Medium Well

 There was a couple years there where I used to stand around in my living room with a plastic guitar strapped to my chest as I flicked a control bar with my right hand and maneuvered my left across a series of colored buttons. I was pretending to play guitar. 

I have mentioned here before how much I enjoyed Guitar Hero.  

On Medium. 

Like so much of my video game experience, I don't feel like I need to push myself needlessly to extremes. This was also the case with my masquerade as a guitar hero. Every so often a guest would appear in our living room and ask if they could dial up the difficulty. "Go right ahead," was my response, and I was frequently amazed by their prowess manipulating a toy guitar and following those rainbow dots that came streaming across the screen. On all those occasions, I never met a single "real" guitar player. Friends who played "real" guitar scoffed at the charade I had made my avocation. 

It was all a vast conspiracy created to get pikers such as myself the vague feeling of playing loud music, becoming a facsimile of a rock star in the comfort and privacy of my own home. Wish fulfillment in the most clunky possible way. 

Which is pretty much how I feel about AI. Like going to an improv show and having the performers ask, "Okay, give us a situation." Then, "Alright, give us a couple characters." Finally, "Now give us a bunch of funny things to say and do." 

Creating amusing videos to fill up your stream? Memes that you were too lazy to create yourself? How about give that bit of imagination you have an extra creative shove? No matter that the end product is the result of every funny bit created before it, but we'll just call that homage.

Not theft. 

My wife and I will soon be marketing our own version called "Novel Hero." Right from that same living room where you once pretended to play guitar, you too can be a "novelist." Don't have the time or energy to push yourself to near madness looking for that perfect sentence? Don't worry. Artificial Intelligence has your back. Heck, half an idea is better than no idea at all. And if you're more inclined to the visual arts, coming next fall, "Paint Hero." You don't have to be a Picasso, especially since we've already got all his best bits right here in a box. 

On Medium.  

Hostage Situation

 Somewhere around the third or fourth song of their set, I used the arena's wi-fi to find out just how old The Electric Light Orchestra's Jeff Lynne was. Seventy-six. This number played in my head along with the band's greatest hits as I watched the guitar tech come in from the wings to drape another instrument over the neck of this apparently frail old gentleman. This impression was further reinforced later in the show when Mister Lynne introduced the guitarist and "musical director" of the band who then proceded to introduce the rest of the band by name. Was there a doubt that the nominal leader of the band might not remember the names of his band? 

Yes. I admit that I am spoiled by having watched Bruce Springsteen age so gracefully by comparison. Please understand that I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the Electric Light Orchestra. These were the sounds of my youth, faithfully reproduced by a group of very capable musicians. And there, center stage in the spotlight was the man who composed produced and brought so much of that music to life. Wunderkind and the only surviving Wilbury, I was bookending an experience I began forty-three years ago when I first saw ELO in concert. This time I brought my wife and son, to share in all the nostalgic joy that was bound to issue forth. 

I got that. Greatest hits and lasers. At times I was swept up in my reverie, but I couldn't shake the image of this old guy giving thumbs up to the audience after each number, thanking the crowd but seemingly detached from the actual experience we were all sharing. This was the "Over and Out" tour, as clear a message as any that this would be the last time we would be seeing Jeff Lynne playing in front of a paying audience. For most artists, there is a moment when they address the crowd: "How ya doin', San Francisco?" There was none of that. Just the music. And the lasers. 

Wasn't that enough? 

It got me to thinking about reports that Frnakie Valli, now ninety years old, is currently on tour, struggling to effectively lip-sync to the Four Seasons' greatest hits. Frankie's rep had this to say: “Frankie is doing what he loves to do at ninety. We should all be so lucky.” 

Ironically, it was back in 1981 when I first saw Jeff Lynne perform that the knock against him and his band was that they were often not playing but just pantomiming to pre-recorded tracks. 

We should all be so lucky. 

Over and out, ELO. 

Rock On

 I don't generally do requests, but I got a text from a college friend that tweaked that nerve. That nerve that drives the word-linking process to the actual sitting down and generating sentences. He started, cleverly enough, with a link to a Bruce Springsteen performance of his song Ghost of Tom Joad. Tom Morello, guitarist for Rage Against the Machine appeared with Bruce in this clip, and it raised the question of guitars and noises made with them. From there, it was my friend's opinion that auto-tune is a "technology with great potential that has been abused horribly by subpar vocalists." 

I could not argue with that viewpoint. But I felt more inclined to discuss the noises made with electric guitars. This was the guy who introduced me to Robert Fripp, Adrian Belew and all the wonderful sounds of King Crimson. It was his passion for six strings and his understanding of the way they could be used to make music that simultaneously crushed my dreams of playing rock guitar at the same instant the furthered my passion for the music other people were making. He showed up in this blog once upon a time before. See if you can pick him out. 

There are two profound memories of this man's guitar prowess that come to the fore in my mind: Him sitting in the hallway of my apartment, straddling the front wheel of a bicycle, plucking at the spokes in a contemplative re-imagining of the way Mr. Spock played his Vulcan lute. The other vision is that of lugging his amp into the bathroom of our freshman dorm, turning it up to eleven and watching the terrified faces of the boys reacting to the power chords he slammed into that tile echo chamber. 

