"Speed Of The Sound Of Loneliness" --Griffith's Prine

 The world's a little lonelier with the passing of singer/songwriter Nanci Griffith, here singing John Prine's "Speed Of The Sound Of Loneliness":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNBeP8dzYdg

Every time I saw her in concert she put on a great show that seemed like it was meant just for you and me. May she rest in peace and song.

YOUTUBE.COM

Nanci Griffith - Speed Of The Sound Of Loneliness

Nanci Griffith sings Speed Of The Sound Of Loneliness (written by John

Bobbified and Dylanized at 80

 

Yes, I hear that Dylan turned 80,

a week or so ago.

He always seemed the eternal youth.

Can 80 be the new 30,

or is it just part of the flow?

I always was suspicious

about drawing lines and such

Making judgments by ages.

But does it really matter,

all that much?

Dylan always had an interesting tie

to time and to place,

and talent and art,

among other things we rate.

He was time out of mind,

watching the river flow.

Yet timely, untimely

or sometimes ahead of time,

being present, living in the past,

pointing to the future, all at one time.

He sang about staying forever young

yet trafficked in music however old.

He never wanted to be the voice of his generation;

yet sometimes played as if he wanted

that veneration.

His name a bit poetic

stood for freedom flashing.

It had little connection,

to his real name, somewhat clashing

He was a zimmer room just the same

A Robert Allen man,

A man walled

within a name.

His songs were ever changing as he performed

or spawned them differently

each time he takes the stage

He spewed them all a little diffidently.

He says he never listens to a recorded Dylan version,

because his songs are not stopped in time or place.

Never ready for reversion.

His voice and styles are ever changing,

never quite the same.

Always rearranging

As if it were a game.

He croaked, he crooned

He moaned, he mooned.

He countrified, he gospelled.

He quick talked, he spooned.

He slurred, he annunciated,

He pronounced clearly.

He seemed mocking and joking

But sometimes sang so sincerely.

He never stayed in one place

One age, or in one time.

He radio hosted

He painted pictures to be posted,

His own master pieces.

That modestly increases.

He prized in Nobel literature

When he hardly ever proses

Yet poetically speaking he ranks.

Even in all of his poses.

He claimed heritage to Woody Guthrie,

He created, he recreated,

He posed, he supposed.

His youth was a fable;

For the times he always changed it,

it never was quite stable

When asked how many folk singers,

they were in the early 60’s.

He answered in fractions, or percentages

Or in complete fictions.

When asked what his songs were about,

Dylan often retorted:

"Some are about four minutes, some … five,

…some, believe it or not, … eleven or twelve."

Some never ending, he smiled and he snorted.

He liked to be elusive

Went from authentic to commercial

His songs sold cars, soda, ladies garments, and computers.

Always controversial.

He plugged in at Newport,

When Seeger cut his chord.

He banded with the Hawks,

Spewing walk outs and dis-chords.

His songs were wrapped in albums

They were copied and covered.

But often were bootlegged

Stolen and pirated, and always rediscovered.

He recently sold his catalogue

To a too big to fail corporation

but did he ever own it.

Is this cause for celebration

Sometimes he seems

Deserving of all the time in the world

and at others hardly a second.

The length of this musing

may be worth it or a waste.

Time is elusive

and we can’t address it in haste.

His songs get discovered

by artists many-styled

there are tapes from the basement

and songs in the aisles.

I saw him on that first trip

to the bright lights of NYCity

in a dimly side room

that was crowded and oh so gritty

It was at Gerdes Folk City,

And a hat that he passed

I put a quarter in the lining

It was good timing

His fame was cast.

I was officially a paid fan.

He played for us a little longer,

He smiled and he harmonicized

like a tambourine man, but a little stronger.

A quarter at the time seemed large to a teen

the price of a yearbook,

a ticket to the silver screen

Seems hardly worth anything now

certainly not worth a year or a book

in our cyrpto constantly changing

world of pay it was hardly worth a look.

So Dylan at 80 celebrated

In concerts and art shows.

His freedom flashing

His world aglaze

His never ending tour never slows,

And he still can amaze.

Is he worth it

to pay tribute

to an everchanging symbol

I'm not sure…

But I know this

He’s a poet and a riddle

And that's why I waited,

some days past his birthday

To ponder and critique

He surely is worth it.

Are these thoughts a worth saving

I am still not so sure.

I went to “save” and “save as”

Ultimately, I wanted them to endure.

Time magazine that chronicler of life

said that Bob Dylan

lectured for his Nobel Prize

the way he’s lived his life:

on his own terms and in his own time

free of other man’s strife.

