Flashback Friday: Something's Burning

Fire is one of those things that can be endlessly fascinating, and equally frightening when out of control. We all know what it is, but might be hard-pressed to define it, so here are the first two definitions from dictionary.com:
1. a state, process, or instance of combustion in which fuel or other material is ignited and combined with oxygen, giving off light, heat, and flame.
2. a burning mass of material, as on a hearth or in a furnace.

When I woke this morning I was thinking about how frequently the word fire was used or came up as a metaphor in rock 'n roll. Here's a short list off the top of my head.

"Goodness gracious, great ball o' fire!" ~Jerry Lee Lewis

"I'm just a hunk, a hunk of burning love." ~Elvis

"She's cool like ice, like fire." ~Dylan

Earth, Wind and Fire

"Let me stand next to your fire." ~Hendrix

"Fire... I'll take you to burn." ~Arthur Brown

"Come on, baby, light my fire." ~The Doors

"Don't you play with me or you'll play with fire." ~Rolling Stones

"We didn't start the fire..." ~Billy Joel

"Something's burning, and I think it's love." ~Kenny Rogers

"I've seen fire and I've seen rain..." ~James Taylor

* * *

The Greek's left us a tale about how fire came to mankind, the story of Prometheus. In Greek mythology Prometheus is credited with creating man from clay. (My son used to make people from clay, too, when he was young.)  As he watched these people whom he created he observed that they suffered during the winter time while the gods all sat around being content in the warmth of their environment.

Prometheus asked Zeus to provide fire for the people but Zeus demurred stating that fire might make people strong and wise like the gods. In addition, fire is dangerous. Someday people might sings songs about it and work themselves into an uncontrolled frenzy.

Prometheus chose to act on behalf of the people and defied Zeus, an action that made him memorable to us but caused him great sorrow. One day he stole fire from Zeus' lightning and snuck it off to the humans that he cared about. Though there is much more to this tale the scene we remember most is the payback Prometheus received for defying Zeus. Prometheus was chained to a rock and each day an eagle (symbol of Zeus) would fly down and tear out his liver. This horrible thing never killed him, however, as the liver would regenerate and he would have to look forward to the same thing happening the next day once more, and the day after ad infinitum.

Fire did ultimately prove to be useful for the people of our world. But it's also done some damage. Homes have been destroyed. Lives have been taken. Fire has caused much destruction.

The story of Zeus and Prometheus seems like a generational thing. "Parents just don't understand." Sometimes parents are wise to be cautious. Fire can be a powerful force. On a cold mid-winter's night, though, I wouldn't want to be without it. When it's raging out of control, however, it can be a pretty scary thing.

Does fire frighten you or comfort you? Respect its power.

Flashback Friday: Off the Record, An Oral History of Popular Music

The late Tom Petty

Imagine that you have been invited to a huge party, and when you get there everyone is a somebody... a Somebody in the history of pop music. Who do you talk to first? Do you walk around looking for your favorites first? Or do you just saunter around talking with whoever you run into next?

 

That's what it's like to pick up the book Off the Record: An Oral History of Popular Music.

Obviously a party like that can only be assembled by someone with connections. In this case the author is Joe Smith, who happened to be president and CEO of Capitol Industries-EMI (the same ones who signed the Beatles, Dylan and so many more.) Before this he had been president of Warner Bros./Reprise and Elektra. A Yale grad who became a popular and successful disc jockey, Smith seems like just the right guy to gather all these other pop celebs under one roof.

