LEFTOVERS: MAR* SONGS: MARCH RAIN

Curiously, this has almost the same title as the last song I wrote about in this theme, albeit in translation, confirming, if ever needed, that March is one wet mother. It is also my birthday month and my unreliable and unravelling neurones told me I had celebrated last year by attending one Michael Chapman in concert. O, so wrong, it was 5 months later, but it is raining today so that's as much link as I need.

Michael Chapman is a remarkable fella, and one who is experiencing a bit of a late bloom, courtesy some heavy duty patronage from americans half and less his age. The fact that his style of guitar play is back in vogue hinders no little, the likes of (the late) Jack Rose and William Tyler taking the template and twisting it both back and forward. OK, it was earlier visionaries like John Fahey who first feted this structure, the confusingly to me entitled American Primitive, but it took, IMHO, bluff yorkshireman Chapman to give it song. Literally.

He has been around and on the road forever. Like so many musicians from the 60s UK, he was a product of Art School, actually teaching for a while before the lure of a penurious existence on the fringes of popular culture became too strong. The story goes that he was too broke to pay the entrance fee into a Cornwall Folk Club, offering instead to play, staying then for the entire season. A record contract materialised and he came to the ear of the iconic John Peel, tastemaker DJ to decades of pale young men. His first records were produced by Elton John producer, Gus Dudgeon, with the exquisite  orchestral arrangements, as here above, of Paul Buckmaster, who perhaps deserves a leftover himself.  
Early records tended toward the pastoral, primarily acoustic guitar to the forefront, with his never more z sibilant style of singing s's, as here on his 'greatest hit', 1970s Postcards of Scarborough.

Like the electric guitar? Sort of familiar? It's Mick Ronson, prior to Bowie, with erstwhile Steeleye Span stalwart Rick Kemp on bass. Following this early taste of success, he later pursued a rockier road, albeit often revisiting his earlier material, like Wrecked Again. Less satisfactory to my ears than the earlier studio version, he was nonetheless popular on the college gig circuit until a massive heart attack in 1990 seemed to beckon the end of his career. Having continued to be a guitar tutor alongside his playing, it was to this he retreated. His catalogue contains a number of discs for the budding virtuoso to brush up their licks, but he was also slowly, very slowly, climbing back onto the performance ladder.

It was probably galling to have Sonic Youth turn up at one such low-key performance, especially as they credited him with having inspired their own ouevre of feedback frenzy. Millstone Grit, from 1971, particularly inspired Thurston Moore, with the middle and last sections of New York Ladies giving the clue, say from about 4.50 onward, and again, more powerfully, at 7.49. Here's an interview between the two of them.

Now, as an elder statesman of guitar music, connecting John Fahey, with whom he has played and Steve Gunn, who has played with him, he has had the accolade of all-star tribute album, featuring both old friends from his past like Kemp and Kemp's ex, Maddy Prior, to Lucinda Williams, by way of the aforementioned Moore and Tyler, and the mercurial talent of Hiss Golden Messenger. I commend it. But even more I commend 50, his last release. A mix of new and of re-interpretations, this is a staggering piece of work. And no, no link, you can find the songs yourself. But I will leave you with an instrumental version of March Rain from 2015's Fish, together with his own version of many of the events skimmed over above.

March Rain 1970 and 2015

Mar* Songs: Mar Jayeen

purchase [Mar Jayeen]

Bollywood is probably not at the top of your list for music files. Then again, with ~ 1 billion listeners, maybe you shouldn't discount the genre. More than once I have pushed music from Turkey  - far from main-stream but perfectly/musically viable - if only we were more in tune or open to alternatives. Bollywood is only a few borders away.

The 3 letters <mar>  may not signify what you think they do. It depends on your language, doesn't it? It's "sea" in Spanish (but you probably know that). My concerted efforts to translate this (what I think is Hindi)  to English produce the result that "mar" resolves to "die", so Latif Aslam singing "Mar Jayeen" - is liberally translated as ?! Die In.

Sting made pretty good use of a similar style with his Morocco explorations/Desert Rose back about the turn of the century, and while there's a lot to be said for expanding your horizons,  you'll likely sense that that expansion is also shrinking as "popular" music becomes more universal. (Star Wars' Cantina Band that sound like Earth music?)

