Speaking of the Reach of the PTMOR Blog....

As noted in the below post, the PTMOR blog has been getting around -- to the Alps in the Italian-speaking region of Switzerland, e.g. I see, via Google Analytics -- an amazing tool, by the way -- that I have been getting page visits from 44 countries in the past month. We would love to hear greetings from all of the different places -- I see a scattered few visits from Russia, Turkey, India, Argentina, Poland, etc. Please say hello in the comments. All of you in more predictable places like the U.K, Canada, Australia, Benelux, etc., don't be shy either. I appreciate the give/take. Feliz Navidad, and happy holidays to you all.

Richard Wilbur

The House


Sometimes, on waking, she would close her eyes

For a last look at that white house she knew

In sleep alone, and held no title to,

And had not entered yet, for all her sighs.

What did she tell me of that house of hers?

White gatepost; terrace; fanlight of the door;

A widow’s walk above the bouldered shore;

Salt winds that ruffle the surrounding firs.

Is she now there, wherever there may be?

Only a foolish man would hope to find

That haven fashioned by her dreaming mind.

Night after night, my love, I put to sea.


-- Richard Wilbur




Taken from the New Yorker August 31, 2009

Back to Work

This page has gotten a bit self-indulgent, I would say; an awful lot of "sharing." Thanks for your patience, especially those mentioned in some of the more personal ramblings. Back to a basic music blog with shorter posts, I promise.

Signed Exile books

We sold 30-something books at the Exile show last week. I can either return the balance (I ordered 50 to be safe), or I can send out signed copies. If anyone is interested, please email me at janovitz.bill@gmail.com. I am not sure how much they are to send, but I will figure $2.00. So let's say they will cost $12. You can send check or money order (or try cash). No bartering yak milk or shoe shines.

Clams

Hey, someone asked me what a "clam" is, as referenced in my last post. Well, I assume more people don't know the term either. So, a clam is a mistake/bad note. Old music-dude terminology. See: Buddy Rich balling out his band on a bus.



"...while you clam all over this fucking joint....

Public Radio Piece

I think I forgot to post this here, though I had posted it over at Facebook. It is a piece I wrote and narrated about my childhood friend Chris Campion for the "Here and Now" program produced by my poker buddy, Chris Ballman, for Boston's NPR news station, WBUR. Campy wrote a highly engaging memoir called Escape From Bellevue: A Dive Bar Odyssey, about his struggles with booze and other substances, while trying to get his band off the ground in the 1990s NYC alt rock world.

Older Guys

Now on Twitter

I needed yet another way to waste time and connect to "the people."

Find me on Twitter @billjanovitz or click the icon on the right below the links section.

Well, it was nearly all summer we sat on your roof
Yeah, we smoked cigarettes and we stared at the moon
And Id show you stars you never could see
Baby, it couldn't have been that easy to forget about me

Wow -- Some Sort of Translation

I found this in a feed I get. I have no idea, but it is clearly some sort of aggregate translator of blog content. The wording is hilarious and I am thinking of replacing everything I wrote with it. This is a translation of my most recent post.

The Ballad of Tim Wakefield ({Non}Cover of the Week 29)

Wake and me rocking Hot Stove Cool Music at Fenway 2005 (photo by Steve Latham)

Buff Tom was in the studio this week working on new songs. Work has also been very busy in my day job. I feared not being able to get to the Cover of the Week this week and, while that is technically true, I did get inspired by another dazzling knuckleball performance by 42-y.o. Red Sox legend, Tim Wakefield last night. So with 2 cups of coffee in me, I whipped this little homage up this morning. Also, finding it's way into the song is this article from the Boston Globe this AM.

When rock and rollers hit a certain (middle) age, many of them feel compelled to write a baseball song. But having one of our own still going at 42, well, that just begs a song. So in the tradition, hopefully, of Zevon and Dylan (and not so much Fogerty), here is mine:

The Ballad of Tim Wakefield



Lyrics:


The Ballad of Tim Wakefield


He don't need no injections in his ass
He makes the ball flutter, it don't need to go fast
Hitters swinging just like a cartoons when it passes
The knuckleball from Timmy Wakefield

I remember all the late innings of June
But there came a night with a big harvest moon
And an October game when a Yankee named Boone
Hit a long one off of Tim Wakefield

But fishing off of Melbourne in the off-season glare
Knowing that middle-aged men everywhere
Are harboring dreams that they could be up there
Pitching just like Timmy Wakefield


When the boys are all flailing as the weather gets warm
He always remain the calm eye of the storm
There are 18 year-old people who might have been born
When a night game was pitched by Tim Wakefield

Batters strike out, pop up, heads bowed low
And into dark dugout tunnels they go
And still confused as the video shows
They were defeated by Timmy Wakefield.

