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THIS ONE DOES IT FOR ME!
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A Thought for Today
Friendship is a seed once sown that’s better cultivated in the practice.
Yesterday, at Larry's
suggestion, we looked at the
first two parts of the longest McKuen poem. Today, the balance.
- Ken, Johannesburg, November 16
IS THERE LIFE AFTER TOWER RECORDS?
for Russ Solomon
Three
A crowd was pressing hard
against, around
the new releases.
The Telarc bin was under siege.
Long thin men in suede stood guard
while their molls talked
playing times,
argued over merit versus price
and in hushed whispers
spoke of leap by Shaw / Atlanta
across the aisle to Pro-Arte.
Ah, block vote poor Berlioz -
is this thy sting ?
She passed an older couple
fussing with
the new / old Furtwangers,
moved down the aisle of Polygram
in time to hear
a woman's verbal cruise of clerk:
I am not sure what name
it goes by
but it's from a symphony,
I think, an opus, something.
I can hum it for you, if you like.
Did you see the movie "Frances"?
It was playing on the radio
in her apartment when she took the pills.
Speaking of radios
you have a strong chin.
Anyway, it was an opus something.
She went directly to Rachmaninoff
( not daring to address
his dour countenance, Serge ).
There she stood, bent over,
Botticelli-like
fingering Ashkenazy, caressing Bolet
and Gavrilov,
pausing to feel Richter,
lingering over Horowitz,
wondering if Cecile Ousset
would ever be released
on Compact Disc.
Has Kocsis completed the concertos
and the Rhapsody ?
Were they still in the Philips vaults
or still inside his head
awaiting word
on vacationing de Waart ?
Did Ashkenazy live walled up
inside a glass recording booth ?
All that Rachmaninoff
and Sibelius,
and Brahms, and Mozart,
Prokofiev too.
The Chopin, Mussorgsky -
what a busy man he was.
She liked his hair. Its texture
in the black and white photograph
reminded her of the green stuff
that passed for grass
in old remembered Easter baskets.
More than once she thought about
a trip to Iceland
( his new home country )
as an act of homage.
She even knew the cost
of round trip airfare.
Martha Argerich looking out
from all those jackets,
lovely and demented.
Did she choose Nelson Freire
for Rach's four-hand piano suite
because he played so well
or because
he looked like such a hunk ?
Every month she rifled
the newest Schwann,
The Green Catalogue,
imported Gramophomes
hoping to find a solo CD
by the blond mustachioed Pelias.
Nothing. Nothing new.
Martha kept him locked away.
She pictured this young male
Rapunzel
waving from some turret bedroom
to every passing hunter / huntress
hoping for a rescue
from mad Martha's eighty-eights.
She knew that come some quarter,
Harry would reveal it all in print,
wasn't that the reason why his fury
and his Sound
were both termed Absolute ?
Her reverie was interrupted
by a sampling of Glassworks
from the speakers overhead.
Anxiety sprang up
from shadows still unformed.
It smothered her, erased all thought
of muscled Frenchman
in a single brittle clanging sweep.
Another twenty measures
of what sounded like a rivet gun -
her head was throbbing,
pounding with it.
Clearly she could see
the whole Glass oeuvre.
Hundreds of music sheets,
thousands of repeat bars,
millions of collective headaches.
Coming round the corner from Serge
past Strauss, Strauss family,
Tchaikovsky, Telemann, Torino
she neared Vivaldi and
the many-but-none-different version
of Four Seasons.
She thought about the total manpower
needed to make Canadian Brass,
the Pipers of the Royal Guard,
the Soviet Army Choir,
the Kronos Quartet.
Rubbing by
a man of no certain age,
but wonderful,
absorbed in miscellaneous Ws,
she felt the numbing start -
round her ears at first
then dropping down
to ease her neck
then down below
and down below that
and down.
Suppose she died this minute.
Imagine.
This was heaven,
she'd be in it.
What if she only fainted ?
Opening her eyes he'd be there.
She moved around the island
till she faced him.
Her heart slid from her body,
rose up above the racks
and hung there in the air
between them.
( Hearts and other body parts
do that sort of thing at Tower.
I, myself, have never seen it
but more than one eyewitness
has told of Tower para-normal. )
Here was not the nomination
the candidate,
the dark horse running,
not even winner,
but The Award, as platinum
as all the records rumored
to be framed and hung
in Quincy's L.A. mansion.
