Running After My Hat

Ridiculous pursuits, matters solemn and less so

Midweek Music Break: Carlos Santana (and Peter Green)

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He sounded like nothing else on the rock landscape at the time. When you first heard Carlos Santana’s music, your mind did a little double-take: What is that?!? Afterwards, it pretty much made no difference which song you encountered: above all, you could count on that guitar, cutting like a singing knife through the jazzy, infectiously smoky rhythms.

“Black Magic Woman” (from the 1970 Abraxas album) had been written a couple years earlier, by the great blues guitarist Peter Green in Fleetwood Mac’s original configuration. As Wikipedia notes:

…[A] curious blend of blues, rock, jazz, 3/2 afro-Cuban son clave, and “Latin” polyrhythms, Santana’s arrangement added conga, timbales and other percussion, in addition to organ and piano, to make complex polyrhythms that give the song a “voodoo” feel distinct from the original.

The version of the song on Abraxas actually opened and closed with a riff on a melody called “Gypsy Queen,” by Hungarian jazz guitarist Gábor Szabó. It’s a little like eavesdropping on some ritual in a Caribbean jungle clearing. Here’s Santana:

Lyrics:

Black Magic Woman/Gypsy Queen
(by Peter Green; performance by Santana)

[instrumental]

Got a black magic woman
Got a black magic woman
I’ve got a black magic woman
Got me so blind I can’t see
That she’s a black magic woman
She’s trying to make a devil out of me

Don’t turn your back on me baby
Don’t turn your back on me baby
Yes don’t turn your back on me baby
Stop messing round with your tricks
Don’t turn your back on me baby
You just might pick up my magic sticks

[instrumental]

Got your spell on me baby
Got your spell on me baby
Yes you got your spell on me baby
Turning my heart into stone
I need you so bad, magic woman
I can’t leave you alone

And here’s the original, from Fleetwood Mac’s The Pious Bird of Good Omen (1969).

(This version is a lot shorter than many of the live-performance recordings available, such as those on YouTube.)

It’s been great to see Carlos Santana’s career booming again. This most recent phase, after a long dry spell (some of it without a label), kicked off with his 1999 album, Supernatural — particularly, the hugely best-selling single with Matchbox Twenty’s Rob Thomas: “Smooth.” Says Wikipedia:

On Billboard magazine’s rankings of the top songs of the first fifty years of the Hot 100 singles chart, “Smooth” was ranked as the number-two song overall (behind only “The Twist”) and the number-one rock song in the history of the chart.

Here’s the video:

Lyrics:

Smooth
(by Rob Thomas and Itaal Shur; performance by Carlos Santana and Rob Thomas)

Man it’s a hot one
Like seven inches from the midday sun
I hear you whisper and the words melt everyone
But you stay so cool
My mu equita my Spanish Harlem Mona Lisa
You’re my reason for reason
The step in my groove

And if you say this life ain’t good enough
I would give my world to lift you up
I could change my life to better suit your mood
Cause you’re so smoothAnd just like the ocean under the moon
Well that’s the same emotion that I get from you
You got the kind of lovin’ that can be so smooth
Gimme your heart make it real
Or else forget about it

I’ll tell you one thing
If you would leave it would be a crying shame
In every breath and every word I hear your name calling me out
Out from the barrio you hear my rhythm from your radio
You feel the turning of the world so soft and slow
Turning you round and round

A hot time in that city, hmm?

 

The Whole Sweet World Is a Garden

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[Video: Rowlf and Fozzie collaborate, after a fashion — and much to their surprise — on an instrumental version of “In an English Country Garden“]

From whiskey river:

The thing about Zen is that it pushes contradictions to their ultimate limit where one has to choose between madness and innocence. And Zen suggests that we may be driving toward one or the other on a cosmic scale. Driving toward them because, one way or the other, as madmen or innocents, we are already there.

It might be good to open our eyes and see.

