It's almost like living a dream

Today, randomly, is about English bluesmen-at-heart who ended up being fleeting pop sensations in the States.

Chris Rea was playing on a jukebox last night, but he wasn't. It was just the Chris Rea of my imagination, or, rather, a late-career Gino Vannelli.

Chris Rea was not a smooth crooner at all, really. He wanted his blues influences and craggy voice to emerge from the crisp yacht-rock coating applied by Elton John's producer. He returned to his early goals only after surviving pancreatic cancer, including the same harrowing-sounding surgery that Steve Jobs had had.

Still, I like Rea's intimate little admonishment to a heartbroken girl."I'll buy your first good wine," he offers.

Creepy? Maybe--but this was 1978, after all.



Climax Blues Band is that workhorse that's been around since bellbottoms and now, somewhere, they play with a little gut (and a lot of guts) and some gray hair. (This is when I always think of walking down a street in downtown Asheville, NC one summer night in '01 or something during a festival and there, at the bottom of the road, was Foghat.) They got it right (ha) in '76 with a clomping, funky favorite (I thought "that lot" came from America, too, dude), and came back again in '80 with this couples-skate-only ballad that's so much more than that, including a band-buster that was only performed live once, karaoke-style, in an English pub in Clearwater, Florida. But what emerges from its crisp, yacht-rock coating, applied by an American producer (who gave us not just Styx, but Styx II and went on to crisp up Animotion with a Fairlight), is an unalloyed love song.



 

Gasping at glimpses of gentle true spirit

This was a post that's been sitting in draft form since November 2011. 

I'm sad that the reason that I found it today is that Richie Havens has passed.

This folk singer, purveyor of peace and possibly the best-known drawer-outer of a stand-in performance after his legendary three-hour set at Woodstock was an  inimitable interpreter of the most wonderful songs of the true rock era--some of them peerless treasures that probably shouldn't be touched by anybody save an older version of its creators.

And I dig that, a lot. Here is my first and foremost favorite:



Tremendous gifts, energy, passion. Tremendous.

Listen to the song--originally precise and clarion--tell me if Richie's diaphanous interpretation doesn't make you ache and want to see some open sky to wonder into.

*******************************************************

I flit, I float, I fleetly flee. I fly. This is like when clouds scud (is that word ever used in any other context?) across the daytime sky at a good clip, you look out and see that, like a mechanically-moved backdrop on a scroll.



I'm going to make an effort to see Richie someday.

Looks like we're ridin' on the same train

Next week will be better.

Whenever, where ever

I don't need to say more.



Except maybe this:



...and don't break nothin'.

You kick them when they fall down

Amateur Joke Day.

Bad jokes done badly by people who don't know how to be funny -- jokes that go on too long, or are funny for a nanosecond, or are generally not nuanced enough nor ever will be to land without making someone feel tricked or judged. Pranks (gawd, I hate 'em! I hate the word!) that are, as the person who has articulated everything I've said already elsewhere today about today, but in The Atlantic, points out, a "derivative of a derivative of a derivative."

And let's not even talk about the self-indulgent, not-entertaining wankery on the Internet.


Look, whether it's announcing a non-existent pregnancy or career change (I'm leaving for Japan to learn to make origami mice! Har! Har!) on social media,  or being sent to see lions washed at the Tower of London, it's not funny.



However, I could watch this one, like, for days.

Charm--and not harm--wins every time.

Your Guilty Pleasure: You told me to take this chance and learn the ways of love

High tenor gets me every damn time. El wrote this for Marvin Gaye, who left the Gordy label stable and, I guess, became unavailable to sing it. El clearly implies his love for Gaye in this track; he deploys that falsetto elsewhere, later.  I'd like to know if there is a deeper story behind El's hopeful early 80s composition, which doesn't have the artificial sheen of Smooth Jazz's 90s catapult.

Of course, my story with this song involves a pool out in the country in the languid sunset heat of August in Kentucky. I think I floated on a raft at some big barbeque party or other, as if in a womb of summer-at-home. 

As the sun has its place up in the sky...

Anything is possible.

ALL-TIME FAVORITE.


Tears for Fears Sowing the Seeds of Love by Celtiemama


High time we made a stand and shook up the views of the common man
And the lovetrain rides from coast to coast
D.j.s the man we love the most
Could you be, could you be squeaky clean
And smash any hope of democracry ?
As the headline says you're free to choose
There's egg on your face and mud on your shoes
One of these days they're gonna call it the blues

And anything is possible when you're sowing the seeds of love
Anything is possible - sowing the seeds of love

I spy tears in thier eyes
They look to the skies for some kind of divine intervention
Food goes to waste !
So nice to eat, so nice to taste
Politician grannie with your high ideals
Have you no idea how the majority feels ?
So without love and a promise land
Were fools to the rules of a goverment plan
Kick out the style ! bring back the jam !

Anything...
Sowing the seeds
The birds and the bees
My girlfriend and me in love

Feel the pain
Talk about it
If you're a worried man - then shout about it
Open hearts - feel about it
Open minds - think about it
Everyone - read about it
Everyone - scream about it !
Everyone
Everyone - read about it, read about it
Read in the books in the crannies and the nooks there are books to read
Chorus !

(mr. england sowing the seeds of love)

Time to eat all your words
Swallow your pride
Open your eyes

High time we made a stand and shook up the views of the common man
And the lovetrain rides from coast to coast
Every minute of every hour - I love a sunflower
And I believe in lovepower, love power, lovepower !!!

Sowing the seeds
An end to need
And the politics of greed
With love

[Freedom Flight]

...for a wintry first spring sunset of the year, during which I can hear gulls crying about the cold as they circle over the lake...

The wonder of it all, baby

Macca: immediate relief from what ails ya (heart):

Cause times change, I know