Ultimately, he grew up to be a physician. Not a musician. Not professionally anyway. Which brings some of the same pains I feel when people watch me make cartoons. "Why did you give it up?" 

I didn't give it up. Neither did he. Those things slipped down the ladder to avocation. The talent to make interesting sounds or shapes does not die an easy death. On the contrary. They live on in our hearts and minds while our hands are busy writing today's assignment on the board or saving the lives of those who need saving. 

And when I hear that roar of a guitar, even if it's through the speaker of my phone as I remember that time when I saw it. I heard it. I felt it. In the hallway of my apartment. In the dorm bathroom. 

Auto-tune sucks. Rock and roll is forever. 

Rock Of Ages

 "Never trust anyone over thirty," was the adage that was tossed around frequently when I was eight or nine years old. But I do think it's important to consider that age and wisdom are often found in the same place, if only because a person makes enough wrong turns that eventually they start making the right ones and suddenly the know exactly how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop. 

That being said, I would like to point out that last week Roger Daltrey celebrated his eightieth birthday. He has been married to his second wife for fifty-three years. He outlived the drummer in his band by forty-six years and counting. He was diagnosed back in 2015 with viral meningitis, and after a lengthy convalescence, he was able to go back into the studio with the other surviving member of the Who and record a new album in 2019. Then he and Pete went out on the road one more time. 

That was way back when he was in his seventies. 

I bring this up because this is the fellow who, at the ripe old age of twenty-one, declared "hope I die before I get old." 

Ah, youth. 

Here was are, pushing the limits and definitions of age around to suit ourselves, complaining about putting an eighty year old man in the White House. Mick Jagger is eighty years old. He and some of the other Stones just put out a new album that is as good as anything that the have released in years. They are hittng the road to play stadiums full of fans from eight to eighty. With a guitar player who is also eighty and has looked it for the past forty. 

I have tickets to see a seventy-four year old Bruce Springsteen later this month. I would have seen him some months ago, but a bout of peptic ulcer disease kept him from making that date. Age is just a number we tell ourselves. Those of us who are over thirty, anyway. 

Some People Really Should Back Down

 A story about Tom Petty (the late): Way back in 1984, while he was pushing himself and his band through the completion of the album that would become Southern Accents, he became frustrated upon hearing yet another disappointing demo track. At which point, Tom hit the wall. Actually hit a wall in the studio. With his left hand. The one he used to play the guitar. In his words, he "completely shattered my hand. I shattered it. To powder.” Initial X-rays and doctor's prognosis suggested that he might not ever play the guitar again. There were wags, at the time including yours truly, who made jokes about "Tom Petty and the Handbreakers."

That story has a happy ending. Eight months later, after lots of physical therapy and plenty of practice, Tom Petty was playing the guitar again. He went right on doing so until 2017, when he stopped playing here on earth and took his act to play the great gig in the sky. 

I relate this story because the kind of passion that existed in this man would probably not have allowed someone to do a very poor cover of one of his songs. And promote it on Faux News and other right wing outlets. The song to which I refer is "I Won't Back Down," released in 1989 as the lead single from his solo album Full Moon Fever. It has been recorded by the wife of one of the Trump Spawn. Subsequently it has become an anthem of sorts for the poor, tormented family whose fortune is being reevaluated even as we speak. Lines like "You can stand me up at the gates of Hell, but I won't back down," take on a special sort of ring when they come slithering out of one of these folk's mouths. Doubling down on this pity party, Lara Trump insists that her version is being "shadowbanned" on outlets such as Spotify and iTunes. That's what is keeping it from becoming the monster hit that is should be. 

Way back when it was released, Tom's version peaked at number twelve on the Billboard Chart. Lara whine-tweeted, "Why doesn't my song appear when you search 'I Won't Back Down'???" Perhaps because she, like so many of her clan, does not understand how things work. "They wouldn't put my song on the radio 'cause it was too political, and I think it's time we as conservatives start fighting back," she continued. 

Maybe she doesn't understand history. 

In 2000, Tom Petty sent a cease and desist letter to the Bush campaign, insisting that they stop using that song. He later played it for Al Gore at his home after Gore conceded the election to Bush. In 2020, his estate sent a letter to the former game show host's campaign that read, in part, “Trump was in no way authorized to use this song to further a campaign that leaves too many Americans and common sense behind. Both the late Tom Petty and his family firmly stand against racism and discrimination of any kind. Tom Petty would never want a song of his used for a campaign of hate. He liked to bring people together.” After the election, President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris played “I Won’t Back Down” at their victory speech in Wilmington, Delaware. Petty’s family later wrote on Instagram that they were “touched to see Tom included on such an important night in America.”

In short, Lara: The song is great. We like the song. We just don't like you. 

No Surrender

"Did you ever get the feeling that we are just talking to ourselves? All our venting and outrage and facts about how sick the Republican Party have become, and the peril our country is in, is preaching to the converted? We’re not converting anyone. We are talking to each other."

