Music Sunday: The Day Late and a Dollar Short Edition

Yes, I know. It's Monday, not Sunday. But, it's a holiday here in the US, Labor Day, and it's been a busy weekend. And so real life, as it does sometimes, got in the way of Music Sunday. But I didn't want to completely miss my music post for the week, and so here I am, taking a break from working on the novel I'm writing, to share a couple of very long songs with you.

First, since this week is going to be very short on the history of the songs I'm posting, I thought I'd leave you this little history of the first decades of rock and roll, by Don McLean, "American Pie", from 1972. You can look up the interpretations people have made of the lyrics here, but rest assured, Buddy Holly is here, and Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger and the Stones, and a few others:



And then, there is Led Zeppelin's "Stairway To Heaven". I think this version is from "The Song Remains The Same". Maybe it's just me, but it seems like Robert Plant might have sung this song a few too many times by this point; he seems a little bored to me through parts of the performance. But no matter, it's still a great song:



I was thinking about also including "Alice's Restaurant", by Arlo Guthrie. But then I decided that it is much more appropriate for Thanksgiving. You'll probably see it here around about then.

But, since today is a holiday, I'm going to go off and do holiday things now. Music Sunday should be back on its regular day next week.

Music Sunday: Moon Song Edition, in memory of Neil Armstrong

Today's Music Sunday is a little different, although not lacking in music.

As you've probably heard by now, Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, died yesterday. The word hero gets bandied about a lot these days, but as far as I'm concerned Armstrong is one man who really deserves that title. He landed the Lunar Module Eagle on the moon, flying it manually after the computer program that was designed to guide the landing turned out to be trying to put the lander down in a place where too many rocks made a landing dangerous. Of course, being a pilot, I suspect Armstrong was not all that disappointed or upset that he actually had to fly the lander, rather than having the computer do it for him. Just having the guts to go to the moon, much less the cool to take over like that and make a successful landing in such stressful circumstances, qualifies him for the title of "hero".

I think it is notable that after his return from the moon, Armstrong simply went about the rest of his life and didn't make a career out of having been the first human to walk on another planetary body. He could have ridden the adulation that came his way as a result of his accomplishment for as long as he wanted to. Instead, he came back and taught, sat on some corporate boards, participated in the spaceflight accident investigations after Apollo 13 failed to make its scheduled moon landing and after the Challenger disaster, and generally led his life. In the US culture of hero worship and celebrity adulation, I think it took a great deal of character not to fall into the trap of living the rest of his life off the fame he gained from being the first man on the moon.

Because it became a tradition at NASA to play musical wake-up calls for the astronauts on missions, I was going to share the wake-up music from the Apollo 11 mission as a tribute to Armstrong. However, it turns out that the wake-up calls on that mission consisted of news and sports reports rather than music, so instead, I'm going to share a few "moon" songs.

"Fly Me To The Moon", by Frank Sinatra, seemed a natural place to start. Two Apollo missions had flown to and orbited the moon before Apollo 11 made the first landing. But the Apollo 11 crew was the first to fly to the moon, rather than just to the vicinity of the moon.



And then, I thought it seemed appropriate to share Louis Armstrong's version of "Moon River":



The Police's "Walking on the Moon" also seemed like a natural song to share here, even though it isn't really all that much about walking on the actual moon:



The moon, of course, plays a role in a lot of songs. "June, spoon, moon" is sort of the classically stereotypical love-song formula, and has nothing to do with moon landings, of course. But I couldn't resist sharing a few more "moon" songs. Many of these songs are romantic in nature, of course. One of my favorites is "Moondance", by Van Morrison:



Cat Stevens's (Yusuf Islam) "Moonshadow" is a song I've liked ever since it first came out. At first listen, it seems awfully depressing, with lyrics about losing, well, just about everything. But then, when you listen to it more closely, it really is about looking on the positive side of every situation, no matter how dire. That is a difficult thing to do, but something I think more of us should try more often. This live performance is from 1976:



Sting's "Moon Over Bourbon Street" is another favorite of mine. This performance, from 2010, includes a symphony orchestra and is perhaps a little over-produced for my taste, but it's a good live interpretation of a very good song:



Not all songs about the moon are romantic (in whatever way you want to interpret that concept) or hopeful. "Bad Moon Rising", by Creedence Clearwater Revival, takes the opposite tack of exploring the theme of the moon as an ominous omen:



Neil Armstrong's family has requested that those who want to do something in remembrance of him do a very simple thing. On a clear night sometime soon, go outside look up at the Moon, think of Mr. Armstrong, and give him and the moon a wink. I can't think of a more appropriate way to remember a man who lived an ordinary life after doing such an extraordinary thing as being the first human to walk on another world.

Music Sunday: The Protest Something Edition

Since summer is almost over and since this is an election year, with the Democratic and Republican nominating conventions coming up soon, and especially with the rhetoric from both sides of the political divide heating up to unprecedented proportions, I thought this would be the perfect time to share a slightly different genre of music - the protest song.

I suppose people of my generation think first of the protest music of the 1960s when the topic of protest songs comes up, but protest songs have been around for a lot longer than that. Just in the United States, protest music has a long history that goes back to the Revolutionary War, while the genre exploded during the Civil War. Since I have limited space here, however, I'll limit myself to songs from the 20th century and forward. And even with that limitation, there won't be room to share more than a few of the many songs protesting many things.

First, from the 1930s, there is "Strange Fruit", made popular by Billie Holiday. The lyrics for the song came from a poem published in 1936 by Abel Meeropol, who also sometimes wrote as Lewis Allen, that protested the lynchings then occurring with disturbing regularity:



In 1940, Woody Guthrie wrote "This Land is Your Land" as an answer to "God Bless America" and in protest of the way the working people of the United States were treated by the capitalist owners of big business in a country and at a time when th captains of industry were revered and worshiped. It was read then as socialist in sentiment, and it was. Later it was reinterpreted (and maybe tamed) by those who chose to take the song as more environmental in nature. But, it is difficult to mistake the meaning of the man who carried a guitar that had the message "This machine kills Fascists" glued to its body. This version does not include all the lyrics to the song, but is the only one I could find that would work:



Even if "This Land is Your Land" isn't one of them, there have been many songs directed at protesting what has happened to the Earth's environment. One of the best of those songs, at least in my opinion, was Marvin Gaye's "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)", recorded in 1971:



In the sixties and seventies, however, most protest songs centered on war, particularly the war in Vietnam. Some of these songs came from unexpected places. For example, the song "Unknown Soldier", by The Doors. This is a live performance of the song, at the Hollywood Bowl:



Other songs protesting Vietnam in particular and war in general, were not so unexpected. John Lennon and Yoko Ono and a few of their friends recorded "Give Peace A Chance in a hotel room in Montreal on June 1, 1969:



Some songs, on the other hand, protest the protest. As Bono has said of U2's song "Sunday Bloody Sunday", about the Troubles in Northern Ireland, "This is not a rebel song". That is reiterated, and reiterated very graphically, specifically and emphatically, in the middle of this performance, a live version of the song from the movie "Rattle and Hum":



And then there is probably the ultimate "protest-the-protest" song, Merle Haggard's "Okie from Muskogee", from 1969 and released just a few months after "Give Peace A Chance". There has been some opinion that the song was a satire, but being half-Okie myself, I see it as a heartfelt statement of the feelings of many people at the time, who were genuinely confused and upset by what they saw going on around them. And there's nothing wrong with that - protest songs can protest whatever the writers of the songs want them to protest:

Music Sunday: Summer Edition

It's summertime in the Northern Hemisphere. With a vengeance, at least here. It was 110 degrees F here yesterday and it is forecast to be 109 F today. That's just too hot as far as I'm concerned.

But, the heat and the crappy air, the winding down of the Summer Olympics, and the fact that here in my community summer vacation is ending for all the kids (and adults) who will be going back to school in the next couple of weeks, all have me thinking about "summer" songs. And there are a lot of them. But, because there are so many of them, I decided, for the purposes of this blog post, to stick with songs that actually have the words "summer" or "summertime" in the title.

First up, this is "Summer in the City", by The Lovin' Spoonful, from 1966, with a lead vocal (and bonus mid-60s sideburns) from John Sebastian. Sidewalks "hotter than a match-head" indeed, or at least it felt like that when I was outside yesterday:



"Summertime Blues" was first recorded by Eddie Cochran in 1958, but arguably the best-known cover of the song is by The Who, although it has been recorded by artists as diverse as Blue Cheer, The Beach Boys, Alan Jackson, and Olivia Newton-John. This is a live performance by The Who, at the Monterey Pop Festival, in 1967:



And then there's "Summertime". This song, which originated as an aria in "Porgy & Bess", by George Gershwin and DuBose Heyward in 1935, is one of the most covered songs in recording history, with one source claiming that there are over 33,000 covers of the song in existence. Well, I don't know about that, but I do know that I can't decide which of my two favorite covers of the song to post here, so I'm going to post both of them. First is Billie Holiday's cover:



I also love Janis Joplin's cover of "Summertime", here from a live performance in Stockholm in 1969:



I hope it isn't as hot where you are as it is here. If it is, try to stay cool. If it isn't, just know how jealous I am that you're there and I'm here.

