It Was Thirty Years Ago Today...

...but Sergeant Pepper had long since retired.

Anyway, this is what I was doing exactly 30 years ago today. It was the final day of my junior year at Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda Maryland and The Ramblin' Beach Guys (my old High school band) got permission to play a short set at lunchtime out in "the quad."

From left to right, we were:

• Danny Miller (lead guitar),now a film editor in Hollywood.
• Peter Saal (bass), who only played with us a few times and of whom I have lost track.
• David Halperin (singer), who went on to work on presidential campaigns and in the White house and who is now at the center for American progress.
• John Heilprin (drums), now the AP's United Nations correspondent.
  
• John Krivit (sometimes bass and mostly singer), who now teaches audio and media technology in colleges around Boston.
• And me (rhythm guitar), now a toiling minor functionary in a small state's government.

According to Danny, who is archivist for this once little-known and now mostly unknown group, we played a short set of rock and punk that day:

• Route 66 (probably The Stones version)
• Rockaway Beach (The Ramones)
• Is She Really Going Out With Him (Joe Jackson and a challenge for a novice guitarist)
• Lip Service/I Remember You (Elvis Costello and ?)
• Surrender (Cheap Trick)
• Imagination (The Stones)
• Hippy Hippy Shake (We probably based ours on the version played by The Razz in those days)
  

I think it's interesting that on two June 20s I am playing a small, supporting role in a performance. Rhythm guitar in 1979 and the briefly on-stage Simon in Stinkin' Rich in 2009.

There's a Tiny Little Buddha in There?

On the windowsill in my office, up there with a small chunk of New Hampshire granite, a logo Slinky, and a tiny ceramic turtle-shaped planter (why do I have that?), I have a small red plastic box. It looks like a 1960s-era transistor radio, with a single speaker, a switch and a volume wheel.

It is a Buddha Machine, from FM3; "a little plastic box that plays music." In fact it contains two short loops of music that repeat in a drone that can be conducive to meditation, or intense work, or just weirding-out your co-workers.

I bought mine on-line a few years back after reading about it in The New Yorker. They are made by a couple of musicians in China -- one Chinese, the other a Westerner -- who also perform with groups of the machines as FM3.

Sasha Frere-Jones has written about the Buddha Machine again, both in the magazine and on his blog. I think it was his tip before that led me to the original. The news this time is that there is an updated version of the Buddha Machine, with more loops and options. There is also, apparently, an iPhone application.

Frere-Jones also points to a page with samples of some of the loops and to a cool site that offers a virtual wall of loop-playing machines that can be mixed and matched and played in dizzying combinations.

Think how much fun I can have with my office-mates now!

What Music Do I Like?

I have eclectic taste in music. When I try to explain or demonstrate my taste, folks often simplify the discussion to one word "weird." I guess that's fair, my taste buds are spread all over the musical tongue.

I heard a piece on NPR this evening, however, that might help to illustrate what I love about the many different musics I like: an openness.

The story is about a group of Nashville session players who set aside their formulaic day-job playing once each week to play as The Time Jumpers in a regular Monday evening gig at a place called The Station Inn. They play standards from across the American music spectrum; generally as western swing. They play for love, fun, and friendship. They are not trying to be "successful." And they sound great.

The part of the NPR story that caught my ear was toward the end, when guitarist Andy Reiss explained what he likes about playing this way:

The beauty of music is [that] when your ears are wide open, your heart is wide open. You're not even thinking. You're listening and you're part of something, and everybody is doing that. When that happens, it's pure magic. And as a musician, you know how rare that is.

What struck me is how similar this is to the way that the members of the Grateful Dead, who play what would seem an entirely different sort of music, describe what they seek on stage. They talk in very similar terms in their 2009 tour announcement (which I linked to over the week-end).

Mickey Hart calls it the "mind meld." The group describes the process in a video posted on their site as "all about listening. You listen more than you play..." Phil Lesh says that that sense of surprise is why he keeps playing:

For me, it’s the question mark that’s really pulling me in...what’s gonna happen? When you walk out on the stage the possibilities are infinite every time. The musical possibilities are infinite: there is no end to it, there’s no back wall and there’s no ceiling, there’s no floor. It’s infinite and therefore you can still explore it till the day that you die.