This was the rhetorical question raised by Steven Van Zandt. He was asking on behalf of a great cross section of the country. A great section of this country that is cross. Cross with the wall of indifference or outright denial of facts and evidence. Upset by having to share space with people who blindly follow the "leadership" of their party into the political and moral abyss. Whether it is the pleas to ignore past behavior and sins of their candidates or the exhortation to commit armed insurrection, it would seem that half the country seems content to watch as expectations for our elected officials continues to slip further away from the high standards set by the very founding fathers they pretend to admire.

So, first of all, let's get that "what does Bruce Springsteen's guitar player know about politics?" out of the way. In 1985, "Little Steven" left the E Street Band to put together a coalition of artists who would speak out against Apartheid in South Africa. The light shone by Steven and those Artists Against Apartheid helped bring necessary attention to the system of segregation or discrimination on grounds of race that had held sway by the white nationalist rule for decades. And if that weren't enough, there is also Teach Rock, a free set of curriculum and activities for teachers to use popular music and culture to help engage students. Did I mention this is free? And that this foundation was the brainchild of (checks notes) Steven Van Zandt? 

So back in 1985, when Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band was experiencing the highest level of superstardom, Steven walked away. He went off to be, as he describes it, "the political guy." Far from languishing, he was able to use his knowledge and understanding to promote causes and point out injustice wherever he found it. Even when he rejoined the E Street Band in 1995. 

Which begs the question he asked, posed at the beginning of this piece: How do we affect a world that has become insulated to the absurd grotesqueries of what we refer to as "The Republican Party?" Like the words of Tommy Tuberville, former football coach and first term senator from Alabama: "They're not soft on crime. They're pro-crime. They want crime," Tuberville said of Democrats. "They want crime because they want to take over what you got. They want to control what you have. They want reparations because they think the people that do the crime are owed that. Bulls**t. They are not owed that." Did any of his fellow Republicans stand up to face this kind of racist rhetoric? Nope. 

That was left to us who are not under the spell of whatever sickness that currently fuels that big red machine. Try not to give up. 

Hall Of What?

 Let me begin with a long and detailed expression of appreciation for Dolly Parton. Her music, her self-esteem and her worldview are constant reminders of what we could be. Her million dollar donation to Vanderbilt University helped fund the development of the Moderna vaccine. She put her money where her arm is. Or was. Or continues to be. About a year later, she received her shot, and sang a reworked version of her hit Jolene, “Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, I’m begging of you, please don’t hesitate. Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, because once you’re dead, then that’s a bit too late.” In addition to that, she launched and founded the Imagination Library to boost literacy among children. The initiative has mailed more than one hundred thirty-three million free books to children. Her My People Fund gave $9 million to people who lost their homes in fires that took place in 2016 in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Go ahead and stack this on or next to the pile of times she has shown her support for the LGBTQ community, including being a regular and vocal supporter of same-sex marriage. Her stance: “everyone should be with who they love.” This came along with her own special tweak, “I think gay couples should be allowed to marry. They should suffer just like us heterosexuals."

There are few folks in show business who are as self-aware of themselves as Dolly. She knows where she came from, and she knows where she's been. The winner of ten Grammys, ten Country Music Awards, and has been nominated twice for an Oscar for best song, and is still waiting for that call for a revival for the Broadway version of Nine To Five to get that Tony. She has been honored by by The Kennedy Center, and every possible country music certificate and achievement that can be doled out to her is well deserved. 

I am not ready, at this point, to explain her inclusion into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. 

I know that this stance is odd, coming as it does from a guy who had to explain to his wife why Carole King was "rock and roll royalty." While it is true that Ms. Parton did a fine cover of Stairway To Heaven on her album Horns & Halos, complete with banjo and fiddle accompaniment, I don't know if this qualifies her for Rock and Roll. Last time I checked, you weren't getting into the Country Music Hall of Fame without a Stetson. Johnny Cash? I can get that, he came up with Elvis. Glen Campbell hasn't made the jump, even though he played guitar for the Monkees and the Beach Boys. 

So maybe I should open my heart to the idea that Dolly is so great and powerful that she can transcend this particular barrier, and I will let the voters decide, but I figure her next prize should probably come from the Nobel Committee. 

Medium Rare

 At my best, I was a wizard at Guitar Hero. On Medium. I cranked away and pushed myself through each and every song, including the bonus rounds. On Medium. For a prolonged period, way past when it was cool to be playing pretend guitar, standing in front of my television focusing all my attention on the screen, anticipating the flourishes of which there were a medium amount, and doing my very best not to fail.

But was it my very best? On a few occasions I took the opportunity to up my game. I flipped the lever that pushed me into the Hard Realm, and found myself clunking and thudding through songs I thought I knew by heart. I did. On Medium. Adding those extra notes. The Orange Button. I had watched others, savants who had visited my living room with the expressed intent of embarrassing me, take on that next level and showed me that it was indeed possible. 

For them.

