Dusty in the Wind

Dusty Rhodes, the incorrigible, free spirit, and pinch hitter extroadinaire, and often game-winner of the 1954 New York Giants died last week of a variety of illnesses at 82.

The Alabama-born Rhodes with the great baseball-name, came to the Giants in 1952 and lived up to his reputation of being a hard-hitting, hard-drinking and defensively-challenged left fielder. Rhodes, who played in only seven seasons with the Giants, retired in 1959 with a career .253 average and 54 homers in 576 games.

But in 1954, he had a gift for the dramatic and won many a game with a timely, clutch hit, including in the '54 Series when he went 4-for-6 with two homers and seven RBI in the Giants' four-game sweep of the heavily favored, 111-win Cleveland Indians. Rhodes, had a left-handed stroke that was tailor-made for the short right field porch of 257 or feet at the old Polo Grounds. He won the first game with a pinch-hit, 10th-inning three-run homer off Bob Lemon just inside the right field foul pole, about 296 feet away, and the next day, delivered a pinch single in the fifth and a home run in the seventh against Early Wynn, as keys to a 3-1 Giants win. In Game 3, he came back to hit a two-run pinch single off the Indians' Mike Garcia to spark a 6-2 Giants win. For all three pinch-hitting opportunities in the Series, Giants manager Leo Durocher had Rhodes bat for the legendary Monte Irvin.

I saw Dusty on Tuesday, June 29, 1954, when he stroked a timely pinch hit in the 13th inning to win an incredibly exciting 4 to 3 game for the rival Giants against my favorite, the Brooklyn Dodgers at the Polo Grounds. Don Hoak had homered in the top of the 13th for Beloved Bums, and I celebrated briefly before Rhodes came through in the clutch once again. Although, I was a strong Dodger rooter, I could not help but like Rhodes who seemed to love the game and the key moments he was brought in to tempt fate.

"It's a sad day for me," Monte Irvin said recently. "Dusty and I were such good friends. Even though he was born in Alabama, he was like a brother to all the black players. Dusty was color-blind. He sure did like the good life, though, which would drive Leo crazy. I remember one time we were in Japan playing an exhibition series and Leo and I were standing in the hotel lobby late one night when Dusty came through the door. Leo said: 'Are you coming or are you going?'"

In his autobiography, "Nice Guys Finish Last," Durocher described Rhodes as "the worst fielder who ever played in a big league game who made training rules forgotten" but added: "Dusty was the kind of buffoon who kept a club confident and happy. And boy could he hit! Between him and Willie Mays, there was nothing but laughter in our clubhouse." Willie Mays recently called Rhodes "a fabulous hitter and a great friend." "He stayed at my house and I've never had a greater friend."

Music, Music, Music

It was a weekend of the local Tinner Hill Blues Festival in a local park, two-incredibly talented rockers at Verizon Center, a classical music farewell party for the beloved high school orchestra leader of the last 14 years (and a 42 year inspiring career in the area), and the Ultimate Doo-Wops at Wolf Trap. For variety and quality of music, it was hard to top.

At the blues festival, over a couple of hours, I saw a group of well-heeled blues rockers--Curtis Blues, Deanna Bogart, Daryl Davis First Ladies of the Blues, Angela Hill, Stacy Brooks, Ruby Hayes, Nadine Rae and the All Stars, and Sheryl Warner and the Southside Homewreckers with Gregg Kimball, Warner Williams. A couple of hours later, at Verizon, I saw two of the best of many years, Clapton and Winwood, effortlessly weaving their magic and enjoying their catalog of wonderful music.

The next afternoon, I saw and heard a wonderfully talented assortment of students from over a great 42-year career of Ms. Gretta Sandberg, sharing their playing, conducting, and composing. It was a great living legacy for an outstanding educator, who had a great and easy (and a natural humor-laden) way of working with students.

And lastly, I saw some veterans and newer replacements from the following veteran groups: The Drifters; Jimmy Beaumont & The Skyliners; The Contours featuring Sylvester Potts; Willie Rogers & The Soul Stirrers; The Clovers featuring Harold Winley; Randy & the Rainbows featuring Randy Safuto; The Marcels; The Edsels; and The Blue Suede Orchestra. The enjoyment of the performers. and their talents on display fueled an appreciative and lively audience.

The range of music, the talents and the enthusiasm of each of the artists for the music, and how each style of music relates to modern life made it noteworthy and particularly interesting weekend.

Music Exchange

The power of music was apparent at the wonderful joint concert of the McLean High School Orchestra and the Detmold, Germany, Jugendorchester (Youth Orchestra) at the Craighill S. Burks Theater in McLean High School. The concert program, presented by more than 75 musicians of the combined orchestras, featured the music of Brahms, Mendelssohn, Bizet, and Tchaikovsky, and then an encore of music from Grease, the Musical, by Jacobs and Casey. It was a magical and emotional evening bringing two cultures together again in a series in each county that goes back fifteen years. The power of the music and cooperation building pieces of friendship, harmony, and memories for life, was magical and breathtaking.

