Blowin' In The Wind

Satisfaction

Honesty, humanity and hooks -- that's what it takes to make a great song, says this New York Times article, which I really enjoyed reading. All the more so because I love the older songs mentioned. And I couldn't believe my luck when I found this video. The Rolling Stones singing (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction way back in 1966! Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, they were so young then. Jagger looks so fresh-faced. And look at Brian Jones.

(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction is their greatest song.

Sympathy for the Devil and Streetfighting Man come close.

Unforgettable too are Jumpin' Jack Flash, Paint It Black, Gimme Shelter, Tumbling Dice, Start Me Up, Get Off My Cloud, Brown Sugar, Under My Thumb,19th Nervous Breakdown, Mother's Little Helper, Yesterday's Papers, She's A Rainbow, Ruby Tuesday, You Can't Always Get What You Want and a string of other Rolling Stones hits. I also love some of their earliest hits such as The Last Time, Not Fade Away, Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow, Come On, Fortune Teller.

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Never seen a better close-up of John Lennon

Please Please Me was historic but Ticket To Ride was great. This is one of my favourite Beatles songs. And I loved the movie, Help, where it plays in the background as the Beatles ski, tumble and clown around on the Alps. The clip can be seen on YouTube. The Fab Four look cute here. John looks smashing. Never seen clearer, bigger close-up images of John on YouTube. That's why I am posting it here.

Wikipedia has quite a bit on Ticket To Ride. This topped both the UK and the Billboard chart. In the UK, Ticket To Ride was No 1 for three weeks from April 22, 1965, taking over the top spot from The Minute You're Gone by Cliff Richard only to be dethroned by King Of The Road by Roger Miller.

On the Billboard Hot 100, Ticket To Ride was No 1 for a week from May 22, 1965, taking over from Mrs Brown You've Got A Lovely Daughter by Herman's Hermits and giving way to Help Me Rhonda by the Beach Boys. Now that was another great group singing a great song. I have sweet memories, too, of Mrs Brown You've Got A Lovely Daughter, both the song and the movie made by Herman's Hermits. Cliff Richard was sweet and romantic on The Minute You're Gone, and King Of The Road got a lot of airplay in  my hometown, Calcutta (Kolkata), during my schooldays. Catchy in a laidback way, it made you hum along. I just looked up the lyrics:

Trailer for sale or rent
Rooms to let...fifty cents.
No phone, no pool, no pets
I ain't got no cigarettes
Ah, but..two hours of pushin' broom
Buys an eight by twelve four-bit room
I'm a man of means by no means
King of the road.
Third boxcar, midnight train
Destination...Bangor, Maine.
Old worn out clothes and shoes,
I don't pay no union dues,
I smoke old stogies I have found
Short, but not too big around
I'm a man of means by no means
King of the road.
I know every engineer on every train
All of their children, and all of their names
And every handout in every town
And every lock that ain't locked
When no one's around.
I sing,
Trailers for sale or rent
Rooms to let, fifty cents
No phone, no pool, no pets
I ain't got no cigarettes
Ah, but, two hours of pushin' broom
Buys an eight by twelve four-bit room
I'm a man of means by no means
King of the road.

Remembering the Beatles and their engineer

The Beatles singing Please Please Me.

This was the title track of the first Beatles album, Wikipedia reminds me, but I first heard it as a single -- one of those old 45 rpm discs that have gone the way of the dodo. It was another time, another place. I was a schoolboy in India and did I go crazy, jumping around and screaming my head off, every time I heard the heavenly harmony of the Fab Four! The great John Lennon wrote this song and here he is. He looks so cool! Someone up there didn't want time to spoil his looks, but what a way to go. We still have Paul and Ringo. But I miss John. And George. Gentle and talented and a good man, he was a genuine Indian. But John was something else. The greatest. Right up there with Bob Dylan and Elvis Presley. An unlikely trio (and Dylan hates Presley) but that's the way it is -- the holy trinity in my songbook.

The BBC reports:
The Beatles' engineer Norman Smith (photo BBC), who worked on every studio recording the band made between 1962 and 1965, has died at the age of 85.
Smith, nicknamed "Normal Norman" by John Lennon, took charge of the band's first session at Abbey Road in 1962.

That's why I chose Please Please Me.

As Wikipedia says:

Please Please Me is the first album recorded by The Beatles, rush-released on 22 March 1963 in the United Kingdom to capitalise on the success of the singles, Please Please Me, which went to No 2 on the UK chart and Love Me Do, which went up to No 17. Of the album's 14 songs, eight were written by Lennon/McCartney...

In the US, most of the songs on Please Please Me were first issued on Vee-Jay Records' Introducing The Beatles in 1964, and then subsequently on Capitol Records' The Early Beatles in 1965.(The song Please Please Me appeared on The Early Beatles but not on Introducing The Beatles, according to Wikipedia.)

