Madame George and A Day In The Life: "The Sixties" Two Greatest Songs



"Painter Photographing Scultpure" (c) Paul Heidelberg

...Tell 'em PH said that.


Also, Van Morrison's Astral Weeks (Madame George is the sixth track on that album) is at least among the top five albums from "The Sixties," right up there with Sgt. Pepper's.



Note: I first went to see Van Morrison perform in the Fall of 1971 in San Francisco at Winterland (this was five years before The Last Waltz was held, and filmed, at that venue). I later saw Van the Man perform a great concert in Granada, Spain in February, 2006.



The Granada concert was a very good one: everything from Brown Eyed Girl to Your Cheating Heart to his familiar tunes about "the wind and the rain." (After I purchased Morrison's great C&W work Pay The Devil, I recognized several of his C&W covers I had heard in Granada.)



A note on that concert: Morrison was backed by about 15 musicians -- they were all hitting it that night, as I yelled to them as I saw them boarding their bus after the concert, gave them the thumbs up and yelled, "Yeah," sounding much like Morrison, I think, like many of his "Yeahs" on many of his works. When he went into "Your Cheating Heart, I yelled "Yeah" and I swear I saw him looking up to me in the balcony, probably wondering, "Who is that person who sounds like me."



And, a strange note: At the time Spain was suffering through a severe drought. I don't know how long it had been since it had rained in Granada, but guess what was occurring, as if tribute to Morrison, as audience members and Van's musicians left the venue: the wind and the rain, that what was occurring.



I was standing in the rain when I gave my thumb's up to Van's band: my succinct music review, you might say. In reply, they all just beamed. They knew they had all just nailed it -- Van included, of course.



Before the concert, I went to a cafe to have a drink while I waited. I listened to an English-speaking woman ordering in English, and assumed she was one of the many British expats who were living in Spain and were also waiting for the show to start.



I thought, "Learn the language of the country you are living in."



Well, one of the highlights of the concert, besides Morrison's great singing, his great Sax work, and others' great Sax work, fine piano work, fine guitar work, was this woman's backing vocals along with another female backing vocalist and a male backing vocalist.



Oh, that is why she doesn't speak Spanish well, I thought. She doesn't live here -- she was probably performing in Sweden the night before, etc.



After the concert, I asked one of the crew if the concert had been recorded.



He asked, suspiciously, "Why?"



I answered, "Because it was a great concert."



He then held up a small black object. It had been recorded. I have thought Morrison ought to release an album culled from that night's tunes. (This was far in advance of the live Astral Weeks album.)



I went to the concert to treat myself for completing my novel-written-in-the-highest-mountains in Spain, when I lived there from 2004 to 2006; I lived "sud de Granada" for two years, two months. In my novel CHASING FREEDOM, REMEMBERING THE SIXTIES, I fictionalized my "Night At Winterland" in 1971, which might be best described as harrowing.



Read the book to find out what I mean by harrowing, and to find out what "The Sixties" was really about. FYI, The Sixties was circa 1965-1975. Musically speaking, the early 1960s was a continuation of the 1950s, with songs by such persons as Bobby Vinton and Gene Pitney (Gene Pitney was good, let it be noted: Check out The New Riders Of The Purple Sage's version of his Hello Mary Lou).



Note: the cover illustration to my novel that you see a representation of on this blog was created by using modern computer software to alter a 35 mm transparency taken "in the bowels" of The San Francisco Art Institute, the best art college in the USA "hands down" during The Sixties.



The title of the artwork is: "Painter Photographing Sculpture." (The work is suitable for framing, as they say; I have had paintings and photographs exhibited at many galleries and I must say there is no way I would sell this work in a gallery for the price of this book; my idea is you buy two copies. Take off the cover of one book to frame, and keep one edition of the book intact.)



(The book is available at such places as http://www.amazon.com/ and http://www.bn.com.)/


Regarding the SFAI -- I attended, and graduated from the college, and it was no easy task. The first year reminded me of boot camp in the U.S. Air Force (four years service -- Honorable Discharge).



It took a long time for people there to accept you, including one strange dude who used a painting studio corner as his home. He was a mascot of sorts I guess, but was one strange dude with a very strange look in his eyes, all the time.



As I write in CHASING FREEDOM, Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead studied at the SFAI and, "before she made it big," Janis Joplin worked in the school cafe for "bread" -- the kind you spend, not the kind you eat.



Get Astral Weeks. I have the original and the live version recorded in Los Angeles and released in 2009, and prefer the original (sans irritating crowd noises, for one thing; for another, great drumming by Modern Jazz Quartet drummer Connie Kay).



Astral Weeks is not Psychedelia. When I first heard the album in a small, and I mean small, cafe in Matala, Crete, in 1969, I thought: "What a great combination of jazz, folk and rock."



