Round Robin: The Way We Listened

For the Round Robin Challenge: Old Tech, New Tech, I asked to see pictures that showed a contrast between old and new technologies for doing the same thing. I don't know about you, but I'm old enough to remember a fairly long progression of ways to listen to music. My first recordings were mostly 45 RPM kid's records, mostly on the Peter Pan, Disneyland and Little Golden labels, but I distinctly remember one or two 78 RPM records in the mix. When I was a little older, the family record player had four speeds, and I used them all - on the same record! It was the last of my kiddie records, The Poky Little Puppy. Meant to be a 45 RPM single, it told the story of a puppy who "just pokes along and he looks at the breeze." Played at 78 RPM, the puppy was much livelier. At 33 1/3 RPM, he really poked along, and at 16 2/3 RPM - yes, there was such a speed! - he turned into a slow-moving oinker. Unfortunately, I don't have the record any more, or I'd show it to you here.

About the same time I was putting the Puppy through his paces, I was buying my first two LPs: More of the Monkees and The Monkees Headquarters.  Soon after that came my first Beatles album, Revolver, chosen because it cost a dollar less than Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band from my brother's record club. Some time after that I bought my first two "adult" 45s: Hair by the Cowsills and Dizzy by Tommy Roe. About five years after that, as I started working on collecting all the Beatles LPs, my brother was very proud of his 8-track tape collection. I'm happy to say I never went down that route!

Me at Rockarama circa 1982

When I was managing a used record store in the early 1980s, I was delighted to take home a 78 RPM single of Little Richard singing Long Tall Sally. The stereo we had at the time must have been one of the last ones that still played that venerable speed. At the time we used to drive from Columbus, Ohio to other major cities in the midwest to sell used records, imports, posters, buttons, etc. at record shows. On the way we listened to music - on cassette tape, of course! Eventually we had to close down Rockarama and I went to work at someone else's record store. I stuck around long enough to sell a few copies of mostly classical albums in a revolutionary new music format: Compact Discs!

I doubt that I still have that Little Richard 78. The vast majority of our LPs are inaccessible in crates in our storage room, and we don't have a turntable set up anyway. But we do have a few stacks of "to be gotten rid off--probably" LPs in our front room.

John left almost our entire cassette collection outside a year and a half ago, where it promptly got rained on in a huge storm. The few cassettes I still have are mostly either audio books or Doctor Who related, such as this novelty single cassette:

And we still have some treasured 45s.

And less-treasured 45s:

I still buy the occasional CD, but only Doctor Who-related ones. Here's my latest purchase:

Mostly, I listed to music on my iPhone, or occasionally my iPad. I don't even know where my iPod is any more. My Halloween music last night was courtesy of Pandora. Two years ago I played a CD on a boombox.

Still, there are some things that remain the same, more or less. The 1963 Beatles may sound better through an iPhone on a dock than on a mono HiFi, but it's still great music. Ditto the 1969 Beatles. And I still love to listen to them!

Now let's see what other old and new tech our Robins have come up with!

Linking List
as of Saturday, November 2nd, 2013
12:34 AM MST

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/mavarin

Ellen - Posted!
Ellen's Phlog
http://ellensphlog.blogspot.com/

Jama - Posted!
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Karen

Weekend Assignment: The Gift That Keeps On Living

Ack! I got sidetracked and missed my own Weekend Assignment deadline!

This week's Assignment is short and seasonal--again!

Weekend Assignment # 350: Best. Gift. Ever.
What is the best gift you've ever gotten from anyone?

Extra Credit: To the best of your recollection, what is the best gift you ever gave someone else?

I'm tempted to say the Chinon SLR I got for my birthday in 1986, but the real answer is this:

As I said at the time: Could be my Best Birthday Present Ever!

which led to this:

Pepper, the day we got her. We were calling her Newdog.

We had to bathe her twice in two days - the second time after

she dug her way out of the back yard!

Pepper is much harder to photograph these days. Whenever I turn on the camera she turns away! But that doesn't stop her from being a great dog and a great gift.

My best gift ever given, I was hoping, would be the one I was putting together for my brother Steve for Christmas this year. John and I have put many hours into putting it together, but we can't quite seem to get it right. It's meant to be a book, or at least a pdf file, if we can ever get the pages to appear in order with no duplications or superseded versions. The title page reads,

The Ruth Anne Johnson Songbook

Version 2.2

Songs and parodies by Dr. Ruth Anne Johnson Funk

Sheet music scanned by John Blocher

Lyrics transcribed from sheet music or memory by Karen Funk Blocher

Yes, it's a serious attempt to scan every page of surviving sheet music my Mom ever wrote, along with my transcriptions of many of her song lyrics. I've been carrying at least half a dozen of her songs in my head for forty years, more or less intact, with more fragmentary memories of her other efforts. Most of them were first performed in musical revues she wrote in the 1960s, and a one woman show she co-wrote for local stage star Bea Solomon in the early 1970s. An astonishing 20 songs of Mom's, some with original music, others with mom's lyrics set to Chopin and other composers, appeared in her show DeManleyville USA (1964) and its update, DeManleyville '65.

Obviously it was all a long time ago, and the people who performed those songs would be in their seventies or eighties by now, those who are still alive at all. I don't know if any of them would remember or care about The Ending of Desire or Come Back, G.E., or any of my mom's music from her Limestone Theater and Syracuse Little Theater days. But I care, and I know Steve cares. Now he will have everything I have in my mom's old notebooks, digitized and darkened and with some of the yellowing removed from the pages. She wrote mostly in pencil on staff paper, so it's important to get legible files out of them before the originals deteriorate any further.

Now if we can just get those pages in order on the PDF, I can get it sent off to Steve. By mail, that is. The last version of the pdf was 130 MB, and Steve's still on dial-up!

Karen

Thirty Years Later, John Lennon Is Still Dead - But His Music Isn't

I'm old enough to remember where I was then I heard John Lennon had died. For that matter, I'm old enough to remember the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show in the summer of 1964. I've been cruising YouTube and Google tonight for appropriate clips and tributes, and it occurs to me I should get something posted here before this 30th anniversary of his death passes.