Some posts were just not meant to be...

I truly believe that a person should know when to just give up. This is one of those times.

I wrote a lovely post about a list of most popular YA novels that was assembled by National Public Radio after voting by over 75,000 readers. Within that post, I linked to both the final list of 100 books and series and the list of 235 finalists that readers were then invited to vote on.

In an attempt to get the links to work after they didn't do so initially, I managed to make the whole blog post disappear.

It's been a long day. The post is staying disappeared, at least for the time being. So, if you saw it in the few minutes it was up before I discovered that the links didn't work, that's what happened to it.

These things happen.

With any luck the next post I put up will behave itself better than that one did.

A little Curiosity is a good thing...

I love science.

I especially love the whole idea of exploring space. I suppose this shouldn't be a surprise. I grew up listening to test firings of the rocket engines that took US astronauts into space and, ultimately, to the moon. This fascination with space exploration has not faded, and so I watched coverage of the landing of Mars rover Curiosity last night.

Watching on television was not an option, since none of the cable news or broadcast networks bothered to cover the event live. Fortunately, NASA provided live streaming from the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, where the project to put Curiosity on Mars is headquartered. I had that coverage open in one tab on my laptop, so I could watch along with some of my fellow science geeks/knitters on Ravelry, open in another tab. I also had a third tab open, where I skipped back and forth between Facebook and Twitter. It was like going to four parties simultaneously.

See why I love science? Not to mention the technology it enables.

As I sat and watched, I was reminded of when I spent an afternoon in 1969 watching TV coverage of the first manned moon landing. I was twelve years old then, and watched the landing with my father. I missed him a lot last night, watching Curiosity's landing. He would have loved it. He would probably have said, as he did in 1976 when Viking 1 landed on Mars to send back the first color photos of the surface of the planet, that it would be absolutely hilarious if a little green guy turned up making faces at the camera in the first pictures back. He took his space travel seriously, but he also had a sense of humor about it.

Of course, there was more at stake when Eagle landed on the Moon. There were two men inside the lunar module, and if something had gone wrong.... Well, it would have been a Very Bad Thing.

But, a lot could have gone wrong with the landing of Curiosity, as well, and while there were no human lives at stake, a lot of effort by a lot of people would have been lost if the landing hadn't gone as planned. The whole landing apparatus was new. The parachute could have failed. The landing engines could have misfired or not fired at all. The sky crane that lowered Curiosity to the surface could probably have malfunctioned in several different ways.

Even if everything went right with the landing, the word was that because of the uncertainties of communications due to the time and location of touchdown, it might not be clear for up to two or three days if the landing had been successful. As it was, the length of time that it takes signals to travel from Mars back to Earth meant that Curiosity would be on the ground for close to fifteen minutes before anyone on Earth would be able to know for sure that it had arrived safely.

Watching the live stream from JPL, it was clear that there was a lot of breath-holding in the control room in the minutes before touchdown. Then, as the signals began to return, tracking the descent of the craft, there were small, tentative bursts of applause at certain milestones. Signals were handed off, then continued to come in. The parachute had deployed. The landing engines had kicked in. The craft was slowing as it should. The sky-crane was lowering the car-sized Curiosity to the surface.

And then, "Touchdown confirmed."

That was the announcement that set off pandemonium, cheers, high-fives, and tears of joy and relief in the control room. Someone had to shout pretty loudly to get the team members to pay attention: "Heads up, folks!" And then, shortly after that, "We've got thumbnails. Keep watching the screen."

And, indeed, there were thumbnails. Pictures. Curiosity had only been on the surface of Mars for a few minutes, but it was already sending back photos, taken through a clear dust cover that had not yet been jettisoned. The horizon was visible. So was a wheel of the rover, and the rover's shadow on the ground in the late afternoon sunshine. You could even see bits of dust thrown up by the landing rockets that had lodged on the dust cover.

It was amazing.

It was also more proof, as were those first photos sen back from Viking 1, in 1976, that Mars - like the Earth and the Moon - is a place. A place with dirt and dust and rocks and hills. It isn't just a slightly reddish dot of light in the night sky.

It is a place we can go, if we just decide to do it.

Oh, it won't be easy. And it will be dangerous, especially for the first people to go. Like the Moon, people would not be able to go out for a stroll in their shirtsleeves. They will need protective suits and breathing apparatus. Habitats will have to be built to enable human beings to live and work there.

It will also be much more expensive to send human beings to Mars than it was to land Curiosity there which, as was pointed out during the coverage last night, cost just seven dollars per man, woman, and child in the United States. Which, in the grand scheme of things, isn't much.

It will be worth it, though. Worth every penny and every ounce of danger. But, as one JPL official said during the press conference held shortly after the landing, all it really takes is "the passion for adventure". It was more than evident last night that the team responsible for sending Curiosity to Mars and landing it safely has that passion.

If you didn't get to see it last night (or very early this morning, depending on where you are), here is the scene in the control room as data arrived conforming the landing of Curiosity:

Music Sunday: Tempest Edition

I decided to do something a little different this Sunday for Music Sunday.

Since I started writing these Music Sunday features, for the most part, I've been sharing music from artists who have made a big splash in the media, artists that everyone knows. The band whose music I'm sharing this week, on the other hand, are very popular, but in an indie sort of way.

I had heard of Tempest for years. But I never knew their music, which is mostly in the Celtic Rock genre, until they played at BayCon, a literary science fiction convention held in the San Francisco Bay area every year. I was just a bit skeptical going into the concert, but I was a fan by about the second song they performed. I've seen them perform live several times since then, and I like them more and more every time I hear them play.

So, today, I'm just going to shut up and share some of their music.

This is an instrumental piece, performed at an arts and music festival in Humboldt County, CA, in 2010. I was not at this performance, but thanks to a kind soul who posted this on YouTube, I can pass this on to you:



This is the official video for Tempest's cover of The Grass Roots "Live for Today". It kind of tickled me that they covered this song, since The Grass Roots were my favorite band way back in the dark ages when I was in junior high school (late 1960s/early 1970s):



"Black Jack Davy" is an adaptation of a Celtic folk ballad from the early 1700s. One of the things I really like about Tempest is how they can take traditional works and themes from centuries ago and make them sound so contemporary:



Here is a two-part mini-documentary focusing on the making of one Tempest album, in 2006:





More information about Tempest can be found here and here.

A little Olympics geography...

So. I'm still watching the Olympics. Men's indoor volleyball, currently.

What I've been thinking about, however, is geography. Last time I took a geography class, about 10 years ago or so, I did really well. And so, during last week's Opening Ceremonies, while the athletes filed into the stadium, I played the game I always do: Where's That Nation. And I could locate most of them, at least to continent and general location within that continent. Or, body of water, in the case of island nations. I should be able to do that. In that geography class I just mentioned, we had to memorize the locations of all the world's nations. We were tested on them, so it wasn't just an idle exercise.

I recognized the names of nearly all the nations in the parade on Friday. There were four, however, which were a mystery to me. Never heard of them. Really. Never, as far as I could remember. Yeah, I did really well on that map test in geography. I did not get 100 percent.

So, I sat down and looked up the four nations I hadn't recognized. Now that I have done that, I understand why I hadn't heard of them, at least in relation to that geography class. Or, three of them, at least. Three out of the four are located in the Pacific Ocean. In class, we were not required to learn every little island nation in the Pacific. The fourth nation that I didn't recognize is in West Africa. I must not have been paying enough attention when I was memorizing the African nations.

The three Pacific Ocean nations that I didn't recognize the names of were the Republic of Kiribati, the Republic of Nauru, and Tuvalu. Kiribati is the largest of the three, with 313 square miles of atolls and a raised coral island scattered over 1,351,500 square miles of ocean in the central tropical Pacific. It has a population of just over 103,000, as of a 2010 estimate. It sent three athletes to the Olympics this year.

Kiribati is absolutely huge compared to the other two Pacific nations I didn't recognize. The Republic of Nauru is an island nation in Micronesia, located just 26 miles south of the equator. It covers 8.1 square miles and is the world's smallest republic. A July 2011 estimate put its population at 9,378, with only Vatican City having a smaller population among sovereign states in the world. The other Pacific nation in question is Tuvalu, 10 square miles in area, located about halfway between Hawaii and Australia, and with an estimated 10,544 residents. But, even with these small populations, Nauru sent two athletes to the Games, while Tuvalu sent three.