So here we have two different sorts of music that bear striking similarities. They both draw from the deep well of American songs, they both exist somewhat outside the main stream, and they both are played by musicians who understand that the beauty of the music is found in the other players.

This is what I like. The genre doesn't really matter; I'm interested in the process and the surprise.

Heads Up!

Deadheads take note: The Dead will tour this spring! Bobby Wier, Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart, and Billy Kruetzmann will be joined by guitarist Warren Haynes and keyboardist Jeff Chimenti. It's the same line-up that toured in 2004.

The group had not gotten together much lately, but a few fund-raising shows for Barack Obama last year seem to have planted a seed among the band-members and they are ready to try on the full Dead thing again.

All four of the remaining original Grateful Dead have been busy on solo projects for years. They have grown and changed and I think want to hear what they'll sound like playing together again.

The tour will start in April in North Carolina and be mostly an east-coast affair, though it will head west, stop in Colorado and end in California in May. There will be five shows near me in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

I hope to make at least one.

Happy Hanukkah!

Today begins the Festival of Lights, an eight-day celebration that commemorates the rededication of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in the Second Century during a revolt against Greek rule by a Hebrew commander called Judah Maccabee. (Hat tip to wikipedia).

Matt Haughey has posted a link to a fun song for the holiday. One that places it nicely in a modern context.



I grew up in an area that had a healthy mix of faiths. I was raised a Catholic but a great many of my friends were Jewish (and some were Hindu and some Muslim, but that is a post for other holidays). We were aware of and took pleasure in each other's holidays. There was no "War on Christmas." There a universal respect for our various cultures. And there was occasional jealousy over gift-getting traditions, but that was minor.

For a full primer on Hanukkah, I strongly recommend "A Rugrats Chanukah," which tells the story of the Maccabean revolt through the imaginations of Tommy, Chucky, Angelica, and Phil'n'Lil. Watching The Rugrats was an added bonus for me during the time of small children, and this retelling of the Hanukkah story contains one of my favorite Rugrats moments: when Tommy emerges from a cave, dressed as one of the Maccabees, and declares, "A macca-baby's gotta do what a macca-baby's gotta do!"

Remembering Odetta

The folksinger Odetta has passed away. I only got to see her perform live one time. It was back in the first Bush administration. Odetta performed at an outdoor show on the University of Delaware College of Marine Studies campus in Lewes. She introduced the song "Rock-a-Bye Baby" as one that could be sung not only as a lullaby but also as an indictment. And she did so, dedicating the song to, and the indictment against, Bush Sr. It was a memorable show.

Time Travel: Remembering The Razz

An odd confluence of letters in my RSS reader led me to search this evening for a band I followed as a youngster back in Washington DC. This week's Monday Music entry on the NPR Monitor Mix blog included a video from the Nazz (Tod Rundgren's old group).

Seeing that "a-z-z" reminded me of The Razz, a DC band from back in the late 1970s. The Razz were a hard-rock band -- almost punk -- that played a snarling form of power pop. They put out a series of singles and an extended play (EP) single. I may still have several of these buried somewhere in my archive.

The group included Tommy Keene, who went on to a recording career starting in the 1980s. According to Wikipedia, his music is critically acclaimed but commercially ignored.

I insulted Mr. Keene one evening at a bar in Northern Virginia. I didn't mean to insult him. A group of us were there to see The Razz; we were fans. I was at the time a rhythm guitarist in a high-school garage band (The Ramblin' Beach Guys) and I was impressed by Keene's guitar playing. The group's other guitarist, Bill Craig, was playing a more obvious "lead guitar" role and I approached Keene during a break to tell him how cool it was to see a fellow rhythm guitarist (I was pretty young). He was not amused; he played parts just as complex as the other fellow, he was just less showy. That was my first lesson in the potential complexity in rock music.

That was one of two Razz shows that I remember specifically. I expect I probably also saw them play at the old Psychadeli at some point, but I'm not sure.

The other show that I remember clearly was a concert in November of 1978 at the University of Maryland Student Union. The Razz opened for Rockpile (Dave Edmunds and Nick Lowe). Several of my bandmates and I got there very early and snagged a table at the very front of the hall. It was one of those great moments in youth when you are part of just the music you want to hear.

