Dog Daze of May

Like a big dog, Life picks us up by the scruff of the neck and shakes us silly. ("Surly" might be closer to it.) Cursed by cars, consumed by computers, sold out by our cells--whether cancer in the flesh or the camera's red-eye flash--working our selves deeper into cosmic, economic, and social-medium debt (neither rare nor well done), belaboring all.

I'm currently trapped by tasks I'm too slow for, and tricked by this tripwired hard-drive. Waiting in the wings, my newest piece can't be posted until I learn how to convert a stubborn pdf file into some more-malleable format. (Suggestions are not only welcome; they are sought!)

In the meantime, read some of the most excellent of other blogs and sites: for Jazz, check Doug Ramsey's wise and measured Rifftides, Jazz Profiles by the inexhaustible Steve Cerra, ever-quirky Brilliant Corners, VillesVille for elegant Ellingtonia, and the inelegant Bill Evans mainstay; for Rock/Rootsier material, try allmusic, BeesWeb (i.e., Richard Thompson and related), extensive Early Blues, and the Guthrie descendants' homage to Woody. I also recommend the amazing Samuel Beckett site and (less active now but good stuff in his archives) War Poetry for... well, take a guess. (And if you are desperate for some culture a la Shakespeare, there's always this droll curiosity.)

I hope to get with it soon--blogging actively again, I mean. Till then, drive safely and defensively, and cool it with the phone-cell photography. In the immortal words of Ray Davies of the Kinks, "People take pictures of each other, Just to prove that they really have been there." You could be a model of restraint instead.

When Les Was MOR

My first wife was not a forgiving woman. (She still hasn’t forgiven me for being whatever lesser man I was in my callow 20’s.) When the slightly older, laid-back-hippieish filmmaker Les Blank--actually working on his fifth or sixth documentary, and by 1968 already on the verge of greatness--would cadge a meal and a couch to sleep on, then drink too much and inevitably hug and paw the hostess... well, that was about her limit.

So when heavy smoker Les also carelessly charred a gouge in her favorite coffee table, it was “Blank you, Les, and Sayonara... no more freebies at the Leimbachers.” But he and I kept in touch--for who wouldn’t and didn’t marvel at his bracing, embracing portraits of crazed, crooked-teeth Cajuns and little-known Bluesmen like Mance Lipscomb, Les's quirky camera eye meandering on and on from there for almost 50 years, finding some bizarre character or strange old music and culture to film (Asian green tea, women with gaps in their teeth, the Savoy family of Eunice, LA, even director Werner Herzog going crazy in South America).

I couldn’t keep up with his casual gypsy lifestyle, but I did borrow his shed-turned-house, hideaway-in-Hollywood when I went to the other L.A. trying to sell my Robert Johnson screenplay in 1970 or ’71. But I immediately caught some virulent flu bug that kept me feverish and flat on my back in 90-degree heat without air conditioning, trapped in that one-room garden shack, it seemed forever, crawling out to find water and a dollop of sherbet once a day for nearly a week.

We went our separate ways. He continued the ascent to an eccentric fame, while I couldn’t give my Hellhound script away. (Blaxploitation movies had not yet made their mark. No way was “a downer Bluesman who dies at the end” the prescription for a hit movie!)
Les Blank died a couple of weeks ago. Age 77, he had lived long enough to win acclaim and honors; but even though he’d quit the habit years before, the cancer-sticks got to him after all. He was working on a couple of new films (according to the obit I read) but to finish them someone will have to step into his oversize Madison shoes!

Way back when, Blank was for several years loosely linked to the Arhoolie record label (see previous post below), creating brief and brilliant portrait-films--20 or 30 minutes in length--of musicians Arhoolie was promoting: The Blues According to Lightnin’ Hopkins, A Well-Spent Life (his film on Lipscomb), and a longer piece on Zydeco accordion great Clifton Chenier. These persuaded owner Chris Strachwitz actually to partner with Les for three other films, most notably J’ai Ete au Bal, a terrific study of the differences and similarities between the “twins separated at birth,” South Louisiana musics casually identified as Country-ish white Cajun and Rhythm’n’Bluesy black Creole Zydeco.

