“And the love that I feel is so far away. I’m a bad dream that I just had today. And you shake your head and say, it’s a shame.”
Jethro Tull’s Thick As A Brick album was released in 1972. Sixteen years old, I bought it on vinyl and wore it out playing it. Listening to this concept album last night – concept albums were big in those years – it reminds me of some of the era’s Yes and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer music — or they remind me of Jethro Tull. Like most art, it’s a continuum of exploration and imagining, building on what’s heard and done.
“But your wise men don’t know how it feels, to be thick as a brick.”
I remember hearing this song for the first time. I’d been retired from the military for a few years and was living in Mountain View, California, and working at a medical device start-up, PAS. We were renting a place but we always treated the places that we rented (or provided to us by the military) as if we owned it. In the case of this duplex that meant a lot of yard work to make the place look better.
So I was out there on a Saturday morning in 1998, doing yard work, when “Closing Time” came on the radio. I wasn’t familiar with the group, Semisonic. Although I bought the album with “Closing Time” on it, I never listened to Semisonic on a regular basis and they faded away from my awareness. I still hear the song, though, and it reminds me of that morning when I was working on the yard.
I took her home to my place, watching every move on her face
She said, “Look, what’s your game, baby?
Are you tryin’ to put me in shame? ”
I said, “Slow, don’t go so fast
Don’t you think that love can last? ”
She said, “Love, lord above, now you’re gonna trick me in love”
All right now baby, it’s all right now
All right now baby, it’s all right now
I’m always surprised when people do and don’t know the words to popular music, but then again, we’re not all in the same vacuum. A friend of mine insists he only really knows and likes one song. That song is “Battle of New Orleans” by Johnny Horton. That I knew it and could sing it to him impressed him.
His wife is like me. I guess we listened to a lot of music on the radio. Her husband’s excuse is that he was doing tours in Vietnam during that time. (Cue, “Country Joe and the Fish” and the “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ To Die” rag. No, he doesn’t know that one, either.) He’s older than us.
I’m surprised, too, by the young people who know the classic rock songs. Many know them via their parents and older siblings’ listening habits, while others learn the music through movies or video games like “Guitar Hero”.
Here’s Free from 1970 with one you may or may not know, “All Right Now”.
I was streaming this song as I walked today. It’s a favorite song. A number of performers have covered it. I think my two preferred versions are by Creedence Clearwater Revival and Marvin Gaye. CCR did a long version of it that has a little more rock ingrained, while Gaye’s version had more blues and soul to it. Gaye’s version was released in 1968 and was a huge hit. CCR came out with their version in 1970.
This song streamed to me this morning as I slopped about the house before cleaning up and dressing to go out. I like the lyric’s enigmatic meanings, how we think, make decisions, and decide to act, and then lose the will or the courage, and turn away. It often feels like we’re almost to our goals when they slip away, forcing us into decisions about whether to give up or go on.
Here’s Paul Simon with “Slip Slidin’ Away” from 1977.
“Two drifters off to see the world, there’s a lot of world to see.”
Today’s theme music is “Moon River” from Breakfast At Tiffany’s. Why not? Based on Truman Capote’s novella, the movie was released in 1961. The song came out the same year. I was five, so I don’t remember much of that, but Mom loved music and movies, and she exposed me to these things. After In Cold Blood came out, I read it and then read other Capote works, including Breakfast At Tiffany’s.
The song and movie are an emblem of the times. Johnny Mercer wrote the song’s lyrics, and Henry Mancini composed the music. Those are some big names in that business. George Pepard and Audrey Hepburn starred in the movie, which was directed by Blake Edwards. Pepard’s character was gay, gay in 1961, and the world didn’t come apart. Hell, Capote was gay. Yet, now, a zillion years later, some in the world want to turn back time, back to the way things were. Did they forget that gays existed back then?
(*snark alert* Yes, I know, they haven’t forgotten, but gays and the coloreds knew their place, then, didn’t they, in this white mythical world where everyone was happy as long as everyone was kept in their place.)
What the movie was and what it was supposed to be, like the novella, like our times, and our memories of those times, depends upon your baggage. I thought that song was perfect in many ways, romantic, hopeful, and smooth, tidying up an image and glossing over deeper struggles. The song and movie came out right before the explosions of the 1960s. When we think of it, we don’t think of the grace of Breakfast At Tiffany’s and “Moon River.” We’re more likely to remember riots, demonstrations, the civil rights movement, protests, and the expanding Vietnam War. Really, 1961 was still part of the fifties.
Many sang or recorded “Moon River” but Mom liked Andy Williams, so that’s the version that I know best.
Thought of this as I was walking today. Thought we could all use a mellow music break from the news about politics, death, wildfires, and other disasters.
Here’s Alanis Morrissette with “Ironic” from sometime last century.
Monday o’memories – I stumbled across some ol’ Grand Funk Railroad stuff while browsing today, and remembered their first live album. It was my sister’s album, but I really enjoyed it, another step in my rock music education. It was a 33 RPM vinyl record that I played on Mom’s big Magnavox stereo that resided in the living room of our thirteen-hundred square foot ranch-style home in Penn Hills, PA. I only did this when I was home alone.
GFR was basic and almost primal in their early years before moving on to more of a pop sound. This first song, “Are You Ready”, epitomized their first year, I think – frenetic musical energy.
We skipped the light fandango
Turned cartwells ‘cross the floor
I was feeling kinda seasick
But the crowd called out for more
The room was humming harder
As the ceiling flew away
When we called out for another drink
The waiter brought a tray
Procol Harum released “A Whiter Shade of Pale” in 1967. When I heard it, I thought, WTF? What are they singing about? What’s it all mean? Later, in my early twenty-somethings, out tasting libations with friends, the song made complete sense. It became then a song about feeling isolated and lost, not drunk or stoned, but confused and searching. I like that in music, art, and literature, I can find one meaning to what I perceive during one stage of life, and discover something vastly different at another point.
The other thing that I like is how some of these things pull me back to a very sharp point of a moment and feel it all again.
Michael Seidel, writer 