Heavenly Shades of Night Are Falling – 2020 February
[for the gang who used to go to Myron’s Pizza and sing Irish songs until Myron decided enough was enough: Denis, Pete, Don, Tom, Jerry, Daryl—Mike, we miss you something awful! ]
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away. Philip K. Dick
I don’t know why you’d call my views controversial. Is someone in favor of Nuclear Annihilation? Linda Ronstadt
In September, the class of ’60 will celebrate its 60th class reunion. Ours will be in September and coincide with McCook, Nebraska’s Heritage Days.
As I prepare to greet old classmates, it seems unimaginable to me that we are 60 years out from our high school days—60 years from all that started while we were in high school.
So, a quick reflection*
We now have reliable evidence that there are miracles and that Dad was dead wrong: Rock & Roll did not soon die away in favor of real music!
Lots of rock and rollers have lived into their 70’s (even 80’s!) and Rock was not a flash in the pan but the enduring music of a century.
It was, and continues to be, the place we go to hear the sounds and lyrics that help us see more clearly where we’ve been, who we are, and where we’re headed. Other folks do this from time to time, too, but Rock (in our day Rock & Roll) has done it consistently, with a passion for it that still draws huge audiences.
Think of it: Joan Baez, Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Art Garfunkle, Mick Jagger, Elton John, Carole King, Brian May, Paul McCartney, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Keith Richards, Carlos Santana, Paul Simon, Ringo Starr, Rod Stewart, James Taylor, Tina Turner, Peter Townsend, Brian Wilson, and the ever evolving Crosby Stills Nash and Young—and any other of the Septuagenarians whose continued presence assures us that there was at least one thing we weren’t wrong about! These days, that may have to be enough for a while longer.
And now, through films and documentaries and retrospectives and final tours, Rock artists are telling us again what our story meant and means. I wonder why it has fallen to our musical figures to do all this for those of us who have survived and the friends and family we touched.
Possibly because the story musicians lived and told was bound up in the chief trinity of our times: sex, drugs, and Rock ‘N’ Roll—signs of the transformations of all kinds: from a traditional to a youth culture, from button-down gray-flannel twin beds to the sexual revolution, from Jim Crow to Civil Rights, from the “greatest generation” to the protests against the lost cause in Vietnam and how what Ike wised up to what was a Military-Industrial complex would continue to push us into wars in their own interests.
Think Hair!
Having fairly recently seen Janis Joplin, Little Girl Blue; Bohemian Rhapsody; Linda Ronstadt, The Sound of My Voice; Twenty Feet from Stardom; Rocketman, Judy, and Springsteen’s Western Stars, I’ve also found my reading entering the same territory. Just for instance, a life study of one person’s encounter with ‘the times they are a changing,’ George Packer’s fine study of Richard Holbrook, Our Man—the title possibly an allusion to Graham Greene’s 1959 title: Our Man in Havana.
My friend Steven Rothenberger not long ago produced a beautiful study of some of Nebraska’s bands from the same era: Scottsbluff in ’62: A Rock ‘N’ Roll Retrospective of Small Town America.
And, for alternative or underground Rock, take a look at Simon Joyner’s, Only Love Can Bring You Peace: Selected Lyrics (Magic Helicopter Press).
