Things I am apparently interested in.

Tonight, I briefly checked out an article in the New Yorker that has to do with new evidence, in the form of feces and its micro-contents, of the route Hannibal took over the Alps with his fabled elephants. Which are--surprise!--probably unlikely.

Once the article, which was quite focused, got down to the tapeworms, I was, quite frankly, out. I mean, elephants crossing the Alps in olden times, sure, but not the dung. The dung is right out. However, I get it that your mileage may vary on this. It is super science-y, for instance.

However! I am currently, apparently, on a quest to find out about a song that Hank Williams wrote with Lawton Williams called 'Between You and God and Me.' It appears on the detailed song list of Williams' Songwriters Hall of Fame page. It was published by Western Hills Music Co., although I don't know when. It doesn't seem to have been recorded, by Hank Williams or anyone else.

I had a conversation about this with my son, the musician, tonight. 'Maybe it's a really crappy song,' he offered, given the sparse facts available.

'Oh, I don't think so,' I said. 'Not in my imagination.' Because this song has taken up territory there. At the suggestion of my son, I wrote an information request to a Library of Congress librarian:

Hello there, 

I'm looking for information about a song that was co-authored by Hank Williams and Lawton Williams, titled 'Between You and God and Me.' It's listed as a song on the Hank Williams Songwriters Hall of Fame page. 

I'd like to know anything at all about the song, including lyrics, whether it was ever recorded, and if there was sheet music of any kind published. I'm a poet, and that's what I'd use this information for --a poem.

Thanks for any help you can give me-- 

htms

Please wish me and the librarians of the Library of Congress, and my mostly hypothetical poem, luck.

Amy.

The documentary is devastating and heartbreaking. Made entirely of an astonishing array of photos, videos, and voices, you get a closeup view of her from the time she was a teenager, already with that incredible gift of a voice.  So, you know, if you're up for that on a Thursday night.

But the music--well, the music is better than I even knew.

She's only 20 years old here.

 

 This, with Tony Bennett, was closer to the end--gorgeous and knowing and full-bodied:


 

 When we went to Dublin in 2008, one of the first nights we were there, when the bars closed, weheard a man on the street singing this song, at first far off, then right under our window, then fading as he passed:



And this will never ever fail to undo me:

 

The way, way back.

Tonight, we saw A Poem is a Naked Person, Les Blank's long lost film about (sort of) Leon Russell, made back in the heyday, in 1974, which was when I loved Leon Russell. Lots of people did. He was a session musician in Los Angeles, working with the famous Wrecking Crew and playing sessions with an amazing array of people (George Harrison, J.J. Cale, Barbra Streisand, Frank Sinatra). He had a pretty great solo career for about ten years, after which it slowed down quite a bit.

Apparently Blank and Russell had some creative--and personal--differences, which meant that this film never was released until now. It was a gift tonight, to listen to the music again, in filmed studio sessions and in concert. A reminder of what a powerful performer he was. I saw him once in the 80s, with Edgar Winter (remember, RH?), in a small club in the mid valley. He was still great at the piano and in good voice.

A boy in my Mormon ward gave me a copy of Carney because it was his favorite album, and we were flirting a little bit, and maybe kind of were together for about a half an hour or a month. I listened to it constantly. I still have it in my limited collection of LPs from that era.

Nothing, nothing like music to bring back everything you felt, everything you were, when you were young and you knew nothing, and a boy gave you music as a gift, and forty years later you are still that girl, listening to an album in the dark.





Here's Rita Coolidge singing 'Superstar,' written by Russell and Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett (that's Russell's piano):

Live music.

File under: Opportunities. Under: Doesn't happen every day. 

My daughter was the one who introduced me to The Weepies in the first place. Tonight, we got to hear them together. First, we had dinner at Eva, and in retrospect, we had several foods in a very pale palette--bread with avocado butter, Greek mac and cheese, Moroccan cauliflower, excellent french fries. All delicious, however.



After dinner, we sauntered our way into the venue--the set had started (but just barely, we thought). So lovely.


 We had lots and lots of time to talk. Perfect. A gift of a night.

Dear Linda Ronstadt,

Tonight I had to drive downtown to a meeting. All the way downtown. Past the downtown Target, that's how far downtown. North of downtown, which meant that I had some listening time in the offing.