Husband John's best friend from college (CGI wizard John Berton) called that night (the 8th) and said, "Lennon's been shot."

I couldn't believe it. "Is he all right?"

"He's dead."

It was a shock. I had been a Beatles fan most of my life, had done a report on them in high school, and had bought all of their LPs (except for Revolver, which I already owned) during high school and college. John had not only their commercial albums, but a number of bootlegs of their demos and studio sessions. We even had a large Beatles mirror hanging on our living room wall.

But Lennon was dead, and I was the co-owner/manager of a tiny Rock memorabilia store, Rockarama in Columbus Ohio. I had to do something in response to this horrific and life-changing event. Five years ago, I wrote about what happened next in my life, as a direct result of John Lennon's death:

Memories of December 9th
(reprinted from a post 5 years ago

On December 9th, 1980, I went to work as usual; but it was decidedly not an ordinary day.

My job at the time, such as it was, was as co-owner, manager and sole employee of Shirt Off My Back / Rockarama. The first part of the name was the original business, started by Kal and Larry in 1979. Yes, it was a used T-shirt shop. Kal and Larry also did computer portraits (primitive dot matrix portraits printed on cloth banners) at Lazarus and elsewhere on a seasonal basis.

I made about half of the buttons shown here.

We were next door to Mole's Used Records, so the rock and roll angle worked much better than the used shirts. We bought out Larry, and started carrying new rock T-shirts, posters, stickers, patches and buttons. I designed and made some of the buttons myself, while others came from suppliers in New York and London. Before we moved to a larger storefront, the place was crammed so full of all of these things, plus 45s and vintage rock collectibles, that our slogan was "A Lot of Stuff in a Tiny Room!"

John Lennon had spent half of the 1970s out of the public eye and away from recording studios, instead playing househusband to Yoko and father to little Sean. He was expected to reemerge around his birthday (and Sean's) in October, 1980. This was the meaning (or, at least, a meaning) of some buttons we had for sale, that simply said "Where's Lennon?" But John had recently relaunched his career on schedule, with the Double Fantasy LP and the hit single (Just Like) Starting Over. We knew where Lennon was, so those particular buttons were no longer topical as of early December 1980.

But the morning of December 9th, those buttons seemed to have a new and sadder meaning. People started coming in, looking for something to wear in memorial to him, and leaving with that button. So I used press-on lettering to design a new button: just the name John Lennon in white on a black background. I made about 75 or 100 of them, and gave them away. It didn't seem right to profit by his death.

Just a few weeks before that, I'd had a conversation with someone about every major rock band having at least one dead member. I figured at the time that the Beatles were "pre-disastered" (a Garp reference), because they'd met their dead member quota with Stu Sutcliffe, back in 1962. The rest of the Beatles weren't drug addicts (not anymore), and weren't likely to die of a brain hemorrhage (as Stu did), so they ought to be pretty safe. But it turned out I was wrong about that one.

Two other things happened at Rockarama on or about December 9th. One was a run-in with a couple of loud-mouthed college boys, who tried to get a rise out of me by saying they were glad John Lennon was dead. I kept my temper, and asked them to leave my store. They declined to leave on demand, but soon wandered off when I failed to entertain them further.

The other was a phone call with Toni from Relix, wholesale purveyors of rock buttons, Grateful Dead collectibles, and Relix Magazine. Toni told me she didn't have anyone to write a Lennon tribute for the next issue of Relix, which was going to press almost immediately. I offered to write it for her, and have it ready the next day. That little article was my first professional sale as a writer. I got paid $35.00 for it, and was glad to get it.

I remember other things from that tiny room, such as Mark Eitzel writing in his songs and poetry notebook in my store, back when his stage name was Billy Lee Buckeye. I remember that early on, I was so ignorant about 1970s rock that I didn't know Led Zeppelin was popular. I remember buying someone's vintage Beatles collection for about $75, including 1964 drinking glasses and bobbing head dolls. I didn't mean to cheat the guy; I just didn't realize the items were old, because they were in such great condition (and because a lot of the old stuff had been pirated in the 1970s). And I remember selling lots and lots of Pat Benatar posters, and buttons of Pink Floyd's The Wall.

Groovy times, man.

Rockarama moved onto 13th Ave. in 1981, and shut down in 1982. It never paid me more than lunch money and the occasional record or collectible. It didn't really break even, most of the time. We supported it by taking selected stock to record shows on weekends. Eventually I had to go get a real job. But heck, it was fun while it lasted. I have no regrets. Well, almost no regrets. Not about Rockarama itself.

***

That terrible, awful night still echoes across the intervening decades, like the final chord in A Day in the Life. It silenced John Lennon, ending a period of musical creativity shortly after it began, with no possibility of more brand new music to come. The much longed-for Beatles reunion happened only in the form of a posthumous collaboration, with Lennon's old bandmates adding on to a couple of his old demo recordings.

Amazingly and rather wonderfully, however, the musical legacy of John Lennon and the Beatles continues, even without John Lennon sitting at his piano or guitar. My husband published a handful of books about the Beatles in the late 1980s, written by the pseudonymous L R E King. The books were an attempt to catalog all the Beatle-related demos, live recordings, studio sessions, remixes and "outfakes" (recordings marketed by bootleggers as something they weren't) that had surfaced illegally. Much of the best material was later released legally, on The Beatles Anthology, Live at the BBC and so on. Nowadays, much of the information King worked so hard on is really available online. There is even sort-of-new material in the form of the Love album, plus gray market remixes and tributes.

And the Internet is such that tonight I've watched a 1966 video of Paperback Writer/Rain, which I probably first saw the night it aired on The Ed Sullivan Show. I've watched a 2007 live clip of a Beatles tribute band perform Hold My Hand, the Rutles song from 1978, which parodied the Beatles' appearance on Ed Sullivan in 1964. I've read parts of a 1980 interview with Lennon that Rolling Stone just got around to publishing. All these years later, Lennon's legacy is as vital as ever.

Karen

EMPS: A Visual Christmas Concert

For EMPS #69: Christmas Music, I'd like to show you the visual evidence of this year's Christmas music at my church, the Episcopal Parish of St. Michael and All Angels. Sorry, no audio!