Dylan never suffered

false fake, or clayed-footed prophets

He’s the enemy of treason

Some say he was born to rock it.

He’s the enemy of strife

He’s the enemy of leisure

He’s the enemy of the unlived

meaningless pleasure

He ain't no falsified prophet

He just knows what he knows

He’s now modeled for a Hibbing monument

Clayed from his head to his toes

He goes where only the lonely can go

At 30 or 80

His lyrics are studied in college classes

As fanciful and as weighty.

11Michael Perlin, Cindy Mullaney and 9 others

8 Comments

Happy New Year!

 From the sunrise on the morning before New Year's day, I saw a sign of promise of the bright times ahead in the New Year. I wish all of my friends and family a Happy and Healthy New Year.

A Special Birthday Plus One

I appreciate all of my Facebook friends who sent in greetings, warm wishes, and other thoughts.  It made my birthday celebration even more complete and special. 

I have to admit it was a rather unusual birthday, yet a very wonderful one – although any birthday during the Pandemic is rather unusual with its disruptions, limitations, and challenges.  But this birthday had even more than its share of unique thoughts, feelings and special effects.  

A week before my birthday, I had returned to the house I grew up in, sorting through (and clearing out) many memories of family life from all stages of my life and even before, from pre-birth, childhood, through college and into adulthood seeing myself, my family, and some friends in some new ways.  So many thoughts passed through my heart, soul, and mind that I feel even more prepared for the future.  My birthday had its Facebook and other greetings, and friends who sent in videos sharing memories, songs, and comedy--these further Philled out the day, and my perspective on the present and what lies ahead. 

To borrow a little from a book I am currently reading—"Little Fires Everywhere,” my mind became a vast eternal place where the present I am living, and the past I was remembering (or even did not know as well before), and the future that I look forward to, all existed at once.  My thoughts and images became enhanced, seeing all of these stages simultaneously like a three (or even more) dimensional way of thinking, feeling, and seeing.  I appreciate all who are or have been in my life and I look forward to getting back to seeing more people physically and renewing and enhancing what has become an only virtual pursuit. 

While this pandemic has been devastating in many respects, I am hopeful that it will remind us of the core values, pleasures, family, and friendships that are truly important in life.  Thanks for allowing me to share these thoughts and for being a part of them.       

John Lewis and His Legacy

We mourn the loss of Congressman John Lewis, an iconic figure driven by values of equity and human dignity. His ideas and his values drove his actions, and he often risked his life and physical well-being for his strong sense of morality. No matter what situation he was presented with, he did not seem to get down and instead he fought hard to get a better result, not only for himself, but for others in his situation. His attitudes reflected his everlasting hope for the more perfect union that we strive for.

I had a chance to meet him for a few minutes before he accepted the U.S. Holocaust’s Museum’s Elie Wiesel Award for 2016. In our brief discussion, he seemed very humble and approachable, and wanted to hear about my work at the U.S. Department of Education and my first litigation assignment, helping to desegregate the Wilcox County public schools, eighteen years after the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Wilcox County was just a few counties down the road from his home county, Pike County, and while he shared some of his experiences in the Pike County public schools, he wanted to hear more about what I had encountered in Wilcox County.

Congressman Lewis had an exceptional moral compass, directing him to take on many issues and in all of them work for the dignity and the rights of all people. We will miss his strong commitment to what is right, and his eternal optimism; his memory will encourage us to build on his legacy.

Eternally Ripping It Up--Whoooo!

For those of us who think we are perennial rock n’ rollers, it is hard to believe that Little Richard, an energetic extension of Richard Wayne Penniman could become 87, let alone that he could die.

His youth seemed eternal, his infinite energy and spirit fueled by multiple generations, genders, and races seemed like it never could run out—It seemed infinite and endless. He was the wild and raw youth in all of us, a bolt of lightning that blazed a fire across the musical sky and a raucous product of the pin-stripped, cold-war driven, post-war 50s that tried to keep a safe and secure cover on a youth movement that was boiling under.

A simple announcement interrupted the homebound pandemic mask-driven 20-20s: “Little Richard, the self-proclaimed 'The Originator,' 'The Emancipator,' 'The Architect of Rock and Roll' built his ground-breaking sound with a boiling blend of boogie-woogie, rhythm and blues and gospel, died last Saturday of natural causes at the age of 87.”

His music seemed super natural, it demanded attention, it pounded and raged on the keyboard strings, it palpitated the pedals of the pulsing piano, it pounded the beat into your bloodstream, your veins, and your mind until it rocked you into motion, and you could no longer ignore it. His music kept a knockin, it ripped it up, it tutti fruttied ah ruddied your soul, it long-tall Sallied and ultimately bop bop a lulahed, and jenny, jenny, jennied into your heart.

