ABC Wednesday Archives - Page 30 of 91

H is for handy

Reading the manual is seldom useful.

I am not what you would call handy. The old saying “Measure twice, cut once” was invented with me in mind, and yet that piece of wood is STILL too long, or worse, too short.

It’s not that I’m not curious about things work. When I was 10 or so, I took apart the deadbolt on our door at home, trying to figure out how it worked. Unfortunately, I never figured out how to put it back together properly, and we had to engage the services of a locksmith.

I tried the Cub Scouts when I was eight, but they were always requiring specific knots, and I quit that in a year. Speaking of knots, I couldn’t master tying my shoes until I was nine, and wore penny loafers until then.

“Righty tighty, lefty loosey.” Need it almost every time.

I attempted to learn to play the piano when I was 12, but it wasn’t meant to be, despite hours of practice. Meanwhile, my sister learned to play guitar in a month, something I could never master either, despite the fact that my dad played.

My father did a lot of floral arrangements, for weddings and cotillions, and the like. He often brought Leslie and me along. She had a great artistic eye, and I was good at schlepping things.

I always appreciated seeing art, but creating art was another thing altogether. Once my 7th-grade art teacher gave me a B in some now-forgotten project, and my father asked her why the grade was so high. She said that it was my best effort based on my ability.

Junior high required going to what they called shop, where I could build ill-constructed wood items, and blow up pottery in the kiln. But I actually liked 9th-grade shop, dealing with metal, maybe because the machinery was so precise that I could not screw up the project.

That was a useful lesson. If I have the right tools, and I’m shown how to do it, I can do it…sometimes. Reading the manual is seldom useful. Being told how to do it almost never works. But doing a hands-on process, and having room to screw it up without destroying it, helps.

Occasionally, I CAN hang that picture without putting a large hole in the wall.

Now my buddy Amy, she’s handy!

Have to end, of course, with Weird Al Yankovic – Handy.

ABC Wednesday – Round 19

G is for grass

While mowing, I was getting conked the head.

When we bought our house in 2000, while about 2/3 of the backyard was grass, perhaps 1/3, maybe a bit more, was actually brick. There had been an above-ground swimming pool once upon a time, long before we moved in, but the indentation, framed by railroad ties, was still there.

Our yard had a unique design, and we liked it, for a time. That is until the bricks started to wear down, the railroad ties no longer walkable due to deterioration. We decided two summers ago to have the brick area torn up – with said bricks filling in part of the hole – and putting in more grass instead.

Though I had agreed to it, this was not thrilling to me, since I was the one who mows the lawn. After all, lawns are a soul-crushing timesuck and most of us would be better off without them.

As I’ve noted, I’d been using a reel push mower. But my parents-in-law got us an electric mower last season. I did not use it because the new grass wasn’t coming in very well, but was mostly a swampy marsh.

Now, though, we have a full lawn, and I have capitulated to using the new machine. It IS especially helpful in the dandelion season when the only way to keep up with them would be to reel mow twice a week; THAT wasn’t going to happen.

Ouch! While mowing, I was getting conked the head by some low-hanging branches in our yard. And the manual hedge trimmer we have wasn’t going to be able to cut through them. But what I COULD cut were some of the ancillary branches, which would raise the predator branches an inch here, a couple of centimeters there, until I could walk beneath without being attacked by flora.

Thus armed with my implement of destruction, and inspired by the city workers who had trimmed branches away from the power lines on our street that very day, I also walked up the street, pruning branches of trees that would otherwise have slapped me in the face.

You’re welcome, neighbors.

ABC Wednesday – Round 19

F is for Fireworks

Recently, I’ve been satisfied watching fireworks on TV.

Colorful fireworks lighting the night sky

I’m OK with a modicum of fireworks on the 4th of July. I’m less thrilled with them on the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd of the month, and I heard LOTS of fireworks in my neighborhood before Independence Day. I’m with Ken Levine when he says, “Why the hell do people buy home fireworks?”

A recent change in New York State Penal Law now allows for the sale and use of a specific category of consumer fireworks known as Sparkling Devices, ground based or handheld devices “that produce a shower of colored sparks and or a colored flame, audible crackling or whistling noise and smoke” of a certain size.

“Sale and use of Sparkling Devices will be legal only in counties and cities that have enacted a local law…” Albany County was the 37th county to pass such an ordinance in May 2016. This explains the display at the local CVS pharmacy of late, which did not used to be the case.