(Thomas Merton [source])

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What’s in a Song/Midweek Music Break: “Blue Skies”

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Few people remember the short-lived 1926 musical Betsy anymore, although its music and lyrics came from powerhouse songwriting duo Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. There’s a reason few people remember it: Rodgers and Hart had written nothing memorable for it. (A Hart-related site calls it “a beautifully mounted mess, top-heavy with ensemble numbers in the Ziegfeld fashion.” Among those numbers, for instance, was a performance by someone called the Harmonica Symphony Orchestra. Umm, okay.)

Few people remember its star, either, one Belle Baker. (That’s her over at the right.) But at the time, she was enough of a force that when she didn’t care for the music, she could simply ignore the show’s — and the show-business — realities… and, in Act 2 on opening night, just start singing a song which Rodgers and Hart themselves hadn’t written. To say they were surprised probably understates the case. [*]

The surprise was “Blue Skies,” written by Baker’s friend Irving Berlin. Apparently he’d been kicking it around in his head for some time, just hadn’t had the proper occasion to commit it to permanent form. Baker’s complaints about her solos in the show gave him that occasion.

It was an immediate hit. Reportedly, the audience on that opening night so loved the song that they required twenty-four encores of it. For her part, Baker was delighted but also a little unnerved; says Wikipedia (alas, without attribution for the moment):

During the final repetition, Ms. Baker forgot her lyrics, prompting Berlin to sing them from his seat in the front row.

I bet that moment really tickled Rodgers and Hart!

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Spacestruck

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[Video: “The Voyager Interstellar Record,” a YouTube playlist of  all the sounds on the so-called “golden record” sent into space with the two Voyager interstellar spacecraft. For more information, see the note below.]

From whiskey river (italicized portion):

Lost in the Cosmos:
The Last Self-Help Book

or

The Strange Case of the Self, your Self, the Ghost which Haunts the Cosmos

or

How can you survive in the Cosmos about which you know more and more while knowing less and less about yourself, this despite 10,000 self-help books, 100,000 psychotherapists, and 100 million fundamentalist Christians

or

Why is it that of all the billions and billions of strange objects in the Cosmos — novas, quasars, pulsars, black holes — you are beyond doubt the strangest?

or

Why is it possible to learn more in ten minutes about the Crab Nebula in Taurus, which is 6,000 light-years away, than you presently know about yourself, even though you’ve been stuck with yourself all your life

[etc.]

(Walker Percy, from Lost in the Cosmos [source])

…and:

II

Our voice trembles
with its own electric,
we who mood like iguanas
we who breathe sleep
for a third of our lives,
we who heat food
to the steaminess of fresh prey,
then feast with such baroque
good manners it grows cold.

In mind gardens
and on real verandas
we are listening,
rapt among the persian lilacs
and the crickets,
while radio telescopes
roll their heads, as if in anguish.

With our scurrying minds
and our lidless will
and our lank, floppy bodies
and our galloping yens
and our deep, cosmic loneliness
and our starboard hearts
where love careens,
we are listening,
the small bipeds
with the giant dreams.

(Diane Ackerman, from “We Are Listening,” in Jaguar of Sweet Laughter [source])

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Midweek Music Break: “Michael Meets Mozart”

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Longtime visitors to RAMH know (as I have said) what I don’t know about music could fit, barely, into a large stadium. (A roofless one, so that the heap of facts and sensibilities inside can actually rise higher than the walls.) So for me to claim that some musical performance awed me — well, that doesn’t claim much.

But this…

Before seeing this piece, I was completely unfamiliar with pianist Jon Schmidt and cellist Steven Sharp Nelson, who collaborated on it. They’d intended to do a mashup, a “Mozart-style arrangement involving several songs by modern artists” — but couldn’t get permission to use the tracks they had in mind. The original composition they came up with instead, says one site, “[weaves] together inspirations from a handful of known influences, including Michael Jackson, Mozart and U2.”

Whatever the source(s) for the final product, yes, I am awed. It’s a dizzying, exuberant blend not just of musical genres but of virtuosity and special effects, both video and audio. (And it took twelve hours just to film.)

Here y’go:

From the YouTube page:

On the recording, Steven Sharp Nelson laid down over 100 tracks including cello textures never known possible. Every single sound on the video was made using only the instruments shown: piano, cello, mouth percussion and kick drum. We utilized some cool effects on lots of stuff… for example the U2-style delay on Steve’s pizzicato at the beginning.

