A dazzling concert of baroque and contemporary music; the fruitful product of a marriage

The couple in the photo above are Joseph Di Ponio and Stephanie Corwin. Joseph is a composer and a co-director of Ensemble Ipse, "a contemporary music ensemble dedicated to showcasing the wide variety of practices in the current new music scene." Stephanie plays both modern and baroque bassoons - she is holding the latter in the photo - and is a member of Repast Baroque, which "is committed to sharing the spirit of seventeenth- and eighteenth century chamber music with audiences in New York and beyond." The other three members of Repast are in the photo's background. Left to right they are: Natalie Rose Kress, violin; Gabe Shuford, harpsichord; and Sarah Abigael Stone, viola da gamba, who serves as Repast's artistic director. During the bleak days of the pandemic, I got cheer online from Sarah's "Bach Everyday."

Given the different musical focuses of Ipse and Repast, it's tempting to think of Joseph and Stephanie as a musical odd couple. They were, nevertheless, determined to find a way for the two groups to interact and produce a concert that could please members of both of their groups' usual audiences. This came to fruition last Sunday in a concert, "Science Fiction: the Music of the Spheres," at the First Unitarian Congregational Society, Brooklyn. 

The concert began with Sarah's instrumental arrangement of Sfogava con le stelle from Il quarto libro di madrigali (1603) by Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643). The program notes quote the lyrics (unsung in this performance) of the madrigal as being about "a lovesick man" who was "venting to the stars" in which he saw "beautiful images of my idol whom I adore" and begged them to "so demonstrate to her my loving ardour." The music captured this sense of longing. 

We then moved from the early seventeenth century to the present with "Other Fields of Gravity" by Molly Herron, who describes it as her impression of what it would be like "to be at the very edge of earth's gravitational pull" where she would "feel the gentle tug of other fields of gravity." Each of these would have "its own texture, taste, color." The music, conducted, as all the contemporary works in the concert were, by Matt Ward, evoked these senses. This was its world premiere, as it was for all the contemporary pieces in the concert.

Next was a revisit to the seventeenth century with Sonate concertate a 2 in stil moderno No.8 (1621) by Dario Castello (1602-1631), a Venitian of whom little is known other than his music, which was within the avant garde of the time, "push[ing] the boundaries of harmonic expression and virtuosity." This piece showcased performances by Natalie on violin and Stephanie on bassoon. 

We returned to present time with "Harmonious Diesis" by Judith Berkson. "Diesis," according to the program notes, "refers to a small musical interval, represented here by the small pitch difference between both ensembles (Ipse is tuned to A=432Hz and Repast to A=415Hz)." This may seem a recipe for discomforting dissonance. Instead, the composer argues, it is "[l]ike hearing a musical memory while processing something new, where the difference between the past and the present is experienced through sound." I agree with her characterization. At the conclusion of the piece, Gabe's harpsichord became "the terrain for the tunings to diverge and merge with one another."

Joseph got to show his chops as a composer with "A Continuity of Rooms" which, like "Other Fields of Gravity," explores the interaction between a large entity, in "Other Fields" earth and in "A Continuity" an art museum, and more distant or lesser entities, in "Other Fields" the moon, sun, and planets; in "A Continuity" galleries and the corridors connecting them. Both pieces, in my view, succeed in evoking a sense of the relationships between entities greater and smaller and, in "A Continuity," inclusive.

After a break we returned to hear "Mars Hill" by Stephanie Griffin, who is also Ipse's violist. The piece takes its title from the town of Mars Hill, North Carolina, where the composer spent time in the Emerson Dorsch Artist Residency, and is dedicated to its founders, Tyler Emerson-Dorsch and Brook Dorsch, and its executive director, Ibett Yanez del Castillo. It opens with "high pitched morning sounds" initially produced by a duet between Margaret Lancaster on piccolo and Alex Shiozaki on violin. It then "winds its way down in register until the sky explodes with stars and visions of distant planets orbiting in perfect harmony around another imagined sun." Special praise must be given to percussionist Colleen Bernstein for her deft handling in rapid succession of drums, triangle, tiny tinkling bells, and a gong.

Next on the program was "Zero Body Problem" by Max Giteck Duykers. The program notes for this consist entirely of a three paragraph quotation from Richard D. Mattuck's A Guide to Feynman Diagrams in the Many-Body Problem. "Feynman" is the late Richard Feynman, nobel prize winning physicist known for his work on quantum field theory. After much discussion of many body problems the quotation from Mattuck concludes: "And within modern quantum field theory, the problem of zero bodies (vacuum) is insoluble. So, if we are out after exact solutions, no bodies at all is already too many." My scrawled notes on the program about this piece are "Slow, then lively." The "lively" part may be an expression of the notion "too many." In any event, I didn't find the music "insoluble"; I found it challenging but enjoyable.

The concert ended as it began, with Monteverdi; this time with Sarah's arrangement of O stellae coruscantes (1607) which, the program notes, is a "sacred contrafactum of Sfogava con le stelle" (1603), the Monteverdi pi ece that began the concert. While the earlier piece expresses romantic longing, the later sees heavenly bodies as "genial images of Him whom I worship" and concludes with "Praise Him eternally." It was approriately worshipful.

Credit goes also to the musicians not mentioned above who also played exceptionally well: Christa Van Alstine, clarinets; Caleb van der Swaagh, cello; and Geoffrey Burleson, piano, who during a break explained for me some special effects he created with small devices placed on the piano's strings.