Back to Smith, the BBC reports:

Recalling The Beatles' first session for EMI, Smith once told an interviewer: "Visually, they made quite an impression, but musically we didn't really hear their potential."

He was impressed by their sense of humour and style, which marked them out from the large number of other bands that came in to try to impress producer George Martin and earn a record deal.

Smith said he told Martin at the time: "For that alone we should sign them. Just because of their humour and the way they present themselves, they are different."

Promoted to producer in 1966, he signed Pink Floyd and produced their early albums including Saucerful of Secrets.

He said he signed Pink Floyd after being impressed by their stage presentation at one of their gigs.

"I can't in all honesty say that the music meant anything at all to me," he later recalled. "In fact, I could barely call it music.

"A mood creation through sound is the best way that I could describe Floyd."

Well, he could say that after working with the Beatles, I guess.

Early Beatles

I love the Beatles, especially their early songs. I thought Sergeant Pepper's was the greatest album when it was released (yes, I am that old) but now I prefer their earlier exuberance. For the same reason, I love the Beach Boys. This song, of course, is for my wife in Calcutta (Kolkata). I am missing her on this Valentine's Day.

Fats Domino: I Want to Walk You Home

What's a Valentine's Day without some love songs? I love Fats Domino. Here he is singing I Want to Walk You Home. It reminds me of  days long gone by when I met my wife for the first time at the university in Calcutta (Kolkata). We used to go to the National Library and enjoyed walking around the garden.

Finest Bob Dylan

After posting Auden's beautiful love poem yesterday, I could find no words to describe how much it moved me. Anything I wrote would have broken the spell of his poem. It reminded me of the songs I love by the Sixties singer-songwriters, particularly Dylan. Bob Dylan is not just a singer but a poet. Some of his songs are the finest poetry I have heard. My favourite is his simple love song, If Not For You. That's how I feel about my wife whom I met at the university. I posted If Not For You on this blog on Valentine's Day last year.

But there are other great songs like I Want You. It's more arcane than the poems of Auden and John Fuller I posted here, but burning with passion and romance and all the feelings I hope I will never lose. These are the feelings that make us human. And Dylan turns them into pure poetry.

I Want You By Bob Dylan

The guilty undertaker sighs,
The lonesome organ grinder cries,
The silver saxophones say I should refuse you.
The cracked bells and washed-out horns
Blow into my face with scorn,
But it’s not that way,
I wasn’t born to lose you.
I want you, I want you,
I want you so bad,
Honey, I want you.

Auld Lang Syne

So many poems have been written about the passing of one year and the beginning of another. So why is Auld Lang Syne the most popular of them all? One reason must be it's not just a poem but also a song. Burns always intended it to be sung. And the words and the music go very well together evoking a wistfulness that's only natural at this time of the year.

I know the feeling. Here I am moping about in my apartment in Singapore at the end of the first day of the new year, missing my wife and my son. They are in Calcutta (Kolkata) but my son will have to go back to America when his college reopens later this month. I spoke to them a little earlier, but rather than perking me up, it made me feel all the more maudlin. That is when the song came to my mind.

(See Aretha Franklin and Billy Preston sing Auld Lang Syne on YouTube.)

The local paper typically ushered in the new year on an upbeat note. "Hundreds of thousands of people thronged various parts of Singapore on Monday night," wrote The Straits Times.Yes,the start of a new year is a time for celebration too. As Tennyson wrote in In Memoriam:

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
   The flying cloud, the frosty light:
   The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
   Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
   The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

And then he gets too idealistic:

Ring out the grief that saps the mind
   For those that here we see no more;
   Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
   And ancient forms of party strife;
   Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

That's never gonna happen. So let's be grateful for what we have and cherish our loved ones and friends. That is why Auld Lang Syne is so popular: it speaks for us, not to us like Tennyson's "Ring out, wild bells". We may not understand each and every word, but we know the feeling. Ripnet translates the poem into English.

Bob Dylan singing Forever Young

Now why did the new year make me think of this song? Here's Bob Dylan singing one of my favourite songs, Forever Young. The words give me the goosebumps.
 

The Highwayman

Reading brings such unexpected pleasures. I was reading The Fallen, a whodunnit by T Jefferson Parker, when I came across The Highwayman, a poem I had last read in school.

It was such a surprise finding this romantic ballad in a hard-boiled cop story set in modern-day America.

I have read no other poem by Alfred Noyes ((1880-1958). The English poet was too old-fashioned to be taken seriously by critics who admired TS Eliot, WB Yeats, Dylan Thomas and other more modern poets. But he did teach English literature at Princeton from 1914 to 1923, according to Wikipedia.

