31 – Everyone’s Gone to the Moon – Jonathan King – 1965

Everyone's Gone to the Moon - Jonathan King

            I don’t know what it is about this song, maybe it’s the use of swirling orchestral strings, but it always saddens me a little when I hear it. Still, I like it for the feelings and memories it invokes. It reminds me of the mid 60’s when I was 9-10 and the future seemed so bright. And then here comes Denny Downer, whining about everybody abandoning him (us?) for the moon,

            I was a huge space program fan as a kid, and that future was not to be dissed. I had large scale models of both the Gemini and Apollo capsules. In fact, the Apollo was the top third of the Saturn V rocket and contained both the capsule and the LEM (Lunar Excursion module). It was about 2 feet high and was pretty cool.

            It blew up “real good” several years later (along with my Star Trek Enterprise, Klingon warship, and flying sub (from “Voyage to See What’s on the Bottom”) models)), when I got a hold of some firecrackers. Probably blew up my kids’ college fund with those five models.

            It also triggers memories of my aunt and uncle who lived in Marengo, Illinois. At the time, their house backed up on a farm (now completely built up with houses). It seemed they were in the middle of nowhere. It was about a 45 minute drive from Algonquin, mainly through farmland. Though their house was newer (mid-1950s, I think), the neighborhood was built into an area with huge, old growth oak trees.

            I still have occasional dreams about that house for some reason, though I haven’t been in it in over 40 years. It was a simple three bedroom ranch who’s each room was larger than our three bedroom ranch in Algonquin, but in my dreams there are hidden rooms that made the house go on and on, though I’m sure if I saw it today it would seem much smaller.

            They had a barbed wire fence at the back of their lot that was electrified, scary to a little kid. I recall overhearing a story about a girl who was out in the winter snow with only her PJs on, and when she climbed over the fence to escape her pursuers, she cut her feet on the barbed wire and she was tracked by her bloody prints in the snow (I overheard only part of this story and the image that sticks in my head is the blood in the snow).

            It also triggers memories of seeing the Beatles’ first appearance on the Ed Sullivan show there (they had a partially finished basement for TV viewing, unlike my other four aunts, or us) when I was nine. I remember my parents commenting (I think it was required) on how “long” their hair was. This song also reminds me for some reason of Freddie and the Dreamers, another British Invasion band that was on Ed Sullivan several times, doing a goofy dance called, unlikely as it seems, “The Freddie”.

            It also reminds me of the first “adult” joke I ever heard, from my uncle Wayne. He told it to me and my cousin, David, at one of our family get togethers. (My dad had five sisters, and all lived within a 25 mile radius of Elgin, and we would get together at holidays and for picnics. There were 13-14 cousins, I think).

            I was about 11 or 12 when he told us…..

                        “This guy goes out to buy a car and the salesman takes him on                    a test drive of a new sports car. He punches the gas pedal and the car goes 
                        from 0-60 mph in five seconds, screaming around the countryside, they       
                        approach a rail crossing and, out of nowhere, a train appears. The salesman 
                        slams on the brakes; the car stops a foot from the speeding train.

                        “Smell that?” the salesman asks, “That’s tire rubber, best tires on the road!”

                        The guy buys the car and takes his buddy out for a spin. Going 0-60 in
                         five seconds, screaming around the countryside, they come up on the same
                         railroad  crossing and out of nowhere a train appears. The guy slams on his
                         brakes and the car stops a foot from the passing train.

                        “Smell that?” the guy asks his buddy.

                        “Smell it? I’m sitting in it!”

            I looked at my cousin, he looked at me, we didn’t get it.

            My uncle Wayne said, “He pooped in his pants he was so scared!”

            We exploded in laughter, bending over at the waist, holding our stomachs, bobbing up and down in unison.

            It was great to be considered adult enough to hear such sophisticated humor!

 

30 – It’s Money That Matters – Randy Newman – 1988

It's Money That Matters (Live on SNL)

            This song is from one of my favorite Randy Newman albums, 1988’s “Land of Dreams.” I seem to enjoy quite a few artists whose voices are, shall we say, challenged. Randy Newman would be exhibit A, but no one else can sing his songs as well (I’m not talking about his work in films, “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” (Toy Story), etc., which are usually sung by better singers).

