It was just about a year ago that the telephone rang at around 3:00 a.m. on a Sunday.  A little bit tipsy, slightly shaken, but mainly angry (oh boy was he pissed!) our son was on the line.  A student at Tulane in New Orleans, he’d just been mugged on Bourbon Street in the middle of Mardi Gras and he wanted me to cancel his bankcard at once.  “Oh and don’t tell, Mom” …who was obviously sitting up in bed, wide-eyed, right next to me… “It’ll only upset her.”

In cases like this it’s effortless to jump into action and the card was cancelled within minutes.  But then a little later while mulling it over (and over), when imagination had a chance to assert itself, the chill trickled down my spine.  He’d become separated from his friends in the crowd and felt someone grab his wallet.  Without thinking he gave chase down a side street. While one guy grabbed him around the neck from behind and the thug who took his wallet taunted him, a third punched him in the head.

What if they’d hit him with something other than a fist?  What if they’d continued to pummel him? What if there had been a knife?  What if ..?

I think we all learned a lesson that night. The big, strapping lad learned that he’s not quite as invincible as he thought, and maybe a little more wariness is in order. And 1,500 miles and a time-zone away, his parents learned that the “what if” game is a foolish waste of emotional energy.  A year later it seems a distant memory. You might say that in the end it was right.

Formed in Berkeley, California in 1987 and a major part of the resurging American punk rock scene at the time, Green Day has sold over 65 million records.  Still touring and having recently recorded its ninth studio album, the band has won five Grammy Awards, including one for Best Musical Show Album for a stage adaptation of its rock opera, “American Idiot.”

Lead singer, Billie Joe Armstrong wrote today’s selection in 1994, although it wasn’t released until the band’s fifth album, “Nimrod” in 1997.  With its melodious, acoustic music and reflective lyrics “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” is an uncharacteristic song for Green Day.  As bassist, Mike Dirnt put it “the release of this song was probably the most punk thing we could have done.”

LISTEN TO TODAY’S SONG – Monday 5 March 

Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)

 Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road

Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go

So make the best of this test, and don’t ask why

It’s not a question, but a lesson learned in time

 It’s something unpredictable, but in the end it’s right.

I hope you had the time of your life.

 So take the photographs, and still frames in your mind

Hang it on a shelf in good health and good time

Tattoos of memories and dead skin on trial

For what it’s worth it was worth all the while

 It’s something unpredictable, but in the end it’s right.

I hope you had the time of your life.

It’s something unpredictable, but in the end it’s right.

I hope you had the time of your life.

 It’s something unpredictable, but in the end it’s right.

I hope you had the time of your life.

Just forty and she has won 27 Grammy Awards (with 41 nominations), making her the most awarded living recipient, only three behind classical conductor, Sir Georg Solti, the most honored artist ever.  She is already the most awarded singer…and the most awarded female artist…in Grammy history.

Alison Maria Krauss, born in 1971 in Decatur, Illinois and raised in nearby Champaign, began studying classical violin at age five because her mother was looking for interesting things for her to do. She soon switched to bluegrass and, at the age of eight, began to enter local talent contests.  At ten she had her own band.  At 13 she won the Walnut Valley Festival Fiddle Championship and was named “Most Promising Fiddler in the Midwest” by the Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass in America. She was also discovered to have “the voice of an angel.”

Signed by Rounder Records at the age of 14, she released her first solo album in 1987 and was then invited to join Union Station, the band with which she still performs.  As her contract with Rounder requires her to alternate between releasing solo albums and band albums, her first album with Union Station was released in 1989.

With fourteen albums and a plethora of soundtrack performances (including “O Brother, Where Art Thou”) she is roundly credited with helping to renew interest in bluegrass music.

Written by string-instrumentalist and vocalist Ron Black, today’s poignant selection (even for a Unitarian…and it’s the kind of selection in which Krauss excels) is the final track of Alison Krauss & Union Station’s (1997) seventh album, “So Long So Wrong”.