The 18^th century England described in the poem couldn’t be more different from dusty Calcutta (Kolkata), where I went to school on a double-decker bus or a rattling tramcar. But the poem is so vivid that reading it was almost like watching a period drama, with the highwayman riding to meet his beloved innkeeper’s daughter in the dead of night.

From Alfred Noyes to Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson

Coming across the poem in a modern-day American crime story made me think of the other Highwayman –- of Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson. The indomitable highwayman who is hanged, killed, buried but still lives on. The highwayman who sings:

I fly a starship across the Universe divide
And when I reach the other side
I'll find a place to rest my spirit if I can
Perhaps I may become a highwayman again
Or I may simply be a single drop of rain
But I will remain
And I'll be back again, and again and again and again and again.

There's idealism and poetry in the lyrics. This video shows Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson in concert.

But The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes is a genuine ballad, romantic and tragic. Here’s the first verse of the poem which I found on the Internet:

THE wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
    The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
        The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
        And the highwayman came riding—
                          Riding—riding—
        The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

And it gets better as it goes along. It's a long poem and doesn't have any profound message, but it tells a touching story and reads beautifully. Click here to read the complete poem.   

One Night

Here's Elvis singing another of my favourites, One Night. Reissued in the UK in 2005, it topped the charts. Amazing.

Here's Elvis singing One Night in 1968 in a small studio, jamming with some of his earliest bandmates, surrounded by a small but rapt audience.

That's All Right (Mama)

Here's Elvis singing another of his earliest classics, That's All Right (Mama), recorded on the Sun label in 1954.

Little Sister

Here is Elvis Presley singing Little Sister -- another of my favourites -- in the studio. He recorded the song in the RCA Nashville studios on June 26, 1961, along with another great hit, (Marie's The Name Of) His Latest Flame. I love that too. Two great hits on one day. Wow! This video must have been recorded much later. Still, it's Elvis in the studio singing one of his hits.

Heartbreak Hotel

Here is Elvis at his youthful best singing one of his greatest songs: Heartbreak Hotel. Just look at him! No wonder fans went wild.

Teddy Bear

Teddy Bear is one of my favourite Elvis songs as my wife knows. I have tried to serenade her with this song in my off-key voice. (I couldn't carry a tune to save my life. Nor do I behave or look like my King.) I saw this movie too -- Loving You -- with my parents at the Metro cinema in Calcutta (Kolkata) during my school days. (My mum also loves Elvis.) But I didn't remember Teddy Bear was from Loving You. I always associated the movie with its slow title song. I saw the film in the original black and white.

Jailhouse Rock

The BBC reminded me today is Elvis Presley's 30th death anniversary. How could I forget? He is the King. I love the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Janis Joplin, Simon and Garfunkel -- the usual suspects -- and a few others too: the Beach Boys, the Grateful Dead, the Everly Brothers, Fats Domino ... oh, let's stop counting and let the music roll on. But it all began with Elvis Presley. My mother loves Elvis Presley too. That's how I became a Presley fan. I remember seeing Jailhouse Rock with my parents at the Metro cinema in my school days in Calcutta in the Sixties. Here's Elvis singing the title song in the movie.

Loving Fats Domino

The Guardian Music Blog has reviewed a book (Fats Domino and the Lost Dawn of Rock'n'Roll by Rick Coleman) which claims The Fat Man recorded by Fats Domino in December 1949 was the first rock'n'roll record. I would dispute that and give the honour to That's All Right, Mama, recorded by Elvis Presley in July 1954.  The way Elvis  bends and  teases the notes in his inimitable voice, dripping with honey and slurring the words in a bad-boy drawl, is pure rock'n'roll. Rock Around The Clock was recorded by Bill Haley and the Comets even earlier, in April 1954. But, as far as I am concerned, Elvis is king. Actually, there can be no definitive last word on what should be considered the earliest rock'n'roll single because music historians have found so many worthy contenders. So let's just enjoy the music .

I love Fats Domino. The Fat Man is rather forgettable in the recording I have. But God knows how many times I have listened to Blueberry Hill. A wave of tenderness washes over me every time I hear Fats Domino caressing the notes of that wistful love song. I married my sweetheart, we are still in love, so why do I go all misty and sentimental over Blueberry Hill? Maybe because we are no longer young. And certainly my wife and I are far apart -- she in Calcutta (Kolkata), I in Singapore -- like those former lovers in Blueberry Hill.

