He Knew All The Words

Right — I was ten when this song came out. I remember begging my mom to buy me a magazine at the grocery store that had the lyrics in it. And since sometime in my college years — maybe 10 or 12 years after it’s original release — this song has always had summer written all over it for me. Is it the great guitar riff? Is it Pat’s snarling vocal? I don’t know. But I do know this a great live recording of it. She can really sing (no autotune for this diva!)….

Okay. So, that’s done. Can summer please go away now?

Last night I returned to Bargemusic for the first time in many years. I’d gone to hear chamber music on this old boat once or twice before, but that was over a decade ago. Now, living so close, I am happy to have my eyes re-opened to it. Scott and Carter and I met there to hear The Voxare Quartet play the second of three programs dedicated to composer Terry Riley in honor of his 70th birthday.

The setting is a 100-foot steel barge, docked at the Brooklyn landing of Fulton Ferry, nestled in between the River Cafe and the new Brooklyn Bridge Park Pier 1. The view is of the lower Manhattan skyline. The music is intimate, and gently rocking with the waves.

The Voxare Quartet created a unified and well-sequenced program, beginning and ending with Riley, and slotting Nico Muhly, Philip Glass, and David Lang between. The Muhly piece — Stride — was terrific, with the slowly breathing opening chords evoking an accordion or a distant harmonica. In her introduction to piece, violinist Emily Ondracek made note of the “beautiful cello solo” it features, and she was right. Cellist Adrian Daurov played with gusto throughout, and he made the most of this wonderful moment in the work. The Glass piece, Company, is one I know well, though this was the first time I ever heard it performed live. Voxare plays with all the bright sound and furrowed brow you’d expect from a young ensemble, and it made Company come alive for me in a way recordings rarely can.

The focus of the concert, and the highlight, was the second half: a soulful, passionate, and inspired reading of Riley’s Cadenza on a Night Plain. The work contains a wealth of musical styles and opportunities, with wonderful solos for each player, song-like bluesy passages, and fierce ensemble moments that require good communication between the players and an unerring sense of meter. It seemed like an very difficult piece to play. Voxare exceeded the challenge. It was a rousing, exciting performance.

But it’s too goddamned fucking hot on the subway platforms.

I’ve sung Elizabeth Warren’s praises many times before. I just watched a lecture she gave in Berkeley in 2007 that made me cry. It’s an hour long, but I urge you to take the time to watch it. She reveals the insane breakdown of the middle class that has come to pass in the last quarter century. It’s disturbing to hear her lay out the underlying details of the economic realities that we’ve come to accept as inevitable. And she’s talking about how this destruction of the middle class is breaking our country, how it could permanently rip the very fabric of our nation, and how it could eventually lead to a political instability that could destroy us. It’s that big. She’s that good. This video is worth every minute of your time it takes.

After being introduced Warren takes the stage at the 5 minute mark, if you want to skip ahead to when she begins:

Written in pencil in 1998:
The year of the drought we went canoeing on the Little Miami River. Everything was brown except the water—the water was clear. August. A river has a name to identify it in memory. All four of us were quiet for long stretches of time, hurrying nowhere. Sunshine. Because of the drought the river was shallow in places, enough so for a canoe to catch on the riverbed. Rick and Keith and Kim. Kim and I shared a canoe. Unexpectedly, I was not afraid. I had driven into town with Frank, a nursing student. That was 1988.

Written on the computer in 2010:
The last winter of the century we took a taxi through Times Square. Everything was in bright color and blur. The people on the street were dressed for the cold, smiling, and the traffic was heavy. Verdi and Bach were mixing in memory. I sat on the left side of the cab, Damion to my right. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes and I looked at him for a long time. Everything felt like slow motion. We were contented, and not in a rush, and the slow crawl down Broadway to Seventh Avenue felt right, like a well-paced silent movie in Technicolor. That was 1999.

Written in 1999:

Echo of a Slow Moving River

The little river barely moved
that summer
I barely made a move either

The drought got worse while
idle people scratched at this and that

Friends around me—they were quiet
I was
longing so
The cul-de-sacs were sick with thirst
from sipping poison

The bank had sunk down to the water
falling like a drunk man

Remind me with your closing eyes
this taxi
is just like that droughted river

The street slows down beside the nighttime
open as any man

Two people embraced near the trees
standing quiet

The river idled slowly under floats
The shadows of the trees became the little ripples
on the water’s silent skin

A deeper yellow settled on the ground then
An afternoon descending

There, what could anyone say aloud
It was all the same, simply echoes

Two people slouching in a car
We are quiet

Here, what haven’t I said to you
Like summer did, we are waiting

Rachel lays out just how far we’ve come in less than one-half of one term since Obama’s inauguration. And even with her appropriate nod to some liberal disappointment (raise your hand if you’re still pissed about the public option!), the list of this administration’s accomplishments is staggering.

