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.