But sharing the lead didn’t last long; the principals’ work habits and social skills were just too divergent, with take-charge, get-it-done, Roots-music-loving entrepreneur Chris bumping up against--and sometimes stumbling over--mellow Les, full-size Ferdinand the Bull, sniffing the flowers and smoking their green leaves, too hippie to be hip, yet so lazily laid-back that he could settle into almost any scene, absorb it, and then slyly film it.

Blank’s production company occupied space in the Arhoolie headquarters building for many years after the partnership was dissolved, and he managed to take part, quietly, in the label’s big 50th anniversary celebration. His final year saw brief upticks around the honors accorded him, but a quiet letting-go was evident as well...

Regardless, his mortal coil now shuffled off, the wonder-filled lives and works will amble on, all those firmly fixed documents of oddities and crudities, madcap musicians and molarless meals, mescal and Mason jars, shrimp gumbo and “snap beans ain’t salty,” holidays on horseback, booze and the Blues, and earthy dancers, always.

* * * * *
Was it ironic or perfectly right that I learned of Blank’s death thus: an email from Arhoolie arrived to announce the release of an album that sounded promising, so I clicked on the link, and the first thing I saw, heading the home page, was Arhoolie’s lament for his passing. Then, below that, the announcement for Jumps, Boogies & Wobbles, major label debut (on both CD and LP) of juke joint-styled Blues trio HowellDevine, consisting of Joshua Howell on harmonica, Hill Country slide guitar, and vocals; mighty rhythm man Pete Devine (machined to sit tight and fit right); plus, takin’ up any slap bass slack... whoever’s made the gig.

I listened to a couple of sample tracks, then rode the link to their home page. And when I found THIS engine of regress, I knew I had to buy the album. (Hitch a ride on the Yella Dog and hear for yourself!)

Meanwhile, I also realized that this confluence represents the passing of the baton, from venerable bearded oldtimer to up-and-coming young whippersnappers. Les began with the Blues and certainly structured some of his best films around those vital elder “musicianers.” I believe he would have taken to HowellDevine immediately. (In fact, might have done so already.)

Chris Strachwitz launched Arhoolie the same way: Mance, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Big Joe Williams, the Black Ace, John Jackson, Lightnin’ the wry and worldly wise. After 25 years or more of them “away,” working well and apart, and in other genres, for the two men to come back to their Blues/Roots Music base--even if only figuratively--and then face a definite permanent parting, well... I guess, as a scuffling musician might say (irony included): “It’s all good.”

R.I.P., Les... Keep on it, Chris... P.I.R., HowellDevine. (Yeah, play it right.)

4 by 4

 That title is not meant to suggest a Jeep or Ram truck or any other “four-wheel-drive” vehicle, nor does it indicate the “four on the floor” beat of disco music. It’s not some doubled-up 2x4 construction beam; and I have no idea if Jimmy Rushing, “Mr. Five by Five” in the flesh, so to speak, ever went on a crash diet!
No, it’s that the other day I was remembering how LP records back in the Fifties and early Sixties still nearly always were issued singly. A two-record set was as uncommon as, say, a Blues 78 in Mint condition. So Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde of 1967 was a bigger deal than we knew, one more challenge to the cultural hegemony of the Arts Establishment--upstart disposable Pop Music, call it, versus the supposed high culture of Opera, where three and even four “LongPlay” vinyl platters were needed to encapsulate a Rigoletto or La Boheme. The gates were pried open, creaking and groaning, and squeezing through came major double sets by the Beatles and Taj Mahal, the Dead and the Who, C.T.A. and CSNY: bootlegs and hits packages and an Exile on Main Street.

Two, then three, then... well, whatever number of records an artist’s fans would bear and buy--meaning more and more as lightweight compact discs supplanted bigger, heavier vinyl. Now some Classical box sets house hundreds of discs presenting the complete works of Bach or Mozart. Now the voluminous record sessions and live performances of Miles on Columbia or the Duke on RCA can come to you in a replica Davis trumpet case, a miniature steamer trunk of Ellingtonian elegance, in fact practically anything a record label’s Marketing and Art Departments can dream up.