By opening non-apologizing stare,
she surveyed all of him at once,
because the rodman holding pole,
awaiting signals.
Eye through telescope.
The telescope itself.
Soft as grassblade underfoot,
strong as stars at nightwork overhead,
gentle as the one thing missing
that plagues our eyes
and haunts our ears.
Jessye Norman
was now wandering through
The Four Last Songs of Strauss.
Yes, I am ready for the nighttime
anxious for the day ahead.
Come and meet me
in the sky's round ribcage.
Come and melt with me
through eyelids closing
on the red clay dust of life.
The hair that curled up
from V-line of his open shirt
matched the color of his bushy head.
Both hands cradled
the album notes he read
the way a father holds
his firstborn.
He brought out glasses
and saw his hands, big,
a half-caste brown.
Because his head stayed down,
bent over,
his eyes, whatever color,
continued as a mystery.
Jessye Norman purred
Beim Schlafengehen.
Yes, I am ready to receive
the starry night
I will give my sensibilities
to sleep.
Um im Zauberkreis
der Nacht... Tief und
fausendfach zu leben.
There you are.
Getting near the Telarcs
was hopeless,
but Stereo Review, D.A.,
Even Ovation and Fanfare
loved Muti and the Phillies.
Auger sings on that one too.
Is she becoming a Carminalite
or what ?
Anyway, I got it.
The man of no certain age
and the woman
turned
went through the turnstiles
into die gestirnte Nacht.
How weary we are of wandering -
Is das etwa der Tod ?
Intermission
- ON BEHALF OF THE MANAGEMENT -
Tower wants your business
and wants to be your friend.
Come here where the Angels practice,
away from budget-minded Seraphim.
Where the Denons speak in tongues
the Orfeos descend
and many RCAs are sixty minutes-plus.
Here is where the stopped heart
is revived,
the heart that races, slows.
Where more than records spin
and at many speeds.
We exist to fill your needs.
No exchanges without receipts.
Four
Because need is stronger
than the pop star's fans
the diva's claque,
those who come before the spires
to spread and spend their need
will keep returning, coming back.
Plastic is not transitory
it does not decompose.
So all those red and yellow bags
crying out from subways, sidewalks -
I have been there, I am going back -
will go on rallying the flock
long after St. Martin's
is no longer in the fields.
Some may worship
at a brand new Wherehouse,
a few espousing licorice
over aromatic tea
will go where seekers of
the Licorice Pizza go
as they went off
in search of Peaches
and the Record Bar.
As always, out in California
new prophets will appear,
some will follow Aron,
others stay with Solomon.
A few will send long lists,
love letters
to that Casanova of the disc,
Andre Perrault,
quels sont les nouveaux discs ?
Nipper and the Brothers Warner
may sleep uninterrupted
through Carlo Tessarini's upcoming tri,
this year's Webern triple-header,
but Chandos will stay wide awake.
Phonogram has started making boxes
for unlimited boxed sets.
From Hilversum to Hollywood,
the rally cry goes up...
A box in every house.
A house without a box is not a home.
See how the Francophallic Angels
are tugging at Maurice,
come put the toot suite Andre touch
on Carlo's solo trumpet piece -
wise Andre's holding out
for the comfort of Continuo.
A harpsichord, cellos maybe,
a violin or two
( makes counting easier,
covers up the wobbles ).
It's that or else
a host of Angel Voices
and Nancy Allen's harp
through oval walls.
Gottfried Henrich Stolzel
will find his share of trumpeters.
Marsalis will collect
his yearly Grammy ( yawn )
to the cheers of millions
who love their jazz classique.
Each disc in its own jewel box.
Tamper-proof.
Supply must ever march
ahead of mere demand.
New releases will be pressed
as cut-outs.
Hurry. Get your copy of the Double Concerto,
Lenny and Herbie the dueling maestros
have put Deutsche back into
Grammophon.
Alas, the last black vinyl Schwann
sailed off
before the cover shot was ready -
no down or under feathers rest
beside decaying analog.
The digital distance deepens.
Who built the Tower ? We did.
And who is that new release
behind the small mustache ?