That could have been NPR time, or PRI time, or Q time, but I have to tell you, Linda, that none of that was cutting it for me. It's October, well into autumn now, and for autumn, you need a soundtrack for melancholy. That's just how it is. Those bright days fading to an earlier night: this calls for the music of your youth. Which brings me to you.

I remember driving around town in my folks' station wagon. These were the days, the seventies, when AM radio had music programming. It was the South Bay, Los Angeles, it was the summer before my senior year. I had a serious crush on a boy and that crush was always and forever going to be mostly unrequited. That was the year of your hit "You're No Good," which I liked to sing at the top of my lungs while driving. I liked to pretend that song was me singing to the boy, even though the boy was good. It still made me feel better.

I had the LP and I had the sheet music. I could play and sing the songs on the piano. You didn't write any of them, but your big, generous voice made the songs yours even so.

A couple of years ago I had a hankering to hear the songs again, so I downloaded the album. And a few weeks ago, I read somewhere that you really can't sing anymore--you've lost your voice because of Parkinson's. I don't know how that makes you feel. But tonight, driving north and then home again, I remembered how I felt when your music spoke for me, made the soundtrack to my summer, my teenage heartbreak, and my memories of a gorgeous time when the ocean gleamed on the horizon, my life was ahead of me, and the car radio played songs like yours.

I won't forget you,

htms


 how

Wait, one more project:

The Music Project!

When I was getting ready to go to Scotland--by which I mean "getting ready to risk thrombosis by sitting for countless hours on a transatlantic flight, God bless it for taking me to see my daughter!"--I charged up my iPod and the Historian's iPod, so that we would both have lots of music to listen to which would hopefully distract us from the clots possibly forming in our legs. While doing this, I confronted the shift in my iPod paradigm. A sketch:

my iPod(s): a love story. by lisab

Well, suffice it to say that in the rush to leave town, I was not able to summon the sober wisdom of Solomon to decide what music should depart from the portable jukebox of my iPod, back onto the archives of iTunes. So that meant that I left a lot of new music behind, which was sad in retrospect, because the Jet of Thrombosis would have been the ideal setting for discovering that music. For getting comfortable with it.

Alas, no. It's true that at one point, I found myself listening to a Genius playlist of 80s tunes. Which had its comforts, and that's the truth.

Anyway. I have spent some time over the past couple of days assessing the contents of this iPod and removing some stuff. For instance, when I was in the car, listening to another Genius playlist, a Jack Johnson tune came up and I thought, I don't ever need to listen to Jack Johnson again in my life. That was a rather emphatic judgment, but I made it. Jack Johnson does not come with when me and my iPod are out and about, although if I ever reconsider my judgment, I know where to find him.

What's good is that I now have some new music to listen to. I told the historian last night that I hated this streamlining, paring away project, even though it's a project that presses on me, because it seems like preparing to die. Because he is empathetic and because he is kind, he didn't laugh. The thing about streamlining your iPod is that you can have your cake and eat it too, because you don't have to really get rid of things. You can rearrange them--some things are on the iPod, some are on one or another of your hard drives. What's harder is culling out the books to give away, or the clothes, or other non-digital stuff. When that's gone, it's gone, and your life may be sleeker, but it may also be poorer.

I can hear my daughter telling me things are not people, Mom. She is right. She is right. Well, my music is in much better order. Now, onto the the things.

And here it is:

At dinner, I said to the historian, "I'm starting to feel a little panicky about how busy I'm going to be. And how much stuff I have to do."

Well, that feeling's been at bay for a few weeks, and it's just the weekend before the semester starts. Well done, anxiety! Thanks for hanging out somewhere else for awhile.

But it's been a great day even so. I worked this morning quietly for awhile--adapted and spruced up a syllabus, worked out a rough schedule. At one, we went to Jordan High School to hear the Utah Wind Symphony Youth Ensemble play. My niece plays the trumpet in this excellent band.

They played a suite by Holst to begin, and then a gorgeous setting of O Magnum Mysterium by Morton Lauridsen. The gorgeous choir my son sang in at the University did this piece.