Yes, I enjoyed this concert, from start to finish. Not everyone did. During the contemporary pieces a few people got up and left. Some years ago I might have done likewise. How did I change my mind? By listening. In part it was some works by David Lang, whom I met when our chidren were schoolmates, and in part just by hearing contemporary pieces on WQXR. I came to appreciate music that didn't always conform to familiar patterns of chord progression, rhythm, or harmony. 

Is one of the things music can do, beyond providing us with familiar pleasures, expanding our ability to respond to aural experiences previously unfamiliar to us? I can't help recalling the time in 1956 when I was ten years old and with my father, riding in our '55 Chevy along a two lane blacktop in the loblolly pine woods of the Florida Panhandle. Dad had the radio tuned to a local station that played country music. The DJ said, "Now, here's Elvis Presley." I'd heard of this guy and seen pictures of him wearing lavender suits with frilly trim. I'd read that he drove girls crazy, so I assumed he was a crooner, in the mode of Frank Sinatra or Vic Damone. Then I heard a single major guitar chord, followed by "You ain't nothin' but a hound dog" in a growling voice, and lots of frenetic rhythm. I thought, "Obviously this is a song Elvis Presley has done as a joke, but I love it!" 

Jimmy Cliff (1944-2025) has crossed the final river.

Jimmy Cliff, born James Chambers in 1944 during a hurricane that destroyed his mother's house in St. James, Jamaica, died today at age 81. His first recorded song, when he was 14, appropriately was about a hurricane. After that he tried various musical styles, including covers of pop and rock hits and some original songs, with some success. After living in London for several years he returned to Jamaica. Thanks in part to his longstanding relationship with record producer Leslie Kong he began making music that appealed to Jamaican audiences. 

In 1972 he became a movie star, playing Ivanhoe "Ivan" Martin, a young man like Cliff who came from poverty and tried to make it in music, but unlike Cliff, was cheated by crooked agents and producers and so turned to dealing drugs. The movie, The Harder They Come, produced by Perry Henzell, had a spectacular soundtrack that was released as an album in 1973. It includes cuts by Cliff as well as other reggae stars, including Desmond Dekker and Toots and the Maytals. 

The songs best remembered from the soundtrack are the uptempo, optimistic ones, the title track and "You Can Get It If You Really Want". But Cliff's music also reflects the difficulties he faced growing up, and knew he continued to face even after achieving success. For example, there's "Many Rivers to Cross," the song in the video at the top of this post.

Bonnie Raitt & Keb Mo - "No Gettin' Over You"

Yesterday was Bonnie Raitt's 76th birthday. She's a spring chicken; I'm three and a half years her senior. In the video above she sings one of her songs along with Keb Mo, whom I had the pleasure of hearing live at St. Ann & the Holy Trinity Church here in Brooklyn Heights some years ago. This rocks!

Should I Keep the Blog Going?

 I'll start by answering that question. I will, because I'm too much of a narcissist not to. Still, there are concerns. My frequency of posting was high during the early days, but dropped off considerably once I got onto Facebook. Small items that would have gone on the blog went to Facebook instead, where they got more attention. Over the past few years I've been averaging about two posts per month. It's now the end of October, and this will be my only post for the month. This can partly be blamed on my having been in a physical therapy facility all month, during which time I've focused on keeping the Brooklyn Heights Blog going. I hope to be home soon.

Apart from my posting frequency, there are larger concerns. I've read that blogging is a dying pursuit, except perhaps for some well financed organizations that link their blogs to other public communications. I link all my posts to Facebook, but facebookers seem largely reluctant to follow links, preferring to keep scrolling. My blog's masthead has the boast, "Taxing your attention span since 2005." Has today's internet environment contributed to even further shrinkage of that span? 

Then there's the name. In 2005 the term "self absorbed boomer" had become something of a meme; largely, I think, because of President George W. Bush's having used it as a jab at John Kerry in Bush's successful re-election campaign. Again as noted on my masthead, a New York Times reporter, Sewell Chan, called my blog "delightfully named." Today, to members of younger generations, "boomer" has become an expletive. We are seen as holding them down, either by our younger members keeping positions to which they aspire, or by older ones consuming financial resources. 

I see my blog as a kind of diary, not of day to day concerns but of my interests and thoughts. I hope that this will prompt at least a few helpful obervations and suggestions. Thank you for bearing with me.

Goodbye, Mets (again)

Last year, at least they made it to the playoffs. This year they started hot, which prompted a long reminiscence of my history as a Mets fan. Summer produced a long period of mediocrity, but at the end of August, thanks to a series sweep of the division leading Phillies, I expressed some qualified optmism. Unfortunately, the Mets record from then until yesterday's season end was 11-18, including being swept in four games by the Phils. They still had a shot at the playoffs going into yesterday's game, which they lost to the Marlins 0-4. As a result, the Mets and Marlins ended the season with mirror image records, 83-79 and 79-83, respectively. I take some consolation in the Mets having finished second in their division, if only because of the woefulness of the Marlins, Braves, and Nationals. 

What went wrong? Tim Britton and Will Sammon of the New York Times tried to find an answer but couldn't find any decisive factor or factors. I'm left with the pre-1955 Brooklyn Dodgers fan's cry, "Wait'ill next year!"

