Tag: Music

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Kitchen Garden

Tomatoes in Big Grove

Planting cherry tomatoes.

On a cool Saturday morning I planted 20 varieties of tomatoes on my bench in the garage. There has been a home-garden tomato crop at almost every place we lived since we married in 1982. I am a couple days late getting seeds into channel trays compared to last year. If all goes well, there will be plenty of tomatoes, beginning in August. I know how to produce a crop.

After noon I watched the BlueSky hashtag #handsoff. Users posted images of Hands Off! demonstrations from all over the country. It was a decent showing of people opposed to the administration, more protesters than usually turn out for nation-wide protests. There is a lot about which to be upset. I did not attend one of several events within half an hour drive of home. I decided an hour’s driving could be better spent.

Instead, I had a 50-minute phone call about unions during the Reagan years. I forwarded a chapter of my memoir in progress to a friend who was a member of the United Auto Workers union during that time. It was a good conversation about things we don’t usually discuss.

After getting his masters, my friend got a job as a teacher in the Saint Louis area. He rose to become president of the National Education Association local. He told me his Sheryl Crow story. Crow had worked as a music teacher for the district and wanted to cash in her pension to head out west. There was a recommendation she leave it in place in case she needed to start over. Of course, she didn’t need that. His Sheryl Crow story is better than mine, which is I heard her play at the Senator Tom Harkin annual steak fry on Sept. 19, 2004.

I had a restless night Friday. The U.S. Senate protected the billionaire class and left the rest of us behind, voting in favor of the reconciliation bill early Saturday morning. Next the bill goes to the House. Its future there is uncertain. The Republican majority is so thin that Texas Governor Abbott is postponing a special election in Houston to replace U.S. Rep. Sylvester Turner who died in March. His action takes one Democratic vote off the table. We are in the hard ball league with our politics, where nothing matters except for the income of the owners. We are not the owners.

Cool ambient temperatures kept me out of the garden again. Soon, though, I’ll get out there and dig this year’s plots. Probably, there will be tomatoes. One never knows, yet we plant the seeds.

Categories
Living in Society

Why Not a Les Paul?

Gibson Les Paul electric guitar. Photo Credit – Wikimedia Commons.

When I played in a band, there were about a half dozen six-string, electric guitars to use. Either a Fender Stratocaster or Telecaster, a Gibson Les Paul or an SG, and maybe, just maybe, a Gretsch, Epiphone or Rickenbacker. There were others, but those are the ball game. In 1974, I bought a Fender Telecaster Thinline.

The purpose of the Telecaster Thinline was to reduce the amount of Ash used in the body. Apparently the wood was in short supply in the 1970s. The guitar served its purpose and years later I sold it to a friend for the same price for which I bought it.

Nothing defined me as a rhythm and blues artist like that Telecaster. It had a distinctive sound, and I looked the part of a musician while playing it. However, when the band broke up and I took off for Europe, I did not return to playing electric guitar in public. My prospects as a professional musician were not bright.

I played it some. It traveled to Lake County, Indiana with the family. Our child enjoyed playing it without an amplifier in the garage. It found a good home in Arizona, delivered by a friend’s parents.

Why didn’t I get a Les Paul? I didn’t think I was cool enough. Most of the excellent local Les Paul players I knew were way above my skill level. It also seems like a guitar for people of short stature. I recognized early on I would not be a Les Paul guy. I am okay with being a Fender man.

Categories
Living in Society

Heat Wave

If you do not like the song Heat Wave by Lamont Dozier and brothers Brian and Eddie Holland something may be wrong with you. Few things characterized my youth like listening to the Martha and the Vandellas recording on my hand-held, red transistor radio. It would not seem like summer in 1963 and ’64 without that song. Perhaps things changed.

We have no new songs of summer today. The heat dome that lived over the upper Midwest the last few days was oppressive and steamy: so uncomfortable my 70-year-old frame couldn’t take the heat after a few hours in it. It has been good for the tomatoes, squash, cucumbers and tomatillos in the garden, so there’s that.

At least we are not in a drought the way we have been during the past few years. In 2012, a time when Iowa field crops were substantially impacted by dryness and crushing heat, I couldn’t wait to get indoors to escape. This heat dome is less severe than that, yet summer heat has a wicked resonance after that fateful year.