When the ensemble first began to play, I recognized, then placed the piece. Without words and without human voice, but with the breath modulated by the reeds and brass, I thought of the many times I had heard my son's choir sing, then of the countless times I've listened to all my children sing. I thought of the choirs I've sung in. I watched the players, all of them in high school, and so I thought also of the small miracle of musicians coming into their own. I thought of the way an instrumental ensemble can swell and fill a room with sound, I felt the sound swell, recognized how it feels in the body to be in that room when the sound surrounds you and blooms. I closed my eyes in the midst of the sound. I thought again of what it would feel like to go to church again and sing. The music thickened, surged around us. The phrases rose and fell and ended.

Something to hold on to in the weeks ahead.

2013, these are my demands, take them or leave them!

Today, to celebrate my daughter's birthday (happy birthday, Sophia!), we had lunch at a little grill at the mouth of the Cottonwood Canyons, Big and Little. My son, younger daughter and I drove in my car. I knew exactly where I was going. I got on the belt route and my son commandeered the iPod.

"What's this?" I asked.

"Birdy," he said.




I listened for a minute. "I was just thinking that I wanted to hear more new music this year, and maybe I would ask you guys to make me a Spotify playlist, like, once a month."

"Once a month!" he said. I smiled, and then my mind started to drift from this song to another song (from Pitch Perfect, probably), and then I was thinking about some other music and then my son said, "Aren't you supposed to get off here?"

Yep, I was. So I drove to the next exit, and got back on the belt route going the other way. But then at the designated exit there were three possible ways to go and you had to be in the right lane to go the correct way, and there was a super bossy semi that wouldn't budge and let me in the correct lane. Annoying!

I know what you're thinking: this is a long story about going to a restaurant, and you don't really care, and what's the point? The point is this: thinking about the new music I want to hear--music I haven't yet identified!--got me going, so much so that I had two wrong-way attempts before we finally got to the restaurant. I think it's a sign, is what I'm saying: surely I need more, and new, music in my life in 2013? I say yes. Maybe if I get enough new music in my life, I won't get so over-excited and dreamy that I can't find my way to a totally familiar restaurant at the mouth of the Cottonwood Canyons, Little and Big.

While I'm thinking about the year 2013, I think I also want

• more long walks
• stronger muscles 
• maybe some other kinds of movement, like dancing and swimming and skating?
• more writing

And I want to enjoy what I have, which is a full, rich life full of meaningful work, chances to learn and grow, a beautiful family, wonderful friends, and plenty of everything I need. 2013: get on it.

Dear reminders,

It has been a long week already and it's not over. Each day it has been my sweet reward to look forward to the long walk I will take around my neighborhood when the light is still bright, but shining aslant, in its last hour.

The other morning, my friend Paula said that she was listening to Glenn Gould's Goldberg Variations to help her focus on a cold morning. I remembered the copy I once bought of this artist, this same piece. It was within just a couple of years of our getting a CD player. It became one of the small coterie of essential recordings for me, and I played it over and over. I remember listening to him play the aria, the enunciation of the theme. How spare, how quiet, before he plunged into the invention of the variations.



Tonight, I ran into this, Simone Dinnerstein playing the Bach Partita No. 1. Clarity, like light falling at a slant in the last hour of the day.


All during my walk, I kept thinking about playing the piano, whose keys are usually dusty, and I don't mean that as a metaphor. What would it be like to move those muscles again? To play Bach, or anything, at the end of every day?

At the end of my walk, when the sun was in the west and almost gone, and I was heading east down the street to my house, I took off my sunglasses, no need for them any longer. The sky was blue, the trees were yellow. Bright, bright.

Dear reminders, thank you for bringing this music back to me.

yours,
htms

Dear cellophane wrapper guy,

There you were, in the row behind me, or the row behind that, at Abravanel Hall. By the way, do you mind if I refer to you as "guy"? It's possible you were female. But it doesn't really matter, Mr. or Ms. Wrapper: because at the Chinese pianist's recital, during the Andante cantabile con espressione movement (written in 3/4 time) of the Mozart Sonata in A minor, K. 310, you began to disrobe some sort of comestible that apparently came wrapped in the distinct crinkly crackle of cellophane.