Cover Illustration for CHASING FREEDOM (c) Copyright Paul Heidelberg.

You want to hear some Good Music? Do not delay, and get Muddy Waters Woodstock Album

Some Cold Ones To Go With The Blues

Recorded in Woodstock, New York, in 1975, this fine work shows you how good musical, literary or visual art is TIMELESS.



To Paraphrase Muddy (aka Mckinley Morganfield), don't be a cheapskate -- spend some money and get this great music. It is one of the best albums I have ever bought, and that includes Bob Dylan's first 11 albums (and plenty more since), about 19 CDs by Van Morrison, not to mention other works by such people as John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, and Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Wagner.



I got my CD "cheap off amazon.com."



I think my www pen pal Bob Margolin, a longtime guitarist with Muddy and his band, first told me about "The Muddy Waters Woodstock Album." (Bob plays on the album.)



You might start with track six, Muddy's tune "Love, Deep As The Ocean."



In the song, Muddy is telling the woman he really loves her when he sings such lines as:



"I loves you honey, like a schoolboy loves his pie."



For all you guitarists out there, on this tune Muddy is showing you how to play slide guitar. He is backed on the work by such great musicians as Levon Helm on drums, Paul Butterfield on blues harp and Pinetop Perkins on piano.



Go out and get yourself some of this pie, brothers and sisters.



(I just checked -- www.amazon.com has the The Muddy Waters Woodstock Album priced at a buyer-friendly $6.17.)



Get it and open up your ears: You won't be disappointed.



(Here is a photo of 20 half liters of Lowenbrau Oktoberfest beers, purchased in Germany the month after they were created; you can have some cold ones vicariously to help you enjoy Music at its Best. Photograph (c) Copyright Paul Heidelberg.)



-- PH

Jakob Dylan's Women + Country: Good Music

With this work Jakob Dylan is saying, "I'm not just Bob Dylan's son, I'm my own man."

(That's probably what "Papa Dylan" told him [and what Ginsberg probably would have thought, also].)

Note: I learned that ([ ]) at The Miami Herald, just as Papa Dylan learned a certain guitar riff in England (the song is on his Another Side Of Bob Dylan album). Am plugging in now that until hearing the work again recently, I thought he had picked it up in Italy, prompting me to write: Re: Italia, I've been there, done that, as in living there for a year and a half and making 10 visits to Roma, five to Firenze, three to Venezia, trips to Ischia, Capri, Sicilia, etc., and a month traveling Europe, including a week each in Amsterdam, London and Paris.

And this came while serving in the U.S. Air Force; I knew men -- no, make that boys -- who never left the base in that time. Unbelievable.

One more thing: I just searched the Internet and discovered Jakob Dylan is 40; sometimes it takes that long "to come out from under the shadow" of a famous parent. This is similar to a remark by a well known American novelist when he said at a literary seminar in Key West that he was still being referred to as a "rising young novelist" when he was well past age 40.

Thoughts and True Wild West/True American Southwest/True Country (check out the dirt road in the middle of this town) photo work (c) Copyright Paul Heidelberg, MMX.

(Add 1 on October 13, 2010, the first full day of the miners being brought to the surface in Chile. I had thought this weeks ago, after listening to the Women + Country They've Trapped Us Boys tune (Track 9) about three times: at first I thought the words were metaphorical but then I realized he is singing about miners trapped in a mine. Jakob Dylan wrote this tune, and released this CD, long before the Chilean miners were trapped, prompting me to think -- we have another prophetic Dylan; it must run in the family.)

Musical Note: Johann Sebastian Bach, Domenico Scarlatti and George Frederic Handel were all born in 1685/Also... (See Below)

...Each died in the 1750s: Bach in 1750, Scarlatti in 1757 and Handel in 1759.

So, 1685 was a good year for musicians, and music.

This photo, taken in Weimar, Germany, was shot at the house where J.S. Bach lived from 1708 to 1717; two of his 21 children were born here.

Photograph Copyright (c) Paul Heidelberg

John Pickering (Revisited): The man who sang on Buddy Holly's "Oh Boy"

sings again.

(For a story about Pickering and the great Lubbock, Texas, native, scroll down to earlier post in 2009.)

Lester Young, Teddy Wilson, Gene Ramey, Jo Jones/and/ Possibly the best work by a Beatle, Post-Beatles Breakup

First, The Beatles:

Sorry Paul and John (Rest In Peace, Brother), but Pablo's pick for quite probably the best vocal work and musicianship by a former Beatle during the post-Beatles Era: Great music by "Georgie Boy," as PM called him affectionatedly at times, George Harrison.