 LISTEN TO TODAY’S SONG – Sunday 4 March

A Reason For It All

I’ve seen hard times and I’ve been told

It isn’t any wonder that I fall

Why do we suffer, crossing off the years?

There must be a reason for it all

I’ve trusted in you, Jesus to save me from my sin

Heaven is the place I call my home

But I keep on getting caught up in this world I’m living in

And your voice it sometimes fades before I know

 Hurtin’ brings my heart to you, crying with my need

Depending on your love to carry me

The love that shed His blood for all the world to see

This must be the reason for it all

 Hurtin’ brings my heart to you, a fortress in the storm

When what I wrap my heart around is gone

I give my heart so easily to the ruler of this world

When the one who loves me most will give me all

 In all the things that cause me pain you give me eyes to see

I do believe but help my unbelief

I’ve seen hard times and I’ve been told

There is a reason for it all

Outside the French-speaking world his most familiar song is “La Mer” written in 1943.  With more than 400-recorded versions, you may know it as “Beyond the Sea” (or perhaps as “Sailing”), which was a hit (with unrelated English lyrics) for Bobby Darin in the early-‘60s, and George Benson in the mid-‘80s.

Then there’s the popular song that he produced from Paul Verlaine’s “Chanson d’Automne” with a refrain that anyone who has read and/or seen the “The Longest Day” is sure to remember, “Blessent mon cœur d’une langueur monotone…” (“Wound my heart with a monotonous languor…”).  In early June 1944 this was the Allies’ signal to the French Resistance that the invasion of Normandy was underway.

Louis Charles Auguste Claude Trenet was born in 1913 in Narbonne, France, and although a wildly popular performer in his time and place, he is most famous today for his recordings from the late-‘30s through the mid-‘50s, an era when it was unusual for singers to write all their own material.  And write he did, refusing to record or perform any but his own songs. His catalogue features nearly 1,000 of them.

Charles Trenet generally wrote about love, or Paris, or nostalgia (or all three) using imagery that was whimsical, witty and sometimes surreal, combining the verbal nuances of a French song with the rhythms of American swing.

Today’s selection, a huge hit that reverberated with the darkening mood of the French public when it was released in 1938, simply bursts with “joie de vivre” … well, that and onomatopoeia. I include it with a tolerable translation… 

LISTEN TO TODAY’S SONG – Saturday 3 March

Boum

La pendule fait tic-tac-tic-tic  (The clock goes “Tic, Tac, Tic, Tic”)

Les oiseaux du lac pic-pac-pic-pic  (The birds of the lake sing Pic-Pac-Pic-Pic”)

Glou-glou-glou font tous les dindons  (“Glou-Glou-Glou” all the turkeys sing)

Et la jolie cloche ding-dang-dong  (And the lovely bells go “Ding-Dang-Dong”)

 Mais… boum!  (But… “Boom!”)

Quand notre coeur fait boum  (When our heart goes “Boom!”)

Tout avec lui dit boum  (Everything about it says “Boom!”)

Et c’est l’amour qui s’éveille  (And it’s love that has awakened)

Boum!  (“Boom!”)

Il chante “Love in Bloom”  (It sings “love in bloom”)

Au rythme de ce boum  (To the rhythm of this “Boom!”)

Qui redit boum à l’oreille  (Repeating “Boom” in our ear)

 Tout a changé depuis hier et la rue  (Everything has changed since yesterday)

A des yeux qui regardent aux fenêtres  (On the street eyes look out of the windows)

Y’a du lilas et y’a des mains tendues  (There are lilacs and there are open hands)

Sur la mer le soleil va paraître  (And over the ocean the sun is rising)

 Boum!  (“Boom!”)

L’astre du jour fait boum  (The stars today go “Boom!”)

Tout avec lui dit boum  (Everything about it says “Boom!”)

Quand notre coeur fait boum-boum  (When our hearts go “Boom, Boom!”)