In looking around the web this evening, I also found that some of The Razz folks, including singer Michael Reidy, have recently been performing as The Howling Mad. Thirty years ago, I recall being told that Michael Reidy was a graphic designer and had done the artwork for The Razz' posters and record sleeves. In retrospect, I think it is the case that his graphic work, along with his group's music, influenced my tastes as a young man and is with me today.

Sunday Morning with the Newspapers #132

In this morning's News Journal, I find an article (Georgetown DelTech to offer theater productions) that describes an effort by Delaware Technical and Community College to bring regular theater productions to the stage on their Georgetown campus.

The goal, said Vice President and Campus Director Ileana Smith, is to get area residents into a habitat of supporting the arts and to "think about this theater as a place to come."

Smith said campus leaders believe the time is right for a theater venue in central Sussex County. Many new residents in nearby Bridgeville, Millsboro and Lewes moved to Sussex County from larger communities with vibrant culture and arts scenes, Smith said.

While I applaud this idea -- I'm in favor of theater, after all -- I do have to point out that Georgetown already is home, and has been for many years, to the Possum Point Players and their Possum Hall theater. In fact, Possum Hall is less than two miles from DelTech (as the Google bot suggests that the crow drive).

I used to be closely involved with the Possums. In the days before kids, the Lovely Karen and I were both a part of that group. Our first date was dinner at Adriatico (when it was on First Street at Baltimore Avenue in Rehoboth) followed by a Possum performance of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

That performance was at (wait for it) Delaware Technical and Community College, in the theatre now proposed for the addition of theater programs.

In those days, before the refurbishing and expansion of Possum Hall, the Possums did their larger productions at Del Tech. And we were a part of many.

Karen, a talented flautist, was a member of the orchestra for almost all of the Possum musicals (back when they used real orchestras). I can act and can fake my way through a song as long as I'm in a "character part." And I used to help out backstage for shows that lacked a suitable "Mike part." I did props, or sound, or helped shove things around on-stage between acts.

Between us, we were involved in The Good Doctor, Wait Until Dark, the Sound of Music, Nunsense, The Crucible, Oklahoma, The 1940's Radio Hour, The Man of La Mancha, Big River, and I'm sure there are others that I am now forgetting.

The week before I proposed, in 1987, we helped out at a Possum Kid's production of The Emperor's New Clothes. It was the last show of that production, so we stayed behind to help tear down the set. I wasn't paying proper attention and put a foot down in the wrong spot. I twisted my ankle over so severely that I pulled the connector-thingy (tendon?) that connects shin to foot completely out of my foot. Technically, it was a bone break. So I proposed on crutches. Never underestimate the power of sympathy.

When the Possums did Nunsense, I was the props master and Karen, then large with Colleen, did sound effects and turned pages for the pianist. Nunsense is a show-within-a-show show. The idea is that a group of Nuns is putting on a performance, so anyone seen onstage should be wearing a Nun's habit. As the show started, the stage manager (our friend Nina) and I would be out on the stage, setting props for the Nun's "stage." At that point I had only a mustache, so I kept my back turned to the audience until the very last second, when I would spin around, face the audience just long enough for my facial hair to register, and then exit, stage left. Those were the easiest (and somehow most satisfying) laughs of my stage career.

We also have a photo of the two of us from that show-- both in Nun drag, Karen clearly quite pregnant, me mustachioed. We like to haul it out to scare the girl's friends when they visit.

So, when I see a story about how the fine folks at DelTech are going to rescue a culturally benighted Georgetown by bringing in theater, I bristle. Just a little. The fact is that Sussex County does not really lack culture. You just have to seek it out. You just have to support it in any way you can.

We have the Possums. We have the Sussex Ballet (where our efforts, and those of our children, now center). We have the Rehoboth Summer Children's Theatre, whose Board I served on for many years and whose web site I still manage. There is a new theater group working in the old Epworth Church building in Rehoboth Beach. There are good programs in the local high schools. And there is the Southern Delaware School of the Arts.

There are fine music programs all summer at the Bethany and Rehoboth bandstands. There is the Rehoboth jazz festival and the Rehoboth film festival. There is a music festival in Dewey Beach. There are weekly concerts in Stango Park all summer in Lewes.

