Not much to say

The most amazing thing about this video is that Glen Campbell was not classically trained and did not read music. Nuff said.

This reminds me of two other musicians who were not classically trained and did not read music, Paul McCartney and John Lennon. The difference, I think, is this: Lennon and McCartney did not write their own music, and when in studio, did not play their own instruments. That is my studied opinion, and as always, I could be wrong, but one thing to note of McCartney: Early on, with  a song like Michelle, he was doing chord progressions that are learned in classical training. Lorne Michaels, the man behind so much developing of talent on Saturday Night Live and now everywhere, said of McCartney that he is a “f****** Mozart.” I am a little less gobsmacked, and regard McCartney as a f****** phony, along with Lennon.

Yes, they learned their chords, they learned to live in public as charlatans, performing music written by others, claiming it as their own, and using studio musicians (Glen Campbell was a member of the Wrecking Crew) and claiming the work as their own. Something that struck me as odd, in 1969 Lennon and McCartney sold the publishing rights to their music for about 1/5th value to a consortium that included Michael Jackson. We are told that the two were young and naive, but that does not fly, as they were surrounded by power and sophistication that would not allow such a deal. I have an alternate theory, that the deal went down without participation or consent from either of the two, as they did not own the rights to the music. Take it one step further – perhaps behind the scenes there was resentment by those who really produced the music, wanting to cash in on their own, pushing the two “geniuses” aside.

Who can know. At my advancing age I have sort of an eye for real talent, and for phonies. Glen Campbell was a diamond in the rough, a genuine and massive talent, self-trained. He is credited with co-writing maybe one song, Turn Around, Look at Me though Jerry Capeheart took full credit on his own, so Campbell never got a dime in royalty. The music business is full of fakes and phonies, so I know without much research that Taylor Swift is an Autotune baby who does not write her own music. I’ve mentioned The Carpenters often enough, and was given a list in the comments yesterday of other female singers said to be equally impressive, including Cass Elliot. My only weakness regarding Karen Carpenter (and Cass Elliot, aka Ellen Naomi Cohen, another massive talent) is that I suspect her death was faked, that she was pushed out of the business for singing about romance in a time when the future had been mapped out, and that old fashioned songs like hers and Richard’s would be replaced by heavy metal, hip-hop, so that they had to step aside. Men were to become pigs, and in the Carpenter’s world, they were not that at all.

I was told by someone who admired The Carpenters that women suffering from anorexia nervosa often grow large heads disproportion to body size. That’s nonsense, though I will concede that starvation can diminish the body while the skull remains unchanged in size. That sentiment might be a response to late-life photos of Karen such as the one to the left, an obvious dark room paste-up. Ask yourself why Karen is wearing a track suit and a placard that says she finished first. What the hell is the trophy for? Karen was not known as a track star. And judge for yourself the perspective – the two heads are far apart in the original, but Karen in the photo seems much closer to us than to the other woman even as their hands are nearly touching. Shadows and skin tone do not work either. It’s just sloppy work.

Anyway, I just stumbled upon Glen Campbell’s amazing performance doing the William Tell Overture on a twelve-string this morning. I did not plan on putting anything up on the blog today. This just rolled out. Have a wonderful day.

43 thoughts on “Not much to say”

  1. Yessir.

    The Swampers had some ace players too.

    When I hear blabber mouths speaking of harmony, I send them to The Mamas and the Papas, or The Eagles… or the Moody Blues.

    As I said to Miles (and Allan Wiesbecker): agreed, The Beatles were getting “Help!” Hah! As you have stated, many are not credited with the work. Beyond the Beatles incarnation, I would guess that George can both write and play… All Things Must Pass is one of my favorites. Ultimately, and certainly for those Beatles: I still love the tunes; oldies and goodies. Abbey Road is one of my favorites.

    Like

    Reply

    1. I agree. I also think that George Harrison may have been the best musician the group. One, he put out a lot of forgettable stuff in the early years (he referred to it himself as “shit”). That’s the normal progression, to get better by sweating it out over time. Also, there was the debacle over My Sweet Lord, copyright and losing a court case and all of that. That makes me think he was the real deal.