Now a multi-talented performer like country great Vince Gill with 43 of his own new songs pent up and wanting to pour out can persuade his label to issue them all at once, filling four CDs with Vince’s genial, Jim Dandy vocals, electrifying eclectic guitars, Bluegrass-style harmonies, big-star pals dropping by, and so on, the four released in a quietly tasteful box with inner sleeves that differentiate each disc by style or substance, and the whole package offered at a bargain price, approximately what a single CD used to cost!

Actually four-disc sets pretty much became the standard for any comprehensive look back--whether a single artist’s career and hits, an important period in a genre’s development, or the different chops and sound from one tenor sax man to the next--as a result of looser copyright laws in Great Britain. In the late Nineties or ‘Oughts as fifty-year protection ended on major figures across the recording industry, new reissue labels like JSF and Proper began flooding the shops in Britain and subsequently the US (as import goods not otherwise available) with amazing and often quite desirable four-CD anthologies rich in discographical information and housed in small-is-better packaging.

... Which brings us circling back to that post title given up top: within a six-week stretch just ahead of and mostly after New Year’s 2013, four divergent four-disc box sets were released, all of them historically important (three not previously available), and all well worth your hard-earned cash. (I’m giving shout-outs here rather than full reviews, but think Five Stars for each set.)

The collection youngest in years that yet reaches farthest back in the story of Roots Music in America is They All Played for US: Arhoolie Records 50th Anniversary Celebration, honoring that great label and shoestring operation, which driven by founder Chris Strachwitz discovered (or rediscovered) and recorded many splendid Roots Music figures--and so became the unheralded major repository for nearly all the musics (plural) of North America, post-1960: Blues, Gospel, some Jazz, Old Time Country, casual Bay Area Folk; obscure Cajun counterbalanced by the genre-defining Zydeco of Clifton Chenier, plus slightly West, a dozen different sub-versions of Tex-Mex/Frontera/Norteno/Border Music; brass bands, merengue players, polka dancers Old World and New; Mance Lipscomb and Lightnin’ Hopkins, Big Mama and Rose Maddox, Whistlin’ Alex and Miss’ippi Fred, Memphis Minnie and Lydia Mendoza, Robert Pete Williams and Sonny Boy 2...

But many musicians passed on over the 50 years of Arhoolie, so the three-day party featured “younger” stars, more-recent Strachwitz discoveries, and cheerful friends of the label: Taj Mahal and the Creole Belles, Ry Cooder and Country Joe McDonald, Any Old Time String Band and Treme Brass Band, Barbara Dane with some local Trad Jazzers, Peter Rowan with accordion master Santiago Jimenez Jr., and three groups alone worth the price of this 200-page, horizontal folio-sized hardback book with terrific reminiscences, commentary, and color photos (by Mike Mednyk).

The picks that really clicked: a multi-generation, La Raza-style group of political-activist singers called Los Cenzontles; the amazing Sacred Steel group The Campbell Brothers (a special interest project for Strachwitz for a decade now); and one of my own lifetime faves, the ever-driven, always-effervescent, Louisiana-hot-spiced Savoy-Doucet threesome, with two of the brightest stalwarts of the Cajun Music revival (fiddler extraordinaire Michael Doucet and squeezebox-maker/mentor Marc Savoy) challenging each other and Miz Ann Savoy, rhythm guitarist and nonpareil scholar of Cajun music and mores. These three will enliven your life.

In 1975, during the brief union of Jazz label Artist House and Pop megalith A&M, guitarist Jim Hall, a great melodist and nervy soloist, received mildly favorable notices when his Live! album appeared (distilled from a week’s performances at a club in Toronto). A low-key, retiring sort of chap, Jim was back then a hidden commodity, indifferent to public acclaim, but in fact the sought-after equal of his peers--notably Rollins (never having played on the Bridge, Hall yet played on The Bridge), Giuffre, Farmer, Desmond (Jim’s Nova sparks striking Bossa Paul), several classic duet albums with Ron Carter or Bill Evans (Jim’s solos comfortably occupying the space between Evans and earth).

