"Going the Distance" Bill Conti-Rocky Soundtrack

I read an interview with Sly where he said he wished he stopped after "Rocky" and then thirty years later made "Rocky Balboa", I don't believe a truer statement has ever been made. While that might seem like an over exaggeration, if you knew me you would know just how strongly I feel about the Italian Stallion's first installment, and how strongly I think the second through fifth are a total waste of time. Few movies have capture the essence of "Heart" as perfectly, few movies bring me to tears without fault on every viewing. It has everything, it is life itself encapsulated. There's the love story of two social rejects, there's the redemption of an old man trying to grasp some portion of his dream before dying, the illustration of just how important luck can be in a man's life...and how to be ready to capitalize on it when it calls.

The movie itself was an underdog, no one wanted to produce it, the financing was minimal, most of the extras were friends and family of Stallone. Sly gets a bum rap but it amazes me that the person we think of him as wrote such a marvelous screenplay. If this movie was a novel it would be up there as a work of American art, the dialogue is precise, the subplots succinct. It is my personal belief that Rocky (the character) himself is a modern philosopher. Every line that comes out of his mouth is pure and true, it resonates without malice and is flooded with goodwill.
To model oneself after Rocky's life in the film would lead to a life of virtue and personal contentment, trust me and watch the film closely the next time it is on.

But this blog is about music and I'll try not to digress. Bill Conti's score is a masterpiece, it translates the writer's intent with surgical precision and gave birth to one of the most recognized songs in history in "Gonna Fly Now". The training montage, often so copied, was introduced here with full intensity, the slow walks through the dark Philadelphia night, the night before the fight with Rocky in the ring alone; all these scenes would be worthless sans Conti's scene stealing score.

In the film the song begins a montage displaying the war that professional boxing used to be before it was corrupted. It starts at the end of the second round when the viewer and Creed realize that Rock is not going down easy. Scenes of various rounds progress with trumpets and subtle guitar riffs interjecting the sounds of grunts and blows, the trumpets escalate and violins come in strong until Rocky, badly beaten in the next to last round gets knocked to the mat with a huge right hook. Rock is down, Micky is yelling to stay down, the music rises rises again, Adrian walks into the area for the first time and turns away while Rocky is crawling around on the canvas, the camera flashes back to a close up of her concerned face while a slick bass run comes in on the track. Rocky arises, Creed turns around after jumping up and down with raised arms and has a look of disbelief on his battered face. The music slows, the violins and horns come back in full volume and Rock delivers a multitude of body blows to end the round.

A long time ago in my garage I used to hit the bag with this tune in my head, years later I would run on the beach with it as a training partner. Every time there was nothing left inside there was always some place I could dig down and find some more juice, it was this song. This 106 Octane-Amino Acid-Protein infused-Steroid always helped me work through the stitches and the lactic acid when my VO2 Max was sky high and the knees where giving way. Take heed what I wrote here and then throw it on next time you are at the gym and be fully confident you can go the distance.

Some SAMOS stuff by US

http://fairtilizer.com/users/mondrianbside

"Meanest Woman" Pinetop Perkins-Ladies Woman

Goddamn I love the blues, and when it is the right fast tempo, boogie blues of which this song falls under. I bought this album on Beale Street down in Memphis, home of The King, B.B. King and a whole other host of kings of music. I walked into the store and this song was playing, there was a huge black woman behind the counter getting down and her and I shagged right there in the middle of the floor with everyone watching. Before you repel in disgust know that someone of that size is not really my type and that Carolina Shag is not a movie you borrowed from a buddy in college, it is a dance.

However it is the beauty of this type of music in which a white dude from the Northeast can get down with a greasy ole southern woman spontaneously in some random music store. There aren't too many things I dig about the south but music like this and their good old time let's cut a rug in the middle of the street attitude is definitely one of those things. For those who are uninitiated when one heads south of the Mason Dixon line things get a little stuffier in some aspects while at the same time loosen up in others, one of them being dancing. Not the type of dancing where a Middle Eastern dude with a Louis Vuitton print shirt, tons of gold and Versace sunglasses on at four in the morning, hopped up on blow is grinding his hard on into your ass (or so I've heard from female customers of various clubs here in Manhattan) for hours upon end without invitation. I'm a talking 'bout hey sugar you are looking sweet tonight, as I offer her a hand and we get down in an innocent manner with a whole ton of sexual tension shoved deep down inside in the proper southern way.

