Skunks!

Okay, I ordinarily don't write about personal things on this blog, but this is just too cool.

Here's a bit from The Rachel Maddow Show about skunks invading New York City. Some of you may recognize the music in the background of the piece. I almost crapped my pants when I heard it.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

After all these years, ASCAP may finally be sending me that first check. Glad it wasn't on Faux News or I never would have known about it.

Pete Seeger Turns 90

If you have any connection to the folk community, or even if you're just culturally in tune, then you don't need me to tell you that today is the 90th birthday of one of the true giants of American song, Mr. Pete Seeger.

Pete is the true embodiment of the folk spirit. He is the most unpretentious cultural icon in the universe, possibly the most unpretentious person in the universe. Even in the folk world, there are folks who thirst for the spotlight and enjoy the fame that they get. You never get an inkling from Pete that it is about anything but the community. He is not the star. He is merely the bandleader with anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand chorines to enjoin in song. To Pete, the sharing of a song is far more important than the person performing it. Paradoxically, it takes a huge person to be so effortlessly humble. If anyone can make you "get" folk music, Pete can.

I have several friends in the Hudson Valley folk community that know and work with Pete. I only encountered him personally once, at Pete's Clearwater Festival, where some of the aforementioned friends (and Pete, of course) were performing.

Several of us were sitting at a picnic table in the artists' area when Pete saundered over to our table with a bag of chocolate chip cookies and sat himself down. "I'm a cookie-holic. I'll eat all of these if I don't share them." This seemed, if not impossible, then certainly inconsequential, as Pete is astonishingly fit and healthy for a man of his age. (He could pass for 70 with ease.) He opened the bag as he straddled the bench and casually waited for any of us to take him up on his offer.

As a (then) recent convert to veganism, I did not partake of the cookies. But it was difficult to feel like "Holy shit! That's Pete Fucking Seeger!" as one would in a similar situation with another celebrity. (e.g. "Holy shit! That's Elvis Fucking Costello!" or "Holy shit! That's Barack Fucking Obama!") It was just a genial old man sharing some cookies. His warmth and humility were evident. They filled the area without overwhelming it. This is not something Bob Dylan would or could do.

After a few minutes of idle chitchat between Pete and my amigos he went on his way. I don't remember if he left the cookies. But he left his spirit.

Pete Seeger is not a sophisticated composer. He is not a stunning wordsmith. He is not a virtuoso instrumentalist or vocalist. What he is is a man who knows the power of song and how to communicate it, a man who practices what he preaches and retains 100% of his soul. This is extraordinarily rare and beautiful. The world is an undeniably better place for having Pete Seeger in it. In fact, he is one of the few people of whom I can imagine a measurably worse world in his absence.

Happy birthday, Pete. May you have many more. No one, and I do mean no one, deserves them more than you.

More Hot (Schoolhouse) Rocks

Since we're on the subject of Schoolhouse Rock, I wanted to give a shout-out to someone who was instrumental in their creation and is, fortunately, still among us. I'm talking about the great Jack Sheldon.

Sheldon gained a modicum of fame as a jazz trumpeter, but, like Blossom Dearie, he's remembered by my generation as one of the voices of Schoolhouse Rock. In fact, he voiced the consensus Schoolhouse Rock favorite, "Conjunction Junction".



I likes me the CJ, and the adjectives song that Ms. Dearie sang is also on my Top 5 list. But my all-time favorite is below, a dizzyingly hilarious number about pronouns called "Rufus Xavier Sarsparilla". The lyric, music and animation are fantastic. And Sheldon's vocal is utterly priceless, particularly the spoken-word interlude on the city bus, which makes me laugh every time.



Thank you, pronouns! And thank you, Jack.

Blossom Dearie

When Isaac Hayes died last year, there was an entire generation that said "Oh man, Chef died!" The rest of us went "Dude..."

