Come All You People Now, Smile on Your Brother...

A Story in Several Parts, not to be sung:

1. Not so long ago in a town far away...no, make that: a long long time ago in a town not very near, I was a young bride. Not so much a blushing bride because this was post Sexual Revolution, or at least the start of it, so when I married to my college sweetheart, I was neither technically nor actually a virgin. However, I was a Nice Jewish Girl who aspired to matching Garland sweaters, A-line skirts and circle pins. I married an actor, an English actor,and post wedding, we hied to England so he could go to drama school.

2. The actor, a fine and handsome young man as you can see, was admitted to that bastion of British Acting, The Central School of Speech & Drama (known also as the Central School of Screech & Trauma). I, as befitted a young wife of that time, worked as a secretary. All of you post-feminists should know that back then EVEN WITH A DEGREE IN PHILOSOPHY, secretarial positions were the zenith of one's expectations, unless one was a teacher, which I refused to be (a story for another time). So, by day my hunky husband lounged about the halls of Central, mixing with all manner of other hunky people. And I toiled on Great Titchfield Street, typing the inanities of Mr. Platt, Vice President of Foreign Operations for Associated Dry Goods.

3. Was I a happy camper? Noooooooooo. But it is beyond the scope of this simple blog post to elaborate and enumerate all of the reasons why. Suffice to say, I was dependent on my mate for ALL of my social needs. Fortunately for me, people seemed to like him (he was quite hunky).

4. One of the people in his year at Central was Dave Clark, of the Dave Clark Five. You know, that Dave Clark Five. Not the Beatles, certainly, but the DC5 was hot shit to some. Dave was seeing the wrong side of his career as a teen heart throb, so he enrolled at Central (one presumes he did not have to audition) to try and get up to speed on an acting career. And Dave, Dave really liked my hunky husband. Consequently, I, that is we, spent an amazing amount of time with Dave and his posse. Ah, the stories I could tell....

5. This particular album photo was actually the cover for a single the DC5 put out sometime in the '70s. "Love One Another" was the song, and Dave thought it would be a cool idea if all you people was actually his friends from Central. We traipsed off to a recording studio somewhere and for an entire evening sang over and over and over again

"C'mon you people now,
Smile on your brother,
Everybody get together,
Try to love one another
Right now...."

over and over and over again. Dave and Mike Smith and the others of the DC5 did the verses. We were the chorus, and while we were singing our blessed little hearts out, someone was taking photos. Did I know that we were going to be featured on the cover? No, I did not. I had come straight from work and that outfit I'm wearing? It's a sweet doubleknit suit, pleated white skirt and navy jacket. My hair? It's up in a secretarial top knot; you could probably find a pencil in there if you looked hard enough.
6. When I look at this photo, I think what a fish out of water I was. All those drama students and me, the secretary. But you can tell that I sang away for all I was worth, and as I recall, a fine time was had by all. I think we even made an appearance on Top of the Pops, so the DC5 could promote the record. For that, I was dressed more appropriately, but I don't have a photo (and I don't remember what I wore), so you'll have to take my word for it.

The Grammy's

I don't know that I've ever watched them before. I didn't intend to watch them tonight. But I did and now I don't know why this is my first time. I watch the Oscars, but then I go to movies. I watch the Emmy's, but then I see a lot of TV. The logical assumption, one would think, is that I don't listen to music. I do, except that I resist a lot of the time, and until tonight, I didn't really know why. Now I do.

Music just gets to me too much. Watching the Grammy's, I kept finding myself in tears. I cried over Cirque du Soleil's Love and Ringo Starr presenting the award to George Martin. I cried over Rhapsody in Blue and Great Balls of Fire. I cried when I sang Good Golly, Miss Molly (with Little Richard) to my dog who didn't know WTF was going on. I cried when Josh Groban sang and I cried when Herbie Hancock played.

All night, the tears were there because music--whatever the genre--just gets right into my heart.

Lost in the Sixties

YouTube - Del Shannon - Runaway (1965)

I hear this song and I'm in the back seat of a car, at the tail end of a double date. We're on our way to the Greater Pittsburgh Airport, just to walk around, hang out, see whatever there was to see. I don't remember who my date was. No one important, then or later. It's winter, cold, and was it really raining or is it that song puts rain into my mind? I don't know. Memory is a funny thing, isn't it. The boy I'm wondering about has dumped me, that I know. Alan. My first short blond. My first kiss. My first makeout. My first breakup.