At St. Michael's, the Christmas services begin with the 5 PM Family Mass on Christmas Eve. This is the service at which children help to set up the creche amid the appropriate Gospel readings and carols. Here, Father Smith leads the congregation in a Christmas carol. The woman at the piano flies in every Thanksgiving and Christmas and plays for us. (I assume she's mostly here to visit family.)



A major feature of music at St. Michael's is the Aeolian-Skinner pipe organ, which I photographed extensively for one of the very first Round Robin Photo Challenges years ago. In a loft at the back of the church is the antiphonal organ, seen here. It's an extra section of pipes far away from the main organ, which is housed in a chamber behind the church sanctuary.



The other main source of music at St. Michael's is the parish choir, directed by Jane Haman, who also plays the organ. Their Christmas performance takes place at the "midnight" mass on Christmas Eve, which actually starts at 10 PM with carols and bible readings. They are supplemented by a string quartet - or is it a trio?



Aha. The fourth instrument in the quartet is the organ, played here by parishioner and choir member Keith Hege. Chuck Haman turns the pages.



The string players are the evening's "hired guns."



There is a Mass held early Christmas morning, but I'm sure you'll understand when I say I always skip that one. The other mass of Christmas Day is at 10:15 AM. Jane, Chuck and the choir take a well-deserved day off, and composer (and retired English teacher) Alan Schultz plays instead. Both his original music and the classical pieces he selects tend to put the organ through its paces, showing off the range of notes a few thousand pipes can produce. My favorite bits are when he has a "call and response" between the pipes behind the sanctuary and the antiphonal pipes in back.



There are openings to the right and left of the sanctuary, through which banks of pipes can be seen. It took me a few tries to get the shot, but I kind of like the underlit versions.



Here's a better shot of the same pipes and poinsettia, taken with flash.



Just for fun, I tried the autoenhance function on this underexposed shot, and did nothing else to it except resize. Well, it's certainly in Christmas colors!

Don't forget - the return of the The Round Robin Photo Challenges is next Saturday! See the Round Robin blog for details. The new Weekend Assignment will be posted shortly.

Karen

Round Robin: Silenced

This week's Round Robin topic is "Silence," as suggested by Monica of Shutterly Happy. It's tricky to depict an auditory experience in a visual medium, let alone the lack of sound, and for a long time I had no clue how to handle it. My eventual solution was to photograph something that clearly produced sound in the past, but has now clearly been silenced. Here we go!

From Round Robin Photo Challenges

The pictures above decorate the former upper-story windows of the venerable Chicago Music Store (founded 1919) in downtown Tucson. I'm honestly not sure whether the guy with the guitar is supposed to depict Jerry Garcia or someone else (Willie Nelson?), but the person in the next window over is Jimi Hendrix, whose music was silenced decades ago. Yes, we can still hear it, but not coming from him - and certainly not coming from that painted window!

Same story with Janis Joplin at the other end. And although two of the Beatles are still alive, their collective voice as a group was silenced in 1970, breaking through again only briefly when Anthology came out.

I've written a couple of times this week about a power failure we had on Tuesday, which drove me out of the silent house. On Friday evening the power went out again! One second Rachel Maddow was coming on - the next, the tv screen went dark and silent, and so did the air conditioner above the tv to the right.

This time the power was only off for a few minutes, but the noise of our electric appliances didn't exactly roar into life right away. When I turned the tv back on, I had to turn on the cable box too. It promptly displayed this screen, silently, until I fiddled with it to try to get an actual station again.

I may be able to come up with something more, later today, but that will have to do for now. Meanwhile, have a look at everyone else's silent photos!

Linking List

Monica - Posted!
Shutterly Happy
http://monica-frameofmind.blogspot.com

Steven - Posted!
(sometimes)photoblog
http://www.sometimesphotoblog.com/

Suzanne R - Posted!
SuzyQ421's Photo Blog
http://suzyq421sphotoblog.blogspot.com/

Carly - Posted!
Ellipsis
http://ellipsissuddenlycarly.blogspot.com

Jama - Posted!
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Terri
Ways I See the World
http://teelgeephotos.blogspot.com/

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Sherrie - Posted!
Sherrie's Stuff
http://sherrie-plummer.blogspot.com/

Joanna
Up on Haliburton Hill
http://uponhaliburtonhill.blogspot.com

Molly Mavis - Posted!
Visual Dialogues
http://visualdialogues.wordpress.com

Meg - Posted! (New Blog Name) - Carly
Free From The Pit
http://www.inquestoffreedom.com/2009/07/round-robin-challenge-silence.html

Linda - Posted!
Linda's Window
http://www.lindaswindow.blogspot.com/

Sandra - Posted!
A Cappuccino A Day
http://www.Acappuccinoaday.blogspot.com

Alexa - Posted!
Imagination Pounces
http://imaginationpounces.blogspot.com

Chrissie - Posted!
Chrissea's Corner
http://chrisseascorner.wordpress.com

ellen b - Posted!
The Happy Wonderer
http://happywonderer.wordpress.com/

Martha - Posted!
Menagerie
http://meandering-martha.blogspot.com/

Kara **Welcome, new member!**
Hip Chick's Home
http://hipchickshome.blogspot.com/

Kelly **Welcome, new member!** - Posted!
A Goddess Rising
http://agoddessrising.blogspot.com/

betty - Posted!
A Corgi in Southern California
http://acorgiinsoutherncalifornia.blogspot.com/2009/07/sound-of-silence.html

Linda (OC’s Mom) **Welcome New Member** Posted!
Country Corgis
http://countrycorgis.blogspot.com/

Peggy - Posted!
Holmespunfun Memes and Themes
http://holmespunfunmemesandthemes.blogspot.com

Annie **Welcome New Member** - Posted!
Annie's Home
http://shopannies.blogspot.com/2009/07/one-of-my-favorite-peaceful-places.html

Betty**Welcome New Member** - Posted!
A Glimpse into Midlife
http://glimpseintomidlife.blogspot.com

Vicki - Posted!
Beach Bum
http://2babb.blogspot.com

Ruth**Welcome New Member** - Posted!
The Scrabble Queen, Knits Too
http://scrabblequeen.wordpress.com

And please check out my other entries below if you get a chance. Thanks!

