Planet of the Blind

Song

            --Elegy for the folk singer Bob Gibson

I’ve got joy in my shirt and joy in my hair,

Got joy in my apple tree

Got joy up the stairs—

It’s just that kind of day.

Got rhubarb in my back seat

Got bananas in my trunk,

When I’m driving on the freeway I’m never in a funk

It’s just that kind of day.

Some people tell you all about their blues

As if they haven’t got a dime—

I tell them to stuff some grapes down their shoes

The dance turns funny every single time.

Bring on the tombstone, bring on the mule;

Turn your lamps down low.

When you’re gone you’re gone—that’s the rule—

Why carry on like a tired old Shmo?

I’ve got joy in my shirt and joy in my hair,

Got joy in my apple tree

Got joy up the stairs—

It’s just that kind of day.

You might hate me for singing this song,

But that’s okay with me:

You’ve got your job and me? I’ve got to get along

I’ve got joy in my blossoms and bees.

I’ve got joy in my shirt and joy in my hair,

Got joy in my apple tree

Got joy up the stairs—

It’s just that kind of day.

It’s just that kind of day…

(Sung to the tune of Bob Gibson’s "Joy, Joy, Joy")

S.K.

Have You Heard? Laurie Rubin

Through my volunteer work at [with]tv I've had the pleasure and the privilege of *meeting* (in cyberspace) and corresponding with Laurie Rubin. 

Laurie is an accomplished Mezzo Soprano.  Listen to this CBS interview I just discovered and you will learn more about this "world class opera singer" who has "performed in the White House and in some of the worlds finest Halls..."

(Photo description: Laurie is on stage performing in her New York recital debut with pianist David Wilkinson.  Wearing a teal evening gown, she looks quite beautiful.  She's standing in front of a grand piano; David is wearing a black suit.  We can see the backs of the heads of her audience in Weill Recital Hall, Carnegie Hall, March 2004.)

Laurie has released a CD of art songs by Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, Beethoven, Brahms, Hahn, Bizet, Copland, Rorem, Harbison and some beloved Yiddish pieces with pianists Graham Johnson and David Wilkinson on the Opera Omnia label.

"Faith in Spring" can be purchased via this link on Laurie's web site.

A music critic I am not but I know what I enjoy, and Steve and I enjoy listening to this often...

Laurie, we look forward to the day when we can actually experience your musical gift in a live performance.  We'll be keeping our eyes on you!

Till then!

~ Connie

Cross-posted on Blog [with]tv

Zombie Woof

Once when I was around 14 and full of zeal of a certain kind, I went to hear Frank Zappa and his rock band "The Mothers of Invention".  Zappa was a brainiac cross fertilized rock and roller with a strong interest in 20^th century classical music and a more than passing understanding of jazz.  Unlike most rockers of the 60’s and 70’s Zappa looked down on the use of drugs and he used to whip out a flashlight and train it on the audience, casting about until he saw someone who looked especially stoned.  He would really make fun of that poor, witless guy.  The man hated playing to a stoned theater.  He wrote inventive and outlandish songs about drug users.  He would sing: "who you jiving’ with that cosmic debris?"

Frank Zappa could also play a peppery, lickety-split lead guitar and while other kids my age talked endlessly of the guitar mastery of Eric Clapton or Jimi Hendrix, I was convinced that FZ had the real chops.  I can still hear Zappa’s transcendent guitar solo from the song "Zombie Woof" on his album "Over-Nite Sensation"—I can hear it in memory, note for note, the way Hemingway said he could follow a trout stream in his imagination.

Frank Zappa died all too early from prostate cancer and I find that on this particular autumn day I miss his brand of social satire and his exceptional musicianship.  All I want to do is go down to my local record store and buy the latest from "the Mothers".

Here’s to intelligent and impatient rock and roll.  Here’s to a deep distrust of lazy audiences.  Here’s to living the art while disdaining the commercial music industry.

Here’s to a hot suspicion of authority but without all the contemporary cheap perfume of despair.

S.K.

Musical Milestones

Before continuing with this post (written by Steve) as a contribution to the next Disability Blog Carnival, Steve and I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Penny L. Richards for her all her continuing hard work and dedication to the Disability Blog Carnival, which she launched one year ago.  Bravo, Penny.  Bravo!  We've made many new friends thanks to you!

~ Steve and Connie

A Living Legend

In the summer of 1978 I went to  a restaurant and bar called The Sanctuary in Iowa City to hear the folk singer Bob Gibson who was billed as "the living legend".  I knew nothing about Gibson except that there was a small photo of him in the newspaper and he was shown with a 12 string guitar.

I was 23 years old and fresh out of college and I'd come to Iowa to study poetry writing at the Iowa Writers Workshop.  I was immoderately in love with the collected Folkways recordings of Leadbelly and I owned a third rate 12 string guitar that wouldn't stay tuned and I spent far too much of my time trying to play "The  Bourgeois Blues" and "The Midnight Special" without having any concept that Leadbelly used a different tuning.

