed the coverage on TV and simultaneously on the radio. It was supposed to be ten minutes of silence, but what I heard more than anything were the sounds of people crying, all over the world, and I couldn't hold back any longer myself. I sobbed uncontrollably – the first time I could ever remember crying over the death of a celebrity. Then, when the ten minutes were over, our radio station started playing "#9 Dream," and I sobbed again – not only for the loss of Lennon, but also for the symbolic end of my own youth...

 

To judge by my postings, you'd probably never guess that I'm really a rather melancholy person. I often feel like the best days of my life are behind me, and that I have no real reason to go on. Especially during this past year or so, with all of its terrible losses, almost every time I go to bed, I lay my head down on the pillow, close my eyes and silently hope – sometimes even plead – that I won't wake up in the morning.

But then, as has happened to me so many times before, a simple song of perfect melody and meaning comes to comfort me in a moment of despair, and life feels born anew.

It's one of my "lost songs" – one I heard a couple of times on the radio when I was young, really liked, then soon vanished from the hit parade and from my memory.

A lifetime passed before I would hear it again...

"Cycles" (Click to play.)

( The lyrics. )

"So I think I'll stay awhile
And see if some dreams come true."

It is so wonderful to be alive.

 

You guys who've grown up in the era of CDs and mp3 players are so fortunate. You probably totally take for granted the "repeat" function on today's media players, but to someone who spent the first 30 years of his life in the era of vinyl records, being able to simply set a playback device to "repeat" a track or an album is nothing less than a godsend.

Think about it. In the old days, if you wanted to listen to an LP track again, you had to stop whatever you were doing, stand up, walk across the room to your stereo or turntable, pick up the tone arm, "aim" the needle at the 2mm wide band between the songs, and hopefully hit it dead on the first time. Then you could walk back and resume what you were doing. Then 3 or 4 minutes later, if you wanted to hear the song again, you had to interrupt what you were doing and repeat all of the above steps again.

Now imagine you've smoked a couple of joints and drunk a sixer of beer. A music track ends and you'd like to hear it again. Now you really have to think – is it really worth going to the trouble? Yes, goddammit, I do want to hear Hendrix's "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)" again, and while I'm at it, I'll turn up the volume on the stereo a little higher, too (you couldn't do that remotely, either).

But because "Voodoo Child" is at the very end of Side D, you better get to your stereo before the song actually ends, otherwise the turntable will enter its automatic return and shutoff mode, in which case you'll have to stand there and wait until you're able to turn it back on. But you're pretty wasted now, and aiming the needle at that 2mm wide space is a lot trickier. Maybe you can't even actually focus your eyes on that tiny line anymore, so you just set the tone arm down close to the beginning. You miss, but you say fuck it, I'll just have to listen to the last 25 seconds of "All Along The Watchtower" again, even though I think it sucks.

Then "Voodoo Child" ends again. Can I even stand up now, I wonder? Shit. I'll crawl to my fucking stereo on my hands and knees if I have to. This time, though, I think I'll just sit by the stereo and put on my headphones. That way, if I want to hear it again after that, it'll be a lot less trouble.

But even if you're totally straight – how many times do you think you'd put up with the hassle of playing one track over and over? I'd guess on average I'd stop after about a half dozen listens. More than that and it's just not worth it. (And if you had a reel-to-reel or cassette tapedeck and wanted to hear a song multiple times? Just forget it. That really was too much of a hassle.)

So just imagine what a thrill it was for me when I got my first CD player, and I could simply press a button on a remote control and have it repeat a favorite song. Oh. My. God! *giddy insane laughter!* Oh my freaking GOD!! It was almost too good to be true. This "repeat" function was nothing less than a miracle to me. Even better, I could now program the player to repeat songs, or program a whole series of tracks. I could actually listen to "Electric Ladyland" and skip fucking "All Along The Watchtower" completely! *blissful happy sigh!*

This was the greatest invention in the entire history of mankind. ;-)

Even today, I don't take the "repeat" function entirely for granted. It's still a miracle to me. I can play the same song literally all day long now and not have to lift a finger! Which is exactly what I did yesterday. And what I'll probably do all day today, too! Oh yeah!! Technology totally rocks!!! :D