New Songs, Timeless Theme

I was listening to my daughters singing along with some popular music last night.  I knew it must be popular because they were singing along and I didn’t recognize it.  In between songs, they talked about the nuances of genre.  Folk, pop, rock, some combination.  But what I noticed were the lyrics, which shared a theme.  Though I couldn’t tell you what they said specifically, the words had that same aspirational, eternal, absolute conviction that good love songs thrive on.  Now, my girls are on the imaginary side of that divide.  They have had, depending on their age, their various crushes or hoped for attachments.  But, unlike Dad, they have yet to experience that aching certainty that the person you are sitting across from in some restaurant or walking hand-in-hand with or driving home is the person you want to, need to, must be with for the rest of your life.  After 35 years of marriage it would have been quite easy for me to descend into lecturing my daughters about how unrealistic the portrayal of love is in a three minute song on the radio.  Really, you could live without that other person.  After all, you were alive before you met them, right?

Then, I thought back to the time when I was in that place.  When the longing and the wondering were actually realized in a magical young woman who said “Yes”, who said “I Do” and started that life together that seems much more than the two of us.  While I know that it is true that a form of life would go on if one of us was no longer there, I also know that there would be a vast emptiness that would never be filled.  That is how love should be.  You give it all you’ve got, flaws and all, and something grows up and out and together until where one ends and the other begins is less and less discernible.  And to tear that apart would indeed be tragic.

So, I suspect the love songs will just keep coming.  As unique as each relationship, as familiar as that ‘tale as old as time’.

Just an old-fashioned love song, 

playin’ on the radio, 

and wrapped around the music, 

is the sound of someone promising they’ll never go.

You swear you’ve heard it before, 

as it slowly rambles on.

No need in bringing ‘em back, 

‘cause they’re never really gone…

An Old-Fashioned Love Song

Performed by 3 Dog Night, lyrics by Paul Williams

I Would Do It For You, Wouldn't I?

One of the benefits of young adults in the house is that I am exposed to more, MUCH more, contemporary music than I would be if we had an empty nest like other 50-somethings.  Sometimes it feels like psy-ops aimed at subverting the home life my wife and I have tried to establish.  But for the sake of this discussion, I am considering it a benefit.  I get a window into the soul of the next generation and I hear some pretty darn good music that I would miss out on otherwise.  One such song is Gone, Gone, Gone by Phillip Phillips.  It is a pledge of undying love with loads of examples of the lengths the singer will go to prove his love.  I am not a music stylist, but I know what I like in 'pop' music and it tends towards the simple, acoustic, bluesy.  Like this song.  If you want a true musical review, go here.  After listening to Gone, Gone, Gone a few times (well, more than a few times - thank you, dear daughter), I picked up on a subtle truth in the lyrics that struck me.  It may have just been a device used by the writers to bridge between the verses and the chorus, but I noticed something:

Give me reasons to believe
 That you would do the same for me.
 And I would do it for you, for you.

I surrender honestly.
 You've always done the same for me.
 So I would do it for you, for you.

Give me reasons to believe... AND I would do it for you.
You've always done the same for me... SO I would it do it for you.

I checked with my household grammar wizards to confirm that AND and SO are acting as conditional conjunctions.  What the song is communicating then is what I experience.  I want to love those who are dear to me passionately, unreservedly, sacrificially.  But, in spite of my ideals, which are wrapped up in a Christian ethic of love modeled by Jesus, I need something back.  I have a strong martyr complex and can give for a long time with no kudos or reciprocation.  Not forever.  And I have never had to.  I am crazy spoiled with love.  I have never faced what some know all to well: a love that started out with mutual joy and passion that somewhere, somehow became a one-way street to a soul-draining loneliness of endless giving until the well was dry.

Then it occurred to me.  Am I the one holding back, sucking the life out of others without giving them even a sustaining crumb of affection?  In the limits of my human condition, I struggle to express affection.  Today, I want to be awake to the hunger and give back what I have been given.

