Mom is dead and my brother inherited her dog old herself now at eighteen.
Hips crippled up thick cataracts in her eyes nearly deaf coat that was once richly reddish-brown enough to inspire the name Cinnamon now almost entirely white.
Everybody looks at her and thinks “It won’t be long now.”
And at Cindy’s end Is another part of Mom gone Another link to the old days broken Because Cindy remembers her And we have loving her in common.
But Cindy’s still here. Still with us Still gets the zoomies (Although 18-year-old Chihuahua zoomies are A very different affair from Puppy zoomies) Still eats her kibble With dignified spice girl entheusiasm.
And all I want Is to keep her with us And keep her comfortable And wanting to be with us until she can’t anymore.
And saying goodbye to her Becomes another way To say goodbye To Mom.
The day after Memorial Day, I am alive and so are you
random image meant to intrigue you with its randomness. Photo by me.
Y’know, I sure do like good coffee. I’m sitting here slurping on my second cup, and my mind is full of yum. Many things give me yum. What gives you yum? I’d like to know. I find your opinions yummy.
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You know who has some really yummy opinions? Graham Platner.
Graham Platner on a boat. Photo from the Graham for Senate campaign.
I generally don’t provide full context for these things I reference, so I won’t here. You may know who he is, you may not. If you don’t, fire up your favorite search engine and learn. But I don’t think you’ll need to do that.
I keep watching videos of the man talking. I find that I already agree with most of what he says, but I also learn things. The fact that this street-level guy who would be my kids’ age if I had any kids (who weren’t felines) has been so dedicated to the well-being of this country, is so well-read, and is willing to go through the BS of a senatorial campaign in these greed-crazy times is absolutely admirable, especially since he’s doing it based on small-dollar donations and fighting against The Big Money. If I lived in Maine, I’d want to volunteer for his campaign. And if it turns out that Trumpo the Clown and his band of idiots put ICE or the National Guard or whatever between the citizens of Maine and their polling places, I hope that they will consider what Graham Platner would do in their place.
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It’s planting time here in climate zone 5b, and Karen has been hard at work growing seedlings in her office and in plastic jugs outside (winter sowing) and this week and upcoming weekend is when all the little planties will go into the ground. Then in a little while, we’ll have beautiful heirloom tomatoes and many other crunchy and yummy garden goodies. I’m very excited for the yield and glad to help out a bit with bringing the things to life. My window overlooks the little garden from the second floor, and on summer days, I will look down from here and watch her water and weed and do all of the various activities while I WFH. The warm months are my favorite.
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I bought a copy of the Rhino High Fidelity remastered copy of Nevermind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols. It comes in a glossy gatefold tip on jacket (yes, I’m aware — the original was neither glossy nor gatefold!) but this version is exciting to me. My old copy (which I stupidly got rid of at some point) was an original UK pressing that sounded about ten times better than the US pressing. I’ve heard that US pressing and it’s quite disappointing if you’re used to the much brighter and fuller-sounding original. This version brings the American song sequence up to *almost* the level of the yellow cover version, and it makes me happy that I can hear the thing close to the way it was originally meant to be heard. Producer Chris Thomas’s notes on the sessions, included here, are enlightening as well.
If you see a copy, grab it. Don’t let the idea of a slightly more expensive high-end remaster of a punk record seem foolish to you — believe me, it’s not! So, there’s another yum for you.
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Have a yummy week, OK?
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I’m working on a query letter, so I have to concentrate on that instead of my weekly installment of whatever it might turn out to be in any given week. I will try to make a post after I get this thing done. If you are expecting a sixth Keith Emerson post, I apologize for the delay. It’s coming!
The cliffhanger is answered: Did Keith make the right choice? Side 1
So we arrive at the final volume of our little trilogy, the most The Nice-like album that ELP ever did, thus inviting a direct comparison. Let’s talk about what I get from the grooves of 3 (at least mostly) live albums recorded as Keith Emerson left The Nice and joined ELP. It’s an interesting journey. I’ll offer the spoiler right now that he really did find a better bassist and singer in Greg Lake. but in my opinion, whether Carl Palmer is a better drummer than Brian Davison is debatable.
I give the nod to Lake here with all due respect to Lee Jackson, who is a fabulous musician. He’s still with us at 83, and is still out there playing music.
