2.17.2023 – when Marvin Gaye sang

when Marvin Gaye sang
whole world changed nothing nothing
was ever the same

What can I say.

What can I say but that I got chills.

What can I say but that I got chills this when I READ Marvin Gaye’s iconic NBA All-Star Game national anthem: ‘He turned that thing into his own’ (click headline for PDF) in today’s Athletic.

According to the article by David Aldridge and Marcus Thompson II, it was 30 years ago that Marvin Gaye sang his three minute version of the Star Spangled Banner.

In February 1984, I was a college student in Ann Arbor, Michigan, a city often described by people who haven’t lived there as a suburb of Detroit.

While it may not have been a suburb, it Ann Arbor did have a Detroit edge to it and Motown was the home team.

Come to think of it, growing up in Michigan, Motown was the home team.

It seems like a lot of the sound track music to my life is Motown.

And Marvin Gaye was going to start off the NBA All Star game, and please understand that in 1984, the NBA All Star game was nothing like it is today.

First of all, it was a real game and both teams wanted to win.

Second of all, that is all it was, just this one game.

No All Star week.

And Marvin Gaye was going to start it off with the National Anthem.

The story told in this article is wonderful in capturing this moment and what led up to it, how it came off, and the legacy of it all.

(Spoiler Alert – the play by play of the people in LA waiting waiting waiting for Marvin to show up and he walks into the arena with his drum track on a cassette in his hand MINUTES before he went on national TV is … well, read it for yourself)

One of the best things written in the article is the line, “No one remembers what happened in the game. No one. Including the players. “If you ask anybody about the L.A. All-Star Game, they say, ‘That’s the Marvin Gaye national anthem game,’” [Isiah] Thomas said.”

I remember watching it as it happened.

“So Marvin walks out,” Thomas said. “They got his music, he grabs the mic … just as cool as ever. But the anthem music doesn’t come on. It’s another beat. The first thing you notice is, ‘Wait a minute; this ain’t the national anthem soundtrack.’”

I remember as I watched and listened, that I had to stand up.

Then I remember thinking how long can this go?

This is INCEDIBLE.

When Marvin got the sell out crowd clapping IN TIME to the National Anthem, I think I had tears in my eyes.

When the players, looking at each in disbelief, joined the crowd, I know I had tears.

In the article, Marquis Johnson said, “The first thought was something to the effect of, like, the uber-patriots, Marvin’s kind of messing with the national anthem. ‘Boy, he’s going to get some blowback for this.’ But then as he went on, and it was so iconic and funky and soulful, all that good stuff, that wasn’t the thought. I was just standing there and enjoying the moment, realizing that this is a unique, special experience that we were all a part of.”

Never forgot it.

But when I talked with other people about it, so few seemed to have any knowledge of it.

People who see other good renditions of the National Anthem and ask me about it.

Oh that Whitney …

Did you see Carrie … or Lady Gaga ..

Well, I would say, they weren’t at all like Marvin were they …

And I would get blank stares.

Staying local, I love Anita Baker (okay I love anything by Anita Baker) and Karen Newman and their renditions of the Anthem but the gold standard, heck the ONLY standard is Marvin.

As Mr. Aldridge and Mr. Thompson II write, Gaye bent the song to his will and tempo.

Working 20 years in television news, I had a standard for sports reporters based on whether on not they remembered this moment

One feller, I think in Atlanta, and I had a long email exchange over it.

I had to send him the link to YouTube.

10 minutes later, he was up in my office to thank me.

He had never even HEARD of it.

Just have to shake my head.

Can something be a defining moment if few people remember.

This song was for me at least.

It somehow made the National Anthem, well, National.

When I die, I hope someone plays this as my ashes are poured out on the beach.

What’s left of Me, the beach and Marvin Gaye singing the National Anthem.

And I know there are comments and concerns about our National Anthem.

It isn’t the greatest song in the book but it is the national song.

Andy Rooney once said something like, say what you will about the Star Spangled Banner, it sure sounds good when you hear it when you are in another country.

One song.

Lots of renditions.

But none better than one sang on February 13, 1983, in Los Angeles California by Marvin Pentz Gay Jr.

Marvelous Marvin.

And I’ll never forget it.

I hope you take the time to listen.

According to the article this 3 minute version is cut down from the 6 minute version at rehearsal.

I got chills watching this too.

