About that corner in Winslow...

For the most part, Winslow, Arizona, is a route 66 ghost town, bypassed by I-40 in 1977. Riding into and out of town you pass a bunch of boarded-up or simply abandoned motels and cafes, and the main street has a few shops and local government buildings, and not a lot more. There's one terrific hotel, though. La Posada is an old Harvey Railroad hotel in the process of being restored as a labor of love by a group of artist-entrepreneurs; beautiful building, designed by Mary Colter as a fantasy of an old Spanish land baron's hacienda, and a first-rate restaurant that serves elk, quail, venison, and the best breakfast I've had on the road - eggs baked over polenta with a green chile sauce. There's still an Amtrak station attached to the hotel, and a heavily trafficked freight line passes right behind it (actually, it passes what used to be the front when most guests were traveling through on the RR) with about 90 trains a day going by. They've parked some rockers near the tracks, and in the evening you can sit outside with a drink and watch the trains go by, which is what passes for night-life in Winslow.

Aside from the hotel, the main reason to stop in Winslow is to stand on the corner. There's a bronze statue of a generic Jackson Browne type in front of a mural of a low-rise apartment block with a couple embracing in one window, an eagle in another, and a painted girl waving out of a flat-bed Ford. A year or two ago, the building supporting the wall burned down, miraculously leaving the wall intact. They had to put a fence in front of it, though, until they can get it fully stabilized (an ongoing municipal project). To compensate slightly, they've parked a red Ford truck on the block. Across the street on both the western and southern corners are two stores dedicated to selling on-the-corner t-shirts, Route 66 memorabilia, and Eagles' CDs. That's Winslow.

We took pictures of the setting (and some local murals) - and on the way out of town we played the Eagles version of "Take It Easy". We both sang along with big smiles because after all, we had been there and done that.

Take 5

The band's going on a break for a short time while we do some road tripping - and don't expect many blogging opportunities (or groupies, either). We'll be back, though, with tales of the road and some more talk about music. Right now we're in Taos, NM, in a charming place (Casa de las Chimeneas) with a CD player and a stack of local musicians' discs in the room. All New Age. Ommmmmmm.......on the range.

Remember those fabulous sixties?

Here's another personal burn. I used it as road music last week, and have been playing it at work today. The music is all from the psychedelic era, although not all of it is pure psychedelia (whatever that is). It's a great set to sing along with, and evokes plenty of memories, some of them actually true.

Here's the annotated set, with my notes in an appropriate shade of purple haze:

1. One Toke Over the Line (Brewer and Shipley) - no, not Seals & Crofts. People got them confused back then. Still do, I'll bet.
2. Subterranean Homesick Blues (Dylan) - the pump still don't work. Dylan's non-stop spiel lies somewhere between talking blues and rap. You wouldn't think someone else would try and sing this one, but Tim O'Brien does a nice version on his first-rate set of bluegrass/country-style Dylan covers, Red on Blonde. This track is the original, though.
3. Magic Carpet Ride (Steppenwolf) - Close your eyes girl, look inside girl, let the sound take you away. And just what's powering that carpet, hmmm?
4. Only You Know and I Know (Delaney & Bonnie) - I saw them at the Fillmore East when they were touring with Eric Clapton. After every number, at least 100 people yelled "Play Crossroads!". Great show overall - and the opening act was Seals & Crofts (no, not Brewer & Shipley).
5. Ride Captain Ride (The Blues Image) - On your way to a world that others might have missed.
6. Incense Peppermints (Strawberry Alarm Clock) - poppy psychedelia that holds up pretty well. One of the funny things about this track is that it was their top-charting release and the lead singer wasn't even a member of the band - just a singer who happened to be in the studio when they cut it. Who cares what songs we choose - little to win, and nothing to lose.
7. Born To Be Wild (Steppenwolf) - I like smoke and lightning, heavy metal thunder. The real theme track of Easyrider and a genuine anthem of the times. Love that galloping drum riff.
8. Season of the Witch (Donovan) - yes, wimpy old Donovan recorded two great tracks around this time: this one and "The Fat Angel". Al Kooper and Steve Sills did a great cover version on Supersession.
9. Crossroads (Cream) - "Play Crossroads!" A thousand lighters wave in the air. Bet you never knew three people could make so much music. Sometimes I can't help but wonder what Robert Johnson would think - maybe he'd decide that Clapton had sold his soul to the Devil.
10. Whipping Post (Allman Brothers) - "Sometimes I feel like I've been tied to the whippin' post". I know just where you're coming from.
11. Little Wing (Jimi Hendrix) - Could he be a lyric bard? He could be anything, even a merman. A great loss to music.
12. Black Dog (Led Zeppelin) - Zep takes the blues apart and puts it back together again as something of their own. Plant goes orgasmic, Page uses a stiletto as a pick, Bonham and Jones provide a bottom you could build a skyscraper on.
13. Green Tambourine (The Lemon Pipers) - and then there's this pretty piece of phony poppy shlock, definitely of its time. Note particularly the lame use of echo and reverb coupled with a cheap synth pretending to be a sitar. Groovy.
14. Good Vibrations (The Beach Boys) - it's another perfect day in LA -time to drop some acid and hit the beach. She's givin' me excitations. Is there such a thing as a pop masterpiece? Yup.
15. Ruby Tuesday (Rotary Connection) - Pope Gregory, I've set up your meeting with the Glimmer Twins. Make sure you bring along the chanting monks and your theremin. A group that should have been better known. The eponymous album is a study in the conventions of psychedelic music. It's also a hoot and a half.
16. A Whiter Shade of Pale (Procul Harem) - for that slow dance moment at the Love-In when you want to skip the light fandango with the one you love. Or ones. Hey, it was the sixties, man.
17. Time of the Seasons (The Zombies) - another underrated group. What's your name? Who's your daddy? Is he rich like me?
18. Timothy Leary (Moody Blues) - This track is best heard through headphones. BTW, in case you're wondering, Timothy Leary's still dead, even if he's outside looking in.
19. Time Has Come Today (Chambers Brothers) - Definitely the best use of a metronome in a rock song, as well as being the source of this burn's title ("...and my soul has been psychedelicized!").

This set should be played with the amp set to 11 because 10 just won't do. And while you're listening/dancing/singing along/playing air guitar/tie-dying the cat, this would be a good chance to use up any patchouli incense you may have lying around.

Hi, Muddy Waters!

The past two days I've been trying to get my mojo working, which is not easy when you're analyzing reinsurance requirements. Listening to Muddy Waters helps. I've been looping through the two volume His Best releases from Chess Records, the essential Chicago blues label, which cover the prime years of 1947 to 1964. BTW, Chess was not responsible for producing the lamentable Tubby Chess and His Candy-Striped Twisters – a short-lived group that bit off the two stars whose names combine pulchritude and table games (the original of the type, Fats Domino, and name-copycat Chubby Checkers) as well as Joey Dee of "Peppermint Twist" fame. Somewhere out there I even found a reference to one "Pudgy Parcheesi", but I don't think he ever cut a 45.

Anyways, this time around besides being awed as usual by the combination of masculine gravitas, bone-deep sexuality, and blues authority that Muddy radiates, I've been focusing on some of the great band work by Otis Spann, Little Walter, Willie Dixon (the renaissance man of Chicago blues), and later work by Pinetop Perkins and James Cotton. Great stuff, all.

Songs catching my ear this time around (besides "of course" tracks like "Rock Me", "Mannish Boy", "I Love the Life I Live…" "Rollin' and Tumblin''' and "You Can't Lose What You Ain't Never Had") include "Long Distance Call" and "Walkin' Thru The Park":

I'm goin' out walkin',
down the old avenue
I'm goin' out walkin'
down the old avenue
I'm gonna walk for so long,
till she don't know what to do

Astral Decades

In the fall of 1968 I was living on NYC’s Upper West Side, near Columbia U. It had been a hell of a year between the assassinations and the Chicago riots and Richard Nixon’s election (my father had raised me to consider Nixon evil incarnate, a creature of unmitigated wickedness). I had been reclassified 1-A (losing my student deferment because I had switched graduate majors from English/Journalism to Law), and found refuge as a Junior High School teacher. NYC was short of teachers that year and had implemented a 9 week long instant teacher program that left you with a temp license and an inner city assignment. Mine was a few blocks away from where I was living, a part of the city known as Manhattan Valley. They were mean streets, but not vicious ones. Although I was licensed in English, the school I was assigned to had no openings in that subject. What they needed was a boy’s Gym & Hygiene teacher, and I was the most athletic looking male (seriously) ….and you know, I've occasionally thought that if they’d left me in that gym, I’d still be there today. Fun job. Lots more fun than teaching Junior High English, which – when a slot opened up and they took me out of the gym – drove me to enlist in the Army Reserve, making me possibly the only guy who joined the Army to get a deferment from teaching.