      Like

      Reply

      1. McCartney was replaced at the end of ‘66, post-Revolver, and while I agree that we can’t say fo’ sho’ that Paul Is DeadTM, it seems the probable truth (Revolution 9?) and once you see it you can’t unsee that the original (literally round-faced) cherub-faced one is not the “Macca” who’ll be playing for American audiences this year…. But
        I highly doubt you could have found more than 10 musicians in Britain in ‘62-‘64 with the rhythmic styles of “Starr” and John Lennon. No one who hasn’t given it a go knows whereof they speak, PERIOD. That’s not how studio “cats” played then…. the Beatles were less flashy! And they needed (only one in the studio!) “Paul McCartney” for the high note singing, this even before his bass playing began to get somewhere….. George, much as I love the guy and hope aganst hope that he maybe got to fake death and escape for a period, he was the least essential of the four until
        His introduction of Eastern Sounds at the end of 65 (Early solos on Can’t Buy Me Love and ISHST and some others being iconic nevertheless.)

        Yes, I’ve seen “Sage of Quay”’s videos: he is a cretin who promotes flat earth theory. (The messenger be damned!) Not he, nor anyone else, has ever been able to prove any (just name ONE agent of the place) aspect of that beloved Tavistock theory. MW’s “In My Life” analysis was pathetic as it clearly wasn’t copied exact from the poem. (“Miles Mathis” did much better with the Leonard Cohen-Bob Dylan thing.) So some Kurt (((Lev))) dude founded it in the 20s, maybe out of Austria: what does that have to do with the circus-paced (artists traveling around playing 2 SHOWS A NIGHT!!!!) British pop touring circuit of the day, where there was no weed and very little just financial reward for the overworked young musicians.
        Tavistock (whether or not they provided some funding at some point????) was just the contention promoted by one “John Coleman” (false name: I remember it’s a “Johann” from South Africa) who was some type of Mossad agent. (True! But I only know a Scot-Greek lady who has the web source at hand)

        Glen Campbell had hisself many hours there of practus!

        Like

        Reply

        1. Not sure you read this piece, as Paul is Dead (PID) is 1) not true, did not happen, and 2) a forbidden subject on this blog. If I let it through we will be overrun by deadheads. There are plenty of websites to discuss the matter, none of them (as of yet) realizing that Paul was a set of twins who stepped in and out of each others’ shoes until “Paul”, the “cute one” just didn’t have the chops for live performance, being more of a sit-drown crooner. He receded to the shadows, and reappeared years later as John Halliday, see video below.

          Anyway, I write about PID on occasion, but only to distance myself from it. It’s a psyop.

          Like

          Reply

          1. No desire to overrun anyone…

            While I like your “Stu Warhol” (it seems there MAY be a height discrepancy, but I cannot deny those faces have a deadpan resemblance…)
            There is little reason to assume “PID” was made up as a psyop although I may have thought that for a while before I could force myself to look at those clear differences from the point of SFF/Peppers . . .

            But you equally have little to base the twin theory on (a dubious analysis of childhood pictures) and there is almost nothing to go on suggesting a retreat into the “Shadows” (NOT Cliff Richard’s band)… I will once again agree with you on its being a dead end subject, ’Round in Circles it’s went… and will remain, unless perhaps someone in England can by chance befriend Jane Asher (poor lady obv of an occult family), I’d think maybe while out massless walking dogs….

