College

April Fool

Patti Smith – April Fool

This past week was pretty busy followed by a weekend full of activities. Now here it is April 1st. I am so ready for it to be April, for spring to finally get going full strength, but it’s been such a long winter that I almost feel unprepared. I need to schedule summer camp for the kids but I still don’t know what the last day of school will be because of all the missed days from hurricanes and blizzards. That kind of unprepared. I am always ready for winter to be over. Before it even starts.

I didn’t really care much one way or the other about spring until I learned what passes for spring in Maine. I’ll never forget our German teacher explaining to a classroom full of kids how, in Austria and Germany, it gradually gets warmer in March and little flowers start popping up and then more in April and everything gets green again. He was kind of a character, this old man from an Austrian skiing village, so I figured he was trying to be funny to get us to remember the words for the season. Then I looked around and saw a number of kids listening as if they hadn’t ever heard of spring before. That first winter in Maine was a pretty harsh one, not just by our weak and untested New York standards, and I remember it snowed into April that year.

My primary goal in applying to college was to get as far south as seemed reasonably possible. I applied to only two schools north of the Mason-Dixon line. I hadn’t given much thought to the type of schools (mostly the big state universities) or to my chances of getting in, I just didn’t want any more snow in April. In the end I wound up outside Philadelphia, which wasn’t south by any stretch, but the seasons did at least arrive when the calendar said they should and you could easily get by without real winter gear. Biking was possible pretty much year round.

But I really came to appreciate spring when I lived in Washington D.C. Unless you are an allergy sufferer, you should try to see DC in the spring. It really is beautiful. I was thrilled to discover daffodils in February, and once all those flowering trees get going, it’s a riot of color everywhere you look. The cherry blossoms really are lovely down around the Tidal Basin but there are lots of less crowded places I loved to walk around; Rock Creek Park, Dumbarton Oaks, the C&O Canal, and Mount Vernon over in VA.

I’ll always love summer the most but thanks to those years in DC, I’m a fool for April.

Talk About the Passion


R.E.M. – Talk About the Passion

It isn’t often that I’m tempted to think about the 1980s as a time of hope and promise. My high school and college years took place during the Reagan years and everything seemed bleak and hopeless. My first presidential election is a day I’d really rather forget but never will. It felt like the beginning of the end (and in some ways, it was).

The news of late has been pretty awful. We don’t have regular television service any more so I’m not even talking about the major network news outlets (most of which I’ve had trouble stomaching ever since Peter Jennings died). It just feels like everything that I read or that comes across my screens lately is more disgusting, baffling, frustrating, sickening, shocking—yet at the same time not shocking, that I start getting really depressed.

“Not everyone can carry the weight of the world.”  Trust me, I know. And I know what you’re thinking. “For fuck’s sake! Combien de temps?! Hmm, Harry Reid?” All those empty prayers, empty mouths. This song may not have anything to do with the issues I’m incensed about today but it’s bigger than a single issue, or two or three. I want to talk about the passion. I want to talk about working toward something better. About finding some passion and doing something about it.

Today, one good thing came across the wires. For a few moments, I was reminded of a wonderful person who made a difference in so many lives. I’m talking about Mister Rogers. Today, March 20, would have been his 84th birthday. Mister Rogers not only lived his mission but he talked about it. And when you first hear his voice, especially in a serious setting like testifying before Congress, you almost chuckle to yourself thinking about how quaint and simple he sounds. But the more he talks, the more you watch everyone else get quiet. They sit, and they listen. They listen to him say things like, “I feel that if we in public television can only make it clear that feelings are mentionable and manageable, we will have done a great service for mental health.” In 1969! Talking to Congress about tackling mental health on children’s television! Or the way that he gently, and without pointing fingers, takes all of the television industry to task in his Hall of Fame induction speech (the whole thing is at the link above but if you just want to cut to the chase it’s here). Watch it. Really.

The article about Mister Rogers I linked to in the paragraph above is two pages long and has several videos, but they aren’t all that long and I promise you they are all worth taking the time to watch, and to read how and why he and his words are still relevant. In the final video included in the article, he says, “I know how tough it is some days to look with hope and confidence on the months and years ahead…” Yes, it is tough, and we have a lot of hard work to do, and Mister Rogers isn’t here any longer to help us do it. He carried the weight of the world while we went busily about our days. We need to pick up where he left off. We have to.

