“Boston-style songwriting refers to the introspective and literate breed of singer-songwriter so prevalent in the modern folk music landscape,”  affirms Ellis Paul who has long been positioned at the head of the class in this particular school of folk-pop music that “bridges the gap between the modern folk sound and the populist traditions of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger.”

“(It’s a style that) grew out of Boston’s thriving folk scene with its dense collection of colleges, college radio stations and listening rooms,” he adds, noting that Boston-style songwriting “tends to be more about lyric than melody, is intimate and thoughtful but also relevant, often addressing social issues.”

Paul Plissey was born (in 1965) and raised in Presque Isle, Maine (deep in Aroostook County, the largest county east of the Mississippi and northernmost land-area in the Continental U.S.) where he played trumpet in the high school band and was state champion as a 5K runner.  That got him into Boston College on a track scholarship where his 10K time remains one of the best in BC history.

His running aspirations all ended with a knee injury during his junior year so Plissey taught himself to play the acoustic guitar to pass the time and began to write songs with the help of a “Hits of the 70s” songbook. Upon graduation, he began to perform at open mic nights around Boston, while working with inner-city kids. After winning a Boston Acoustic Underground songwriting competition, he received national exposure on a Windham Hill Records compilation, settled on the stage name, Ellis Paul and made the leap to professional musician.

Since his debut record in 1989, Paul has released 17 albums and plays nearly 200 dates a year on the club and coffeehouse circuit, bringing that Boston-style to a venue near you. “Each song is supposed to be like a little three-dimensional world,” he concludes.  “I’m hoping to invite them in, have them make out the details and the reasons for being there and apply them to their own lives. But I’m also hoping to entertain them.”

Today’s selection, long an Ellis Paul standard, comes from his sixth (1998) album, “Translucent Soul”.

 LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Wednesday 28 March

The World Ain’t Slowin’ Down

 I found you sitting on a suitcase crying

Beneath my feet

I feel the rumble of a subway train

I laugh out loud

‘Cause it’s the one thing I hadn’t been trying

The train came in breathless

The passengers restless

You say, “Baby, you’ll never change”

You gotta’ get gone, you gotta’ get going

Hey, the world ain’t slowing down for no one

It’s a carnival calling out to you

It sounds like a song

Hits you like scripture

You paint the picture

With colors squeezed from your hand

Weren’t you the kid

Who just climbed on the merry-go-round?

Hey look, the world ain’t slowing down

Hey, hey, the world ain’t slowing down

Hey, hey…

Out on the sidewalk,

Pigeons do the moonwalk

I’ll be dancing like Fred Astair

The lampposts are rocking

The whole town’s talking

Like a fool in a barber’s chair

And I get the sensation

The joy and frustration

Like being caught by a tropical rain

Freedom can numb you

When there’s no place to run to

It feels just like Novocain

You gotta’ get gone, you gotta’ get going

Hey the world ain’t slowing down for no one

It’s a carnival calling out to you

(It’s calling out to you)

It sounds like a song

Hits you like scripture

You paint the picture

With colors squeezed from your hand

Weren’t you the kid

Who just climbed on the merry-go-round?

Hey look, the world ain’t slowing down

Hey, hey, the world ain’t slowing down

Hey, hey…

 You packed up all your handbags

Throwing off the sandbags

I let go and you stepped free

I didn’t want to lose you

You said, “You didn’t choose to

It’s just how your karma came”

But thanks for the vision

And the twenty-twenty wisdom

It hit me like a southbound train

 You gotta’ get gone, you gotta’ get going

Hey the world ain’t slowin’ down for no one

It’s a carnival calling out to you

(It’s calling out to you)

It sounds like a song

Hits you like scripture

You paint the picture

With colors squeezed from your hand

Weren’t you the kid

Who just climbed on the merry-go–

Weren’t you the kid

Who just climbed on the merry-go–

Weren’t you the kid

Who just climbed on the merry-go-round

Hey look, the world ain’t slowing down

Hey, hey, the world ain’t slowing down

Hey, hey, it’s a big, blue world

It’s a big, blue world

Riding on a big, blue world

After Paris it’s the most romantic city I know and having enjoyed Montreal in every season, I guess I’ll have to go with a delightfully mild (late) spring weekend in envisioning today’s selection.  That’s the scene, as for the time… here’s hoping that you too have experienced one of those occasionally beguiling phases that have little to do with age and everything to do with endorphins and “joie de vivre.”