            There are a lot of rumors on JPM’s sexuality and the guy was not a mature lad… even young Harrison had married by early ‘66, McCartney would be the clearest choice to bump-off if the Sacrifice/Car-Crash-Murder theory of “Sage”’s holds water. The Mathis Committee likes to discount supernaturalism, I know, while never telling us why a clever think-tank that can control the art output of Britain would hire fellows who can’t even do fully the job required of them….. Actually, one of the early unofficial temporary Beatle drummers got quoted by the DailyMail in the Internet age calling Paul a “creep”; JPM had an odd family and was a cad with the ladies… But for those who think they (L&M) just couldn’t have written those songs (could this be a potential get-saved/last-exploitation-of-the-boomers cash cow we’re witnessing w/ “Sage of Quay”!), well, Lennon had a MAJOR development going on with his chord-choice ability during ‘63, I’ll grant you. (Yet he saved his most audacious rhythm playing for McCartney’s “All My Loving” if you can find a clip…).
            But the not-as-introspective Paul must’ve just had something from the get-go:

            “Cayenne,” the most important excerpted / preserved from tape for digital age “Anthology 1” circa 1995… George ain’t on it, a certain other 17-year-old did lead guitar as he hadn’t yet switched his main indstrument. Whichever of the “many JPMs” did the writing/playing, listen to :36-:44 in particularly some for a jazzy improvisation that goes well off the reservation in terms of what some other aspiring Shadows/Ventures-imitating young gitarist would have played… (Remember, Glen couldn’t write!) I can absolutely hear the incipient signs of a melodic genius here, albeit one far less aware/calculating as is “Macca”… Billy Shepherd is as good a hold as we dupes seem to have on things now…

            “Respek” as “Paul”’s friend Kanye might say……

            Like

            Reply

            1. The Beatles were recruited by Intelligence and trained in Hamburg. The childhood photos of the McCartney’s are definitely twins, but like most people you cannot see it because you don’t see with your own eyes. If you read Sir Faul Revisited, you’ll see grown adults who are two different men. PID was initiated, an Intelligence psyop, because it was obvious there were two McC’s, and they needed misdirection. If you look at the drum in Sgt. Pepper, as discussed in Sir Faul Revisited, you’ll see diabolical cleverness far beyond the ability of four 20-something mopheads.. The psyop worked, as people look at Mike and see he is not the crooner who sang Till There Was You at the Royal Command Performance in 1963. If you listen to that and then Lady Madonna, you’ll hear two distinct voices, neither capable of the range of the other. If you have ears. The boys were selected from a wide range of candidates, including Pete Best and Stu Sutcliffe, trained intensely and developed muscle motor skills for music written for them probably by a committee at the Asher household, George Martin part of it. When they retired from public performance, they suddenly got very good on their instruments and started writing music far above their heads. Watch the movie Give My Regards to Broadstreet. You’ll not only see two Paul’s, but a cameo by Lennon. If you have eyes.

              Amazing you come here and fail to read the evidence presented and cling to goofy theories planted by experts at psychological manipulation. This is why the subject is verboten here. It goes round and round. You cannot see what is hidden in plain sight. Drop it, or go away.

              Like

              Reply

              1. “goofy theories planted by experts at psychological manipulation”

                Like the Committee that has attached itself to a struggling, elite-born pre-raphaelite fag artiste “miles mathis”…

                The Fab Four (who as you’ve said numbered among their ranks in, um, intelligence lads as different as mama’s boy of low-rent mien who let said adulterous mum do most of the talking on his most famous post-firing tv clip, Pete Best, and the aspiring Modernist painter, Stuart Sutcliffe-Andy Warhol) “were
                recruited by Intelligence and trained in Hamburg.”

                German or British intelligence?

                This is, like Tavistock, a matter where all the allegations come up uncited and empty. The Grateful Dead, on the other hand, I can fully believe as having had three or four Intelligence recruits (or in-family people) as members of the band… some, like Bob Weir, were/are too idiotic to have understood much of the planning….

                Guitar players have “tab”, not very common in books/magazines yet, in pre-Fab days,
                but for the all-modern-and-developed high-tech Lute instrument of now (post-1900) to be compared in terms of what people can do and conceive on it with the Piano is a basic (and telling) logical fallacy…

                And, indeed, the musical issue is only obsessed over by people who really don’t know
                the guitar basics or are paid to (cough, Sage) claim, look, folks, “they” just couldn’t have done that. While promoting their own drably Wings-redolent original material. A basic pre-tutorial: Michelle, btw, that is, if you put a Capo (do you know what one is?) on the fifth fret, is as easy on the intro as playing a Cm chord shape and introducing a few variations – there are passing chords and the like – the intro “technically” has about 6 chords you hear, but most are based around the resultant Fm (even country boy Glen Campbell would
                know what i talk of here)….