Notably, Tuvalu is the second least-elevated nation in the world, with it's highest point at 15 feet above sea level. Only the Maldives, in the Indian Ocean, are lower, with that nation's highest point at 7 feet, 10 inches above sea level. It is interesting to note, too, that one of the titles Queen Elizabeth II of England holds is Queen of Tuvalu, as the monarch of that member of the Commonwealth of Nations.

The African nation I didn't recognize, Togo, is considerably larger in both area and population, covering an area of 21,925 square miles between Ghana and Benin in West Africa. It has a population of 6,619,000. Out of that population, Togo sent six athletes to the Games. French is still the official language of Togo, reflecting its history as a French colony, but there are a number of indigenous languages spoken there, and over 50 percent of its inhabitants still practice indigenous religious, although about 20 percent of the population practices Islam and 29 percent claim Christianity as their religion. Togo won its independence from France in 1960.

Another of my geekdoms, as you may have noticed, is geography. I learned the joy of geography and map-reading at my father's knee. So, I feel kind of disappointed in myself that I didn't know anything about any of the nations I've written about here. But they are not the only participants in the Games that have interesting stories to tell about their geography and inhabitants. I could have gone on for several more paragraphs about the very small European states that are represented in the Olympics. I mean, the city-state of Monaco is less than a square mile in area and still sent six athletes to the games.

But I've gone long enough for tonight. I started writing while volleyball was on, there was some gymnastics in there somewhere, and some swimming. It's almost time to go out and put the trash can out at the curb.

And, hey, there are still more Olympics to watch.

Of course, I'm watching the Olympics...

I've been watching the Olympics a fair amount this week. although I have to admit that I like the Winter Games more than I enjoy the Summer Games.

Having said that, however, I will say that I enjoy watching diving. That's what's on as I write this, and I have to give NBC credit for showing the finals of the women's synchronized platform diving in prime time even though the US team did not qualify for the finals. I've always thought that US coverage of the Games focuses entirely too much on US athletes, leaning toward only showing, especially in prime time, events in which US athletes are believed to have a good chance to win medals.

I also enjoy watching gymnastics, although I don't have any interest in what they call rhythmic gymnastics (the women's routines that use ribbons and hoops and so forth as props). I like volleyball, too, mostly because I played volleyball on a church league when I was a senior in high school. It amazes me how different indoor volleyball is from beach volleyball, but I like watching both. Swimming is fun to watch, as well, although I'm not quite sure why I like it. You can't really see anything but flailing arms and splashing.

I have no use, however, for the track and field events. Running and jumping and flinging things just does not interest me. Well, the pole vault fascinates me in a sort of perverse way, because I just can't understand why anyone would do that. I certainly would never launch myself all those feet off the ground on what looks like an excessively flimsy fiberglass pole. I'm just surprised that those poles don't break more often.

Water polo doesn't do anything for me, either.

The sport I'd like to see more of is synchronized swimming. I know. It's a weird sport. And those nose-clips they wear make them look like they've all had the same unfortunate nose job. But I've always been clumsy in the water, and it fascinates me that those groups of swimmers can look so graceful doing what they do.

My favorite parts of the Games? The opening and closing ceremonies. I'm not going to contribute here to the criticism of NBC's coverage of the Opening Ceremonies this year (I did enough of that on Friday night, other places online, while I was watching), except to say that the commentary and editing nearly ruined the experience for me. I really, really want to see a recording of the BBC's coverage. I've heard that it was much superior.

I will say that what we got of the entertainment portion of the Opening Ceremonies in the US coverage impressed me and entertained me. I loved the Queen, Daniel Craig, and the corgis. That was fabulous, and I feel a great deal of affection for the Queen for agreeing to be a part of that. On the other hand, who could possibly turn down the chance to be a Bond Girl to Craig's 007? I certainly wouldn't. I loved the music that was chosen (and I did catch the sound of Doctor Who's TARDIS at the end the portion of the music segment featuring Queen). And, I loved seeing Paul McCartney performing "Hey, Jude". I was sorry to see so much criticism of his singing, since it was obvious to me that it was a result of his feeling the emotion of the moment. I've heard the emotion-choked voices of individuals trying to sing before, and that is exactly what that sounds like.

And the fireworks. The fireworks were spectacular, even on television. I don't usually enjoy watching fireworks on TV, but I enjoyed those.

The games have just begun, with almost two weeks of events left to go before the Closing Ceremonies on August 12. I'm hoping for exciting competition, no off-the-field drama (although there has already been one incident of some people throwing around accusations of doping, involving a Chinese swimmer), and a little better coverage from NBC than they've provided so far.

I will be watching.

Music Sunday: "Sunday Morning Coming Down" Edition

I don't like Sundays any more.

I used to like Sundays when I was a child. Sunday was outing day. My family went on some kind of outing nearly every Sunday, even on days when my father had to work. Many times, we would just go for a ride somewhere, to see what we could see. Other Sundays, we would go to a museum, or to Griffith Park Observatory, or to Disneyland (back in the days when it didn't cost an arm and both legs to get in).

Gasoline costs too much to do that now, and I miss those outings a lot. With my arthritis, it is even difficult for me to get out and take a long walk on a Sunday. That was something we used to do as a family on Sundays, as well, sometimes just walking around town for two or three or four hours.

Not being able to have those Sunday outings any more puts me out of sorts sometimes. This is one of those Sundays, and so it has been difficult for me to get into the mood to write the usual Music Sunday blog post. There just wasn't any music that I wanted to hear. I even asked for recommendations from friends. And I got some good recommendations. Just nothing that moved me enough to share with you all.

And then I remembered "Sunday Morning Coming Down". Written by Kris Kristofferson, it was first recorded in 1969 by Ray Stevens. Kristofferson has also recorded it, as did Johnny Cash. I like this cover, which I just discovered, by Trace Adkins:



And here is Kristofferson and Cash singing the song, in 1978:



Not an upbeat song, to be sure, but it made my Sunday a little more bearable. I hope your Sunday was better, wherever you are.

Just a note: I've seen this song identified both as "Sunday Morning Coming Down" and "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down". I have no idea which is correct.

Music Sunday: Music Plus Book Review Edition

I grew up listening to rock music. I also spent a lot of that time reading the writing of Robert Hilburn, the legendary music critic for the Los Angeles Times. So, when I discovered that Hilburn had written a memoir, Corn Flakes with John Lennon and Other Tales From a Rock’n’Roll Life (Rodale, 2009; 280 pages), I had to read it.

I’m glad I did.

Hilburn, who wrote his first story as a freelancer for the Times in 1966 and was hired as full-time pop music critic and editor in 1970, is a fabulous writer. He spent his career at one of the epicenters of the music industry, and he writes about his adventures with grace and wit and a great deal of insight. As part of his job, he met and interviewed and reviewed the biggest and most legendary names in music, and became friends with not a few of them. These friendships did not stop Hilburn from calling these performers on the missteps in their recordings and in performance, although he writes about being worried that his relationships with these artists could be seen as a conflict or interest or result in bias toward them.

Hilburn also writes about his questions concerning continuing to write about music aimed mostly at teenagers and young adults as he aged, addressing his doubts in the context of covering musicians who kept making music, sometimes relevant, sometimes not so much, as they aged. I found this interesting as a person of a certain age who still loves rock music but finds fewer and fewer new artists whose work I can relate to as I get older. Hilburn quotes Paul McCartney on the subject, recalls that at one point Mick Jagger said that he couldn't envision still singing “Satisfaction” at the age of thirty but has continued singing it much longer than that, and celebrates the fact that Johnny Cash’s work remained relevant until the end of his life.

Then there are the stories. Hilburn recalls being the person John Lennon would call to spend an evening with during Lennon's year-and-a-half long “lost weekend”, spent primarily in Los Angeles, when he needed to remain relatively sober to get up for an early meeting the next day. He relates serious and deep discussions he had about the music with Bruce Springsteen. He talks about the difficulties inherent in interviewing people like Bob Dylan and Neil Young. He explores his ability to connect with musicians much younger than himself, such as Kurt Cobain, and from very different backgrounds, such as Ice Cube. He describes hanging out with the members of U2 in and out of the recording studio.

In the course of all this, Hilburn pulls no punches in writing about artists he admires and those he finds, following Bob Dylan’s three categories of musicians, “superficial”, which in Hilburn’s eyes includes some very big name acts and musicians. But Hilburn spends much less time on the superficial than he does on the natural performers and the supernatural performers, Dylan’s two other categories.

I’ll leave you to read the book to discover how various performers Hilburn discusses fit into which category. If you think this is my way of making you read the book rather than giving away the good parts, you’re absolutely correct. Every music lover should read Corn Flakes with John Lennon.

Because it is Music Sunday, I’m going to end this review with three of the artists and performances mentioned by Hilburn in the course of his book.