Karen

Weekend Assignment: #274: The Pursuit of Happiness

"We hold these truths to be self-evident," Thomas Jefferson famously wrote, under the editorial kibitzing of John Adams and Ben Franklin, "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Our Weekend Assignment, delayed until the anniversary of the ratification of those words by the Continental Congress, takes its cue from my old buddy Tom:

Weekend Assignment: #274: How do you personally pursue Happiness?
Extra Credit: How do you know when you've caught it?

This has got to be the shortest Weekend Assignment question I've ever posed, but it's not necessarily the simplest. The concept of happiness can be tricky to define, let alone recognize. It's a platonic ideal, frequently defined more by its absence - or its pursuit - than by the actual experience of it.

Yet we know it's real, at least in retrospect. Often we can look back on a moment and say, "Ah, I was so happy then," whether we recognized it at the time or not. Even the big, obviously joyous occasions - a wedding day, the birth of a child, the vacation of a lifetime - can be obscured by the stresses of the moment, or by just being too busy to fully appreciate that ah, yes, this is happiness, right now.

Still, we try for it, all day, every day. An accepted theory of human behavior is that every single thing we do is in pursuit of happiness, of trying to make ourselves feel better, selfishly or otherwise. I've always hated that idea, that the most altruistic act isn't really for the sake of the other person, but to make us feel good about ourselves.

So, to transition from the pontificating, which has been making me happy for several minutes now because the writing is going well, I now must consider what I do to try to be happy. There are lots of things I do, some of them contradictory. I write. I hang out with dogs. I goof off. I stop goofing off and accomplish something, thereby reducing the guilt quotient. I hang out with John. I read. I drive up the mountain. I watch my favorite tv shows. I go to church - which doesn't sound like a happiness-producing activity, especially if you're as uneasy with certain kinds of religious behavior and belief systems as I am. Yet againt the odds, St. Michael's does indeed make me happy, at least as much because of the people as because of the ritual and the meaning behind it.

It's been a stressful week for me. I discovered on Wednesday night that my unemployment claim ran out at the end of May, but the state website let me continue to put in claims anyway. It just didn't pay anything. There was a form in the mail that explained about an additional 7 weeks I qualified for, if I filled it out and turned it in - no later than two weeks ago. I learned of its existence on Wednesday night, and tracked it down in a pile of mail on Thursday afternoon, just in time to get it turned in at DES (Department of Economic Services) before they closed for the holiday weekend. The DES employee couldn't tell me whether it would still be accepted. And I just realized that I should have filed a claim anyway online this week, even if it's not being paid, and I think I've missed the deadline on it. If all this works, it should be paid retroactively, but only if I don't break the chain with a week of no reported claim.

It's kind of depressing, partly because I've screwed up, and partly because I shouldn't still need unemployment payments after all this time. My part time job is good and valuable, but not lucrative. Am I doing enough to find work, or letting my discouragement over the lack of response induce a debilitating lethargy where job hunting is concerned? And does it even matter, when most of the job listings either don't fit my skills and qualifications or are the same ones I've applied for at least once before? Clearly, though, lapsing into defeatism isn't going to lead to either employment or happiness. So I went through CareerBuilder and Monster and a few other sites this week, updating and upgrading, and compiled a master document of past job data: addresses and dates and supervisors' names and phone numbers. And for a moment, I was happy with what I'd accomplished - but I still have much more to do.

Often, though, it's not the head-on, work through your troubles approach that leads to short-term happiness, or at least pleasure. (There's a whole tangent I could pursue but won't: what is pleasure, if not a sort of degraded, shamefaced form of happiness?) We all face that annoying tension between short term gratification and long-term goals. Do I enjoy an ice cream cone now, or deny myself for the sake of a lower number on a bathroom scale?

Maybe we have to have both, the adult, disciplined pursuit of the things that we hope will made us happy in the long run, and the little pleasures that make us happy in the moment. Tonight I was going to start this entry right after John turned off Torchwood on DVD, but instead I spent most of the night reading a magazine about golden moments from each of the 200 Doctor Who stories to date. The many writers of this DWM Special describe particular scenes, and why they're brilliant, and the impact they had on their chid- or adult-selves. Their joy in the show, their love for it and happiness that it's still going strong after nearly 46 years, beams out from the pages, and produces an answering outpouring of emotion from me. So for a few hours, as I read about the "deadly jelly baby" scene and "everybody lives" and the disinfecting elevator, and I'm happy. Then I put the magazine away, and return to the problem of facing my own, imperfect life.

So. What about you? How to you pursue happiness, and do you notice when you find it? Tell us about it in your blog, with a link back here, and a link to your blog entry in the comments below. You can get all philosophical on us, as I just did, or maybe just describe a particular activity that does the trick for you. Heck, if stamp collecting make you happy, I want to know about it! Just be sure to get your entry in by Thursday evening, because I'm going to try to get this increasingly tardy meme back on schedule next week. Meanwhile, there's last week's Assignment to wrap up:

For Weekend Assignment #273: Music(ians) of Your Life, I asked for your reaction to the death of Michael Jackson, and whether there a particular musician whose work has particular meaning for you. Excepts from the responses follow.


Julie said...

Sure, I grew up listening to the Jackson 5. I even had a picture of young Michael Jackson on my wall when I was twelve. But my heart belonged to the Beatles. Even then, I listened to a lot of different music. I was probably the only kid my age who knew that swing music wasn't something made schmaltzy by Lawrence Welk. I was also a huge standup comedy fan and could listen to those records for hours. I still can. The other day I was reading an urban fantasy story that involved Noah, and all I could think of was Bill Cosby: "God? What's a cubit?"

Florinda named the Beatles and four other artists:

The Beatles: I was ten years old when I first became aware of them, and they'd been broken up for four years by then. Their sound shaped my musical preferences, and they're still the standard I use for evaluating the best pop/rock: melody, harmony, lyrics, and how it all works together. There's a song in their catalog to go with nearly every moment you can think of. They produced their share of clunkers (for my money, most of them inhabit the White Album), but in eight years of recording together, the classics-to-clunkers ratio is very much in the classics' favor.