Will the eagle face the arrows again? Notes on the Department of War, how it went away, and what might happen if it comes back (besides a huge government expenditure)

 In the summer of 1971 I was at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, going through U.S. Army Field Artillery Officer Training. A few of my several hundred classmates were U.S. Marines, who relied on the Army for artillery officer training. A few others were German, Thai, or Vietnamese. One of my Marine classmates was Mike, a genial Texan and Aggie. Mike knocked on the door of my Bachelor Officers Quarters room one afternoon and asked if he could see my notes from a class he had missed. I was glad to help.

After looking at my notes he picked up my "flying saucer" dress cap with a device like that in the image above. He said, "You know, there was a time when the eagle faced the arrows instead of the olive branch. That was before nineteen and forty eight when these liberals took over the government and changed the name of the Department of War to the Department of Defense, so nobody would think we were the kind of country that would stand up and fight for what we believe in." I let this pass instead of challenging his assertion that liberals had taken over the government in 1948. At the time, I knew that there had been Democratic presidents (FDR and Truman) from 1933 until 1952. I also knew that Truman, who became president when FDR died in 1945, won the 1948 election, remembered for the erroneous Chicago Daily Tribune headline declaring Dewey the winner. What I didn't know is that the Republicans had controlled both the House of Representatives and the Senate from 1945 until the 1948 election gave the Democrats majorities in both houses, along with the White House. Whether this amounted to liberals taking over the government is debatable. 

What neither Mike nor I knew was that the name Department of War was eliminated in 1947 as a result of legislation, the National Security Act, that passed the GOP controlled Congress and was signed into law by President Truman. Until then there were two cabinet level agencies that controlled the military: the Department of War, which controlled the Army; and the Department of the Navy. The National Security Act put the Army, Navy, and newly created Air Force under the control of a new cabinet level agency, the National Defense Establishment, headed by a Secretary of Defense. In 1949 the National Defense Establishment was renamed the Department of Defense. The direction the eagle faces on the cap device, which is modeled on the obverse of the Great Seal of the United States, was changed by presidential order in 1945. 

If President Trump succeeds in renaming the Department of Defense the Department of War, will he think to reverse the direction of the eagle's gaze? If so, Mike, if you're still with us, and I hope you are, congratulations. Despite our differences on political matters (I prefer DoD to DoW and olive branches to arrows), I enjoyed our time as classmates and hold you in great respect.

 

Are the Mets back on track?

Back in April I posted that the Mets then sported the best record in the Majors, but added the question, "Can we stop the season now?" The reason for this bit of facetiousness was my observation, back in 2008, that the Mets have the "ability to raise hopes, then smash them like cheap china." Long time readers of this blog may recognize a recurrent theme here.

It seemed things were going that way again this year. On August 5 Will Sammon of the New York Times noted that the Mets had a "prolonged stretch of mediocrity" since June, with a record over that time of 27-28. He pointed to their weakness in all aspects of the game: pitching (both starters and bullpen), hitting, and fielding. Meanwhile their divisional rivals the Phillies went on a tear, holding as much as a seven game lead in the NL East. That was until this week, when the Mets swept a three game series with the Phils, reducing the deficit to four games.

Today Sammon wrote that the Mets are "clicking again" He attributes this in part to the performance of rookie pitcher Nolan McLean (photo: D. Benjamin Miller, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons) who baffled Phillies batters to seal the series sweep yesterday. Since being called up, McLean has started and won three games, and has an ERA of 0.89. Sammon also noted that Mets batters are hitting again. 

It seems then that the answer to the question I posted in the caption is, "Yes." At least it is for the moment, but I can't discount the possibility of a derailment. They have a challenging schedule for the remaining season: three games with the Tigers (78-57 as of now) next week; a four game series with the Phillies, which could be their make-or-break, September 8-11; three with the Padres (now 75-59) September 16-18; and three with the Cubs (now 76-57) September 23-25. Injuries, which seem to be a persistent problem for the Mets (I speculated why here), are always a worry. Still, I'm feeling better about our chances now.

Update: well, maybe no. Fresh off a sweep of the Phillies, the Mets lost to the Marlins 7-4, then pounded them 19-9 yesterday. That game featured the first major league start for Jonah Tong who, over six innings, allowed one run on six hits, no walks, and six strikeouts. Today the Mets suffered a very ugly loss. Starter David Peterson lasted only two innings, during which he allowed eight runs off eight hits and gave up three walks. At the end of the sixth the Mets had tied the game 8-8, but after that their bats went silent. The Marlins scored once again in the seventh, and the usually reliable Edwin Diaz gave up two more in the ninth. The Mets have one more game with the Marlins, and an opportunity to tie a four run series, tomorrow. After that, the mighty Tigers await.

Flaco Jiménez (1939-2025) "Is Anybody Goin' to San Antone"

When I first heard Leonardo "Flaco" Jimenez doing his accordion magic, he was in distinguished company. It was on the album Doug Sahm and Band, which I acquired not long after its release in 1973. Along with Doug and Flaco, the musicians on the album included Bob Dylan, Dr. John, David "Fathead" Newman, David Bromberg, and Kenny Kosek. With all that I heard Flaco's accordion, an instrument for which I hadn't yet developed a great liking, doing wonderful things.