Recently, I’ve been satisfied watching fireworks on TV while The Wife and The Daughter travel 75 miles to my in-laws’ house in Oneonta and watch the festivities there. But because they were home this year, traveling two days later, the Daughter wanted to see pyrotechnics.

We all went out, hearing the explosions, but unable to see any fancy colors except the local illicit models. The Wife went home, but the Daughter and I found a field with a fairly decent view of the fireworks from the Empire State Plaza from behind the high school.

But the more local items blowing up were LOUD. A series of items that sounded like gunfire. In fact, if someone WANTED to commit murder, it’d be a decent time.

As we got closer to the school, we noticed what I initially thought was a furnace I had never seen before. But no, it was a fully-engulfed Dumpster fire. And the adjacent shack was smoldering. Fortunately, the Fire Department arrived before I was able to call.

On our walk home, we saw a young couple with her toddler daughter, throwing something out on the street. When cars would ride over the area, it sounded as they had blown a flat tire. Often, the driver would swerve from being startled; I’m glad no one got hurt.

I was ready to go home. I was most worried about someone detonating something and deafening me or my daughter.

The best way I could describe it was as a fairly civilized war zone.

ABC Wednesday – Round 19

E is for Eagles

Liking Eagles music is uncool in certain crowds.

Eagles - Walsh, Henley, Frey, Schmit — Walsh, Henley, Frey, Schmit

The Eagles was an American rock band based on Los Angeles who became one of the most successful musical acts of the 1970s. In 1971, Linda Ronstadt her then-manager recruited local musicians Glenn Frey and Don Henley for her band. They, Randy Meisner, and Bernie Leadon played on her eponymous third album, before recording the first Eagles’ album. The songwriting partnership of Frey and Henley really was established with the group’s second LP.

The country-folk-rock band had some hits but wanted a bit of a harder sound. Leadon’s childhood friend Don Felder played on a couple of songs on the third album and then joined the band full time.

But it was the fourth studio album, One of These Nights (1975) that really broke through on the charts, the first of four albums to reach #1. The title track also went to #1, Lyin’ Eyes reached #2 on the charts, and won the band their first Grammy. The final single, Take It to the Limit, went to #4. The song reached number 4 on the charts. The album was nominated for a Grammy award for Album of the Year.

At this point, they released the Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975) album that has challenged Michael Jackson’s Thriller as the all-time best-selling album in the United States.

Bernie Leadon left the band, unhappy with the harder edge of the music. He was replaced by Joe Walsh of the James Gang. The next album was the massively successful Hotel California. It contained two #1 singles, New Kid in Town and the mysterious title track. But after an exhausting tour, Randy Meisner left the band, replaced by “the same musician who had succeeded him in Poco, Timothy B. Schmit.”

The 1979 album The Long Run was successful, less so than its predecessor, and the band went “on hiatus” for 14 years until they reunited in 1994, and put out a popular live album, Hell Freezes Over, and a profitable tour. “In 1998, the Eagles were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. For the induction ceremony, all seven Eagles members (Frey, Henley, Felder, Walsh, Schmit, Leadon, and Meisner) played together for two songs.”

One last album, Long Road to Eden, came out in 2007, without Don Felder, who had been involved with lawsuits against the band.

The band was “slated to receive Kennedy Center Honors in 2015, but this was deferred to 2016 due to Frey’s medical problems. Then on “January 18, 2016, founding member Glenn Frey died in the Washington Heights section of New York City at the age of 67, leaving Don Henley as the only remaining original member. According to the band’s website, the causes of his death were rheumatoid arthritis, acute ulcerative colitis, and pneumonia while recovering from intestinal surgery.” in short order, Henley confirmed the dissolution of the band.

Liking Eagles music is uncool in certain crowds. I appreciate their sound, particularly their tight harmonies.

Some favorite songs – links to all:

10. Take it Easy (Eagles) – written by Frey with his then-neighbor Jackson Browne
9. Already Gone (On the Border)
8. Heartache Tonight (The Long Run) – sounds like a Bob Seger song, in the good sense; written by Henley, Frey, Seger, and J. D. Souther
7. Desperado (Desperado) – particularly hated for its alleged faux profundity; whatever
6. Life in the Fast Lane (Hotel California) – some rockin’ Joe Walsh

5. Tequila Sunrise (Desperado) – one of my drinks of choice in college
4. I Can’t Tell You Why (The Long Run) – I think it’s lovely and sad
3. Take it to the Limit (One of These Nights) – written by Meisner, Henley, and Frey, the only Eagles single to feature Meisner on lead vocals; reminds me of a coffeehouse in my college town that I lived in, and a young woman with long light brown hair, with whom absolutely nothing happened
2. Hotel California (Hotel California) – the Stairway to Heaven of the Eagles’ oeuvre, it shouldn’t be diminished because it was overplayed
1. Wasted Time (Hotel California) – I gravitate towards songs about lost love

ABC Wednesday – Round 19

D is for Donovan

“When I was a young man I was led to believe there were organizations to kill my snakes for me.”