Bruuuce

Bruce put on a great show at DC Verizon Center. As usual, he had an incredible dose of Energy, and he gave it and everything else for the audience. The song choice for requests was great, and his song choice were generally fine, but towards the end, in the darkness of the lyrics, his choices lost some of their energy and some of the incredible vitality of the singer and his audience that are usually unified. There is a fine and more complete review of a first-timer at http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/bruce-springsteen/

The Power of Song -- L Cohen

Leonard Cohen filled the Merriweather Post Pavillion in Columbia MD, and the Washington Post provided a mainly positive review that went off on a sour note of negativity about the mix of sound and the skill of the side musicians that was unjustified. In reality, the concert was truly exceptional, with only the high ticket prices, and the rainy and cold weather detracting from a mostly magical evening.

The sound quality was as clear and crisp as a concert in a fine symphony hall; it was well beyond what I have come to expect at a rock concert. It was easy to hear Cohen's somewhat raspy voice that improved over the course of the night, and to hear the fine musicianship of the sidemen and back up vocalists and the beautiful arrangements of the songs that were close to exquisite and seemed to tightly surround the words. The sidemen added to the richness of songs and their thoughtful lyrics, and all played off the artistry of Leonard Cohen very well.

The serene yet playful 74-year-old Canadian song-poet put on a fine three-hour show (with a 30-minute recess) at the outdoor venue that was filled with intensity and easygoing grace, that complemented the meticulous musicianship. And the behatted man with the white-hair - looked alternately elderly and youthful, took turns being sad and nimble and debonair, depending on whether he's holding his fedora over his heart or wearing it on his head. He crouched through some songs as if Yogi Berra was calling a perfect game.

The crowd laughed and applauded lines like "I haven't been this happy since the end of World War II," in "Waiting for the Miracle," the elegantly stately song in which he sang, "the maestro says it's Mozart, but it sounds like bubble gum."

Cohen hasn't toured in nearly 15 years; he last hit boards when "I was 60, just a kid with a crazy dream." His stature has rightly grown as an iconic wordsmith of the first generation of rock singer-songwriters, a philosopher of love and death, sexual ecstasy, and societal doom, whose cigarette-scarred singing voice has grown more effective even as its range has become more limited.

This time around, Cohen was backed by a superb 10-piece band whose standouts included Spanish bandurria player Javier Mas, keyboardist Neil Larsen, and a chorus consisting of Cohen's cowriter Sharon Robinson and sisters Charley and Hattie Webb.

Early on in the first set, Cohen performed "Everybody Knows," his song of political and personal betrayal from his fruitful late-'80s electronic phase. And everybody seemed happy with the turn of events, especially Cohen, who skipped on and off the stage each time he came and went over the course of two sets and three encores. (He didn't display as much gymnastic prowess, however, as the Webb sisters, who executed dual handstands early on during the dystopian "The Future," signaling that the marathon show to come was going to be as playfully theatrical as it was satisfyingly serious-minded.)

"So much of the world is plunged in chaos and suffering, it's remarkable that we have the opportunity to gather in places like this," Cohen said before "Anthem." For a guy known first and foremost as a lyricist, Cohen pays acute attention to every acoustic detail. Every song got its due, and every Hammond B-3 or sax solo - from Larsen and multi-instrumentalist Dino Soldo, respectively - came through as crystal clear as the vocals.

One of Cohen's specialties has always been writing words that are about music - music as a source of spiritual sustenance without which the soul would wither and die. "But then, you don't really care for music, do you?" he sang in "Hallelujah," issuing the ultimate put-down in a blood-and-guts version that contrasted gravely with Jeff Buckley's ethereal cover.

In Cohen's apocalyptic encore of "First We Take Manhattan," he indicated his narrator's deprived state by asking: "Remember me, I used to live for music?" And in "Chelsea Hotel No. 2," he got a big laugh for rhyming "you told me again you preferred handsome men, but for me you would make an exception." But then he cut to the song's core by singing about the gift he was giving to his reverential audience at that very moment: "We are ugly," he sang, in an unpretty voice. "But we have the music."

Newspaper sectionism

As newspapers shrink their staffs, all of the sections of the papers are becoming more and more interchangeable. The Washington Post recently discontinued its separate business and Sunday book review sections, and merged them into News and Outlook respectively. This is coming at a time when I often find myself reading a story and going back to first page of the section of the paper to check on what section I am reading. In USA Today terms, Life becomes Sport, or Money or News, and vice versa.

While the particular section of the paper does not really matter much, it is a commentary on today's life that items and sectors of our life are often interchangeable. Sports items are often found in the entertainment, business or news sections--sports are more and more a business or entertainment in its most commercial form. Entertainment is more and more a business if not a sport, and entertainment figures are often in the news. Recent business news often seems like the news of a sport with the chaotic rise and fall and hopefully rise again of the stock market. Life is complex but simpler in some ways.

Change you can believe in...

The economic challenges we are facing are having a sad but sometimes interesting effect on our society and daily lives. While the daily newspapers we wake up to through the major label-run music industry that entertained us at night are being threatened with extinction (and some papers and labels have already passed away), many other institutions and industries that affect our daily lives are facing similar problems and restructuring (some of it overdue).

A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education analogized the problems of the newspaper industry with the issues faced by institutions of higher education (it is on the web at the following address: http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i30/30a02101.htm). The pay scale of corporate officers in every industry, the work of bankers and the financial industry, and the need for staff in every field are also being rethought and revolutionized. Perhaps most prominently, the auto industry and the views on the need to save the environment are also being rethought. The world is being reshaped at a pace that we could not have anticipated just a year or so ago.