                The voices in Command Performance clips and on “Lady Madonna” have an acknowledged different lead vocalist – by anyone who can tell that the figure meandering about w/ as yet little facial scarrification, presumably, in the “SFF” (you know the tune) 1967 promo video, is not the same round-faced bloke as in earlier clips… nor his brother! That “Mike McGear” is the brother of Original JPM, I, like many other people you’ll find, find it odd and do not allow a 100% certainty of it, but do you really think it’s any odder than there being a Ron AND a Clint Howard. (And “McGear” actually has a strong facial resemblance to his purported mother, to boot.)

                I have not seen all of GMRtB… most movies with Bryan Brown (or “Macca,” for that matter) are terrible, so that’ll just have to wait, but I know that in the Peter Jackson re-film – distracting in its computer re-editing of an originally non-digital & on-the-cheap enterprise – we can see that butt of all self-aspiring “I’m anti-NWO, really” crusaders, probable murder victim John Winston Ono Lennon, ex-M.B.E., can do a mean “Third Man Theme”… on that there gitar anyway, none of his other “Fab” compatriots were likely to have managed it with THAT rhythmic flair. It is just out-of-nowhere and unprovoked, obviously remembered from the days when the German likes of Astrid Kirchherr (a seemingly suspicious enough character) recruited him for a Westward-aimed Intelligence project. He is unique in that his musical abilities seem to have developed AFTER his gifts for verbal and visual caricature (too much early evidence to bother to cite – and he was of course EXTREMELY CLEVER, he’d never for inst employ ALL CAPS), but, hey, once you’re a great rhythm guitar player . . . some of the guy’s keyboard and occasional lead guitar work was pretty nifty too. You see, “they”TM learned literally THOUSANDS of songs and played together for THOUSANDS of hours, the Fab 4’s
                strummer crew did, before Ringo and before coming to America…
                What the Grateful Dead, Karen Carpenter and the Lennon-admired Cass Elliot – ! – have to do with any of this I fail to descry…

                And I know that they had suspect art-world creatures (as in being “illuminati,” certainly high-born Londoners) around & influencing album cover development come about 1967 (whatever “Bill Ackrill”/whatever himself couldn’t draw from his own shady background). And while I can name them… let me tell ya, there’re Robert Fraser, Michael Cooper, Miles – you probably don’t know who this is, it’s not twinkie – why don’t you come about with files and why not tell me & everyone here who recruited this Internet-age-punching-bag of a past-Beat combo, masters of the plagiarized ditty,
                that is besides a tantrum-throwing yet (occasionally) well-meaning, loving & trusting Jewish mama’s boy and upstart record shop
                owner who may’ve really just been trying
                (and hopefully failing!) to get into bed with their leader.

                Respect and (co-opted$) Peace!!!

                Like

                Reply

              2. “goofy theories planted by experts at psychological manipulation”

                Like the Committee that has attached itself to struggling, elite-born pre-raphaelite fag artiste “miles mathis”…

                The Fab Four (who as you’ve said numbered among their ranks in, um, intelligence lads as different as mama’s boy of low-rent mien who let said adulterous mum do most of the talking on his most famous post-firing tv clip, Pete Best, and the aspiring Modernist painter, Stuart Sutcliffe-Andy Warhol) “were recruited by Intelligence and trained in Hamburg.”

                German or British intelligence?

                This is uncited. The Grateful Dead, on the other hand, I can fully believe as having had three or four Intelligence recruits (or in-family people) as members of the band, while probably mostly unaware – like the idiotic Bob Weir – of what was really meant to be happening.