We have culture. We just have to do a better job of supporting it.

New Blog (and New Radio Station?) in Delaware

I just stumbled across a new Delaware blog -- WKNZ - Z88.7fm, Harrington, DE -- which will chronicle the effort of a group of local Christian folk to build and run a "25,000 watt HD Christian radio station."

The blog appeared June 10 after the group got its FCC construction permit. That alone took 10 years; the FCC is a slow beast. How long the next steps will take is uncertain, but the permit itself is a large step forward:

We are humbled, blown-away, and a little over whelmed, but after nearly 10 years, the FCC has finally given us the approval to begin building a very powerful Christian radio station on 88.7fm in Delaware. The tower will be in Harrington and the studios in Milton, DE (at least that was the plan 10 years ago!). We are currently in the process of dusting off those plans. Lots has changed in 10 years!

The blog-writers are Bill, Andy, and Elbert (with an "E"). I think Bill is likely Bill Sammons, who I used to know in conjunction with the Delmarva Poultry Industry and who I recall was leading an effort to found a Christian station some years back. I assume this is he and this will be that station, but I don't always pay as close attention as I should and so may be completely wrong.

There's a survey up now, looking for input on what sorts of things to program. I think I'll take it. I'm not particularly Christian, though the Lovely Karen is a woman of faith and we have friends among the Christians, but I applaud diversity on the airwaves. And I don't think we should automatically assume that a Christian radio station will automatically hew to the worst extremes of the "christian right."

The musical choices could be interesting. I'll make the argument, for example, in favor of playing some of the Grateful Dead catalogue. Seriously. One of the things that fascinates me about the Dead's music is the widespread use of the Bible as lyrical source material and inspiration. And their deep exploration into folk music and folk traditions included mining a vein of moral stories and cautionary tales that could fit in the new station's format.

That's my view, anyway.

Minor Observation #527

I think I have finally figured out why some of the top pop hits of today grate so fearfully on my nerves. I'm a kind Dad and sometimes let my daughters listen to Hits One on the Sirius radio. Some of the tunes played are quite good. Some make me want to leap screaming from my moving Prius.

It's not just the overtly sexual lyrics which would have given me pause even when I was a horny 18-year-old. It's not just the unimaginative melodies and over-processed, faked-up singing. It's not even the deliberate "stoopid-ness" of the personae adopted by the performers.

No, what really makes me cringe is the fact that, of late, producers have been sampling heavily from the most over-played pop of the 1980s to build the music-montages over which their singers rap, croon or mumble. They've appropriated songs that were big hits at a time when pop music was at its most fake, unimaginative and tedious. And the songs they are (re)using were horribly over-played in the 1980s.

There was some good music produced in the 1980s. But it wasn't what made it as "pop hits." I still listen to some music from the 1980s. But I was sick of these hit songs 20 years ago. Adding new lyrics and beats hasn't helped.

The Participation Generation

The old-photos blog Shorpy has had a few pictures up lately showing everyday folks making music back in the 1940s. The one at left shows a pick-up band at a Florida trailer park. An earlier entry shows "boys in the bunkhouse" gathered around a stove and a guitar.

These resonated for me with parts of an interview with Levon Helm I heard this morning on my commute. It was a rebroadcast of the December 11 edition of Fresh Air. Terry Gross was working through Helm's history and talking about his new album, Dirt Farmer, reflects the influences of his early life.

Levon Helm, once the drummer and a singer with The Band and a solo artist of some repute, has established a new tradition of regular in-studio house parties featuring a variety of great musicians at his place up in Woodstock. They started as a kind of rent-party a few years back when he was working through bankruptcy and recovering from throat cancer. They echo a style of house-party that was a part of his Arkansas childhood back in the 1940s and 50s.

Helm, musing on those sorts of parties and the fact that his father used to perform at some of them, used the phrase "participation generation" to refer back to a time when anyone might pick up a guitar, a fiddle, a washtub, or a beat-box and join in a pick-up band.

That's part of what I see in these photos.

Update: Here is an even better view of the jam session shown above.

Random Images, and Music

Here's a neat art project: a randomized music video that draws imagery from the whole of flickr.