I didn't look back to see who you were, or to imply anything, really. I thought to myself, come on. I thought, really? What comestible emergency decrees that one fiddle at some length with a piece of something wrapped in a long-winded piece of cellophane, during the middle of the slow movement of a piano sonata?

And then I thought a compassionate thought. Cough, I thought. Maybe cellophane wrapper guy had a cough, and he tried to suppress it, and in desperation, during the Andante cantabile con espressione movement, he fished a cough drop from his pocket and couldn't unwrap it fast enough. I thought how all of us in that grand, crowded concert hall were occupied with our own humanness, with our little ailments and discomforts, all of us hoping that the music would lift us, enrapture our attentions, make us fly. Poor cellophane wrapper guy. Trying not to cough. We all do our best.

I thought this compassionate thought until the Presto movement began. 2/4 time. Speedy and percussive and spine-tingling, accompanied by the aleatory music of cellophane wrapper guy, opening his second comestible.

I have to tell you, cellophane wrapper guy: I laughed. Not out loud, because it was Mozart, and Abravanel Hall, and because of dignity and all that. I wish I could say I was not amused, but it was just so ridiculous.

I'm sorry you didn't stay for the Chopin Ballades after the intermission, a little sorry at least, and I do hope you feel better soon, if indeed it was a cough that ailed you. I suggest, however, that, in preparation for your next concert-going experience, you practice unwrapping your future cough drops like a ninja. A Mozart-listening, Chopin-respecting ninja.

It's about the music, man,

htms

Method of Modern Love.

Walking down the street, plugged into my iPod, Hall & Oates:

Me: [singing, and none too quietly]  ♩♪ ♪♫  M-E-T-H-O . . .
  
Guy, working in his yard, deadheading dandelions. Looks up.

Me: [                   ] [walking on, looking neither right nor left]

Guy, looks back down at his dandelions. Keeps snapping off their nimbusy heads.

Me: [fifteen, twenty yards away, not looking back] . . . -O-F-L-O-V-E, 

It's a method of modern love.  ♩♪ ♪♫

--because singing blue-eyed soul in the streets is the Constitutional right of every American.

[ ]

for my sister-in-law, whose father has passed on today.

New music day!

Today, a bunch of new recordings came out. For instance, Ben Folds Five's album The Sound of the Life of the Mind,  a reunion album coming about twelve years after the band split up in 2000. Slate had a piece about the recording (in the series called "Where to Start with..."). I frankly disagree with the writer--she thinks Folds writes solely from his own life, whereas I think he writes in the tradition of Robert Browning in the dramatic monologue. However, pay no attention to any of that. I am hoping for awesome piano chops and superb pop melodies, which I believe is eminently possible.

Also, Brad Mehldau has a recording of covers, Where do you start? I have pretty much never heard a Mehldau track that I didn't love or at least respect. So I am really looking forward to this. On Saturday, I listened to a recording from 2010, Highway Rider, while I was driving to and from the mall, and it was so beautiful. Bonus: it has Joshua Redman. And there is another recording from earlier in the year, Ode, that I also need to acquire. There's a lot of Mehldau to listen to right now.

Rickie Lee Jones, one of my all-time favorites, released a new recording today, also an album of covers, called The Devil You Know.  Who loves cover albums? I know I do. And there are a lot of good songs on here--"Reason to Believe," "Sympathy for the Devil," and "Only Love Can Break Your Heart."

Also: new Killers, and Band of Horses, and Grizzly Bear, and there's also the new Dylan and the new Springsteen (read this). I've got some listening to do.

Some stuff I've been

reading: this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this

watching: this

admiring: this and this

planning to eat soon: this, this and this  (yep, again)

looking forward to: this and this

hoping to wear this fall: this  (after it goes on sale)

crying about:  this and this, today (and also possibly this, a little, on television, for which there is absolutely no excuse)

listening to: this and this

finding heartstopping: this (like a time machine)

Three songs.

i.

