brainrow

Arlo Guthrie on “Alice’s Restaurant”:

Nobody in their right mind would have expected an 18-minute monologue to have shelf life, especially in an era when radio refused to play anything that was over 2 1/2 minutes.

It’s been forty years since the true story told in the song took place. Generations have grown up without hearing it. Rats.

On the plus side, what fun to play it for someone who has never heard it before!

If you want to end war and stuff, you gotta sing loud.

Via Backup Brain: While My Ukulele Gently Weeps. The hosting site is called College Humor, but this is no joke.

Got music playing in iTunes while I work. Up comes “Wichita Lineman,” written by Jimmy Webb and sung by Glen Campbell. Stopped working, in awe.

“And I need you more than want you, and I want you for all time”

Damn. That may be the single finest line ever written in any song.

How do you type that frenzied shriek that a crowd of rabid fans made at a Beatles concert?

My first impression is that it’s “Eeeeeeeeeeee,” with maybe a lot of exclamation points at the end, but that seems rather dull and leaden, somehow, there on the screen. If you look at film of the crowds at those concerts, they’re shouting “John! Paul! George! Ringo! I looove you!” and other things. “Eeeeeeeeeeee” doesn’t really do it justice.

At Bruce Springsteen concerts, people shout “Bruuuuce!” and it sounds like they’re booing. Now, that must have taken some time to get used to. If his audience ever turns against him, Bruce won’t know until he sees incoming rotten tomatoes and other produce.

“Aiiieeeeee” has some energy, but it sounds like something a guy would say as his still-beating heart is plucked from his chest in an Indiana Jones movie — there is a strong negative vibe that doesn’t really work for the Beatles’ fan sound. “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” as repeated by ten thousand screaming teenagers might actually be close, but it just looks silly there in type.

“Aaaarrrggghhh!” — well, that’s not even close, is it? “Eeeeeeyaaaaa!” looks promising, but it seems kind of hostile. This is harder than it looks.

Aw, heck. I’m gonna go with my original instinct.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Kate Bush is finally releasing a new album! After twelve years! Eeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!

I guess this news is almost six months old, but I just heard about it. Eeeeeeee!!!

Kate Bush, if you’re not familiar with her work — eeeee!!! — is a singer/songwriter from England. She was phenomenally popular in Europe during the 1980s and early 1990s. She gained a cult following in the United States, and I was one of the cult.

I first heard her on December 9, 1978 — eeee!! — on Saturday Night Live. She must have made some sort of impression — eee! — because it was more than two years before I heard her again, on December 17, 1980, and I remembered her name and the title of one of her songs. I put a Kate Bush page on my cobweb site (it’s old and dusty, see, because it hasn’t been updated for a long time) and told the story of how I got hooked on the music of Kate Bush.

In the years since Kate went silent, I sorrowfully searched for other singers to take her place. I found Sarah McLachlan and Loreena McKennitt and Sinéad O’Connor and Tori Amos and the Roches and others, all wonderful. But I’ve always hoped to hear more from Kate Bush. Now, at long last, my wish may come true. Wooooohoooooooooooooooo!!!!!!

“Wooooohoooooo” is pretty good.

As the country starts four more years on the wrong track, Paul Simon‘s sad song about the Statue of Liberty sailing away to sea seems appropriate:

Many’s the time I’ve been mistaken
And many times confused
Yes, and I’ve often felt forsaken
And certainly misused
Oh, but I’m alright, I’m alright
I’m just weary to my bones
Still, you don’t expect to be
Bright and bon vivant
So far away from home, so far away from home

I don’t know a soul who’s not been battered
I don’t have a friend who feels at ease
I don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered
Or driven to its knees
Oh, but it’s alright, it’s alright
For we lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the
Road we’re traveling on
I wonder what’s gone wrong
I can’t help it, I wonder what’s gone wrong

And I dreamed I was dying
I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly
And looking back down at me
Smiled reassuringly
And I dreamed I was flying
And high up above my eyes could clearly see
The Statue of Liberty
Sailing away to sea
And I dreamed I was flying

We come on the ship they call the Mayflower
We come on the ship that sailed the moon
We come in the age’s most uncertain hours
And sing an American tune
Oh, and it’s alright, it’s alright, it’s alright
You can’t be forever blessed
Still, tomorrow’s going to be another working day
And I’m trying to get some rest
That’s all, I’m trying to get some rest

Paul Simon can be spooky, sometimes. There Goes Rhymin’ Simon came out in 1973. One song, titled Learn How to Fall, includes this lyric:

Oh and it’s the same old story
Ever since the world began
Everybody got the runs for glory
Nobody stop and scrutinize the plan

On the same album, the song American Tune has these lines:

Still, when I think of the road we’re traveling on
I wonder what’s gone wrong
I can’t help it, I wonder what’s gone wrong

Don’t we all.

Simon and Garfunkel may be touring again soon.

What a team! Together and separately, they’ve made a lot of wonderful music. They’re still making it.

Twenty years ago today, I saw Simon and Garfunkel in concert at the Akron Rubber Bowl. It was a long show, with three encores. Each of the singers had several solo turns, performing songs from their independent careers. As the evening drew on, almost every song was received with a sense of warm familiarity, and a growing astonishment at just how much those two fellas had up their sleeves.

Twenty years ago. It was a nostalgia show, even then. Akron was the first stop in the duo’s first U. S. concert tour since 1970. There was an energy and an innocence to some of the earlier songs that was exhilarating and embarrassing at the same time. Feeling groovy?

Someone threw love beads onto the stage. Art Garfunkel picked them up and said, “What is this, the Sixties?”

There was a tinge of sadness, too, for everything lost in the years since the previous tour. Paul Simon’s solo song, The Late Great Johnny Ace, was all about loss — particularly the death of John Lennon, still sharp in everyone’s memory twenty years ago.

There was a new verse for The Boxer, too:

Now the years are rolling by me,
They are rocking evenly.
I am older than I once was,
Younger than I’ll be,
That’s not unusual.
No, it isn’t strange,
After changes upon changes,
We are more or less the same.

After changes we are more or less the same.

Twenty years ago. Time flies, whether you’re having fun or not.