After that, Flaco joined the Texas Tornados, another Doug Sahm led group that included Freddy Fender (born Baldemar Huerta), a star in his own right, and Augie Meyers, whose stylings on his Vox Continental organ (an instrument also used by Ray Manzarek of The Doors) thrilled me since I'd first listened to the Sir Douglas Quintet in the '60s. The video above is of the Tornados doing "Is Anybody Goin' to San Antone," a song that was made a hit by Charley Pride, the first Black artist to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. I chose the Tornados' version of this song as an example of Flaco's style because of the delightful interplay of his accordion with Augie's Vox organ, and because of my own connection to San Antonio, where I spent a couple of formative childhood years. 

As I've told elsewhere, it was in San Antonio that my mother, who grew up in central Pennsylvania, learned to buy fresh tamales, wrapped in cornhusks, that we would often have for dinner, and where, for my fourth birthday, I was given a "Billy the Kid" outfit that included a hat, denim shirt and jeans, boots, a belt with a holster, and a cap pistol, from Joske's of Texas. When I returned to San Antonio in the '90s for a convention I went to what had been Joske's but had become part of a national chain, hoping to get a pair of "cowgirl" boots for my then three year old daughter. I was told they didn't carry such things. I then learned that the place to go for Western attire was el Barrio. 

I now know that Flaco and I had San Antonio in common; he was born and raised there. When I first moved to Brooklyn Heights in the mid '80s I often indulged the taste for tamales I had acquired in San Antonio at a now long gone little restaurant called Old Mexico. On weekends an accordionist, whose name I'm sorry to say I've forgotten, would play there. I told him I enjoyed his music, and that I was a fan of Flaco's. He said he had recently seen Flaco perform, that he was as good as ever, but that Flaco wasn't flaco (Spanish for "skinny") any more.

Adios, Flaco. Perhaps the heavenly choir will appreciate some accordion accompaniment

"Sargent & Paris" at the Met

To a New Yorker, "the Met" may signify the Metropolitan Opera or the Metropolitan Museum of Art (there are also the Mets, but that's another story). On Friday Martha and I went to the art museum to see Sargent & Paris, an exhibition that focuses on the time John Singer Sargent (self portrait,1907, at left; public domain via Wikimedia Commons) spent in Paris, which was a large part of his early life. His father, FitzWilliam Sargent, an eye surgeon, gave up his practice and moved to Paris with his wife, Mary Newbold (Singer) Sargent, whose inheritance enabled them to remain expatriates. While they spent much time in Paris, they traveled extensively. Their son John was born while they were visiting Florence.

During Sargent's childhood and youth the family continued its footloose ways. He had no formal education but showed early talent for drawing. He received instruction from his parents; his mother was an amateur painter and his father a medical illustrator. During their travels he was inspired by great artworks he saw in museums throughout Europe. In 1874, at the age of eighteen, he gained admission to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He did well in his studies there, and also enjoyed the companionship of, and instruction from, other artists. Among these were Carolus-Duran, Léon Bonnat, and Paul César Helleu, whose gift to New York is the Constellation Mural on the ceiling at Grand Central Terminal. He and Sargent had a long friendship; he and his wife are shown in a Sargent painting included below. While in Paris Sargent also enjoyed companionship and inspiration from a fellow American, James Carroll Beckwith, with whom he shared studio space.

When Martha and I arrived at the exhibition it was crowded, possibly because it would be closing after two days. I tried to spot paintings that seemed especially interesting. What follows is a somewhat random sample of Sargent's work while he lived in Paris, and some after.

Rehearsal of the Pasdeloup Orchestra at the Cirque d'Hiver (c. 1879) The Art Institute of Chicago. While Sargent is best known as a portrait painter, he also had a strong interest in music, played piano well, and liked to paint musical subjects. This painting of an orchestra rehearsing is strongly impressionistic. I was drawn to it by the swirling pattern of white sheet music. The figures in the foreground are circus performers.

Édouard Pailleron (1879). Oil on canvas, 127 × 94 cm (50 × 37.01 in). Musée National du Château de Versailles. Unlike most of Sargent's portraits, this is informal in its arrangement. The subject is described in the notes accopanying the painting in the gallery as a satirical writer and "bohemian" who was an early admirer of Sargent's work, and commissioned the portrait.

Portrait of Edouard and Marie-Louise Pailleron (Édouard Pailleron's children) (1881). Oil on canvas, 152.4 × 175.3 cm (60 × 69 in). Des Moines Art Center, Iowa. This portrait of Pailleron's children, done two years after his portrait, is interesting for, among other things, the children's dour expressions. According to the notes, ten year old Marie-Louise and Sargent "battled over her attire and pose" which necessitated mutiple sittings.

Atlantic Storm (1876), oil on canvas, National Museum Stockholm. Anyone who has known me, or been a reader of this blog, for some time, knows that, as a result of having crossed the Atlantic by ship four times in my childhood (my first crossing was a stormy one), I have a love for ships and the sea, as did Sargent. I was drawn to this painting because it shows a ship's stern pointing down as it climbs an oncoming wave. It also shows Sargent's talent for portraying sea scenes.

Mrs. Albert Vickers (Edith Foster) 1884 Natasha Oil on canvas Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia The Adolph D. and Wilkins C. Williams Fund, Jpeg: Pat Yates. I had to include one example of what's thought of as a "typical" sargent painting, a full length, carefully poised portrait of a  woman in elegant attire. I think this is an especially good example.