I love other Fats Domino songs as well. I Want to Walk You Home is a particular favourite. (It also makes me think of my wife and our university romance.) And let's not forget Ain't That a Shame, Jambalaya, My Girl Josephine, Be My Guest, I'm Ready, I'm Walking, Whole Lotta Loving, Let the Four Winds Blow, All by Myself, Blue Monday, Red Sails in the Sunset. Did I leave out anything? Plenty. I just named the songs I listened to after reading the Guardian Music Blog last night. Reviewing the book by Coleman, it says:

Fats Domino gigs apparently provoked the most riots of any early rock'n'roller -- despite the singer-pianist's friendly, grinning countenance, and apolitical songs (unless you count the line "got to work like a slave all day" on Blue Monday).

Coleman... does consider if it's for racial reasons that Elvis still gets all the props as the rock'n'roll pioneer -- Fats garnered his first column inches in decades only when he was thought missing after Hurricane Katrina, as his neighbourhood was one of the worst-hit.

But a more likely reason is that he just isn't as newsworthy. His cuddly, homely persona (he couldn't even be bothered to leave New Orleans to get a medal from President Clinton) pale into insignificance compared to the compellingly tragic tale of the pelvis-wriggling pop puppet (Elvis Presley) with an Oedipus complex or the pansticked hollerer Little Richard.

Even if Fats didn't actually invent rock'n'roll, he was certainly responsible for accidentally inventing ska, and thus reggae. Just check out the offbeats in Be My Guest. Along with putting a Crescent City bounce to an old cowboy song, Blueberry Hill, and the groundbreaking Fat Man, Antoine 'Fats' Domino was definitely a great innovator, and richly deserves a much fatter entry in the history books.

Yes, Fats Domino deserves greater recognition. He may be an entertainer first and foremost, but he is unique. His piano playing and his sweet voice lazily dragging out the vowels and smothering the consonants in an indulgent Southern drawl make his music as distinctive as anything by Presley or Bob Dylan. (Bob Dylan would hate being named in the same breath as Presley: he has such a low opinion of him, heh, heh.)     

Here's Fats Domino singing Blueberry Hill

Calcutta

I've kissed the girls in Naples;
They're pretty as can be.
I've also kissed some French girls
Who came from "Paree."
The Spanish girls are lovely;
Oh, yes, indeed they are.
But the ladies of Calcutta are sweeter by far.
The ladies of Calcutta will steal your heart away;
And after it is stolen, you'll say--
I've kissed the girls of Naples;
I've kissed them in Paree;
But the ladies of Calcutta do something to me

I know the words are rather silly. But that song was a big hit in 1960 and apparently busted the charts again in 1967. Could anyone tell me the name of the singer? I couldn't get that information on the Internet.

I used to hear that song often on the radio in Calcutta (Kolkata) in the 1960s and '70s. So when I heard the instrumental version on the radio here in Singapore on Sunday afternoon, I started singing along. At the end of the tune, the deejay Brian Richmond said it was called Calcutta. I remembered it as The Ladies of Calcutta. But when I searched the Internet, I found Brian was right: it was called Calcutta.

I found the complete lyrics on a website called Jim's Giant Harmonica Songbook, but it did not say who the singer was. It was the only website which had the song, so I decided to reproduce the lyrics here. For if that website disappeared, there would be no other copy of the song on the Internet.

The only other information I could get on the Net was that Calcutta was a chart-topper in 1960 when recorded by the Lawrence Welk Orchestra. Brian Richmond featured it among the hits of 1967, so it was a hit twice over. And yet it seems to have been completely forgotten.

The lyrics may sound silly but it's a catchy little tune that climbed the charts against stiff competition. In 1960 it had to compete with songs like Are You Lonesome Tonight? by Elvis Presley, Georgia on My Mind by Ray Charles, Cathy's Clown by the Everly Brothers, Blue Angel by Roy Orbison, Calendar Girl by Neil Sedaka, Poetry In Motion by Johnny Tillotson, Rubber Ball by Bobby Vee, Tell Laura I Love Her by Ray Peterson, Tonight's the Night by the Shirelles, The Twist by Chubby Checker, Walking to New Orleans by Fats Domino, Wonderful World by Sam Cooke, Save the Last Dance for Me by the Drifters, and Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini by Brian Hyland.

And in 1967 the competition was even stronger. Brian Richmond played it with songs like Penny Lane by the Beatles, Let's Spend the Night Together by the Rolling Stones, and I'm a Believer by the Monkees.

But how did a song about the ladies of Calcutta get into the charts in the 1960s? Who wrote the song? Whoever wrote it was absolutely right. I know as a Calcuttan, married to one of the ladies of Calcutta, myself. I have never heard any similar song about the ladies of Bombay or Delhi or Madras or Singapore, for that matter.

There is one about "the flower of Malaya", but I don't think that's likely to make anyone proud. It goes:

Rose, Rose I love you with an aching heart.
What is your future, now we have to part?
Standing on the jetty as the steamer moves away,
Flower of Malaya, I cannot stay.