Few have been more adept at capturing joie de vivre (along with its sibling, “sweet sorrow”) than the McGarrigle Sisters, Kate and Anna.  Raised in a mixed English/French Canadian (and highly musical) family in the Laurentian village of Saint-Saveur-des Monts, they began performing publicly in the mid-‘60s, while Kate studied engineering at McGill and Anna was an art major at Ecole de Beux-Arts de Montréal.

They also began to write their own songs, some of them covered by artists as varied as Judy Collins, Nana Mouskouri, Billy Bragg, The Corrs, Maria Muldaur, Elvis Costello and Emmylou Harris. It was one song in particular, “Heart Like a Wheel” that was covered by Linda Ronstadt on her 1974 album of the same name that at long last landed the McGarrigles their first recording contract.

The result was their 1975 self-titled debut album, “Kate and Anna McGarrigle” which led off with today’s selection and amongst its 12 tracks included their own version of “Heart Like a Wheel” as well as (Kate’s then-husband) Loudon Wainwright III’s “The Swimming Song.”  The album was chosen by “Melody Maker” as the best record of the year.

Through the next 30 plus years (until Kate’s death from clear-cell sarcoma at the age of 63) the McGarrigles would release another nine albums, some in English, some in French, with the later recordings occasionally including Kate’s singer/songwriter children, Rufus and Martha Wainwright.

And sometimes the McGarrigles would tour.  I was lucky enough to see them in London in the ‘80s and in Toronto in the ‘90s and on both occasions they made the concert hall feel like the front parlor of an old house in Saint-Saveur-des Monts on a Saturday night.

 LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Monday 26 March

Kiss And Say Goodbye

 Call me when you’re coming to town

Just as soon as your plane puts down

Call me on the telephone

But only if you’re traveling alone

Counting down the hours

Through the sunshine and the showers

Today’s the day

You’re finally going to come my way

Let’s make a date to see a movie

Some foreign film from gay Paree

I know you like to think you’ve got taste

So I’ll let you choose the time and place

Have some dinner for two

In some eastside rendezvous

Then we’ll walk

Arm in arm around the block and talk

 Tonight you’re mine


Let’s not waste time

 I do believe the die is cast

Let’s try and make the nighttime last

And I don’t know where it’s coming from

But I want to kiss you till my mouth gets numb

I want to make love to you

Till the day comes breaking through

And when the sun is high in the sky

We’ll kiss and say goodbye

The first recorded (English language) usage of the word “serendipity” was in a letter, dated 28 January 1754, from English historian, Horace Walpole to British Diplomat, Horace Mann.  Walpole claimed to have taken it from the Persian fairy tale, “The Three Princes of Serendip” whose protagonists were “always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of.”  Serendip was an old name for Ceylon, which is an old name for Sri Lanka.

Which is all to say that “serendipity” is a pleasant surprise, or happy accident.   As noted medical research Julius Comroe once put it, serendipity is to “look for a needle in a haystack and get out of it with the farmer’s daughter.”

For me, discovering today’s selection was an example of serendipity.  In the early/mid part of the last decade, before trusting my livelihood to the wonderful world of Mac, I subscribed to Napster (which was only available to MS Windows users) and having heard Iris DeMent’s “Let the Mystery Be,” I was looking for more of her work.  When I came across “My Life” with her name listed, I assumed it was her version.  Instead I was introduced to this rendition, sung by D.C. Anderson, and it was pleasant surprise indeed.

Based in New York, David Cameron (D.C.) Anderson is a Broadway actor (including “Phantom of the Opera”, “Nicholas Nickleby” and “Pippin”) and a cabaret and folksinger/songwriter who has recorded nearly a dozen albums.  Today’s selection comes from his 1997 release, “The Box Under the Bed,” and I quickly discovered that I liked it even better than the DeMent original, which was the closing track on her 1994 (Grammy Award nominated) album, “My Life.”

