Two Big North Star Events, One Special Weekend -- The Carlton Room and the Summer of Love, Baby

There was a lot of synchronicity in the air last night where Pippi Ardennia with Glenn Swanson and Friends christened the new Carlton Room at the Big O. You could feel it and breathe it, taste it and see it. The Oldenburg House is officially opening its doors and windows to ring in a new chapter in this historic and fabled B&B on the edge of Paradise. Though tonight is the official Carlton Room Grand Opening, Glenn and Emily Swanson opened their hearts with a special evening of good vibes and music as a way of thanking everyone who helped make it possible... as in the electrician and the plumber, the painters and landscapers, the floor finishers and a few other select special people.

The newly refinished Carlton Room includes a stage perfectly sized to intimately showcase Pippi Ardennia and a jazz band extraordinaire. Having heard Pippi and friends here a couple years ago, it was impossible to not think we were in the presence of a modern Ella Fitzgerald as she exuded her own blend of love and soul.

Pippi and Billy: Still at the top of their game.

So tonight is the Grand Opening for a series of monthly dinner concerts with three course meals, complimentary beverages -- including "A Rose for Emily" Cocktail, 17-7 Pale Ale or Lemonade -- and an inimitable top-drawer accompaniment. That Rose for Emily Cocktail is not only an amusing tip of the hat to Glenn's wife Emily, but also to the Nobel Prize-winning author who penned this famous short story.

Tonight's Carlton Room dinner show is full, but upcoming dates for those who desire a most memorable experience can contact the Oldenburg House. Upcoming shows are slated for August 19 & 20 and September 29 & 30.

Now here's the uncanny part where the synchronicity began to kick in. Billy Peterson, for those who don't know, is the son of a Minneapolis jazz great Willard Peterson. His son is also a phenomenal musician (keyboards.) Kevin Odegard, a guitar player who co-wrote with Andy Gill the book A Simple Twist of Fate about the making of Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks (BOTT) album, introduces Billy into the story with this sentence: "A little way across town, Billy Peterson, Minneapolis' most talented and prolific bass player, was gigging six nights a week with the jazz group Natural Life at The Longhorn in the Lumber Exchange Building at Fourth and Hennepin."

Dave King with Dan Hansen

Billy Peterson, the bass player on BOTT, has played with some of the best in the business, continues to record with the likes of good friend Steven Tyler. As we talked he mentioned that the drummer that he performs with in Minneapolis is Dave King, who just happens to be the fave musician/artist in the world of my friend Dan Hansen who is an artist who did a digital art piece of Dave King.

For more Twilight Zone elements on all this, one of the songs Pippi sang was Stand By Me, the title of Dan's favorite Hollywood film, or at least a fave at one time and deeply meaningful to him. She did it in a form of sing-along style, so natch I was singing along.

Now while all this was going on, other members of those BOTT recording sessions that Kevin Odegard wrote about are performing this tonight at 6:00 p.m. in St. Louis Park for a free Summer of Love Concert in the Park on behalf of Guitars for Vets. The lineup includes Odegard, Peter Ostroushko, and a cast of some of the Twin Cities' best at the Wolfe Park Ampitheater, 3700 Monterrey Drive. It's a Magic Marc Production saluting the 50th Anniversary of the Summer of Love.

What I especially like is the tag line: Healing the Planet One Song at a Time. If you're anywhere near the Twin Cities tonight, make your way to this Free love-gift of music to any and all.

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One of the highlights of last night in Carlton was Glenn and Emily's tribute to Helen Swanson, whom everyone knows as Mama. A kind, cheerful, generous presence year-round. Everyone who comes to Oldenburg House has been gently touched by the sweet savor she brings to the atmosphere here.

The evening opened with Glenn and Emily jointly reading an Official Proclamation regarding the renovation, acknowledging the past (The Oldenburg House was built in 1894), foreshadowing the future, and thanking one by one all the partners and purveyors who participated in this new chapter in the Big O's multi-storied history.

Looking for a special place to get away? Place the Oldenburg House on your short list.

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Meantime, let the music move your soul.  And have a great weekend. Yeah.

50th Anniversary of the Summer of Love: All Star Line-up for Free Concert in the Wolfe Park Amphitheater July 29

Woodstock was not the beginning. In 1967 the San Francisco music scene awoke to produce a phenomenon that became known as the Summer of Love. In three weeks, the Minnesota musicians who brought us seven years of Bob Dylan tribute concerts are back for one final concert, saluting the 50th Anniversary of that Summer of Love.

