I am not sure if is at all OK for me to be putting this here. I should have asked for his permission before doing so, which I would do in a heartbeat, except I am so bloody shy about contacting him.

For me, this is the exact definition. Exact! Verbatim. Every syllable of every word! And then the way he sings it… So, I am going to risk the wrath of all the IPR Gods and even more importantly of Bob Dorough himself (as well as lyricist Fran Landesman), should they ever stumble upon it, and post this here nonetheless:

If you talk about a musician who is special to you, are you (in the end) (again!) talking about yourself? Well, yes. I suppose you are. But, no matter – I do want to talk about Bob Dorough, for whose music I placed a big order at Amazon last week. Apparently they manufacture one of the items I wanted only on demand, so I am still waiting for the whole shipment to arrive; but this is my Syncretismas gift to myself this year. You can listen to the samples if you are not familiar with the man’s music here.

I had not thought of Bob Dorough or listened to him in a very long time. I used to have his stuff on audio cassettes. Then when that technology became extinct I tossed out the whole kit and caboodle which I had accumulated during one of my major clean out sessions some years back and Bob Dorough’s music went out with the rest. And then lately I started hearing his songs in my head. Why I hadn’t done so in so long I have no idea. Anyway, the real music should be arriving in a few weeks and I cannot wait!

For someone who adores The Who, Bob Dorough may appear to be a somewhat bizarre choice but nevertheless I love his music – and I love Bob Dorough. He does “vocalese”, which means he adds lyrics to jazz standards that are essentially conceived of as instrumental music. And then he also sings quite a few regular jazz standards that others have in their repertoire as well. Like Polkadots and moonbeams, after which I named a whole alpha.tribe outfit. I do not really care for any of the other versions of this song sung by other vocalists, but his I love!

And much the same also goes for Devil may care and even Midnight sun (although admittedly Sarah Vaughn does a pretty mean Midnight sun as well).

He sings almost like as if he is talking, even maybe whispering. And yet there is still the melody. But he sort of teeters on the edge of melody, doesn’t seem to make a big deal out of it almost and yet it pours out perfectly of course. Off the cuff he is. Naughty. Mischievous. The voice of the refusal to grow up. Sticking to your guns of childhood as you plod through your boring old grown up life. And it carries both the joy and the sadness embedded into that state of being, which would inevitably bring with it humor and idiosyncrasies. And somehow Bob Dorough sings all of this, brings his psyche through in his vocals: Very tongue-in-cheek, very mercurial, very tough to pin down. Almost impossible to categorize, almost impossible to put a label onto.

Like I said – I love Bob Dorough. I love the music itself  of course, it is awesome. But I do more than just love the music in Bob Dorough’s case. I hear the one who sings it and love what the voice tells me of its owner

I just rooted around online a bit and Bob Dorough is alive and well at the age of 87. He has a page on my-space and I am almost tempted to sign up and become his friend there. Bloody shyness stopping me of course. In any case, although it is extremely unlikely that he will ever hear me doing so, I wish him all the very best of health and longevity and good spirits in the upcoming decade!

And!!! Major discovery: I have been desperately trying to find one of his albums which he recorded together with Bill Takas called Beginning to see the light in 1976, particularly for the track called Better than anything, the lyrics of which can make me chuckle on even the lousiest of days – but really the whole thing from one end to the other. I was willing to pay whatever anyone was asking for it but it seems to be extinct. And then voila! Here it is! What a find! What a blog! What generosity! YAYYY! Thank you Cat and LauraDoe!

Students can be such demanding little critters – hhh…

For some unknown reason the nosey parkers are still snooping around in my blog it seems – and this despite my strictest instructions to the contrary! I thought that I had made myself abundantly clear more than a year ago when I pointed them in the direction of the great urban outdoors, of which there really is no lack of at all in this city; rather than sitting at home perched behind their screens reading the ramblings of their boring old instructors! Alas, absolutely to no avail…They are still in here! So anyway, I was cornered by a few of them on the service shuttle coming back home into the city the other day and they wanted to know what my top 10 favorite songs by The Who are. There is, of course, no easy answer to such a question, so I begged for some time to give the response the utmost attention that it needs. And here it is  – my Top 10 The Who songs list (I think):

1) Who are you?
2) Guitar and pen
3) They’re all in love
4) Slip Kid
5) Won’t get fooled again
6) New Song
7) Squeeze Box
8) In a hand or a face
9) Empty glass
10) Behind blue eyes

Except here’s the problem with this list: First I have had to leave out things like “Eminence Front” and “However much I booze”! Being limited to just 10 that is? Second, I love all these songs equally?