The book is handled just right. There are no long interviews. Like the party, you can bounce around for a brief spell with Tom Petty, then George Harrison, Little Richard, Ray Charles. Over here is Dylan and is that Yoko Ono? Oh yes, talking with Joni Mitchell, Phil Collins and Ella Fitzgerald. Joan Baez, Robert Plant and James Taylor seem to be enjoying themselves over there with Tina Turner and David Bowie. Then you see the jazz guys, Lionel Hampton, Stan Getz and Dave Brubeck staring out the window onto the lawn where Quincy Jones is listening to Robbie Krieger, Mary Travers, Frankie Valli, Al Kooper and Herbie Hancock. Donovan pensively listens to John Fogerty and David Lee Roth. Judy Collins seems to be reminiscing with Graham Nash and Stephen Stills. Lou Rawls and Tom Petty can't seem to get enough of Henry Mancini.

O.K., you get the picture. And the stories they tell are fascinating because pop culture has played a role in all of our lives.

My bedtime reading ended with Mike Nesmith talking about the Monkees. They were not a music group, they were characters on a television show. The purpose of the show was not to end up with hit records, he says. But one day they're driving along in the car and hear that their song Last Train to Clarksville is #2 on the national charts. Nesmith says the very notion of it was bizarre. Suddenly everything changed.

Jimi

The Monkees were shipped to London to prepare for a road tour as a music group, but they weren't really sure about how they really felt, nevertheless they followed through. One strange quirk about the tour was having Jimi Hendrix open for them. Mickey Dolenz had heard Hendrix in a London club and made the recommendation, which Nesmith off-handedly thought was O.K., sight and sound unseen. When they arrive in Raleigh, North Carolina, to do their first gig, the Hendrix trio is mind blowing, even in appearance, but the teeny bopper screamers are there only for one purpose, and it's not the Experience of Jimi Hendrix.

Nesmith says he disguised himself and went into the crowd to snatch a listen. He'd never heard anything like it. "It was the most exhilarating, the most majestic, the most entertaining, the most fulfilling music I'd ever heard," said Nesmith.

But the mismatch was self-evident and after eight gigs Jimi had had it. The girls were chanting, "We want the Monkees," and in the middle of a song the most incredible guitar player of a generation left the stage in the middle of a song, disgusted.

For the record, this book offers a lot. It's real, it's intimate, up close and personal. Recommended.

You can find the book here on Amazon

Illustrations by the author

Let's Take a Look at the Numbers

A miscellaneous collection of random numerical facts for the 206th day of the 2013.

667 ~Number of tornadoes in U.S. this year so far, as of July 23… Fewest since 2004.

31.2 ~Number of iPhones Apple sold in the last quarter (in millions).

14.6 ~Number of iPads sold in the same period (in millions).

45,734 ~Number of people named John Smith in U.S.

178,710 ~Number of people in the United States with the first name of Leon.

67 ~Number of people in the United States with the name Leon Newman.*

316,300,286 ~Number of people in United States, July 2013.

2.1 ~Fertility rate of American women.

37 ~Number of years till we reach a U.S. population of 400 million (current guesstimate).

9 ~Number of symphonies Ludwig van Beethoven wrote.

41-45 ~Number of symphonies Mozart wrote, depending on which were his own or incorrectly attributed to him.

35 ~Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s age when he died.

56 ~The age at which Beethoven finished his life.

97 ~The age at which Great Grandpa Newman passed away.

0 ~The number of symphonies Great Grandpa Newman wrote.

47 ~The numeral between 46 and 48, the 15th prime number.

151 ~The total number of home runs hit by the National League in 1903.

158 ~Total number of home runs hit by the 1927 New York Yankees.

264 ~Total number of home runs hit by 1997 Seattle Mariners, current MLB team record for home runs hit in a single season.

150 ~Number of psalms in the Book of Psalms.

3500 ~Number of distinct species of mosquitoes.

0 ~Number of people in Minnesota who are fond of mosquitoes.

10,800 ~Temperature at the earth’s core, Fahrenheit.

27 ~The age at which Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain left this mortal, material realm.

½ ~The number of times Dr. Francis Schaeffer smiled during his ten-hour film series “How Should We Then Live?”

9 ~The number of Tall Ships that are slated to be strutting their stuff in Duluth Harbor this weekend.