One of the musicians that Hilburn had a friendship with was Johnny Cash. He calls Cash's cover of "Hurt" "stirring" (p. 194):



Another artist Hilburn has high praise for is Bruce Springsteen, whose "Brilliant Disguise" Hilburn described as "a chilling reflection about commitment" (p. 148):



Hilburn said that U2's album, "The Unforgettable Fire" "confused" him, but he called two of the songs on the album, "Pride (In the Name of Love)" and "Bad", "brilliant" (p. 141). Just last week, I shared the band's performance of "Bad" at Live Aid, so here is "Pride":

Sweet frustrations...

As a compulsive and voracious reader, I get frustrated when I can’t find something to read.

You would probably laugh at that statement if you could see where I’m living. Between my roommate and myself, there must be at least a couple of thousand books in the apartment. I have not come close to reading all of them.

Still, sometimes I find myself wandering from bookshelf to bookshelf, repeating the lament, “But I can’t find anything to read.”

I know. Cue the violins and the weeping.

It sounds stupid, but it is a real problem. While I love to read, there are books – there are whole genres, really – that I’m not that keen to read. And even within the genres of fiction and topics in non-fiction that I do enjoy reading, I’m not in the mood to read all the books all the time. If I’ve read three mysteries in a row, for example, I’d probably want to read something else before I read another mystery.

I’ve had this problem a lot lately, and I go through periods like this from time to time. It gets so that I just can’t find anything I want to read. I suspect that the current troubles are at least partly due to the fact that I’ve been writing a lot, and I don’t want what I’m reading to bleed through into what I’m writing.

I’m not really worried about ideas creeping from my reading into my writing, but more about tone and voice. One time, last year, I was working on something that I was writing in third-person omniscient. Then I started reading a book that was written in the first person. Imagine my surprise (and dismay), when I realized that I’d written the last several thousand words in first-person rather than third.

Sigh. I haven’t gone back to that project yet.

However, I’m not here to complain, but to say that I’ve managed to find myself an embarrassment of riches. I’ve got two books, both out of the library, that are, at least so far, fantastic. They’re both so good that I wish I could read both at the same time. When I sit down to read, it is difficult for me to decide which one I want to spend time with.

(Actually, the main reason I’m writing this rather than reading right now is that, when I sat down intending to read for a while before starting dinner, I couldn't decide which one I wanted to pick up.)

One is fiction, 11/22/63 (Scribner, 2011; 849 pages), by Stephen King. I found this one at the library on Monday, sat down and started reading just to see if I was going to like it – it has gotten good reviews, but I haven’t felt moved to pick up any of King’s work in several years – and found it mesmerizing from the first pages. The other is Corn Flakes with John Lennon and Other Tales from a Rock’n’Roll Life (Rodale, 2009; 280 pages), by rock critic Robert Hilburn, who wrote for the Los Angeles Times for many years. I read Hilburn’s work in the Times for years and I love books on rock music, so when I found it today I could resist picking it up when I went to take some other books (books that looked good, but which ended up not catching my interest when I started to read them) back to the library.

I used to have this problem, having two (or more) good books to read at the same time, a lot. I don’t know if it is because I’ve read many more books by now, or if there just aren’t as many good books coming out now, or that I’m just getting picky in my old age. Whatever the case, I rarely have two good reads in hand at the same time now.

I plan to enjoy this sweet frustration, and hope that this is a sign that it will happen more often.

Because, man, I really do get cranky when I can’t find anything good to read.

Book Review: "The Boy Who Couldn't Sleep and Never Had To", by D C Pierson

The other day when I was at the library, I picked a book up off the shelf because it had such an improbable title: The Boy Who Couldn't Sleep and Never Had To (2010, Vintage Books/Random House; 226 pages). How was I supposed to resist a title like that?

Maybe that was author D C Pierson's strategy in picking the title. If it was, it was a good approach. It also describes the premise of the book quite well. Eric Lederer is a high school student, one of those who a lot of the rest of the students at his school have pegged as mostly likely to shoot the school up. He's a loner, a geek who is probably a little too intelligent for his own good. He just doesn't fit in. But, one day he approaches Darren Bennett, another student, the become fast friends, and Eric soon confesses that he doesn't sleep.

Of course, Darren's first reaction is what most of ours would be: so, don't drink so much caffeine. To which Eric's response is something along the lines of, "Dude, you don't understand..." Soon, the two boys are planning a multi-film epic that will be tied together with comic books and video games and, inevitably, a television series.

But, the course of true friendship and entertainment-moguldom is never an easy path, and...stuff happens. It would be unfair to say more.

Pierson is a good young writer, who has claimed J. D. Salinger as one of his influences. As far as I'm concerned, he has written a much better book than anything I've ever read of Salinger's. I find Salinger's work unpleasant and his characters (principally Holden Caulfield) impossible to like or to sympathize with. On the other hand, Pierson has created in Eric and Darren two characters who do stupid things, sometimes colossally stupid things, and sometimes mean things. There were a couple of points while reading the book where I would have cheerfully throttled both of them. But I continued to like them and to pull for them to work it all out.

I like this book more than I like most novels that are meant to be literary, rather than genre, works. And, The Boy... was clearly meant to be a literary novel. But deep down, this is a fantasy novel, and I like it all the more for that.

Music Sunday: Live Aid Anniversary Edition

Twenty-seven years ago last Friday, Live Aid was unleashed on the world. I remember that day; I spent it sitting in front of the television watching the coverage on MTV. I saw nearly the whole broadcast. I might have napped a couple of times during the day, but I got up early and stayed until the end. It was an amazing, interesting day.

Oh, not all of the performance were wonderful, to be sure. But even some of the not-so-good performances were fun to watch, and it was all in a good cause, to raise money and awareness regarding victims of famine in Ethiopia. The whole thing was organized by Bob Geldof, who had earlier organized the Band Aid benefit single, "Do They Know It's Christmas?", and Midge Ure, and they did an amazing job considering the logistics of putting together two all-star concerts that would take place simultaneously in two hemispheres. And, yes, there were criticisms later about the money-raising aspects of the show, and accusations (some of them long after the fact) that not all the money went where it was supposed to go. Be that as it may, it was a remarkable day of music, put together and pulled off much more successfully than anyone could have expected.

One of the most vivid memories I have of the day is the performance by U2. I had probably heard of the band before that day, but I wasn't really aware of them. Looking back, though, I think one of the most remarkable aspects of their performance is being able to see the beginnings of Bono's ability to hold a huge audience in the palm of his hand, especially here, as he sang "Bad", which has come to be one of my favorite U2 songs.



And, yes, he really can do that palm of the hand thing. I saw U2 on its Oakland, California, stop during its Zoo TV tour in1992, and witnessed this live and in person.

However, at Live Aid, Bono was still an amateur in the art of holding a big audience. Later that afternoon, also at the London venue of the concert, Freddie Mercury and Queen held the master class in uniting an audience into one entity and turning them to the band's purpose. The performance has been cited widely as the best live rock performance ever, and I'm inclined to agree. No, really. Just watch. It's remarkable:



There have been attempts since to recreate the success of Live Aid, mostly to lesser success. I think it can be compared to Woodstock in that respect. The 1969 Woodstock Music and Art Fair, for all of its problems, was a once in a lifetime event, and attempts to recreate it (notably the Rolling Stones' disastrous free concert at Altamont Speedway and the efforts to hold sequels to the original Woodstock in 1979, 1989, and 1994) were clearly not in a class with the original.

Speaking of Woodstock, Crosby Stills, and Nash, who appeared at Woodstock in 1969 (in one of their first live performances), appeared at the Philadelphia venue of Live Aid, singing "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes", among other songs:



Their performance that day isn't their best ever, vocally speaking, but as someone who remembers the original Woodstock (and spent the weekend wishing I was there, despite the rain and mud and logistical problems), I appreciate the link between the two events. And, having seen CSN perform live, I can attest to the fact that when they are on vocally, the results are beautiful.

The Who also performed at both Woodstock and Live Aid, but with a slightly different line-up since, by the time of Live Aid, Keith Moon had already died.



Also performing at both Live Aid and Woodstock were Joan Baez, Carlos Santana and Neil Young, who performed as part of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young at Woodstock. Baez even managed to invoke Woodstock as part of her performance:



I'm not sure if Live Aid really was that generation's Woodstock, as Baez called it, but it was a remarkable musical event.

Public speaking - I'm not afraid. Are you?

Yesterday, I did something that would make many people flip out. That is, I stood up in front of people and talked.

It went fairly well. I survived, and so did the people who had to sit there and listen to me. I'm sure that I said "um" and "uh" too many times, and one of those who listened to me told me afterward that he was distracted by by glasses sitting too low on my nose (he said he kept wondering if they were going to fall off). But, I also got compliments on my part of the presentation (there were two others who also spoke), and I feel pretty good about the whole experience.