They also wanted to know the same thing with Queen. (I can hardly believe this but apparently they actually listen to these bands! Love them! These songs were written a long long long time before the oldest of them was even born? !!!) With Queen, the answer is somewhat simpler. I feel that Queen albums need to be listened to in their entirety. Like The Who opera albums in a way. So, it would be very tough to make a list there. Also, with Queen I love their stage presence almost as much as the music they make and the two things are really more or less welded into one whole in my mind. And again, although when on stage they arranged the flow of the songs into different sequences than the ones of the albums, there still seems to have been a deliberately orchestrated continuity in the way the songs got seamlessly blended into one other. Also visually, I should add. When I listen to them, in my mind’s eye I “see” Queen as much as I “hear” them somehow. The most money I have ever spent on a concert ticket was for a Queen concert. And nowadays I love to watch all their concert DVD’s over and over again. The cockiness, the humor, the imagination, the sheer unabashed in-your-face drama of the man… But, all that said, if you still want to push me up against a wall with a gun, I will say “We will rock you” (of course), “It’s a hard life”, “Who wants to live for ever”, “Brighton Rock” – and then finally… My all time anthem:

I want it all, I want it all, and I want it now!!!
You couldn’t possibly have phrased that any better than you did Freddie… (I know he wasn’t the one who wrote the song, Brian May was – but…)
:-)

I have been thinking about The Beatles. Small wonder, since I have been listening to them pretty much on a loop during my entire trip last week.

I seem to listen to music only when I am out on the street. Going back and forth from work, wandering around, shopping – that type of stuff. At home, for some weird reason, I forget to do so. So, I am not sure how much of a music connoisseur I really am. Hardly at all, I would say. And quite recently, I admitted that my love of The Beatles might in fact be in dubious taste in that they are somewhat “cute”. But, since I said that I have been wondering – are they really so cute after all?

First off, I am not too terribly into cute as far as my other musical favorites are concerned. My big, all time, number one fave are The Who, on whom I already wrote about quite a while ago. Now, them, I really do have on a 7/24 loop whenever I go out on the street! Right next down the line (as a very close follow up in fact) would be Queen. And what comes after them is anybody’s guess really and The Beatles are somewhere in there very close to the top.

It is only 3 of their albums that grab me, those being The White Album, Sgt. Peppers and Abbey Road. The earlier stuff, yes yes, very nice and all that but ultimately – yawn!!! And that is of course the time-line wherein the cutsey-putsey stuff, which is usually associated with the Beatles, resides. The later stuff, especially the things which they did when they all went solo? Again, sorry, I do not like any of that either: If anything, double-yawn!!! But these three albums… Yesss! Not every song on every album, mind you. Things like “While my guitar gently weeps” and “She’s leaving home” and “Something” I fast forward so fast you have absolutely no idea. In fact, I have compiled a playlist on my MP3 player where none of these more romantic ballady type things are even to be found – notable exceptions being “blackbird” and “Martha my dear”. And to give myself credit, I never cared for the romantic tunes even when I was 16. The ones I adore are the ones in which, over the course of the three albums, there unfolds the whackiest pantheon which I would dare to suggest has ever been imagined at any point in the 20th century:

Polythene Pam and Mean Mr. Mustard! The Sun King! Lovely Rita and Maxwell with his silver hammer! Rocky Raccoon and his fickle lady love whose “name was Magil, and she called herself Lil, but everyone knew her as Nancy”. Not to mention Gideon’s Bible and the gin reeking doctor who proceeds to lie on the table in the same song. Closely followed by the Piggies, big and small…

And of course Henry the Horse dances the waltz!

That strange negotiation which goes on on the flip side of Abbey Road:

You never give me your money
You only give me your funny paper
and in the middle of negotiations
you break down

I never give you my number
I only give you my situation
and in the middle of investigation
I break down

Out of college, money spent
See no future, pay no rent
All the money’s gone, nowhere to go
Any jobber got the sack
Monday morning, turning back
Yellow lorry slow, nowhere to go
But oh, that magic feeling, nowhere to go

So familiar… Especially when a few songs later we come to that flashback-refrain:

I never give you my pillow
I only send you my invitation
And in the middle of the celebrations
I break down…

It seems like this has been said to me so many times. In so many different ways. When I was given invitations but was not asked to share a pillow and during the celebrations of which my host broke down… Oh dear…

And then of course, the trip songs: I have done my share and I know exactly what Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds or a Day in the Life are all about. And I love them! How could I not?

