Tag: music

The Kennedy Center Honors 2013

saw keyboardist/composer Herbie Hancock perform in the Albany area, perhaps in the 1990s at the Palace Theatre, though it could have been at the Troy Music Hall.

Right before they went off to South Africa to honor Nelson Mandela, Barack and Michelle Obama attended The Kennedy Center Honors. I always watch the broadcast, which this year is on December 29 on CBS-TV. Four of the five honorees I’m very familiar with.

Opera singer Martina Arroyo is a name I’ve heard, but to say I was familiar with her work would be a gross overstatement.

Actress Shirley MacLaine was in a number of movies I’ve seen over the years, including The Apartment (1960), the creepy The Possession of Joel Delaney (1972), The Turning Point (1977), the Oscar-winning Tears of InternmentTerms of Endearment (1983), Steel Magnolias (1989), Postcards from the Edge (1990), Guarding Tess (1994), and most recently in Bernie (2011), which I liked. I probably saw her sitcom in the early 1970s. But my favorite MacLaine vehicle has to be Being There (1979) with Peter Sellers, one of the very first VHS tapes I ever bought, along with Annie Hall.

One of my work colleagues was listening to Soul Sacrifice, the song that ends the first Santana album, just last month. It was the version of that song at Woodstock that turned the world on to the guitar artistry of Carlos Santana. I loved the first several Santana albums, especially the second one, Abraxas, with that Black Magic Woman-Gypsy Queen/Oye Como Va segue. (Here’s the original Abraxas and here’s the Abraxas with extra live tracks.) I have some of his jazz fusion music as well. If I wasn’t as enamored with some of his all-star collaborations this century, it was no reflection on his fine playing.

I saw keyboardist/composer Herbie Hancock perform in the Albany area, perhaps in the 1990s at the Palace Theatre, though it could have been at the Troy Music Hall. I didn’t love the show – it seemed too sedate -but I have enough of his albums, including his Joni Mitchell tribute album I picked up just this year, to know that his recordings are quite eclectic. My collection spans back to Maiden Voyage in 1965 and includes Gershwin’s World (1998), featuring Joni Mitchell and Stevie Wonder, and The New Standard (1996) that my jazz-loving friend Donna hated, but that I embraced, so she gave it to me. Here’s Hancock’s YouTube channel.

I have a LOT of albums by Billy Joel, singer, composer, Piano Man. He I saw in concert in New Paltz, NY in 1974. He was very late – they got lost coming up from Long Island. He wasn’t the showman he became, sitting stiffly at his piano, but his songs, even early on, were always strong. His early MTV videos were generally quite entertaining. I’d be hard-pressed to come up with my favorite of his songs (but I’ll try in five years). Here’s Joel’s YouTube channel.

Cherie Currie, chainsaw artist

Cherie Curry “did the most amazing carving in memory of Runaways drummer Sandy West when she died a few years back.”

I’m working on a library reference question last month. Someone wants to be a chainsaw artist, i.e., take wood and make art out of it, using a chainsaw. I don’t do this all the time, but when I’m dealing with an industry I am not familiar with, or for which there is little standardized information, I’ll take a look at Wikipedia. The chainsaw carving post reads: “Many new artists began to experiment with chainsaw carving, including Brenda Hubbard, Judy McVay, Don Colp, Cherie Currie (former Runaways lead singer) …” Whoa! And I came across this YouTube video of her woodworking.

For those of you unfamiliar, the Runaways was a rock band, all women, mildly popular in the latter half of the 1970s, whose most popular song was probably Cherry Bomb. There was a 2010 movie about the group based on Cherie Currie’s memoir. She and another former Runaway, Joan Jett, were interviewed about the film.

I figured he already knew, but I told SamuraiFrog, who has become friends with Cherie, about my chainsaw art discovery. He said, “Isn’t she good? She’s got a website devoted to it. She did the most amazing carving in memory of Runaways drummer Sandy West when she died a few years back.” He’s particularly fond of the little bears she carves.

One of the things people wonder is how I know all the arcane things I know. Part of it is that I have to look some of it up for work. That is the part of the job that I really love.

I am a collector, part 2

My rationale for owning that much music involves the notion that I should PLAY that music, and I do have an arcane methodology of listening to at least most of my CDs once a year.