On the Fourth of July, I was driving to meet my daughter downtown, when I heard the rebroadcast, from On Point, of a program about "This Land is Your Land." When I heard this version--sung at the big party on the Mall in Washington, D.C., the day before Obama's inauguration in 2009--I got tears in my eyes. Those two big American voices, Pete Seeger's and Bruce Springsteen's, with that gorgeous choir behind them:




It's not an ancient song, but it's an old one. It reminded me of the folk music of my youth, and the pathways my love for that music sent me down. It makes me think of music that's the fabric of life, a life woven of song, ideas woven into songs, a life where singing is a kind of action. 

 ii.

I just recently charged up my little iPod shuffle, to see if I liked using it while I walked. Turns out, yes, I still do. In fact, the first song that kicked in when I took a walk yesterday was Beck, "Gamma Ray":



I think this song has the kickingest beginning. It makes me want to move. And when I heard it the other morning, what it most put me in mind of, when it came pouring through, get-up-and-dance style--it reminded me of the last time I heard "Gamma Ray" on my headphones, when it made me feel exactly the same way.

iii.

My son and I used to have an argument about who is better, Nirvana or the Foo Fighters. I don't see any reason that I should have to choose, but I admit that I used to be a Nirvana partisan. But that was before I heard this:



I remember feeling like I was being awakened by the ferocity of that first line, by the ferocity of that scream. This song, too, came on when I turned the corner while I was walking Bruiser. I felt like singing it to the sky.

Little-known facts.

Tonight, after the poetry reading downtown, after deciding where to eat, after our late dinner, we walked to our car in back of the brewpub. Next door, at the pub next door, the Poplar Pub, there was music on the patio, a patio which must have been covered, because it had been raining and there were evidently people outside. I heard the noise of people talking, eating, drinking, and music lifting on the wind. It was funk: Rufus, with Chaka Khan, "Tell Me Something Good."

I saw Rufus, with Chaka Khan, when I was still a teenager. It was at the Forum in Los Angeles. They were the opening act for Stevie Wonder, who was touring with what must have been Fulfillingness First Finale, since it was about the time "Tell Me Something Good" came out. Stevie Wonder wrote the song. Chaka Khan's career was launched with that band and that song.

I remember that time, when all the best music was soul and R&B and funk. I'm pretty sure I didn't appreciate that fact, since I was all Joni Mitchell and Paul Simon and Jackson Browne at the time. Respect to them, but ever since I left SoCal when I was about 18, some of the music that most powerfully conjures that time up for me is the music I so easily dismissed back then--Al Green, Marvin Gaye, the O'Jays, the Temptations, the Spinners, Bill Withers, Billy Preston. (Although I guess I didn't dismiss it entirely--I did go to the concert [with my very good old friend--are you still reading?].

I saw Chaka Khan one other time, when she was opening for Prince. That is a big old voice, with an almost electric edge. Even on a rainy night, over the fence in the back patio of another bar and through a parking lot, all the way into 2012.

This is the audio from the recording grafted on/synched sort of with a live recording. Anyway, you get the drift:



New: Spotify Play Button!

[couplet-o-rama]

I love music.

Here is one of my new favorite things:

I arrive at school about 7:30 a.m., so that I have a full two hours plus a little before my first class to get everything sorted: class plan solidified, poems responded to, etc. My office is a good office, but it's got no windows. So often I go over to the student center with my books and papers, and plug into some music. You know, like the kids do, creating my own sonic atmosphere that shuts out most of the bustle and the music playing on the soundsystem. It's like being in a little world of my own, one that's part of everyone else's world, but with better music, and lots of light.

This week I have been listening again to Sufjan Stevens' The Age of Adz.  It is brilliant. I was a late listener to Illinoise, which I also find to be brilliant. This is, as everyone probably now knows, a complete change of direction for Stevens, sonically and lyrically and in pretty much every way you can't think of. I can't quite get over how good it is, and how much better it gets once you accept it on its own terms.

"I Walked" is a song from one partner in a failed romance to another:

Lover, will you look at me now?
I'm already dead to you 
But I'm inclined to explain 
To you what I could not before

The song has an utterly gorgeous melodic line. I happen to know that, in a big busy room, when you're wearing headphones and so is practically everyone else, you can sing along softly and no one will call you on it.
 