I thought of all those plastic models that lined the shelves of my room and eventually hung from the ceiling on fishing line. I loved to construct planes and cars and monsters and ships and all manner of things from kits. I lived in a neighborhood where boys my age were all doing similar things. The difference? I was on Medium. I sometimes painted my spaceships and airplanes and creatures. Sometimes I would even remember to trim the excess plastic off the parts when I twisted them off the frames they came from on the box. I worked fast, but mostly stuck with the directions, but I was never at the level of detail that my friends were. One of whom took great joy out of showing me how he had taken an Afrikan Korps officer and painted his insignias just like a photo he had noticed on the box, and on this bit of plastic no bigger than the tip of his thumb, he had taken an needle to paint the lenses of the binoculars around the Kommander's binoculars that hung on his chest.

This was not me.

I was interested in completing the model. Then looking forward to slapping together the next one. I was, to put it mildly, "into completion." 

Fast forward to a few nights ago, when I sat in front of my computer, playing Civilization. Civilization IV, to be precise. I had been given the newest version a year before by my son, who figured that I must have finished the challenges available on a game that was nearly twenty years old. The one I continued to play after sampling the updated graphics and new details available in the update. I had become very proficient at the Chieftain level, one notch up from the beginning setting for Settler. I felt confidence in this realm and stuck with it, landing again and again at the Domination Victory. I had dominated once again. 

On Medium. 

Which seemed pretty victorious to me. 

The Practice

 I am grateful that I took all those piano lessons. I admit that I may not have always shown it. It felt, at the time, like a chore that I was saddled with and not the kind of chore could be completed and then move on. It was a commitment to time I pretended not to have. Practicing felt like homework, and why would I volunteer for any more of that? 

In my head, even now, I imagine myself sitting down at the keyboard, cracking my knuckles and proceeding to play all today's biggest hits. I was never going to be a guitar player, though the idea that I might stayed in my wish box for years after that possibility closed. I could have stuck with the piano. I lived with one for eighteen years. I learned to read music and understand how it worked. But never enough to master it. 

Those piano lessons stuck with me. All these years later, when I listen to a song, I can see the notes flying at me. I appreciate the math. The composition. There was just enough music theory in my lessons to build an understanding of sharps, flats, major and minor. Somewhere in there, I even had a little vocal training wedged in there. I can look back now and say that all this knowledge was important to creating the person I became. 

But I wanted out. I could not see myself doing the things that it would take to make me anything but a pretty good piano player. Instead, my focus switched to playing tuba. I had the lungs for it, and all that prior music knowledge helped me move right along. When I finished junior high, I finished piano lessons. Somewhere in my head, I had equated piano lessons with something that little kids did. At fifteen, I was all grown up and ready to take the world by storm. Me and my tuba. 

My father used to grumble about my choice of instruments. Why couldn't I play piccolo or something that would fit in my pocket or backpack? Whenever it was time to haul the school's sousaphone from school to home or vice versa, it was a project that required all the space we had in the back of the station wagon. I was part of a band, after all, and rehearsing is something that bands do. I was down with that, because it was mostly a social thing. Even though I was in a band with other kids in band, it was still social. It was something I wasn't getting with piano. 

When I played in the high school stage band, I watched the keyboard player. He was pretty good. So good, in fact, that he ended up playing with Gloria Estefan after he graduated. I didn't get the sense that he practiced. Ever. He just sat down and music poured out of him. That was the talent thing. Somewhere along the line, I figured that was what was missing from my musical experience. 

And now, the piano that I grew up with sits behind me, having made the trip across the country after being lovingly sent to me by my mother to look after. When I turn around, my mind fills with long ago afternoons of scales and arpeggios, metronomes and fingering charts. 

It's never too late. 

Not Dead Yet

 There is a scene in the classic film This Is Spinal Tap in which the befuddled rockers try to understand why being labeled "sexist" is a bad thing upon their release of their album Smell The Glove. "Well, so what? What's wrong with being sexy?" wonders guitar virtuoso Nigel Tufnel. Their manager opines to the record exec, "It's 1982!" 

For historical perspective, it wasn't until 1985 that People Magazine began publishing their annual Sexiest Man Alive issue. That one featured a twenty-nine year old Mel Gibson on the cover. The first thing I would like to point out is that the balloting excludes, by definition, dead guys. Dead guys are not traditionally thought of as being particularly sexy, but they are notably sexist as a group. That's where a lot of your sexist thought originated: Dead guys. Misogyny is an ancient Greek word, after all. 

So you can see how tangled this web gets: sexy and sexist seem to come as a package. Now it's 2021, and People Magazine has selected Paul Rudd as this year's Sexiest Man Alive. Fifty-two year old Paul Rudd. We love Paul Rudd, but is he really the Sexiest Man Alive? Certainly age has very little to do with it, since Sean Connery was seven years older than Mister Rudd back in 1989 when he won the title. Sexy is as sexy does, it would seem. The same could be said of sexism, I expect. 

Selecting Paul Rudd is a pretty safe move by the crew at People Magazine. not the open-shirt-smoldering-gaze crew that we might have expected. Does that mean they are not being sexist? Or are they simply making a good faith gesture in a male-dominated planet that does not have to wait a year to laud women for their sexiness. This People Magazine thing is just an annual distraction from the flood of sexist depictions of women regardless of their age and station. 

