Go Now!...Beyond The Moody Blues

Back in the early 1970s, when I and others of my generation were just beginning to create the concept of "the soundtrack of our lives," several groups stood out: the Beatles, of course, and the Rolling Stones, Grand Funk Railroad and...The Moody Blues.

The Moody Blues were an English band originally from Birmingham, England. Founding members Michael Pinder and Ray Thomas initiated a rhythm and blues-based sound in 1964 along with Graeme Edge and others, and were later joined by John Lodge and Justin Hayward as they inspired and evolved a progressive rock style. Their second single, "Go Now" (released in 1964), really launched their career, being promoted on TV with one of the first purpose-made promotional films in the pop era, eventually hitting number one in the United Kingdom and in the United States where it reached the top ten. Among their innovations was a fusion with classical music, most notably in their seminal album Days of Future Passed (1967 ).

The group's lyrics were pretentious, their music mediocre, and their production so poor that they were often joking referred to as "The Muddy Blues," but many of us really connected with them. Why? I think today that the key factor was their ability to evoke melancholy--a generally gloomy outlook characterized by low levels of enthusiasm and eagerness for activity.

Surprisingly, many of my generation, while facing the beginning of their lives, faced it with despondency, fear and cynicism. I've gotten a brighter perspective since then. Let me share how one friend expresses the transition that he, like me, underwent over several years:

There is a devious sadness to the world in which we live – a sadness that comes to find us in the night, when we're all alone under the canopy of a million stars. Something within us knows that we ought to be better--that our love ought to burn brighter and shine more fiercely--that our passion and conviction for life ought to be strong, and lead us through that nagging temptation to settle for the ordinary and mundane. Something within us knows that life was always meant to be lived to the full. And this something, when it comes to find us, convicts us of all the cheap and
common things we often settle for. This feeling, in my mind, is the definition of melancholy.

I don't play the Moody Blues much any more. I think that I can do better now than melancholy--so can you!

Another British Invasion

The folk rock group Fotheringay was formed in 1970 by singer Sandy Denny upon her departure from Fairport Convention. The band drew its name from Fotheringay Castle, where Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned in England.

Two former members of Eclection, Trevor Lucas and Gerry Conway, and two former members of Poet and the One Man Band, Jerry Donahue and Pat Donaldson (bass), completed the line-up responsible for the quintet's only album. This folk-based set included several Denny originals, notably "Nothing More", "The Sea" and "The Pond and The Stream", as well as my absolute favorite versions of Gordon Lightfoot's "The Way I Feel" and Bob Dylan's "Too Much of Nothing". The album failed to match commercial expectations and pressures on Denny to undertake a solo career—she was voted Britain's number one singer in Melody Maker's 1970 poll—increased. Fotheringay disbanded in 1971 during sessions for a projected second set.

My wife accidently broke my album during the early days of our marriage and I mourned it for years. One day a few years ago, I mentioned this sadness to my kids and they suggested I look for the album on eBay. I found it! I bought it for $25 from an English vendor and it wasn't until it had actually arrived that I realized...I had no way to play it!

My mother bought me a CD player/turntable for Christmas in 2006, which allowed me to enjoy those great tunes again...I'll never forget the song "Too Much of Nothing" with its lyrics that could be torn out of today's headlines:

Now, too much of nothing

Can make a man feel ill at ease.

One man's temper might rise

While another man's temper might freeze.

In the day of confession

We cannot mock a soul.

Oh, when there's too much of nothing,

No one has control.

Another (Steve) Miller Moment...

My first two years in college (1971-1973) were in Spokane, which is just a few miles west of the Idaho border. Since the drinking age in the Potato State is only 18 (it's 21 in Washington), weekends would find young people traveling east to bars that dotted the state line. My favorite watering hole was the El Patio, a run-down (but cheap) venue that had one endearing feature--a long-term run by the Steve Miller Band.

Steve Miller moved to the burgeoning San Francisco scene in the mid-1960s and formed the Steve Miller Band. Miller and James Cook, bassist Lonnie Turner and drummer Tim Davis backed Chuck Berry at a 1967 gig at the Fillmore West that was released as a live album. Guitarist Boz Scaggs joined the band soon after, and the group performed at the Monterey Pop Festival in June.

Hits during this period and into the early 1970s included "Baby's Calling Me Home", "Key To The Highway", "Livin' In The USA", "Space Cowboy", and the track "My Dark Hour" which featured Paul McCartney (aka Paul Ramon) on bass. Steve was originally from the Ketchum, Idaho area and seems to have returned here to recuperate following an automobile crash.

The band hit the jackpot in 1973 with The Joker--their sound was slick and bouncy, and the title track became a number one single; the album was certified platinum (more than one million sales). Three years later, the Steve Miller Band returned with the album Fly Like An Eagle, which featured the hits: "Take The Money and Run", "Fly Like an Eagle" and "Rock 'N Me". Needless to say, they no longer played the El Patio.

Little did I know that my later life would take me "from Phoenix, Arizona/All the way to Tacoma" (like the song), or that I would look back on my nights in the crowd on the state line with nostalgia...

It Was Such a Beautiful Day

It's a Beautiful Day was a band formed in San Francisco in 1967, a unique blend of rock, jazz, folk, classical and world beat styles.

The band was the brainchild of violinist and vocalist David LaFlamme. Other members were his wife Linda (keyboards), Pattie Santos (vocals), Hal Wagenet (guitar), Mitchell Holman (bass) and Val Fuentes (drums). Although they were one of the earliest and most important San Francisco bands to emerge from the Summer of Love, It’s a Beautiful Day never quite achieved the success of their contemporaries such as The Grateful Dead and Santana, with whom they had connections.