These days when octogenarian Hall is feeling his oats he’ll go play with one of “the kids,” whether that younger duetist bears the years of Metheny, or Frisell, or Geoff Keezer. A match whatever the moment, Jim can still pick mighty quick, strum with aplomb, or extoll a droll solo. For example: “Stuck in his strum, Jim pulled out a plum, and got right back in the pocket.” (All right, I agree... no more puns.)

Remember that Live! album? In the four decades since, guitarists and others have discovered it, loved its beauty and wit and immaculate sound and completely inventive playing, studied it note by note by note, and now adjudge it one of the supreme Jazz albums of the 20th century. Much credit belongs to the Canadian sidemen, bassist and crafty sound recorder Don Thompson and drummer Terry Clarke, both playing at the top of their game, both simultaneously supporting and challenging Hall. Still mesmerized after many listens, many a listener has wondered what the rest of that astonishing week could have sounded like...

Wonder no more! The canny, fan-funded ArtistShare label has worked with Hall and Thompson to assemble and, late last year, issue Live Vol.2-4 (4CD set ASO116, maybe available from the ArtistShare website only)--21 performances of melodic standards and excellent originals, three hours and seven minutes of gorgeous, perfect guitar-trio Jazz. These occupy three of the CDs; the fourth is a CDR offering High Res 24bit/48K Audio Files of the music for your computer or other sound-system device. And all housed in an inch-thick, extra-sturdy, 5”x6” album-book with essays, photos, drawings, news clippings, et al. I can only add... BUY IT! NOW!

Four-set number 3 comes from a trumpeter you would not think to call under-recorded. But elegant little album-book Columbia/Legacy 88725418532, Live in Europe 1969: The Bootleg Series Vol.2, presents the only known recordings (and live ones at that) of Miles Davis’s so-called “lost band,” the transitional quintet he had in 1969 between the splintering of his long-lived “second quintet” (Miles + Shorter, Hancock, Carter, Williams) and the several changeable, gauntlet-thrown-down, Fusion bands of the Seventies.

“Lost band” is actually an unfortunate appellation, because to my aging ears that’s what I’m hearing in too many places: musicians who are lost and struggling to find a way--forward or back they don’t care, so long as there’s movement. Well, with a rhythm section as speed-ready and stamina-sure as Chick Corea, Dave Holland, and Jack deJohnette, the trick for Miles and Wayne Shorter is either to keep up, to ride those tigers--or to rein them in. And that’s the fractious and fractured para-Jazz we hear taking up too much aural space: grooves few, swing absent; the sounds unsettled, falling between two stools; neither the Miles that was--whether soft and sensuous, or shattered blue glass--nor the Fusion that would be... something... something not yet defined.

So discs 1 and 2 document summer festival dates, with Miles alternately sputtering fire and squeaking futilely, and Shorter exploding all cylinders, as frenzied-fast and angry as Coltrane on a bad-karma day. The third CD is more transitional. Early fall in Stockholm finds the music clearly on a course for Fusion, Corea trinkling a real piano and the “tunes” now tumbling roughly into place...

And suddenly it’s disc 4, a spectacular color DVD with the band fully “found” at last, five powerhouse players concertizing in-the-round, their in-Fused notes like imperious fists pounding and resounding throughout the Berlin Philharmonic’s shuddering foundations. Roll over, von Karajan, and tell Furtwangler the news: the barbarians are at the gates, ‘Gate. And that Fusion rift? Man, it’s da Bomb!

If I’m lyin’, I’m tryin’. Czech it... Miles has dedicated the concert to Duke Ellington. (Huh? See the Aryans whispering, “Is that the Duke of Hohenzollern?”) Our five NeuMuziKnights confront Deutsche dragon ComplaZenSie, and snicker-snak... behold, from the entrails of the beast drift partial visions of players yet unknown: Zawinul to Jarrett, Mahavishnu to Bartz, a massive Jack Johnson rope-a-doppelganging, and Miles-to-be going before he sleeps. (Mistah KunFused--he live...)