You've always done the same for me.
So I would do it for you.

In The Summertime (1972)

The summer of 1972 was glorious.  The end of the school year was always a source of joy.  To make school bearable, I would begin the count-down on the first day in the fall: how many days until Christmas vacation, then how many more until school was out for the summer.  But that year, summer vacation was more significant than ever.  You see, I had survived 7th grade.

The change from elementary school where I had the exalted status of a 6th-grader to the Junior High where I was a punk 7th grader was shocking.  I was a creature of routine.  One teacher in the same classroom day in and day out was ideal.  Now my school days were spent on a sprawling campus where I had to find a different class room every hour.  There were weeks of wandering with my campus map until I got the hang of it.  And I will not discuss the calamity of P.E. which was only hinted at when the shopping for ‘back to school’ clothes included the purchase of an unusual garment to be worn only for gym class.

Ford Pinto
or was THIS the worst car ever?

Chevy Vega - worst car ever made?

Meanwhile, I had older sisters who were navigating the more sophisticated climes of high school.  Being the 'kid brother' had its drawbacks to be sure.  Older sisters could go places and do things that were only mysteries to the mind of a 12-year-old.  Ford Pintos or Chevy Vegas or equally underpowered thrift-minded cars would appear and my sisters would join their giggling friends and motor down the narrow trailer park access road and disappear towards the entrance.

The Osmonds
Phase 3
Ick...

Three Dog Night
Harmony
Awesome

But occasionally, their friends would stay.  They would hang out in the living room playing Three Dog Night or Chicago or, heaven forbid, the Osmonds, while somehow carrying on a conversation over the blaring speakers of the straining console stereo.  If mother had only known.  But she was at work, where she was every weekday until 5:30 or 6:00 in the evening.  Those hours between the end of school and mother's arrival home were sort of a free-zone from the usual decorum that had to be observed on the return of our sole, overworked parent.  And the usual decorum most definitely did not include rock ’n’ roll.

Need more bell...

What straight hair was all about.

An awareness came to me that these female friends of my sisters were — aside from their propensity for loud and laughter-punctuated talk that made absolutely no sense whatsoever — interesting in a way that the girls at school were not.  It was the era when long, straight hair was required on girls, and straight-legged jeans were absolutely outcast.  A large amount of time was spent straightening hair and sewing extra denim into the legs of jeans so they would be transformed into massive bell-bottoms.  

In the summertime, the visitors came more frequently.  School had ended.  The sun and Coppertone® were out in force.  Jeans gave way to cutoffs.  And halter-tops. And bikinis.  Until that summer, I may have only been vaguely aware that the surface area of a person had so much skin.  (Something in the neighborhood of 17 square feet.  Do the math.)

Before 'SPF'

Skin looked so much better on tanned girls than it did on my pale, scrawny physique.  So when my sisters had visitors, I would find all sorts of excuses to make the trek from my room (where I was by an unwritten protocol imprisoned due to my complete uncoolness) to the kitchen at the opposite end of our boxy trailer,  whereby I had to pass through the intoxicating sanctum of music and teenage femininity.  The sights and sounds.  The unconscious gesture of a girl's hand flipping a wisp of hair back over her shoulder was enough to make me stumble.  Should one of them look my direction, my mouth would suddenly parch.  I would swallow hard.  Sure, there were girls in Junior High, but they merely hinted at the promise that these companions of my sisters embodied: womanhood in full bloom.

Tanned,
lovely,
high school girl.

On my return trip to the meagre bedroom I shared with my brother, I would occasionally hear whispered tones and quiet giggles.  A suspicion came to me that perhaps I was the unfortunate cause of their mirth.  Still, I told myself, it had to be better to be noticed than to remain invisible and virtually non-existent.  

I had not progressed much beyond that awkward, tongue-tied state several years later when I met another tanned, lovely high school girl.  Providentially, she knew how to carry a conversation that continues to this day.