 Le vent dans les bois fait hou-hou  (The wind in the wood moans “Whoooooo”)

La biche aux abois fait mê-ê-ê  (The lamb at bay go “Maaaaaaa”)

La vaisselle cassée fait fric-fric-frac  (A broken dish goes “Frick, Frick, Frack)

Et les pieds mouillés font flic-flic-flac  (And wet feet slip “Flip, Flip, Flap”)

Mais… boum!  (But… “Boom!”)

Quand notre coeur fait boum  (When our hearts go “Boom!”)

Tout avec lui dit boum  (Everything goes “Boom!”)

L’oiseau dit boum, c’est l’orage  (The bird says “Boom”…It’s a thunderstorm…Brrrrrrr)

 Boum!  (“Boom!”)

L’éclair qui, lui, fait boum  (The lightning that He makes goes “Boom!”)

Et le bon Dieu dit boum  (And the good Lord says “Boom!”)

Dans son fauteuil de nuages  (From his throne of clouds)

 Car mon amour est plus vif que l’éclair  (For this love is livelier than lightning)

Plus léger qu’un oiseau, qu’une abeille  (Lighter than a bird, than a bee)

Et s’il fait boum, s’il se met en colère  (And when it goes “Boom” with its passion)

Il entraîne avec lui des merveilles  (It carries us away with wonder)

 Boum!  (“Boom!”)

Le monde entier fait boum  (The whole world goes “Boom!”)

Tout avec lui dit boum  (The entire universe goes “Boom!”)

Quand notre coeur fait boum-boum  (Because my heart goes “Boom-Boom!”)

Boum, Boum!  (“Boom, Boom!”)

 Boum!  (“Boom!”)

Le monde entier fait boum  (The whole world goes “Boom!”)

Tout avec lui dit boum  (The entire universe goes “Boom!”)

Quand notre coeur fait boum-boum  (Because my heart goes “Boom-Boom!”)

Boum, Boum, Boum!  (“Boom, Boom, Boom!”)

 Boum, Boum!  (“Boom, Boom!”)

Je n’entends que Boum, Boum Boum!  (I hear only “Boom, Boom, Boom!”)

Ça fait toujours Boum Boum, Boum!  (It always goes “Boom, Boom, Boom!”)

“Brrrrrrr Boooooom!”

She was a polymath, a Renaissance woman who studied modern languages at Berkeley and served as an EU interpreter in Brussels, while publishing award-winning fiction in “Mademoiselle” and “Cosmopolitan” and scholarly articles in “American Heritage” and “The New York Times Magazine”.  But after becoming inspired by some Billie Holiday recordings while living in Paris, she was especially a jazz singer, whose performing career began in London where she also recorded the first of her two-dozen albums.

Born in Berkeley in 1946, by the late ‘70s Susannah McCorkle (by now living in New York) was an international darling with the jazz critics. In the ‘80s and ‘90s she was a featured performer at Carnegie Hall and the Lincoln Center.  She also appeared regularly with a consummate cabaret show in the Algonquin Hotel’s eminent Oak Room, for which (thanks to her linguistic skills) she translated her own lyrics from French, Italian and Brazilian songs.

But Susannah McCorkle’s was a sad story in the end. Although she exuded a “sultry self-confidence” on-stage, and despite her many gifts, in private she battled with deep depression and, in May of 2001, tragically leapt off her 16^th floor balcony on W. 86^th Street in Manhattan.

With its Bossa Nova overtones and its celebration of this rejuvenating, life-affirming month of March, today’s selection is cited as McCorkle’s favorite number. Written and composed by Antonio Carlos Jobim in 1972, with intermittent Portuguese and English lyrics and very much meant to form a collage, some critics deem it to be the best Brazilian song ever written.