Mei Kwei, oh, Mei Kwei for my Eastern Rose.
Men crowd in dozens everywhere she goes.
In her rickshaw on the street or in a cabaret,
"Please Mei Kwei for Rose," you can hear them say.

All my life I shall remember,
Oriental music and you in my arms.
Perfumed flowers in your tresses,
Lotus-scented breezes and swaying palms.

Rose, Rose I love you with your almond eyes.
Fragrant and slender 'neath tropical sky.
I must cross the seas again and never see you more.
Way back to my home on a distant shore.

(All my life I shall remember,)
(Oriental music and you in my arms.)
(Perfumed flowers in your tresses,)
(Lotus-scented breezes and swaying palms.)

Rose, Rose I leave you, my ship is in the bay.
Kiss me farewell now, there's nothin' to say.
East is East and West is West, our worlds are far apart.
I must leave you now but I leave my heart.

Rose, Rose I love you with an aching heart.
What is your future, now we have to part?
Standing on the jetty as the steamer moves away,
Flower of Malaya, I cannot stay.

(Rose, Rose I love you, I cannot stay.)

Queen at Live Aid

I mentioned in my previous post that I can't forget seeing Freddie Mercury on television as he performed at the Live Aid concert in 1985. We saw the telecast in real time in India. Here he is at the concert singing Crazy Little Thing Called Love. The recorded version sounds almost like Elvis Presley. At the concert, of course, he hypes it up. This is my favourite Queen song, from a gig I saw on television. So when I found it on YouTube, of course, I had to link to it.

Freddie Mercury and other famous Indians

Clockwise from top left, the Nobel Prize winning economist Amartya Sen, author Salman Rushdie, India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and his mentor Gandhi, rock star Freddie Mercury, the world's biggest steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal and cricketer Sachin Tendulkar. They were the seven ethnic Indians featured in Time magazine's 60 Years of Asian Heroes special issue in November last year. The feature on Mercury appears under his real name: Farrokh Bulsara. He was a Parsi born in Zanzibar to Indian parents, according to Wikipedia.

My son was surprised when I told him Freddie Mercury, the lead singer of Queen, was an Indian. Yes, he went to school in Bombay, I told my son, before going to Britain with his parents. 

I was chatting online with my son, who is in college in America. My wife, in Calcutta (Kolkata), also joined us. She was telling us about the Indian School Certificate exams now on. A girl she knows is sitting for the exams. One of the essay topics for the exams, she said, was "Money". "Money?" asked our son. "I would have written about Pink Floyd," he quipped. I was amused. Since going to college, he has been listening to music I loved.

That's how I got around to telling him about Freddie Mercury. I happened to come across the Time special earlier yesterday and was telling him about the Indians mentioned there. He was so surprised to hear the Queen lead singer was an Indian that I forgot to tell him his favourite cricketer, Tendulkar, was also on the list. He would have been elated.

I am not a great Queen fan though I like their song, Crazy Little Thing Called Love, where they sound a bit like Elvis Presley. Mercury made a deep impression, though. I can't forget seeing him on television as he peformed at the Live Aid concert in 1985. The picture here shows him at that concert.

Mercury and Rushdie

Was Freddie Mercury the model for Ormus Cama, the rock star in Salman Rushdie's novel, The Ground Beneath Her Feet? Cama's great love, of course, was a woman: the ravishing superstar Vina Apsara. Mercury was gay and died of Aids. But he also had a long relationship with a woman, according to Wikipedia.

I don't know much about Mercury and it's been a long time since I read the Rushdie novel. The thought just came to my mind when I read the Time article. After all, Mercury did go to school in Bombay, where Rushdie was born and which is vividly described in the novel. I had read that Cama was based on Elvis Presley and John Lennon. But he could have also been partly inspired by Mercury, who did have Indian roots.

Fats for Valentine's

One final post for Valentine's Day. After Bob Dylan and George Harrison and the Mamas and the Papas, here's the Fat Man -- Fats Domino. I have wanted to write about him for a long time but didn't want to clutter up this blog with too many videos. However, I find it impossible to describe what he's like without showing him singing and playing the piano. He has such a great time performing.

I remember reading how he suffered during Hurricane Katrina when he was thought to have died in his home in New Orleans. Luckily, he survived.

This song reminds me of the time when my wife and I were still students in Calcutta (Kolkata). We would return home together, taking the tram, every day. She would be the first to get off. Of course, we weren't married then; we lived with our parents. Naturally, the tram conductors got to know us. They smiled when we got married. They could tell because my wife wore sindoor -- a red powder that married Hindu women smear across the parting of their hair.

Now my wife is in Calcutta (Kolkata), I am in Singapore. But we will be chatting tonight. After all, it's Valentine's Day.