Maybe it’s unfair to hold up Mister Rogers or bands like R.E.M. as examples of how we can take what we’re passionate about and try our best to spread the word and educate and inform people without getting mad or preachy. I guess I’m just hoping that we can remember those lessons and not get too discouraged. If there’s one thing I learned from the Reagan/Bush era it’s perseverance. It hurts and it’s demeaning to lose. But I, for one, need to look back at where I’ve been, what has been important to me, what helped me get through difficult times. This helps.

{If you’re wondering why I chose this early live video instead of the black and white one set to the studio track that would seem to fit perfectly, it’s because I couldn’t find a version of that without an ad and this time, I really felt like I didn’t want to subject people to a possible football ad.}

Dancing Barefoot

Patti Smith – Dancing Barefoot

I think I knew who Patti Smith was before going to college but only in the most cursory way, probably based on recognizing album covers and knowing maybe two songs. In short order though, I learned what a big influence she had been on so many bands I loved and even if I still didn’t know much of her music or much about her, I figured they knew what they were talking about.

I became addicted to this song* during college. Addicted, or some might say obsessed, pretty accurately describes a good 3/4 of my college years. Everything about this song just nails that mix of excitement, anger, longing, mystery, all the emotions the 20-year-old me would keep bottled up until I was alone in my dorm room or out on my bike. Then I’d blast the tunes and “spin so ceaselessly ‘til I lose my sense of gravity…”

About a year ago I went to an exhibit of Patti Smith’s photography. I’d read her book, Just Kids, and loved it and couldn’t wait to see her work for myself. The museum had an evening event where they had a dj playing music, food, drinks, and anyone wearing a concert t-shirt got in for free. I hauled my old shirts out of storage and proudly picked one to wear.  The shirt says EVERYTHING on the front and IS COOL on the back. I stood there looking at Patti Smith’s photograph of Keats’ grave, wearing my Pylon t-shirt, while the dj played Bigmouth Strikes Again and Radio Free Europe. Everything is cool.

* Actually, the one on constant repeat was The Feelies cover of this song – I think it was a flexi-disc that came with The Bob or something, I didn’t have the Patti Smith album yet – with a slightly faster tempo. A slower, totally haunting version by the Swedish sisters who are First Aid Kit, sung last year when Patti Smith won the Polar Music Prize, just proves how universal and timeless this song is.

(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)

Come Talk to Me

Peter Gabriel – Come Talk to Me

It was all over the internet earlier this week that John Cusack came out on stage at Peter Gabriel’s concert at the Hollywood Bowl (the Back to Front tour in honor of the So 25th anniversary tour) to give him a boombox for his performance of “In Your Eyes.”

I didn’t see Peter Gabriel on the So tour, but I saw the Secret World tour a couple of times. I have to say, those shows really fit the definition of spectacular. It was big, lots of musicians, lots of sets, lots of instruments – some of which you couldn’t identify – with things and people popping up out of the stage floor, moving down conveyor belts, I’d never seen anything like it.

I’d seen Peter Gabriel before as part of the Amnesty International tour but that was different. That had been one of those massive affairs that were big in the 80s, held at stadiums that could hold 100,000 people and featured several big name acts. Peter Gabriel was the highlight of that show for me but when Bruce Springsteen is on the bill and the venue is in Philadelphia, the vast majority of people have come for only one reason.

On the Secret World tour, he had the space and time to do whatever he wanted. This video comes from the DVD release of the tour’s stop in Italy and is pretty much the same as the shows I saw. I might just have to rewatch the whole thing.

(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)

St. Swithin’s Day

Billy Bragg – St. Swithin’s Day

I was feeling a little low today and when that happens, I often try to make myself listen to the radio so I don’t fall into old habits and listen to songs I know will just allow me to feed that feeling. But the radio wouldn’t cooperate so I gave in and listened to a series of progressively sadder and sadder songs.