And just in case you were wondering, I already told People Magazine to take my name out of the running, so you can't get me for conflict of interest. 

But He Could Play A Guitar Just Like Ringing A Bell

 "Clapton is God." That's what fans used to spray paint on walls back in the day. Eric Clapton describes his reaction at then as, "disgusted and pleased at the same time." I was not one of those fans. I always appreciated his talent, but his blues always seemed somewhat self-imposed. I found his hovering around the Beatles amusing, and his friendship with George Harrison bordering on the sycophantic. Clapton wrote Layla as a paean to his best friend's wife. Whom he later married after she initially turned him down. That rejection set young Eric on a four year heroin bender, from which he popped up long enough to catch the ex-Ms. Harrison on the rebound. 

By his own admission, Eric Clapton was self-medicated for the better part of twenty years, right up until the moment that his son Conor fell from the balcony of his fifty-third story apartment in New York City. Conor's mother was not the ex-Ms. Harrison but rather another woman with whom Eric had been having an affair with while married to the ex-Ms. Harrison. It was after this and a string of tragedy that has been fodder for rock journalists for decades that Mister Clapton decided to get sober. 

Happy ending?

Well, except for the part where it turns out that Eric Clapton is a vocal anti-vaxxer, going so far as to record a song with fellow rock dinosaur Van Morrison called Stand and Deliver, smearing the public health's response to COVID-19. In interviews, he has complained about his reaction to the vaccine which he claims he was coerced into. He says that he was afraid that he might never play again after a reaction to his second shot. His stated rant about the response to the virus was, “I’ve been a rebel all my life, against tyranny and arrogant authority, which is what we have now, but I also crave fellowship, compassion and love, and that I find here. I believe with these things we can prevail.”

Two things should be noted at this point: Eric Clapton recovered from the vaccine's side effects, and he has not contracted the virus. 

So, it turns out he's not God after all. He's a guitar player of note. 

Eruption

 The story goes like this: Back in 1979, a friend of mine was inspecting my record collection and stopped abruptly at the V's. He swooned over the first album in that section, alphabetically. He raved, he plotzed, he sang praises most high. "Oh that," I said somewhat dismissively. "It's pretty good." It was then and there that my friend engineered a trade: his copy of Led Zeppelin 2 for my Van Halen 1. I accepted his terms. I felt that I was easily getting the better part of the deal, "Whole Lotta Love?" "Ramble On?" "Moby Dick?" This was certified rock and roll history I was holding, not some screeching debut by some southern California hair metal band. 

A really good southern California hair metal band. With a guitarist who I already had to admit could make music and sounds like I had never heard before. His technique of playing with both hands on the neck, sometimes displaying a knowledge of music beyond the garage was already making him a legend. But he was no Jimmy Page, right?

Six years later, it would be those screeching riffs that would be used by Marty McFly to impress his father that he had come from a distant planet to melt his face. The idea that Eddie Van Halen was an alien was perhaps not unfounded. How else to explain this virtuosity? 

A lot of people don't remember hearing Eddie speak, perhaps because he was often drowned out by his lead singer's bravado. I do. I can remember all the times he rolled his eyes and had just a few words to express the frustrations of being a guitar god sometimes obscured by a Warner Brothers cartoon villain in assless chaps. 

And he married Valerie Bertinelli. This had the effect of both making me righteously jealous and elevating his status. Eddie Van Halen could do it all, and no one knew that better than my good friend and college roommate Darren. He had seen Van Halen live, and had the T-shirts to prove it. Darren wasn't from Oklahoma, he was from Rocklahoma. He is the one who gifted me with the story about how Eddie and his bandmates spent more on beer than they did on the rest of the production of their video of "Hot For Teacher." 

When Yosemite Sam and Eddie parted ways in 1985, it was Van Halen that thrived and survived with a slightly less cartoonish front man. It was in 1988 that I had my closest brush with seeing them play live. I was in the emergency room the night before they played just up the hill at Folsom Field in Boulder. I had torn three of the four ligaments in my left knee and I was asked to wait while the flurry of pre-concert ODs and fight victims were brought in. The next day, as I laid on the couch in my apartment not far from the stadium, I awaited reconstructive surgery, I could make out many of the songs coming through in waves. 

A lifetime later, my son and I came within a forty minute drive of heading out to Red Rocks to see the recently reunited lineup of Van Halen. 

We didn't go. Maybe because I was too old, or maybe because I was holding out for the Led Zeppelin reunion. But I regret it. 

Especially now when the news of Eddie succumbing to cancer came across the waves. It created a profound silence in my life, which could only be cured by playing "Eruption" at maximum volume on my home stereo. For a moment, I was seventeen again, and I hope that wherever my copy of Van Halen's first album ended up, that it got a spin. Edward Van Halen not only stomped on the Terra, he rocked it. Hard. He will be missed. Aloha, Eddie. 

Rhapsodizing

 I remember the first time I heard Bohemian Rhapsody. It was presented to me on a mix tape made by my older brother. It was the first song on side one, so there was no way I could avoid it. Not that I wanted to. After that first listen, let the tape roll. I listened to the rest of side one. I flipped it over and listened to side two. There were a lot of gems: some Elton John, a great chunk of Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells, music that was brand new to my thirteen year old ears. 