To find this out yourself, do as blues great McKinley Morganfield (aka Muddy Waters) urged for years: Don't Be Cheap, one of the deadliest of sins, spend some cash and get the digitally-remastered version of The Traveling Wilburys Volume I ("Google" Traveling Wilburys I to find out some very neat info such as wikipedia's describing how this great supergroup came to be: the info includes Harrison's needing to record side B to an upcoming release; he stops by Tom Petty's house to get his guitar before he and Petty head to Bobby Zimmerman's [aka Bob Dylan's] as Dylan had a studio in his house).

It all comes together with good work by all the musicians, including great vocals by Roy Orbison and fine guitar work, including Jeff Lynne's playing on Dylan's "Like A Ship," a bonus track on the digitally-remastered 2007 release. Pablo thinks that Jeff Lynne's guitar work on "Like A Ship" is what Dylan was after in his quest for the Holy Grail of fine electric guitar work for many, many years.

Back to Harrison: First listen to his excellent vocals on "Heading For the Light." The saxophone work by Jim Horn is over the top -- some Lester Young-like sounds would be nice here (see writing about Young below.)

The real treat to Harrison's work on Traveling Wilburys Volume I is the bonus track on the 2007 release: "Maxine." Great story, "told via singing" by Harrison on this tune, especially his pronounciation of "Lover," which takes you right back to "The Beat-les," as Ed Sullivan called them.

Some musing on Dylan's work on The Traveling Wilburys Volume I: Pablo thinks Dylan needed "a lift" at this point in his career, and life, and got it here. Pablo thinks the first Wilburys work was an impetus for later work such as "Time Out Of Mind" and "Modern Times."

In "Tweeter and The Monkey Man" Dylan gets into Dylanesque narrative this writer finds reminiscient of some of his best '60s work.

Pablo likes this release far better than the next edition of The Traveling Wilburys. In part because the album was recorded in the Spring of 1988 and Orbison died later that year.

Note: to music company executives (those that are left, I write half-jokingly) -- Release "Not Alone Anymore" as a single, in part for a tribute to this great Texas born singer (must be the water, you've got Buddy Holly, Lead Belly, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Orbison, Lightnin' Hopkins, Mance Lipscomb, Willie Nelson, Edgar Winter, Johnny Winter and many other great musicians coming from the Lone Star State).

Release this tune as a single, MP3 format, etc. and spotlight this vocalist's unique voice (many younger music aficionados have never heard his music or his name, most likely).

Add 1: Thinking later about this "Best Beatles, Afterwards," I have to think about John Lennon, of course, and works such as "Imagine." I think it is a testament to non-Proustian elements of time that memories of Lennon might fade; in several works, the French writer Marcel Proust kept having vivid childhood memories that made it seem like "Yesterday" was only "Yesterday." But after 30 years -- don't forget what happened 30 years ago this December -- remembrances are not always "Proustian clear."

Also, Ringo Starr has done some great work with his All-Starr (get it) Band; I first caught the group gigging on a late night TV program circa 1989. Use the Internet to check out the line-up in his first All-Starr group (it includes several former members of The Band.) Also, check out the line-up for 2010, which includes Edgar Winter, another great Texas musician mentioned above.

But, I never found McCartney's post-Beatles work to approach what he did with the Beatles (especially during the "Wings Era").

So, let's give "Georgie Boy" some long-deserved, and long-overdue credit. Get that digitally remastered version of "The Traveling Wilburys Volume I" and listen to "Heading for the Light," before you get to "Maxine," which is a bonus track -- released on this new Wilburys work after Harrison's passing, of course. The writing, singing and Harrison's passion are superb.


Take Two on this writing involves some of the best jazz you will ever hear: The Lester Young/Teddy Wilson Quartet's "Pres & Teddy" featuring virtuoso tenor sax man Lester Young, pianist Teddy Wilson, Jo Jones on drums and Gene Ramey on bass.

(Here comes Texas, Again: Wilson and Ramey were both born in Austin.)

Listen to a tune such as the opening track "All Of Me." Great work by all, including great drum work by Jones (if you think the White Stripe drummer, on one well-known release, anyway, accomplished any more than imitating a sick five old banging on a drum, you need to check out drummers such as Jo Jones and Art Blakey; people such as Jones and Blakey go virtually unrecognized while people who do not know what they are doing haul in the cash).

So let me close with these thoughts: With the (usually) "wonderful world of the www" and such things as You Tube, you have no excuse not to check out such great musicians as Young, Wilson, Ramey and Jones, Blakey, Lead Belly and Lightnin' Hopkins and others mentioned in this piece.

In fact, after recently buying an Art Blakey album, I "googled" drummer Gene Ramey, which led me to the Lester Young-Teddy Wilson Quartet work, which I then bought after listening to a minute or two of the outstanding "All Of Me."

Musically Yours,

Pablo
aka
Paul Heidelberg
writer, poet and artist

Charlie Parker Lives