LISTEN TO TODAY’S SONG – Thursday 1 March 2012

 The Waters of March

 É pau, é pedra,


É o fim do caminho


É um resto de toco

É um pouco sozinho…

A stick a stone

It’s the end of the road

It’s feeling alone

It’s the weight of your load

It’s a sliver of glass

It’s life, it’s the sun

It’s night, it’s death

It’s a knife, it’s a gun

 A flower that blooms

A fox in the brush

A knot in the wood

The song of the thrush

The mystery of life

The steps in the hall

The sound of the wind

And the waterfall

It’s the moon floating free

It’s the curve of the slope

It’s an egg, it’s a bee

It’s a reason for hope

And the riverbank sings

Of the waters of March

It’s the promise of spring

It’s the joy in your heart…

 É o pé, é o chão,


É a marcha estradeira


Passarinho na mão,


pedra de atiradeira

 É uma ave no céu,


É uma ave no chão 


É um regato, é uma fonte,


É um pedaço de pão

 É o fundo do poço,


É o fim do caminho 


No rosto o desgosto,


É um pouco sozinho…

A spear, a spike,

A stake, a nail,

It’s a drip, it’s a drop

It’s the end of the tale

The dew on a leaf

In the morning light

The shot of a gun

In the dead of the night

 A mile, a must

A thrust, a bump

It’s the will to survive

It’s a jolt, it’s a jump

A blueprint of a house

A body in bed

A car stuck in the mud

It’s the mud, it’s the mud

A fish, a flash

A wish, a wing

It’s a hawk, it’s a dove

It’s the promise of spring

And the riverbank sings

Of the waters of March

It’s the end of despair

It’s the joy in your heart…

É pau, é pedra

É o fim do caminho


É um resto de toco

É um pouco sozinho

 É uma cobra, é um pau

É João, é José 


É um espinho na mão

É um corte no pé

 São as águas de março 


Fechando o verão 


É a promessa de vida 


No teu coração…

 A stick, a stone

It’s the end of the road

The stump of a tree

It’s a frog, it’s a toad

A sigh of breath

A walk, a run

A life, a death

A ray in the sun

 And the riverbank sings

Of the waters of March

It’s the promise of life

It’s the joy in your heart…

 São as águas de março 


Fechando o verão 


É a promessa de vida 


No teu coração

 É pau, é pedra

É o fim do caminho


É um resto de toco

É um pouco sozinho

É pau, é pedra

É o fim do caminho


É um resto de toco

É um pouco sozinho…

Wha’?  February 29^th and after a near-snow-free winter there’s snow in the forecast for much of the Baystate?  As the leap-year storm hasn’t arrived there’s only its portent and I know I’ve told this story before but, beyond that debut album cover of the four of them in the bathtub (1966’s “If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears”), The Mamas & The Papas will forever come to mind when the weather is raw and wintry, but not quite white.

The 28th of December 1981 in Northern Ireland was just such a day. I was bumming around Ulster Province, which (at the time) was one of the few places outside America where it was actually beneficial to look like an American. It was early and having purchased my railway ticket to Belfast at the station in Coleraine, I had just enough time for a quick cuppa’ tea. So I was sitting by the window in a nearby cafe (pronounced “kaff”) when a local farmer sporting a flat cap and soiled tweed jacket pulled up on a tractor, clearly his way of getting around, and entered the shop next door.

Time was tight and I soon headed back to the station, marveling along the way how quintessentially Irish this scene was, what with that farmer in his wellies and the morning mist mingling with the smell of peat smoke from someone’s fireplace. Then I passed the tractor…with its built-in radio blaring today’s selection (and ‘pop’ went the reverie).

Written by John and Michelle Phillips in 1963 while they were living in New York and recorded and released in 1965, this was The Mamas & The Papas breakthrough single and it quickly peaked at Number 4 on the U.S. Charts and Number 23 in the UK.

TODAY’S SONG – Wednesday 29 February 2012

California Dreamin’

All the leaves are brown

And the sky is grey

I’ve been for a walk

On a winter’s day

I’d be safe and warm

If I was in L.A.