CUT -- This is just not working. I'm trying to get myself back in the moment to write an amazingly evocative trip back in time and it simply isn't happening. Sorta like the orgasm that just won't roll over...or the sneeze that dies before it's out.

Part of it, I know, is the the bevy of prancing girls circling Del Shannon. Are they doing The Pony? Or just making like a carousel. And if so, to what end? And isn't their hair bouncy? As if they're refugees from a Breck commercial.

That's what we looked like in the Sixties. Exactly. Friends today see the photos of me back then and gush, "You were so good-looking. The boys must have just loved you." Well, no, they didn't. The boys loved the blondes; we brunettes were always consigned to the second banana role. Think Betty and Veronica. Or Sandra Dee and Susan Kohner.

Besides, I was too "ethnic". Read, Jewish. Not WASP. The Other.

And also, too smart. Smart was not in then. Smart came about five years later.

I always was ahead of my time...

A Song for All Ages

Have I mentioned before how much I love music? How evocative it is for me, an aural Proustian madeleine. Yes, I believe I have, in a prior post, somewhere. But I'm aging, people, and we tend to repeat ourselves as we go, so forgive me.

I was listening to the TV the other day. Literally. PBS was running one of their interminable pledge drives which feature a bar here and a chord there of songs from yesteryear. They have the original groups on, or what is left of them, to sing the full version of the hit, and the station splices that in between the pitches. I love the music. What I don't love is that the singers have aged so, so, ungracefully. By which I mean: they've gotten old. Lined, wrinkled, puffy, gray. Can I tell you how depressing it is to see the heart throb of your youth looking just like someone's grandpa? The only thing worse is the frequent cuts to the audience who are all bopping along to the song the same as they did the year it came out. Except they are really lined, wrinkled, puffy, gray. Probably, one must conclude, as is one, a thought which instantly stops one's own bopping on one's sofa.

So it is that I listen to these programs, but I don't watch. And thus am I able to preserve a modicum of self-delusion. That self-delusion enabled me to focus on the songs. It occurred to me as I was listening to the television that every major decade in my life has been marked by a specific genre of music. Wouldn't that be a cool frame for a memoir? A memoir! Shit, I'm not old enough--. Oh, I guess I am.

I Feel Sleepy, Very Sleepy, So Slee--

I'm fine as long as I'm upright, but the moment I sit at the computer, I begin to sink into the chair and drone into some slllllloooooooooowwww alpha state. I'm trying to do stuff, to get things done, to achieve and make much of my life, but I feel sleepy, so sleepy--!

This morning on my long walk with Molly, I saw a huge white rabbit, complete with big, perky ears. I did a double take. To see a hare on my walk, or ducks, geese, edible birds of all sort is not unusual. But a white rabbit? The Easter Bunny? And it was --did I mention this--huge. I know I saw it, but my life is such that maybe I didn't. Or maybe it was my father come down to beat the shit out of D for abandoning his little girl. You can see where my mind is these days.

Speaking of my father (yes, the emparadised one), did I ever tell you that I carry a picture of him in the console of my car? Sort of like a photographic St. Christopher. Yesterday I took it out--because I was stuffing yet another gas receipt in the console--and put it in my Date Book, which I was carrying to my appointment with the lawyer. What do you think of them apples, Harold Darling, I asked him. He didn't answer, but I can tell he isn't pleased.

The response to my Meme in Quarter Time was so fantastic that I've had to forego the prizes, since there were so many I couldn't possibly choose. I will now, however, begin the backstories. Don't know how far I'll get today, because remember that I feel sooooo sleeeeeepy. So maybe I'll just get the Bold-faced Lies out of the way to begin with:

4. I love Progressive Jazz.
Wrong. I hate Progressive Jazz. It is the only kind of music I have absolutely no tolerance for. Rap, yes. Country/western, certainly. Rock, pop, folk, and classical--yep, yep, yep, and yep. Progressive Jazz--nope. It's just noise to me. I get that there are improvisations and trills and drills and recurring whatevers, but that's all intellectual as far as I'm concerned. Maybe I'm not smart enough. That has occurred to me, since my sense is that Progressive Jazz is the province
of intellectuals. If so, call me dumb; or call me someone who needs more melody, more heart, more emotion in her music.