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Frank Rich uses his Times column today to ruminate on the state of marriage in the USA. After noting the recent separation of Al and Tipper Gore and recent (4th) nuptials of Rush Limbaugh—and after sincerely wishing them both happy futures—he turns to the politics of marriage:

But there is a shadow over marriage in America just the same. The Gores and Limbaughs are free to marry, for better or for worse, and free to enjoy all the rights (and make all the mistakes) that marriage entails. Gay and lesbian couples are still fighting for those rights. That’s why the most significant marital event of June 2010 is the one taking place in San Francisco this Wednesday, when a Federal District Court judge is scheduled to hear the closing arguments in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the landmark case challenging Proposition 8, California’s same-sex marriage ban. A verdict will soon follow, setting off an appeals process that is likely to land in the Supreme Court, possibly by the 2011-12 term.

I myself haven’t followed this trial all that closely—mostly out of fear of getting my hopes up. Personally I think the likelihood of the current Supreme Court (+Hagan) striking down discriminatory marriage statutes out in the states is slim-to-none. Possible, sure, but highly unlikely. A tactic of going for federal government recognition of those same-sex marriages performed legally in the five states that allow them probably would pass the Supremes. But the stated impetus behind the current case is right on, and more power to those lawyers and plaintiffs and all of us if they somehow succeed.

Importantly, Rich points out the great part of the plaintiffs argument that domestic partnerships and such that are not-quite-marriage are really no solution:

Domestic partnerships and equal economic benefits aren’t antidotes, Boies explains, because as long as gay Americans are denied the same right to marry as everyone else, they are branded as sub-citizens, less equal and less deserving than everyone else. That government-sanctioned stigma inevitably leaves them vulnerable to other slights and discrimination, both subtle and explicit. The damage is particularly acute for children, who must not only wonder why their parents are regarded as defective by the law but must also bear this scarlet letter of inferiority when among their peers.

Anyway, politics in this country have recently been rather narrowly focused—the 2008 election, the Great Recession, the two wars, the upcoming midterms, the god-damned oil leak in the Gulf that nobody can seem to do anything about. It’s really about time to get the marriage equality issue back out front and center. And I’m quite happy that it’s not in the hands of the federal government, especially given how the Obama administration and Congress together are botching their handling of the repeal of DADT. Take a quick read of the Frank Rich piece, and do me a favor—email it to a couple of people who might have forgotten that you have a personal stake (me!) in this case.

One of Richard Avedon‘s most important bodies of work is his celebrity portraiture. Large-format, minimal composition in front of a seamless, black-&-white, these pictures are iconic. I’m convinced I have more than four vinyl albums that feature cover photography by Avedon, but these are all I can lay my hands on tonight. But what a great quartet! Take a look at this—

Broadway’s Fair Julie Andrews

Wow—Julie looks so young and fresh. And a bit saucy with her fingers in her mouth. I love her heavy-gauge mock turtleneck and her kinda messy little-boy hairdo. I was torn about which track from this album to offer here. I was going to put her rendition of A Little Bit in Love from Wonderful Town, but in the end I think she overplays it a bit. Her voice is too pure for Columbus, Ohio, methinks. So here’s a more classic track, I Didn’t Know What Time It Was, by the greatest of songwriting teams, Rodgers and Hart.

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Tony’s Greatest Hits Volume III

Tony’s looking suave here, with his upturned collar and him fiddling with his cuffs. A man’s man. The angle is curious—usually one would avoid a shot where the camera’s aimed upward at the subject. But it works. Not only does it give him some heightened physical stature, it reveals him as the towering figure of popular song he was at that time (make no mistake, he still is). The song from this album was an easy choice—I Wanna Be Around—a song I’ve been obsessing about lately. Oddly, I think this recording is different from the one on the I Wanna Be Around Album (which is the same as on the Ultimate Tony Bennett CD). I know that back in the day sometimes a record company would release a different take on compilations, and some artists even re-recorded tracks for their Greatest Hits comps (John Denver did this in a way I find fairly annoying). Whatever the case here, the arrangement is the same, but I can hear differences in the performance. Either way, it’s freakin’ great.