California Dreamin’

On such a winter’s day

 Stopped into a church

I passed along the way

Well, I got down on my knees

And I pretend to pray

 You know the preacher likes the cold

He knows I’m gonna’ stay

California Dreamin’

On such a winter’s day

All the leaves are brown

And the sky is grey

I’ve been for a walk

On a winter’s day

If I didn’t tell her

I could leave today

California Dreamin’

On such a winter’s day

On such a winter’s day

On such a winter’s day

In the right hands a twelve-string acoustic guitar, its double strings in six courses, produces a rich, shimmering quality…and despite having to overcome such obstacles as partial hearing loss and near-career-ending tendon damage, Leo Kottke has long been recognized as a twelve-string master.

Born in Athens, Georgia in 1945, Kottke’s family moved so often that he was raised in twelve (there’s that number again) different states. Influenced by folk and delta blues, he learned to play trombone and violin before turning to guitar.  A mishap with a firecracker permanently damaged the hearing in his left ear, a condition exacerbated (in both ears) when he was exposed to big guns while in the Naval Reserve, so much so that he was discharged early.

After a stretch of hitchhiking and busking ‘round the country, Kottke settled in the Twin Cities region of Minnesota, becoming a coffeehouse regular. In 1969 he recorded his first two albums, the live “12-String Blues” and the quintessential “6-and-12-String Guitar.”  Never a top-40 kind of guy, today’s 1974 selection is Kottke’s only single to actually hit the charts.

By the early ‘80s his aggressive picking style caught up with him and he began to suffer from nerve damage and painful tendonitis in his right hand. So he took a break and changed to a classical style, using fingertips rather than fingerpicks and changing his right hand positioning.  Having collaborated with the likes of Chet Atkins, Lyle Lovett, Johnny Cash, Fleetwood Mac and Rickey Lee Jones, Kottke has recorded nearly 40 albums. These days you can still catch him on “A Prairie Home Companion.”

Featured on his seventh album, “Ice Water” and peaking at Number 69 on the Billboard Charts, “Pamela Brown” was written by Tom T. Hall, who some may recall as the writer/composer of “Harper Valley PTA.”

 TODAY’S SONG – Tuesday 28 February 2012

Pamela Brown

 I’m the guy that didn’t marry pretty Pamela Brown

Educated, well-intentioned good girl in our town

I wonder where I’d be today if she had loved me too

Probably be driving kids to school

 I guess I owe it all to Pamela Brown

All of my good times – all my roamin’ around

One of these days I might be in your town

And I guess I owe it all to Pamela Brown

 Seen the lights of cities and been inside their doors

Sailed to foreign countries and walked upon their shores

I guess the guy she married was the best part of my luck

She dug him cause he drove a pick-up truck

 I guess I owe it all to Pamela Brown

All of my good times – all my roamin’ around

One of these days I might be in your town

And I guess I owe it all to Pamela Brown

 I don’t have to tell you just how beautiful she was

Everything it takes to get a guy like me in love

Lord I hope she’s happy cause she sure deserves to be

Especially for what she did for me

I guess I owe it all to Pamela Brown

All of my good times – all my roamin’ around

One of these days I might be in your town

And I guess I owe it all to Pamela Brown

For an artist of his stature (52 albums in a career spanning over 50 years) very little is known about Evangelos Papathanassiou’s personal life.  He rarely gives interviews and it’s not known where he generally resides, although he has said that he travels around, rather than settling in one specific country or place.  Born in Volos, Greece in 1943 and a self-taught musician (he refused to take traditional piano lessons and still does not read music) he apparently began composing at the age of four.

Throughout the 1960s he was involved with a number of popular Athens-based bands but it was his solo work (especially scoring films) in the 1970s and beyond that brought him international renown and reward, including the 1982 Academy Award for Best Original Music Score for “Chariots of Fire”.  Most of the world, of course, knows Papathanassiou by his stage name, Vangelis.