The Scottish singer, songwriter, and guitarist Donovan Leitch turned 70 on May 10, 2016. Somehow I missed it, alas. He was one of those musicians that borrowed from folk, jazz, pop, psychedelia, and calypso to create a notable and rather recognizable sound that helped define the 1960s.

Like many artists of the period, such as the Kinks, the Rolling Stones, and the Beatles, his UK and US releases were quite different.

I associate Donovan with the Beatles. He contributed the line “sky of blue and sea of green” to “Yellow Submarine.” Donovan was among the guests invited to Abbey Road Studios for the orchestral overdub for “A Day in the Life”. He taught John Lennon a finger-picking guitar style in 1968.

Most notably, Donovan traveled to the ashram of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in Rishikesh, where all four Beatles, two Beach Boys, and actress Mia Farrow also showed up.

I have one much later album, Sutras, from 1996, described as deeply meditative, produced by Rick Rubin in the same period he was producing Johnny Cash. Though neither critically nor commercially as successful as the Cash albums, I enjoyed it.

Here is a list of 10 essential Donovan songs. And my favorite 16, with links, though only the first two songs are assured of their slots.

16. Eldorado (1996)- the words are by Edgar Allan Poe.
15. Epistle To Dippy (#19 in 1967) – this is, midst the nearly indecipherable psychedelia, a pacifist song.
14. I Love My Shirt, a sweet, simple song I remember watching on the Smothers Brothers TV show. It was the B-side of the single Atlantis in 1968 in the UK, but not in the US.
13. Universal Soldier (#53 in 1965) – it was written and recorded by Canadian singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie, then covered by him.

12. Catch the Wind (#23 in 1965) – Donovan’s debut single brought the comparisons to Bob Dylan. It’s a “lovelorn ballad about Linda Lawrence (then the significant other of the Rolling Stones’ Brian Jones) who later became Donovan’s wife.”
11. Jennifer Juniper (#26 in 1968) – the song was inspired by Jenny Boyd, sister of George Harrison’s wife, Pattie Boyd.
10. Wear Your Love Like Heaven (#23 in 1967). This shows up in some commercial for perfume, I think.
9. Rikki-Tiki-Tavi (#55 in 1970). It uses the mongoose from Rudyard Kipling’s story in The Jungle Book as a metaphor. “When I was a young man I was led to believe there were organizations to kill my snakes for me. i.e.: the church, i.e.: the government, i.e.: school. But when I got a little older I learned I had to kill them myself.”

8. Colours (#61 in 1965). Lovely in its simplicity.
7. Season of the Witch (1967) – Jimmy Page on guitar. Not a single in the US, but played regularly in his live shows, and covered often.
6. Sunshine Superman (#1 in 1966) – Jimmy Page on guitar. The former comic book fan in me loves “Superman and Green Lantern ain’t got nothin’ in me.”
5. There Is A Mountain (#11 in 1967). Very Buddhist. “First there is a mountain, there is no mountain, then there is.” Copped by the Allman Brothers as the foundation of their Mountain Jam. I copped “Oh, Juanita” for a song I wrote that has fortunately never seen the light of day.

4. Mellow Yellow (#2 for three weeks in 1966) – this song with some suggestive lyrics, was kept out of the #1 slot by Good Vibrations by the Beach Boys, then by Winchester Cathedral by the New Vaudeville Band. It reportedly featured Paul McCartney on backing vocals.
3. Hurdy Gurdy Man (#5 in 1968) – Jimmy Page was one of the electric guitar players and John Paul Jones played bass, arranged the track, and booked the session musicians. John Bonham may, or may not, have played drums, depending on who’s telling the story, and when, memory being tricky. The tambura which Donovan himself plays had been given to him in India by George Harrison.
2. Celtic Rock (1970) – Donovan said that he used the drone of that tambura to create this song. “Hey kala ho kala ho la jai.” It practically defines the genre it namechecks.
1. Goo Goo Barabajagal (#36 in 1969) – billed “with the Jeff Beck Group. “Love Is Hot,” indeed.

ABC Wednesday – Round 19