If I Were A Carpenter

On Facebook, I was recently challenged to name 10 albums that have influenced my musical taste and upbringing over the past 44+ years. You have all seen the posts: One record per day. No explanations, no reviews, just the cover art.  Not my desert island discs, not my top 10 albums of all time, but the 10 albums that are core memories.

For those that know me, seeing my first two listings, "Check Your Head" by the Beastie Boys and "Southern Harmony & Musical Companion" by The Black Crowes were probably not surprising, but then I started to dig deep.  In fact, it was Corey Glover's voice from Living Colour that started to ring in my head, when he sings, "Everything is quiet / Everyone's gone to sleep / I'm wide awake / But these memories / These memories can't wait".  It caused me to think of the early 1980s in Westfield, NJ when it was The Carpenters' "Close to You" that was being pumped out of my parents' faux-end-table size speakers.  I cannot even remember the last time before today when I listened to "We've Only Just Begun".  But it was at this point that the challenge really started to make sense. 

It also made me think that I can relate to my friend Jess who has been spending the quarantine in Moreton-in-Marsh, UK.  She recently wrote,  that she is "Nostalgic in normal times and fairly connected and social, I wondered if this overwhelming longing to hear from people I’m perfectly capable of not talking to with any regularity in other times was just me. Turns out it’s not. It even has a name, a good one. It’s called a memory avalanche, this feeling of nostalgic desire for connection with people from our past . . ."  

This comment made me think of the Disney Pixar film "Inside Out" when Riley, a happy, 11-year-old Midwestern girl gets her world turns upside-down when she and her parents move to San Francisco.  Riley's emotions do their best to try and guide her through this life-changing event in only a way that a clever Pixar film can.  Outside of entertainment, scientific studies find that our identities are defined by specific emotions, which shape how we perceive the world, how we express ourselves and the responses we evoke in others.  "Inside Out” similar to these times of quarantine is a film about loss and what people gain when guided by feelings of sadness.

So for me, it is not the loss of people, but over these weeks and now months, I have been taking the time to reconnect with music.  There have been some recent deaths of musical legends that have hit me right in the gut, leading me to reflect on what music has always meant to me.  I do not own any Bill Withers or John Prine albums, but when I heard the respective news of their deaths, I could not help but remind myself how much I like listening to classic songs like "Use Me Up" and "Lean on Me".  And for Mr. Prine, the memories of hearing  'Dear Abby' and 'Grandpa was a Carpenter' jumped to the forefront of my mind.

Don't ask me how I remember these types of things, but spending all of this time inside has allowed me to dust off some albums that I have held onto and it feels good to connect with these records from my past.  It has even allowed me to hear how I got from polished singer-songwriters who used the Wrecking Crew as their house band to hip-hop pioneers that played their own instruments.

Thanks for reading.

"Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?"

"When things get back to normal . . .".   "When was the last time you went out to eat in a restaurant?" These are becoming all too common questions/phrases that we are currently hearing regularly in conversation.  In fact, I initiated an email thread a couple of weeks ago asking my long-time concert companion Jamie what were his first and LAST shows.  For those keeping score at home, for me it was August 28, 1991:  George Thorogood and the Delaware Destroyers with Johnny Winter at Waterloo (Stanhope, NJ), while for Jamie it was July 27, 1986:  Mr. Mister with The Bangles at  Saratoga Performing Arts Center (Saratoga Springs, NY).  And to keep us in the way-back machine, the first show that we ever attended together was November 23, 1994: G Love & Special Sauce at Maxwell's (Hoboken, NJ).  We have come a long from those days, but obviously not too far geographically since we were both spotted together most recently February 15, 2020:  The Play Trains reunion show at Crossroads (Garwood, NJ).

However, I have decided that I want to stop thinking about things from a perspective of first and last, but instead first and what’s next.   Is it the auto disco, The Micrashell (according to Robby, I can just wear the green blazer over the suit), drive-in shows, streaming concerts?  

The auto disco just doesn't do it for me, I would rather take a road trip and sing and dance in the car all the way to New Orleans instead of parked in one place.  The Micrashell is wild, an extremely futuristic idea and you will always be Halloween ready, but I can only see myself donning it for a Daft Punk show.

Drive-in concerts intrigue me, but similar to the fact that most amphitheaters were built outside of cities, so were drive-ins and not that I have never traveled for a show, but what happens if you don't call "Shotgun"?  Being relegated to the backseat for a show at the Riverside Drive In Theater in Vandergrift, PA makes me think that my friends will treat me like Morgan from 'Good Will Hunting' and that I just ordered a 'double burger'.

As for streaming concerts, I went old-school and watched the Rush in Rio live DVD in the Hickey’s basement with some fanatic fans, I also took the time to connect my laptop to my TV to watch Phish from my own living room as they closed out their 2014 tour at the Verizon Amphitheatre in Alpharetta, GA, but not surprisingly, neither experience captured the feeling of actually being there.

I realize that artists are going to continue to release new music and that they are going to want to present their songs.  In fact, I just read the New York Times '25 Songs that Matter' and I am definitively intrigued by Richard Dawson (the British singer songwriter, not the kissing bandit TV game show host) as well as the band Red Hearse and the idea of seeing these artists perform live.  So what do I think is next?

Well after watching SpaceX launch, I believe we are over-thinking all of this.  In my humble opinion, the same venues re-open, but at smaller capacities.  Concerts adopt the definition of social distancing and take-on the feel as if you are seeing the Avett Brothers at Club Cafe in 2006.  And when that happens you can once again say, "Remember when we saw G. Love & Special Sauce with 50 other people on the night before Thanksgiving."

Thanks for reading.