When keyboardist, Rick Wakeman left Yes in 1974, Vangelis was considered as a replacement, although he ultimately declined.  However, he did become friendly with lead vocalist (and alto tenor) Jon Anderson and years later the two collaborated on a number of albums as Jon & Vangelis.  With Anderson writing the lyrics and Vangelis composing the music, today’s selection (which reached Number 6 on the UK Singles Charts) was featured on their second album in 1981, “The Friends of Mr. Cairo”.

TODAY’S SONG – Sunday 26 February 2012

I’ll Find My Way Home

You ask me where to begin

Am I so lost in my sin?

You ask me where did I fall

I’ll say I can’t tell you when

But if my spirit is lost

How will I find what is near?

Don’t question I’m not alone

Somehow I’ll find my way home

My sun shall rise in the east

So shall my heart be at peace

And if you’re asking me when

I’ll say it starts at the end

You know your will to be free

Is matched with love secretly

And talk won’t alter your prayer

Somehow you’ll find you are there

Your friend is close by your side

And speaks in far ancient tongue

A season’s wish will come true

All seasons begin with you

One world we all come from

One world we melt into one

Just hold my hand and we’re there

Somehow we’re going somewhere

Somehow we’re going somewhere

You ask me where to begin

Am I so lost in my sin?

You ask me where did I fall

I’ll say I can’t tell you when

But if my spirit is strong

I know it can’t be long

No questions I’m not alone

Somehow I’ll find my way home

Somehow I’ll find my way home

Somehow I’ll find my way home

Somehow I’ll find my way home

’79 was a bumpin’ year for the Duchess of Coolsville.  If you weren’t listening to her distinctive (Grammy Award winning) signature sound on the radio, with its finger snaps and jive talk beat, then you were hearing imitations of it in Dr. Pepper and McDonalds commercials.   And her quirky fashion statements were showing up all over the place: the skin-tight lycra pant suits, the elbow length fingerless gloves, the red high heels and of course the ubiquitous berets.

Born on the north side of Chicago in 1954, Rickie Lee Jones was mainly raised in Arizona, a wide-open place that would provide the imagery found in much of her writing (including today’s selection).  Her father, a violent alcoholic, moved the family around a lot and the struggling Rickie Lee spent much of her early childhood in the company of imaginary friends.

But her mother was a strong-willed woman who worked double shifts as a waitress so that her kids would want for nothing. By the time she was 12 Rickie Lee had studied ballet, tap, acting and modeling.  She was also an AAU swimmer.  After her parents’ divorced she ran away from home (at the age of 16), spending time in Chicago, Detroit, Phoenix (where she enrolled in the Little Theatre), Washington State (where her mother had moved) and southern California.  A natural musician, she started performing publicly at the age of 21, slowly finding her jazz-inspired sound, while playing in clubs up and down the West Coast.

By the time she was 25, Rickie Lee Jones had become the hard-drinking, beatnik-beret wearing hipster that’s seen on the cover of her first album, gaining further notoriety as part of “Rock’s Bohemian Couple” along with her then-inseparable boyfriend (none other than) Tom Waits. “We walk around the same streets,” she once said,” and I guess it’s primarily a jazz-motivated situation for both of us. We’re living on the jazz side of life.”

Released in 1979, that eponymous first album peaked at Number 3 on the album charts (selling well over 2 million copies in the U.S. alone), with its first track, “Chuck E’s in Love” reaching Number 4 on the singles charts. Today’s selection is the album’s second track.

TODAY’S SONG – Saturday 25 February 2012

On Saturday Afternoons in 1963

The most as you’ll ever go

Is back where you used to know

If grown-ups could laugh this slow

Where as you watch the hour snow

Years may go by

And years may go by

So hold on to your special friend

Here, you’ll need something to keep her in

Now you stay inside this foolish grin

Though any day your secrets end

But then again

Years may go by

And years may go by

You saved your own special friend

‘Cuz here, you need something to hide her in

And you stay inside that foolish grin

When everyday now, secrets end

Oh and then again

Years may go by

And years may go by

Years may go by

Years may go by…