                And the musical issue is only obsessed over by people who really don’t know their guitar basics or are paid to (cough, Sage) claim “they” just couldn’t have done that. While promoting their own highly Wings-redolent original material. Here is a basic pre-tutorial: it’s on Michelle, btw, it’s not so hard to begin, that is, if you put a Capo (do you know what it is?) on the fifth fret, it’s as easy on the intro as playing a Cm chord shape and introducing a few variations – there are passing chords and the like – the intro “technically” has about 6 chords you hear, but most are based around the resultant Fm (even country boy Glen Campbell would
                know what i talk of here).

                The voices in Command Performance clips and on “Lady Madonna” have an acknowledged different lead vocalist – by anyone who can tell that the figure meandering about w/ as yet little facial scarrification, presumably, in the “SFF” (you know the tune) 1967 promo video, is not the same round-faced bloke as in earlier clips… nor his brother! That “Mike McGear” is the brother of Original JPM, I, like many other people you’ll find, find it odd and do not allow a 100% certainty of it, but do you really think it’s any odder than there being a Ron AND a Clint Howard. (And “McGear” actually has a strong facial resemblance to his purported mother, to boot.)

                I have not seen all of … most movies with Bryan Brown (or “Macca,” for that matter) , but I know that in the Peter Jackson re-film – distracting in its computer re-editing of an originally non-digital & on-the-cheap enterprise – we see John Winston Ono Lennon, Ex-M.B.E., and punching bag of “I’m anti-NWO, really” paid agents everywhere playing an unprovoked run-through of “Third Man Theme” (Intelligence movie) with a rhythmic flair that, on the gitar anyway, none of his other “Fab” compatriots were likely to have managed… You see, “they”TM learned literally THOUSANDS of songs and played together for THOUSANDS of hours, the Fab 4’s
                strummer crew did, before Ringo and before coming to America… What the Grateful Dead, Karen Carpenter and the Lennon-admired Cass Elliot – ! – have to do with any of this I fail to descry…

                Like

                Reply

                1. Hamburg was in the British sector of Germany during the postwar occupation, and I imagine was crawling with Intelligence agents. [Also, we all form our own opinions, but McGear has a nose identical to John Lennon’s, check it out. That would make him a Stanley.]

                  Like

                  Reply

                  1. I give up. It seems for everything asserted about “Paul McCartney” you’ll find someone else trying to re-invent the wheel and claim, “No, it was this way.” I’ve read out the given bass tablature – without playing, it checks out – for songs from Pepper and from the songs on the albums preceding it (guitar players have “tablature,” its simplified compared to pure note reading) and it’s plain that Paul1 was coming to a more fluid manner in his bass playing (Rubber Soul/Revolver) different from the staccato choppiness – appropriate as it is – of the lines on SgPepper. Aside from that, I can clearly see that Paul2 is not the brother of the 1st Paul.

                    There is no set of rules
                    upon which their two chief songwriters relied in the early days, no Ancient Classical Conservatory secrets, and many of the analysts taking a musicological point of view, even if they – like me – favor the L, they will admit that his chordal bag of tricks was more limited. You’ll find similar changes in solo stuff from ‘74 (#9 Dream) as you would in ‘65-era things (YGtHYLA).
                    After their seemingly unrewardingHamburg apprenticeship, their songs took cues from the best of the early r’n’r songwriters they effectively studied – Goffin&King,
                    Chuck Berry, and especially, Buddy Holly & the Crickets, who sort of remained their template (whatever they may have added to it).