Mike also names a number of bands, including...

The next stage came with music I actually bought myself. Mostly that was Styx and Kansas. I loved those two bands. They were a bit different in style than The Cars, but they had the right mix for me. Some good rocking music, but also some slower songs mixed with a little progressive rock; especially with Kansas.

I think Styx Paradise Theater album was the one I listened to the most. It was certainly one of their biggest albums and it hit at the perfect time for me. What I want to know, though, is why is not on iTunes? That is driving me crazy.

That's it for now! As always, I'm looking for suggestions for future Weekend Assignments, and also for more of you to participate in writing the entries. Come on - as good the our three stalwarts above are, we'd love to hear from YOU as well. Thanks!

Karen

Weekend Assignment #273: Music(ians) of Your Life

Michael Jackson's death inspires this week's assignment.

Weekend Assignment #273: The death of Michael Jackson has provoked a huge reaction, much of it from people who grew up listening to his music. Is there a particular musician whose work has particular meaning for you?
Extra Credit: What is your personal reaction, if any, to the death of Michael Jackson?

From Michael Jackson vigil Tucson

I vaguely remember the Jackson 5 cartoon show, and listening to Ben on the car radio; so I guess you could say I grew up with the music of Michael Jackson. When I worked for McDonald's in 1979-1980, I remember proposing my opinion that Michael Jackson would benefit psychologically from being made to work anonymously at McDonald's for a month, to get some idea what the real world is like. I still believe that premise, that a celebrity who creates an artificial world around himself to the exclusion of the real world only exacerbates any self-destructive tendencies. John always said that a celebrity who has survived fame and come out psychologically healthy could do a good consulting business helping new celebs avoid the all-too-common pitfalls of drugs, ego, and money issues. A few years later, as an employee of Buzzard's Nest records, I sold a heck of a lot of Thriller LPs and cassettes, and listened to the promo copy daily for a while. I later listened to our promo of the Jacksons LP Victory, but was less than impressed by that one.

But really, I was never a Michael Jackson fan. I'm a little annoyed that my favorite cable station, MSNBC, has been pretty much hijacked by coverage of his death over the past 24 hours and counting, and that some interviewees have placed his cultural importance above that of Elvis or the Beatles. Fair enough, though: he broke the color barrier on MTV, was hugely influential in the fields of rock/pop, dance and fashion, and fascinated the public almost as much with his tragic life and death and bizarre behavior as because of his music. And we are now in the world of Twitter and texting and 24-hour news cycles. This sort of thing is probably inevitable, if not quite reasonable. (What about Iran? What about the energy bill? Isn't anything else happening today?)

Thursday evening I left the constant Michael Jackson coverage behind on tv and headed to Reid Park with the dogs. As we passed the rose garden, I saw more people there than was usual for that time of day. That's when I noticed the four trucks from three local Clear Channel radio stations in the parking lot, soon joined by news trucks from two tv stations.

More people started arriving in the rose garden, and sure enough, the gazebo was soon draped in KRQ banners. A trio of people stood with white party balloons, on which they had written in Sharpie. "I LOVE YOU, MICHEAL" was one of the things written on them. Ah. of course. As we left, someone had just addressed the crowd about having gotten his single parent mom to buy him a tape of BAD. Then they played the song Thriller, which is still stuck in my head. Darn it.

It was a typically diverse Tucson crowd - black, white, Hispanic, kids and baby boomers, man and women. Nobody was crying, or seemed particularly upset. At least one guy in his forties was standing just outside the rose garden with his young family, a vinyl LP under his arm. But the few words I heard as I walked by seemed to be about a trip to a local casino.

I have to wonder what December 8, 1980 would have been like given 2009's technological zeitgeist. I will never forget the death of John Lennon, whose murder provoked a similar reaction but in less high-tech terms. John Lennon and his three chums from Liverpool have been a significant part of my life since 1964, a hundred or a thousand times more so than Michael Jackson. I did a project on the Beatles' music for school in 1973 or so, spent high school collecting their albums, drove across town to get a McCartney LP the day it came out, wrote to Yoko after her husband's death, and eventually saw Paul and Ringo in their respective concerts in Los Angeles in the 1980s. I was a record store owner-manager when John died, and handed out free buttons in commemoration the next day. (I think I've written about this part of it before, so let's move on.) John Lennon's death was as sudden as Jackson's, and more extreme, horrible and unforeseeable in its circumstances. And like Michael Jackson, John Lennon was a complex and interesting person in his public persona.

But that's not strictly relevant to John Lennon's musical impact. I'm not one of those Beatles fans who idolize Lennon and discount the other Beatles' contributions. Paul McCartney was and is at least as talented. They complemented each other musically, and pushed each other to collaborations that were better than anything they each did alone. George was no slouch, and Ringo did his part; each deserves more appreciation than they get. But without John Lennon, I doubt that we'd all know and appreciate his friends to the extent that we do, even today. He was the one who put together the band, and instigated many of the Beatles' musical and technically innovations. 45 years after their breakthrough U.S. tours, what John, Paul, George and Ringo did still matters.

How about you? Did you grow up listening to Elvis, the Beatles the Jackson 5, New Kids or Nirvana, or someone else entirely? Tell us about your all-time favorite in your blog, and don't forget to link to your entry in the comments below. (Also, please link to this entry in the entry you write, okay? Thanks!) I'll be back next Friday (probably earlier in the day!) to recap the results, thus:

For Weekend Assignment #272: Here Comes Summer!, guest professor Carly and I asked you to describe your summer plans. Here are exceprts from the responses:

Julie said...

Vacation? What's that? Oh, I could use a few days off, but it ain't gonna happen anytime soon.

We're so swamped right now that getting away for more than a weekend is problematic. And even then it's a weekend combined with something else, like a convention appearance for me or a bowling tournament for Chris.

