Category — music

Mother Earth
Memphis Slim
I was working as a bartender at Antone’s: Austin’s Home of the Blues when blue piano player and shouter Memphis Slim came to play, which was a big deal for blues fans—it was his first stateside gig since he had expatriated himself to Paris in the 60s. And his gig fell on my night off, so I’d really be able to listen. On the appointed night, I banged in through the screen door in the alley out back, found my favorite seat stage right and took Ecstasy.

The band played a few numbers before bringing Memphis Slim up to a standing ovation. He sat down and began with “Mother Earth,” one of his best-known songs.

I don’t care how great you are,
Don’t give a damn what you’re worth.
When it all comes down,
You’ve got to come back to Mother Earth.

His playing was completely relaxed and his voice boomed out, commanding and round. My new boyfriend, the guitar player in the house band, was on stage backing Memphis Slim, and he sounded like a genius to me—knew exactly where to fill, where to lay back, where to mimic the old records, and where to throw in something completely new. Between numbers, he would look to make sure I was still there and wink when he saw me.

I began to feel happier and happier, maybe even beyond the beyond of any happiness I had ever experienced. Was it the drug or was it the music, so present and real but about to pass out of existence altogether? Maybe it was my new boyfriend, on stage, playing like a dream, so subtle, so exact. With each note, each perfect fill, each full stop, my sense of happiness escalated. There was nothing but happiness everywhere I looked. Happiness didn’t feel like I imagined it would, all giggly and bouncy. No. It was quiet and deep and completely everywhere. Tears began to stream from my eyes.

Why couldn’t it be like this all the time, I asked myself and the moment I did, it was. Something ceased to be and its cessation is what caused me to notice it, like when you turn off a television you hadn’t realized was on. I realized that I had spent every moment until that point fighting some kind of fear. Every job, every boyfriend, every haircut, phone call, and trip to the market had been motivated in some way by fear. In an instant, it all disappeared. I stopped being afraid. I drew in the antenna that checks the environment for malicious content and saw that everything was actually okay. Then, like every moment, it passed into non-being—along with the song I was hearing, the song I wasn’t hearing, along with Memphis Slim, the Blues itself, and all those friendly waves and winks. I was alone again with my conventional mind. So I exhaled and came back to Mother Earth.

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Dancing in the Dark
Bruce Springsteen
dancing-in-the-dark.mp3
I was sitting outside the Tam O’Shanter Lounge in my cab, waiting for last call to see who might stumble out too drunk to drive. Cabbie was one of my first post-high school jobs and the best career alternative I could think of at the time. It was late August, about a zillion degrees inside and outside the cab, even at 1:30 in the morning. (lady cab drivers do not get dibs on the air conditioned vehicles.) I was smoking cigarettes, slouched down, soles of my feet on the dashboard, one foot on either side of the steering wheel, radio on. Blah, blah, this party, that good time, we’re really whooping it up over here at KISS 108 and we know you out there in radio land are too, went the DJ. What the hell was I doing there? I mean middle class Jewish girls don’t sit in cabs waiting for barroom fares when they should be choosing a major or throwing up their dinner in the bathroom. But maybe sticky summer night cabbie was where I fit best. I had no idea how to make my life work. I had no idea what I was doing. “Dancing in the Dark” came on the radio but I didn’t really listen cause I’d heard it about a thousand times already.

Message keeps getting clearer, radio’s on and I’m moving round the place
I check myself out in the mirror I wanna change my clothes my hair my face
Man I ain’t getting nowhere just sitting in a dump like this
There’s something happening somewhere baby I just know that there is

Kyosaku is what Zen guys call it when your teacher hits you with a stick to wake you up in the meditation hall and the downbeat of the last syllable of the last line struck me right between the shoulder blades. I wanna change my clothes, my hair, my face. There’s something happening somewhere. I just know that there is. I burst into tears. I had to find the something cause it wasn’t going to walk out of the Tam O’Shanter Lounge and rap on my window. It wasn’t waiting for me in a college class, a fancy restaurant, or the front seat of a cab. I didn’t know where it was, I just knew that that someplace was not here and come morning I was going to quit my job, sublet my room, put all my stuff in the back of the car and drive until I found it. So I did.