The band's debut album, It's a Beautiful Day, released in 1969, featured the tracks "White Bird", "Hot Summer Day", "Time Is" and "Bombay Calling".

I still have the album in near mint condition as well as a poster from the band's performance at Gonzaga University in the mid-1970s.

"Those Were the Days..."

The tune for this 1968 hit single was running through my head a few weeks ago, and a knick knack I happened to spy in Cracker Barrel this afternoon attributed the song to Gene Raskin, who transformed the traditional Russian folk melody into an international blockbuster for Welsh vocalist Mary Hopkin.

During the early 1960s Raskin and his wife played Greenwich Village folk clubs under the name Gene & Francesca, releasing an album in 1962 which included "Those Were the Days," a tune of either Russian or Ukrainian origins traditionally known as "Dorogoj Dlinnoyu" and dating back to the turn of the 20th century. In 1966, while Gene & Francesca were headlining London's Blue Lamp Club, Paul McCartney caught their act and two years later, while assembling material for his protégé Hopkin's Apple Records debut, he suggested she record "Those Were the Days."

The resulting single topped the British pop charts for six weeks in the autumn of 1968; Hopkin subsequently sold eight million copies worldwide, with the song becoming Apple's biggest hit outside of the Beatles' own recordings.

If you were alive in 1968, then you probably remember--indeed, cannot forget--this song.

Wheat and Tares

It all grows up together in Southwestern Illinois--the myriad crops that have sprung from the fertile soil for decades and, more recently, residential subdivisions and commercial centers...more coming up each year.

Metro East isn't the kind of region we knew back in Western Washington--large cities with much smaller suburbs blossoming in ever-widening rings--but rather it's a smattering of small cities, villages, and farmland dotted across 1700 miles. Lot size is much larger, too--none of those postage stamp sized lots for our neighbors here. Maybe they have more time for yard work since their commute is generally so much shorter...

Geography Lesson

When we moved here earlier this year I told most people that we were moving to St. Louis; that's true in that we're in the Missouri city's metro area--one that covers two states. This part of the area is known locally as the Metro East, and it has some distinct characteristics beyond being under the legal jurisdiction of the State of Illinois.

Metro East encompasses five Illinois counties in the St. Louis Metropolitan Statistical Area. In 2000, there were 599,845 people living in this designated area, scattered across a variety of cities and small towns, typically called "villages" here. The area's largest city is Belleville, but other large population centers include Edwardsville, Collinsville, Alton and Columbia.

What strikes us most as newcomers here from the Pacific Northwest is the development pattern. While many individual buildings date back to the early 1800s and many cities were incorporated 150 or more years ago, Metro East remained largely rural until just the past couple decades. A quick look at any aerial view--which shows St. Louis heavily developed and Metro East primarily still farmland--begs the question of why development took so long to jump the Mississippi.

But jump it has, and today the communities of Metro East continue to grow at a rapid pace.

Movie Review: Abe Lincoln in Illinois

You won't find it at Blockbuster--though it might be at some public libraries--but I'll never forget this film. Abe Lincoln in Illinois was a classic in its time, but I remember it for a reason that's even more compelling for me.

I was a child of ten and a sixth grader the November day when President Kennedy was shot. As terrible and unsettling a tragedy in its time as the 9/11 incident, the assassination rocked our world to its foundations. I remember walking home for lunch with my friend Billy Bilnoski (now a cardiologist) and that, when he ran out of his house to tell me the news, I completely refused to believe him. It wasn't until I got home and saw broadcaster Walter Cronkite on the television in the middle of the day and my mother staring blankly at the screen--lunch unmade--that I realized Billy had been telling the truth.

Good little citizens that we were, Billy and I went back to school that afternoon. My teacher refused to teach, and she spent most of her time with her head on her desk, sobbing. Some of the kids joined her in crying, and some of us just milled around aimlessly, but we were all in a state of stunned confusion.

That weekend there was no regular programming on television--it was as if the adults who worked in broadcasting were too upset to do their jobs, like my teacher and my mother had been. Coverage continued around the clock of every minute aspect of the tragedy--which is why most of the country was watching when Kennedy's assassin was, in turn, assassinated.

Sometime in the course of that long weekend, one of the networks aired Abe Lincoln in Illinois in its entirety--and entirely commercial-free. It was on very late at night, but I remember staying up to watch the whole movie and gaining a sense of security from the story about this great statesman who, like President Kennedy, had had his promising life cut short. That viewing of the film was the seed for my life-long admiration for the Logsplitter.

Now I am living in the Land of Lincoln, and I plan to visit some of the sites here that memorialize his life and legacy. It's only fitting, I think, that I recall the cinematic inspiration of my youth and use it--albeit somewhat twisted--to craft the title of this blog.

A' Blinkin' and A' Bloggin'

It's not supposed to work this way.

According to everyday opinion shaped by national media, there's a slow leak in the Midwest letting people out, and they're heading to the coasts. Almost the first thing everyone we've met here asks is why we've moved here--as if to suggest that there's must be some scandal back in the Northwest that we are fleeing. Nobody moves from the Puget Sound to the Metro East...that's common wisdom, although the truth is very different.

Well, we are doing just that--myself and my wife Anne, two daughters and a new son-in-law have all moved to join our oldest daughter, her husband and our two grandchildren. And togetherness isn't the only benefit we're finding here.

More in future posts...