I think it is interesting that there have been polls indicating that most people are more afraid of getting up and speaking in front of an audience than they are of dying. That seems pretty extreme to me. But, I've got things I'm frightened of, too, so I'm really in no position to judge. Honestly, though, I've never been afraid of speaking before groups, large and small.

This probably has something to do with the fact that I've been up in front of people enough in my life that it seems natural to me.

I don't even really remember the first time I was up in front of an audience, but I've heard the stories and seen photos. I was about two years old, and the event was a fashion show to show off sewing projects by high school students. My aunt had made a dress that was my size, and I modeled it in the show. Apparently, I had fun. I've been told that I wanted to go back and walk the runway again. Alas (and probably fortunately), that was both the beginning and the end of my career as a fashion model.

Then, there was the Christmas play I was in when I was five years old. I have a few fleeting memories of that, and none of those memories include being reluctant to go on stage. What I remember more clearly about that night was it being horribly foggy when it was time to go to the (Methodist) church for the play but it being clear as a bell and windy when we emerged from the church basement a couple of hours later.

During elementary school, I was required to speak in front of the whole school a number of times. I was in speech therapy beginning in second grade (I had a lisp), and nearly every time there was a need for a student to speak in an assembly, I was elected because it would be "good for me" to practice my non-lisping speech. I also was in my school band and, in sixth grade, all-district band, which meant being on-stage for performances. I didn't do as much of that sort of thing in junior high or high school, although I was onstage in a pageant at Shakespeare Festival in 9th grade.

Later on, during the time I was a Mormon, I was sometimes asked to give talks in church, teach Sunday School or Relief Society classes, and so forth, which gave me more experience talking in front of an audience. So did being involved in community theatre (although I usually did behind the scenes, backstage work rather than being on stage), holding offices and campaigning for offices while I was involved in Phi Theta Kappa honor society, and other random things I've done through the years.

All of this means that I've been up in front of an audience - ranging from a few people to, in a few cases, a few hundred people - enough that it makes sense for me not to get too anxious or upset about it. On the other hand, there are people who make a living getting up in front of an audience who report getting sick nearly every time, even after years of experience.

Maybe I'm just a ham (some of my friends would probably say that there is no "maybe" about it). Maybe it's something genetic. Whatever the cause, I'm glad that I'm able to have fun with getting up in front of groups and speaking. I've seen too many people just miserable about even having to get up in a class and do a presentation. And by miserable, I mean sweaty-palmed, tongue-tied, run-to-the-bathroom-to-ralph miserable. And I don't want to have to go through that kind of miserable.

Music Sunday: Happy Birthday Edition...

Here in the United States, we celebrated our nation's birthday this week, with all of the food, fireworks and patriotic music that implies. It put me in mind of the July 4th I spent, many years ago, riding around north Wales and discovering that one of the radio stations there was actually playing John Phillip Sousa marches and other patriotic songs from the US. It was interesting to me that they would do that, and it was kind of fun spending that gray, rainy (until late afternoon, when the sun came out) day seeing green hills, sheep and cows, small Welsh villages and, occasionally, the ruins of a castle on a distant hilltop, and listening to American patriotic music.

But, since I'm really not a huge fan of that genre of music, I thought I'd take a look and see who in the music world celebrated their birthdays in the past week, and share some of their music with you.

It was Ringo Starr's birthday on July 7. I've shared music from The Beatles here before, more than once, but I thought I'd share one of the songs Starr recorded after he left the band. This one, "It Don't Come Easy", is my favorite of his post-Beatles career, if for nothing else the line, "I don't ask for much/I only want trust":



It was also Robbie Robertson's birthday this week, on July 5. Robertson, of course, had a long career with The Band, but he has also done some interesting solo work. This song, "Somewhere Down the Crazy River", is my favorite of his work away from The Band:



Huey Lewis also celebrated a birthday on July 5. He had a number of hits with his band, The News but, again, I thought I would share some of his work from outside his usual habitat, "Cruisin'" recorded with Gweneth Paltrow, from the film Duets.



From the world of country music, Toby Keith is celebrating his birthday today, July 8. He has recorded a number of songs that could be classed as patriotic music, and created more than a little controversy with some of it. But I first became aware of his work with this song, "How Do You Like Me Now?" How many of us haven't wanted to go back and tell someone from our past, "Hey, look at me now. Not as bad as you thought, huh?" But the video doesn't take the easy way out; he didn't get the girl in high school, and he doesn't get her when comes back twenty years later, either. It's a fun song and a clever video:



And then, just to wrap things up and come 'round full circle to The Beatles, here is Paul McCartney, singing "Birthday" to Ringo Starr a couple of years ago at a show at Radio City Music Hall:

Thoughts about fashion and news on a Friday night...

I saw an item the other day while I was reading on the Internet that Kate Middleton - excuse me, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge; not being British, I don't understand the ins and outs of properly referring to royalty, so I had to look that up - wore a dress to Wimbledon the other day that she had, heaven help us all, worn before.

This item - I refuse to call it a news story, because it is my position that what anyone wears, even royalty, isn't important enough to rise to the status of news - has been on my mind every since. I don't understand the mindset that, above a certain rank or social class or level wealth, there is something, I don't know, untoward, about a woman wearing an outfit more than once.

Yes, I understand the concept of conspicuous consumption and that it is one of the ways that people impress upon the world that they are of higher class, rank, or wealth. That is, I understand it intellectually. Emotionally and logically, I don't get it at all, especially the part where the press, the gossips, and sometimes people in general, take such people to task if they don't cooperate with the program and go ahead and wear something more than once.

I have to admit that my first reaction when I read the item was to think, "So what?" Still, the very fact that someone thought to write about it, and someone else facilitated its publication on a widely-enough website (I think it was Yahoo! News) that I would run across the item. I don't seek out gossip columns or stories about British royalty.

Later on, however, it occurred to me to wonder what message such stories send to the people who read them, and whether these message are inadvertent or deliberate. Are we meant to envy the person, this time the Duchess, who can afford to be seen in public only once in an outfit? Are we to admire the wealth that it takes to be able to do that? Are we to aspire to such wealth? Or are we meant to simply feel put in our places or reminded that we are certainly not the equal of someone of that rank and wealth, and probably never will be?

Or is the message meant not for the masses, but for the Duchess herself, that she should be ashamed of herself for betraying her adopted station in life? Was it meant to shame her into getting with the program of conspicuous consumption?

I suspect that Kate doesn't give a rip that anyone noticed that she was wearing something she had worn before. There have been items published previously detailing her fondness for shopping at stores those who are not married to the future King of England can also afford. She might even have laughed, had she seen the item.

The question is, should we care? Obviously, someone wants us to. After all, the story was written, and it was published. And whether or not there was a deliberate message intended, the item set off this string of thoughts in my mind. I assume that I am not the only one whose thoughts wandered in the same direction when they saw the story

I don't think we should care what the Duchess wears, or how many times she wears each item of clothing. But I think I do care that this is what we get in our daily news feeds, with a prominent enough headline that I noticed the item. There are important and serious things going on in the world. What someone wears, even if that someone is the future Queen of England, really isn't important in the grand scheme of things.

Music Sunday - Academy Award-winning Songs Edition...

I've been thinking about movie music this week, and about the songs that have won the Academy Award for Best Original Song.

The songs in this category, which was not introduced until the 7th ceremony, for films released in 1934), must have been written specifically for the film in which they appear, and the award goes to the songwriters, not the singer/s of the song in the film, although there have been several instances of a songwriter also being the singer in the film.

Probably the best place to start is the winner in 1939, from The Wizard of Oz: "Over the Rainbow", written by Harold Arlen (Music) and Yip Harburg (Lyrics), and sung in the film by Judy Garland. This is a good place to start because the American Film Institute has named this the greatest movie song of all time. And it is one of my favorites. Here is how it appears in the movie:



My favorite Best Song winner, however, is this one, "The Windmills of Your Mind", written by Michel Legrand (music) and Alan and Marilyn Bergman (Lyrics), which appeared in the 1968 film, The Thomas Crown Affair, starring Steve McQueen. Sung by Noel Harrison (also an actor and the son of actor Rex Harrison), its use in the film is, I think, perfect:



The song, and the performance of the song fit perfectly, I think, the visuals that accompany it.

In the remake of the film, which starred Pierce Brosnan (and which I have not seen), the song is covered by Sting. I've heard that version, and while it is not bad, I don't like it nearly as much as the original.