But it was that song on side one that brought me back. Over and over again. I hit the stop button. Rewind. Play. For every time I listened to the rest of that tape, I listened to Bohemian Rhapsody three times. The harmonies, the piano intro, the guitar solo, the bombast. Six minutes. Who made pop songs that were six minutes long? 

Didn't matter. Not to me. Not back then. I would have been happy to hear the nine minute version. Twelve. No worries. I could just rewind and play it again. Eventually, of course, I had my very own copy of the vinyl album from whence the single came, A Night At The Opera. Yes, there were other amazing sounds to be heard on this record. Love songs to cars and others, stylistically all over the map. Which were wonderful and pleasant but nothing approached the sonic mysteries of the first Queen song I ever heard. 

Forty-five years later, I still reach for the volume knob when I hear Freddie Mercury lament the share of sand kicked in his face. I turn it up. A lot of other songs have joined the list of songs that I turn up as a matter of course. Born To Run. Limelight. Sabotage. And others. But this was the first. And when the smoke clears and the gong sounds, I'm ready to press rewind and do it all over again. For another six minutes. For another forty-five years. 

Songs My Father Played For Me

 It never occurred to me that I should be afraid of The Beatles. Even as I harbored all kinds of fear for The Rolling Stones. And The Who. And especially Led Zeppelin. Those were the guys who were devil-worshiping drug-taking hippies whose music would most certainly cause me to fall into either or both of those traps. I might have been scared off by their appearance, since I was introduced to the Fab Four when they were still relatively clean cut. I would politely suggest that even the straightest hairstyle and a snappy suit would make Keith Richards look clean cut. Or Keith Moon. Or Jimmy Page. Mostly Keith Moon. 

Part of this essential favoritism was probably formed out of the way John, Paul, George and Ringo entered my life. Besides hearing their delicately crated pop songs on my older brother's stereo from an age that I cannot precisely remember, they were also stars of their own cartoon on TV. This comfort was expanded by having John and George voiced by the same actor who brought Boris Badenov, Paul Frees. During this time, The Who was making a "rock opera" about the torment of a deaf, dumb and blind boy. The Stones were at their Satanic Majesties Request. And Led Zeppelin was making records in a dazed and confused state, probably in a mansion once owned by Aleister Crowley. 

It wasn't until I sat down with the White Album and its attendant enclosed photos of the band that I began to reassess my feelings for the lads from Liverpool. These were no longer the identically clad and shorn young men to whom I had become accustomed. They had become, well, hippies. And that "song" on side four? All that noise and mumbling and goings on for more than eight minutes? I was used to being able to sing along with these guys. What had happened?

Fast forward to 2007, when I took my son to Best Buy to purchase our first version of Guitar Hero: Legends of Rock. My son's enthusiasm was dampened initially by the appearance of Guns and Roses' guitarist Slash on the cover. He gave me a worried look and asked, "Do we like him?" I assured my son that everything would be alright. In time. First he would have to experience "Welcome to the Jungle," and defeat that scary guy in a guitar battle for the ages. 

He got over his fear. And he didn't even think to ask about "Paint It Black." It was all just part of the soundtrack of his youth. Then it was time for us both to get over our nervous feelings about Black Sabbath. 

LP

So maybe you've noticed that the subtitle of this blog is "Short Attention Span Theater." Or maybe you've been too rushed to take the time to read down that far. Which is understandable. This is the age in which we live. It's a "don't bother to read the subtitles kind of world" in which we live. It's hard to keep up.
Until now.
All of a sudden we have been gifted with all this extra time. Time to learn how to play guitar, as a friend of mine from work has done. He's got the beginning part of Bob Marley's "Jammin'" almost down. And he continues to work on it.
Because he's got the time. My wife and I have completed watching three seasons of The Good Place. It's a show about being trapped somewhere between heaven and hell and it's entirely relatable currently, but of course back in the days before Quarantine we didn't have time to watch. At least that's what we told ourselves. And best of all, Netflix takes the commercials out. Saving us all that time to learn how to play guitar.
And set up Zoom meetings.
It has occurred to me that back in the day there was no producers or disc jockeys telling Beethoven that that Ninth Symphony is really boss but does it have to be that long? Like the scene in Bohemian Rhapsody where resorts to going to a radio station to personally invite them to play his band's six minute song. Take this to the current status of pop music where songs are released and albums are rarely created to be taken as a whole. We simply don't have the time to listen to anything for more than two minutes and forty-five seconds. During this isolation period, I have been listening to Pink Floyd records start to finish. Sargent Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is a long title for an album that should be listened to at a sitting. Just your luck! We happen to be sitting for forty to fifty minutes at a stretch these days. Why not enjoy a little extended play?
My sainted mother and I were talking movies the other night, as we have done straight along, but I confess I reach out to her a little more often these days. I wanted to know how she enjoyed the last Avengers movie because I needed validation for my nerdiness from my mother. And we agreed that it was quite epic, which had the subtext of meaning "long." Not that we didn't enjoy it. When I watched it the first time, I was ready to do laps. Yet I am still willing to participate in our culture's obsession with keeping it short. I make my share of jokes about Martin Scorsese's The Irishman. "Oh, it's so long! Why can't it be shorter?" Okay. Maybe they were more whines than jokes, but seemed important to diminish it because of the time it took to watch it. Shameful, when I consider how I reacted to a friend of mine complaining about Peter Jackson's King Kong going on for more than three hours. I was agog. King Kong? Peter Jackson? Why couldn't it have been six hours?
These are unique times. Time to reflect. Savor. Enjoy. Between the mounting fear and depression. And I could go on and on about this, but you've got things to do.