Florinda combined this assignment with the previous one (to describe your town or city) in her entry:

School is out for the summer now, and families will be looking for ways to keep the kids busy until it starts back up again a week or so before Labor Day. My family is no exception. The summer days in Simi Valley can get very hot and dry, but thanks to low humidity, the nights are usually pretty comfortable. However, my husband doesn't have a high tolerance for the heat, despite having lived in Southern California all of his life, so we tend to seek out air-conditioned indoor activities during the day. We'll be going to the movies a lot, or staying in to watch DVDs. This year, we want to try to make one or two trips to the beach - the nearest one is only about thirty miles away - and to use the neighborhood swimming pool. Simi Valley Town Center is an outdoor mall, so if we have shopping to do on really warm days, we'll probably go to the indoor mall in neighboring Thousand Oaks.

Mike references his own recent vacation that kicked off his summer:

Well, as you can see from my last few posts, we've already taken our summer trip. We went to Walt Disney World to see the parks and sweat as much as possible. It was a good time! That is not the norm, however. This year was our first big vacation since we had kids. (Our son is seven by the way). Jenn and I have done little weekend trips on occasion, but this was the first time we went all out on a family vacation. And, based on the cost, it's a good thing we waited this long. I need to find a place that gives the best price for plasma donations, any recommendations?

That's it for now! I'm rushing off to do a photo shoot for later tonight, but will be making the rounds properly over the next day or so - this time for sure! As always, I'm looking for suggestions for future Weekend Assignments, but at the moment I'm especially looking for participants to write the entries. Thanks!

Karen

Round Robin: A Joyful Noise - Photographed

As recently as 7 PM Friday, I had little idea what I was going to do for this weekend's Round Robin Photo Challenge, "See the Music," despite the fact that the topic was my idea in the first place! I had vague thoughts about maybe adding some kind of FX to a photo to invoke the experience of music, although I had no clue how; or pulling unused archive photos of the church organ or past musical performances, or showing you some of our leftover rock posters from our Rockarama days. I even thought of photographing Cayenne through my car window, with the musical caption, "How Much Is That Doggie in the Window," a song few if any of you are old enough to remember.

So there I was, dusk at the dog park, pondering my problem, exacerbated by the fact that I'd put things off until the last minute again, mostly due to computer problems this time. That's when I heard a man's voice saying something over a public address system somewhere nearby. I could not make out a word he was saying, but it didn't matter. If someone was speaking into a microphone at 7 PM on a Friday evening at Reid Park, chances were excellent that music was to follow. Perfect!

From the Picasa album Round Robin Photo Challenges

I collected the dogs' two leashes from a post, and led Cayee and Pepper through the north gate out of Miko's Corner Playground. Sure enough, the music was starting, old fashioned singalong spirituals, from the sound of things. It was coming from one of the ramadas (covered picnic areas, in this case) across the parking lot. It was like a tent revival meeting, without the tent! At least, I assume to, never having attended such a thing.

I stepped forward just enough to take a few pictures, trying to hover inconspicuously on the periphery of the event. I was quickly approached by three people, one at a time, who all invited me to pull up a chair and stay. I explained to each one that I needed to rush home, that my husband was expecting me to stop at Carl's Jr. for a low carb burger before he starved to death. One nice woman identified the group as Seventh Day Adventists, and insisted on giving me a booklet, even after I explained that I was heavily involved with St. Michael and All Angels Church. One nice man petted Cayenne, and tried to pet Pepper as she sort of hid under Cayenne! Meanwhile, the people under the Ramada moved on to the next song: "If You're Happy and You Know It." I sang, briefly, but did not clap.

The event was called Worship in the Park. The lady with the booklet explained that they wanted to hold a few such meetings before the summer heat came along. The weather for this one was overcast but dry - balmy, really, with a temperature that could not have been more perfect for the purpose, around 80 degrees at dusk.

Now, fun as that all was, it's not typical of the music I generally encounter in my own religious life. St. Michael's will occasionally slip in a spiritual, but with a full choral arrangement, probably accompanied by pipe organ. We get a lot of Bach and Handel and Mozart and other classical composers. For Easter morning, as seen above, the usual choir and organ were supplemented by a brass quintet, and also a drummer or two on tympani.

This is not to say that the music at St. Michael's is never participatory. Much of it is at least as much so as the Worship in the Park music. Most of the hymns are sung by the congregation as well as the choir. And partway through the Easter Vigil mass each year, the evening before Easter Sunday, parishioners play percussion - sort of. There's a fanfare, and everyone who chose and remembered to bring a bell gets to ring it in celebration.

And those who didn't remember can do what Father Smith did, and jingle their keys!

In trying to help you "see" the sacred music I've encountered recently, I realize I'm settling for photos of less than sterling quality. It's not easy to take good pictures from a distance after dark, even with my new, semi-decent camera. It's doubly difficult to photograph an ill-lit church while serving as acolyte in the sanctuary during High Mass.

But way back, for one of the earliest Round Robin Photo Challenges, I did my best to capture some hidden music visually for you. In my entry for Mysterious Doors, I photographed many of the pipes of the church's Aeolian-Skinner organ, which are usually hidden behind doors and drapes. But as I sit with the other acolytes to the left of the altar, I'm right next to this hole-in-the-wall, beyond which some of the pipes can be seen - and definitely heard.

Now let's go find out where everyone else saw the music!


Linking List


Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
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Carly - Posted!
Ellipsis
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Jama - Posted!
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Valerie
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Sherrie - Posted!
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Nancy - Posted!
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Jen ***new blog*** - Posted!
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Linda
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Chris - Posted!
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Mojo - Posted!
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Amanda ***Welcome New Member!***
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Alexa ***Welcome New Member!*** - Posted!
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Connie - Posted!
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Marina - Posted!
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Peggy **Welcome New Member** - Posted!
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Karen

Yes, But Does It Help?

Yet another new button design.

So tonight, in my quest to do something Obama-related and record the experience for Huffington Post, I went to a free concert at Old Town Artisans in downtown Tucson. Three hours later, I left early, having spent $1 on a raffle ticket and another $9 on burritos and Diet Pepsi. I came away with an official union-made Obama-Biden button for John, two free DVDs about Obama from the Arizona Information Project, and a nagging doubt as to whether I've done anything this weekend that helps my chosen candidate even a tiny bit.

Amelia Dahl Quartet plays for Obama.