Jesus Songs - 1970

It was 1970.  I was a mere lad of 11, at that irritating age that comes to all children, a teenager wannabe.  'Teenager' was a relatively new concept in those days, and pre-teen had yet to be invented, but teenagers were cool and I wanted to be one.  See, both my sisters were teenagers and they got to do groovy things like go on outings with the church youth group.

1970 was also the heyday of the Jesus People movement.  Lots of cool and groovy things were happening, especially concerts where people sang songs about Jesus that weren't hymns in strict 4-4 time.  Musicians even used guitars and drums and had long hair and wore Levis.

Somehow, I finagled my way into being allowed to go with my sisters to one of these events.  What is stuck in my mind is not the event, but the ride home.  See, in the high-spirited aftermath of the concert, everyone was in the mood for singing.  So, numerous songs of the Jesus Movement were belted out by the bus load of energetic teens (and pre-teens in my case).   Keep in mind that in parallel with the Jesus People movement, which was viewed with an awed mix of joy and concern by the adults in church, I and my sisters had discovered AM radio and rock-and-roll.

In the dark of that bus that night, these two cultural phenomenon neatly dovetailed as the unlikely hit song "Put Your Hand In the Hand" was started by someone and everyone joined in.

That same year, another song with vague spiritual overtones performed by the folk duo "Brewer and Shipley" would climb nearly as high in the charts.  Now, in my unsophisticated mind, this song was just another example of the Jesus Movement seeping into the popular music scene.  After all, it mentioned 'Sweet Jesus' and 'Mary'.  Maybe the song was Catholic in origin?  I knew Catholics were big on Mary.

So, after the last line of "Put Your Hand in The Hand" faded away, I started to belt out, "One Toke Over The Line, Sweet Jesus".  After all, I felt I loved singing and Jesus as much as anyone else in the bus.  However, my attempt at spiritual leadership was abruptly terminated by a hissing negative comment by my oldest sister.  I cannot recall exactly what she said, but her sharp brevity combined with the stern look on her face made me realize that in no uncertain terms: I had committed a SERIOUS SOCIAL MISTAKE!

There is no place to disappear on a church bus.  I couldn't very well crawl under the seat, though I considered it briefly.  Somehow, the moment passed.  Whether there was any more singing, I don't remember.  Nor do I remember anything else about the ride home other than an overwhelming sense of mortification at my own ignorance.

Exactly when I discovered the meaning of "toke" and learned that "Mary" was shorthand for MARIjuana I cannot say.  What I can say is that I was really excited to hear the Doobie Brothers version of "Jesus Is Just Alright" a couple of years later, that is, until someone explained to me what a 'doobie' was...

Utah's Best Music

Our family has fond memories of Utah.  Of sweating in Zion National Park on family vacation; of stops at obscure bed&breakfast locations at the approximate midpoint of the 1200 mile trek to and from Wyoming where my Mom lives.  But until a few months ago, other than geography, Utah held no other interest for us.  Then, friends of ours told us about this musical group with the unlikely name of "The Piano Guys" and that we "just had to check out" their video on YouTube.  Generational note.  When I hear 'YouTube', I think "biggest digital dumping ground of wasted time and mediocrity imaginable"; when my children hear 'YouTube', they are filled with anticipation.  Still, we all gathered around the computer to view the Piano Guys signature video.  It is hard to describe.  Five guys playing a piano. I mean, the whole piano.  Not just the keys, but plucking strings, using horse-hair strands from a violin bow to play the strings, smacking the sides.  It was truly playing the entire instrument.  Not long after this discovery, one of our daughters found out they were coming to California.  So, after months of waiting, we got to see them at the Grove in Anaheim last Friday.  They were great, the venue was full of enthusiastic music fans of all ages, and they finished with that signature number.  Somehow, our girls - the biggest fans ever - managed to be first in line to get autographs.

Check out The Piano Guys.  Something different, something worthwhile in the sphere of 'entertainment'.  It is still out there.  People creating beautiful music for the love of music.