In addition to the previously stated items:

Buttons: by which I mean those types of buttons that politicians give out. Some of them are from political races; I think the first is for a guy named Bill Burns, who was an unsuccessful candidate for mayor of Binghamton, NY, my hometown, in 1969. A lot are from various events, such as an anti-nuke rally in June 1982. Some have no political agenda at all, such as series of buttons of famous cartoonists.

I’ve been collecting for a long time, but not in any organized fashion. One button I had in high school was “Kiss Me, I’m Germ Free.” My friend Jon took a liking to it, so I lent it to him, but I never got it back.  He decided to wear it on the seat of his pants, some teacher reported him to the principal, and the principal confiscated it; bummer.

Books: I was reading somewhere that people like to judge people by the types of books they see in their living rooms when they visit. If that is indeed the case, then we might be judged as largely illiterate, for there are only about a dozen books on the first floor of our house.

However, in the office on the second floor, there are built-in bookshelves that take up about half the wall space, and they are filled with tomes. To my left and right are my wife’s books teaching guides and classic literature. In front of me as I write this are my reference books for film, music, television, sports, plus my Marvel Masterworks and other comics-related items. Behind me are texts on religion, history, biography; a lot of my Beatles-related books are there. In the attic, more Beatles, TV, and comic book stuff, in bookshelves, not in boxes; this is why the lengthy repair of the attic was so frustrating – lack of access to some of my books.

I’m actually loath to consider my books a “collection,” though I suppose others might think so. I was watching CBS Sunday Morning last month, and I saw that Doris Kearns Goodwin has hundreds of books about Presidents. My ex-girlfriend Susan had several thousands of books, at least for a time. Now THOSE are collections.

Music: as I’ve noted, I started collecting records, i.e., LPs, since about 1966, maybe 1965. When I stopped collecting them in 1989 – last purchase was some Ray Charles album – I had about 1,200 of them. Since then, though, the number has grown as people, switching over to compact discs, dumped their collections on me. I dare say the collection has doubled, with a relatively small number being duplicates.

For a brief time, I was collecting cassette tapes, but I discovered soon that they wore out too quickly. Still, there is music that I only have in that form. BTW, I NEVER owned an 8-track player, so I avoided those altogether.

I got my first CDs in 1987, and I probably still get a half dozen CDs each year, for my birthday and Christmas at least. My CDs number more than 1,500 because I started putting them in new furniture my wife wanted me to get – it wasn’t MY idea – but they didn’t fit. Some of them are on the Amazon Cloud, which doesn’t FEEL like a collection at all.

My rationale for owning that much music involves the notion that I should PLAY that music, and I do have an arcane methodology of listening to at least most of my CDs once a year. I’m sure I’ve even described the process in this blog, though I know not where, but if you REALLY want to know, you can Ask Roger Anything later this month.

Rhythm, or inertia, or whatever works

If I can’t write something at least every couple days, it feels quite likely that I won’t ever do so ever again.

I always remember this conversation, over 15 years ago, with my friend Dorothy. She was suggesting blowing off going to church choir rehearsal so so I could hang out with her and my future wife. As tempting as that might have been, I declined. It is better for me musically to get as much rehearsal as possible. Moreover, it would easily become the case that if I blow off one rehearsal, to blow off another, and another.

That’s because I’m basically lazy, and would rather read all day, or visit with y’all.

For me, the rhythm thing has long been true of exercise. When the local Y closed a few years ago, my opportunity to play racquetball regularly, which I had done for over 25 years, went with it. There was some recent minor holiday when I COULD have played racquetball at Siena College nearby, but it simply never entered my mind.

It’s accurately descriptive of work. I check my e-mail and whatnot in the morning. That first reference question is usually the hardest to finish. Once I’ve gotten my “reference rhythm”, I can generate more reference, unless stopped by a meeting or some other force.

I was thinking on this because, prior to this year, I had a very regimented pattern of going to donate blood every eight or nine weeks, barring illness or other legitimate circumstances. I’ve donated over 18 gallons over the years. But I did the apheresis thing early this year, and somehow that’s thrown off my standard clock so that I didn’t donate again until June.

This blog is much the same way. If I can’t write something at least every couple of days, it feels quite likely that I won’t ever do so ever again. Whereas writing begets writing. When I get stuck scribing one thing – “why won’t it write itself?!”, as I am wont to say – and as of this writing, I’m really stuck on one particular piece, I’ll put together something, ANYTHING -even if it’s a puff piece like this one.

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