What can be done about this heat wave? Hunker down and stick it out.

We will make our home here, and in doing so, make the current heat wave the stuff of legends. We’ll develop grand stories, legends, to be told on blogs, on telephone calls, and video conferences. We’ll tell it in Twitch chats, on Discord, and on text-based social media. We’ll make something out of it like the salsa the heat wave is helping produce.

We’ll make our own musical stories, even if it may not be as good as what Martha and the Vandellas sang. It will be our experience. We will own it. That will be enough to survive the heat wave.

Categories
Living in Society

Favorite Concerts

Last Obama Campaign Rally in Des Moines, Nov. 4, 2012.

Beginning with a Herman’s Hermits concert at Davenport’s Municipal Stadium on Aug. 27, 1966, I’ve attended a lot of live musical performances. In this post, I write about some that stand out. They are listed in chronological order.

Van Morrison – On April 3, 1970, I saw Van Morrison play at the Fillmore East in Manhattan. Members of my senior high school class took a trip to Washington, D.C. and New York. I lived on poker winnings from nightly games with my classmates for the Washington part of the trip. Three of us decided to use one of the free nights in New York to walk from our hotel on Herald Square down to the Fillmore East and see a concert. We had no idea what we were to experience.

Morrison played Brown Eyed Girl, which was popular at the time. Some of my fellow guitar players had tried their hand on that classic in Iowa. The big event was Warner Brothers Records had released the Moondance album in January, and those songs made up most of the show. The whole thing was an experience, including the famous Joshua Light Show. I am thankful for that opportunity even though it was not part of the plan when we left Iowa.

Grateful Dead – When the Grateful Dead played at the University of Iowa Field House on March 20, 1971, I ran a Strong Trouper carbon arc spotlight. The evening started with floor seating, but the crowd promptly stacked all of the chairs on the sides and despite efforts by the campus police to bring order, the band played on. My partner, running a spotlight on the opposite side of the field house, had to leave early to strike a set at Hancher Auditorium. For a while, after campus police turned off the stage lights, I was the only illumination during the performance. I saw the Dead again on Feb. 24, 1973.

Allman Brothers – The Allman Brothers Band was something. When they appeared at the University of Iowa Field House on Feb. 19, 1972 the album they had been working on, Eat A Peach, had been released the previous week. Duane Allman died after a motorcycle accident in October 1971 while they were working on it. The idea of dual lead guitars had not occurred to me but it became a signature sound for the band. I saw them again when they returned on Nov. 9, 1973.

Ravi Shankar – An art student friend and I drove to Cedar Rapids to hear Ravi Shankar with Alla Rakha perform at Sinclair Auditorium at Coe College. The improvisational nature of their music was astounding. I can’t forget it. The date was Feb. 20, 1973.

Eric Clapton – The Mississippi Valley Fairgrounds in Davenport was host to Eric Clapton, Yvonne Elliman, Carl Radle, Jamie Oldaker, and others on July 27, 1974. I had listened to Clapton’s records going back to his work with John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers. The band was clearly into the performance as the sun set over the fairgrounds, making it a memorable evening.

Judy Collins – My friend and I saw Judy Collins perform at the Des Moines Civic Center on July 30, 1982. I proposed marriage to my friend 19 days later. She accepted and we remain married.

B.B. King – My sister and I went to hear B.B. King at the Col Ballroom in Davenport on March 25, 1983. My grade school friend, Red Gallagher opened for the blues legend. There is nothing to say but B.B. was the king.

Sir Elton John – At one of the weirdest concerts I attended, Sir Elton John performed at the Cow Palace in San Francisco as part of Oracle Open World on Oct. 24, 2006. Tens of thousands of Oracle users were in attendance. I knew virtually none of them yet enjoyed the performance. Corporate concerts are just a different vibe.

Bruce Springsteen – The night before the general election, Nov. 4, 2012, President Barack Obama hosted Bruce Springsteen on the streets of Des Moines. My friend Jan and I left a canvassing operation for a house candidate early to drive to Des Moines and be part of Obama’s final campaign rally. The two of us met Obama in the receiving line after his 2006 speech at the Harkin Steak Fry and wanted to get closure on the campaign. No regrets about that decision.