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Blue Skies
The Allman Brothers
blue-skies.mp3
My boyfriend and I were lying on the floor listening to music, smoking pot, waiting for the pizza delivery guy. I think I was about 18 years old. He wanted me to listen to “Blue Skies” by the Allman Brothers. Sure, I thought. Whatever. I like music. He cued it up and when it was over I said, “yeah, that’s pretty good.” I mean it was fine, good sounds, nothing wrong. Plus I was stoned and had a cute boyfriend, so what’s not to like. “No,” he said. “Listen again. Amazing guitar solo.” I didn’t really know what a guitar solo was, but assumed it meant some guitars would start to play louder than the other instruments at some point. So I listened. When it came to the part he wanted me to hear, he poked my shoulder and pointed to the stereo.

I can’t really describe what happened next. Suddenly it was like I had never hard music before. I heard that the song was made up of dancing, spinning parts. I listened for the drums to see if my ears could track their line and then I picked the bass out of the mix. There were two guitars playing and soon I could tell the difference between them—this one was a little sweet, that one a bit fuzzy. I found that I could zoom back and forth between listening to each instrument or the whole song, but I couldn’t do both at once. They call this dependent arising in Buddhism, meaning everything exists only in relation to something else—there is nothing on this earth with a separate identity.

The guitar solo came to the foreground and it was so unforced, it was like dangling your hand in the water while someone else rows, soft, smooth, effortless. Then the second guitar soloed, ending with a cascade of perfectly picked single notes in a repeating pattern and then—at 3:57 exactly—the first guitar came out of nowhere and mimicked the line exactly. With no effort whatsoever they found each other and played in tandem, one sweet and the other fuzzy, totally separate and completely joined. This is what had always been happening, I just never heard it before. I burst into tears.

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Yesterday, Duncan and I were talking about what qualified a song as melancholy. Melancholy is not quite sadness. It seems to also include an element of longing, even of sweetness. As an enneagram 4, I feel eminently qualified to compose a melancholy playlist. (For more about the enneagram–and my obsessive interest in it, click here.) And so I did, and here it is:

I Can’t Stand The Rain     Ann Peebles
Kothbiro Ayub Ogada
He’s Funny That Way Billie Holiday
Too Long at the Fair Bonnie Raitt
One For My Baby Charles Brown
Blue Gardenia Dinah Washington
Sentimental Walk Diva (ST)
I Will Not Be Sad In This World Djivan Gasparyan
I Cant Tell You Why Eagles
Layla Eric Clapton
Someone to Watch Over Me Etta James
When I Get Like This The Five Royales
When Your Lover Has Gone Frank Sinatra
Unnatural Habitat The Greenhornes
There is an End The Greenhornes & Holly Golightly
For A Dancer G regson & Collister
Dark End Of The Street James Carr
Carolina James Taylor
My One and Only Love John Coltrane & Johnny Hartman
When The Roll Is Called Up Yonder Kelly Joe Phelps
Unsuffer Me Lucinda Wiliams
Round Midnight Mel Torme
You Look Like Rain Morphine
Feel Like Going Home Muddy Waters
Withered on the Vine Nick Lowe
I’ve Been Loving You Too Long Otis Redding
On the Other Hand Randy Travis
Landslide Stevie Nicks
Whole Wide World Wreckless Eric

Thoughts?

memphis slim at antone’s in austin, tx, 1986-ish
(mel brown under the hat behind him, sitting at the b-3)

Buddhists say that in every moment there are 108 opportunities to wake up fully and completely, to transcend the sorrows of this world and attain bliss without end. You might find your moment in the sunset or the blossoming of a flower, from making love, hearing your teacher’s voice, taking a sip of water, falling ill, or stubbing your toe. For me, one such moment came while listening to the blues in a bar in Austin, Texas where I worked as a bartender. For a few hours, I transcended the sorrows of this world and felt around in the space of bliss without end like a blind man in a hotel room. I never actually saw it, but I know I was there.