Anyway, it was not a great time in my life - did I mention there was also a particularly nasty teachers' strike that fall which divided the faculty and created an atmosphere of tension and anger? So, one late night that fall, heavily depressed, I was lying around listening to WBAI, a free-wheeling listener-supported radio station which featured some of the weirder and more liberating radio personalities of that or any other time. I guess it was probably Bob Fass or maybe Steve Post doing the talking. Whoever it was decided to play a new album in its entirety and let it roll. The music grabbed me instantly, and took me to a far better place than where I'd just been.

The LP was Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks, and from that moment on, Van has been on my permanent A-list (even though he’s had some weak releases), and Astral Weeks has headed the list of my desert island musical selections.

Although nothing else he's ever done has been the equal of that one-of-a-kind set, his ability to do and mix r&b, jazz, folk (skittle-type and celtic), pure blues, torch, standards, and pop is – IMHO – unparalleled and unequaled in the music world. He writes great songs, has a distinctive, high-intensity voice, plays harp, sax, & guitar, and is a first-rate producer and arranger. He can rock, he can swing, he can moan the blues, stroke a love song, and get the step-dancers moving at a ceilidh. His body of work includes other outstanding albums like Moondance, Tupelo Honey, Veedon Fleece, Into the Music, Irish Heartbeat, Too Late to Stop Now (live), Enlightenment, and Down The Road.

After a series of middling albums in the early 90's, Van's last three have been excellent – Down the Road, What's Wrong With This Picture, and the just-issued Magic Time, which I've been listening to this week. It's a mix of original material with a couple of very nice takes on standards ("I'm Confessin'", Fats Waller's "Black and Blue" retitled as "Lonely and Blue"), the lovely ballads "Stranded" and "The Lion This Time", the jumping "Evening Train", the haunted "Gypsy in My Soul", and more. All in all, it's a worthy addition to the Van canon.

Tell me, who's that writin'?

I was away down the shore again this weekend, and didn't have a chance to put metaphorical pen to paper. I'll have more postings later, but just wanted to note this quick one: I picked up a rerun of an American Roots Music show on PBS last week (showed up on a Tivo wishlist); this episode was about various key artists at the heart of different roots lines - people like Jimmy Rodgers, Robert Johnson, the Carter Family, Bessie Smith, etc. Aside from assorted contemporary talking heads, they had some marvelous footage of the musicians, including some great clips of Uncle Dave Macon playing and clowning around on the Grand Ole Opry. But the clip that knocked me out was old Son House, doing John the Revelator. He was standing up and in motion, accompanying himself with just handclaps, preaching the song with his entire person. It was riveting in a totally spooky holy ghost kind of way. I didn't get saved, but I came damned close.

Passing time

Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the first rock 'n roll song to hit #1 on the Billboard pop charts: Bill Haley and the Comets' Rock Around the Clock. This article in CNN noted that

Haley and his band had recorded "Rocket 88" not long after it came out, and with the Comets (the name changed from Saddlemen) he had a hit with "Crazy Man Crazy" in 1953. That success led to a contract with a major label, Decca.

...which reminded me of the passing signs on the rear of a truck I saw back in the early 50's. The left side sign said "Go Go Go!" while the one on the right said "Crazy Man Crazy". Another truck pair (from much later) had "Grateful" on the left and "Dead" on the right, which is cooler than the traditional "Safe Side" and "Suicide".

Cover Art

This is the cover of Down The Shore. The picture is actually a painting of the Cape May Point lighthouse as seen from the beach, found via Google. And yes, the DJ Stan signature predates this blog.