                    I do like the Warhol-Sutcliffe and Courson-Walters theories, btw, and while I can easily see Jimbo as being related to the family he’s supposed to be in, I acknowledge there are many oddities in photographs for public consumption (maybe some of which has to do with old poorly mimeographed magazines as well as tampering). Prince & David Bowie, you’ll find, do have an unnatural promotion that reflects the alternate lifestyles they’re supposed to represent, I remember, talking about the former, when I encountered in an early job of mine a black guy who – older than me and different socioeconomics and all – didn’t like Prince for the same general reason I don’t – the jerkiness of his rhythms. Prince proceeds from earlier funk music no more logically than Bowie from early r’n’r, they’re aberrations. Taylor Swift Mannekins are great, far less sociopathic than the real thing I’d presume. Less impressed by “JFKTV” & “Tyrone McCloskey”’s entirely smug rendering of the still-somewhat-hardy-in-‘63 American culture -think he must be English, given usage of “complete rubbish,” et al. – the credibility test is low on this one, especially the idea that so many would give up freedom to live as themselves, well, freely. Irish certainly do not run America.

                    I’ve actually
                    been to Liverpool (once), btw, which is pretty much enough to convince
                    me that its residents are giving no more thought to ThePeerageTM then and now than the residents of Akron, OH.

                    Like

                    Reply

  3. Mark
    Thank you. I like your style & reading your posts. Engaging, interesting & easy to read. Funny, this morning I was thinking of writing this to you & asking you where I can find more on the Beatles con, next time I looked online here was your post.
    First I knew about Beatles con was when I read your post on Paul/Mike & was wondering where intel came into it. I’m starting to get it but would like to read more. Also fascinated by the clone implications with actors. The deeper I get & the faker the ‘real’ world paradoxically the more grounded I feel. Cheers
    Kath

    Like

    Reply

    1. Here’s a paper suggested by one of our commenters.

      https://tabublog.com/2015/12/26/the-manufactured-invention-of-the-beatles-stones-grateful-dead-and-the-birth-of-rock-n-roll-by-the-tavistock-institute-a-jesuit-corporation/

      I found it to be speculative in that it claims that Theodor Adorno wrote the Beatles’ music, without much evidence to that end. Also, I don’t think the author realizes that “Paul” is a set of twins or that John faked his death.

      I am more inclined to think that there was a writing committee in the Asher household, where the mother, Margaret Eliot Asher, whose star student was George Martin, was a professor of music at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. If you’ve read Sir Faul …

      Sir Faul revisited

      you know that Jane Asher served as a beard, not in the gay sense, but in that she made public appearances with both Paul and Mike McCartney, the twins. This ruse served to keep the public from spotting twins. “Paul” McCartney lived at the Asher household while “dating” Jane, and I imagine there was a collection of musicians buzzing in and out, and that is what I suspect to be the source of the early music. But I cannot prove that. As I like to suggest anyway, if you think that Paul McCartney wrote Yesterday, I have to ask you … which Paul?

      Miles Mathis did some work on the McCartney twins and the Lennon death. He’s well worth a visit if you are not already familiar with him.

      Like

      Reply

      2. Keep you doped with religion and sex and T.V. And you think you’re so clever and classless and free…But you’re still “Fuckin’ Peasants” as far as I can see. A Working Class Hero is Something to be.

        Like

        Reply

      3. Mark, Over the years I have heard every plausible theory acceptable, or unacceptable general principle offered to explain observed facts. I’ve heard whispers in dark corners and loud voices exclaiming the truth…And sometimes I just had to sit back and laugh. But your delve into this has brought you far closer to the truth than you think…And that’s all I can say.

        Like

        Reply

  4. Mark,

    Have you seen the recently released Beatles documentary/movie “Get Back”? It appears to show all four of the Beatles as highly creative, musically inclined individuals, improvising their way through the studio sessions that would eventually result in the album “Let it Be.”

    I would say it’s the best “evidence” available for the mainstream reading of the Beatles as organically grown savants, so to speak, and perhaps casts some doubt on the Tavistock/Adorno/Twins & like theories. I still think they didn’t write much or all of their music, and Lennon faked his death, et al, but I would love to hear your response to the Get Back footage specifically.

    Like

    Reply

    1. Thank you for reminding me of this … I’ve avoided it but I know I have to sit through it. I’ll make you a deal … if you sit through Give My Regards to Broadstreet. I’ll sit through Let it Be. GMRTB is highly revealing if you know what to look for. I would guess Let It Be the same. (I think John Lennon makes a cameo in GMRTB, by the way.)