- from "Intervals", 1986 |
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Oksana Baiul o Lisa Bonet o Daws Butler o Gene Clark o Eddie Condon o Dwight Gooden o Clu Gulager o William Christopher Handy o Paul Hindemith o George S. Kaufman o David Leisure o Mary Margaret McBride o Fibber McGee (James Jordon) o Donna McKechnie o Burgess Meredith o Joanna Pettet o Martha Plimpton o Guy Stockwell |
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Time is a runner, and not with good intentions.
Time is an enemy only to those who waste it.
The guarantee for finding sanity again is finding love again and giving over to the new beloved that one facet of yourself that you held back the last time. |
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TOWER RECORDS
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Five
At intermission time
on the Opera Quiz last Sunday
William Livingstone was asked
what role, if any,
he would like to play
and in which opera.
He mentioned a small
but significant part
where the hero gets killed early,
dies gloriously,
and is talked about incessantly
all through the next two acts.
The hero always dies
or never is, she thought.
She looked around the room
for heroes. There were none.
Maybe she had picked
the wrong time to arrive.
Late night was only good on weekends,
and only for looking and appreciating.
Of course, appreciation was a part
of "the experience" -
but afternoons or early mornings
were friendlier. More easy.
Never any sense of competition
in the mornings.
The music too was better.
Beethoven in the background,
Vaughan Williams.
( The lark always ascending. )
Bach partitas, two-part interventions,
Papa Haydn at just-right volume.
Scriabin sometimes. Sibelius.
Nothing too experimental.
It had taken months to learn
certain rules about the game.
The close-out section
was reserved for students,
those on budgets
who confined themselves to budget lines.
Greensleeves. Eminence.
Privilege. Odyssey.
Greensleeves fit them.
Odyssey did not.
Eminence and Privilege
described their lack of either.
The older, mind-set crowd
browsed opera bins.
But opera buffs were square
or over the top.
There was no in-between.
Some of the most interesting, alas
liked only Callas, Berganza.
Sutherland, Schwarzkopf.
Horne. Sills. Dame Kiri.
No room for mortal women
in their lives.
The well-dressed ones,
approaching thirty,
only cared about
the basic repertoire,
crash programs in the classics.
Go home with one and be prepared
for competition with Vivaldi.
Fantastique translates to
the Gallows March,
playing it the only element
of danger.
Musicians and the money group
gather twice a week
to check each other's bins and buns.
They carry Mahler scores
in leather cases,
whistle Bartok, hum the counterpoint
to each Slavonic Dance,
own every version of Brahms 1st
assigned to record since fifty-five,
can prove to you Ravel fucked up
Mussorgsky's Pictures
by adding all those band parts.
They have never heard
of Smokey Robinson,
the Maddox Brothers and Rose,
and never will.
Roy Acuff will remain a mystery
long past Times obituary.
Some ignore, dismiss Rachmaninoff,
with whom she had a secret kinship -
strengthened by a Tarot reader
who, looking at her cards
and fingers,
informed her she was the Russian
incarnate.
AND, he died in forty-three
the same day she was born.
Some things are only buttressed
by coincidence.
In the Tower
it was best to move around.
Invent the storyline yourself
for the burly one in alligator boots
who carried off an armload of CDs
devoted only to castrati arias
transcribed down for trombone solo.
Imagine why the little man
whose hand shook
bought four separate versions
of Bach's Cello Suites,
two Brandenburgs, and seven
( count them, seven )
picture postcards of a young Ned Rorem.
And who is the lady on roller skates
and why is she looking at me?
She looked up from a reverie
induced by Goran Sollscher
playing Cavatina
the door was opening.
Always something different's
noticed first.
One time it's eyes, hands, or thumbs,
then speculation as to size
and what size means;
nothing, everything.
Sometimes a bulge around
the middle of a frame.
This one was at the perfect distance
to showcase all of the above.
A minute later, less. He was not alone.
She stayed only a little while more.
Picked out the Parrot
Monteverdi Vespers,
a Gruberova French recital,
paid for them by credit card,
watched as they were
eased into the so-familiar yellow bag,
left without a turning back
and started driving home.
She had both Sills samplers now,
the Callas Norma and the Carmen,
the Chopin set from last week...
Still, there was no such music
at the Tower
new releases all the time.
And as she drove she thought about
tomorrow's Tower hour.
A click. The trapdoor opened.
And then the blazing laser.
- from "Intervals", 1986 |
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