An Out-of-Doors Study, 1889. Oil on canvas. Brooklyn Museum, Museum Collection Fund, 20.640. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum). Here's a plein air painting of Sargent's long time friend and fellow artist Paul Helleu, also at work on a painting, with his wife Alice snoozing behind him and their canoe beside them. The notes describe this as "a dynamic and modern composition."

This exhibition opened my eyes to many aspects of Sargent's work, and increased my appreciation of him as an artist.

Tom Lehrer (1928-2025) - "Fight Fiercely Harvard"

Tom Lehrer, who died yesterday at 97, began writing songs when he was a student at Harvard College, majoring in math, in the 1940s. One of his earliest efforts, "Fight Fiercely Harvard," in the clip above, was a fey take on college football fight songs. The presence of "albeit" in the lyrics tells us we're not exactly on the scrimmage line. Unfortunately, current events have made the song timely, though not in a way related to football.

Though he enjoyed success as a songwriter and performer, for Lehrer music was an avocation. He had a long career as an academic mathematician and scientist, a pursuit that inspired several of his songs, including Lobachevsky (this and the next two linked songs are from live performances and begin with some, I think, amusing chatter). Many of his songs, like We Will All Go Together When We Go ("When the air becomes uraneous/We will all go simultaneous"), had dark, sardonic lyrics set to lively, happy tunes. He was a fan of the light operas of Gilbert and Sullivan, Victorian London's precursor to Broadway, and used the tune of "I am the Very Model of a Modern Major General,"from The Pirates of Penzance, for The Elements, another math and science inspired song. Although he was on the Harvard and MIT faculties for many years, in his later ones he taught at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Life in California inspired him to write (I'm Spending) Hannukah in Santa Monica. 

Despite his talent, popularity, and wisdom in many fields, Tom Lehrer was a humble man. At the beginning of his website, Tom Lehrer Songs, he released all his works to the public domain. He had a good. long life, but will be missed.

Connie Francis (1937-2025), "Lipstick On Your Collar."

As her New York Times obituary notes, Connie Francis is mostly remembered for dreamy ballads like her first million seller, Who's Sorry Now (no question mark in the title). She did occasional rockers like "Lipstick On Your Collar" (video above, with an introduction by Dick Clark). She grew up in Newark's The Ironbound, a neighborhood that was probably grittier in her childhood than now as, like many inner city areas, it is undergoing gentrification. When Bobby Darin decided Connie was his Dream Lover, her father showed him the door at gunpoint. 

"Lipstick On Your Collar" is my favorite of her many hit songs. I like it because it shows her tough side. I like it for the same reason I like Doris Day as Calamity Jane.

Farewell, Concetta Rosa Maria Franconero from The Ironbound. You gave much to many. You also endured much, both emotionally and physically, but you always prevailed. Maybe you and Roberta Flack can thrill the heavenly host with a duet.

Music recently lost two greats: Sly Stone and Brian Wilson

I've been crazy busy, but I feel I must join, if belatedly, in commemorating two brilliant artists we lost recently, both of whom profoundly affected the course of pop music in the 1960s, a time when I was especially attuned to it.

I first heard "Everyday People" by Sly and the Family Stone sometime during my second year of law school, probably on WBCN, then Boston's "underground" FM rock station. It grabbed me for its sound, a bold blend of the principal styles of Black pop music at the time: R&B, funk, and soul. Some writers claim it also incorporates "psychedelica." I don't hear it, though it may be true of some of the group's other songs.

What most caught my attention, and admiration, were the lyrics. Unlike most male pop singers, Sly began, not with a boast or a statement of despair, but with humility: "Sometimes I'm right, I can be wrong./ My own beliefs are in my song." In the next verse he made the statement everyone remembers: "Different strokes for different folks!" He begins the next, and also the final verse with a plea: "We've got to live together!"

It's a song as meaningful and relevant today as it was in 1968.

The Beach Boys rode a wave of popularity in that began in 1963 when "Surfin' USA" reached number three on the Billboard chart . Like much rock and roll, the song drew directly on Black roots. The music is credited to Chuck Berry, as it uses the tune of his "Sweet Little Sixteen", slightly arranged by the co-credited Brian Wilson, who wrote the lyrics with assistance from his cousin and fellow Beach Boy Mike Love.

"Surfin' USA" began a series of hits, almost all of which were written or co-written by Brian, that glorified two prominent aspects of Southern California teenage culture: surfing and cars. These were mostly songs by and about guys; "Surfer Girl" and "Car Crazy Cutie" were among the exceptions. The songs celebrated "manly" virtues such as fearlessness in the face of monster waves and keeping cool in a hotly contested drag race. 

The song I chose to feature in the clip above, "Don't Worry Baby," released in 1964, shows Brian turning from the macho pose of his earlier songs, and showing vulnerability. It begins with his protagonist having vague misgivings - "Well it's been building up inside me/ For oh I don't know how long" - but his girlfriend provides comfort and reassurance - "Don't worry baby/ Everything will turn out alright." Then we learn the specific reason for his anxiety:

"I guess I should've kept my mouth shut/ When I started to brag about my car/ But I can't back down now/ Because I pushed the other guys too far"

His  big mouth has led to his being challenged to a race. Does his girlfriend beg him to ignore the challenge and not race? No way:

"She told me baby, when you race today/ Just take along my love for you/ And if you knew how much I loved you/ Baby nothing could go wrong with you"

Was she right? Did he survive, even win, the race? So it seems, although the song doesn't tell us. After all, he's a narrator still around to tell the story. Moreover, the optimistic feeling of the song convinces us that he didn't suffer the sad fate of Tommy in Ray Peterson's "Tell Laura I Love Her."