I read the news today oh, boy
Four thousand holes in blackburn, lancashire
And though the holes were rather small
They had to count them all
Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the albert hall

…

My father is the one who laid the groundwork of my private pantheon. I recently found a story book which he wrote and illustrated for me. It had been lost for many years and when it showed up on one of the upper shelves of my mother’s library I cried like a dog. In this story a bear marries a rabbit and they live happily ever after. The book actually starts with the happily ever after and my father takes me in meticulous detail through the everyday activities of the couple, how they go on vacation together, how when the bear gets sick at one point the rabbit nurses him back to health. How the bear has to take all the potted plants in their apartment to his office since his rabbit wife cannot resist eating them. I should probably scan it and post it here so that maybe people can understand why I seem to talk about my father so much.

I was torn out of that world, in which bears and rabbits live together happily ever after, the day when I entered the “grown-up” world, aka. grade school! I loathed it! And it is no exaggeration when I say that starting from age 7, I went through decades of solid loathing, indeed being revolted by “grown-up” life at every turn of the path. In all of its manifestations! A world devoid of people like my father, people that had the sort of imagination that makes magic happen. And I did not – and to this day do not believe that this horrifying “grown-up” world is ultimate, unassailable, irrefutable “reality”. The Beatles are one of the few solid rays of hope that I was/am correct in this assessment. The loopy world which they sang about. If there were people like them out there surely I would eventually meet them? And I did. A handful maybe, strewn over decades.

And then…

I got me a Second Life folks… ;-)

http://www.jokefrog.com/flash/singing-bird.shtml

…

I have been laughing about this for years now! In fact (having just watched it again) I am roaring even as I am linking it to here and I must have watched it a good few hundred times already at this point – but no matter: The shock never ever quite wears off…

What utterly flagrant display of good self-esteem, right? Downright awe inspiring it is… The name of the person who made this (as far as I can make it out) is Jino Kang. And, in my book, the man is a genius!

…

In those days I did not much care for them. They were much too “hard” for my taste back then. I was a Beatles girl, then later on I got into all the psychedelic stuff like Pink Floyd and somehow, one way or another “The Who” completely passed me by. So, I owe a huge big “thank you” to whoever it is that is the big “Who” buff on all those CSI series. I immediately peeled back my ears and listened to the music when I heard it for the first time 6 or 7 years ago. Next thing I was online frantically searching for MP3’s. And next thing after that, I was in amazon buying up the CD’s. The music has been with me ever since.

I have it on my MP3 player running pretty much on a loop. I walk through crowds, sit on commuter ferries and campus shuttle buses listening and listening, over and over again. And I sit on my exercise bike and listen. Of course, I listen to other things too: Queen and Santana I really like for instance. Blood Sweat and Tears too. Some music I bought in Brazil 2 years ago. Sometimes I really like to listen to Michael Jackson (especially when I am walking). Recently I ripped all the post 1967 Beatles albums, so they get a hearing too sometimes. Michel Petrucciani. But I keep coming back to the Who.

I have the operatic albums like Tommy and Quadrophenia and I love them. But the stuff that really gets me are the individual track albums and especially the later dated ones. “Who are you?” and “Who’s next?” are my two favorites. I am actually not very surprised that as a teenage girl I never got beyond “My Generation”: This music is really very hard core. It is raw, straight from the gut, and then conversely there are high levels of musical refinement. At this point I must know pretty much every note in these songs by heart and I still never stop being amazed by the orchestration, the way the vocals and the instruments come together and then break apart, and the utter melodiousness that they manage to combine with the harshest of hard rock. The silent bits between the crashing phrases. I especially like the ones that have keyboards. Vicious keyboards. Everything about these songs is hard and relentless, including the lyrics. They have a bitter edge. But, bitter or not, there is also a huge amount of hope in them somehow. Or for me it is like that anyway.

I am glad I discovered The Who so recently. This music belongs to me alone. I have no memories whatsoever associated with it. It is very much about the now and a possible future. When I walk along or pedal along, I tend to feel empowered, like as if there was nothing that I would not be able to pull off, if I set my mind to it. There is an awful lot of energy in there and it feels like as if that energy gets transmitted directly into my system. The hope of rebellion. Hard to explain.

There was also a surprise for me more recently: Pete Townshend turned out to be an alumnus of the Groundcourse, the art educational strategy I am reinterpreting for Second Life. Made me very happy that. Validates my claim.

I have to figure out a way of streaming “The Who” at Syncretia. Maybe not the individual tracks (might be too much, that) but Quadrophenia. Would I need to get permission for that I wonder? Probably…