Atif Aslam, Pakistan born, has played all over parts of the world.The Wiki page for him is full of praise - as I think you might be after listening. It appears that he had an international education: Kimberly Hall School & St. Paul's Cambridge School (both in Pakistan - but that's not as unusual as you may imagine, I  know from personal experience). But beyond his upbringing, he's made a name for himself in the music world (Beyond the Western World's limited perspective)

But ... musically, it doesn't so much matter what his Hindi lyrics  translate to - more better that you listen and read the "lyrics" without needing to focus on the meaning;
Har lamha dekhne ko
Tujhe intezaar karna
Tujhe yaad karke aksar
Raaton main roz jagna
Badla hua hai kuch toh
Dil in dino yeh apna
Kaash woh pal paida hi naa ho
Jis pal mein nazar tu naa aaye
Kaash woh pal paida hi naa ho
Jis pal main nazar tu naa aaye
Gar kahin aisa pal ho
Toh iss pal mein mar jaayen
 https://www.musixmatch.com/lyrics/Atif-Aslam/Mar-Jaayen/translation/english

MAR* SONGS: Águas de Março

Or Waters of March, the english translation of what has been called the all-time best Brazilian song, in a 2001 poll. Written by arguably the best and certainly the best-known of Brazilian composers, the king of Bossa Nova, Antonio Carlos ('Tom') Jobim, in 1972, it has sustained myriad versions over the years since. Unusually, both the portuguese  of the original and it's translation were both written by Jobim. Bossa Nova seemed, in my youth, inescapably naff and forever attached to cheesy black and white travelogues. More recently it has seemed to attain a revisioned renaissance and  sits well alongside other latin dance and music forms, thanks in part to the dance music attuned stylings of bands such as Bossacucanova, the translation of which even I can work out.

It was Jobim's stepfather who encouraged his playing, after the he and his mother moved to Ipanema, yes that one, starting his nascent career playing in clubs and bars. Although now deemed to side most closely with jazz, in fact early influences and passions were derived from the classical field. Already big in Brazil, courtesy his writing partnership with Vinicius de Moraes, a celebrated poet, his wider breakthrough came with, in 1963, his collaborations with Stan Getz and the husband and wife team of Joao and Astrid Gilberto, including that song from Ipanema. Writing most of the music over the two volumes of Getz/Gilberto ensured worldwide recognition and many awards. The bossanova craze was in full swaying swing.

Aguas de Marco, as a song, has had a fascinating history, starting life as the 70s brazilian equivalent of a cover disc: a free and probably flimsy vinyl distributed with O Pasquim, a magazine of the day. Thereafter it was picked up by Elis Regina, later to work closely and to collaborate with Jobim, appearing on her 1972 debut. Jobim himself didn't officially release his own version until a year later, with the additional english lyric now attached to the verses in portuguese. This was then reprised, by both of them, another year later, on the seminal 1974 album Elis and Tom. (See top clip above.) Since then there have been a flood of versions from artists as varied as Frank Sinatra, Art Garfunkel and David Byrne. Unarguably now a standard, it was also purloined by advertisers, no doubt for a fat fee, but never, for me, the real thing.

So what are the waters of march? March is the rainiest month in Rio, and the words, more a tone poem of images than any narrative, are said to represent the torrents of water flowing down the steep hillsides of the city, flooding the gutters with all manner of debris. I encourage you to sift through the floodwater of what can so often be so much supper club and hotel lobby flotsam and jetsam, looking for the class of what this much maligned music style has to offer. Tom Jobim will always rise to the top.

                                                  Antonio Carlos Jobim 1927 - 1994

Still thirsty?

Mar* songs: Mary , Mary

purchase [Mary Mary]

Kind of like J David said - from the start I planned to veer off into the Mar* option rather than the full <March>. He's already said that we've been there once before (without a lot of success). I hadn't specifically thought we were flogging a dead horse, but it is starting to appear that way.

This past weekend - once again, I was faculty-on-duty for a "Retro Night" student dance- along with several other faculty members. You probably went through more than one High School dance of this kind at some time in your past, but maybe not as a chaperone. This  Retro Night was ostensibly 80s focused -a  time these kids only know about as <history>. That's the time when I had turned adult (defined by: earn your own living. A concept apparently somewhat strange/difficult to some in the newer generations. Thank or criticize others than me for that.)