Dedicated To The One I Love

Here's one more song to mark Valentine's Day. This is Dedicated To The One I Love -- my wife in Calcutta (Kolkata). I love this song. Mama Michelle begins the song and is soon joined by Mama Cass. See them dancing together. It's pure magic.

If Not For You

It's Valentine's Day. The BBC reports it's becoming a special occasion in India now. But we did celebrate even more than 20 years ago. Didn't we, darling? How long have we been married now? More than 20 years. And even before that we would meet up, give each other little gifts and cards on Valentine's Day.

Now my wife is in Calcutta (Kolkata), I am in Singapore, our son is in college in America. I wouldn't have even known it was Valentine's Day today unless I saw that report on the BBC website. It would have been so embarrassing if my wife had to remind me. We will be chatting online with our son later today, but when we decided to do so, no one said it's going to be Valentine's Day.

To mark the occasion, here's my favourite song: Bob Dylan's If Not For You. My wife never complained when I tried to sing it to her though I can't carry a tune for nuts. But what could I do?

If not for you
My sky would fall,
Rain would gather too.
Without your love I'd be nowhere at all,
I'd be lost if not for you,
And you know it's true.

Here's Dylan singing If Not For You with George Harrison at the Concert for Bangladesh in 1971.

Canned Heat: On the Road Again

Here's a blues band from the 1960s that I like -- Canned Heat. I was searching for their videos last night and found this gem. That's Alan "Blind Owl" Wilson singing On the Road Again and playing the harmonica. It's a memorable performance that's got the whole band swinging. See Bob "Bear" Hite boogieing in the background.

Jejune

Much of the early Beach Boys' songs are about high school and teenagers. Some of them are quite funny, but they aren't as naughty and knowing as Chuck Berry's celebrations of teenage life. The Beach Boys' Fun, Fun, Fun, for example, is as infectious and more filled with harmony than anything composed by Chuck Berry, but the lyrics aren't in the same league as a Chuck Berry classic like Nadine. In fact, I was about to describe the early Beach Boys' lyrics as "jejune". Not "childish" or "juvenile" but something "adolescent".

Adolescent they are but they can't be called "jejune". Though "jejune" is lumped together with "juvenile" and "puerile" in the thesaurus, there is a difference according to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary. According to it, "jejune" means "naive and simplistic" and can also mean "dull". The Beach Boys are by no means dull. But that's what "jejune" means according to the COED. It says the word comes from the Latin "jejunus", which means "fasting, barren".

I am surprised that a word derived from the Latin for "barren" became a synonym for "juvenile". The Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary categorically says "jejune" means "juvenile" and "puerile". "Juvenile", "puerile", "infantile" all come from Latin words for children. But "jejune" originally had nothing to do with children. How did it come to be associated with "juvenile"?

Meanwhile, here's Chuck Berry performing Roll over Beethoven. I did find a clip of him performing Nadine with Keith Richard. But this is an all-time classic.   

Sloop John B

The Beach Boys and the Grateful Dead are my favourite American rock groups. They may be very different but both are strong on guitars and harmony and both came out of the West Coast. This is my favourite Beach Boys song, Sloop John B, performed at a concert in England in 1980, long after their glory days in the early 1960s when they were the most successful American band with their "California sound". A very different California sound from that of the Eagles, whom I don't dig at all. The lyrics of the Beach Boys' early songs may be inconsequential, but the harmony is heavenly. Brian Wilson is a genius.

Touch of Grey

I love the Grateful Dead and this is one of my favourite songs. At my age, it resonates all the more, especially because of what's been happening in my life. I won't go into that now. Let's just look at the brighter side of life. "I will get by," sings Jerry Garcia, "I will survive." It's a great song.

I only wish I could find a video of my other favourite song by the Grateful Dead: Ripple. But no luck there. I couldn't find a video of Ripple. This is as good as it gets: the Grateful Dead performing Touch of Grey at a concert in 1993. Garcia died in 1995 at the age of 53.

John Lennon remembered

I was just reminded on the Net that John Lennon was shot dead on this day by Mark Chapman in New York in 1980. YouTube has several clips of how his death was reported.

I am a believer

This one's for my wife. Our song is If Not For You by Bob Dylan. But this song by the Monkees sets my feet tapping and I love the words. It's really true. I am a believer all right. We were so young when I fell in love with her and now we have a son in college! I came across this while blogging about Mary Queen of Scots whose birthday it is today. Writing about her reminded me of Mary, Mary, another song by the Monkees, which I found on YouTube and posted with my piece on Mary. After that, of course, I had to look for my favourite Monkees song and here it is: I Am A Believer.

Revolution

Revolution was the B-side of one of the Beatles' greatest hits, Hey Jude, released in 1968. I love Hey Jude even more, but John Lennon really puts his heart into Revolution in this performance. Paul's also in great form. And look at Ringo grinning away! And George too!