Born in Paragould, Arkansas in 1961 (but bred in Cypress, California) and raised in a Pentecostal household, Iris DeMent was her father’s fourteenth child and her mother’s eighth.  Although heavily influenced by gospel and country music, her themes have long explored religious skepticism (she considers herself to be a Christian agnostic), small town life, human frailty and something we could all stand a little more of (whether in reference to others or to ourselves)…understanding and forgiveness.

LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Sunday 25 March

My Life

 My life, it don’t count for nothing

When I look at this world, I feel so small

My life, it’s only a season

A passing September that no one will recall

But I gave joy to my mother

And I made my lover smile

And I can give comfort to my friends when they’re hurting

And I can make things seem better for a while

My life, it’s half the way traveled

And still I have not found my way out of this night

My life, it’s tangled in wishes

And so many things that just never turned out right

 But I gave joy to my mother

And I made my lover smile

And I can give comfort to my friends when they’re hurting

And I can make things seem better for a while

Perhaps you recall “Telephone and Rubber Band.” And who can forget: “The Ecstasy of Dancing Fleas,” “Milk,” “Hugebaby” or “Pythagoras’s Trousers”?  It’s all high-spirited stuff from the Penguin Café.

Known to those familiar with “The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle” for helping with the string arrangement on Sid Vicious’ “distinctive” version of “My Way,” classical guitarist and composer, Simon Jeffes had become “disillusioned with the rigid structures of classical music and the limitations of rock music.”

Then, while in the South of France, he was on the beach sunbathing and as he later recounted, “suddenly a poem popped into my head (where) I am the proprietor of the Penguin Café (and) I will tell you things at random… It went on about how the quality of randomness, spontaneity, surprise, unexpectedness and irrationality in our lives is a very precious thing. And if you suppress that to have a nice orderly life, you kill off what’s most important. Whereas in the Penguin Café your unconscious can just be. There is an acceptance there that has to do with living the present with no fear in ourselves.”

Teaming up with cellist Helen Liebman, Jeffes began to experiment with an assortment of musical configurations, both live and in the studio, sometimes playing various instruments himself, sometimes bringing in other musicians, depending on the needs of a particular piece or when making live appearances, such as when The Penguin Café Orchestra (PCO) opened for the German band (“fahr’n, fahr’n, fahr’n auf der Autobahn”) Kraftwerk at North London’s Roundhouse in 1976.

A first album, “Music From the Penguin Café” was released that same year, followed by a world tour (with mainly music festival appearances).  The next album, “Penguin Café Orchestra” followed in 1981. And so it went for the next 15 years, with six studio albums, numerous live (and televised) performances and marginal renown, until Simon Jeffes’ died from a brain tumor in 1997.

Today’s selection comes from “Signs of Life” the PCO’s (1987) fifth album. “Perpetuum Mobile” is Latin for “perpetual motion” and is actually a long-recognized musical term referring to an ongoing steady stream of notes or a musical progression that’s played over and over again.  Composers as varied as Beethoven, Haydn, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Paganini, Debussy, Shostakovich, Britten, and numerous others have effectively tapped into this technique.  And to this you can add Simon Jeffes…with all the enthusiasm of a free-flowing life force.

LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Saturday 24 March

Perpetuum Mobile

Our selection today comes laced with gratitude to a friend who, as an MD, helped us out of a jam when our far-off kid was ailing mightily.  He’s much better now and so are we…certainly well enough to sit in astonishment when reading about an artist whose career has spanned (one, two, three, four, five, six, seven…) EIGHT decades.

Her father thought up her given name when she was born in 1932 (drolly alleging that it was a combination of two old girlfriends, Pet and Ulla) and she was christened Petula Sally Olwen Clark in her hometown of Epsom, Surrey. Although most of us know her for those wonderfully upbeat hits from the ‘60s, Petula Clark’s career actually began as a BBC Radio entertainer during (ready for this) the Second World War.