But the capper, the last laugh, the final geste and gesture... in a placid farewell to his past, Miles ends this brilliant set, this irony of the moment and augury of things to come, with a near-solo stroll across “I Fall in Love Too Easily” (plus, band back, a sign-off whisp of “Sanctuary”)--spirited and dispirited, fragmented and fragile, broken and bereft, brazen and beautiful. It’s Berlin all over again, an un-Sally’d Joel Grey and goodbye-to-all-that cabaret, a cock in the snoot to good-German kunst and the rusticals of the Wall, and--above all--a five-band of brothers in a divided city, about to divide the whole world of Jazz.
* * * * *
Rather than keep over-writing, I think I should wrap things up. The fourth set (ordered but not in hand when I began this meant-to-be-light essay) turned out to bring mixed results--100 Hits Legends: The Everly Brothers (set LEGENDS019), takes five CDs, 20 cuts per CD, to deliver most (but not all) of the Cadence and Warner Bros. hits and best other tracks... but only 80 or so in this selection are really worth reissuing. (Hands up if you think you need to hear the Brothers whipsaw through “My Mammy,” “Mention My Name in Sheboygan,” or “O Mein Papa.”) But even the bad songs still have the gorgeous, soaring, brothers-in-arms harmonies pretty much patented by the Everlys.

I was fooled too by the widespread publicity; I guess the 2010 not-new set was instead being dumped on the market at a ridiculously low price, so the good news is you can probably find one at Half-Price Books or on the Internet for about $10. As some song our Daddy taught us might say:

If you write for no money,
Put on a free show,
You got to be ready...
Sometimes it’s no go.

Yet in this case,

At a dime a song
For those harmonies,
You can’t go wrong
With the Everlys...

Blues Legends, Courtesy William Stout

There's good news on two fronts... Most important, granddaughter Lliralyn, the families, and the Vashon community are all slowly recovering from the horrendous trauma of Ryan’s death. People are moving past those tearful hugs and glacial silences, edging out into sunlight, laughing briefly once more.

And during the interim my other good news got even better:

It's remotely possible that a few readers of this blog may have been on board as far back as September of 2007, but for most of you my piece on artist and illustrator William Stout (go here) could provide some useful background regarding his training, subsequent experience, and present reputation.

Stout has several books in his resume, most of them dinosaur or fantasy-related. But for the past five years or so, he’s been spending his down-time hours researching, designing, and then finally painting, watercolor portraits of his favorite Bluesmen (and Women)--significant, sometimes truly legendary, African-Americans who made and played the Blues. The “comic arts” division at Abrams, respected publishers of regular Art or Photography books mostly, had issued a very successful collection of Old Time musician portraits created by maverick-gone-mainstream comix artist R. Crumb, and the Abrams editors embraced the notion of Bill’s sort-of sequel presenting a hundred Legends of the Blues.

Contract in hand, Bill worked steadily, polishing and preparing and painting his chosen hundred--ranging wide and far, Robert Petway to Robert Johnson, Cow Cow Davenport to Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters to Ethel Waters, Bessie Tucker to Bessie Smith, Lonesome Sundown to Sunnyland Slim, Georgia Tom to Mississippi Fred, and Tampa Red to Bukka White and Blues Boy King.

He also sought to line up a “name” musician or movie personage to write the book’s Introduction. As Bill says (approximately; my memory of our phone conversations): “Jimmy Page, the great guitarist and leader of Led Zeppelin, agreed to write one. So I kept painting, and three years went by, and Jimmy kept assuring me he’d send something soon... Finally, with all the paintings finished, with a week left till my contractual deadline to submit everything at once, Jimmy confessed he had written nothing and was now too busy to produce anything at all!”

Stout paused, then: “Three years, right? And suddenly he’s too busy. Well, I called just about every Arts person I knew, directors and producers and cartoonists and musicians and... nobody. No one able or willing to help. So there’s three days left... and then I thought of one more person I could ask...”