Kevin Odegard, leader of the Minneapolis band that backed five cuts on Bob Dylan’s seminal “Blood on the Tracks” album, is a co-producer of this, his final park concert. He marks it with a poignant, special suite written just for the occasion. (Odegard was, among other things, co-author of the book Simple Twist of Fate which provides the untold backstory about that major Dylan album.)

Stan Kipper, drums, with Barb Meyer and team.

The list of musicians is a virtual who's who of Minnesota talent including Peter Ostroushko of Prairie Home Companion fame, Barbara Meyer, Gary Lopac, Aaron Ollswang, Jim Steinworth, New Primitives and some surprise guest musicians. MC for the event is St. Louis Park homeboy Magic Marc Percansky.

To no one's surprise Odegard chimes in, "And we'll tip the hat to Bob Dylan before it's all over... with the help of a choir and ukulele club." Of course.

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The concert is co-produced by Odegard’s lifelong pal Stan Kipper, who has played with Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jay "Thunder Island" Ferguson and many of America's greatest stars. Kipper says, “The concert this year will a perfect time to celebrate with family and friends. Reconnect with yourself, wear flowers, break out the bell bottoms and sandals, dance with your family and neighbors, sing along with us, and remember the days and fun times you had during the Summer of Love. It's going to be the best night of the summer for the folks at Wolfe Park in SLP!”

Opening the show is Milwaukee's Kharma Shotgun, the official band of the Guitars for Vets charity. The band also acknowledges the loss of core member and guitar player extraordinaire, Lonnie Knight, with a rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”

Free concert. Stellar constellations of stars. Make a memory. Wolfe Park. July 29.

"He not busy being born is busy dying." -- Bob Dylan

A Whiter Shade of Pale

Ok, admit it. You loved the song, have always loved the song, but have never been entirely sure what it was all about.

That’s how it has been for me to some extent. Right from the start when it first aired in the Summer of Love it had a gripping, seductive quality. The chord progressions mesmerized as did the lyrics, strangely abstract yet vivid enough to play with your imagination. It seemed like there was something there but you just couldn’t get your hands on it. At least that’s how it was for me. Whether the lyrics or the evocative music, in England when Sgt. Pepper was the number one album, this was the number one single.

Twenty years later I still played the 45 once in a while. (I think it’s still inside my Wheels of Fire album by Cream.) And to this day as an amateur pianist I can’t help but run through those chords now and then, just letting the sweet sounds saturate the room.

But those lyrics… Unraveling the poetic unto total transparency is not always necessary. Appreciating a turn of phrase, and accepting the ambiguities, this is what gives a poem or a song like this one, and many of Dylan’s, it’s longevity. The mind can play with it endlessly, like an impossible labyrinth or Borges’ Library of Babel, and you never figure it out. But each time it leaves you with something to take away, a moment of delight and self-forgetfulness.

It's the opening line of the second verse that really used to get me. "She said there is no reason, and the truth is plain to see..." Which truth? The truth that there is no reason? Or the ultimate truth that caused her face to turn a whiter shade of pale?

The playing cards speak to me of the old "know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em" type of thing, though Kenny Rogers didn't do The Gambler till a few years later. Dylan, too, refers to having to play the cards your dealt in Series of Dreams. And the last couplet in that stanza "Although my eyes were open, they might just as well've been closed" it speaks of an interiority of transcendence, the contrariness of Truth with a capital T, and seeing the light. Which I did, but did not. Or, of blindness in spite of light.

Here then are the lyrics. Frivolity and fear, clarity and obfuscation, vividness and ambiguity all rolled into one. Afterwards I've given you a link to a page with much more insight about this song than I would have mustered on my own. Before you head there be sure to watch the YouTube vid below featuring Gary Brooker, who co-wrote this, accompanied by Peter Frampton on guitar and Ringo Starr on drums.

A Whiter Shade of Pale

We skipped the light fandango,
Turned cartwheels 'cross the floor.
I was feeling kind of seasick,
But the crowd called out for more.
The room was humming harder,
As the ceiling flew away.
When we called out for another drink,
The waiter brought a tray.

And so it was that later,
As the miller told his tale,
That her face at first just ghostly,
Turned a whiter shade of pale.

She said there is no reason,
And the truth is plain to see
But I wandered through my playing cards,
And would not let her be
One of sixteen vestal virgins
Who were leaving for the coast.
And although my eyes were open,
They might just as well've been closed.

And so it was later,
As the miller told his tale,
That her face at first just ghostly,
Turned a whiter shade of pale.

For more background about White Shade, check this site out. Listen first to the music, however. Let it take you away.