Down there I remember dancing for hours with friend's girls to Sam Cooke, Otis Redding and songs just like this, other times they were my own. It was an awakening to me because everywhere I have ever lived up until that point dancing was pretty much overtly sexual grinding. My vote is save the grinding for when the clothes are off when one can really get down to business, leave the real dancing to the liquid, fluttering sound of the piano on this song, the catchy guitar riffs and the three hundred pound sweaty woman singing along side for the dance and then go home to some Barry White or Curtis Mayfield...maybe even some slow John Lee Hooker.

We always have an prevalence to categorize songs and dancing like this as innocent acts from a bygone ear. As for myself I half heartily agree, what I'm talking about here is the foreplay for a very interesting night. There would be no excitement for Christmas if you didn't stay up all night the evening prior, no humorous punchline if the straight lines weren't set up, and no four in the morning-hot sweaty southern nights that take your breath away and add years to your life if there weren't songs and dancing like this. Let's try to leave dancing to dancing, kick out that Middle Eastern douche bag and just have fun, the remainder of the night will eventually fall into place.

Next time, if ever, you are down in Memphis take a meander down to Beale Street, yea it is a little cheesy and a little whored out, but skip the clubs and hit up the little music store where I purchased this CD, you'll find it, and while you are at it head down to Savannah, Tuscaloosa and yes even La Grange...there's some good ole, fine timing music down there with some loose women when you get them in the right frame of mind, I am confident you'll find yourself satisfied even if you wake up the next day in your hotel room alone after dancing the night away with someone who can play linebacker for the Vols.

"The bride in the embrasure" by MONDRIAN

Are you a mod?/Are you a fag?/Are you the god behind grind & hardcore fusion?/Are you a dream?/Are you a drag?/Cos’ drags take drags who ever you are/The one at the end of it/The one tell me about it/The one at the end of it/The one tell me about it/And end like David Carradine/Are you a wind?/Are you a gas?Asking for this or that/Your own smell diffusion/Are you a spook?/Are you a spark?/Or just a speck of dust inside a giant’s eye/The one in the midst of it/The bride wham bam thank ya ma'am/The one in the embrasure/The bride tell me about her/And end like David Carradine.

http://www.reverbnation.com/play_now/song_3202301

Subtitles:

"The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even" by Marcel Duchamp. (photo of Marcel Duchamp standing in front of the "Bride" large glass, 1936). + “Wham bam thank you ma’am!” = slang for a quickie or a really fast-paced sex with someone you barely know or do know but don't care about.

In memory of David Carradine (1936-2009)

"Control freak" by MONDRIAN

J’ai toujours dit, Marc aussi l’a toujours dit : ce qui compte, c’est la mélancolie. Aristote aussi, j’oubliais !, l’a toujours dit : « Pourquoi tous les hommes qui furent exceptionnels en philosophie, en politique, en poésie ou dans les arts étaient-ils manifestement mélancoliques ? » (Problèmes). Avec Control freak, on touche le fond. Et chez MONDRIAN, on en est fort aise. Dans la vie, y’a en un la mélancolie, en deux la mélancolie, et enfin en trois – ah oui d’une capitale importance capitale – les mailles de pull à repiquer. Voilà, c’es tout ce que j’avais à dire ; je vous laisse seul avec le lien de la chanson : http://www.myspace.com/popmondrian. "Going once, going twice, sold!" Bonne journée à tous.

"...nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands."
E. E. Cummings

LYRICS : She bath in light and shine/All around/She turn and let come into sight/Perfect lines/Oh, she’s what makes images work/Cos’ nobody, not even the rain, has such fast legs/Yeah, nobody, not even the rain, has such fast legs/Keep dancing to never grow old/Keep dancing, you will never grow old/If you lose yourself, lose total control/Keep moving, keep on and on/And on and on to be/Bold enough/To reach her there/There on the dancefloor/Here rapture, and there it’s obviously her breath into thin air/Here rapture.