The extra string on the electric cellos (the black cello has an extra high string and the white cello has an extra low string) allowed us to cover the full range of the orchestra. The deep bass drum sound is a bump on the body of the cello with a little help from some effects. The shaker sound was created by Steve rubbing rosin on his bow. The record scratch is Steve scratching a quarter on the strings… you get the idea.

Those two electric cellos look like musical instruments from the planet Tralfamadore.

Jumbled together with the other things in that stadium I mentioned: knowledge of musical notation. But I did glance at some of the sheet music for “Michael Meets Mozart.” Among the annotations interspersed between and within the staves:

  • delete F if you can’t reach
  • this is what the computer prints when you slide your right elbow up the keys
  • let ring as long as possible with half pedal

There’s this, at the very top (whatever it means):

  • chills up

and later (my favorite):

  • Watch your fingers on the lid hit! (I found out the hard way)

Ha! And also: Le sigh.

Real-Life Dialogue: Return of the Bathroom Talker

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It’s been a long time since I last posted about this guy. Not that I’ve had no further interaction with him, no. It’s just that all further interaction with him has been of the same unvarying sort. Nothing new to report. And I’ve also gotten cleverer about avoiding him.

But this latest example just pushed me over the edge.

To understand what follows, you need to know that at the start of every week, for as long as I’ve worked here, I bring in a small bottle of milk which I use to flavor my tea in the morning; I stow it on a shelf on the door of the refrigerator by the coffee/hot water machine. The bottle, as it happens, holds exactly enough milk for ten cups of tea — two cups a day, five days a week. All was well until one Friday a few months ago, when I suddenly found that someone had “borrowed” a serving or two of milk from the bottle, so I didn’t have enough for that day’s tea.

It happened once, I shrugged. When it happened twice, I was forced to take radical evasive action.

To wit: I wrap my bottle of milk in a way-too-big tan plastic shopping bag — wind the bag around and around the bottle — and then secure the handle loops over the neck of the bottle. I return the bottle to the refrigerator shelf, lying on its side. Unless you unwrapped it, you’d never know what it was.

So last week, I’m dispensing hot water into my cup at the coffee machine when the Bathroom Talker (or BT) shows up. I pour the milk into the tea, and the scene unfolds from this point.

BT: YOU USE MILK.

JES: Yes.

BT: [unintelligible]

JES:Excuse me?

BT: HOW MUCH DO THEY TAKE?

JES: [thinking about this] Oh, uh, I put maybe a tablespoon—

BT: NO. HOW MUCH DO THEY TAKE?

JES: “They”?

BT: DO PEOPLE STEAL YOUR MILK?

JES: [wrapping up milk bottle, putting into refrigerator] Oh. Yeah. A couple months ago somebody started—

BT: SO HOW MUCH DO THEY TAKE?

JES: Oh, uh, well, a bottle holds exactly a week’s worth—

BT: THEY STEAL YOUR MILK?

JES: Well, yeah, that’s why I wrap it up. To hide it.

BT: YOU WRAP IT UP?

JES: Yeah. In a plastic grocery bag.

[BT stops talking, goes to refrigerator. He opens door, scans the contents, focusing especially intently on the door.]

BT: WHAT’S IT LOOK LIKE?

JES: […]

BT: I SAID, WHAT’S IT LOOK LIKE?

JES: [laughs, shakes head, rolls eyes, and walks away without replying]

 

What Did the Dormouse Say?

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[Image: T-shirt available from the Skreened store. Of all the images of this moment which I found online, the original Tenniel still seemed best. Disclaimer: I have no interest (vested or, ha, shirted) in the store other than this photo of this T-shirt.]

From whiskey river:

Brotherhood
Homage to Octavius Ptolemy

I am a man: little do I last
and the night is enormous.
But I look up:
the stars write.
Unknowing I understand:
I too am written,
and at this very moment
someone spells me out.

(Octavio Paz [source])

…and:

To the as-yet-unborn, to all innocent wisps of undifferentiated nothingness: Watch out for life.