Sacrifice

In the minutes leading up to the moment when everything changed, I was asking one of our fifth graders about his last basketball game, the one scheduled for that coming Saturday. "Aw," he complained, "They cancelled it because of the Coronavirus." This was a shame indeed because his team had gone undefeated and only had the mild formality of playing a team they had already beat to have a perfect record. Instead all they got was that lousy asterisk*.
It was later that day when word came down that not only was Saturday's basketball cancelled, but so was the rest of school. As the staff rushed around preparing work for students they assumed they would see in a couple weeks, there was little thought of how we would eventually come back together again. It was, by most accounts at the time, going to be a prolonged Spring Break.*
We went home after that, having reminded as many parents as we could that there would be no school for two weeks. Happily, most of them were able to make sense of this pronouncement and we set about imagining how we might deal with the inevitable loss of school days. By Monday of the following week, our return date had been pushed back to May.*
Now there was talk around our district and across our state about the possibility that "normal" was still quite a ways away and field trips and year-end activities like proms and commencements might have to be postponed, altered, or eliminated altogether. All those championship games took a backseat to public health.*
Somewhere down near the midpoint of California, our son was completing his coursework. He had received an email saying that his June commencement was on hold until further notice. A few days later he received another email from his university telling him that his diploma was in the mail. The family joke that erupted out of this was that a courier would drive past his house and toss his sheepskin on the lawn in a bio-hazard bag. A honk and a wave. Congratulations!*
Birthday celebrations are being held online. Easter egg hunts were conducted in living rooms. My wife insists we are beginning to detect facial expressions from the eyes poking out above masks. People who have not picked up their guitar in years are taking lessons from Al Gore's Internet. *
Hopefully these things that we have maintained or shifted to new platforms will make up for the months that have straight up disappeared. There will be more undefeated seasons. There will be more commencements. But not like these.*
*everything changed

My John Prine Story

So, here's my John Prine story:
When I turned forty, a couple of my buddies decided we should all go down to Key West and relive the trip we took to Florida when we were in our twenties. It was very different this time, if only because there was no foldout bed in our room with "DO NOT USE" scrawled across the mattress. We were doing things in a much more upscale way. We were celebrating another decade of getting through the getting through.
Something that was still the same was that we had one designated drinker with us, but since we were in Margaritaville proper, there were still plenty of visits to the local taverns.
At this point, I suspect that you may be wondering how all of this has anything to do with John Prine. I'm getting there. That mention of Margaritaville should bring to mind Jimmy Buffett. I will give you the next leg up which is the connection between Mister Buffett and Steve Goodman. Steve Goodman, for the uninitiated is the source of a great many songs, many of which were sung by Jimmy and enjoyed in his own right. And Steve Goodman was friends with fellow singer/songwriter John Prine.
So by now you're probably getting a sense of where this conch train is heading.
In all of the various establishments we found ourselves in, there was almost always somebody at the mic, strumming a guitar, singing songs about the islands, or the sea, or missing someone who had gone off to the islands or the sea. There are a lot of opportunities for the folks who find themselves in Key West to be A) entertained by a singer/songwriter or B) engaged in some sort of performance of songs written by themselves. Or anyone else.
Starting to get pretty interesting, huh?
Well, it was getting late when we stepped in out of the rain and into the bar of the Best Western Hotel. This was actually the second time we had landed in this spot, the first time we had been shooed out by our designated drinker. I assumed that they must have been out of those little paper umbrellas for his cocktail, and we pressed on. And just as abruptly, we were steered back, and this time we ordered our tonic and lime and whatever tropical mixture that would suit the drinker. We took a table in a mostly empty room, where I noticed a piano. I assumed that the player of that piano must be on break.
I was wrong. In another quirky twist of fate, my friends hopped up from the table and our designated drinker took his place at the keyboard. The two of them tore into a cleverly personalized version of "A Pirate Looks At Forty" just for me. A few other patrons smiled and took in the moment. I was impressed and embarrassed but extraordinarily pleased with the tribute. They finished to a round of applause that exceeded polite.
And then one of the hotel employees took up the mic, and my friend was nudged off the piano bench in favor of her own accompanist. She dedicated her next song to me, because my name had been announced as the birthday boy. The song she sang was "Angel From Montgomery." Do not ask me why this stranger had somehow become convinced that I would love nothing more than to be serenaded by a stranger on this muggy summer night in Key West. But I guess you can imagine what happened next.
We went back to our hotel.
Wait. Did I forget to mention that "Angel From Montgomery" was written by John Prine? Not my favorite John Prine song. That honor goes to "Souvenirs." But "Angel From Montgomery" is the only John Prine song I have ever had dedicated to me by a slightly tipsy hotel employee.
COVID-19 reached out and grabbed John Prine from us this past week, and I will miss him and all his music, especially that song. Mister Prine stomped on the Terra, especially the beaches of Key West. He will be missed.
Aloha, John.