Boston may not be the easiest place
It's not every player they warmly embrace
So just go ask Keith Foulke if he would trade places
In history with Tim Wakefield

You know what they say about saving nine
Well Doug Mirabelli was his stitch in time
The State Police escorted him for no crime
We just needed him to receive Tim Wakefield

Taking the mound or offering his time
for charity's sake and then on down the line
There are plenty of people who will be crying
When they hang up the spikes of Timmy Wakefield

Dylan has written all about Catfish
I may never write like Bobby, Wake like Pedro won't pitch
But true Red Sox fans will always know what they wish
To have nine players just like Timmy Wakefield
Nine players just like Timmy Wakefield
Give me nine players just like Timmy Wakefield

Buffalo Tom Tonight

http://www.volvooceanrace.org/ports/boston

Live at the Fan Pier.

Free, full set, starting at 9:00

Buffalo Tom Live

Hi -- We have just added a one-off show to try out some new material and play some of the oldies as well. June 26 at the Paradise in Boston. Tix on sale Thursday 4/16:

Livenation.com

Part Time Man of Rock T Shirts

Kids -- What's it gonna take to get these babies moving? See the link over on the right. Is it design? Price? What's holding back all but the most dedicated from purchasing? You name it, I will make it happen. Testimonials from those lucky consumers who have chosen to do the right thing and buy one of these would be great to see as well.

Keep the love flowing....B

Aretha Franklin's "Precious Memories"

I left Catholicism behind when I was 18. The schism first occurred, though, just as I was starting that sacrament known as penance, which I recall happening around 3rd grade, or 9 years old. So, let me get this straight, I thought, I go into this mysterious dark booth, kneel down and confess my sins – pretty much consisting of disobeying my parents, being mean to my siblings, and, slightly later, onanism, oh the ongoing onanism! And this priest, who was usually identifiable as one of the rasping and raging red-faced alcoholics who taught C.C.D., the religious education classes. And this guy, this sad old man was supposed to communicate with God and absolve me of my sins. Yeah, this is about the time when logic entered the equation and I started to question the whole deal.

But a lot of the reason I drifted was that it just bored me to death, sitting in that nice big neo-Gothic church of my childhood. The best part of the mass was my daydreaming, glancing around at the architecture, observing the congregation, particularly the younger and hotter female portion, and the pipe organ music. The music could, on very rare occasions, offer a little inspiration. But let’s face it; the Catholic Church was already a faded version of its historic self. In the past centuries it inspired the Masters in painting, architecture, and music. Had it retained some of that enigmatic glory, perhaps if the mass was still mysteriously said in Latin, I might have at least suspended my disbelief for a while longer. But they started their weak attempts at bring the mass down to the people, with lame folk-music masses and it only pushed me out the door faster, all that mustachioed earnest strummy monotony against the macramé’d felt-Advent-banner-background. This was a long way from Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring”, (or for that matter, my favorite Bach piece “So Sheep May Safely Graze”) or the Sistine Chapel.

If anything, I looked for reasons to keep me away from the dispiriting Church and did not have to look far for scientific and logical support for my rationale. People can become straight-up rational and atheistic and still find their artistic mojo. In fact, there is an interesting article in a recent New Yorker about the author Ian McEwan’s arc from a young man who accommodated new-age-y philosophy into an older accomplished author who finds inspiration in more earthly sources and less tolerant of mystical strains. Not many would consider McEwan’s work cold or uninspiring.

I like to leave all doors open, however and would consider myself, therefore, agnostic. As an artist, there is something otherworldly in moments of ecstatic music and art – whether it be intentionally devotional (raga, chanting, gospel, Sufi dervishes, etc.) or not. Just because soul music is the secular sibling of gospel music does not mean that it has taken the spirit out; the spirit is in the music and performance itself, not in the lyrics.

My wife and I went to see Reverend Al Green conduct his Sunday service in Memphis during the mid-1990s. He sang almost the whole time, pausing only briefly to warmly welcome the handful of us that were outsiders before letting himself be transported again by the amazing and powerful music. The church itself is a modest sort of mid-century building on the outskirts of town. He had this stellar band that included a Hammond organ player with two loud Leslie speakers flanking the stage. We were there for over two hours, during which he shook our hands, introduced us to the congregation, sang and sweat his heart out, while his congregants sang, danced, prayed, and even did the whole “speaking in tongues” ecstasy thing while ushers attended to them. I felt simultaneously drained and lifted up when we left. In fact, the service was still ongoing when we had to leave. I said to my wife, “if this was church when I was growing up, I would never have questioned a thing and would be there right now.” I think I might have touched the face of God that day. I’m sure there is a biological explanation for all of this, but I don’t need to know what it is; it is not relevant.