"The Line" Bruce Springsteen-The Ghost of Tom Joad

I find it amazing that they actually have this sign on the five in San Diego County. In today's overtly sensitive world, a world in which we give illegal aliens every benefit that Americans receive, I truly can't believe it, the first time I saw it I thought it was a joke.

But it is not.

I had an old buddy who used to fly helicopters out of North Island and when they had nothing else to do they would fly along the border and point drop cherry bombs down into the river and watch as the Mexicans freaked out thinking that they were being attacked by the Border Patrol. I guess karma is a bitch because that good friend is now at the bottom of the cold Pacific still trapped in his harness in water too deep to be reached by any Naval rescue submarine.

As for myself I am not for ridiculing a group of people who want nothing more than to live and work in freedom, to make a better life for themselves and their families. However like the millions who came before them there are appropriate ways to go about becoming an American citizen. Their efforts are noble but the ends do not justify the means. I am sure there are plenty who totally disagree with my logic, there are those like my lost friend who couldn't give a rat's ass and there are those somewhere in the middle of the debate. In debating it in my own consciousness I still haven't come to an answer that suits the humanitarian in me while placating the self preservationist.

Every song on the album "The Ghost of Tom Joad" brings up such questions, ones that probably will never be answered. The album illustrates some of the horrors of the migrant working class in America, from young boys smuggling heroin and prostituting themselves ("Balboa Park") to Tom Joad's famous speech to his mother ("The Ghost of Tom Joad") this album is not the fist pumping visceral Boss celebrating freedom and the lives of the wild and innocent. "The Line" is one of the most chilling songs I have had the pleasure of being miserable listening to, the Boss weaves together some of the most heartfelt human emotions in existence and plots them against each other to craft a story worth of Steinbeck in his purest traditions. In it the narrator:

Retires from the military.
Buries his wife.
Starts over again with a new career he is proud of.
Befriends his partner who by the way is Mexican.
Falls in love with a Mexican woman.
Attempts to smuggle her into the country.
Finds the object of his affection's brother is smuggling drugs.
Confronted by his partner he thinks of killing him.
Loses his love.
Leaves his new job and is a drifter.
Spends his nights searching for his love.

All that in a song that is around five minutes long, God I wish I had the balls to steal his idea and write a true novel about the subject in the depth that it deserves. Time and time again Springsteen shows just why he is the greatest artist of the second half of the 20th century. His ability to condense vast subjects and tell their tales through the lives of average Americans knows no limits. Constantly he amazes us with his narrative skills, his perfect timing and beautiful musicianship. "The Line" never fails to choke me up and I can't count the times I have listened to this American version of a Greek Tragedy in a dark room over and over with a guitar on my lap singing alone in a voice on the verge of falling apart.

I'd like to think that if my friend knew of this song he would have hesitated and thought about the people he was throwing those cherry bombs at, I'd like to think that after listening to this we'd take that awful sign down from the side of the highway. I'd like to think that after this song we could all take time to understand how fortunate we have been in the crap shoot of life to be born in this country, a county that people risk their lives to get into if only to work as a landscaper for pennies a day. I know that Springsteen didn't know my friend but it is for him that he penned this song. He wrote it for those wading through rivers of pollution at this very moment, for the men working the line and have to live with the philosophical battle constantly waging war in their minds. Yea, he wrote it from a desk in a mansion in Rumson with millions in the bank; but he himself represents everything those people are risking their lives over. The opportunity to make something of one's self is more addictive and motivating than any drug in existence. The only other ideal people will risk everything for in this world is to love, to be loved and know it truly.

The fact that in this song both ideals are so expertly interwoven will never stop boggling my mind, outside of the craft the issues themselves will never let me cease listening to this tune in my dark room over and over on the verge of tears. In it he satisfies Joad's ghost and the voice of Steinbeck; he illustrates the ongoing struggle for a better life and he breaks your heart when the hopes and dreams of love and happiness are dashed in an instant on a made up line in one of the most desolate places in the land of bounty and plenty.

