Fret Not

I guess everyone knows who Tom Waits is, the singer with a voice like rocks being dragged over sheet metal - go ahead: take a quick listen - but I’ll bet not everyone knows how grateful and quietly pleased he seems to be with life. It's something I learned by hearing him talk with Terry Gross of NPR’s “Fresh Air” a few months ago when his latest album came out.The first cut on "Bad as Me" is one where you’re just sure you’re hearing the pops and clicks of vinyl; you think it’s a record. Nope: that’s the sound of chicken on the barbecue, a sound so like the sound of a record you’re positive he had a phonograph there in the studio.So too he said he could name no better way to get the sound of snare drum than to jump on a trampoline in November when it’s all weighed down with an autumn windfall of sticks and branches.The man takes that kind of delight in the world; a child’s delight.He said he’s been known to put a tape recorder inside a trash can and wheel it around the yard to see what kinds of sounds he gets, what kinds of rhythms suggest themselves.You don’t need to worry even if you haven’t written for a whole year, he said, because the music is always there and all music has rests in it; you know that. You, you’re just on a rest if you're not creating right now. No worries.He also said he often just sings spontaneously, making up any old tune as he goes along, as does his collaborator and wife Kathleen Brennan. "What's the choreography of a bee?" he said rhetorically near the end of this interview. Bees don't have instruments. Bees don't take lessons in how to weave the patterns of their flight. They just fly.It seems like a perfect lesson for a brand new week: Just fly. Just sing. You don't need a guitar, he said, 'cause one thing is sure: “There are no frets on your neck.”No there aren't. In other words, sing or write any old way. That's what I take this to mean. In other words, we make the path by walking, as the proverb goes.Now here's the nicest tune on Bad As Me, in my book anyway, something called "Back in the Crowd" which owes a lot to Elvis and a lot to Mexican music as you'll probably hear right away. Enjoy![youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCbPkr9AEG4&feature=relmfu]

Good Old Simon & Garfunkel

Say the names Simon and Garfunkel and see what it evokes. Steve from South Caroline wrote the other day that he was listening to their early work and within seconds PilotPatty from the Metrowest area of Massachusetts laid down four lines of a classic S&G song bam!,  just like that right out of her head.Music goes deep all right.The mere mention of their names takes me back to senior year in high school when late at night I worked away up in the attic, making  two velvet dresses for my sister and me while “The Sounds of Silence” played  on the radio. The dresses were Burgundy and Forest Green I remember and they bunched in a sad homemade way around the armpits so later that winter I added long sleeves in the belling-out angel-costume fashion of the times.We thought we looked so great e decided to get our picture taken in them at good old Loring studios in donntown Lowell. As present for our mom we thought. Only when the proofs came back we looked in every shot like the female equivalent of that eager-to-fit-in-pair the Wild and Crazy Guys as played by Steve Martin and Dan Aykroyd in the old Saturday Night Live skits. (Have mercy on all young people! They work so hard at inventing a self!)  I just came upon this rendition of  S & G’s ‘For Emily, Wherever I May Find Her’. How many young females swooned over this one with its words carried in on the waves of Art’s high-tenor voice. Sex was getting closer by the minute with the Pill newly available and all those rockin' sounds out of England, but how scary could it be when sung about by these gentle souls with their Kathys and their Emilys, in search of some town called Scarborough Fair? Searching always for that one girl, just that one girl? How the world has changed since those days my gosh! Here is Emily now:[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7aUNZQVpQ&feature=related]

"The Dead Beatle"

It seems I’m not through with Paul yet. I’ve been thinking of him so much I  dug out the interview he gave to The New Yorker in ’07, just before the debut of Memory Almost Full in which he spoke about the amazement he feels when he looks back on his life:"There were four people in the Beatles and I was one of them. There were two people in the Lennon-McCartney songwriting team and I was one of them. I mean right there that’s enough for anyone’s life.  There was one guy who wrote ‘Yesterday’ and I was him. One guy who wrote ‘Let it Be,’  ‘Fool on the Hill,” ‘Lady Madonna' – and I was him too. all of these things would be enough for anyone’s life so to be involved in all of them is pretty surprising. And you have to pinch yourself."Well I have to pinch myself too, but more to keep back the tears as I read and listen. They were so gifted, all of them, such wonderful songwriters, Paul and John, though neither could read or write music. They were each just 15 when they met and George was even younger when Paul noticed him on the school bus with his Presley-like hairdo. Turned out the kid could play the guitar like nobody’s business. And then came Ringo and the rest was history.It’s six days now since I saw him in Boston. He’ll be in Atlanta soon. But he’s right here now in this song “The End of the End” about the day he dies. It comes with more great photos and also his best mate’s tune “Isolation.” Words below the clip this time too. Once again, get out your hankies.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dczjgl-Vus8]

At the end of the endIt's the start of a journeyTo a much better placeAnd this wasn't badSo a much better placewould have to be specialNo need to be sad

On the day that I die I'd like jokes to be toldAnd stories of old to be rolled out like carpetsThat children have played onAnd laid on while listening to stories of old

At the end of the endIt's the start of a journeyTo a much better placeAnd a much better placeWould have to be specialNo reason to cry

On the day that I die I'd like bells to be rungAnd songs that were sung to be hung out like blanketsThat lovers have played onAnd laid on while listening to songs that were sung

At the end of the endIt's the start of a journeyTo a much better placeAnd a much better placeWould have to be specialNo reason to cryNo need to be sadAt the end of the end