So....here we are in Retro Night (80s) and the songs don't include Olivia Newton-John. Nor Blondie. Nor Paul McCartney... and on and on. It's their perspective of what defines Retro, not mine.
That said ... the theme's  <Mar*> so  I offer my perspective of Mar*, which goes to double or triple Retro because retro means going back.


Because I grew up overseas from the US  = overseas from everywhere!, grabbing the sounds (literally had to stand by the radio dial and keep adjusting the short-wave frequency to keep the channel in tune), my perspective is skewed. But ... I didn't miss the Monkeys. Much like my friends in the US, I didn't miss Archie comics (the Archies) or Sad Sack(!!), we[a group of US expat teens] somehow managed to more or less assimilate to our US peers - by catching the crazes on a time -lag loop. And so I bopped to:

Mar* Songs: Forward March

Pat Metheny Group: Forward March
[purchase]

It took me a while to adjust to studying in college, because it was different from what I did in high school. The material was significantly more complex, there was much more of it, and my fellow students were almost uniformly incredibly smart. But one thing that was basically the same was that studying was a solitary act.

Law school, though, was another thing altogether. Heading into it, though, I had no idea that I needed a new approach, and fully expected that I’d continue in my accustomed manner. However, early in my first year, I was approached by a friend, who somehow knew that creating a study group was critical to success. And I’m so glad that I did. In some ways, the first year law experience, at least at Fordham Law School in 1983, was remarkably more like an elementary school or middle school experience than college. We were divided up into sections, alphabetically, and were given a set schedule, with no electives. All of my classes were with some combination of other sections, all of which were filled with classmates whose last name was from the first half of the alphabet, except for one class that was just for my section. Therefore, I didn’t really get to know anyone in the second half of the alphabet until second year, and was closest to the people in my section.

This sort of rigid scheduling was ideal for study groups, because we were all taking the same classes. And I quickly found that studying with Dave, A.J. and Bob was not only helpful in digesting and understanding the enormous mass of material that they throw at you first year, but they became my closest friends. We would meet periodically, order some sort of takeout (because we were in New York, and the choices were myriad), discuss our work, and, of course, other stuff. Sometime during second semester, Bob fell off the radar, distracted by his ultimate lack of interest in becoming a lawyer and the ready availability of college hoops at Madison Square Garden, but the rest of us continued to work together. As we approached our finals, we prepared outlines, quizzed each other, and pushed each other hard, while also becoming life-long friends.

I have a strong memory of showing up at a study group session at Dave’s apartment with a new copy of the Pat Metheny Group’s First Circle album—and by album, I mean a large slab of black vinyl.  I’m pretty sure that I picked it up, discounted, at the Warner Entertainment company store. After graduating from college, I worked at Atlantic Records for the summer of 1982, which granted me access to the discounted records, books and other items that were in the employee-only store in the basement of 75 Rockefeller Plaza. By continuing to visit the store periodically even after my employment ended, I remained a familiar face to the security guards who still let me pass into the inner sanctum for a few years.

Metheny had been a favorite of mine since I was introduced to him at WPRB, and I’ve written about him a few times here. I know that Dave, who played the guitar, was a fan (I don’t remember whether the others were, too). So, it was natural that when I showed up with the new album, in February, 1984, I would put it on Dave’s turntable, and that we were excited to hear it.

And on came “Forward March.” It was, and remains, a bit of a headscratcher. A dissonant, ragged march-like song, which eventually turns somewhat less weird, but never really sounding “perfect.” Sort of like the Portsmouth Sinfonia, or even the first rehearsal of an average high school marching band. Allmusic suggests that it might be a parody “directed at a few silly skirmishes of the day (Grenada? the Falklands?).” Another blogger considered the fact that the band opened concerts on its tour with the oddity as showing that:

While the Pat Metheny Group are all serious musicians, this was no hardcore jazz purists’ band. They want to entertain you. They want you to smile (I’ve never seen a musician look as happy as Metheny does). For all its novelty, “Forward March” made its audience smile right from the word go.