*Source: http://howmanyofme.com

Hendrix Spawned By 1965 Greenwich Village Scene

I had an older friend who told me once that he’d seen Jimi Hendrix in Minneapolis in November 1968. He said, “I didn’t get it.” His statement surprised me because at the time the music world had already shifted. But as I listened to Manic Depression again this week, I wondered if the reason he couldn’t relate to what Dylan was doing was because he was still living on the "Before Dylan" side of the divide. That is, before Rock ‘N Roll had been transformed to Rock.

Saturday I wrote about this insight I’d gleaned from Lee Marshall’s Bob Dylan: The Never Ending Star, which many of us have known intuitively for decades. The essence is this: up until a certain point in time rock and roll was music you could shuffle and tap your feet to. After that moment in time, rock was a permanently altered genre.

Listening to Hendrix again today I understand how confusing his music might have been. When the first three notes steam up and then pause, what follows is a riveting ride. It’s not a dance tune. It’s not rock and roll. And Hendrix was never a rock and roll star. He was a rock star.

Where did Hendrix discover his path? According Charles R. Cross’s Room Full of Mirrors, even though in '65 Hendrix was playing gigs up in Harlem, he was drawn to the scene that was happening in Greenwich Village. Something explosive and real was going on. He recognized it and wanted to be a part of the freedom it promised.

Before this time Hendrix spent several years honing his skills as a backup guitarist in big name bands that included the likes of Little Richard, Wilson Picket, the Isley Brothers, Jackie Brown and others. Cross points out in his book how Hendrix was a student of these experiences, picking up all those tricks that he wowed people with later, including playing with his teeth and behind his back.

The one thing he picked on the scene in the Village was the inspiration and motivation to quit being a backup guitarist and go it on his own. It happened when heard Bob Dylan. Hendrix didn’t care much for his own singing, so it held him back. But if Dylan could make it with his voice (and Dylan had made it), Hendrix figured he could also make it.

Depending on which legend you read Hendrix was invited to England by either Keith Richards’ girl friend, Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham or bassist Chas Chandler of the Animals. It was there that he hooked up with drummer Mitch Mitchell and bassist Noel Redding, establishing himself and assembling his new sound.

The Copernican Revolution was essentially a paradigm shift. Before Copernicus, it was believed that the earth was the center of the galaxy. Copernicus published a treatise positing that the earth and planets revolved around the sun. The odd thing about this revolution is that it didn't happen overnight. It took more than 100 years, yet we label it a revolution.

The so it was that the Rock Revolution cannot be called a single incident, a single song. It was a space in time. It took place in the Sixties. It caused a shift in everything, upheavals in values, and strove for something elevated which felt within reach for a time: Freedom.

"The emergence of rock culture, from 1965 to 1968," writes Marshall, "thus depends upon a series of ideas concerning how rock music is actually a form of popular art, and rock stars popular artists. Dylan is central to the emergence of this kind of discourse. As part of a 'more mature' folk genre, he had already utilized the album as his main format and thus his electrified albums carried cultural legitimacy into the teen market."

This idea of albums, not pop chart singles, was a major shift. Hendrix, the Beatles, Bowie and others are remembered by their albums. Are You Experienced, the album, put Hendrix on the map, not the singles extracted from it which served as a form of advertising for the albums. We follow the arc of Hendrix's career by the albums he

Marshall continues, "During 1965 and 1966 he (Dylan) embodied the idea of an artist following a unique personal vision no matter where (personally and professionally) it took him. Dylan came to represent the artistic change itself....  Dylan provided pop artists with a new model of the star and a new range of topics for songs."

In short, Dylan demolished the logjam and let the river flow again. Hendrix was one of many ships that sailed through to a newly opened sea.

'Scuse me, while I kiss the sky.

EdNote: A few thoughts from this piece were drawn from this brief Hendrix bio by Keno. Top right: Hendrix painting by Ennyman