On this particular night, Memphis Slim was playing at this club, Antone’s: Austin’s Home of the Blues. He was an influential piano player and blues shouter who had expatriated himself to Paris in the 60s. Tonight, my night off, he was going to play his first stateside gig in more than twenty years. Joining him was the guitar player with whom he had recorded in the 50s, Matt “Guitar” Murphy.

I came in through the screen door in the alley out back, waved to whoever was tending bar that night, kissed my friends hello, and made my way to my favorite seat-directly stage right, a few feet from the steps leading up to it. From here, I could just about read the set list on the floor by the mic stand. I looked around and realized that 250 of the 300 or so people in the room were my friends and acquaintances and that I was seated amidst these lovely people in the best seat in the best house, getting ready to hear the best music. So I sat back and swallowed a tab of Ecstasy.

The house band played a few numbers before bringing Memphis Slim up to a standing ovation. And you almost had to stand to see all of him anyway-he was so tall, so elegant and slender, black-haired still except for one beautiful gray diamond at the center of his forehead. He sat down and began with “Mother Earth,” one of his best-known songs.

I don’t care how great you are,
Don’t give a damn what you’re worth.
When it all comes down,
You’ve got to come back to Mother Earth.

His playing was completely relaxed and his voice boomed out, commanding and round. Everyone was already in love with him, with where he came from, who he was, what this night represented, the songs he played-but he didn’t care. He just played. It was very simple and totally perfect. I listened on. My new boyfriend, the guitar player, was on stage backing Memphis Slim, and he sounded like a genius to me-knew exactly where to fill, where to lay back, where to mimic the old records, where to throw in something completely new, all in service to the song. Between numbers, he would look to make sure I was still there and wink when he saw me. This was already ecstasy, no?

I began to feel happier and happier, maybe even beyond the beyond of happiness. Was it the drug? Or was it the music, present and real, emanating from a generation that was just about to pass on? Maybe it was the warmth I felt toward my friends or that I was in love with my new boyfriend, on stage, playing like a dream, so subtle, so exact. Soon these thoughts and feelings passed out of ordinary existence and became like songs themselves-songs of home, of rest, and of contentment. I listened to how they were contained in the music I was hearing, and how they weren’t. With each note, each perfect fill, each full stop, my sense of happiness escalated. I began to ride great waves of wellbeing. At a certain point, I wasn’t sure if I could handle much more.

What comes after happiness? Have you ever asked yourself that? Well I took a little peak over the edge and saw the incinerating quality of bliss. It could singe you and scorch you and there wouldn’t be anything left. I drew back and breathed, long and deep. Then something ceased to be and its cessation is what caused me to notice it, like when you turn off a television you hadn’t realized was on. I stopped being afraid. I stopped being anywhere but right there, on the spot, and simply being there fully was delight itself. I realized that until this point, my entire life-every decision, every relationship, every job, every haircut, every word-had been driven by fear. I saw that this was completely, utterly unnecessary and I started to laugh. How silly I’d been to spend my whole life thinking anything could harm me! Everything was perfectly fine exactly as it was, always had been and always would be. The times I had been happy and the times I had been sad were just moments stacked in perfect sequence to create the perfect composition that was the perfect now. I drew in the antenna that checks the environment for malicious content because there was nothing to guard against, nothing at all. There was a sudden feeling of great space and in that space I saw that what had appeared as fear was actually just another form of ecstasy. This is what I saw, what I knew. Then, like every moment, it passed into non-being-along with the song I was hearing, the song I wasn’t hearing, along with Memphis Slim, the Blues itself, and all those friendly waves and kisses. I was alone again with my conventional mind. So I exhaled and came back to Mother Earth.

clifford & albert king & a flying v

One year ago, a dear friend died suddenly. He was the founder of a blues club I worked in. But that doesn’t really describe him. This man, Clifford Antone, devoted everything he owned and everything he was to blues music and musicians. It’s not like he was a saint (see below), but in a sense, he was (see below).