I’ll let his voice trail off, because I get to take over the story. Yeah, me, "Joliet Ed (Jr.)," a little brother to the Blues, for sure, but Bill’s grasping-at-straws last hope, and an "Old School"-credentialed friend. Bill explains the situation he’s in and tells me that if I agree to help, I’ll have three days total to come up with some wonderful intro. No time to ponder alternate possibilities, do research, interview anyone else, decide to start over. Just time to go for it--start writing and hope for the best. Oh, and as Bill sheepishly added, “If Stephan King or Jon Landis or--why not?--Spielberg suddenly calls me back with a last-minute attempt, well, I’ll have to go with the celebrity name, and scrap yours... That’s the ugly reality. Some deal, huh?”

Hey, nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? I’m pretty sure I can come up with something, so why not try? (Besides, he’s offered me my choice of a Legends original--the art work--as thanks just for trying!)

I won’t drag the story out... Short weekend shorter, on Sunday night, half a day early, I emailed Bill with my attempt at an Introduction attached, expecting him to respond quickly with suggestions for revisions, but... Nothing, no response, complete computer silence...

No word come Monday morning, and still no word by Monday night... I figure Bill must hate it, now is so busy scrambling and arguing with Abrams that he doesn’t want to get into it with me on the phone too... I’m bummed. Hate it that I’ve failed to deliver, that I’ve let my old friend down... and of course there’s no way I’ll accept a painting as payment for failing. Moping and cursing, I drag myself off to bed.

Tuesday’s still the same. No word. Morning drags on into afternoon. Then, finally, comes the dreaded email... except... I’m reading that “Abrams loves it, no changes needed, thanks for coming through just as I knew you would,” etc. (Mr. Stout apparently is one who believes--oh, don’t we all?--that no news equals good news.)

So we are both now fair-haired boys once or again (even those of us who lack hair--naming no names, of course). Moreover, the publishers want to pay me “a small stipend” (their words), for last-ditch effort in a worthy cause perhaps. (“I want to thank the Academy--and my third wife Margo Malwear for being such a bi...ggg, uh, helpmate!”)

Anyway, smooth sailing thereafter. I do change a sentence not quite clear, but otherwise all’s well up till now, when first sample copies have arrived and been distributed only to those closely involved. In fact, I’ve just used my sprightly single one to offer discreet peeks at a few of the hundred Black and brilliant Legends (every painted image copywrited, be it known, by William Stout and Abrams Books), soon to be drawn large as well as writ, in the hallowed annals of the Blues--such a circumstance devoutly to be wished for the meager Introduction too.

Look for Legends of the Blues in alert bookstores, comix shops, and music sources--and from equivalent on-line sellers--starting in late April or early May. (And if you think this post looks wonky, you are spot on. See previous post below for explanation of sorts... which is exactly what I am out of!)

Trouble in Blogger City

I've had a post ready to go for a week, but our dear host, blogspot.com, has been force-feeding all us minions a non-digestible, non-functional, "new & improved" version of the platform, with a useless mis-step midway which makes adding pictures a fiasco. Gone is the wonderful page allowing us to select a pic, resize it to fit suitably, and then slide it right into a waiting framework. Offered in its place is a less inviting guide for selecting and uploading... what, exactly? One by one they arrive, these remarkably obtuse pics from hdqs., all the same size, incapable of alteration, refusing to allow integration of visual elements and text.

The blogspot bosses and tech wonks and downtier bureau-krats (the ones that rummage in your drawers) blithely bleat that we must be patient, they are "working on solving the problem." I say: Bully for them. And: Bring back the tools that work! (As country-folk songwriter Guy Clark defines it, "Stuff that works, stuff that holds up, the kind o' stuff you don't hang on the wall.")

Yeah, we got Trouble, right here in Blogger City... and that's spelled with T, and that rhymes with B, and that stands for... Botched!

O Death, Won't You Spare Him Over?

“For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,/ When we have shuffled off this mortal coil.”--William Shakespeare, Hamlet.

Nightmares, more likely.

Unbearable news has come... displacing the sequel to last week’s post. A considerably more dreadful matter commands the attention of all who have borne children or helped in their care and raising...

“In the midst of life we are in death.”--The Book of Common Prayer [from an Episcopal ceremony].

