94 – Sail Away – Randy Newman - 1972

Sail Away - Randy Newman

One of my favorite Randy Newman songs, where he sings from the persona of a guy trying to talk some Africans into coming to America, soft pedaling the whole slavery thing.

                …in America you get food to eat

                Don’t have to run through the jungle and scuff up your feet

                You just sing about Jesus and drink wine all day

                It’s great to be an American.

It reminds me of his appearance on the original Soundstage on PBS back in the mid-1070s. He introduced the song with a story about how it was written for a planned movie with different directors contributing parts to a whole, like Martin Scorsese, and some others he named, but it all fell through because the cocaine bill was too high (this was back when you could joke about drugs and not get labelled a druggie).

I wish I could be clearer on my recollection, but I can’t find the audio tape I have somewhere that I recorded from the FM simulcast that used to accompany “stereo” broadcasts before there were stereo TVs. The tape has Randy Newman on one side and Harry Chapin’s appearance on Soundstage on the other.

93 – Peg – Steely Dan – 1977

Peg - Steely Dan

                “Peg” from Steely Dan’s 1977 album, Aja, is one of my favorite Steely Dan numbers. It doesn’t always conjure up specific memories, but the last time I heard it, flying back from a customer visit in Phoenix at 11PM at night of a day that began with a 3:50AM wake-up call for a 7 AM flight. I began to think about Lynn and my excursion through the fertility system and how we came to adopt Zay and Alicia.

                Married in 1989, we held off for a little while to start a family, but in 2 years or so, me being 36, Lynn 32, we began to try to have baby. Fairly quickly Lynn became pregnant, but within a few months she suffered a miscarriage. We thought it was a fluke so we began to try again, but nothing happened.

                After a couple years, Lynn saw her first of what would become a plethora of fertility doctors. I can’t remember all the specifics, but over the next 14-15 years we did everything short of cloning ourselves.

                Artificial insemination, then in-vitro fertilization with Lynn’s eggs, with donor eggs, and with donor embryos (three tries for each), nothing took. We even did a chromosomal analysis to see if there was a compatibility issue between us.

                I specifically recall the several attempts at artificial insemination, because it was usually done on a Sunday morning. I would first “gather” my sample and then add a preservative to the vial. Lynn would then place the said vial in her armpit to maintain the temperature, and we would head off for the one hour drive to the doc’s office in Winnetka. The nurse would take the sample and place it in a centrifuge to separate my little guys from the preservative (I claim my guys were too dizzy from 15 minutes in the centrifuge to find and implant in the eggs, they probably ended up in Lynn’s appendix, or some other dead end) and were then placed within the egg (I think, I wasn’t in the lab at the time).

                This same doctor had an office on the Mag Mile in Water Tower Place in Chicago and one A.I. attempt was made on a weekday. It was 1996, the Democratic national Convention was in town, and I was on the 20^th floor in the doctor’s office. They handed me a vial and escorted me to a room with “appropriate” (if you know what I mean, and I think you do) magazines and videos and left me to coax a sample into it.

                However, I could still hear people talking and laughing in the office area outside the room and I found it impossible to wring a few cc’s out. I left the room and went to a bathroom on another floor and locked myself into a stall. I then realized I had no visual stimulation available, I had left the magazines behind. I did find a K-Mart newspaper insert and turned to the ladies’ wear and commenced to persuade.

                After about 20 minutes I produce my sample, but I was a little raw and found myself walking a little bow-legged. I took the sample cup back up to the office and turned it over to the nurse. Lynn was in another room, and after the insemination, rested for an hour or so.

                I went down to ground level and began to cross Michigan Avenue to the Border’s bookstore across the street when a motorcade came barreling down the street, running all the red lights, and I had to hurry across the street, in some pain. I later found out it was Hillary Clinton in that motorcade. Maybe that’s why I’m a Bernie Sanders guy this election cycle.

                Anyway, none of these attempts ever resulted in a baby, so in the early 2000’s we began to work with a wonderful agency, Adoption-Link, to see if we could adopt. I was 48 and Lynn was 44, which is kinda old for established adoption agencies, but Adoption Link had no age limits and, finally, in 2006 they had a 9 month old boy to adopt.