He had been to prison twice, convicted of selling marijuana. Not a few joints on the street corner either, more like several tons on a plane from Mexico. Whatever he earned, he spent it all, every penny, on this music. He opened a nightclub in Austin, Texas in 1975 and brought blues icon Muddy Waters in for several weeks. Blues was not exactly popular in Texas at that time. When Muddy arrived in what was then a podunk Texas town and met this white, hippie college-kid club owner, he was not quite sure where he had landed. But, like everyone who passed through the doors of Antone’s, he had entered the world of Clifford. The stage was stocked with the best equipment—vintage amps and collectable guitars in perfect condition. Wanting to accompany Muddy was a group of local musicians that eventually included Stevie and Jimmie Vaughan and at least a dozen other exceptionally soulful musicians. Muddy was their idol. In the window was a framed photo of him, garlanded with flowers. Sitting in the audience waiting for the show to begin was just about nobody except for Clifford. And so it began. After Muddy came Howlin‘ Wolf, Clifton Chenier, Albert King, B.B. King, Sunnyland Slim, and everybody else. Eventually, he launched a blues record store and a blues record label. When I arrived in 1985, the legend was in full bloom and, although Muddy and Howlin’ Wolf had passed, every other living icon was taking the stage at Antone’s like it was the coolest oasis in the desert. Which it was. Some came for a night, some came for a few months, and some, like blues harpist James Cotton and Muddy Waters’ piano player Pinetop Perkins, came to live. Albert Collins, John Lee Hooker, Otis Rush, Buddy Guy, Bobby “Blue” Bland, Jimmy Rogers—the list goes on and on—played night after night, backed by the stellar, mind-blowing, forget-ever-trying-to-explain-it Antone’s House Band. It was the most soulful place in the world. I am totally not exaggerating.

I worked with Clifford for almost 10 years, first as a cocktail waitress at his club, then a bartender, then the manager of his record label. We spent some crazy times together and had lots of agreements and disagreements. It was deep. In the mid-90s, I moved away and our contact dwindled in the intervening decade. Just a few weeks before he died, I was in Austin visiting. Cliff and I had dinner together and there was nothing but love. We spent several hours in sweet reminiscence. Remember the time Doug Sahm almost pushed me (Susan) into a swimming pool because I wouldn’t give the band a draw on the next night’s pay? (I didn’t have any money…) Remember when Albert King fired his band in the middle of a gig? Remember the Japanese record label that wanted to license one of our records because they “had listened to it and were terrified?” (I think they meant something like “we were filled with terrific-ness.”)

Almost all the people we idolized were dead. His club still booked blues, but rock acts and comedians brought in the profits. He was teaching a class at the University of Texas called “The Blues According to Clifford Antone” and this was his new stage. He loved turning kids on to his musical heroes. But his heart was left in the past. The world he loved, gave everything to, where he had staked his soul, was gone. “When Albert (Collins) died, that was it for me,” he said. I think he already felt a bit like a ghost.

Last year, he died at the age of 56 of a heart attack. Out of nowhere. When I went online to read about Cliff’s passing in the Austin paper, the caption simply read, “Clifford Antone, 1949–2006.” Above the headline was a black and white photograph of him from the late 80s, in his record store. I was standing on one side of him and on the other was the other employee of Antone’s Record label, Connie. We were holding the company’s latest albums in our arms, pretending to show the covers to Clifford, who was smiling. I looked at my own face and stopped. Who was that young woman? Who was now looking back at her? Where was all the music? I remembered the exuberance and inspiration and wildness of that time, and I felt so happy and so sad. But all of it is gone, everything in that photograph is gone, somehow. Record albums are as good as gone. Connie lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their little baby girl. Clifford is in the ground. I’m sitting here typing this in Boston, looking at the picture of the three of us tacked to my bulletin board, surrounded by notes for a new book I’m writing, a picture of my husband and I at our wedding, and numerous Tibetan Buddhist symbols and deities. Outside the window, spring leaves dim the sunshine that splashes across my desk in winter.

Sun and shade, past and present, happy and sad, here and gone. This is our life.

Today’s New York Times has an op-ed piece entitled, “Authentic? Never Mind” by Paul Krugman. It’s about how presidential candidates are trying to appear authentic. (Oxymoron.) Fred Thompson, for example, switched from a Lincoln Continental to a pickup truck to appear authentic during his Senate run. Does anyone really fall for #(@) like this?