      Like

      Reply

  5. Here are a few more variations of that same photo to get an additional perspective:

    https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/photo-of-karen-carpenter-photo-by-michael-ochs-archivesgetty-images-picture-id74256411

    There are tons of Karen photos to skim through. Maybe she was that skinny at one point in time. It’s amazing how fast some girls can lose weight. She passed only one month away from being 33, but i’m sure like many of the others she was simply retired to a beach front gated community.

    Like

    Reply

    1. “What Makes this Song Great?”–Rick Beato’s breakdowns
      of over 100 songs can take up an evening. Brilliant…

      Here’s one:

      Like

      Reply

      1. There is “Room at the TOP,” They are telling you still. But first you must learn how to “SMILE as you KILL”, if you want to be like the, “FOLKS on the HILL”. A Working Class Hero is Something to be.

        Liked by 1 person

        Reply

        1. I was very young when I got Marianne Faithful’s lp that has this song, and I have never heard anyone else’s version. Just hers. It has Guilt , too.

          Like

          Reply

      2. Check out Rick reviewing “Just Like Heaven”

        It’s just an incredibly uplifting beautiful piece created buy a guy made up and dressed in black – a virtual outcast outside his incredible talent, and music. Modest as all hell.

        “I’ll run away with you”… yessir!
        “Just like a dream!” Khadamned right!

        Like

        Reply

  8. The last concert I attended, a couple of years ago, Trampled by Turtles with Deer Tick and The Dead South, at Red Rocks Amphitheater (which is just down the hill from us), featured talented musicians and very loud music, most a bit agitated for my taste, but who cares about that. What I saw was 9,000 mostly young people, stoned or high or drunk. That combination of sound and drugs and booze is a high much like something I have only experienced as a young guy betting on horses, where if my horse was winning at the end, the combination of way too much beer and that excitement was, I later learned, the same sensation that people get from crack cocaine. Anyway, that night was like a Roman orgy, I think. I attended a concert in Billings, Montana in the 1970s, Iron Butterfly and Smith, and when Smith came on stage as the opening act, the crowd was quiet, and one of the band members said “Hey Billings, are you excited!” and a few voices in the crowd whooped, as if the crowd wanted to perform for the band. Iron Butterfly played In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, which featured a 20 minute drum solo, which would excite anyone high on pot, but I was stone cold sober, and found it very tedious.

    What I am saying is that I am straight laced and boring when it comes to most rock music, but it appeared with the Kyleman venue you brought to us that the audience was naturally excited by the music, almost as much as the musicians. That’s refreshing. I don’t know how anyone made it home without a DUI after Red Rocks and Trampled by Turtles.

    Like

    Reply

    2. “Anything” that goes on straight for more than 20 minutes can become tedious and boring…unless it’s some good sex. “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vidda”…Good- Lord, Even the Iron Wings of the Butterfly can’t hold out that long.

      Like

      Reply

  9. Mark-

    You recently referred to Beethoven’s 9th, and the “ode to joy”, as a marker for you in appreciating some of what classical music can offer. Like you, I also have not heard most of what is out there. However, I’ve realized that “most” of what is out there doesn’t interest me…but…there are those pieces, some of which I would call transcendent, waiting to be discovered.

    What appeals is very personal of course, but I’m going to suggest one that is at or near the top for me. It is Mahler’s 8th symphony. I don’t listen to the whole thing, it’s an hour and a half long. I cue in just for the last 30 minutes. That 30 minutes is an unbelievable emotional ride through ebbs and flows of beautiful, soft, and powerful singing and music. I have no idea of the words to the songs, I don’t want to know. The voices are perfect as emotive musical instruments.

    This video is of section two of the symphony. When I listen to this, I start at about the 19 minute mark. Wherever you start, take it to the end. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11ivfCSsDr4

    I saw this symphony live at Lincoln Center, NYC, in 1974.

    Like

    Reply

Leave a comment