This evening Nancy posted a link to this interview with the author of a book called This Will End in Tears: The Miserabilist Guide to Music. Sounds like a book I might have written. The interviewer starts out by saying “Everyone has their favorite sad song, but have you ever thought about the sad song as a whole category of music?” Uh, have you never met a Smiths fan? I don’t have a favorite sad song, I have an extensive collection of sad songs. In college I made tapes with titles like “Morrissey’s Most Moaning Melodies” and “Anguish, Fear, Lamenting” or “Does the Body Rule the Mind or Does the Mind Rule the Body?” (subtitled, I Dunno!).

I made a conscious effort in my 20s to put some distance between myself and lots of those beloved sad songs in the interest of self preservation. And it more or less worked. I still love those songs. Many of them now, with the years that have passed helping to ease the sting, I can listen to and enjoy with a smile. “Oh I can smile about it now but at the time it was terrible.”

So after the talk of Mozzer, why the Billy Bragg song? Because no one can touch him when it comes to songs that pierce your heart. Just listen.

(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)

Citysong

Luscious Jackson – Citysong

Last week was a hot and busy week. This song always says summer to me. Even without the video filled with shots of New York City in the summer. Maybe it’s the line about the bike messenger. I spent the summer between my junior and senior years of college as a bike messenger in Philadelphia during one of the hottest summers on record and loved it.

(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)

(I Was Born in a) Laundromat

Camper Van Beethoven – (I Was Born in a) Laundromat

I was just checking out the Radio Time Machine (thank you kottke.org) which has a slider you can move to check out what was popular on mainstream radio stations in the past. My fellow college radio DJs will remember that music played on mainstream radio at the time was awful. That’s why college radio was so important to us. Even if my college’s station was a weak AM station that you could pick up in about three dorms, we saw it as our mission to play music you were not going to hear anywhere else.

One of my fellow DJs was a big Camper Van Beethoven fan. It took me a while but eventually I came around and became a Camper fan myself. This came in handy when I graduated and moved back home to Maine without any plans for my future.

Luckily, an entrepreneurial college student had decided to open a record store that summer. This small town had a record store before but it trended more to classical and jazz and really wasn’t remotely close to the kind of record store I’d grown accustomed to in the Philadelphia area while in school. So I eagerly awaited the opening day of the new store. I think I was their first customer. Before summer had ended I had talked my way into being their first full-time employee. The owner and his two friends who had helped him get it off the ground hadn’t really worked out who was going to run things when they were in classes since none of them had graduated yet. There I was, ready to jump into the gap.

The owner was a huge Camper fan and their new album, Key Lime Pie, was coming out in September. He ordered lots of copies of it, imagining it would fly off the shelves. If you listen to the songs on the Radio Time Line from 1989, you’ll see two Milli Vanilli songs, two Phil Collins songs, three Paula Abdul songs, and so forth. While the new Camper album was the most mainstream thing they’d done to date, it was still well out of the ordinary. Needless to say we had several copies left.

Not long ago I got an e-mail from the owner of the record store. He has not only survived but grown a little chain of stores and one of those two friends who had helped him get that first store off the ground is the person who created Record Store Day. They are going to be profiled in a book about record stores and he wanted to include me as the first employee. I’m almost famous!

(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)

Driver 8

R.E.M. – Driver 8

Southern Serves the South.

I bought train tickets today. I decided that with the cost of gas and tolls, it would be no more expensive, and maybe even cheaper, to take the train down to Philadelphia in May. I will travel the same route I’ve traveled more times than I could count, though I haven’t done it in a long time. 

In looking up the schedules and fares, I discovered that one leg of my trip happens to fall on National Train Day. National Train Day! Where was this holiday when I was in college? Events taking place in NYC at Grand Central, Chicago Union Station, Los Angeles Union Station, and Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station. That’s MY station. I do love the train, but the station holds more than just the prospect of a train trip for me. It’s all the hopes and dreams, all the expectations, all the heartache, all the cool, all the sadness, all the delays, all the people watching. I’m thrilled that 30th St. made the list, and I’ll be there.

I read somewhere that all the train arrival and departure signs have been modernized and are digital now and don’t make that tell-tale clickity-clackity sound anymore. That’s a little sad, but I’ve got the train tape modernized and digitized and loaded on the iPod, the angel statue is still there, and there’s probably soft pretzels for sale in there somewhere.

(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)