He came from the roots of gospel and other spirits--his father was a church deacon, a brick mason, who sold bootlegged moonshine on the side and owned a Macon Georgia. nightclub called the Tip In Inn--and his peak was short-lived, his transcendent spark was boldly lit in 1955 through 1957. Little Richard shouted, moaned, screamed and trilled his way through a string of hits like “Tutti Frutti,” “Long Tall Sally,” “Good Golly, Miss Molly” and “Lucille,” all the while pounding the piano like a man gone controllably wild, punctuating his lyrics with an occasional shrill “whoooo!” And just as quickly as he emerged, on October 12, 1957, he cut his career suddenly short, when he was performing in Australia, and saw a blaze across the sky (now known to be the Russian satellite Sputnik), and took it as a sign that he needed to return to his religious roots and become a preacher.

Time Magazine said he played “songs that sounded like nonsense … but whose beat seemed to hint of unearthly pleasures centered somewhere between the gut and the gutter.” His music drew in both young black and white fans at a time when parts of the United States still were strictly segregated. “I’ve always thought that rock ‘n’ roll brought the races together,” Richard once told an interviewer. “Although I was black, the fans didn’t care. I used to feel good about that.” When white artists like Elvis and Pat Boone tried to cover Little Richard songs, they toned it down, trying to tame the wildness of rock-and-roll, and make it “safer” for the pop audience.

He returned to rock in the 60s and Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, James Brown, Otis Redding, Elton John, David Bowie, Bob Dylan, Rod Stewart, Bruce Springsteen, and Prince, a galaxy of rock stars, all cited Little Richard as a major influence. Jimi Hendrix, who played in Richard’s band in the mid-1960s, said he wanted to use his guitar the way Richard used his voice. When the Beatles heard him, they wanted to open for him, and during an intermission, Little Richard taught Paul the woos, oohs and howls that showed up in “I Saw Her Standing There” and many other Beatles songs.

There was a very gentle side to Little Richard, and there was no one quite like him in rock and roll; Little Richard was the original, never meant to get old and never meant to die.

“Ain’t No Sunshine When They're Gone”; On Second Thought, Yes There Is...

Recently, we experienced the loss of two gifted, singer-songwriters of somewhat different styles and talents; the two in their own way and through their own routes reached out to our minds and hearts and spirits. Bill Withers worked as an aircraft mechanic before becoming a singer-songwriter, while John Prine was a mailman as he started his path to his songwriting and singing career. Both seemed to have gathered their passions, their power, and their unique talent from their previous careers.

I had the pure luck and privilege of seeing Bill Withers in DC on his debut tour in the early 70s; I was there as a part-time rock critic (who was a mild-manner lawyer by day, and by night a rock enthusiast). He seemed to communicate the vulnerability that we each felt in our respective roles, but he had a rare quality through the power of his voice and words that made a very strong first and lasting impression. His “Lean on Me” was a spiritual lead in, anchor, and title to the namesake movie about my high school in Paterson NJ. His songs had the easy power of anthems. it has become an anthem for health workers and our current times of mutual reliance and dedication.

His family described him as “A solitary man with a heart driven to connect to the world at large, with his poetry and his music, he spoke honestly to people and connected them to each other.” This became very clear during these weeks of isolation and connectedness.

John Prine, has a very special gift of storytelling that broke through to tell us in a special way about the loneliness and exclusions of our modern day every day life. He sent through his special deliveries, the personal packages of special connection to all of us, breaking through the walls of our comfort zone. His words too seem to have very special meanings especially at these times of challenge. He touches on the loneliness that we all experience in isolation and we now are all his characters in his stories of “Hello in There” and “Angel from Montgomery” and so many other tales of our times.

In a recent obituary, a writer related that “[a]s a songwriter, Prine was admired by Bob Dylan, Kris Kristofferson, and others, known for his ability to mine seemingly ordinary experiences — he wrote many of his classics as a mailman in Maywood, Illinois — for revelatory songs that covered the full spectrum of the human experience. There’s “Hello in There,” about the devastating loneliness of an elderly couple; “Sam Stone,” a portrait of a drug-addicted Vietnam soldier suffering from PTSD; and “Paradise,” an ode to his parents’ strip-mined hometown of Paradise, Kentucky, which became an environmental anthem. Prine tackled these subjects with empathy and humor, with an eye for “the in-between spaces,” the moments people don’t talk about….”

Each in their special way touched our lives with warmth, spirit, and wonderful song. We will miss them, but we will always have them with us.