Get back

I have been meaning to post this clip of the Beatles' rooftop concert at their Apple headquarters in London in January 1969 ever since I saw it on YouTube. It reminds me of my schooldays. A great song and a memorable performance, it's a flashback to a time when the world had not heard of yuppies, downsizing, rationalisation and all the corporate gobbledygook that have crept in since the 1980s. Actually, the first nail in the coffin was dug when the economist Milton Friedman won the Nobel prize in 1976. And then Margaret Thatcher became prime minister in 1979 and Ronald Reagan entered the White House in 1981. And the world hasn't been the same again. Here's to the good old days. Get Back!

Music for my blog!

SpiralFrog will be available only to Internet users in the US and Canada, noted The Straits Times here in Singapore recently. It's the same with Pandora, the music discovery service which allows Internet users to create custom-built radio stations. That also is available only in the US.

I discovered that while trying to create a personal radio station, using one of the free music services. I tried to create one using Pandora, but no dice. The service was available only to residents in the US, it said.

However, I can use Mercora which calls itself P2P radio as the music is webcast by the members themselves. It's a legal social music network. The music can be heard but not downloaded. It's free, the sound quality is okay, and there's lots of music to choose from. And I have even been able to link it to my blog.

One has to download the Mercora IM radio. which has to be accessed through an Internet Messenger. And Firefox users need to download a Mercora plugin.

Setting up the IM radio isn't tricky. And the music search and customised playlists can be easily attached to a blog sidebar.

To create my "Favourite artistes" musical slideshow in the sidebar, I went to the Mercora MusicMatrix page. There I was asked to type in the names of my favourite artistes, then had to press the Generate button. That created the code which I copied and pasted on the blog. It can be used on MySpace, TypePad, Blogger and I guess on WordPress too though maybe not on WordPress.com which doesn't allow JavaScripts.

Up to nine artistes can be featured in the slideshow. I had no problems choosing my first seven: Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Janis Joplin, Elvis Presley, Simon and Garfunkel, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. But the eighth and ninth posed a problem. I chose the Beach Boys and the Grateful Dead, but I would have also liked to feature Chuck Berry, Everly Brothers, Fats Domino and the Creedence Clearwater Revival. Yes I would, if I only could, I surely would. Yes, that's a line from El Condor Pasa. Delivered in the heavenly harmony of Simon and Garfunkel, it's an absolute gem of a song.

Mercora, by the way, was founded in 2003 by Srivats Sampath, president and CEO, and Atri Chatterjee, VP of marketing and business development, says the Wikipedia. That's one up to the Indians. Jai Hind!

Ustad Bismillah Khan: A remarkable Indian

I pricked up my ears at the unexpected notes of Indian classical music on the BBC World Service. Ustad Bismillah Khan has died at the age of 91, said the news reader. The music I heard was a recording of him playing the shehnai, an Indian woodwind instrument.

I love rock music myself, but how could I not respond to the reedy notes of the shehnai? It reminded me of home and Indian weddings.

I can't recall if a shenai player performed at my wedding. I was too engrossed repeating the Sanskrit mantras said by the priests and exchanging vows with my wife as flames leapt up from the fire burning in front of us as a witness to our marriage. But the shehnai must have been played at our wedding too, if not by a live musician then on a record or a tape. There were no CDs then.

The achievement of Bismillah Khan was to elevate this traditional wedding music instrument to the dignity of Indian classical music.

I didn't know India became independent to the music of the shehnai played by Ustad Bismillah Khan. He performed from the ramparts of the Red Fort in Delhi on August 15, 1947, as Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister, unfurled the Indian flag. It was the wedding music instrument that celebrated India's independence or -- to use Pandit Nehru's words -- "tryst with destiny".

India observed a day of national mourning for Bismillah Khan, I read here in Singapore. The national flag was lowered to half-mast as he was buried with full state honours.

He was indeed a remarkable man. A devout Shia Muslim, he also worshipped Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of learning and music. The temple town of Benares (Varanasi) was his home where he performed at the famous Viswanath temple. Hindu gods have to be entertained with music and it was he and his uncle before him who played for the gods at the temple.

This is the India I love where one religion can embrace another. My wife has visited the shrine of a Muslim saint in our hometown, Calcutta (Kolkata). Other Hindus go there too.

That would not have surprised Ustad Bismillah Khan. He loved the river Ganga, holy to the Hindus, which flows past Varanasi. The Indian Express reported:

He turned down many offers luring him overseas, including one in which he was promised a replica in Benaras in the US. He rejected it saying, "You will not be able to bring my Ganga here."

I didn't know that. There's so much we Indians have to be proud about, we don't even know all the details.