Disappointed

It is a wonder that we don't feel crushed
every time we open our eyes.
The thoughts that are in our heads
all those visions and dreams
Out there in the world they diminished
smaller, duller, quieter.
Symphonies composed in our sleep
don't sound like much.
The colors that shone so bright
behind closed eyes
don't exist out where the clouds
often obscure the clouds.
Moving so slowly in the world defined
by gravity and equations.
I wish that I could build those houses
that appear in my mind.
There is more than enough room
inside our heads
to get things done, to create and expand
to fill the rooms we imagine.
I can play guitar, and not just pretend
I can hit all the notes.
When I open my eyes I lose that magic
I can't sing and I can't dance.
But there is one thing that doesn't disappoint
when I open my eyes
All of those imaginary kingdoms and compositions
can be forgotten when I see you.

Listening Wind

Every few years I wake up to find that music technology has passed me by. This was most certainly the case when my son finally coerced his mother and I into using Spotify to listen to music in our home. I gave it my standard test, "play Flying Saucer Safari," and it did not hesitate or flinch. From out of my speakers poured what Trouser Press once referred to as, called it "highly ordinary" and "a sub-Devo mesh of hiccupping vocals, angular tunes with tiresome stop-start rhythms and a high, weedy guitar/organ sound." What does Trouser Press know, really? 
So once that hurdle had been passed, we decided to go all in, asking our home robot to find all the music we cared to hear from that corner of Al Gore's Internet. Abruptly, our CD collection became more physical media holding up our speakers. And while I dance around my living room to the tunes I know and loved from long ago, I worry just a little about how my enjoyment is being paid out to the artists whose music from which I continue to extract joy. This is what I assume my monthly fee is helping to fund. I worry, but I don't stop using the service. The capacity to be able to play Baby Shark with barely a moment's hesitation is invaluable. 
Well, okay. It has a value, and the folks at Spotify have met my price point. Much in the same way that streaming services have all but eliminated my need to purchase tapes, or discs of most any sort. Having a collection used to be something that gave me satisfaction. Then it gave me a hernia when I had to tote all that vinyl from one apartment to the next, and finally across the country. When I moved into my own house, I let those albums go. By that point, I had converted most of those purchases into compact discs. When we had a toddler in the house, we sought to eliminate the disorganization brought on by this proto-audiophile by decanting all our CDs and putting them, along with their attendant artwork, into vinyl sleeves and storing them all in drawers. These were labeled alphabetically for easy filing. 
And now they sit there, as mentioned previously, holding up our speakers as we listen to our streaming music. For tiny percentages of a cent for each play. Meanwhile, the machines make suggestions of music I might like, since I seem to enjoy the Suburban Lawns. The deeper I dig, the more they pile on in front of me. Records I never bought by artists I never really knew. Now all I have to do is ask my home robot to play some Brandi Carlile. Because the kids these days seem to like her just fine. 
Me? I abhor a vacuum. 

Sir Yuksalot

Dying is easy. Comedy is hard. Those are the words most often attributed to Edmund Kean. Mister Kean was a Shakespearean actor in the nineteenth century.  My son, who is a studying theater in college, might agree except that he has disdain for most things Shakespearean. Which, as an undergraduate, is pretty much his job. Poking holes in things that are supposed to be good for you is what students should do. However, having grown up in my house, I don't know if he would argue the sentiment too long. He grew up with a heaping bushel of comic influences. In his early teens, he discovered that the word "pants" has a magical quality to it, and he has used it to his advantage over the years, most memorably when it came time to name our family's Guitar Hero Band: Fiendish Pants.
Meanwhile, tragedy occurs around us every day. Plane crashes. Floods. The lingering presence of Donald J. Trumpf. Finding something funny to say or do while the world continues to disintegrate gets harder and harder. If Shakespeare were writing today, I wonder if he could have maintained his ratio of comedy to tragedy. Lumping the history plays into the tragedy camp, the Bard wrote just about one comedy for every tragedy. For each drama where everyone dies at the end, he wrote one where everyone gets married. Nice job, Will!
Which brings us to the twenty-first century for the sake of this discussion, wherein Peter Farrelly won an Oscar for his movie Green Book. While not a tragedy in the traditional sense, its themes of racism and homophobia seem much more serious than the rest of Mister Farrelly's work. Starting with Dumb and Dumber, he and his brother mined the silly side of the road trip until he decided that would never get him an Academy Award. That being said, I wonder if there is a drawer full of terribly sad screenplays that came roiling out of the minds of Peter and his brother Bob as they struggled to create the giggles found in all those Jim Carrey haircuts. And I wonder if Hamlet would have been funnier if he had a broken front tooth.