And I prefer Brian Davison to Carl Palmer on the issue of pocket. If you haven’t heard that term before, it means finding the place in the rhythm of the music where there’s a gravitic center to the beat. If you can find the pocket, you unlock a feeling of being meshed in with your bandmates in such a way that the feeling of the music gets deeper. In that situation, the synchronicity of the players together feels transcendent. It’s hard to describe if you haven’t been inside it, but it will affect any music you hear. It can draw you in, settle you inside the beat in such a way that your whole body feels like it’s swaddled in groove.
There are microdivisions of the beat, and a range of time within the beat — either slightly forward of it, right on it, or slightly behind — where the feeling of “locking in” can be all-encompassing or it can make you anxious, or it can make the music feel almost robotic. That anxious feeling can be useful to convey a sense of aggression or danger, which some find attractive, but if you’re looking for an expansive, powerful groove, you’ll find that locked-in feeling so much more unifying. The anxious feeling is at the leading edge of that groove, the locked-in feeling comes more from being just the slightest bit past the middle of that range of being “in rhythm.” Brian Davison could find the pocket with ease. Carl Palmer was always at the anxious edge of the beat, anticipating slightly and pushing. So while Palmer would typically pack more strokes into a beat than Davison would, Palmer always felt like he was pushing things, and there’s plenty of evidence of that on Pictures at an Exhibition.
Cover by William Neal, photography by Keith Morris and Nigel Harlow.
On paper, this could almost be an album by The Nice, with the caveat that strong compositional elements come from both Lake and Palmer, as well as Emerson. There’s a song on side one that is a solo acoustic piece from Greg Lake. There wasn’t a piece that was untouched by Keith Emerson as an arranger/composer since the days of Davy O’List, back on the very first album by The Nice. Honestly, Greg Lake is the best singer and songwriter Emerson ever worked with in a band. Still, it’s the same basic approach as the previous band, with the two new components plugged in.
Lake played a Fender Jazz bass, giving a much rounder, fuller tone than Lee Jackson’s plunky hollow body ox teardrop bass, which gives the whole band a smoother, more contemporary tone. He was also a more fluid player. There was less jazz in his sensebility (the model of his bass notwithstanding) and more rock. As discussed above, Palmer was much more kinetic behind the kit. Emerson seems liberated here, though he’s the same player. ELP was more of a well-oiled machine than The Nice, it’s plain…
I’ll have more to say about this album in my next post. Stay tuned.
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This album came out a couple of months before Emerson, Lake, and Palmer’s Tarkus, the new band’s second album. The breakup was already established, ELP was a going concern, and a final album by The Nice was, it seems, of interest, at least in the British market, where the album charted at number 5. There’s a previous post that talks about side one of this album. You might want to reference that for the “bigger picture.”
The second side of the record consists of Tchaikovsky’s “Third Movement, Pathetíque Sympnony,” which is credited both to the Russian composer and The Nice, and Bernstein and Sondheim’s “America” which is subtitled “2nd Amendment,” in The Nice’s version. Emerson claimed that this was the world’s first instrumental protest song, which I find to be a dubious claim, although I do support the claim that this is a protest song, and does make its point well.
Yes, I found a copy fo the gatefold on eBay…
I said before that side 2 followed the same pattern as side 1, beginning on piano and moving to organ later, but here I am listening again and glory be! the first thing you hear is organ! How did I not remember that? In fact, there’s no piano on this side of the record at all. I apologize for the misinformation. I hadn’t listened to side 2 but the once in preperation for part 3 of this article. Repeat listenings have had me wondering if I should go back and edit that part, but in this case, it’s published and it would feel dishonest to change what you might already have read.
While there are jazz touches, and classical themes are explored in these arrangements, this is first and foremost a rock album. Though all of these songs have appeared on other albums, the band are working from new arrangements. One can look at this release as some sort of afterthought, but I love the warmth of these performances. I feel like this album may be the best justification for the band’s existence, released after the fact, when all of the members had moved on.
I love the instrumental freakout at the end of “America.” It’s very much in the wheelhouse of other early-70s drone at times, but ultimately represents the theme of entropy and destruction that appears to be the point here, and seems to be drafted into being the band’s big goodbye as well. Lee Jackson gets a final word in, playing the bass line a couple of times, as if to say that he’d be willing to continue the project, if only…
Honestly, I feel what Jackson is doing here. There are many points in my life where that whimper of an ending could have been magnificent if it was the beginning of rebirth. But here we are, at the end of something beautiful, falling apart for the lack of will to find the common ground to continue.
Side one of ELP’s Pictures at an Exhibition is next.
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