Another interesting Best Original Song winner is, as unlikely as it seems, from the Alfred Hitchcock film The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), by Jay Livingston (music) and Ray Evans (Lyrics). "Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)" (the order of the song title was changed to "Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera)" by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for purposes of the ceremony), which became Doris Day's signature song, usually gets a lighthearted reading in performance. Not so in the film, where it is also performed by Doris Day:



Also bearing mention, historically speaking, is "Evergreen", from the Barbra Streisand version of A Star is Born. When this song won Best Original Song, Streisand became the first woman to win in the category for composing the music, as opposed to writing the lyrics (which were written by Paul Williams). The song also won the Golden Globe that year for Best Original Song, and Streisand won a Grammy for it for Song of the Year. It is also a good song, used effectively in the film, where she sings it with Kris Kristofferson:



In the past couple of decades, more songwriters from the rock, pop, and other contemporary music world have won Academy Awards for Best Original Song. Perhaps most notable is Bruce Springsteen's win, in 1993, for "Streets of Philadelphia", from the Tom Hanks/Denzel Washington film Philadelphia, for writing both the music and the lyrics:



Apologies for the poor quality of the sound after the song itself, but I couldn't find a video of the use of the song in the film. This performance of the song, from the Academy Award ceremonies, is wonderful, but whoever posted the clip was not as careful at the end, when Springsteen made his acceptance speech, and there is some background noise.

Other winners from the rock/pop/rap world include, Phil Collins, who has been nominated three times and won for "You'll Be in My Heart", from Tarzan; Lionel Richie, who won for "Say You, Say Me", from White Nights; Elton John, who wrote the music of "Can You Feel The Love Tonight", from The Lion King; Bob Dylan, for "Things Have Changed", from Wonder Boys; Annie Lennox, who collaborated on the music and lyrics for "Into The West", from Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King; and, perhaps most surprisingly (for me, at least), Eminem won for writing the lyrics to "Lose Yourself", from 8 Mile. My surprise comes not so much from has having written winning lyrics, but from the Academy voting for the song. And, on another historical note, Melissa Etheridge won for writing "I Need to Wake Up", from An Inconvenient Truth, marking the first time a song from a documentary had won in the category.

For me, one of the most interesting things about the history of Best Original Song winners is that even though I'm both a music fan and a film fan, there are so many of the songs, both winners and nominees, that I don't know at all. While some were hits, others seem to have made no mark on he world outside of the film they appeared in, at least in any venue that I am aware of.

Half-year reading review...

It's time to do my half-year reading summary, since midnight tonight marks the halfway point in the year. I'm not sure where the time has gone, but I've apparently spent at least some of it reading.

This list comes from the Reading Challenge thread over at Ravelry (if you don't know what Ravelry is, Google it), where some of us set a goal for reading for the year and then keep track of what we've read while trying to reach that goal.

I'm not doing too badly so far this year. My goal is to read 40 books this year, and as of a couple of days ago, I've finished 19 books, which is just one below a pace to meet my goal for the year. That's much better than I did last year.

I've posted reviews of many of these books either here or over at my reading and literature blog. That blog decided to go all wonky a few weeks ago, so I won't link to that, although I might try to salvage a few of the reviews later on to post over here.

Looking back over the list, I can only find one that I probably wouldn't recommend - Natural Selection, by Dave Freedman. I'm not sure why I even finished reading it. I'm not shy about giving up on books that I don't like. Still, for some reason I kept reading. When I reached the end of the novel, however, and discovered the cheat Freedman had pulled, I was sorry I had given so much time to it.

I think my favorites from the list are Life, By Keith Richards, with James Fox, on the non-fiction side, while my favorite novel on the list is A Discovery of Witches, by Deborah Harkness. I'm looking forward to the sequel, which comes out in a couple of weeks. I also really liked Latter-Day Secrets, by Natalie R. Collins, which I was lucky enough to read before it was published as one of Ms. Collins' beta readers. It's available now as an e-book, and I'd recommend you look for it, especially if you like romance-spiced contemporary mysteries with an historic hook.

Aside from the one book I mentioned earlier, I liked all of the books I've read so far this year, although I did have quibbles with one or two, including Restless Souls, by Alisa Statman with Brie Tate. The review is here somewhere, if you'd like to find out exactly what those quibbles were.

Anyway, here is the list. Maybe you can find something here that you haven't read and might like to spend some time with. For myself, I just hope I can find as many books I will enjoy as much as the books I read in the first half of the year.

January
(1) Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood 1910 - 1969, by William J. Mann (422 pages)
(2) Gun Games, by Faye Kellerman (375 pages)
(3) Red Mist, by Patricia Cornwell (498 pages)
(4) Lucy’s Legacy: The Quest for Human Origins, by Donald C. Johanson and Kate Wong (309 pages)

February
(5) Hotel Transylvania, by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro (252 pages)
(6) Ishmael, by Barbara Hambly (255 pages)

March
(7) Hangman, by Faye Kellerman (422 pages)
(8) Blood and Ice, by Robert Masello (675 pages)
(9) Victims, by Jonathan Kellerman (338 pages)

April
(10) A Discovery of Witches, by Deborah Harkness (579 pages)
(11) Restless Souls: The Sharon Tate Family’s Account of Stardom, the Manson Murders, and a Crusade for Justice, by Alisa Statman with Brie Tate (381 pages)
(12) Role Models, by John Waters (304 pages)
(13) Life, by Keith Richards, with James Fox (564 pages)

May
(14) Natural Selection, by Dave Freedman (414 pages)
(15) Dead Time, by Stephen White (400 pages)
(16) Latter-Day Secrets, by Natalie R. Collins (377 pages)

June
(17) The Calling: A Year in the Life of an Order of Nuns, by Catherine Whitney (250 pages)
(18) The Blackbird Papers, by Ian Smith (326 pages)
(19) Virgin, by F. Paul Wilson (309 pages)

My next task is to find something good to read. I've started a couple of novels since I finished reading Virgin, and I've put both of them down in disappointment. I might revisit one of them, to give it a few more pages, but I doubt I'll like it any more than what I've already read.

In which I vent after a less than satisfying day...

I try to not use this space to moan too much about my personal stuff. I know no one wants to hear (read) it when I'm having a bad day. And most of what I have to complain about are decidedly first world problems, and much less serious than what other people are going through.

I understand that.

But, every once in awhile, I just have to vent. This is one of those times*

Start with the firecrackers that have been going off every night for the past three in my neighborhood, since they are the most immediate issue. Apparently, some of my neighbors either don't have a calendar or don't know how to read the one they have. The Fourth isn't until next week, people. I don't have anything against fireworks (except for their unfortunate tendency to start fires and blow peoples fingers and faces off sometimes), but I don't want to hear them every single night. A couple of nights ago, it sounded like they had a cannon out there.

Second of all, I haven't been able to concentrate at all today to get any writing done. It's been going really well since the end of last week. I've started the second draft of the novel I'm working on, and I've written nearly 11,000 words since last Friday night. Now? Nothing. I sat here and stared at the computer monitor for ages tonight, and...crickets.

Now, I know myself and my writing habits well enough to know that these things go in cycles, and that in a day or two I'll be on track again. At times like this, however, knowing that doesn't help.

So, after I gave up working on the novel, I figured I could get a newsletter I'm responsible for publishing up and going. I have a Saturday night deadline on that, and much of it is already written. But, I need to get everything into one document and formatted. Except, I couldn't get the reformatting to work, no matter what I did. I finally gave up on that, too. I try not to be a quitter, but it was either that or throw my laptop across the room, and that wouldn't have made anybody happy.

And then there's the job search. Nothing going on there, either. On the rare occasion I find a job posting that I have qualifications for, a talent for, and half a chance of getting, it turns out to be too far away for it to be practical for me to apply, considering that I cannot afford to relocate. As Roseanne Roseannadanna (the Sainted Gilda Radner) used to say on the old (good) Saturday Night Live, "It's always something."

I could just give up and go to bed. I've gotten the things I really needed to do, done today. Had a meeting at CVP, which went well, and where I volunteered to help with my committee's presentation during Seminar Week in a couple of weeks. I watered the plants (and discovered that I've got lots of cherry tomatoes on the vine and ripening). I washed dishes. I did the grocery shopping that I needed to do.

The hang-up with going to bed now, though, is that it isn't even 10 p.m. If I go to bed now, I'll wake up at three in the morning and not be able to go back to sleep. Since I don't have to get up early in the morning, that idea is a nonstarter. I might be able to find a book to start reading, but in the mood I'm in that's probably a long-shot.

Ah, well. I've probably vented enough for now, and it's served it's purpose; I feel slightly calmer now than I did when I started writing about half an hour ago or so.


So, if you've gotten this far, thanks for reading. I promise this isn't going to turn into an "oh-poor-me" blog. It's just been one of those days.


-------------
*Five extra points to whoever can identify the movie this line comes from.

Book Review: "Virgin", by F. Paul Wilson

Virgin (Borderlands Press, 2007; 309 pages), by F. Paul Wilson, is an odd book.

This is not a criticism, just a statement of fact. I can’t remember the last time I read a book where it took so long to figure out where it was going. Again, not a bad thing, although I did nearly give up on it about a quarter of the way in, just because I wasn't sure what the writer was up to.