She made her debut in 1942, while attending a BBC broadcast with her father.  When an air raid occurred the producer asked if there was anyone who could sing (in hopes of calming the edgy studio audience) and the ten year old raised her hand and sang “Mighty Lak a Rose” to a thunderous ovation.  Clark then repeated her performance for the broadcast audience, and thus soon began a series of nearly 500 appearances for “Britain’s Shirley Temple” whose photo was often plastered on British military equipment as a sign of good luck.

Throughout the 1950s Petula Clark garnered international success by recording in both French and English. But then came the paradigm shift of Beatlemania and her singing career (like so many others) began to founder. In 1964, composer-arranger, Tony Hatch tried to interest her in some new material that just wasn’t a fit, so in desperation he played a few chords from an unfinished song he’d been writing with The Drifters in mind.  Clark’s response was immediate, if the lyrics were as good as the melody she’d record it as her next single.

Released in four languages, and “owning” the American charts, “Downtown” was an enormous success in the UK, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Australia, Italy, Japan and India. Actually it would prove to be the first of fifteen consecutive U.S. Top 40 hits for Clark.  A multiple Grammy Award winner (with a place in the Grammy Hall of Fame), who will turn 80 this year, little “Pet-Ulla” has sold more than 68 million records throughout her extraordinary career.

Today’s selection-by-request, was also written by Tony Hatch (with Jackie Trent), and released in 1967.  Peaking at Number Five on the Charts it was Clark’s final American top-ten single.

Now there are those who think of “subway” in the American sense (underground metro) and those who think of the British usage (underground pedestrian passageway).  And there are those, like me, who have smugly assumed that since it was written by a Brit and sung by a Brit it obviously refers to the British usage. Wrong, according to lyricist Jackie Trent, the song was inspired by a Broadway Musical, “Subways Are For Sleeping.”

Good choice, Doc. “Don’t Sleep in the Subway” is reportedly Petula Clark’s favorite Tony Hatch composition.

 LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Friday 23 March

Don’t Sleep in the Subway

 You wander around

On your own little cloud

When you don’t see the why

Or the wherefore

Ooh, you walk out on me

When we both disagree

‘Cause to reason is not what you care for

I’ve heard it all a million times before

Take off your coat, my love, and close the door

Don’t sleep in the subway, darlin’

Don’t stand in the pouring rain

Don’t sleep in the subway, darlin’

The night is long

Forget your foolish pride

Nothing’s wrong

Now you’re beside me again

You try to be smart

Then you take it apart

‘Cause it hurts when your ego is deflated

You don’t realize

That it’s all compromise

And the problems are so over-rated

 Good-bye means nothing when it’s all for show

So why pretend you’ve somewhere else to go?

 Don’t sleep in the subway, darlin’

Don’t stand in the pouring rain

Don’t sleep in the subway, darlin’

The night is long

Forget your foolish pride

Nothing’s wrong

Now you’re beside me again

 Don’t sleep in the subway, darlin’

Don’t stand in the pouring rain

Don’t sleep in the subway, darlin’

The night is long

Forget your foolish pride

Nothing’s wrong

Now you’re beside me again

 Don’t sleep in the subway, darlin’

Don’t stand in the pouring rain

Don’t sleep in the subway, darlin’…

Sometimes it takes a long time to connect the dots, in my case a very long time.  We were out for a pleasant ramble through the Shropshire countryside when Gabrielle (a fond acquaintance at the time) told me about her brilliant brother, a talented musician who had died from an overdose of antidepressants, possibly a suicide, ten years earlier. “He still has a devoted following,” she affirmed.

I have an annoying habit of keeping track of these things and can tell you that this took place on Saturday the 11^th of August 1984 in the West Midlands of England and we had a delightful picnic on Wenlock Edge, followed by an enjoyable swim in a mill pond and, later on, a few pints of Best Bitter at the George & Dragon in the (Alison Avery-esque) village of Much Wenlock.

And although the story of Gabrielle’s brother was interesting, well, you know how it goes when road leads onto road. I eventually lost touch and didn’t think much more about the conversation for the next, oh, quarter-of-a-century or so….