I was surprised to learn that the lyrics of "Don't Worry Baby" aren't exclusively Brian's. The title, and chorus, are his, as is the general story line. He was inspired by the Ronettes' hit, "Be My Baby." Working off this, possibly with inspiration from his girlfriend Marilyn Rovell, who later became his first wife, he got the title, "Don't Worry, Baby" and the general idea for a story line, along with the chorus. He gave this to his frequent collaborator Roger Christian, who presented Brian with lyrics in a parking lot. Brian took them home and composed the music. 

That Brian's songs were almost all the products of collaborations doesn't, in my view, diminish his status as a genius. If anything, I think, it improves it. His ability to envision a song's concept and to find an ideal collborator - Christian being a natural for car songs as he was a racing enthusiast who earned the monicker "poet of the strip" - speaks to his brilliance.

Sly Stone photo: Sarfatims, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Brian Wilson photo: IthakaDarinPappas, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

 

Remembering my father on what would be his 111th birthday

 

Today, June 14, is the 111th anniversary of the birth of my father, Claude Moreland Scales, Jr. It's also Flag Day, and the birthday of someone else who is having his celebrated with a parade. It's one day before Father's Day. Dad was born and raised on a small farm in southern Indiana. He graduated from high school in 1932, when the Depression was at its worst, and spent the next four years doing farm chores and pumping gas at a service station.

In 1936 he enlisted in the Army and was trained as an infantryman. One day his unit was on a training exercise and he was lugging a Browning Automatic Rifle in oppressive summer heat and humidity. He heard a sound overhead, looked up, and saw an airplane. He thought, "There are people in that who are having more fun than I am." When his enlistment term ended, he said he would re-enlist only if he could be assigned to the Air Corps.

He was a radio enthusiast, so he was sent to Fort Monmouth, New Jersey and trained to be a radio operator. He was on the crew of a B-18 bomber, but developed an inability to hear certain frequencies, so was put on ground duty. When the U.S. joined World War Two, he was made a recruiting sergeant. This led to his meeting my mother when his recruiting office in the federal building in Altoona, Pennsylvania was on the same floor as the office of the Bureau of Bituminous Coal, where she was a secretary. The occasion of their meeting proved tragic. Her brother had received a draft notice. He was to report to the recruiting office in a few days time and take a physical exam. If he passed he would shortly after be put on a train and taken to a fort for training. She asked to be notified if Thomas Lane passed his physical so that she, her mother and sister could come and say goodbye before he boarded the train. It proved to be a final farewell; the circumstnces of my uncle's death are told here.

After their marriage, Dad was sent to a USAAF bomber base in England. He received a wartime temporary commission, and was made the base's supply officer. He wrote a letter to Mom in which he said that one thing he missed, besides her, was Spam. She didn't get his sarcasm and sent him a case of the stuff. This no doubt got a good laugh from his mates. One of these was the actor Jimmy Stewart, who was the pilot of one of the planes stationed at his base.

Dad had the additional duty of heading the crew of the anti-aircraft gun that was the base's sole on post facility for defense. I asked him if he'd ever seen any action. He said things were quiet, as the Royal Air Force, with American and Canadian help, had taken command of the skies over Britain and the North Sea. One day the alarm sounded and he and his crew scrambled to their positions. The approaching enemy was a fast, low flying Junkers Ju-88 on a photo reconnaisance mission. It was almost overhead when the gun crew arrived. They could have spun the gun and tried to shoot the plane down as it flew away, but Dad said he was afraid that, if they succeeded, it would crash and burn the wheat field of a farmer he knew and liked, and who sometimes unofficially augmented the base's food supply. So, Dad said, "I let him get away safely."

After the war Dad reverted to his permanent rank of master sergeant and in 1948 left the Army to become part of the new Air Force. When Mom was pregnant with me, he was stationed at what is now Tallahassee International Airport. Before I was due, the military hospital there was closed, so she decided to go to her home in Pennsylvania where my birth could be supervised by a doctor she knew. During most of my first year Dad was being shuttled around among short term assignments, so I spent my babyhood with my mother in my grandmother's apartment on Pennsylvania Avenue, the main drag of Tyrone, a town that sat beside what was then the four track main line of the Pennsylvania Railroad. The aural landscape for my infant ears was frequently punctuated by steam whistle shrieks and diesel air horn blasts. Since this occurred during a time when I was under the constant adoring attention of Mom and Grandma, it may have been the basis of my lifetime love of trains. Later in my childhood, when Dad would join us on visits to Tyrone, he would take me to the station for train watching. He was something of a rail buff himself, could spot the different kinds of locomotives and cars, and told me that on one of his Army supply assignments he had been taught to operate a diesel switch locomotive.