The lady over to the right just passed, and I'm of the generation (which is the same as the above-referenced "dude" generation) that remembers the later pop-culture sensation but not the prior musical legacy.

The voice was instantly recognizable. And she was a talented and versatile singer and songwriter. Her career lasted from the 40s into the 21st century. But in my heart, she'll be remembered for two songs that she recorded for Bob Dorough in the early 70s.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the late Blossom Dearie. (Her real name, by the way. Didn't know that. Wouldn't have guessed it.)



And for something a bit more somber.

Ron Asheton

Damn, it seems like my record collection is getting more and more populated by dead people.

I reckon that now's the time that those who actually survived the 60s are starting to drop in earnest. I wrote about some of them fairly recently. (Believe it or not, I skipped Mitch Mitchell.)

The latest is Ron Asheton, guitarist for the Stooges. That's Ron with the glasses over there with a practically zygotic Iggy Pop in front. Ron, Iggy and the bunch (including Ron's brother Scott) were responsible for some of the dumbest, simplest, most awesome music to come out of the late 60s-early 70s. They were punk before punk existed. Which is not really news, but hey.

Here's their most well-known stupidfest, "I Wanna Be Your Dog". You have to love this. I love even more that classically-trained John Cale, recently divorced from Lou Reed, was responsible for producing the record.

Ron and Scott had re-united with Iggy recently for a tour and album, which just goes to show you that anybody who isn't dead will eventually get back together. Weirdness, indeed.

Even weirder... Chuck Berry? Still alive, people.

Three Types of Audience Member That Piss Me Off

Okay, so it's the day before Christmas and I'm supposed to be all peaceonearthgoodwilltowardsmen and shit. Well, it's raining here so I'm gonna rant a bit about people that piss me off. 'Cause I never do that.

Concert tickets are expensive. Unless you like really unpopular music (and I do like a lot of it) you're going to shell out some bucks for a show. At least for well-known artists. So with great anticipation (and money) I went to see Neil Young at MSG last week. Big show. Two opening acts, one of whom was Wilco, another musical act I like a whole lot.

So, how was the show, you ask? Well, if I had a gas mask, x-ray glasses and unidirectional ear plugs it would have been great. There are three distinct flavors of annoyances at concerts that make me batshit crazy. And they were all there. I shall now gripe about each in turn.

1. The Person Who Stands Up All the Time - I'm all for being excited by the act that you just shelled out a bundle to come see. But as an old SNL sketch demonstrated (sorry, can't find it online), crowds collectively decide whether to stand or sit at concerts. When there's just one yokel doing it, it's annoying. Especially when they're fewer than three rows in front of me. This person stood up after every song to throw her hands in the air, further obscuring the view. This is okay, assuming you're going to sit down again in a somewhat timely fashion. Which she usually didn't.

2. The Guy Who Sings Along to EVERY FUCKING SONG - I swear, I get this guy at every big concert I go to. Does he think that no one can hear him? Does he think I want to hear him? Does he know what the word "off-key" means? Does he think I dropped a hundred bucks to hear Neil Young with Special Guest Doug Malinowski in Row C Seat 13? Will he sign my ticket stub? My favorite part was during "Powderfinger" when he not only sang the words, most of which he knew, but the goddamn guitar parts too. ("The closer they got, the more these feelings greeeeew! Dairn dair dairn de-dair-dair dair de-dairn!") I actually was relieved when Neil sang new songs that no one knew. At least this dude shut up for a bit.

3. The Smoker - You knew this was coming, didn't you? Smoking was banned at pretty much every indoor space in New York City early on in the Bloomberg administration, and no one was happier about it than I. Finally, I said to myself, I can go out and hear music (and play music) without wanting to die. Apparently, this is not so much the case. One dude lights up. Stinky. Gross. It can be nipped in the bud if somebody nearby says "Hey, dude, do you mind?" or an usher comes by and politely asks the offending party to extinguish. But when this doesn't happen, it emboldens others around to do the same. The original party, now emboldened in turn by the acquiescence and participation of others, ceases to hide the cigarette under the seat between puffs, and in his cupped hands during puffs, and just smokes openly through the whole freakin' show. Person #1 even joined in. She was too far away for me to tell if she pulled off the annoyance trifecta, but she clearly didn't have much lung power because, rather than being forcefully expelled upward and/or outward, the smoke just drifted out of her mouth and wafted back towards me to say hello. I did not return its friendly greeting.