There were a total of seven musical acts in the five hour concert. When I arrived, Amelia Dahl was singing Fly Me to the Moon, backed by her light jazz quartet. Next up was the duo Sally and Pablo (Sally Withers and Pablo Peregrina). Pablo, who was the main musical guest at the art show on Saturday night, reprised several Obama-themed numbers, this time with Sally on lead vocal. You can see their rewrite of La Bamba, called La Obamba, on YouTube:



Hip Hop artist James Ciphurphace followed with two spoken word pieces, as his young son shyly shared the stage with him. Then came Cinder Bridge, a keyboard and drums duo that was probably my favorite act of the night. Jacob "Roll" Acosta (say it out loud) sang and played acoustic guitar. Ticket to Tokyo was a full-fledged, Petty-inspired rock band. I didn't hear American Android, another rock group, as I was long gone by then. I gather that most of these musicians have appeared at several concerts for Obama over the course of the summer and fall. Aside from the opening act, which played standards, nearly all the music was original.

Why, it's Barack Obama! At the concert! Overdressed!

It was a beautiful night, with perfect weather, a pleasant setting and genial company. However, the event was sparsely attended, perhaps because this was Homecoming Weekend at the University of Arizona. I kind of doubt that much money was raised for the Obama campaign, but perhaps that wasn't the point. Many of the attendees have spent the past several months (or longer) making phone calls, canvassing neighborhoods, organizing events, printing information flyers, burning pro-Obama DVDs, etc. This concert seems to have been a chance for campaign volunteers to have a little fun, connect with each other, and get fired up for the final push. One of the event organizers spoke about how she had never been involved in a political campaign before, and of all the friends she'd made working to get Barack Obama elected. Other organizers and some of the musicians expressed similar sentiments. There were probably fewer than a hundred people in attendance all told, but they seemed to be enjoying the concert and each other, and the commitment to the cause was palpable.

Okay, so he was only a stand-up.

Shortly before I left I spoke briefly with the woman who had brought the Barack Obama stand-up people had been posing with all evening. "I had fun setting it up in the passenger seat for the drive over," she said, "but only two people noticed." She had bought it in Flagstaff, of all places. Later she was in a shop in Sedona that carried life-sized stand-ups, including John Wayne. She asked if they carried an Obama one.

"What are you talking about?" the shopkeeper replied. "This is McCain country. His ranch is just up the road."


Okay, so Northern Arizona may have a mixed reaction to Barack Obama, even now. That's not surprising. The whole state is probably like that. The few polls that have been conducted here lately show the race getting close. Few people really think Obama can win Arizona, but down here people are starting to dream of the possibility that John McCain won't carry his own state. Even if that doesn't happen, Obama may well carry Pima County, and his coattails should help Democrats statewide.

Eight days to go! A volunteer called this afternoon and asked me to make phone calls this week. I didn't promise - the very idea of cold calling strangers fills me with dread - but I'm thinking about it.

Karen

Weekend Assignment Results: Music on the Brain

A pirate band sings of New York girls doing the polka. Huh?

Last week for Weekend Assignment #226: Jukebox Brain, I asked whether there a song that you're particularly enjoying at the moment. For our small but mighty cadre of correspondents, the answer seems mostly to be "No, not really":

A jazz band in New Orleans Square

Julie said...

The other day I found a Vista sidebar gadget that plays streams from UK radio stations. Virgin has a format and playlist similar to a local station, but I get tired of the local ads - all screaming car dealers, weight loss products, "enhancement" products, and so on.

Florinda said...

I think I've mentioned that my favorite iPod playlist is huge - it just went over 1500 songs, since my husband has been telling me all week that I must add the rest of Viva la Vida, the new Coldplay album, and I finally did it. That's his current musical obsession - he's been listening to the whole thing at work at least once a day.

Mike said...

In the house I have been listening to Spock's Beard's, The Kindness of Strangers. I'm not sure which song I like the best, but I think it is The Good Don't Last. I like the line: "We made a land where crap is king/and the good don't last too long." They make many references to bad songs and bad TV shows that were poplular. It's a fun song!

Sarah said...

I'm not playing anything in heavy rotation at the moment. There's been lots of things in my head, but since The Police concert I saw on July 14, the Grammy for "Most Incessant" has been going to "King of Pain." I have stood here before inside the pouring rain, with the world turning circles running 'round my brain (and you see, I keep giving it to other people!) Actually I think I'd just about exorcised it by today but then I heard it on the radio at Erik's Deli at lunch time.

Kiva said...

On Pandora, you get to make your own radio stations based on the characteristics of the music. This week while I'm working I'm listening to a station that is based on gypsy guitar, for example, Django Reinhardt, The Hot Club of San Francisco. For fun, I'm listening to a channel of music that I just made that has Pink Martini as the base. The song that's playing now is Brazil done by Pink Martini. Anyone want to dance?

Thanks, everyone! The new Weekend Assignment topic will be posted shortly.

Karen

Weekend Assignment #226: Jukebox Brain

I had a Weekend Assignment lined up that was more of a writing exercise, but the heck with that. Let's go with something simple this week. Scalzi had more than a few music-related Weekend Assignments over the years: random song lists, songs for Halloween, bad Christmas songs, songs to party by, sf songs, songs for a wedding are all among the topics I seem to recall (or just Googled). I think he even did an earworm one, but let's do a little variation on that:

Weekend Assignment #226: Is there a song that you're particularly enjoying at the moment, that's on heavy rotation on your iPod, the CD player in your car, or just in your head? If so, what is it? If not, what was the last song you were really into?

Extra Credit: What song, if any, has been playing in your head today, and you really wish it would stop now?

As for me, I suppose it's good news that I've finally stopped playing one or both of Murray Gold's Doctor Who soundtracks nearly every day. I love that music, and it makes me happy, but it kind of loses its power after the first 300 times, you know? I didn't really have a favorite specific track on either CD, but I'm quite fond of Westminster Bridge, Clockwork TARDIS (for which I keep threatening to write lyrics), All The Strange Strange Creatures and The Doctor Forever.

Now, the previous CD in my personal heavy rotation was George Martin's Love remix of Beatles songs. It was a wonderful way of making some of my favorite music of all time fresh and new again. I've been looking for my copy of it for a few months now; if I don't find it soon I'll replace it. And the only album stored on my new phone is Once More With Feeling, the musical Buffy episode. The phone doesn't play loudly enough to bother with, though. I need headphones or bluetooth or something. But I have played Going Through the Motions (Buffy sings about her "strange estrangement" while killing vampires) several times recently.