Then, far from England and many years on…Tuesday the 4^th of December 2007 while at my desk here in Concord, Massachusetts to be exact (annoying habit)…I happened to be listening to an NPR profile about the long-deceased singer/songwriter, Nick Drake, who had been acquiring a new and appreciative audience and…

“…hold on, Drake, that was Gabrielle’s surname, you don’t suppose…” and right on cue they played an excerpt from the BBC documentary “Skin Too Few: The Days of Nick Drake” and there was Gabrielle’s voice discussing her brother who had long maintained a devoted following…

It’s a following that I now well understand.  Reclusive and timid before a live audience, he only recorded three albums (“Five Leaves Left”, “Bryter Later” and “Pink Moon”) and failed to reach a wide listening audience in his lifetime, but after his untimely death in 1974 his records slowly gained word-of-mouth appreciation, especially amongst fellow musicians, to the point where Nick Drake is now recognized as one of “the most influential English singer/songwriters of the last 50 years.”

Although not all of his songs have weathered the ages, many have, some with beautiful (sometimes lush) dissonant melodies and “vivid, epigrammatic” lyrics, heavily inspired by the Romantic poets.   Featured on his 1970 album, “Bryter Later” and accompanied by John Cale (of Velvet Underground fame) on the celesta, here’s just such an example…

LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Thursday 21 March

Northern Sky

 I never felt magic crazy as this

I never saw moons knew the meaning of the sea

I never held emotion in the palm of my hand

Or felt sweet breezes in the top of a tree

But now you’re here

Bright in my northern sky.

 It’s been a long time that I’m waiting

Been a long time that I’m blown

Been a long time that I’ve wandered

Through the people I have known

Oh, if you would and you could

Straighten my new mind’s eye.

 Would you love me for my money?

Would you love me for my head?

Would you love me through the winter?

Would you love me ’til I’m dead?

Oh, if you would and you could

Come blow your horn on high.

 I never felt magic crazy as this

I never saw moons knew the meaning of the sea

I never held emotion in the palm of my hand

Or felt sweet breezes in the top of a tree

But now you’re here

Bright in my northern sky.

At the start I must admit to a lesser ending…

A decorated Air Force pilot of some renown, Lieutenant Colonel Henry Deutschendorf, Sr. was an impressive man with a military bearing, who’d set five speed records in his supersonic Convair B-58 “Hustler.” But the life of a military family can be a nomadic one and for Henry Deutschendorf, Jr., this was a painful fact.

Shy, rather introverted and ever the “new kid,” Henry Jr. had a difficult time making friends.  Recognizing this, his grandmother presented the (then) eleven year old with a well-worn guitar, to help him to focus his attention on something he might enjoy, and just maybe to help him to fit in.

Fortunately, musicianship ran in the family, Henry’s uncle was a member of the New Christy Minstrels. By his late teens he was playing folk songs in local clubs.  And it was one of his uncle’s fellow musicians who suggested that he come up with a stage name that could actually fit a marquee.  So he turned to his middle name, John, and combined it with his favorite state’s mile-high capital.

And in the years ahead John Denver’s recordings would sell in excess of 30 million copies, earning him four platinum and 12 gold albums, along with numerous Country Music, American Music and Grammy awards,  an Emmy award and enshrinement n the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame.

Throughout his busy career, John Denver owned and played dozens of highly prized, world-class guitars, most of them acoustic, including: Guilds, Yamahas, Mossmans, Ovtion/Adams, Grevens, Somogyis, Taylors, Godins and numerous others. But early (and later) on, he performed with Gibsons, always maintaining that his most prized possession was the 1910 Gibson F-Hole Jazz guitar that his grandmother had given to him.

When it “went missing” in the early ‘70s, apparently during a television appearance, he was reportedly devastated.   And when it was returned to him a number of years later, he sat down and wrote today’s selection.

First included on his eighth album, (the multi-platinum) “Back Home Again” in 1974, it wasn’t a huge hit like other songs on the record. But it became one of his standards and versions of “This Old Guitar” were subsequently included on a number of his later albums.  And now we arrive at that ending.