I got my discharge from Fort Irwin
took a place on the San Diego county line
felt funny bein' a civilian again
it'd been some time
my wife had died a year ago
I was still tryin' to find my way back whole
went to work for the INS on the line
With the California Border Patrol

Bobby Ramirez was a ten-year veteran
We became friends
his family was from Guanajuato
so the job it was different for him
He said' "They risk death in the deserts and mountains"
pay all they got to the smugglers rings,
we send 'em home and they come right back again
Carl, hunger is a powerful thing."

Well I was good at doin' what I was told
kept my uniform pressed and clean
at night I chased their shadows
through the arroyos and ravines
drug runners, farmers with their families,
young women with little children by their sides
come night we'd wait out in the canyons
and try to keep 'em from crossin' the line

Well the first time that I saw her
she was in the holdin' pen
Our eyes met and she looked away
then she looked back again
her hair was black as coal
her eyes reminded me of what I'd lost
she had a young child cryin' in her arms
and I asked, "Senora, is there anything I can do"

There's a bar in Tijuana
where me and Bobby drink alongside
the same people we'd sent back the day before
we met there she said her name was Louisa
she was from sonora and had just come north
we danced and I held her in my arms
and I knew what I would do
she said she had some family in Madera county
if she, her child and her younger brother could just get through

At night they come across the levy
in the searchlights dusty glow
we'd rush 'em in our Broncos
and force 'em back down into the river below
she climbed into my truck
she leaned towards me and we kissed
as we drove her brothers shirt slipped open
and I saw the tape across his chest

We were just about on the highway
when Bobby's jeep come up in the dust on my right
I pulled over and let my engine run
and stepped out into his lights
I felt myself movin'
felt my gun restin' 'neath my hand
we stood there starin' at each other
as off through the arroyo she ran

Bobby Ramirez he never said nothin'
6 months later I left the line
I drifted to the central valley
and took what work I could find
at night I searched the local bars
and the migrant towns
Lookin' for my Louisa
with the black hair fallin' down

"Livingston's Gone to Texas" Jimmy Buffett-Living and Dying in 3/4 Time

One of the biggest problems I've had in my life and I assume it has been a big problem for a great deal of people, is not that I can't find something to do with my life but rather I have far too many occupations and pastimes I want to pursue. So far I've had two careers in my thirty years and am constantly wondering just how to squeeze the other ten into the next fifty. Besides for working the Oil Rigs in the North Sea, CIA case officer, Presidente of a small South American country and writing the great American novel I have always wanted to be a cowboy.

I assume we all wanted to be one at some time in our lives however I actually had the opportunity and didn't seize it, probably one of the biggest regrets in my life to date. A friend whom I played hockey with in college, a friend who owned a horse ranch in the western plains of Saskatchewan asked me one summer to head our with him and work the range. He'd teach me how to rope, ride; I'd have my own set of spurs, white Stetson, Charlie Dunn boots and a constant lip of Copenhagen. I probably would have developed that Duke Wayne swagger and a constant pensive look on my face as tan and tough as saddle leather. At the time I just couldn't picture spending more than a few months away from the ocean which was always my first love and I turned the offer down.

Who knows if I ever would have come back, and maybe right now I'd be walking back to my home in the snow where a pretty little petite Canadian woman was keeping the fire warm and my boys were skating on the pond waiting for their old man to return to show them the ropes with a little two on one action in my old Bauers before they hit the rack while Bernadette and I laid under bear skin pelts making more Gordie Howes.

Instead I am laying in my bed with Mondrain and Lichtenstein paintings on the walls, Tom Ford's best in the closet and Le Courbusier chairs in the living room a block off of Central Park after two hours of Vinyasa Yoga. Bernadette's pale skin and makeup-less homemaker face is supplanted by an intense professional woman's scent lingering on my sheets next to a nightstand with a cell phone and two Blackberrys. In no way am I complaining but there is and will always be a part of me that knows I would be much happier out there in the elements, instead my Porsche there'd be real horsepower under my legs and my white Stetson wouldn't just be collecting dust in a cramped NY closet.