The man responsible for much of my musical joy and agony

Meanwhile, I've had McCartney's Monkberry Moon Delight in my head all evening, mostly because I referred to it in a joke last night. This morning it was The Safety Dance by Men Without Hats, which was on the radio as John dropped me off. I think I'll ask him to keep it on NPR from now on!

It's a Small World (After All) really doesn't bother me

Your turn! Tell me off music in voluntary and involuntary heavy rotation in your head these days, whether it's the latest single by Sally Obscura, Moonlight Sonata or a Gregorian chant. Write about it in your blog or journal, and post your links from there to here and here to there. The playlist gets posted a week from tonight!

And the wind played a dreadful cantata
...cantata...cantata...

Karen

Who Is This Guy? A Recital Review

The antiphonal section of the organ, May 2005

A friend of mine from church took me out to dinner this evening, followed by a pipe organ recital by Alan Schultz in honor of the 50th Anniversary of St. Michael & All Angels Day School. Mr. Schultz (as his former students call him) or Alan (as longtime parishioners call him) recently retired from the school after teaching there for over four decades. I know him mostly as the substitute organist who occasionally plays at the 10 AM mass - not just Bach and such, but his own sacred classical works as well.

Tonight he started us off with Fantasy in G by J.S. Bach, turning much of it into a call and response between the main section of pipes behind the sanctuary in the front of the church and the antiphonal pipes above the back door. He said it was supposed to represent sets of angels singing to each other. It was interesting to hear, and made more use of the organ's capabilities than the average Sunday hymn.

Mr. Schultz introduces a composition.

Next came the premiere performance of Schultz's Psalmist Songs, "a song cycle for mezzo, English horn and organ." This was based on seven psalms (1, 121, 31, 45, 103, 133 and 126) sung by mezzo-soprano Korby Myrick, accompanied by Alan on organ and Kay Trondsen on English Horn. One of the psalms reminded me strongly of the L'Engle novel The Moon By Night, which quotes from it extensively.

Mr. Schultz plays a fugue.

Alan finished the recital with seven selections from his Twenty-four Preludes and Fugues in All Keys for Organ, which was also being premiered. He explained that in Bach's day, an innovation in the way instruments were tuned made certain keys, which sounded awful before, usable for the first time. Bach eventually composed two sets of Preludes and Fugues to cover each of the twelve major and twelve minor keys. Schultz has composed one set. He explained all this, and a little bit about what a prelude is and what a fugue is. I didn't really quite catch on what exactly defines each of this musical forms, but I gather that the fugue part developed from the canon, or round, which in turn arose naturally in medieval times from people not starting a chant at quite the same time. At one point Alan demonstrated the form by having the audience sing Row, Row Row Your Boat. These introductions reminded me a little of Leonard Bernstein's Concerts for Young People when I was a kid. He ended the performance by having us sing a particular hymn that led directly into his Fantasy, Fugue and Variation on "Divinum Mysterium" in E-flat major.

Before and after the recital there were prayers from Father Smith and testimonial speeches from several people associated with the school and its students. I had vaguely gathered that Alan taught English as well as music, but was surprised to learn that this was perhaps the most important part of his legacy at St. Michael's Day School. His eighth grade students learned to write research papers, something I wasn't exposed to until my senior year in high school. One speaker credited him with turning his students into "grammar police," and a former student of his joked that he tries "to never split...I mean, never to split infinitives" because of Mr. Schultz. The student's parents said they needed a dictionary to look up words in Mr. Schultz's report card evaluations, and the father, a professor, said he has higher standards for papers from former St. Michael's students because of Mr. Schultz. The headmaster talked about Schultz joking about buying a supermarket just so that the express checkout would allow "10 items or fewer." He sounds like my kind of guy!

Newspaper photos from his career adorn a centerpiece.

It turns out this man I've seen around the parish for a decade, and occasionally heard play, is a bit of a renaissance man. Today's program calls him a "composer, teacher, conductor, organist, harpsichordist and author." He was music director of the Southern Arizona Symphony Orchestra for 15 seasons, and he's a former director of the Tucson Masterworks Chorale. He's written a book on teaching organ, had several recordings released, and has had both music and poetry published. Wow! And to think he was basically "just zis guy" to me until tonight.

Afterward at the reception, I tried to express my appreciation upon learning more about him, especially the English teacher bits. I somewhat nonsensically compared the recital to "a cross between Leonard Bernstein's Concerts for Young People and the writing of Madeleine L'Engle," a compliment he accepted graciously. To be honest, I'm a bit of a Philistine with respect to classical music; I do like it, including Schultz's own contributions to the genre, but not enough to seek it out or make an effort to learn more about it. Still, even my relatively untrained ear can tell that his music is creative, ambitious, and well-executed.

I remarked to my friend before the recital that St. Michael's can be represented by a big Venn diagram, with overlapping populations of students, faculty, staff, choir, parishioners who normally attend each of the three Sunday masses and thus seldom meet each other, the social concerns people, the Altar Guild people and ECW. There was a good selection from each of those groups there tonight, including one writer and former journalist I'd like to get to know better.

Given this revelation about someone I took for granted, I can't help but wonder: if this man I see each week at the 10 AM mass can be as accomplished and interesting as Alan Schultz, what about all the other people behind those familiar faces? I overheard one woman this evening mentioning that she was a nurse in Vietnam. Another parishioner is an expert on Byzantine art. We have engineers and astronomers, mathematicians and professors, photographers and who knows what else, some retired, some still working. What fascinating biographies do these people have, unknown by a shy fellow parishioner who barely scratches the surface of their acquaintance?

But maybe it's not important that I get to know each person in depth, learn all about their careers and their hobbies, their trips to Spain, their military careers, and their stories in major newspapers. Maybe it's enough to know and to remember that they're all people, mostly intelligent, talented people, each making unique contributions to the world and its people, each with his or her own "spark of divine fire." Occasionally, if I pay attention, I may even see them glow.

Karen