I was dispensing some advice to a very good friend recently (unsolicited, which is par for the course in my case) about how to forge a new career when your current situation just gets too unbearable.
“Here’s what you do,” I said. “Make a list of all the things you love to do … and then try to figure out a way you can make some kind of money by playing to your passions and your strengths. Because in the end, that’ll make you happiest … and it’ll make all the hard work you’re going to have to put into it a heck of a lot more palatable if you have a visceral passion for it.
Take me. I love to write. And I love music. More than any single thing in life, I love music. I wake up every day with a tune in my head, and I can honestly say I’m never without one for a minute. I hum to myself if I’m working … I have to have the ear buds with me if I’m exercising … and just about all my emotions can be very easily put to music (at least in my mind).
So what do I do? I write sports. I’m not complaining. It’s been a fabulous career. But it dawned on me -- while I was walking today on one of the most spectacularly unseasonable days in the history of January – that if I could have the dream job of dream jobs, I’d spend the entire day at the piano, or the guitar, and I’d be the entertainer I’ve always wanted to be.
Seriously. Although I’m not going to threaten Lennon & McCartney anytime soon, I’ve been known to pen a song or two. And one was called “The Star of My Own Show,” which is about a guy who fantasizes he’s putting on a concert while hacking around in his basement. Sort of like Guy Patterson banging on the drums while closing down his father’s appliance story in “That Thing You Do.”
Long ago, in another lifetime, I actually wrote a music column … called “Midnight Ramblings.” It was a once-a-week deal for the paper I still work for, and it was during the ‘80s, when I was trying to hang onto my 20s as I was careening toward 30. It was a lark, really. There was a lot going on in music, and it was a wide-open palate.
These days, there’s probably still a lot going on in music, but I’m not as inclined to keep current the way I was back then. At age 58, there’s no way I could ever pass myself as “young,” and I’m afraid I’ve gotten to the point where I say to myself, “well, what IS the point?” If I start rattling off lyrics and factoids about modern music, circa 2012, to the kid who sits at the next series of desks from me, who’s not even 30 (the only other person at my end of the room who would even know anything about those lyrics or factoids), he’s liable to think I’ve flipped my lid.
Besides, you don’t HAVE to branch out as long as you have XM Radio, or you link to Pandora. You can pretty much have it your way with regards to the type of music you listen to. And if you’re like me, and download music like a fiend, you can sit and listen for hours to stuff geared specifically to you, and never hear the same song twice. You can’t do that on XM, where a lot of songs – even the old ones – seem to be in heavy rotation. These days, you never have to branch out and experience the great unknown if you don’t want to.
But if I’m to take my own advice, I would say that it’s time for me to stop shoving my love of music in the background … and to find a way to make it a more dominant part of my life. So hence, I’ll be blogging under the title “Midnight Ramblings” at least once a week.
This is not a new title. It’s the name of the column I wrote. If you’re astute, you’ll know right away that it’s a reference to the Rolling Stones song “Midnight Rambler,” which is off their “Let it Bleed” album. It’s kind of a creepy song, inspired (or so the story goes) by Albert DiSalvo, a/k/a “The Boston Strangler.” I don’t have any special affinity for the song. It’s certainly not my favorite Stones song. I just liked the pun.
I have no idea what I’ll be bringing up in these blogs. Anything and everything, I suppose. A friend recently told me I’m “very eclectic,” which is actually a nice thing to say about someone. It means I’m not a one-trick pony … that my interests are varied.
That’s how I am about music too. I don’t like any particular genre to the exclusion of all others. Conversely, though, I never cared for disco (understatement); never fully understood rap; and have a low tolerance for country/western. However, put on some bluegrass and I’m there.
If I could accurately describe myself, I would say I cringe at any music that’s manipulative or maudlin. That would encompass anything by Barry Manilow, most of John Denver’s repertoire, and (most especially) McArthur Park.
And while I may not always appreciate or understand when bands take sharp turns away from what they do well, I most always respect it. Stagnation and art, to me, are mutually exclusive terms. I always considered it one of modern music’s great tragedies, for example, that the rest of the Beach Boys couldn’t jump out there on the edge and support Brian Wilson when he was trying to make the “Smile” album. Because of that, a tremendous piece of music stayed hidden for almost 40 years.
But they were too worried about breaking out of the surfer/automobile mode, and just couldn’t see where music was heading in the mid-1960s. Brian Wilson was a visionary. He could.
Anyway, while I was walking in the 55-degree January weather, I thought about all of the wonderful things about music … how it stirs you up, calms you down, comforts you, DIS-comforts you (at times), makes you laugh and/or cry; makes you stop in your tracks sometimes; and flat-out leaves you walking on air by its sheer power and/or beauty.
I could go on all day about this, but what I’ve decided to so is come up with 10 random observations based on the songs I heard as I was walking along the boulevard of my home town.
-- With apologies to Christopher Walken and the Blue Oyster Cult, the Stones still win the prize for the best use of the cowbell. It heralds the opening of “Honky Tonk Woman,” one of the best songs they ever recorded. And next time you hear it, really listen to it. Beneath the raunch guitar, that cowbell is always there. So, as the saying goes, “more cowbell.”