Whenever that part of me arises I throw this old favorite tune on and think about what could have been. Jimmy Bufffett is a punchline anymore. A man who at one time chased a single woman around for over a decade and dedicated every album to her (he would eventually land her), a man who lived a life of real pirates, drinkers, writers and cowboys has now been changed into a brand name; a fantasy for a bunch of beyond middle aged stiffs he would have never looked at twice thirty years ago. However, the sad whore-like person he has become should not belittle his first few albums, the only true music that the man has ever made. The albums: A White Sport Coat and Pink Crustacean, Living and Dying in 3/4 Time, and A1A represent the foundation for county/folk/beach escapism music that would eventually get bastardized into the junk Kenny Chesney floods the market with. I return to those three albums every once in a while and remind myself of the beauty old Jimbo used to put out before he sold his soul for another billion dollars.

Combine both my longing to be a cowboy and his early uncanny sound and you can see why "Livingston's Gone to Texas" is one of my favorite Buffett songs. The lyrics are heartfelt and supposedly about a friend who ran off to do just what I am always thinking about. The strings mush up the arrangement a little but the slippery pedal and simple acoustic guitar and piano bring it all back in. When the percussion changes at the line They said he learned to be a cowboy, they said he learned to rope and ride... it hits me straight and right there I always resign to stop whatever I am doing and hop on a Greyhound straight for Van Horn.

And if you have no desire to buy that ticket and head out west with me in the near future check out the three albums mentioned, they are what made the brand what it is well before sold out shows at Fenway Park and chain restaurants at Disney World. These albums (just like the cover of one) are a man in cut off jeans sitting under a palm tree drinking a Michelob in his own little paradise fantasy world and throwing them on is your own vacation to the Old Anchor Inn at 208 Duval, sadly it is long gone.

MONDRIAN/OUR BEST ALBUMS OF 2010 FOR ROLLO&GRADY

"Who Are You" Tom Waits-Bone Machine

One night I was sitting at a bar alone in San Diego, the bartender there was a ravenous brunette with f-holes tattooed on her back which she always showed off with a sheen backless sun dress that magically complemented her gorgeous tan. Our playful flirtations contributed to my nightly returns, seconded only to the eccentric selections that were available on the juke box. That particular night I put a twenty in and settled in for the long haul of solitude, the majority of the songs being sung by San Diego's own native son. Another man at the short end of the bar eventually grew tired of my selection and made it known to the bartender (who blew him off, turned and raised an eyebrow to me) and to the walls who were the only other occupants of the establishment. As I walked over to the man sitting there drinking sea breezes no less with his hat on the bar (strike three) I made it known to him that if he had something to say about my music he should take it up with the man who put it on. As usual it didn't come to blows and the man left seconds later, leaving me to revel in Tom and dreams of my lips tracing those f-holes.

I guess that man didn't know Tom Waits spent his early years in Chula Vista and worked the door at The Heritage nightclub in San Diego. He probably didn't know about how after the Coast Guard he migrated up to LA and got his start at the famous Troubadour where Damien Rice, Lenny Bruce, Bette Midler, Leo Kottke, James Taylor, Bruce Springsteen, The Pointer Sisters, Liza Minnelli, Sheryl Crow, Karla Bonoff, Al Stewart, George Carlin, Tom Waits, Pavement, Rickie Lee Jones, Ramblin' Jack Elliot and Arlo Guthrie, Elton John, Linda Ronstadt, Hoyt Axton, The Eagles, Bob Dylan, The Byrds, Joni Mitchell and Neil Diamond all got their early starts. He probably didn't know either about this ballad which was playing in the background when I walked over in confrontation, a ballad of an album which would win him a Grammy, an album also featuring the great Keith Richards.

And it is his loss. Life is never a black and white set of rules and responses but I hold some make or break commandments one of which being I'll never respect a man who doesn't like Tom Waits. In scope and depth very few compare, in daring and originality he has no peer and in dedication to the craft of music and the encapsulation of emotions others struggle to escape his shadow.

Like Dylan I can't decipher the lyrics and I don't try. I view each verse as its own volume of a great masterpiece. One cannot analyze each line of a Jackson Pollock (in case you were curious the main art behind the title of this blog is my favorite Pollock) and shouldn't; one would never as Miles Davis why he hits each note. Rather music of such craftsmanship can only be analyzed in the soul, initial reactions that trigger the synapses and construct those old scenes from the past on the screen of your mind. From the opening note on your first virginal hearing of this song it is as familiar as an old t shirt, you know the song before you have ever heard it and continue on in a deja vu dream of raspyness.