My words can hardly honour a man like Bismillah Khan. So here is a videoclip of him playing his beloved shehnai, which he practised 13 hours a day, according to his friend and famous tabla player Pandit Kishan Maharaj.

Help! Don't ruin the Beatles!

The Singapore Idol contestants are a young, talented bunch and include some wonderful singers from what I have seen of them on TV Mobile, the TV channel shown on public buses in Singapore. But it was a bit too much when I saw them singing Help! today. There was nothing wrong with the singing. The boys and girls harmonised nicely. They might have sounded lovely on the radio, but no, this was a video showing them frolicking on the beach.

Grr, look what they've done to my song, Ma! I mean every time I hear that song, I'm reminded of the Beatles. The faces of John, Paul, George and Ringo come to mind. Instead, there was this gaggle of kids performing that song on TV. I couldn't even close my eyes for fear of missing my bus stop.

Why not let the contestants sing their own songs on videos? Or songs written specially for them? That would be better for their own careers.

The worst video I saw featured the classic, American Pie, sung by some local youngsters. They carried the tune all right. But they were laughing and waving like high school kids as they went around in a flashy open-top 1960s car singing with all the exuberance one would expect of the early Beach Boys. That's not American Pie, one of the most richly allusive pop classics, dark and lilting at the same time.

Talking of Help!, I still remember the movie from my school days. We were jumping in our seats. The Beatles actually perform the song in the movie. They smile as they sing up a storm, knowing they will have the audience eating out of their hands. We loved every minute of it. The other most memorable sequence featured the song, Ticket To Ride, where the Beatles go skiing on the Alps. That was shot in Austria. I just found a website dedicated to Help! with several shots from the movie.

Well, here are the Beatles singing Help!  Nobody else should be filmed singing that song, not while old Beatles fans are still around.

Greatest albums of all time?

The Beatles, Bob Dylan and Pink Floyd make the list along with Jimi Hendrix and the Who but not the Rolling Stones and the Doors and Simon and Garfunkel. There is Joni Mitchell but not Joan Baez, Black Sabbath but not Led Zeppelin. There is Velvet Underground but not the Grateful Dead.

Even Elvis Presley appears on the Observer newspaper's list of "50 albums that changed music". That really surprised me because, though he is still my King, I can't recall any of his albums being lauded as a seminal piece. But how much do I really know of the 1950s?

Elvis Presley -- the album on the list -- must have really rocked the house when it came out in 1956. I just checked the play list and it's an absolute gem with tracks like Blue Suede Shoes, Heartbreak Hotel, I Got a Woman, Lawdy Miss Clawdy, I Want You, I Need You, I Love You, My Baby Left Me, Blue Moon, Tutti Frutti, and Shake, Rattle and Roll. Sure, some of the songs were recorded by others as well, but Elvis was -- and still is -- the King.

The Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club, of course, has to be on the list though I personally prefer to listen to their earlier tracks these days. Psychedelia I love, but rock'n'roll is wild.

The Beach Boys are also on the list, for Pet Sounds. It contains my favourite Beach Boys' song, Sloop John B, and the lovely Wouldn't It Be Nice? Critics may prefer the track, God Only Knows, but it's not as catchy or radio-friendly.

Pink Floyd makes the list for The Dark Side of the Moon, Bob Dylan for Bringing It All Back Home and Jimi Hendrix for Are You Experienced? The Who are there for the album My Generation. The title track is a classic.

But why no Stones? "Because, brilliant though they are, they picked up an established musical idiom and ran with it rather than inventing something entirely new," says the Observer. That's true.

Maybe that explains why Joan Baez, Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead -- some of my other favourites -- are also not on the list.

But did anyone sound fresher than Simon and Garfunkel? Methinks not. But then again I thought Led Zeppelin was the greatest of all heavy metal bands.Now, with age, I prefer something softer  -- like the early Beatles and the Beach Boys!

There is some great soul music too on the list too: James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Otis Redding and Marvin Gaye. But it also includes Kraeftwork and rap. Yech!

Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd

I just heard Astronomy Domine followed by See Emily Play, the first and second tracks on the Pink Floyd compilation album, Echoes. One is heavily psychedelic, the other jazzy, psychedelic, with even a fairground and musicbox feel in parts and flirting with madness:

Emily tries but misunderstands, ah ooh
She often inclined to borrow somebody's dreams till tomorrow
There is no other day
Let's try it another way
You'll lose your mind and play
Free games for may
See Emily play

Soon after dark Emily cries, ah ooh
Gazing through trees in sorrow hardly a sound till tomorrow

There is no other day
Let's try it another way
You'll lose your mind and play
Free games for may
See Emily play

Both the songs were written by Syd Barrett who died on July 7 at the age of 60. But his death was reported only four days later on July 11, when the shock of the Bombay blasts