-- But when it comes to great Rolling Stones moments, for me it’s the extended guitar solo at the end of “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” off “Sticky Fingers.” Every time I hear it, I lament the fact that Mick Taylor’s tenure with them was so brief.
-- Someone once wrote that an LSD experience was like “going from black and white to color in the Wizard of Oz.” I don’t know about that. I’ve never dropped acid. But I would have to think the aural equivalent of such a profound shift in mood would be the crescendo that bridges the third and fourth movements of “Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.” It is a brooding piece of music, in the key of C Minor, for three movements, with the “three dots and a dash” musical phrase dominant throughout. But after the third movement, the music builds and builds until it explodes into C Major. I don’t know how that registers as an LSD experience, but as a musical experience it’s one of the best ever.
-- There are three songs that I cannot hear and without stopping what I’m doing so that I can experience them totally. One is “Stairway to Heaven,” and I can’t explain that. We’ve all heard that song so much we can probably sing it in our sleep. But I still have to drop everything and listen. The second is “A Day in the Life (Beatles).” It doesn’t matter what else I’m doing. I have to stop dead in my tracks and drink it all in. The third is “Nights in White Satin” by the Moody Blues. There’s something profoundly timeless about all three, even if the extended version of “Nights” has all that hippy-dippy Graeme Edge poetry in it.
-- There is a whole slew of songs I wish I’d written, and genres don’t matter. But of anything I heard today while I was walking, I’d have to say that the fourth movement to Dvorak’s New World Symphony makes me insanely jealous. It is just majestic.
-- Most people would consider “Jessica” by the Allman Brothers to be a neat little guitar song that Dickie Betts wrote for his daughter of the same name. And, of course, it is. Nobody can play it like Dickie Betts either. But there’s a piano bridge between the two main guitar parts that just absolutely knocks you out. I could die happy if I could play piano like that.
-- Has anyone ever stopped and wondered why we, in Boston, celebrate our nation’s independence by making a song that commemorates Napoleon’s defeat by the Russian Army the centerpiece of our civic celebration? Well, we do. Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” is a piece depicting the battle between the French and Russian Armies in 1812 as Napoleon sought to conquer Europe. You can even hear snippets of “Le Marseilles” in it. The ending, with all those bells and cannons, is counterpointed by, what was then, the Russian National Anthem (the Russians successfully defended their homeland against the French, and it’s been said that when all the bells of Moscow peeled at once, you couldn’t hear yourself think). True story: My wife and I, along with some of our friends, used to make the yearly trek onto the Charles River Esplanade to hear the Pops concert on July 4. One year, we got to sit up on the top floor of Emerson College, which was command central. But the year that really stood out for me was the year we walked across the footbridge that crosses Storrow Drive (now named for Arthur Fiedler) after the show ended and could still hear every church bell in Boston ringing like crazy. The church bills were part of the tubular chorus that helps bring the overture to its rousing conclusion.
-- A lot of very knowledgeable people consider Andrew Lloyd Webber a hack. For all his success in musical theater, he doesn’t seem to get the props afforded to, say, Stephen Sondheim. This is hard for me to understand. No disrespect intended to Sondheim, but if I never heard anything from “Sweeney Todd” ever again, I could live with that. But I bring up Webber because of one song in “Jesus Christ, Superstar,” and that’s “Everything’s All Right.” It’s in 5/4 time … a key signature made famous by Dave Brubeck in “Take Five.” For a guy just coming out of the chute and introducing himself to what can be a really snotty social set (I’m talking about theatre critics here), that’s pretty damn daring. J.C. Superstar has some pretty sophisticated stuff on it … and there was similar sophistication in “Evita.” Maybe, to some, he exhausted his creativity after he split with Tim Rice (after Evita). You couldn’t prove it by me. I always like his stuff.
-- How could so many people be so wrong about “Pet Sounds” by the Beach Boys? When it came out in 1966, it barely caused a ripple … and that’s with two bonafide classics on it (“Wouldn’t It Be Nice” and “God Only Knows”). I don’t count “Sloop John B,” because that was shoved down their throat by the record label so there could be a “hit” on the album. Brian Wilson says it’s the only song he ever recorded that he didn’t like. “Good Vibrations” is still, to me, the most wondrous rock ‘n’ roll song ever written. But “God Only Knows” is a masterpiece by any definition you want to use. How “Pet Sounds” could have been so poorly received by the music cognoscenti back then is simply beyond my comprehension. I guess it’ll be forever cursed with the label “ahead of its time.”
-- But if you want to talk about an entire GROUP being ahead of its time, how about the Buffalo Springfield? How could they have missed with a lineup that included, in its original incarnation, Stephen Stills, Neil Young and Richie Furey (with Jim Messina coming later) miss? Easy. Drugs. Jealousies. The times. And an eclectic musical palate that made them difficult to pigeon-hole. Today, on my iPod, however, I heard Neil Young’s “Mr. Soul.” And being the aficionado I am about these things, I remembered reading somewhere that the record company that recorded Springfield didn’t want Young to sing lead on any of his songs because his voice sounded “too weird.” Well duh! It still sounds weird. But “Mr. Soul” is one fine song, with Stills’ ferocious guitar solo in the middle adding much spice to it.
Well, that should about do it for now. Anything more and anyone reading this might eventually explode. Let’s see what this blog brings in the future.
Thanks for reading.
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