            Even though I was introduced to Randy Newman by David Steinberg’s rendition of “Political Science (Let’s Drop the Big One)”, Newman’s version is the best, I’m also ignoring “Mama Told Me Not to Come” by Three Dog Night, their version is superior.

            Other artists I like who maybe don’t have the best voices:

            Jimmy Webb – Singer, songwriter, I like his versions of his hits, sung by others on the hit version, and I’ll write about them as they come up on the Zune.

            Leo Kottke – I like his voice, too, even though he famously calls it sounding like “geese farts in a fog” on the liner notes of “Mudlark”. There are several vocals here on my Zune which I’ll be discussing in future postings.

            Billy Corgan – Very distinctive voice, somewhat whiny, but I like Smashing Pumpkins for other reasons as well.

            Steve Dahl – “Margarita”, good song, voice…OK.

            Trevor Horn – vocals, songwriter, The Buggles, an acquired taste.

            Warren Zevon – adequate…

            Mark Knopfler – Great duet with James Taylor on “Sailing to Philadelphia,” coming soon on Kaffred’s  Zune

            Maybe it’s because I’s easier to sing along with voices slightly better/worse than mine?

29 – I’ve got a Thing about Seeing My Grandson Grow Old – Cat Stevens – 1970

I've Got a Thing About Seeing My Grandson Grow Old

             I first heard this song in 2002 when the Cat Stevens Box Set came out. The song itself comes from the “Mona Bone Jakon” sessions of 1970, when his sound became more introspective following his year long bout with tuberculosis.

            It reminds me of my short stint at Sonic, which I talked about a little in the very first posting (“What’s All This Then?”). I had come back there and spent some of my time downloading songs from Grokster. We were slow, the main reason we were shut down after only being in business 10-11 months.

            I remember the box set was a revelation, in that there really hadn’t been anything new from Cat (now Yusuf) since “Footsteps in the Dark”(1984), a best-of compilation that finally gave us the songs from “Harold and Maude”(there it is again) that had never appeared on any album (17-If You Want to Sing Out…). There are several songs that I’d never heard before, (“If Only Mother Could See Me Now”, “The Joke,”  and “The Day They Make me Tsar”)including his version of “Portobello Road” an early song I had only heard covered by his guitarist Alun Davies on his album “Daydo”.

            There’s even a duet with Elton John, a song called “Honey Man”, I like each of them separately, but their voices don’t blend well, to my ear.

            Had this song  (I’ve Got a Thing…) been released as a single, I’m sure Wally Phillips would have been able to wring several days out of Cat’s pronunciation of vitamin (see also, 27-“Morning Has Broken”). He uses the British pronunciation of vitt-a-min, as opposed to the American vite-a-min,

            Anyway, it’s a nice sentiment, but at 58, with a 3 year old and a 7 year old, seeing a grandson grow old may be problematic.  Maybe something along the lines of “Seeing My Grandson Change My Depends” is more likely in my future.

28 – Viva La Vida – Coldplay – 2008

Viva La Vida - Coldplay

            I think this is the newest song on my Zune, bought from the Zune Marketplace.  I don’t have any idea what the rest of the album sounds like, I only bought the song. Kind of like buying a single at the Ben Franklin back in the day. (For you young whippersnappers out there, the Ben Franklin was a five and dime store, kind of like the Dollar stores of today, but they also sold 45 rpm singles as well…”What’s a 45 rpm single old man?” “Shut up”)

            I absolutely love this song, I don’t know why. It gets multiple plays every time it comes on the Zune and I sing along every time as well. I don’t know what it’s about, or what the lyrics mean, but it has a great chorus, perfect for singing loudly in an echoing room…

                        “I hear Jerusalem bells a-ringing,

Roman cavalry choirs are singing,

Be my mirror, my sword and shield,

Missionaries in a foreign field…”

            Meaning: Huh?