                So it was on May 9, 2006, on what would have been my father’s 74^th birthday, we drove to Oak Park to pick up Zay, our son. He was already responding to his birth name, Zayshun, so we named him John (for my dad) Zayshun.

                We wanted a girl as well, and Adoption Link allowed us to wait until one was available and on May 25^th, 2010, we picked up 3 day old Alicia Marie.

                As I’ve said before (#11 - To Be What You Must ), I’ve never regretted any part of this.

92 – WOLD – Harry Chapin – 1973

WOLD - Live at the Bottom Line

            I don’t know why it is so, but Harry Chapin is rarely included in the Rock and Roll Too Young to Die articles. I think he is as influential as Buddy Holly or Jim Croce, and definitely more so than the Big Bopper or Richie Valens. Maybe not musically, but as a humanitarian.

            Harry Chapin, when he died at 38, was a great influence to the World Hunger movement. Harry’s manager, Ken Kragin, was one of the driving forces behind USA for Africa and hands Across America, two of the biggest do-gooder forces of the 1980s.

            I first remember hearing “Taxi” on WVFV, the all request station in West Dundee that we  listened to when I worked as a janitor at Crown High School (see # 10) in the summer of 1972.

            I also remember my folks giving me god-natured sh-t for listening to his first album because of the last line of “Taxi”…”…takin’ tips and getting’ stoned, I go flyin’ so high when I’m stonnnnnnned”. I say good-natured, because I was like the kid in “Sixteen Candles”, seen briefly as Samantha (Molly Ringwald) enters the gym for a dance, saying, “I want to stay at home with you guys!”, as they forced him to go to the dance.

            My high school years were dance and concert free, and I don’t think I ever attended a football game. I played basketball all 3 years, polishing the bench with my backside (see # 74), but rarely attended school functions. I was so afraid of being turned down that I never asked a girl out on a date in high school, never.

            This attitude led to my making my mom cry for the only time I can remember (until my dad died 16 years later). I usually went out with my b-ball friends and cheerleaders after almost every game, usually to Masi’s a bowling alley/pizza place in West Dundee. One time I decided I didn’t want to go out for some reason and told my folks so. They tried to make me go, but I walked away from them. 

            They went home, thinking I was walking home from Crown (about 3 miles), but I decided to go out with the group and when I came home at 1 AM or so, I walked in and found my mom and dad sitting up waiting for me in the living room. I just walked past them to my room, and that’s when I heard my mom crying, “I was so worried!!!”. My dad came into my room and chewed me out a little. 

            I deserved it.

            Harry Chapin also addressed issues that no other folk artist did, that I can recall. Such as “Sniper” from his second album, about a Charles Whitman-like sniper. I also enjoyed “Mr. Tanner”, which showcased his bass player, “Big” John Wallace, who had a 5-octave range voice. And this one, “WOLD”, about a has-been, or never was, DJ, trying to get back together with his ex-wife and trying to find his way in a changing landscape. This particular live version has him ending up playing “…disco bullsh-t.”

            My wife, Lynn, was also a fan of his. She met him and was kissed by him, backstage when he appeared at Illinois State University.

91 – Classical Gas -1968 and 122 – Greensleeves – 1969 – Mason Williams

Classical Gas - Mason Williams

Greensleeves - Mason Williams

            “Classical Gas” was the surprise instrumental hit of 1968 by the head writer of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, Mason Williams, and “Greensleeves” was his follow-up of the next year.

            “Classical Gas” was the song that made me want to learn to play the guitar. I first started with an acoustic guitar at Norman’s Music in West Dundee in 1968. At the time, they occupied the building in the downtown now occupied by Emmett’s Restaurant and Brewery. The lessons were given one-on-one in studios on the first floor. I never got beyond playing single notes on each of the six strings, never got to play a chord.

            Norman’s also had what they called “band”. Something my parents paid extra for. One Saturday each month you’d trudge up the outside metal staircase to the second floor, where a large, high-ceilinged room contained about 25 other guitar players, sitting on folding chairs, ready to play the 2 songs we learned as a “band”.