But it seems that may well just be overthinking it. Metheny himself, in response to a fan question about the inspiration for “Forward March,” stated that the song is:

really just sound - there was a thing i was messing with with [sic] a new instrument for me at the time, the synclavier, where it was possible to scale the range of the guitar by large amounts - meaning that what would normally be read as an octave could be read as several octaves and the 12 notes in between that same octave were scaled along with the octaves into 12, but now across several octaves, thereby making an "octave ratio" larger than 1:1. this was fascinating to me at the time, and that piece was one of several that came from it. the only one that was recorded. 

I’m really not sure how that really explains “Forward March,” but hey, Pat has never lied to me.

Anyway, the next song on the album is “Yolanda, You Learn,” a much more typical Metheny song. I’m sure that we listened for a while, then got down to studying whatever subject was on the docket, and maybe more importantly, eating whatever food was on the menu.

After first year, we were allowed to take electives, so the three of us weren’t always in the same classes—but when we were, we reconvened the group, and still remain good friends more than three decades later.

Mar* Songs: Rosie Flores Came to Town (Mar 1914)

The Honeydogs: Rosie Flores Came to Town (Mar 1914)
[purchase]

Sometimes, I like to pull the screen back and let you see what goes on in my mind when I choose what to write about. For me, when a theme is posted (or when I choose the theme), it immediately prompts me to think of a song and a personal story that ties to the song. Those are my favorite types of pieces. On other occasions, the theme leads me to a song, but I have no story, so I end up writing about the song, or the band. Those are fun, too, but less compelling. Then, you have themes, like this one, which prompt neither a song nor a story, and I’m reduced to scrolling through my iTunes library hoping for inspiration to hit. Those can be interesting, because this type of piece often pushes me to learn about a song or a band that I’m not all that familiar with. That’s what you are getting today.

Part of the problem is that in some ways, this is a repeat theme. Back in March, 2013, we did a “March” theme that was not particularly popular with our writers. Only four posts were written, two of which were by me. One was about my love for Monty Python, whose theme song was “The Liberty Bell March,” and the other was about Robert Randolph’s song “The March.” So, those were really the two songs that were foremost in my consciousness for “March,” interestingly neither of which related to the month.

Searching my library for ‘mar” led me ultimately to this song, “Rosie Flores Came to Town (Mar 1914)” from The Honeydogs. I know very little about this band, and the Internet is actually pretty stingy with information. I became aware of them initially because their original drummer, Noah Levy, played on Golden Smog’s Down By The Old Mainstream album (credited as Leonardson Saratoga). They were an alt-country band who arose from the same Twin Cities scene as The Jayhawks, The Replacements, Soul Asylum and others. Led by Noah’s brother Adam, The Honeydogs released albums, often with critical praise, every few years since 1995, but with very little commercial success.

I’m not 100% sure what this song is about, though. It appeared on an album of unreleased tracks called Island of Misfits (released on September 11, 2001, maybe not the best day to have been putting out new music).  To be honest, it sounds enough like “Gentle On My Mind” that the lawyer in me started wondering if there was a plagiarism claim available. In part, it seems to tie a missing child incident to a show by Rosie Flores, the great rockabilly singer and guitarist. But it is hard to say. I can’t find any lyrics online, it is hard to understand all of them from listening to the song, and I can’t find any articles about any such incident tied to an appearance by Flores. Nor can I figure out what the reference to March 1914 is, since Flores was born in 1950. Maybe it isn’t about that Rosie Flores at all. So, you’ll have to just enjoy the song, without much analysis. By the way, Noah Levy played drums on Flores’ 2013 album, Working Girl’s Guitar, more than a decade after he left The Honeydogs. Also, this is the second time I’ve discussed a song about when a musician “came to town.” But a very different musician.

As I said above, sometimes posts like this are interesting because they push me to find out more about a band that I don’t know much about. It turns out, that happened here, and it even ties into something tangentially semi-personal. In trying to find out more about the band, and specifically the featured song, I found out that Adam Levy’s son Daniel committed suicide in 2012. Daniel was essentially the same age as my son, and Daniel’s mother Jennifer Delton is a history professor at Skidmore College (and a Princeton Ph.D.), where my son and future daughter-in-law attended. Daniel, an artist, started college at the Minnesota College of Art and Design, but left after a year and a half, returning to Saratoga Springs, where he took classes at Skidmore. His suicide happened in Saratoga Springs, between semesters, just after my son finished taking Professor Delton’s class. However, neither my son, nor his fiancée, recall anything about this incident.