            It reminds me of a specific time, March-August 2009. In March, the company I worked for in Cary, Bartlett Manufacturing, went belly up. The owner gave up and shut it down, throwing 60+ people out of work. This was about 5 months after we took a 28% pay cut (which I am still trying to climb back from) to help keep it running. He had entered into an agreement with the owner of another shop in Round Lake Beach and they were supposed to keep Bartlett open for 3 months until the work there transitioned to Round Lake, but he decided to just give up and shut it down, blaming the Chinese.

            Most of the supervisors and managers at Bartlett had been offered positions at Round Lake, but I had not. I had worked there (Round Lake Beach) five years earlier for 6 months until one day I was fired. The explanation was that I had “blown off” a customer in for a visit, but I am still convinced L.S. (see Update posting) had something to do with it. I had asked another manager to cover for me with the customer as I had a particularly tricky corrective action to finish for their biggest military customer. It was for an issue that occurred a year before I got there and was very serious. I thought the CAR (corrective action report) was more important than the customer visit. I was wrong.

            Regardless, I was not expecting to get an offer to go to Round Lake. But on the very last day of Bartlett Mfg., the owner of the shop in Round Lake asked to talk to me. He started by apologizing for my getting fired (I had been fired by his President, not him), saying he had been told what they thought he wanted to hear, which he subsequently came to believe was not the whole truth. I was floored. He then offered me a job with his company, but not as a Quality Manager, since he already had one, but in a position TBD.

            This led to one of the most interesting periods in my career.

            At first, I helped the QA manager at Round Lake as a quasi-quality engineer, helping him put together PPAPs, FMEAs, and Control Plans (a bunch of paperwork gobbledygook required by Bartlett’s automotive customers, which Round Lake had no experience with at this time)

            After the closing of Bartlett it quickly became apparent that since none of the people from the punch press department took positions in Round Lake someone would be needed to run orders out at Bartlett until the presses could be moved to Round Lake, to a 17,000 sq.ft. building down the block being prepared. Among those who took jobs in Round Lake only the former president of Bartlett and I had ever set up dies and run the punch presses. The former president only stayed for a month before he left to open a rep firm, leaving me.

            I had not set up or run a press in about 15 years, when I had helped Gary Kelly (see #1-mmmm.mmmm) build boards in a small shop he set up in Elgin, less than a mile from where we then lived. I worked at Dynacircuits during the day, and then worked 4-5 hours every other night for cash at Gary’s, setting up and running silk screening, setting up and running a punch press, and doing some visual inspection.

            So, for the next 5 months, as the Bartlett building was being gutted around me, I would drive from Elgin to Cary to run the presses, and then run the finished boards up to Round Lake for inspection and shipment. There were only 3-4 other people in this 73,000 sq. ft. building, and I was by myself, pushing 500 lb. dies around and setting up 110 ton presses, running the presses, listening to my Zune in the huge echoing (thought I wouldn’t explain that, huh?) punch press room pumped through a stereo boom box I found in the abandoned front office. The phone system was disconnected so the only contact with the outside world (and the others in the building), should something happen to me, was with cell phones.

            I was 54 years old, with a bad hip, doing more physical work than I’d done in years. And it was fun! And “Viva La Vida” was a great accompaniment.

            Note: If anyone out there knows how I can link some video I took of myself (I put the video camera on a ladder as I struggled with dies and ran punch presses)doing this work, I’d greatly appreciate it.

27 - Morning Has Broken - Art Garfunkel

27 – Morning Has Broken – Art Garfunkel

 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?”

26 - Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring - Leo Kottke - 1969

26 – Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring – Leo Kottke – 1969

Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring - Leo Kotke

            This one comes from the second album I bought of Leo’s, “6 and 12 String Guitar”, and his version of the Bach standard is my favorite (I have 3 versions, one from the “Bach”, two album set that Columbia put out, one from Walter/Wendy Carlos’ “Switched on Bach”, and Kottke’s).

