27 – Morning Has Broken – Art Garfunkel
The church hymn made famous by Cat Stevens in 1972, this is Art Garfunkel’s take on it and I like it. Whenever I visit a church, for a wedding or baptism or recital, I always pull the hymnal from the back of the pew in front of me and see if it’s in there. I’ve never gotten to sing it in a service, though.
Every time I hear it I think of my youth (early 70s) when I woke up to Wally Phillips on WGN. This was pre-Steve Dahl Rude Awakening when radio in Chicago was quite lame in the morning. I had listened to Chuck Benson and Kurt Russell on WIND in the late 60’s; they were a wacky morning team. I actually sent away for a free can of wind (WIND, get it?) that was a can of Freon with a WIND label on it. I still have it in a box somewhere.
Wally Phillips spent several days; it seemed, on what the correct pronunciation of recreation was. Cat Stevens pronounced the word as” … God’s reck-reation of a new day” and Artie (and most of Wally’s listeners) pronounce it “…God’s re-creation of a new day.”
Wally specialized in the mundane. He also had a running discussion (he did have 4 hours a day to fill!) of whether you place toilet rolls on the holder with the first sheet coming off the top or from underneath. I know it sounds pretty lame, but until Monty Python, David Letterman, SNL, and Steve Dahl came around in the mid-to-late 70’s, I was pretty lame.
I remember hearing “Spam” on Dr. Demento in 1974 and it sparked my search for all things Python, which culminated in my acquisition of the “Matching Tie and Handkerchief”, the three-sided album.
When I went away to Blackburn College, I met Tom W. (see Randy Newman, “God’s Song” #5) who worked in the AV dept. Part of his job (and at Blackburn you worked 15 hours per week on campus to pay for room and board) was to get up early each weekday morning and record a show from St. Louis public TV, “Guten Tag” on an early VCR and then set up and play it to the German language class. The pre-VHS/Beta VCRs in 1975 were huge, the tapes about the size of Shaquille O’Neal’s shoeboxes.
When CBS ran the heavily edited “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” in early 1977, Tom taped it and we gathered in the AV room in Lumpkin Library to watch and memorize most of the movie.
Highlights: John Cleese as his then wife Connie Booth was being taken to be burned as a witch, “Well, she turned me into a newt!” When those surrounding him look skeptically at him, he says sheepishly, “I got better.” And of course John Cleese again as the Black Knight when he is reduced to an armless, legless torso, “Come back here! I’m not through with you!” to Graham Chapman’s King Arthur, who replies, “What are you going to do…bleed on me?”