Rules don't mean anything if nobody enforces them. Now, there are no hard and fast rules against #1 and #2, so I accept that I'm just a curmudgeon who should stay home if that crap bothers him. But #3 really angers me. Apart from the general unpleasantness (that I spent a lot of money to experience, fuck you very much) I had a freakin' headache for most of the show, which was really long, by the way. And, oh, you know, it's just the law and all. Not that anybody cares about laws in this country anymore.

Am I overreacting? Is it just me? Seriously, what the hell is wrong with people?

Oh, by the way, Merry Christmas!

Jimmy Carl Black

Jimmy, we hardly knew ye.

I knew nothing about this guy until the news dropped that he was dead at the ripe young age of 70. Well, almost nothing.

What I did know was that he was the drummer in The Mothers of Invention and he didn't do too much of note after Zappa disbanded the group after a few of the freakiest records that anyone had heard up to that point (which was 1969).

And every time I popped in "We're Only In It for the Money" I'd hear him say, "Hi, boys and girls. I'm Jimmy Carl Black and I'm the Indian of the group." Which was kinda funny, although I'm not really sure why.

It really sucks for some people after they get booted out of famous bands. Millions of people hear your playing and you get bupkis for it. The Ms of I were on salary and Frank wrote all of the songs so he kept all of the royalties. Apparently the guy even worked in a doughnut shop for a while. Oh, the humanity.

But he seemed like a decent guy who had a sense of humor about himself. And there just aren't enough Indians in rock music anymore. Or ever.

No, Buffy Sainte-Marie doesn't count.

Richard Wright

Someone sent me an e-mail the other day with the subject "Pink Floyd Founder Dead" and I thought, "Oh man, what happened to Roger Waters?"

Nope. It was keyboardist Richard Wright, not to be confused with the author of "Native Son".

It's always interesting when someone who is considered a minor part of a creative endeavor passes on. It makes you stop to consider what that person's contribution was and how the group would have been different without it.

One of my all time favorite pieces of music is "Us and Them" from "Dark Side of the Moon". If you don't know it already, I feel bad for you for not having it as part of your life. Although I envy you for not being able to hear it for the first time. I first heard it when I was a kid and Floyd was all over what would eventually be called "classic rock" radio. I bought the record (yes, record) and proceeded to experience it in the way it was meant to be experienced, with headphones, lying on your back, in the dark. Wow.

Wright co-wrote "Us and Them" with Waters and damn, it's just gorgeous. Wright plays both organ and grand piano on the song. It moves along at a pace that is as stately as Ravel's "Bolero", and with similar undulations, but climaxes in a very different way before segueing directly into "Any Colour You Like" (which then segues into "Brain Damage" and "Eclipse"), forming one 16-minute long chunk of stoner heaven. Although I managed to enjoy it just fine without any controlled substances. (Those came later.)

"Us and Them" manages to be both sleepy and forceful at the same time. It lulls you into a nice pillowy unhurried place before launching you into a chorus that manages to be bombastic without pulling you out of the mood that the song originally created. Like the best Lennon-McCartney songs, where you can tell who wrote what part, the Wright verse alternates with the clearly Waters-orchestrated and themed chorus. Then Wright brings you back down with an understated piano solo on top of the song's base of his organ and Nick Mason's lethargic drums.

Wright made other key contributions to Pink Floyd, including his work on "Shine on You Crazy Diamond" from "Wish You Were Here". But if he had done nothing but "Us and Them" that would have been quite sufficient for me.