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Je m’appelle Barbra

Ah, back when she was simply Baaaahbra, with the pageboy haircut and the Egyptian eyeliner eye. Doesn’t Babs look fab here? She’s quiet. Svelte. Monochrome, with combed bangs and casual bangles. She teamed up with Michel Legrand for this album and sang a mixture of old and new songs, all from the French. Here’s a track written by the young Monsieur Legrand, with French lyrics by Eddy Marnay, with the English adaptation by none other than Johnny Mercer. Barbra’s totally controlled on this track, no histrionics, no Broadway hamming nor California excesses—just that perfect perfect voice and real emotion.

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Chér

Cher’s album Chér was released twice, first as this version, Chér, and then again as Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves, based on the success of that title’s single. She too is looking young and fresh, serious, though a bit vampy (a quality which, as we all know, would soon change to campy). Anyway, get a load of those eyelashes! And I pity the poor hair & makeup assistant who had to comb out those perfect long bangs. Everyone knows Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves, and many people know her lesser hit The Way Of Love from this album (the latter is one of my very favorite instances of a cover song which does not update the gender of its pronouns, which thereby creates an ambiguously bisexual context for Mrs. Bono’s heartbreak), but I’m going with an album track here that has some bounce and some grit, I Hate To Sleep Alone. On their Under The Blacklight album, Rilo Kiley perform an original song called Close Call which is obviously influenced by Gypsys, Tramps, & Thieves. So I was not wholly surprised to discover this Cher track which has the same kind of desperate anger that Rilo Kiley has made their own on so many songs. Jenny Lewis should mix a cover of this track into her live performances of Close Call. Anyway, like all of us, Cher hates to sleep alone.

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Bonus!
Rilo Kiley’s Close Call:

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Here’s a wonderful live sketch from Two’s Company, with Bette Davis and Burt Lahr. Really really funny… Reading that Wikipedia article linked above, I just learned that the 1952 Broadway production was choreographed on Miss Davis by none other than Jerome Robbins.

See all of today’s charts here.

This is the first ad in a long long long time that actually makes me want to eat at McDonald’s (don’t worry, I’m not going to):

One can’t imagine an ad like this airing in the United States. Though who knows? Maybe it could run in local markets in NY, SF, or LA? Anyway, it made me laugh out loud, and the look on this kid’s face is so cute.

I went to Jones Beach on Saturday with Scott, Francesca, and Andy. We found ourselves subjected to the noise and bother of an airshow — fighter planes buzzing the beach and doing loop-di-loops. It was cool to see the planes, but they had huge loudspeakers set up with announcers talking for hours on end. When it ended at 3pm, we were much relieved.

It was super crowded. Literally blanket-to-blanket. The picture above shows the beach after it cleared out when the airshow was over.

The sea was freezing and smelled like clams, and the sun was hot, and the breeze was cooling and pleasant.

I love Scott’s come-hither look in this next picture. And I love in the one after that how you can see Scott and Francesca reflected in my sunglasses….

We started the day with lots of train and bus drama, but the ride home was blessedly efficient and simple. It was about an hour and a half from boarding the train to hitting the sand — and maybe 15 minutes shorter than that coming back home. All for 15 bucks.

Adrienne was supposed to come with us but she had school work to do. [Oh wait, 2006 is over].

Later Sunday evening, I headed over to Paula’s place –soon to be Paula & Antonio’s place. We were celebrating some great news: they’re engaged to be married! More details when it all gets planned. Hooray for the happy couple.

Then I spent Monday sleeping off my slight sunburn and Paula’s strong margaritas, then headed into the city to spend some time with Alex, Jim, Thea, and Chloe. We played on the playground, strolled the Lower East Side, then ate pizza on Allen Street.

Thea and Chloe are both getting so big. They still need help climbing around the playground apparatuses, but their strength and skill is mind-blowing when you think it was just yesterday they couldn’t even crawl.

Cheery times on Allen Street:

And if this doesn’t make your heart melt, what will?!:

All the pictures from this entry are in an album on my MobileMe site where you can download them.

This song’s been in my head all weekend. One of the most perfect songs ever written.

It’s Friday. Make-a-chart Day. Mmmmmmm, cherries!

One of the biggest assholes in the Senate, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, has been defeated by primary opponent Joe Sestak. Specter was an asshole Republican who became an asshole Democrat. And now he’s an asshole with no job. If he runs as an independent, he’ll lose.

Remember his bullshit on the Thomas nomination? The way he took it upon himself to “demolish” the credibility of Anita Hill?

He’s a pig who deserved to lose his seat long ago. Kudos to Sestak for kicking him out. Here’s to the future Senator from Pennsylvania.