It starts out with the discovery, in 1991, of an ancient manuscript in the wilderness of Israel. Some years later, two manuscripts surface, written in an archaic form of Aramaic, seemingly authentic...until it turns out that the words were written with ink that was only a few years old.

One of the manuscripts, along with a translation of the text, ends up in the hands of a Roman Catholic priest in New York, given to him by a friend who thinks he will get a kick out of it. But there is a Shin Bet agent who is after the manuscripts, and he is willing to kill to get them back.

Who is the agent? Why does he want the forged manuscripts so badly? What or who is he protecting? And who is he, really?

There is much more to the story, including a US Senator with aspirations to the presidency with secrets of his own and a nun who is determined to find what the priest’s manuscript says is hidden. To say much more than that would be to take all the fun out of the reading of this novel.

It would be easy to say that Wilson set out, in Virgin, to out-Dan Brown Dan Brown. And there is an element of that to the novel. But Wilson takes a different, much more original tack to the genre than Dan Brown could ever have managed.

I do have to say that I didn't find the resolution to the novel to be completely satisfying, but that has to do with my own personal outlook and not with anything in the storytelling. And, the quibble I have with it is so small within the whole that it didn't bother me enough to ruin my enjoyment of the reading experience as a whole, considering that the larger message was something that had me nodding my head in agreement as I read the last few pages of the book.

I've not read anything by Wilson before, but on the strength of my experience in reading Virgin, I suspect that I will be seeking out more of his work.

Music Sunday: The Looking for Work Edition

This is going to be an unusual Music Sunday, I think, because I haven't had the time to focus on music very much this week.

You see, I'm looking for work. I have been for a few months now, and so far all I've got is crickets. Part of this has to do with the fact that I'm not what you'd call a traditional professional. I'm a writer, editor, and proofreader, and while there are other things I can do, I don't have the on-paper qualifications a lot of employers think they need from their employees. I'd like to think that the fact that I am very good at the things I do would at least partly make up for that, but with the economy as it is, job-hunting is kind of a crap-shoot. Right now I'm convinced that the odds of finding a real job are worse than the odds casinos offer to gamblers.

The result of all of this is that I start to feel guilty if I'm not actually engaged in looking for work, or doing my volunteer hours at Central Valley Professionals, where I recently took a week-long seminar in job-search techniques, or doing something else to actively find work. Even though I know that I can only spend so many hours a day working on the search, I still feel guilty when I'm not either looking or thinking about looking. That translates into little time and little inclination to think about music.

Being a writer, however, means that I've also got writing projects going. I've written a little bit about those here in the past. One is a non-fiction project and the other is a novel. I don't feel quite so guilty when I'm working on those; I'm working, even if there is not an immediate pay-off for those projects. At least I'm doing something productive.

And this is where the music comes in. There aren't many songs about writing, really. But there is Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark", which is at least in part about a writing frustrated with just sitting and trying to write his book. Appropriate, I think for the week I've had, although I'm not that frustrated with my writing at the moment, as I've written well over 5,000 words this weekend so far.



Then there is this promotional video, from before music videos were a thing, for The Beatles "Paperback Writer", about the frustrations surrounding trying to get published. It is really the only other rock song I can think of that has to do with writing. Let me know if you know of others.



So, it's back to the salt mines for me, even on Sunday. One of these days, the books I'm writing will be finished - and published one way or another. At least these days there is the option of self-publishing. There's still a stigma to that, but things are getting better on that front, I think. And, maybe one day I'll actually find a job.

Not holding my breath, you understand, but the economy can't stay this crappy forever. Can it?

Was your weekend as busy as mine was?...

Yes. Today is Monday. Yesterday was Sunday, and was meant to be Music Sunday.

It was, as you might have noticed, not.

There is an explanation for that. I was otherwise engaged all weekend at an event for an organization that I belong to...in other words, it was Anniversary weekend for the Barony of Nordwache, Kingdom of Caid, Society for Creative Anachronism. That means that I was busy all weekend, from early Friday morning until late afternoon Sunday.

I was not nearly as busy there as some other people, but I did do several hours of volunteer work, sitting at Gate and running the Silent Auction. Additionally, it was hot at the event, which involved camping...and there was no air conditioning aside from the occasional breeze. I don't do heat, so I was exhausted by the time I got home. I did actually sit down and attempt to write and post the Music Sunday post yesterday evening, but I wasn't braining very well, as an imaginary* friend of mine has been known to put it.

Actually, I'm still not braining all that well today. I've also got dishes to do, and laundry to check to see if it's dry yet, and straightening, vacuuming, and mopping to clean up after having guests for two weeks. Three adults, two medium to large dogs and, occasionally, a five-year-old child in a two-bedroom apartment is a little crowded, and things tend to not stay neat and tidy. But roommate, her son and granddaughter, and the two dogs, are now gone on summer vacation, leaving room to actually do some cleaning up.

So, Music Sunday hasn't disappeared. It just went on hiatus for a week. I might even post a video or two along he way between now and then, if the spirit strikes me. No promises, but it could happen...so stay tuned.
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*An imaginary friend is someone I know online but not in real life.

Music Sunday - The Late Sixties/Early Seventies Edition

I like new music, old music, most kinds of music. It seems to me, however, that the period between 1967 and 1973 or so produced an amazing variety of good music - or at least a lot of music I liked when it came out and still like listening to today.

The thing that got me thinking about this this week was a surprise re-hearing of a song from 1969, "Ruby (Don't Take Your Love to Town)", by Kenny Rogers and the First Edition. It was a song I liked when it was released, but I had nearly forgotten about it in the intervening years and it kind of surprised me to discover how glad I was to hear it again after so long. When it came on, I cranked the volume on the radio in the car and sang along - for some reason I tend to remember the lyrics of songs that I haven't heard in years - and despite the content of the song, just having heard it seemed to put me in a much better mood simply because I'd heard it.

Not that this is a song with fun, upbeat lyrics. Released during the height of US involvement in Vietnam, it tells the story of a man who was injured in the war, something that wsn't talked about a lot at the time, even with protests against the war heating up across the country and around the world. But it is a good song, and a good song is always a good thing.



Looking around for other songs from the time, I found a couple of others that are just as good, and just as good today as they were when they were recorded, also in 1969, even though they are much different than "Ruby". I found this 1989 performance by B. B. King of his 1969 hit "The Thrill Is Gone":



And then, for something completely different from either "Ruby" or "The Thrill Is Gone", there is "Come Together", the last song the Beatles ever recorded with all four of the band's members in the studio at the same time.



I think it is only appropriate to also include this song, from the following year, while the Beatles were in the process of breaking up. This is one of the first of Paul McCartney's songs as a solo artist, "Maybe I'm Amazed" which, for my money, is one of the most interesting love songs I've ever heard, and far from his later "silly love songs" period.



And, because I can, I'm going to include this song from a little earlier, The Animals' "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood", from 1965. I've never been able to figure out if this is a song of rationalization or apology, but I've always liked it.



From a little later than the first songs this week, this is a live performance of "Heart of Gold", by Neil Young, from 1971 or 1972. I was lucky enough to see Young perform this song live in 1973. You'll have to bear with the first minute or two of the video, with Young searching for the right harmonica before he performs the song, but its worth the wait. And, really, it's kind of amusing watching him pull boxes out of various pockets before he finds the instrument he wants.



That's what? Six songs? I could post quite a few more, but this is probably enough for one Sunday. Enjoy.

Oh, and I'd love it if you'd drop a comment telling me about your favorte songs from the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Sigh...

Ray Bradbury died Tuesday night, at the age of 91, and I am very sad about it.

It isn't that he didn't live a long, full life. He did. But now there won't be any new stories from him, and that is sad for his millions of readers. I've been one of those readers for many years now - since the age of about eight, when my father brought me a copy of one of Bradbury's short story collections when I was stuck home in bed with almost-pneumonia.

I honestly can't remember which collection it was (although I think it might have been R is for Rocket), or which stories were in it. That was a very long time ago. But I do remember reading his stories, loving them. I remember being entranced that he could take a series of short stories and weave them in and around each other so that when I think of books such as The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man, I think of them as novels and not as collections of short stories, which was what they really were.

He did write actual novels as well. Fahrenheit 451 comes to mind, of course, as does Something Wicked This Way Comes. Somehow, I just read Fahrenheit 451 for the first time a couple of years ago, in the context of a public marathon read-aloud sponsored by my local library system. I got to participate as a reader and had a wonderful time. It was a unique and lovely way to finally read a book that manages to project hope even out of a story set in a dystopian future.