Ryan Krug, age 17, a junior at Vashon High School on Vashon Island, Washington, was killed in a single-car crash on the night of January 29, 2013. He was driving home after a study night with friends. The island houses large numbers of hapless deer and raccoons, and speculation is that something crossing suddenly in front of the car might have caused Ryan to swerve off the road, smashing head-on into the waiting telephone pole.

“I had not thought Death had undone so many.”--T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land [after Dante].

My granddaughter Lliralyn, age 16, is also a junior at Vashon High. She and Ryan

had been casual friends for most of their lives, but a few months ago they unexpectedly saw each other in some new light, and they became girlfriend and boyfriend. Ryan’s death has left Lliralyn silent and empty-eyed, practically comatose. My own rage would blaze the island to blackened, barren char.

“Because I could not stop for Death--/ He kindly stopped for me--/ The Carriage held but just Ourselves--/ And Immortality.”--Emily Dickinson, #712 in The Collected Poems.

I accept no excuse or explanation from any religion for the heartlessness, the cold disinterest... or is it active malevolence of... what? God/Goddess/Yahweh/Allah/Fate/Karma/ Supreme Being/Blind Chance/Universal Entropy/ Nothingness? The Non-Existent Absence that lets sexual predators and savage armies thrive, and instead chooses to murder Ryan Krug, one of the brightest lights on Vashon, a young man lean and tall, curly-haired and handsome, and lately Llira’s particular friend--the Undefinable Evil that destroyed this loving son, top student, talented athlete, budding artist, excellent

saxophonist, citizen volunteer, natural leader, and good friend to everyone who crossed his path (while remaining loyal to his core “Crew”)--may “It” burn from air to earth, seared bits be swallowed by the sea, and spirit extinguish.

“Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.”--Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Almanac.

One week gone since the accident. Vashon mourns... as do we. Lliralyn takes refuge, day and night, in groups of her girlfriends, using them as shields against family and solicitous authority. She barely speaks. Slightly younger sister Maddie seems about ready to resume soccer and school; Llira clearly not. Her friends tell us she is

convinced that no one before her ever could have experienced such a level of emotional pain, or have had taken from her such an abiding, all-consuming love...

Meanwhile, Kelly (her father) and I are working on a song to celebrate the couple--high schoolers in love, treated respectfully. I wrote the lines early on, held them back for a few days, then showed them to Kelly. Will they work as lyrics? Could any words somehow assuage the many families’ massive grief? Our effort may prove an exercise in futility, yet we continue.

“After the first death, there is no other.”--Dylan Thomas, “A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London.”

Life is fragile, Death inexorable, and Love? Love is forever... and impossible... immutable... and an illusion. Love is all things to all people. Love sees what the heart sees, and Love is blind. Love is the stuff of dreams--tenuous... fleeting... exciting... never enough. Or perhaps it is selfless... passionate... all too much... impermanent... mutable... gone.

Ryan and Lliralyn were blessed by the gods, by the Mass-into-Energy Force that binds the Universe. They were also cursed by some implacable lesser evil... envious, petty, mean. Llira survives--scarred and skittish, but a scrappy fighter too. She’ll come back, and will be.

... Watched over, in dreams, by her miraculous, tragic, first love.

Then “how do you like your blueeyed boy/ Mister Death?”--e.e. cummings, untitled poem.

Sheets to the Wind

I have some good news and some bad... or more accurately, I should just say: I have some great news, and some good news that should have turned out better.

Imperfect news first... In grad school (English Lit, University of Washington), creeping up on 50 years ago, I got to know a guy named Bruce Lofgren; he was taking Lit courses but really hoped to have a career in music. He played Jazz guitar, could compose and arrange too, and he was studying privately with guitarist Larry Coryell--who would soon head East to become part of Gary Burton’s Quartet playing a light version of Jazz-Rock (Lofty Fake Anagram and such).

Maybe Bruce picked up some of Larry’s tricks and style, but he maintained Lofgren

too. He moved to Los Angeles and carved out his career, playing mostly electric Jazz, doing some arranging, teaching part-time in the public schools, eventually forming and maintaining somehow for a couple of decades now a so-called “rehearsal band”--his Bruce Lofgren Jazz Orchestra meeting regularly for the joy of playing Big Band music, but only rarely getting anything more than a one-night gig, paid Musicians Union scale. (Famous examples would be the bands organized by Terry Gibbs in L.A. and Thad Jones/Mel Lewis back in the Apple.)