"I Want to Be Well" is both plaintive and fierce:

Illness likes to prey upon the lonely, prey upon the lonely
Wave goodbye, oh, I would rather be, but I would rather be fine

I want to be well, I want to be well
I want to be well, I want to be well




Just one more song I found myself singing along with--"Get Real Get Right":

I know I've caused you trouble 
I know I've caused you pain 
But I must do the right thing
I must do myself a favor and get real
Get right with the Lord

This story gives a pretty good window into the recording.

If you haven't already given this album a listen, you can hear it all the usual places...but make sure you give it more than one chance. It will grow on you.

(p.s. blogged every day in January, in case you're keeping track.)

Making music with my friends.

Tonight over at singing son's house, a bunch of friends and family played and sang and knocked Abbey Road out of the park. I wish I had video and/or audio to share with you. On the other hand, it's probably better that I don't--it's the kind of thing that is better in the doing than in the recording.

Here's how it works:

1. singing son notifies his family and friends that they'll all gather on a specified date. In the meantime,
2. they should study up and listen obsessively to a specific recording, so that
3. on the specified date, they can bring themselves, their singing voices and relevant instruments, so that
4. everyone can play and sing the entire recording.

It is very edifying.

So far, it's been Bridge Over Troubled Water, Rumours (Fleetwood Mac), and tonight, Abbey Road.  I have been at all three. What have I discovered?

• everyone doing their part really does make the whole greater than the sum of the parts.
• every part doesn't have to be virtuouso, because see the above.
• homemade music is one of the very, very best things.
• so many talented friends!
• (I know I'm their mom, but) my kids are awesome.
• there is nothing whatsoever--nothing at all--better than making music with other people.

I got to play a lot of keyboard parts tonight. Highlights:  obtaining The Beatles: Complete Scores, a truly miraculously complete volume; how awesome it is to actually play and wade around in the sonic volume of "I Want You (She's So Heavy)"; how great it is to slide from "Polythene Pam" into "She Came In Through the Bathroom Window" (ohhh look out!), just about as good as it is on the record; how sweet the beautiful piano parts in "Golden Slumbers" and "Carry That Weight" and "The End" are; how beautifully people sang the gorgeous gorgeous harmonies on "Because." 

As I said to the historian on the way home, there were a lot of wonderful parts. Some not wonderful parts, too, but the wonderful parts were really wonderful, and that's really the point.

Last: a friend who came to the Rumours party said that she kept trying to tell people how great it was, but after awhile it seemed like she was just bragging, so she stopped. Yep, that's kind of how this feels. But I have to tell you: it really was awesome.

In conclusion, let me leave you with this, just in case you need a refresher (we sounded almost this good):

Three songs.

Yesterday, my son and I ran to breakfast (at Virg's, radagast, in case you're reading--it was dang good, so thanks for the recommendation!). Whilst driving there, we were listening to The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner, the last studio album of Ben Folds Five. The last controversial studio album of Ben Folds Five. Anyway. It has a great two-song sequence, beginning with "Army,"

which contains, near the end, these lines:

"and my ex-wives all despise me
try to put it all behind me
but my redneck past is nipping at my heels"

a song which is followed immediately by "Your Redneck Past":

which begins with these sharp lyrics:

"choose from any number of magazines
who do you want to be?
billy idol or kool moe dee?

if you're afraid they might discover your redneck past
there are a hundred ways to cover your redneck past"

(My son and I agree that those first three lines are some of the best beginning lines of any song, ever--"Billy Idol or Kool Moe Dee?" Ridiculous.) But all of this talk of rednecks reminded me of another song, called "My Redneck Friend," by Jackson Browne, from the album For Everyman, which I loved when I was in high school:

All of which made me think of how many ways we weave the connections between the things we loved in the past--I listened to this Jackson Browne countless times when I was young--and the newer things we encounter. Also, is there a thing about rednecks in popular music? Is redneckery the guilty secret of rock? Something to think about.

Here's a little sequence I have been mentally connecting:

Rolling Stones - Paint It Black by SamFisher037

I'd be interested in hearing about your little three-song chains, the connections you make between your past and present through song.

I have been hearing the following in my brain.

You can listen, too.




I Walked, Sufjan Stevens

Radiohead, Karma Police

Philip Glass, Etude 1

Billy Bragg (with Wilco and Natalie Marchant), Way Over Yonder in a Minor Key