Categories
Living in Society

We’re Going Home – Gordon Lightfoot

Gordon Lightfoot passed on Monday. Early Morning Rain was on my playlist when I performed on the guitar. It is one of my favorite songs of any artist. May he rest in peace.

Categories
Juke Box

Juke Box – She Had Me at Heads Carolina

Maybe I’m making too much of the song “She Had Me at Heads Carolina” by Cole Swindell. It says a lot about contemporary culture in the context of the decline in public schools.

"Heads Carolina, tails California"
Maybe she'd fall for a boy from South Georgia
She's got the bar in the palm of her hand
And she's a '90s country fan like I am
Hey, I got a Chevy, she can flip a quarter
I'd drive her anywhere from here to California
When this song is over, I gotta find her
'Cause she had me at "Heads Carolina"

I’ll have more to say. One thing, though. What does it even mean to have “the bar in the palm of her hand?” Don’t @ me because I know the answer to my question. It’s related to these lines from Shakespeare’s As You Like It:

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts...

I’ve been thinking about this song for a week or so and haven’t processed it. It is a successful song on a couple of levels. It sets a context for the action of a protagonist removed from broader society. At some level we all want that — a place of our own with comfortable surroundings. Yet what is the challenge in that? What is the social good? What is that context of a bar where people catch up with each other and socialize? How is this not a form of veiled misogyny? I’ll be thinking about this for a while.

In the meantime, here is a link to the YouTube video.

Categories
Juke Box

Juke Box – Don’t Dream It’s Over

There is something about the Hammond B-3 organ. We’ll look back on these coronavirus pandemic videos with fondness one day, I predict. (hat tip to David Shorr).

Make it a great weekend!

Don’t Dream It’s Over by Crowded House.
Categories
Living in Society

After the Democratic Primary

Iowa County Democrats central committee meeting on May 10, 2022.

Iowa and the country are heading into a weird place. The combination of isolated lives made more so by the pandemic, social media, and unceasing stimulus from people and corporations wanting to convince us of something brought us here. The sense of loss is palpable.

I miss the political environment we had when I was growing up, when Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson were president. Democrats were in the minority in Iowa yet I felt there was a secure place for people whose opinions differed from the majority. That feeling was lost, slowly eroded until it was gone. There are few prospects of it returning. All that is visible is a bare wound with the bandages of society ripped off. We are becoming a place where our assumptions about feeling welcome are challenged.

To meet this — that is, to maintain mental health — I return to specific actions in a limited context, to wit: Once the winners of the June 7 primary election are known, it’s hammer down to the Nov. 8 general election. There will be plenty of political work to do in that five-month period. The Iowa Democratic Party reached out for an organizing event this week in the First Congressional District, and I plan to do my part. After the rout in 2020, why won’t I give up? There is a bigger picture related to needing something useful and fulfilling to do.

It begins with the idea people are not that interested in my stories about old campaigns. I told my story about helping elect Lyndon Johnson in 1964, yet there are only so many times that old saw can be brought out. It still cuts wood among people who haven’t heard it. Trouble is, most people I hang with have heard it.

As I age my views become less relevant to people on life’s main stage. I’m being mostly forgotten, not quite a has-been, but one can see it from here. I’m okay with that. I remain a predictable Democratic vote and can bring a few people with me when needed.

As far as the economy goes, my fixed income isn’t a driver. When the curtain falls on this mortal coil, my payments to the gas, telephone and cable company won’t be missed. My insurance company may miss me, yet once the final payments are made the relationship will be over.

We need short-term projects, in which to engage. Projects like the 2022 midterm election campaign. It helps us forget the hopelessness of modern society and the hegemony of rich folk hard at work deconstructing what few protections remain in government programs like Social Security and Medicare. I miss the old days, yet look forward to the new, even if the sense of loss is palpable.

I think there is a song about that.

Categories
Juke Box

Juke Box – Garden Song

Inch by inch, row by row. That’s how a gardener builds a life. I need a couple of days away from the blog after 97 daily posts in a row. While I’m gone, here’s Arlo Guthrie teaching us how to sing a song. Hope you have a happy time zone!

Categories
Juke Box

Juke Box – Canned Goods

Greg Brown’s story about Iowa is one I’d like to believe.