            The first was “Under the Double Eagle,” a John Philip Sousa march that we played at a funereal pace. I can still hear it I my head when I want to torment myself.

            The second song we played was “The Ballad of the Green Beret,” another toe tapper you had to hear to believe, and even if you did hear it, you’d wonder what song it was.

            Then we would break for “refreshments”, which consisted of Kool-Aid and cookies (I don’t remember what they were called, they were shaped like windmills).

            After an hour or so of “practice” they’d let us go.

            I talked my folks into getting an electric guitar (a Fender with a small amp) which I then used to take lessons at a music shop in the Wintergarden part of the Meadowdale Shopping Center (long gone, it had an ice rink and restaurant for a time, then partially burned down and was replaced by shops, one of which was a music store).

            This second teacher would write down a series of letters/notes and say, “Figure out what this song is.” I was horrible at making those notes sound like the song it was. It always sounded like a series of notes; my rhythm was/is terrible. I would come back the next week, playing the notes all different ways, never knew the song. I remember one song was the opening of “Day Tripper”. Once I k new what it was , I could play it the right way, but that way of teaching wasn’t working so I changed teachers again.

            The third and last teacher had me buy a music book that when I opened it the pages looked like a nest of ants had walked through ink, then all over the page. It was classical guitar and for a beginner like me (still hadn’t learned a single chord) blew my mind. I tried two lessons, and then dropped the guitar.

            In 1969 I sold the guitar and amp to buy a CB radio. Four other friends and I thought we could get a CB and go to one of the 23 channels and become DJs. Once we got our licenses we found out you weren’t supposed to talk for more than 5 minutes. We tried playing music on channel 21 and we got yelled at by other CBers.  We then used them in place of the phone to talk about weekend plans, etc.

            In 1970, I sold the CB to buy a 9” RCA Black and White TV for my room. I took that TV to Blackburn and had it until 1983 when I took it to Southern Illinois University law school for my ill-fated semester (see #33) and I left it with a guy in the dorm when I skedaddled from there.

            I still wish I’d kept up with the guitar, but I prefer listening to someone else play it, Like Leo Kottke, Lindsay Buckingham, or Mason Williams.  

90- To the last Whale (Wind on the Water) – David Crosby and Graham Nash-1975

To the Last Whale (Wind on the Water)  

               

                 I hear this song and I’m back in Tom W’s room at Blackburn, 1975, marveling at the intricate acapella harmonies at the start, flowing into, after some whale and other sounds of the sea, an early ecological plea to stop harvesting the whale “…just to feed the pets we raise, put the flowers in your vase, and make the lipstick for your face.”

                Reminds me of how much of our time at BU, at least what I can recall of it, consisted of wasting our time, listening to albums in Tom and Wes’s room, since Tom had the best stereo set-up at the time, i.e. Marantz Tuner/Amp, Bose speakers, Advent turntable.

                I can honestly say there are whole chunks of my time spent in classrooms that I have zero memory of. Yet I can recall Hoc-Soc and IM basketball games (# 5- God’sSong) with a clarity that is startling. 

                In late 1975 I attempted to go back to my hard contact lenses, as I was getting tired of my John Lennon wire rims. However, I failed to build up wear time gradually (as was required with hard lenses, you’d start with 4 hours, then after several days build up to 8 hours, then to all day) and kept them in too long on a Friday evening.

                I woke up about 3 AM with a feeling like someone was squirting an orange peel into my eyes; they were inflamed and tearing up like crazy. I could barely see, but I still drove myself to the Carlinville Hospital, which was several blocks away, which did not have an emergency room at the time. They rinsed my eyes out with a syringe, and then put me in a dark room. 

                After several hours they let me go and sent me to an ophthalmologist, who informed me that I had corneal abrasions. He gave me some eye drops and some dark glasses that clipped over my wire rims, giving me the look of a blind person (think Ralphie, in A Christmas Story after his “Soap….. Poisoning!!”) for several days.

                I went back to contacts several years later, when gas permeable soft lenses came on the market. I finally gave up on all contacts in my 40’s and I’ve worn glasses ever since.