I was lonely that summer.  I'd rented a student apartment that came without furniture.  The landlord loaned me a sofa with no legs and a bed.  I sat in the empty living room and tuned my bad guitar and wondered how I would make it in the world with my evolving blindness and my obvious incapacity to do the customary jobs reserved for America's misfits.  Blind people don't drive taxis or wait tables or serve as short order cooks.  Anyway, I was too much in love with poetry to picture myself doing much of anything.  I didn't feel sorry for myself: I kept as much as possible inside poems and songs.  I sang Elizabeth Cotton's "Freight Train" in my barren apartment as the prairie dusk came with its graduated softness.

The Sanctuary was a skinny room with a bar on one wall and a small stage on the other side.  The tables in the center had real church pews for seats.  Although my vision was unreliable I estimated there were about 70 customers sitting in those pews and perhaps a dozen people at the bar.  A good turn out in a small town.   

I asked the waitress if I could have a table by the stage since I was "legally blind" and she said this would be okay.  I ordered a Pabst Blue Ribbon and waited for the show.

I suppose I should remember who warmed up for Gibson but I don't.  I'm sure it was someone with plenty of talent.  Iowa City has a good folk music scene.  What I do remember is that when Bob Gibson came out The Sanctuary was suddenly packed and the warmth of the crowd was spontaneous and communal.  These were Gibson groupies and I could sense that lots of them had driven from outlying Iowa farm towns to be there.

I didn't know that Bob Gibson had been the headline performer at the 1960 Newport Folk Festival and that he was the person who introduced Joan Baez to the music world when he invited her on stage to sing with him.  I didn't know that Bob Gibson had co-written songs with Phil Ochs or that he had sung with Pete Seeger or that he had been a noted performer in the glory days of New York City's folk scene in "the village".  I had no idea that he was a pal of Shel Silverstein's and that they had begun writing songs together.

But man, I knew instant warmth when I felt it.

Gibson arranged the shoulder strap of his Martin 12 string while the applause rolled over the room. 

Then he sang Phil Och's anthem "There But For Fortune" and I was utterly floored.

I've had the good fortune to hear some amazing musical performances over the years, from The Beatles to La Scala, from Domingo to Duke Ellington, but I've never heard anything quite as wonderful as Bob Gibson's beautiful 12 string  and sweet light baritone in that little room in Iowa City.

Bob Gibson died too young and toward the end of his life he suffered from Parkinson's disease.

I can't tell you why I'm thinking of him today.  I feel a sweet ache and a taste perhaps of water taken from a tin cup and I want to pass it along.  If you don't know Bob Gibson's amazing music  I urge you to get your hands on his cd's at Amazon.  Or better yet, go to a vintage record store in Chicago and talk to someone who may once have heard him play at the Gates of Horn.

SK

Is This America?

In an article in today's Columbus Dispatch Commentator Ann Fisher calls "Tolerance, harmony disolving into discord" she begins by saying:

"You can turn to the front page of any big-city newspaper any day of the week and quickly scan a host of issues that divide us as a nation.  The front page of yesterday’s Dispatch was as good an example as any: Ohio’s death penalty, the war in Iraq, President Bush, political perks, the minimum wage, sports and "Who, what’s hot, not in ’07."

In her article, Ann discusses how America is not, in her opinion what it once was:

"Screaming and derisive radio and television talk-show hosts of every ilk underscore the anger.  And a mountain of blogs and Web sites and other flotsam and jetsam of our cyberage have formed a collective, anonymous wedge."

The point of her article is to introduce to us, her readers, a new song, Is This America?, written by Eric Gnezda, humorist, speaker, author and singer/songwriter.

"Is This America? never could replace our national anthem, which was adapted from a pub song.  Nothing could.  Still, this new song recalls that we didn’t always kill one another at kids’ hockey games."

Ann urges us to give it a listen.  Let's, shall we?  Now playing:  Is This America?

~ Connie

Sibelius Season

When I was a kid I always knew when real winter was coming because my Finnish father would break out the Sibelius records.  If there is a gloomier composer than Jean Sibelius I haven't discovered him.  Sibelius was the father of Finnish nationalism in the 19th century and his powerful, dark, neo-romantic symphonies helped his nation achieve a crucial sense of cultural autonomy while Finland was still under Russian rule.

But here's the thing: winter rolls in with icy rain and a full week of clouds and in my general view that's the time for the Bob Marley records.  My dad went for an even more intense version of winter.  I suspect his seasonal plunge into the darkest music was akin to the business of giving nervous people big cups of coffee.  The darker the symphony the better my dad felt.

If you really want to try Sibelius out I recommend his justly famous violin concerto.  He only wrote one violin concerto and it's a doozy.  I recommend the recording by Pekka Kuusisto.  We are not related as far as I know.  In Finland, Kuusisto is a common name.  But Pekka Kuusisto is an uncommon violinist.

Today however, what with the clouds and icy rain, I will take time to listen to Bob Marley.  And maybe a little Louis Armstrong...

S.K.