Bradbury was, above all, a storyteller, and he could do that sitting in front of an audience and talking as well as or better than he could on paper. I had the good fortune to hear him speak one year at LosCon, in the main ballroom at the Burbank Airport Hilton. The room was full, or close to it, and he held his audience in the palm of his hand for close to two hours, telling stories of writing short stories and novels, of screenwriting and playwriting, and of the writers and others he knew along the way. Among other things he said that day, he confirmed the story that he had actually heard L. Ron Hubbard say, as has been attributed to him and has also been called an urban legend, that the easiest way to make a million dollars is to start a religion...before Hubbard ever invented Scientology.

That book of Bradbury short stories that my father brought me when I was a child was...I guess you could call it a gateway drug into my love of science fiction. And, really, fantasy as well, because in many of Bradbury's stories, the line between fantasy and science fiction was fine, and sometimes nonexistent. It was one of the first science fiction books my father handed me to read, one of the first of many, and it was probably a good place to start, a good writer to start with, because throughout his writing, and his life, Bradbury was able to maintain a childlike wonder about the world and the universe and he was able, as well, to project that wonder onto the page and into the consciousness of his readers.

If there is anything this world needs, especially today, it is a sense of childlike wonder. We still needed Ray Bradbury in the world. But, since he is gone now, as many of us as are able need to take up the torch and carry it along with us and spread it as far as we possibly can.

So, go read something Ray Bradbury wrote, in remembrance of one of the greats. And spread the word...he may be gone, but is work is still here and it is still wonderful.

Voting day...if you were lucky

So, I went to vote this morning, since it was Primary Day here in California.



I was at my polling place by a quarter after seven, walked in, announced my name like you're supposed to do...and was told that the roster wasn't there, that it had never been mailed to the precinct inspector (that's the person in charge of the polling place, a thankless job if there ever was one...ask me how I know). They told me that I could either vote a provisional ballot, go downtown to the elections department and vote there, or come back later.

Going downtown was out of the question. There are no parking places downtown that you don't have to pay for and, anyway, I was on my way to the job search seminar I'm taking part in this week and I would not have had time to go downtown, vote, and get back to my seminar on time. So, I said I would come back later, wished the poll workers well, and went home and had breakfast before I had to be at the seminar.

None of this made me happy. Well, finding that I had time for breakfast after all made me happy, but that's about it. There is no good reason I can think of for the roster not have been mailed to the inspector. Yeah, there are reasons - incompetence downtown, too few workers downtown in this era of budget cuts to get everything done that needed to be done before the election, the US mail losing the envelope with the roster and street indexes in it - but these are not good reasons. Incompetence is never a good reason. I know that budgets are tight, but an election is an important thing, and other things need to go by the wayside before getting necessary voting materials to the polling places on time gets dropped from the list of priorities. And, well, if he post office can lose a large, thick manila envelope containing official government documents, they really need to look at their efficiency.

There is just no excuse for something like this happening. I worked on precinct boards for years, often as the inspector, and while the rosters occasionally got to me just the day before the election, they were always there before Election Day. And even if the package did not arrive on the day before the election, the inspector should have been instructed to call downtown, and someone should have been waiting at the polling place when the workers arrived at 6 a.m. with a copy of the roster so that the all the materials would be in place when the polls opened at 7 a.m. Even if the registrar of voters had to deliver it herself.

Well, I went back to vote after I got out of my seminar at 4 p.m., and the roster was there. It had, according to one of the precinct workers, arrived shortly after I left the polling place in the morning. This is good. It isn't good enough. And this wasn't the poll workers' fault. They were nothing but polite and apologetic, both when I was there this morning and when I went back in to vote in the afternoon. In fact, when I was leaving after finally getting to vote, the Precinct Inspector thanked me for being so patient and understanding with them this morning. Apparently, not everyone was so understanding. I just told her that I'd been on the receiving end of too many irate voters during the years I worked at elections to inflict that on someone else.

And speaking of working on the election...I had applied to do so, but no one ever got back to me about it. I tried going downtown a couple of times to find out why I had not been contacted but, again, there was no parking to be had and I never got to talk to them about it. When I was talking to one of the workers at the polling place this morning, he said the same thing happened to him, and that he was only working because he aggressively pursued them about it. Then, this afternoon, he told me that I should probably go talk to them about it because, during the course of the day, eight or ten other people who had come in to vote reported that they had also applied but were never contacted. This seems very odd when the election department is always complaining that they never have enough precinct workers on election days. This must have been especially true if the elections department did as they claim and opened twice as many polling places throughout the county as they had in the last election.

I will be pursuing this issue with them. I needed the work.

So, that was my Election Day. If you live in a place that had a primary today, how did your Election Day go?

It isn't Music Sunday...just an apology, an explanation, and one of my favorite songs...

Yes. I know. I missed Music Sunday this week.

All I can do is apologize and beg forgiveness. It was a crowded weekend, even though I was home the whole time. Saturday, after sleeping in a bit (hey, I have to indulge myself once in awhile), I spent time working on making award cords for my SCA Barony. Anniversary is coming up soon, and I need to have those finished by then. I also spent time...gasp...sewing. Nothing fancy, since I don't really sew. But, I'm making a quilt, so I spent a couple of hours sewing three-inch by three-inch squares together. I'm just pleased that I didn't break the machine, a real accomplishment considering the fact that sewing and I don't get along and that goes double (maybe triple) for sewing on a machine. I'm not proud of this fact, but truth is truth.

I also watched a movie, since I had the opportunity. It was The Lincoln Lawyer, based on a Michael Connelly novel and starring Matthew McConaughey, Marisa Tomei, Ryan Phillipe, and William H. Macy. I'm not a big McConaughey fan, to be honest, but this was a good movie that stayed, as far as I can remember (I read the novel a couple of years ago), pretty close to the source material. There's a great twist at the end (no, I'm not telling), and McConaughey was better in this than anything else I've seen him in.

Then, on Sunday, I made the mistake of sitting down and starting to read a novel, The Blackbird Papers (Doubleday, 2004; 326 pages), by Ian Smith. I figured it was safe to dip into it because it was an author I haven't read before, and it usually takes me time to warm up to new mystery writers. But, I got sucked in almost immediately and spent most of the day reading, in between washing clothes and dishes and worrying about the job-search seminar I started today. Not really something to worry about, I know, but I always worry about going into new and unfamiliar situations. So, when I sat down to attempt to write the Music Sunday post, nothing I would have been comfortable posting got written. This is not to say that nothing got written...just nothing I considered usable.

So, by way of apology, I'll leave this...(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay, by Otis Redding...here for you, because I love this song.

Book Review: "The Calling", by Catherine Whitney

Every once in awhile, when I'm at the library, a book catches my eye for some reason as I'm walking down an aisle looking for something else. I'll pick it up for no other reason than I take noticing it as a sign that I should read it. I've found some really good books that way, books that I wouldn't have read otherwise.

That's the case with The Calling: A Year in the Life of an Order of Nuns (Crown Publishers, Inc., 1999; 250 pages), by Catherine Whitney. I was walking down the aisle between aisles of books, on my way out of the library on Thursday, when the title of the book caught my eye. I backed up, pulled it off the shelf, read the flyleaf, and put in in the pile of books I was taking home.

It might seem that this book is an odd choice for me to be interested in reading. I'm not Catholic, and never have been. I'm not really a religious person. However, when I was studying anthropology at university, my concentration was in the anthropology of religion. Additionally, I've always been fascinated by the question of why certain people choose to devote their entire lives to religion in a formal sense...those who believe they have a calling, whether it be as a priest or a nun or other Christian clergy, or as a religious professional in any religion. So, a book like this is really right up my alley.

Turned out, it wasn't exactly what I was expecting. Yes, it explores the question of how some of the nuns in the teaching and nursing order that Ms. Whitney studied - it was the order that had educated her as a high school student - came to their callings, and how some of them felt that calling even after they left the order. But it also looks at the concept of the calling in a wider sense, in the sense that people often feel called to do the thing that they do, not only to make a living but to feel fulfilled in their lives. The gist of it, I think, is that one's calling is the thing one feels that they must do.

I was left with the impression that doing the research for and writing the book had left Ms. Whitney, who left her church and her faith behind after high school, and after a short flirtation with joining the order herself, with a sense of closure regarding her relationship with the nuns who had taught her. She notes that, when she spent some time with the sisters in the order, some of whom had been her teachers so many years before, they always referred to her as "one of our girls", and that this had left her with a feeling that she really had always been a part of the order, even though she had spent so many years feeling estranged from her high school experience and her religion.

The best part of the book, however, for my money, are the portraits Ms. Whitney draws of some of the women who were members of the order, and who remained, in many ways, members of the order even after leaving, as much members as the women who chose to stay when so many were choosing to change paths for many different reasons. Ms. Whitney does the valuable service of showing that these women, far from being the stereotype of women who became nuns because they were unmarriageable, or running away from the world, are in most cases, strong, intelligent, competent, vibrant women who chose the life they did as a positive step rather than as a "settling" for what was left for them.