It’s spring and I hope that fact serves as a reasonable explanation for the ping-pong nature of this dispatch from my bunker, which also serves as an ever-expanding library of books, music, and books about music. I may not be a wealthy man by any reasonable contemporary definition, but I work daily amidst an embarrassment of riches.
As I write this piece on an early Monday morning, the house is still asleep. The dog is snoring from her makeshift bed in the knee cubby of my desk. Rory Gallagher is on the turntable, the volume turned down too low to truly appreciate his Irish bluesy goodness. I also had time to read uninterrupted the first chapter of Kinks’ chief songwriter Ray Davies’ first official autobiography, which followed his “unofficial autobiography” from a few decades ago.
I consider myself very fortunate for the somewhat easy access to cool tunes and literature. Even when it’s not easy, there’s a lot of fun to be had ferreting out quality books and elPees at all the second-hand emporiums dotting the Michigan landscape. Not to mention such online treasure troves as Better World Books and certain record collector social media groups.
I also read last week’s contributions from my fellow columnists in this fish wrap. Mr. Negus always manages to elicit at the very least a chuckle, and I do appreciate his frequent takes on music, fly fishing and counter-culture literature. Those other fellas, it seems to me, continue to obsess over a certain former president as an intentional distraction from the current sorry situation.
Perhaps a few more years of stratospheric inflation, deficit spending, astronomically high gasoline prices, disturbing and/or absurd social agendas, and daily revelations of government actors’ and family members’ wrongdoing (not to mention the gaslighting by their media lickspittles) will provide a much-needed mental adjustment, but I’m not holding my breath. Ideologues gotta ideologue, one-trick ponies gotta one-trick, conformists conform, and all that jazz. It’s what happens when politics is treated as a blood sport played in the realm of the confirmation-biased, quarter- educated (quoting Russell Kirk), rather than researched, well-sourced and carefully considered public policies robustly and respectfully debated. Go Team Blue! Go Team Red!
So much for that. Let’s move on, shall we?
Not too long ago, I wrote about the diminishing returns of following music. Or at least that impression overtakes me from time to time. However, I still have revelations about some music I might’ve overlooked or didn’t sufficiently dive into when it was contemporary.
This occurred to me when I considered a comment an XM-deejay made recently. Summing up Van Morrison’s run of albums from 1968’s “Astral Weeks” to 1974’s “Veedon Fleece,” the jock noted it was a run of superior albums comparable to Bob Dylan’s “Bringing It All Back Home” to “John Wesley Harding” between 1965 and 1967, and the Beatles “Rubber Soul” in 1965 and “Abbey Road” in 1969 – and, he added, no one else had ever accomplished anything similar before or since in pop music.
Hold the phone, Mr. Deejay. I could name off the top of my head at least two female performers who released several remarkable albums back-to-back. Of course, many jazz artists can boast of similar accomplishments of artistic achievements, but in pop music it’s a bit more of a rarity.
Since many among the readers here are familiar already with Joni Mitchell, I’ll make the argument for the remarkable string of albums released by Laura Nyro in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Nyro was truly a one-of-a-kind songwriter and performer. Her songs became hits when sung by other high-profile acts such as The Fifth Dimension, Three Dog Night, Blood Sweat and Tears and Barbra Streisand, but they also sparkled when Nyro tackled them with gusto. Seriously, readers, check her out.
Bruce Edward Walker (walker.editorial@gmail.com) is a Morning Sun columnist.
Credit: Source link