            Bach lends itself well to Kottke’s finger picking style and I always marvel at his fluidity and quietness. He used to play it all the time at the live shows I attended in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, at Chicago’s Park West, Hemmens Auditorium here in Elgin, and my favorite venue, which he plays almost every year, this year being the 28^th, the Woodstock Opera House.

            Most people may remember the Opera House from “Groundhog Day” as the tower Bill Murray throws himself from in his attempt to break the endless loop his life has become, trapped in the same day in “Punxatawny, PA.” Orson Welles performed Shakespeare from the same stage where he attended the Todd School in the 1920’s. It’s interesting to envision that booming voice, even when he was a teenager, overwhelming the audience of the Woodstock Opera House.

            I find it the perfect venue for Leo Kottke, a quiet performer who maintains an intimacy with his audience, especially when it is as close as it is at Woodstock. It seats about 325, and no seat is very far away, only 10 rows or so on the main floor, 8 in the balcony. And the acoustics are perfect for catching Kottke’s sometimes baffling, sometimes hysterical, asides and stories.

            I haven’t seen him for 5 years or so, the last time was at the Hemmens here in Elgin, where he played with the only other performer more eccentric than him, Leon Redbone. This guy is the same as he was 40 years ago on Saturday Night Live. He also had some sort of call and response-type inside joke going on that left 99% of the audience going “Huh?”

UPDATE>>>>>

It’s time for another update to try to explain why this blog has become so sporadic.

Late last year, just before Christmas, Lynn’s 83 year old mom became sick and was hospitalized. This lady went through 4 bouts with cancer just since I knew her (23 years) and she always bounced back. This time the cancer had spread and the prognosis was not good. She passed away on January 12, 2013. This created a strain at home as Lynn tried to visit her whenever possible and I could get home to watch the kids.

Also, things at work started to become stressful. I was basically a one man department and then the owner’s lick spittle decided he didn’t want to do part of his job anymore and started piling jobs on my desk for verification. It required me to use CAD/CAM software to view and verify data, something I’d never done.

I gave the files back to L.S. and said, “I have no problem learning how to do this, but someone needs to train me on the use of the software.” He threw the files back on my desk and said, “You can read the Help files, can’t you?” and walked out of the office. Anyone who’s ever done CAM will tell you reading the help files alone will do nothing. I struggled for the next month or so, teaching myself (with the help of a couple CAM engineers who worked for L.S.) to move around in the software to do what I needed to do, but much, much more slowly.

Then I saw an ad online for a job at the place where my old friend, Mr. Mortimer, was. It was as an engineer instead of a manager, but I was looking to reduce my commute from 2-3 hours to an hour or so, which this would. I contacted Bob H. and we corresponded and it turned out they could offer pretty much what I was then making, with a promise of a review (which I had not had in 4+ years, indeed I was still 20% below what I made in 2008, all the salaried people there took 20% cuts that never came back) in 6-9 months. And Mr. Mortimer and Bob H. were contemplating retiring in 3 years and wanted me to help plug a hole when Bob H. (QA Mgr) left.

So, realizing L.S. would never leave (nor could he, since he was persona non grata with the military due to an earlier transgression, which would have gotten anyone else fired, but like I said, he’s a champion lick spittle) and would always have the owner’s ear, I had no future there and I took the new position starting April 1.

Since then, Lynn’s mom’s house went on the market and sold in 2 days and Lynn has had to work with her 2 brothers and 1 sister to clean and prep the house for the closing, going through a lifetime’s accumulation of stuff, trying to decide who gets what and what is worth keeping. It’s also been very stressful.

Also, during this past month and a half or so our main computer crashed, trapping all our pictures and videos of the kids and though I’ve bought a new one, I haven’t had time to set it up and recover what data I can from the crashed system.

Time is at a premium, obviously, and I have several projects hanging that I can’t get free to do, so blogging has fallen off the radar. I have a couple drafts of new posts, but I don’t have the time at work I had at the previous job to jot notes and sometimes even do a hand written draft (I know, I was using company time, but I only did it to clear my head and recharge for the task at hand there. It helps me sometimes to write something not work related to get me focused on writing reports for the military)