How or even why we became friends I don’t remember, but something connected us

tenuously; and one would check up on the other when passing through each other’s turf. I (indirectly) got to hire Bruce to work on the music for several commercials, and every so often Bruce would ask me to create the phrases suited to some song he’d composed--this even though, back in grad school, one night at a party held on visiting poet John Logan’s rented houseboat, Bruce had pinned me like Nabokov toying with a moth for his butterfly collection, shouting from thirty feet away, loud enough to be heard above the party din, “Leimbacher, you’ll never be a poet... you’re too normal!"

I’ve borne that hidden, never-quite-healed wound of words ever since, unable to claim otherwise. I write all sorts of things, it’s true, but--speaking objectively--I do rely on a quick wit and a slick surface patina that work well for headlines, slogans, ad copy, naming projects, puns and word play, etc. I stick with the brief and quick, and that includes lyric poems and the occasional song lyric.

So in the decades since college I’ve put words to maybe a half-dozen Lofgren tunes. The only one that might actually have been heard heretofore was the title song for Bruce’s album Move into Your Car--a timely suggestion now, but issued two decades too early! And even sung con brio and with suitable irony by moonlighting lead/harmony vocalist Janis Siegel, Manhattan Transfer’s superb nine-GRAMMY award-winner. But the album went nowhere, and our song went with it.

In late October of 2012, Bruce emailed me that over the Halloween weekend, his long-lived BLJO would be playing at an L.A. club, during which he intended to present the world premiere performance of the long-awaited second song from collaborators L&L, this one a sexy, double-entendre number called “Sheet Music” that I’d dreamed up, turning music terms into bedroom talk in a comically racy, slightly silly way.

After so much time gone by, I certainly couldn’t remember the words I’d worked up--still can’t--but that “Sheet Music” would finally be performed was good news. Bruce had better news too: the vocalist would be a charmer he’d met, a younger relation of the late, highly regarded Jazz bassist Red Mitchell (a granddaughter, he thought).

Best news of all, a friend of Bruce’s would videotape the whole gig and I’d then receive a duplicate DVD of it... “All right,” I thought, “this could be great!”

The weekend came and went; a brief email assured me that the performance was a success, the audience laughed and applauded our “world premiere,” and my copy

would be coming soon...

Six weeks later, Christmas drawing nigh, I finally held that CD-sized dream right in my hand, about to play the sweet proof of my royalties-rich future as a songwriter. I loaded the disc, pushed “Play,” waited another excruciating minute, then saw, and heard...

Good news: the BLJO is near twenty strong, dressed vaguely as pirates but offering no band routines; still and all, solid soloists and tight ensemble work on Bruce’s inventive charts.

Not-so-bad news: there was nearly an hour of other tunes before the vocal section began, but then “Sheet Music” came right after Kurt Weill’s “Pirate Jenny"! Heady

company indeed.

Not-so-good news: Bruce’s video ace did nothing but set up a single camera--at an angle and distance to take in the whole band--then start the tape rolling and (probably) head to the bar for a couple of drinks. (Oh, someone changed focus a few times, but it might well have been Bruce himself since the framing didn’t include him much of the time anyway!)

Worse news: whoever was playing soundman was also a minimalist--i.e., one microphone, positioned for solos or full-band power only; an adequate solution, but...

Worst news: one not suitable for an unknown singer and song, with tricky lyrics obscured by an arrangement that perhaps zigs too loudly when the vocalist needs light zagging instead!

Yes, it’s true, the words could not be heard, nor the entendres doubled, unless the listener was sitting close to the singer. So the performance likely impressed no one; that premiere may have been its derniere as well.

Then, heaping insult on injury, the “Music Impossible” DVD dupe self-destructed

after just two viewings! Proving once again that “There’s many a Slip ‘twixt Sheet and Hip.”

* * * * *
Next: the good news, one of the best things that’s happened to me in twenty or thirty years...