For me this song plunges out of an old record player with cigarette smoke wafting from the revolutions, a lamentation of youthful love conjured up by visions of carnivals and boardwalk games made by a man on the end of his rope. There is a .45 waiting with a chambered round, other times a slow death from sclerosis after days of shakes and walking from cold showers over butts and glass on a filthy tiled floor. Then there are times when the sun is shinning, my malaise is in regression and I'm back on the beach in Coronado and the narrator is in the dunes off Ocean Ave making love to his muse as the sun sets across the Pacific below Point Loma.

If only that man stayed that night and let his mind ramble, if only my f-hole darling came across the bar one time and we set out for Mexico on my Bonneville. If only we took the risk we'd have a more convincing answer when questioned Who Are You?

"Gomorrah" Jerry Garcia Band-How Sweet It Is

I was always the type that never fit in with the Dead's whole scene, at least on the surface. I scoffed at the Deadheads and their culture and never took it seriously, always thought it was a carnival for druggies and losers. I thought that until one day in high school my best friend's brother and I did some landscaping in north Jersey and we started talking about music. He was a typical Head in appearance, beard and hemp...typical.

In our conversation on the drive up to the site he told me something that really blew my mind "John I've been to a bunch of shows and I have never been fucked up for any of them, why would I want to be numb to the music, the music is my high." He then played a few Dead covers of my favorite songs (El Paso, Big River, etc) and opened my life up to a world I never knew.

In the list of many people who have formed who I am today and made me the person I am John and Bobby are on the top of my list. There are my parents, teachers and coaches, lovers and teammates but these two guys opened my mind to the Grateful Dead, Jerry Garcia and everything their beautiful music encompasses.

What I learned is that Jerry wasn't about drugs, it wasn't about counter culture or any of that bullshit people believe it to be; it was always about making heartfelt American music. Music that will stand the test of time and will never be surpassed. It is Jerry jamming on the chromatic scale, his fragile voice stumbling through the lyrics; about a man who took the stage almost every night of the year for over thirty years in a black pair of sweats and a t-shit. A man who never made wincing faces with his bends or flashed his hand movements, a man who let his music do the talking.

While the Dead is truly an experience the Jerry Garcia Band was Jerry's music, he played what he wanted, the songs that inspired him in the way he thought it was meant to be played. Because of that you can witness and hear someone on the level of Bach, Gershwin and Miles in his purest form. To me there is nothing really better than listening...better yet experiencing a JGB bootleg.

Lucky for us we don't have to listen to the audio plugged into the soundboard on this song or album. "How Sweet It Is" was an album recorded live at The Warfield Theatre (Jerry's home base) in San Francisco in the height of Jerry's playing ability. "Gomorrah" is the pinnacle of this album. Of course I can tell you the story of how when Jerry died Bobby put on "Like A Road" (the last song on the album) for a day straight and holed himself up in his room or maybe about the sick solos in "That's What Love Will Make You Do" but for my money "Gomorrah" always takes the cake.

It tells the biblical story that we are all familiar with and rather than a Priest, Rabbi or Preacher laying it down we have Jerry and his sublime background singers lettin' us all know how it occurred. This song is the musical opera every jerk off seventies rocker dreamed of, it is epic in scope and chilling busting out through the speakers. There has never been a time when Jerry hits his solo that I have not dropped down and begged for more, if there is a God he was certainly giving Jerry cues and is probably copping licks up there in the sky off of the bearded man on the stage.

In its lyricism and melody "Gomorrah" is without equal. To take the place of John I will tell you that whatever preconceived notions of Jerry you have, the negative ones at least, buy this album and let it course through you veins. There is no way one will ever regret it, there is no way it could ever be equaled, and never any hope of it ever being surpassed. Jerry is just that good.

That's why whenever I need my religion I don't return to St. Pat's a few blocks away, rather I crank up the Bang and Olufsens and take a few shots from my own chalice, put my axe on my lap and pretend to lay down the fluttering, whimsical lines Jerry drops in this song and let my soul fly. I have never felt so pious and dedicated to such an ideal.

Love, a collision (Morning Crash's solo webcam version from Fougères with L.U.V.)