The fellow who created ASTRONAUT -- Felix Jung -- has taken a music track by a friend and used keywords based on the lyrics to fetch semi-random images from flickr, based on tags given to those images. He has built a web-movie, using Flash, that incorporates those images into a simple music video of the song.

Flickr users can add tags to their images as a way to organize them or categorize them. For example, I have quite a few photos tagged with "Vermont." There are even more tagged "Vermont" by other users. Using tags, I can quickly see all of my Vermont photos or look at photos of Vermont from other users.

Felix Jung has taken this a step further, as he explains in his post about this project:

Each time the Flash file is loaded, new images are randomly pulled from Flickr. I've hard-coded 53 keywords at set points in the song, and when the page is first loaded... calls are made out to Flickr to retrieve these keywords. With each call, I vary the parameters a little bit.

The song includes either the word or the concept "distant" towards its end. Jung has taken that as a keyword and called flickr photos tagged with "distant." There are 4,664 photos so-tagged as I write this morning. The parameters Jung refers to are changing ways to randomly sort and select from the found images. That way, different images are chosen each time the movie is played. This morning, my playing of it turned up this image.

It's a simple thing, but makes nice use of the many images that flickr users are adding to the public face of flickr each day.

We sometimes forget about the potential for the web to be a global, interactive, collaborative marketplace of ideas. We add content -- through blogging or posting photos, sound or video -- partly to satisfy our egos and be "published." But we also should remember that we are adding small bits to something larger that grows in ways we cannot forsee.

This is what is at the heart of the philosophy of the Creative Commons.

At least part of our pleasure in this Internet thing should be to see to what unexpected use other folks put our creations.

Here's a Movie I'd Really Like to See

A new documentary about the life of Joe Strummer has opened over in England. I'm not sure if it is out yet here in the US. The film is called The Future is Unwritten, and it looks fascinating.

Joe Strummer was a guitarist and front man for one of my all-time favorite rock bands, the Clash, who helped me define my youth.

As I have written before, I remain a Strummer fan. He was at the heart of the great Punk Rock explosion of the 1970s, but he transcended that genre; he was a classic rock rebel and cultural revolutionary.

I think it is telling that one of his last recordings was a duet with Johnny Cash, singing Bob Marley's "Redemption Song."

I still carry Joe Strummer's voice in my head. It seems comfortable there with Jerry's guitar sound.

Will we see this film down at Movies at Midway? Or will there remain three screens of Spiderman 3?

Tom's Dark Epiphany

Shortly after inventing his Edison Recording Machine, Tom sat listening to a wax cylinder of music.

All of a sudden, the years opened before him. He heard generations of recorded music: symphonic, impressionist, minstrel singers and crooners, blues both country and urban, worksongs, jazz, rock and roll, country pop, jam-bands and hiphop.

He heard and saw a musical future enabled by his own inspiration and work.

Then he saw a singing contest, judged by a strange trio: a clownish bear, a trained seal, and a dyspeptic clergyman. He saw democracy harnessed to this contest; its voter participation outstripping any actual election.

A title appeared in his mind's eye: American Idol. And he wept.

Wind in Trees

I took a walk on Sunday. Back in Cape Henlopen State Park. It was windy and cold, so I went inland a bit, on the trails through the back dunes and marsh areas.

The wind was blocked by the trees. It was blowing strong in their tops. The tallest trees were swaying and knocking against each other like huge claves.

OK. This is Weird

Apparently my youth is still out there. It appears to have moved to California.

When I was a youngster, I played guitar in a band called The Ramblin' Beach Guys. We were never famous, beyond a small radius around our high school. But we were loud and fast and fun and being a part of the RBGS, as we called ourselves, was a hoot.

Tonight, I find another young Mike Mahaffie playing guitar in another small band. This Mike is 18 "and goes to some college with a really long name." He plays guitar for The Benefits, out of Campbell, California. The other fellows in the band are all in High School. They list their influences as punk, ska and hardcore. We were similar, though more influenced by the 1960's-era Stones and early punk than by hardcore and punk.