When I was about halfway through my second year, Dad got a long term assignment to Miami International Airport, at the time half of which was an air force base. I have some clear memories of out time in Miami. For a while we lived in a small apartment building where I got to know my first dog; our neighbors had a sweet natured boxer named Heidi. I came to love what my parents called "modern" architecture, which I later learned was art deco, of which Miami had plenty. When I was three, Dad got transferred to Kelly AFB, just outside San Antonio. My Pennsylvania bred mother learned to buy fresh tamales wrapped on cornhusks at the local market. My fourth birthday present was a "Billy the Kid" outfit from Joske's of Texas, complete with hat, shirt, jeans, boots, belt with holster, and a cap pistol.

After some time Dad got orders to Officer Candidate School, and we lived in Cheyenne, Wyoming for several months while he completed the course. He must have done very well, because he graduated with the rank of captain. I remember his taking me to Sherman Hill, where we watched giant Union Pacific articulated steam locomotives pulling mile long freight trains across the Continental Divide. One time we saw President Truman's train, led by a bright yellow UP diesel.

After Cheyenne we returned to San Antonio. Soon after, Dad got orders to England. He was stationed at a small outpost, Chicksands, which had no family housing or school, so he went over ahead of Mom and me to find a place for us to live, and Mom and I stayed in Tyrone for several months.

When we joined Dad, we settled into half of a duplex thatched roof cottage built in 1597 that Dad had sublet from a British Army major who had been sent to Germany. The owners, who occupied the other half, were the delightful Warner family, who had a dairy herd and raised pigs and chickens. Their daughter, Peggy, was my sitter whenever my parents went out for an officers' club event at Chicksands or a theater night in London. I began my formal education in a County Council (what we call "public") school where, as I note in my brief bio in the right column, being American is likely all that saved me from having my bottom caned.

In 1954 Dad got orders to return to the U.S. That summer we got together with another American family who were also returning and who had a daughter, Doris, about my age; together we hired a tour guide who had a VW Microbus. Our guide, Jimmy, who spoke all major European languages, took us through Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, and France. When we stopped in the Bavarian Alps, Doris and I had a snowball fight in June. When we got to Paris, I broke out with chicken pox. Jimmy took me to a pharmacy, but couldn't remember how to say "calamine lotion" in French. He showed my arm to the pharmacist, who said, "Ah! Oui," and brought out a bottle of the good stuff. Dad had an 8mm movie camera he'd bought in Germany. For years he showed movies of me standing in front of the Eiffel Tower, scratching; in the gardens at Versailles, scratching; and on the Montmarte, scratching. I forgave him.

Dad's next, and as it turned out, last, Air Force assignment was Eglin AFB, near Fort Walton Beach in Florida's Northwest Panhandle. Eglin had both on base housing and an elementary school. I was of the proper age, eight, to start third grade. Since I'd been in a British school, the school officials weren't sure what level of work I was prepared for, so they had me tested. It turned out I was capable of sixth grade work, but my parents wisely, I think, decided to keep me with my age group.

We were four years at Eglin, where Dad served as the housing supply officer, a sometimes thankless task. He was promoted to major in 1957, but in 1958 he decided that, with 22 years of service, it was time to retire. He and Mom decided on Tampa as our retirement home. They bought a house close to MacDill AFB, where we could take advantage of Dad's retiree benefits of medical care and bargains at the Commissary and Post Exchange. He used his GI Bill benefits to take courses at Tampa Business College that prepared him to pass the exam for a real estate license. Unfortunately he got into real estate during a recession, so he went to what he knew, acting as a supply guy for an appliance wholesale dealer. He held several such jobs until he finally retired in his 60s, when he could live comfortably on his Air Force retirement and Social Security.

When we moved to Tampa my maternal grandmother, who had severe osteoarthritis and needed a wheelchair, was living with us. My mother was raised a Presbyterian; Dad a Methodist. After arriving in Tampa we looked at the Presbyterian church, which had steep steps leading to the entrance. Manhattan Avenue Methodist was, at the time, all at ground level, so to assure Grandma would have access we became Methodists (in the Air Force we had attended Protestant chapel, where the chaplain could be Baptist, Lutheran, or whatever). Dad quickly became active in the church, serving as an usher and eventually as a lay leader.

How to sum him up? He was proud to have achieved what he did, but realized that he'd been fortunate in many ways. He did not look down on those who had been less fortunate. I'm proud to have been his son.

The Who - Won't Get Fooled Again (Shepperton Studios / 1978) - Happy 80th, Pete Townshend

This performance of a perhaps timely song shows Pete's guitar and vocal heroics at their most manic, with Roger Daltrey singing and doing his frenetic thing as well. John Entwistle is steady on bass. Sadly, it was drummer Keith Moon's last performance before his untimely death. I wondered who did the synth. According to Google's "AI Overview" (which seems an appropriate source for something about a synth), it was Pete himself:

"He used an EMS VCS3 Mk1 synthesizer to process the sound of a Lowrey Berkshire Deluxe TBO-1 organ. The organ was played with a marimba repeat effect set to fast, and then the output was fed into the synthesizer and a LFO (Low-Frequency Oscillator) to create the arpeggiated sound. The intro to the song, including the synth part, was recorded using a backing track." 

Rock on, Pete! 

Another Finger Lakes Venture; This Time for Tea, not Wine

On Thursday, April 24 our friends Chris Bennem and Lisa Moore took Martha and me in their car from Brooklyn to Glen Hollow (photo at left), their "fairy-tale farmhouse reminiscent of a European country cottage" situated on a hillside overlooking Canandaigua Lake and in New York State's Finger Lakes winemaking region. We've made two previous visits to Glen Hollow. The first, in June of 2021, included visits to the tasting rooms of several wineries, and is described here. The second, last November, provided us with an extensive tour of Dr. Konstantin Frank's vineyards and winery, followed by a paired tasting.