Substituting the image of authenticity for authenticity is dangerous. When you can’t tell the difference, anyone can lie to you about anything. You can lie to yourself.

Some examples:
Ladies with Wedding Scrapbooks. When I was on the Oprah show a few years ago (talking about The Hard Questions to ask before marriage), one of the guests was a woman who had a bridal scrapbook. In it were pictures of gowns, flower arrangements, and wedding rings that she might like. There were lists of caterers and business cards of wedding bands (music, not rings). For the groom, she had selected photos of various tuxedos. The problem? She didn’t even have a boyfriend. I felt sad. Instead of looking for love, this young woman was seeking to cast someone in the role of groom. She had the costumes all picked out and the script written. Mr. Husband was a staging necessity.

Christina Aguilera. (Or Mariah Carey) Whenever I hear one of these singers, I want them to SHUT UP. Do they have astonishing voices? Yes. Range, power, technique: check, check, check. But there is no feel. They’re pretending to be singers. There is no sense of anything but performance, nothing of soulfulness. All the melisma, escalating hand flutters, and pained expressions in the world will never make one single moment of authenticity, the kind that you hear when the song is emanating from the inside out, not the other way around. You can excuse Britney or Madonna (whom I love) because they don’t have a choice. They aren’t gifted with great voices. They can carry a tune and surround themselves with beats, style, dancers, and costumes and it’s all good. But when you hear someone pimping a real voice, it makes me VERY UPSET.

We seem to have lost all common sense about what is genuine and what is pretending to be genuine.

We suffer from image poisoning.

I heard that Sam Cooke dreamt the song A Change is Gonna Come,woke up and wrote it down. It scared him. He thought it meant he was going to die.

The song sounds like this.

Lately, I’ve been listening to it repeatedly. Like maybe hundreds of times in the last several months. It makes me cry every single time. I’m trying to figure out why…

I was born by the river
In a little tent
And just like the river
I’ve been running ever since

The “in a little tent” part just kills me for some reason. And we’ve all been running since the day we were born.

It’s been a long time coming
A long time coming
But I know change is gonna come
Oh yes

We keep longing no matter what…

It’s been too hard living
But I’m afraid to die
Because I don’t know what’s up there
Beyond the sky

How much more perfectly and succinctly can this fear be expressed? We don’t really know what’s going on or why we’re here. The only people who say they do seem not all that bright to me.

It’s been a long time coming
A long time coming
But I know change is gonna come
Oh yes

But still we long.

I go to the movies
And I go downtown
Somebody keeps telling me
Don’t hang around

And the confusion creates the poison of hate. Plus when I think if anyone being racist to Sam Cooke I just want to cry and cry.

It’s been a long time coming
A long time coming
But I know change is gonna come
Oh yes

But still we long.

Then I go to my brother
And I say brother help me please
But he winds up knocking me
Back down on my knees

And still poison grows. Cruel responses are real and I don’t know what to do.

There have been times that I thought
I couldn’t last for long
But now I think I’m able to carry on

When I see the courage people have to renew themselves and carry on, I think it is the most moving thing in the entire world.

It’s been a long time coming
A long time coming
But I know change is gonna come
Oh yes

When I hear faith like this, I feel so grateful. Maybe it’s true.

So I guess what the song sounds like to me is

Life is suffering
But there is basic goodness
Our biggest fear is not-knowing
Plus everything is impermanent: why?
But there is basic goodness
And also poison
But there is basic goodness
And also poison
But I can be brave
I have faith.

i forgot. this is what music is supposed to sound like. listen to cyndi lauper offering tribute to joni mitchell at some awards thing-y. (mtv?) vocal is relaxed and intensely focused. the singer is listening to the band. the band is listening to the singer. the performer is deeply seated within herself. no one is in a hurry. the context is tribute. the listener can listen without being distracted by tricks, hoopla, or poses. these qualities (relaxed, intense, synchronized, trick-free, created and performed as an offering) are exactly what i love about music. it’s the clearest connection i can get with living, pre-packaged energy. i forget all the time from hearing music on hold, in airport restrooms, and as advertisement. instead of coming to you directly from the sambhogakaya, this time courtesy of cyndi lauper. whom i thank deeply.