I have caught life. I have come down with life. I was a wisp of undifferentiated nothingness, and then a little peephole opened quite suddenly. Light and sound poured in. Voices began to describe me and my surroundings. Nothing they said could be appealed…

They never shut up.

(Kurt Vonnegut [source])

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Pottermore

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From The Atlantic:

In a much-anticipated press event this morning, J.K. Rowling announced the launch of Pottermore, a new website meant to bring all-things-Harry Potter to the Web. It was revealed in a leaked memo yesterday that a central focus of the site would be an online gaming experience developed by the company Adam & Eve that will include real-world prizes such as magic wands secretly scattered throughout Britain and the United States. But the launch revealed that the site will be much more than that, though it does appear to include some gaming elements.

And here’s the woman herself:

More about JKR’s reasons for setting up Pottermore, and the interesting (to me!) discussion about which e-book format they’ll use, are at The Atlantic‘s site as well as elsewhere.

Midweek Music Break: “One Shoe Blues” (Sandra Boynton via B.B. King)

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[Image: B.B. King and Boynton sock puppet]

I had occasion recently to be searching around for an image from the 1970s, the cover of possibly the biggest-selling greeting card in the planet’s (if not the universe’s) history. It was a cartoon, at the top of which was depicted a single hippopotamus, a small avian creature, and a pair of sheep. Beneath, in a charming apparently hand-lettered caption, it said:

Hippo   Birdy  Two Ewe

This search made me wonder what had happened to the artist, Sandra Boynton. I took it for granted she continued to work in some capacity, even though she — something like the J.K. Rowling of greeting-card creators — surely could have retired after her first few products hit the market.

She hasn’t retired, not at all. She’s certainly branched out, though. Among her other accomplishments, Wikipedia identifies her as a songwriter and I wondered what that was all about. Hence I came to her 2007 album (actually her fourth), Blue Moo: 17 Jukebox Hits from Way Back Never. The Boynton-crafted songs on it purport to be (per the subtitle) actual hits from some imaginary parallel universe’s past; the album as a whole is marketed as children’s music. The performers featured, though, include folks likely to be appreciated by adults in our own universe’s past (and present) — Steve Lawrence, Patti LuPone, Sha Na Na, Brian Wilson, and so on.

And buried in the middle, a true gem: “One Shoe Blues,” upon which B.B. King lavishes his signature attentions:

[Below, click Play button to begin One Shoe Blues. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 3:09 long.

[audio:oneshoeblues_bbking.mp3|titles=’One Shoe Blues’|artists=B.B. King]

Lyrics:

One Shoe Blues
(by Sandra Boynton; performance by B.B. King)

Well, I woke up this morning
Couldn’t find my shoe
Yes, I woke up this morning and I couldn’t find my shoe.
Although the right one is here, I need the left one too
(Yes, I do)
I can hear my mama calling.
She says it’s time to go.
Yes, I can hear my mama calling.
She says:
Really now, it’s time to go.
I say:
Mama, I can’t find one of my shoes!
And she says, Oh no. Not again.
I’ve got the one shoe blues
It seems they’re never gonna stop.
Yes, those one shoe blues.
Oh, they might never ever stop.
Mama says,
Just come along now!
One shoe.
Do you expect me to hop?
Did you look in the closet and under the bed?
Yes, I did
Did you look carefully in the closet and under the bed?
Yes, yes I did.
Try and think where you left it.
That’s what my mama said.
Last night I left it right here next to my other shoe.
I know I put it right here next to my other shoe.
I think somebody took it.
But I don’t know who.
No, I don’t.
I’ve got the
One shoe blues.
That’s why I’m singing this song.
I’ve got the
One shoe blues!
And so I’m singing this sad song.
You know it’s been
At least twenty minutes
That I’ve been looking in every possible place
For that…
Huh.
There it is.
I guess it was on my foot all along.
Okay, I’m ready to go now.
Anybody seen my coat?

If you prefer action, you can also see on YouTube a Boynton-directed video of the performance.

Boynton’s Web site, by the way, really impressed me. No flash, no dazzle (except that from the artwork). Just well-written, funny, unpretentious, and altogether artless in the very best sense.

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