Word had it that after Denver died in a plane crash (at the age of 53 in 1997) the old guitar was cremated with him, its ashes spread with his in a favorite spot up in the Rockies; truly a touching story that I have often recounted.

But rather than leave well enough alone I had to go and double-check my facts with a quick Google search (dangerous habit) and was brought directly to The John Denver Guitar Research Site, which features a recent picture of his well-maintained and much-cherished guitar as seen on display at the Musical Instrument Museum in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Now I felt compelled to dash off an e-mail inquiry.  They’re wonderful folks at the JDGR Site – well worth a look – and I soon received a response, noting that not only is the storied instrument still with us, but that Denver was actually mistaken in identifying it as a 1910 Gibson F-Hole Jazz Guitar…

Mistaken or not, and despite this muddled ending, the rest of the tale rings true. Regardless of its provenance, this was the old guitar that taught young Henry Deutschendorf, Jr. to sing a love song.

LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Wednesday 21 March 

This Old Guitar

 This old guitar taught me to sing a love song

It showed me how to laugh and how to cry

It introduced me to some friends of mine

And brightened up some days

And helped me make it through some lonely nights

Oh what a friend to have on a cold and lonely night

 This old guitar gave me my lovely lady

It opened up her eyes and ears to me

It brought us close together

And I guess it broke her heart

It opened up the space for us to be

What a lovely place and a lovely space to be

 This old guitar gave me my life my living

All the things you know I love to do

To serenade the stars that shine

From a sunny mountainside

And most of all to sing my songs for you

I love to sing my songs for you

Yes I do, you know

I love to sing my songs for you

The urban legend isn’t true, and that’s a shame. It was not anonymously written in 1692 and discovered in a Baltimore churchyard centuries later.  Although you can see how the mistake could be made.

Latin for “desired things,” “Desiderata” (plural of “desideratum” for you pedants) is actually a prose poem by Max Ehrmann, an attorney from Terre Haute, Indiana. Written in 1927, when Ehrmann was 54, “Desiderata” only achieved renown years after his passing, when it was discovered on Adlai Stevenson’s deathbed in 1965.

Apparently Stevenson had planned to use the poem in his Christmas cards and the text was part of a compilation of devotional materials that the rector of Saint Paul’s Church in Baltimore had assembled for his congregation.  The cover included the church’s foundation date: Old Saint Paul’s Church, Baltimore A.D. 1692, causing confusion about the poem’s origins, which is where the urban legend arose.

“Star Trek” fans may recall the Leonard Nimoy recording, which was entitled “Spock Thoughts” and was included on his 1967 album, “Leonard Nimoy Presents Mr. Spock’s Music From Outer Space” (No?  Don’t remember that one?)  In his rendition the second to last sentence was changed from “Be Cheerful” to “Be Careful” as was done in today’s selection.

In 1971, radio announcer and television talk show host, Les Crane (famous to some for being married to Tina Louise of “Gilligan’s Island” fame) made a 45rpm recording of the poem that reached Number 8 on the Billboard Chart in 1972 (hitting Number 4 on the Canadian Charts and Number 6 on the UK Charts) and Crane received a Grammy Award.

While it was assumed that “Desiderata” was very old and therefore in the public domain, the copyright actually belonged to the Ehrmann estate and the publicity around the record led to clarification and a happy conclusion for Max Ehrmann’s family who eventually received appropriate royalties.

Although this rendition, which became somewhat of a counterculture anthem, is slightly dated with its groovy accoutrements, it was hugely inspirational during a rather gloomy time for the country.  As for the text itself, timeless is a fine description, and one could well imagine stumbling across it in some old churchyard, etched across a weather beaten tablet dated A.D. 1692…

 LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Tuesday 20 March

Desiderata

 (You are a child of the universe

No less than the trees and the stars

You have a right…)

  Go placidly amid the noise and haste

And remember what peace there may be in silence

As far as possible without surrender

Be on good terms with all persons

Speak your truth quietly and clearly

And listen to others

Even the dull and the ignorant

They too have their story

Avoid loud and aggressive persons

They are vexations to the spirit

 If you compare yourself with others

You may become vain or bitter

For always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself

 (You are a child of the universe

No less than the trees and the stars

You have a right to be here

And whether or not it is clear to you

No doubt the universe is unfolding as it should)