Des nouvelles webcamesques de Morning Crash, de son antre bretonnisante ! Mode automne-hiver pour Morning Crash et son écharpe légère. De même, Morning Crash avec sa toute nouvelle guitare électro-acoustique sur son doux lit de sampling, Morning Crash et Passage du Havre de Jean Guéhenno en édition Folio que vous pouvez apercevoir derrière si vous avez de bons yeux, mais surtout Morning Crash et la version instrumentale-live de Love, a collision. Appréciez le négligé du jeu, le nubile du poignet glabre contre le bois laqué du coffre de guitare, l’interstitiel du regard vers la machine à loops et encore et toujours l’écharpe, jouet du vent, objet de convoitise chez beaucoup de ses camarades de la pop muzik et marque de fabrique du chef d’orchestre de MONDRIAN.

"A Whiter Shade of Pale" King Curtis-Live at Fillmore West

Sitting on the deck under the Southern Cross right now and not going to make an entry about that great, though overplayed song. King Curtis came up on random (probably because I played this tune entirely too much over the past week) and I felt the need to head back to reality and from my humble Costa Rican cabaña. "A Whiter Shade of Pale" might be one of the most famous songs ever, especially in the UK and Europe. I have loved it ever since I first heard that Bach inspired Hammond organ intro after Nick Nolte hits the play button in Life Lessons. Like Costello's "Allison" the paradox of the song is that it is so short you want more and more however it is that briefness that contributes to its attraction. This King Curtis version sans lyrics could go on for hours and hours, actually it has because I kept it on repeat for an entire day yesterday. I wish I didn't have to, I wish it was a solid forty-five minute opus, a battle between organ and sax.

Regardless of its elapsed time King Curtis lets you know (since most people don't know his name, the fact that he played for Buddy Holly as well as The Coasters and Aretha Franklin) why you should now remember his motherfuckingname. There's a ton of soul buried down in that frame and permating out of his skin and mouth in the form of sweat and notes.

The meaning of the lyrics of this song have been heavily debated for some time, I guess that is what happens when over 900 artist have covered it throughout the years. The standard is always mentioned: Drugs. However Keith Reid viehemtally denies any type of substance being the topic of the song, saying that it is simply a boy leaves girl story (...and maybe the reason why Scorsese used it in Life Lessons; watch it). Up until I read Keith's interview years ago I would have never thought this work could be about such a sober (literally) experience. It makes sense:

We skipped a light fandango,
Turned cartwheels 'cross the floor.
I was feeling kind of seasick,
But the crowd called out for more.
The room was humming harder,
As the ceiling flew away.
When we called out for another drink,
The waiter brought a tray.

And so it was that later,
As the miller told his tale,
That her face at first just ghostly,
Turned a whiter shade of pale.

She said there is no reason,
And the truth is plain to see
That I wandered through my playing cards,
And would not let her be
One of sixteen vestal virgins
Who were leaving for the coast.
And although my eyes were open,
They might just as well have been closed.

And so it was later,
As the miller told his tale,
That her face at first just ghostly,
Turned a whiter shade of pale.

The reason why I go into the lyrical side of this song when the version of topic has none is because if one heard King Curtis's first there would never be a doubt of what the topic was. The Sax brings to life a side not seen on Procol Harum's somewhat disconnected ditty, it brings in a gentleness rarely displayed in songs written about addiction or even drugs without the dragon.

"Sister Morphine", "Purple Haze", "White Rabbits", "China Cat Sunflower" "Fire and Rain", Sunday Morning Coming Down", "Ashes to Ashes", "Heroin", "The Needle and the Damage Done", "Dumb", "Life in the Fast Lane"....the list is endless, some might be fast and some depressingly slow; they all are legends of Rock but compare any of these to a song about a lost love and anyone could see there is no comparison between the two.

Usually music follows life, not just lyrically but in the harmony and tonality, more so in the latter. Just as love in life can never be truly captured with words this piece is a perfect example of how music can clear up any confusion about meanings and translations. The invention of music by our ancestors, whether they were whales mating or prehistoric man beating bones on rocks preceded our vocabulary for in-depth conversation. It should be no surprise that those emotions felt by our ancestors and still felt by us cannot be defined by strict rules and gramattical constraints.