MAR* SONGS: March 11th 1962/Mary Gauthier

When this assignment was sent out, it was on the understanding that March might be too restrictive a heading, something the plethora, perhaps, of military band favourites will demonstrate as being a tad pessimistic. But are there many songs about March the month? April, July and September seem to have plenty, I have learnt, but few seem to acknowledge this month, variously either that of the roman god of war or of, largely, the zodiacal fish. Actually, there are a few about pisces. So what could be better than a song that actually references a date, a birthdate, even. (OK, a birthdate that follows, by a day or so, the end of this fortnight, but.......)

Mary Gauthier is somewhat of an unexpected success story, not writing a single song until she hit 35, and probably then never expecting to have an 8 album and counting career. All at the age of, do the math, 55, for March 11 1962 is her true birthdate, as well as being the title of the song above. The Foundling, from 2010, is an inherently autobiographical song cycle based upon her always less than mainstream life. Given up for adoption at birth, truly a foundling, she spent her childhood in the care of an italian catholic couple, from whom she ran, aged 15. Seeking, I guess, herself, she found little but drugs, alcohol and trouble, spending her 18th in jail. Via an abortive period studying philosophy, she learnt cooking and opened the restaurant she ran for 11 years, 'Dixie Kitchen', also the name of her first album, the sale of which funded her 2nd, and breakthrough album, 'Drag Queens and Limousines'. Her almost instantly recognisable drawled tones, imagine an even more raddled Lucinda, often portray tales of life between low and the gutter. Perhaps her most famous song is this, 'I Drink', featured in these very pages some years ago. Here's a link.

But that would do her disservice, to attribute her merits solely to a quasi-Tom Waitsian underworld of squalor and disappointment. Her songs can also lift the soul. Eagerly awaited as I scribble is her latest, a work in conjunction with U.S. army vets and their families, described here. Not out yet in my home country, she is over for a short tour later in the year. Never yet having caught her live, I hope to remedy that. And here is a song from the forthcoming.

Never cute, never gentle, always acutely precise and demanding of thought, here's to you, Mary, have a great 11th.

Dig in!

Mar* Songs: March of the Men of Harlech

Robin Huw Bowen: The March of the Men of Harlech

[purchase]

Dal Riada: Men of Harlech

[purchase]

There is an old saying, that March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. That may prove true of our new theme as well. For the “in like a lion” part, let me start things off with the March of the Men of Harlech. This song dates from at least 1793, and came close to becoming the Welsh national anthem. According to folklore, the song first was written to rouse the troops during a seven year long siege that ended in 1468 with the besieged Welshmen winning the day. The song became popular after its use in the 1946 film How Green Was My Valley, and it was also featured in Zulu in 1964. That last version had lyrics that were written specifically for the film. There are several sets of lyrics, in both Welsh and English, starting with published versions from the early 1800s, but there is no generally accepted text.

Men of Harlech is most often performed in one of three ways. It may be sung by a male chorus or a solo singer; Charlotte Church may be the best know artist to record it that way. There are any number of recordings of arrangements for brass bands. I tend to think the versions for harp are likely to be truest to the original. Some of the instruments in a brass band did not exist in the 1400s, and it seems telling to me that an instrumental version for harp was the first published version, with the rival lyrics beginning to appear in print later. Robin Huw Bowen performs a version that may be close to the original sound. Warfare was a much quieter affair in the 1400s than it is now, and the strains of the harp within the besieged castle would have done much to boost morale if played this way. But solo harp is an acquired taste for the modern listener, so I have also included the fuller arrangement by Dal Riada. Here, the harp is augmented by bodhran and flute for a beautiful group sound that honors the feel of the original song.

Dal Riada should not be confused with the folk-metal group Dalriada. Dal Riada, with the space, is an offshoot of the folk group Idlewild, led by David and Carol Sharp. They only recorded two albums as Dal Riada, possibly because of the similarity of band names.