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans

Keep interested in your own career, however humble

It is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time

Exercise caution in your business affairs

For the world is full of trickery

But let this not blind you to what virtue there is

Many persons strive for high ideals

And everywhere life is full of heroism

Be yourself

Especially, do not feign affection

Neither be cynical about love

For in the face of all aridity and disenchantment

It is as perennial as the grass

Take kindly the counsel of the years

Gracefully surrendering the things of youth

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune

But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings

Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness

 Beyond a wholesome discipline

Be gentle with yourself

You are a child of the universe

No less than the trees and the stars

You have a right to be here

And whether or not it is clear to you

No doubt the universe is unfolding as it should

 Therefore be at peace with God

Whatever you conceive Him to be

And whatever your labors and aspirations

In the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams

It is still a beautiful world

Be careful (cheerful)

Strive to be happy

This time the melody’s metaphorical.  When most of us think of a metaphor we suppose that it pertains to a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to something that’s symbolic and not literally applicable. But music can serve the same purpose…a concept that Suzanne Nadine Vega thoroughly understands.

Born in Santa Monica, California in 1959, her parents were soon divorced and after her mother married a writer and teacher from Puerto Rico the family moved to Spanish Harlem in the Upper West Side of Manhattan. An artistic child who wrote her own songs, Vega later attended the celebrated High School of Performing Arts (anyone remember “Fame”?) where she studied modern dance, and began performing  as a singer and musician in small Greenwich Village clubs while at Barnard College.

After some of her songs were included on a Fast Folk anthology record, she received a major recording contract.  “Suzanne Vega” her eponymous debut album was released in 1985 and although critically well received in the U.S., it went platinum in the UK, setting the stage for “Solitude Standing” the 1987 album that includes today’s selection.

As an interesting aside, another track from the album, “Tom’s Diner” which takes place at the real Tom’s Restaurant (with an exterior that many of us recognize as the restaurant where the gang hung out on “Seinfeld”) was used as the reference track in an early trial of the MP3 compression system.  Because it’s an a capella vocal with little reverberation and “wide spectral content” the song evidently lent itself to “hearing imperfections in the compression format” during playbacks. As a result, Vega is jokingly referred to as the “Mother of the MP3” and we can thank her vocal talent for the way these “Songs of the Day” have been conveyed for over a year now.

Of course it’s “Luka”, one of the earliest pop hits to deal with child abuse and domestic violence that remains Vega’s highest charting hit (reaching Number 3 on the Billboard Hot 100).  A Spanish language version of the song was also included on the single and (metaphorically speaking) in both versions the cheerful, upbeat music serves as a profound (and heartrending) metaphor for a victim who denies that something terrible is happening.

LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Monday 19 March  

Luka

My name is Luka

I live on the second floor

I live upstairs from you

Yes I think you’ve seen me before

 If you hear something late at night

Some kind of trouble, some kind of fight

Just don’t ask me what it was

Just don’t ask me what it was

Just don’t ask me what it was

I think it’s because I’m clumsy

I try not to talk too loud

Maybe it’s because I’m crazy

I try not to act too proud

 They only hit until you cry

After that you don’t ask why

You just don’t argue anymore

You just don’t argue anymore

You just don’t argue anymore

 Yes I think I’m okay

I walked into the door again

Well, if you ask that’s what I’ll say

And it’s not your business anyway

I guess I’d like to be alone

With nothing broken, nothing thrown

 Just don’t ask me how I am

Just don’t ask me how I am

Just don’t ask me how I am

My name is Luka

I live on the second floor

I live upstairs from you

Yes I think you’ve seen me before

 If you hear something late at night

Some kind of trouble, some kind of fight

Just don’t ask me what it was

Just don’t ask me what it was

Just don’t ask me what it was

 And they only hit until you cry

After that, you don’t ask why

You just don’t argue anymore

You just don’t argue anymore

You just don’t argue anymore