This visit, however, wasn't motivated by wine. We went because Martha offered to help Lisa, who serves as President of the Board of Trustees of the Bristol Library, to prepare and present an English tea at Glen Hollow as a fund raiser for the library. Fortunately, many had responded to the invitation, so there was much work to be done. Cuts in federal funding for arts and literacy organizations like libraries made efforts like this an urgent task.

Here's one of several long tables set for the tea.

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Here's Nicola (Nikki) Lund, Secretary of the Library's Board of Trustees and a native of the Sceptered Isle, explaining the traditions of the English Tea. 

 

Here's Paytan Mann, the Library Director, enjoying her tea.

This trip may not have been about wine, but there certainly was wine to be enjoyed. In the photo are three fine examples of Finger Lakes wines that we had to complement the delicious meals Lisa and Chris provided. At the left of the photo is Boundary Breaks' 2022 Cabernet Franc; in the center is Ravines Wine Cellars' 2021 Sauvignon Blanc; and on the right is Heron Hill's 2021 Reserve Chardonnay. Heron Hill's Ingle Vineyard and tasting room are a short ride north of Glen Hollow. After our arrival on Thursday we attended Heron Hill's "Friends and Neighbors" free tasting and buffet dinner. I especially liked Heron Hill's gewurztraminer, an Alsatian varietal that does well in the Finger Lakes climate, and produces a white wine with a unique, slightly spicy flavor.

It won't be too long before there is wine with a "Glen Hollow" label. The photo at right is of the vineyard, planted with chardonnay, recently acquired by Chris and Lisa. It may not look like much now, but by fall it should produce a crop of grapes. Chris and Lisa have an agreement with Heron Hill under which those grapes will be made into wine. They have long term plans to acquire grapes from other vineyards and expand their wine offerings to include other varietals such as cabernet franc and riesling. 

Wall of Death, by Richard and Linda Thompson

This song has been going through my head for several days. I suppose it's a metaphor of the time we're living now, when everything seems precariously close to disaster. The video inspired me to look up Lillian La France. She was born Agnes Micek in Kansas in 1894, and became famous as a motorcycle stunt rider in the 1920s and '30s. She's perhaps best remembered for riding the "Wall of Death" which, as you can see from the video, is a circular track with steeply sloping walls so that, near the top, a rider and bike are horizontal to the floor, held from tumbling down only by centrifugal force. 

I first knew of Richard Thompson as guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter for Fairport Convention, a band I came to love in the spring of 1970 when I was walking past the dorm room of my law school classmate John Lovett, a Kentuckian and superb banjo picker. John's door was partly open, and from inside I heard spine tingling female and male harmony on what sounded to me like Anglican chant. I knocked and asked John who was doing the song. He said it was Fairport Convention, doing their arrangement of an obscure Bob Dylan piece called "Percy's Song", on their album Unhalfbricking. I didn't rush out and buy the album; I was prepping for finals and working on my third year paper. 

When I arrived in New York in June of 1970 I began collecting Fairport albums. The group was very prolific in the years 1968-'70, recording and releasing six albums: Fairport Convention (1968); What We Did on Our Holidays (January 1969); the aforementioned Unhalfbricking (July 1969); Liege & Lief (December 1969); and Full House (July 1970). Thompson played lead guitar and sang on all of these, and co-wrote several of the songs. 

In 1971 Thompson left Fairport to begin a solo career, although since the 1980s he has performed at Fairport's Cropredy Convention (formerly the Cropredy Festival), often with present or former members of Fairport. His first solo album, Henry the Human Fly (1972) , was panned by critics and sold poorly, although a reviewer in 2004 called it "a true gem." One of his backing vocalists on the album was Linda Peters, who soon after the album was released married Richard and became Linda Thompson. They then did six albums together. The first, I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight, recorded in 1973 but not released until '74 because the OAPEC oil embargo made production of vinyl discs expensive, was at first "ignored by reviewers," but "later came to be highly regarded." The next four albums received less praise. 

Their last together, Shoot Out the Lights, had a title that ironically referred to their first. It also reflected the state of their marriage at the time it was recorded; they were divorced before it was released in March of 1982. After that, they traveled to The U.S. for a promotional tour during which they were onstage together but otherwise kept apart. The album received much critical praise. Robert Christgau wrote in the July 6, 1982 Village Voice, "these are powerfully double-edged metaphors for the marriage struggle." The song titles tell a tale. They are, in order: "Don't Renege on Our Love"; "Walking on a Wire"; "Just the Motion"; "Shoot Out the Lights"; "Back Street Slide"; "Did She Jump or Was She Pushed?" (all songs were written by Richard, but this has lyrics by Linda); and, finally and fittingly, "Wall of Death."

I've only seen Richard Thompson in live performance once. It was in the early 1990s, when he did a free outdoor concert in Battery Park City, during which he did a splendid rendition of what is, in my estimation, one of his greatest songs, "1952 Vincent Black Lightning." I've delighted in his recordings for over half of my life, and, despite its lack of his guitar fireworks, consider "Wall of Death" one of my favorites.