Down the Shore

When I grew up in the Bronx and we went to visit my grandparents and go to Coney Island or went driving out to Long Island's south shore for a day of fun in the sun, we "went to the beach". In New Jersey, you don't go to the beach - you go "down the shore".

As I blogged earlier, we were down at Cape May Point this weekend, the most relaxing place I know. The weather was fine - though the ocean is still pretty cold - and the drive was easy (about 2.5-3 hours from NYC down Jersey's Garden State Pkwy to Exit 0, which is kind of cool). We went to the beach, sunned and read, grilled our dinners (and ate lots of fresh corn), drank Vodka tonics, and generally had a fine time.

Our driving music included Down The Shore, a burn I put together a few years ago for that specific purpose as well as to commemorate the Jersey Shore and the cycle of a beach summer in general, and which is also today's CD. It starts out in the hot city, and concludes with songs of summer's end (except for the last track, a novelty song that traces the drive to Cape May from Sea Isle City). It's a pretty eclectic mix with a mild emphasis on the late 50's. Here's the track listing (my notes are in red):

1. Summer in the City - The Lovin' Spoonful
2. Summertime Blues - Eddie Cochran
3. Summertime, Summertime - The Jamies
4. Under the Boardwalk - The Drifters
5. One Summer Night - The Danleers
6. Hot Fun in the Summertime - Sly & The Family Stone
7. Love Letters in the Sand - Patsy Cline not Pat Boone
8. Fourth of July, Asbury Park - Richard Shindell a fine acoustic version
9. Atlantic City - The Band
10. Wildwood Days - Bobby Rydell
11. Jersey Girl - Bruce Springsteen I actually like Tom Waits' version better - but not on this disc
12. Summertime - Willie Nelson
13. Theme From a Summer Place - Percy Faith one of the great slow dance tunes of my youth
14. Summer Lovin' - Grease yes, it definitely belongs here
15. Sea 0f Love - Phil Phillips
16. A Pirate Looks At Forty a/k/a Mother Ocean - Jimmy Buffet I'm no parrot-head, but I like this song
17. Ebb Tide - The Righteous Brothers
18. All Summer Long - The Beachboys of course
19. Remember Walkin' In the Sand - The Shangri-las
20. Sand in My Shoes - The Drifers Boardwalk revisited
21. Boys of Summer - Don Henley
22. Back to the Island - Leon Russell an all-time favorite song
23. On The Way to Cape May - Al Alberts

Thirties Jukebox

In honor of the Glorious Fourth, I decided to listen to an American time capsule of sorts - today's work CD: The Great Depression: American Music in the 30's. Apparently this is a group of musical selections which were part of the soundtrack of a documentary on the Depression. Fittingly, it opens with "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" performed by the cheerfully unctuous Rudy Vallee, and closes with two upbeat tracks - Horace Heidt's theme song for the 1939-40 World's Fair "Dawn of a New Day" and Artie Shaw's version of "Whistle While You Work" (Tom Waits did a definitive proletarian version of that song, industrial clankings and all, on Stay Awake - but that's a posting for another day).

In between there's music from a wide assortment of artists, ranging from Blind Willie Johnson and Barbecue Bob to Ted Lewis (with train sounds, a swinging male quartet, and an inspirational song-talker) and Red Norvo. The most interesting juxtaposition is between the incredibly square "Hungarian Varsovienne" - a kind of square dance without the western swing influence that makes square dancing fun (and it is, it is) - performed by Henry Ford's Old Fashioned Dance Orchestra (yes, the same Henry Ford) and Victoria Spivey & the Chicago Four doing the "Detroit Moan". Hard to believe they're from the same era in the same country.

Overall, it's a pretty tasty collection - mostly blues and swing. Favorite tracks? Duke Ellington's "Creole Love Call", the Rudy Vallee take on down and outness, and a jaunty little pop swing number, "Are You Makin' Any Money", played by Chick Bullock and His Levee Loungers.

The USA has a lot to answer for, both historically and today, but one of the great glories of the people of this country is the music they created and continue to create. This set gives a glimpse of some of the varieties produced during one decade; you can think of the disc as a musical Roman Candle, shooting colored fireballs of music into the warm July night. Happy holiday to all commenters, regular readers, and casual linkers!