50’s Holiday Revisited
Another year, another holiday. Bukowski pretty much summed it up. It’s not that you’re depressed, it’s just… as a man who’s seen this revolving door 63 times now, you tend to get a little ho-hum about it. What are we even celebrating, Santa? Freedom?
Regardless, the music is both a blessing and a curse. Every year I have these moments of inspiration from hearing Christmas music, and also a little dread. This year I made a playlist for doo wop, and that was just the right fix. It has the universality of the holidays, but it’s soulful. If you listen closely to the actual background voices and realize they are often facilitating instruments that, from the street-corners of their inception were beyond a financial or social grasp to these young groups… it’s really quite something. This music inspired The Beatles and so much more.
In 1978, on one of the first tours with Moon Martin to New York City, we were being driven from the airport to our hotel by a driver with a strong Brooklyn accent. There was an old 50’s song on the radio, then another and another until I finally asked “what is this station?”. He replied, “This? Yeah man it’s a doo wop station! The greatest, right?”
For me it was more than the greatest. It was an out of body experience. The music of The Dells, The Capris, The Flamingos… one after another playing with the skyline of Manhattan coming into view. It was turning dusk, and the boys in the band wanted to go venture around… see a few things, maybe get a bite.
However, I opted to stay in my room overlooking old time fire escapes with the bedside radio on, playing doo wop. I was frozen in time. Not the present, but a time I felt I had been here before. It’s one of the only feelings of this I’ve ever had, but a strong one.
And to this day, at certain times… like this year, it’s medicine. I devoted an entire record to this era and genre called Coolerator which is on Spotify, Apple Music and the rest. I tried my level best to use equipment from that time, perform and mix the record with the same sensibility. It’s more of an homage than anything I really felt like promoting… but I have to say of all my records, it’s my most frequent listen.
This and my Spotify doo-wop playlist links below. Merry Merry. Happy Happy 🙂
Juliet Ivy – we’re all eating each other
If you’re a songwriter, you’re probably like me, i.e., when you hear a song so good, so fresh and nonconforming, you get this surge of energy/envy like you wish you were a part of it or had thought of it or whatever.
Not since Tame Impala’s “The Less I Know The Better” have I felt this kind of wow. It makes me want to write. At least that’s the last I can remember… in truth there are probably a few more. In Tame Impala’s case it was really about a sound and production more than a lyric.
There’s something about this younger generation that speaks different, thinks different. In some cases it’s appalling, but there are certain minds and voices out there who bring something new and creative to the table. Juliet Ivy seems to be one.
This song says something I’ve thought in a hundred different ways, only she succinctly puts it into a couple of verses and a chorus. We’re all here. We all have different beliefs. But in truth, none of us actually KNOW why or how or where. Faith is a really good thing… but sometimes being realistic about what is before our eyes and ears is too. It keeps us from the delusion that we’re somehow chosen above billions of others.
Cheers to a new young artist. May she have loads of success without ever being owned.
Jude
Goodbye, Hello
My posting on social media’s days are numbered. I had to deactivate my FB page since being hacked … yet again … this time thanking all for being ‘fans’ … which sounds so like me! What’s next, me proclaiming ‘I’m from the government and i’m here to help’?
This is my internet space, and I will post songs, photos and what’s on my mind here. If no one reads it in this lifetime, perhaps one day someone will see there was a guy who received no Grammy, no AMA, no awards whatsoever save a few BMI airplay achievement medallions and certificates, but was an artist true to his form, no matter the audience.
So many proclamations I read about what it takes to be a ‘real artist’. John Mellencamp said you have to do it, you have to tour, because it’s in your blood if you’re a real artist. This may be true, but I see little correlation between being an artist and touring. In fact, to me they’re almost polar opposites.
Writing, rewriting, demoing, recording, producing, mixing… these are an art form of their own. It starts from nothing. Eventually you end up with something that is your signature sound, lyrics that reflect your life experience. Well, if you’re not just hacking the latest radio or Spotify trend that is.
Many say it’s a gift from the universe that if you don’t snatch up, someone else will. I always liked that description because for me, that’s the closest to how it feels.
Touring, in my opinion is in large part a carny act. You have a lobby call, early. You head to an interview or two, then it’s time to eat. After lunch you have sound check. Then you have an hour to go to your hotel room or bus and relax, hang out, shower and prepare for the show. Once the show starts, typically speaking you do the exact same thing you did the night before. Then it’s back to the room or bus and onto the next city. It’s groundhog day.
This is not to say it doesn’t take some creativity to invent an entertaining live show. I’ll tell you this, it certainly takes an athlete. But once it’s created you do it night after night, week after week, month after month. zzzzz
Ok mr. devil’s advocate, I know there are a few performers who are free-form and wing it. Jazz musicians have to play live to keep up their skill, their spontaneity, and I get that. But with popular music that’s not the norm. The norm is “HELLO CLEVELAND, I LOVE THIS CITY!” … followed by the next night’s “HELLO PITTSBURGH, I FUCKING LOVE THIS CITY!”
To me it’s brutal. Living with, again typically speaking, 4 or 5 guys in a bus is not an intuitive way for a man to be. We’re not designed this way after the age of 25. This is why so many bands stay together but don’t like or even speak to each other anymore. In the case of The Who, for example… Roger and Pete exit the stage from different sides, get in their limos and see each other at the next show, onstage, never uttering a word to one another. It’s been that way for many years. Just not in our DNA to live in tight quarters with other men. Women same. Men/Women, yikes…
Lennon/McCartney knew it after a few short tours, and in 1966, 2 years after going to the toppermost, they stopped. They were like, wait, we could be writing new songs and instead we’re out here taking bows for the songs we already wrote… not what we want to do! So they stopped. And the world thanks them.
For li’l ol’ me… I did many other things to keep from touring. I managed for 22 years, produced some records, ran a small label for awhile, developed many new artists… and now I get to enjoy what I love most, songwriting and record making. I hope you enjoy my new home and the songs, photos and videos I offer. They are mine, based on a life lived and devoted to what I love… music.
-Jude