What do they sound like? According to their MySpace profile, The Benefits sound like "a basement of frustraition! [sic]"

It Was a Different Time

I found my way to a YouTube posting of an early Johnny Cash performance. He's singing There You Go on the television show Ranch Party. This is from the mid or late 1950s. Just Johnny, a bassist, and an electric guitar player (the Tennessee Two). It made me realize how different music on TV has become.

Look at Johnny Cash here. He's so darkly slicked-back. He looks rather like Desi Arnaz as Ricky Ricardo. Dig the gold jacket. And he's soooo restrained.

Meanwhile, the bass player, Marshall Grant, is just boppin' and poppin' back there. You can't tell from this still shot, but he's chewing a big 'ol wad of gum; out of time with the tune.

And then, there's Luther Perkins, the guitar payer. He's playing a classic country-style Fender Telecaster. I played a Tele in my youth, and I always focus-in on them when I see one played.

Perkins is playing a very restrained "plunkety-plunk" lead-line throughout the song. This still is from his solo (you know, the part where the guitarist usually grimaces and poses and wrings the poor guitar's neck).

There's not a note out of place in his solo. There's not a lot of flash or fire, either. It's perfect, but it's so under control. There's a moment just at the end of the solo when Cash leans back and, I think, calls a chord change out to Perkins.

This is classic stuff, but it is also remarkably stiff and the players, with the exception of a happy, bouncy Grant, seem oddly uncomfortable.

(Via Mr. Dante Fontana's Visual Guidance LTD)

I Think I Like This, Sam I Am

Dylan-parody, as an art form, is about played out. But I've never heard anything like this: Dylan Hears a Who!

Why didn't anyone else think of this? Bob Dylan (classic 60's voice version) singing the words of Dr. Seuss.

I think this version of Green Eggs and Ham is definitive. But that's just me.

When the Music Hits Me Just Right

I had another one of those great runs of music today. There are times when, as I flip around among my favorite channels on the satellite radio in my car, I find song after song that I love. And occasionally, something new and delightful.

This evening was like that. Song after song after song. And then David Dye, of the World Cafe, presented me with Josh Ritter's Girl in the War.

I know I've heard music from this guy before, and I remember thinking him pleasant, but I hadn't heard this song.

He has a pleasant nice voice, accompanied by delicate acoustic guitar picking. It was the lyrics that hit me:

Peter said to Paul you know all those words we wrote
Are just the rules of the game and the rules are the first to go
But now talking to God is Laurel begging Hardy for a gun
I got a girl in the war man I wonder what it is we done

And

Paul said to Peter you got to rock yourself a little harder
Pretend the dove from above is a dragon and your feet are on fire
But I got a girl in the war Paul her eyes are like champagne
They sparkle bubble over and in the morning all you got is rain

Peter and Paul (the Apostles?) seem to be discussing great metaphysical issues, but keep coming back to "I got a girl in the war." That does two things. It brings us back to what's most important on a basic, personal level. And it spins the old war-time, homefront cliche from the "girl back home" to the "girl in the war."

Looking into this song this evening led me to a video (quicktime) of Ritter performing this song at a Center for American Progress event last fall.

"I came 2000 miles to play you this song," he says. "I meant to write about this country, and it came out sounding like a love song."

I'd Know That Stone's Slouch Anywhere

Rooting around in the cut-out bin of the internet this evening, I came across a video of a performance including Ray Charles, Jerry Lee Lewis and Fats Domino posted on a Swedish site called "Mr. Dante Fontana's Visual Guidance LTD." (Really)

Hearing three of the great rock piano bangers playing all together was worth a click. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

There's no information with the clip. It looks like a television show, or some sort of benefit concert. The band is led by the ubiquitous music-elf, Paul Shaffer, who earns equal measures of my respect and my eye-rolling. He's a sometimes annoying presence, but no one puts together all-star pick-up bands as well as Shaffer.

What surprised me in this case, though, was how quickly I was able to pick Rolling Stone Ron Wood out of the dark, out-of-focus background. Other than Shaffer, and the three legends, the rest of the band is mostly in shadow and fuzzy.

Ron Wood, however, stands in a distinctive slouch over his guitar. It's a stance he shares with his band-mate Keith Richards and it goes with their loose-limbed, loping style of rock and roll.

I recognized him by his outline and his lazy grooving behind a piano-pounding Jerry Lee Lewis.