I was thinking of this all today while I was walking into work and “Precious Memories” came on my ipod. This is the version that Aretha Franklin and James Cleveland sing on the 1972 live album, Amazing Grace. The recording always almost brings me to my knees, specifically around 3:25 minutes in. This is the first of two climaxes on the recording when I feel privileged that was someone -- Jerry Wexler is the producer, of course -- was there to record the holy moment. Because that is exactly what it is. Aretha seems to be channeling the Holy Spirit here. Without exaggeration, every time I listen to this, every time, whether it be the first time in months that I am listening to it or the fourth time in a row, I am physically affected. It goes beyond shivers down the spine; it is an overwhelming experience, emotional and physical, that I can barely contain. It is literally almost orgasmic. I could only imagine what sort of freakin’ weirdo I look like walking down a bike path with my face all contorted with anguished emotion.

(Listen here)

“Precious Memories” is a traditional that gets to the heart of it, as Van Morrison sings in his own rhapsodic moments. Over a sublimely gentle ¾ pace, Aretha hums low in a call-and-answer with the Southern California Community Choir starts the lyric:

Precious memories, how they linger
How they ever flood my soul

And the soul of the listener starts to flood as Aretha adds a wordless riff.

In the stillness of the midnight
Sacred secrets will unfold.

And this is the whole thing: the sacred secrets are unfolding just as the arrangement does. The gathered live congregation of the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles are all aware that this calm is fleeting; the ecstasy is building. Aretha, off microphone, cues Cleveland with the first line of the next verse, “In sad hours,” and the rich husky baritone of Cleveland picks it up:

In sad hours (Aretha: Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord)
When I get a little lonely (yeah, yeah, yeah)
The truth, the real truth, the real truth of Jesus’ (thank you, Lord) (Aretha: say it, James) Love is told, oh yeah oh yes it is

The congregation and the choir are now clapping on the 2 and 3 of the waltz beat. It is building. And then it hits.

Mmmm, Jesus (they repeat His name 6 times between them) whispers

(The choir hits with a loud “yeahhhh,” which Aretha picks up’
“Yeaaaaaahhhhh I’ll be with you.” (Cleveland exclaims off mic, “SAY IT!” which sounds like he slammed his finger in a car door -- the agony and the ecstasy.)

And the arrangement stars to wind down from this first climax, only to have Aretha sing, “You know he will. We oughta sing that one more time, James.”

And they bring it back to a seemingly impossible second crescendo. “Every, every, every, every now and then you’re gonna get a little lonely.” And now Aretha just tosses words out the door and it is pure singing, one “Jesus” is all she says riffs to “Child, I’ll be. With. A’you,” pausing rhythmically between those words.

And the arrangement simmers down, the choir and congregation, who have witnessed similar moments, nevertheless sound as stunned to semi-silence as we feel as listeners. Where they were shouting, beseeching, encouraging, clapping, singing along during the song, by the end, they sound drained, offering relatively modest applause that comes nowhere near appropriate for what might be one of the greatest soul-unloading, cathartic performances captured on record.

You can hear why every rock & roll and pop star poser like Michael Bolton and Celine Dion haul out a gospel choir for some TV appearance or another; the power of a great gospel choir is undeniable. What such performers miss, however, is the force and depth of Aretha and James Cleveland, a force and depth to match that of a choir, to stand to-to-toe with and compliment a choir. Aretha’s recording here builds an arrangement that is like the architecture of the great Gothic cathedrals of Europe. At the start, the choir’s voice lift like arches up to the heavens, Aretha weaves her voice in and the choir dips. The, rhythm encourages the stop-start gait associated with a slow-moving ceremonial procession toward the front of the church, the altar. This holy music, like the great architecture, aspires to capture the spirit, the very essence – not the specifics – of the faith of the participants. They could be singing about Krishna, Jesus, or Allah, it doesn’t matter. What they are communicating is the passion in their souls. It’s enough to make you want to go to church.

Elvis and Nick at WBCN 1978

Talkin' 'bout my alma mater. In fact, I saw Elvis solo at UMass in 1983 or '84. He was fantastic.