Just for fun, I cut and pasted the eclectic list I keep in my file of “thanksgivings” for what has taught me and brought me joy across my years, lumping together stuff from the country, popular, and folk charts, and only selecting the artists and songs that most stuck in my mind when I made the list:
Animals (House of the Rising Sun), Eddie Arnold (Make the World Go Away), Beach Boys (What Would I Be without You), Byrds (Mr. Tambourine Man, Turn Turn Turn). Glen Campbell (Wichita Lineman), Johnny Cash (Folsom Prison Blues, Ring of Fire, Sunday Morning Coming Down), Patsy Cline (Crazy, I Fall to Pieces), Credence Clearwater Revival (Bad Moon Rising), Eagles (Lying Eyes), Fleetwood Mac (Go Your Own Way), Crystal Gayle (Don’t it Make Your Brown Eyes Blue), Jimmy Dale Gilmore (My Mind’s Got a Mind of its Own), Tom T. Hall (Old Dogs and Children and Watermelon Wine), Ferlin Husky (Wings of a Dove), Waylon Jennings (Good Hearted Woman), Kansas (Dust in the Wind), Claude King (They Say Don’t Go), Frankie Lane (Wild Goose), Loretta Lynn (Coal Miner’s Daughter), Vaughan Monroe (Ghost Riders in the Sky), Van Morrison (Brown Eyed Girl), Willie Nelson (Always on my Mind, Momma, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow up to Be Cowboys), Oakridge Boys (Ozark Mountain Jubilee), Dolly Parton (Coat of Many Colors, Hard Candy Christmas), Pogues (If I Should Fall from the Grace of God), Ray Price (Heartaches by the Number), Charley Pride (Kiss An Angel Good Morning), Jim Reeves (Four Walls to Hear Me), Riders in the Sky (Tumbling Tumbleweeds), Tex Ritter (Do Not Forsake Me), Marty Robbins (Streets of Laredo), Jimmy Rodgers (I’m in the Jailhouse Now), Kenny Rogers (Islands in the Stream), Sons of the Pioneers (Cool Water), George Strait (Amarillo by Morning), Hank Williams (Your Cheating Heart), Tammy Wynette (Stand By Your Man); and, sure, Tori Amos, Beatles, Bee Gees, Brothers Four, Karen Carpenter, Cherish the Ladies, Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makin, Neil Diamond, Dixie Chicks, Bob Dylan, Enya, Aretha Franklin, Indigo Girls, Elton John, Janis Joplin, Cindy Kane, Kingston Trio, Gordon Lightfoot, Limelighters, Anne Murray, New Christy Minstrels, Randy Newman, Peggy Lee, Peter Paul and Mary, Queen, Linda Ronstadt, Diana Ross, Pete Seeger, Simon and Garfunkel (oh, these days, don’t we wonder where Mrs. Robinson has gone!), Bruce Springsteen (especially his We Shall Overcome album); Barbra Streisand, Village People, Dionne Warwick, Weavers, Andrew Lloyd Weber, Roger Whitaker, Glen Yarborough; and Don’t Stop Believing, We Shall Overcome, Somewhere Out There, Why Are There So Many Songs about Rainbows, Twilight Time, Moon River, and almost any film music by Elmer Bernstein, Jerry Goldsmith, John Williams; also, some local lights, many of them friends from here or who have played here: Mike Adams*, Roxanne Brown and Vlad, Brett and Jeff Ensz, Joel Fought, Art Hansen, Lindy Hearne, Wes Hird, Mick Johnson, David Kingsley, Craig Link, Mike Loveless, OK Sisters, John Ross, Chuck and Jim Salestrom, Mike Schiacitano and Diane, Christine Seaborn, Terry Sinnard, Ginger ten Bensel, Greg Tesdall, Todd and Lois Thalken, Martin Tilley, (and Yanda’s).
Oh, my, I can see that I left out as much as I got in!
Watch out Little Darlin’—pretty soon we’ll be singing Oom Dooby Doom for our 60th! (To paraphrase Cather: My first girlfriend—there were two! Hope you are both coming.
Happy St. Valentine’s Day to all.
Chuck
Kearney, Nebraska
February 2020
*Around here we celebrate all this once a year (coincidentally at the Eagles Club) in a fund-raising event named after the much-missed Mike Adams who could work wonders in a studio or on the stage, with visitors and veterans.
PS:
Mentioning Neil Diamond: on a personal note, the traveling salvation show is on the road again. I’ve been asked to serve several months as Rector of St. Mark’s in the interim, the church across from UNL’s Love Library in Lincoln, Nebraska, where my dad (the “Lion of St. Mark’s) was once Rector. Nancy and I will be in Lincoln twice a month for anywhere from 3 to 6 days each trip, staying in an apartment on the campus of Holy Trinity Church, once offered to us when I was asked to brush off my custodial skills and become Holy Trinity’s sexton. Chose to finish my doctorate instead! But I had indeed been custodian at St. Mark’s for some years and Nancy was the office secretary. Nepotism at its most advantageous! Don’t tell me you can’t go home again. (Open invitation to all SMOC grads from our day to come back and help SMOC transition to a new future!)
We’ll see how the new schedule goes but I’m hoping for another blog posting in March.
capeek 