11.29.2022 – of virtuosic

of virtuosic
reticence, a silk of sound
inward and wistful

Music critics get to use the best words.

In a recent review of the New York Philharmonic titled, At the Philharmonic: a Taste of Holiday Bounty: Stéphane Denève leads a program of extravagantly colorful French works, with the pianist Víkingur Ólafsson as the soloist in a Ravel concerto, Zachary Wolfe GOT TO WRITE:

It’s not that his touch is diffuse; it’s as clean as marble. And it’s not that the tempos he and Denève chose for the framing movements were slower than normal. But the effect Ólafsson got throughout, of a kind of virtuosic reticence, could be described in the same words I used for his performance in February: a “silk of sound, inward-looking and wistful in both major and minor keys, in both andante and allegro.

1st to have a job where you are paid to go to concerts in New York City.

Then to have job where you are paid to go to concerts in New York City and then be allowed, no, expected, to write about these concerts using some of the best words and the best USE of words that you can imagine.

Thanksgiving came a day early at the New York Philharmonic this year: the calories, the juicy fat, the whipped cream, the fun, the sense of endless bounty

Some pianists lean on the factory-machine regularity, the bright lucidity, of those parts

… opened the concert with an extravagance that offers proof of the survival of the orchestrational panache of the French tradition: its lurid lushness and sly squiggles, brassy explosions and sensual strings

The Philharmonic played well throughout, riding the many waves and swerves of intensity and pigment, from dewy dawns to mellow dusks

IT IS JUST NOT FAIR.

But I have this blog and I can write about the words.

And I can applaud the use of the words and thoughts.

And I can fell a little smug.

Mr. Wolfe notes that the soloist, Víkingur Ólafsson, played a tender Rameau encore.

I bet I know what he played.

I bet I know because in a post back in April, I recommended that you listen to playing Rameau.

I made another bet in that post.

I bet that if you listened to the piece through the link I had on the page, I bet that you would instantly become happier.

I hold with that statement today.

4.10.2022 – do you want to hear

9.28.2022 – groping as we grope

groping as we grope
if heavens colors were like
music heard afar

As much as I loved the line,

Or wondering, when they learned that leaves were green,
If colours were like music, heard afar?

Seems like the idea of music as colors has turned up before in this blog – and I believe there has been discussion of folks who do SEE color when listening to music.

Then there is the lines:

As though, for them, the Spring held nothing new;
And not one face was turned to look again.

And I think how to have never seen a sunset.

To have never looked back for that one last look.

I am reminded on the painting of the blind soldiers by John Singer Sargent.

Once again the line from The Color Purple comes to mind that “I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.“

Spring , and the Blind Children

They left the primrose glistening in its dew.
With empty hands they drifted down the lane,
As though, for them, the Spring held nothing new;
And not one face was turned to look again.

Like tiny ghosts, along their woodland aisle,
They stole. They did not leap or dance or run.
Only, at times, without a word or smile,
Their small blind faces lifted to the sun;

Innocent faces, desolately bright,
Masks of dark thought that none could ever know;
But O, so small to hide it. In their night
What dreams of our strange world must come and go;

Groping, as we, too, grope for heavens unseen;
Guessing – at what those fabulous visions are;
Or wondering, when they learned that leaves were green,
If colours were like music, heard afar?

Were brooks like bird-song ? Was the setting sun
Like scent of roses, or like evening prayer ?
Were stars like chimes in heaven, when day was done;
Was midnight like their mothers’ warm soft hair?

And dawn? – a pitying face against their own,
A whispered word, an unknown angel’s kiss,
That stoops to each, in its own dark, alone;
But leaves them lonelier for that breath of bliss ?

Was it for earth’s transgressions that they paid –
Lambs of that God whose eyes with love grow dim –
Sharing His load on whom all wrongs are laid ?
But O, so small to bear it, even with Him!

God of blind children, through Thy dreadful light
They pass. We pass. Thy heavens are all so near.
We cannot grasp them in our earth-bound night.
But O, Thy grief! For Thou canst see and hear.

7.29.2022 – in music landscape

in music landscape
of melancholy, not joy
peppy outlier

Adapted from a blurb for a popcast/review on the artist Lizzo.

The blurb read:

Lizzo’s second major-label studio album, “Special,” another collection of up-tempo disco-pop empowerment anthems, just arrived at No. 2 on the Billboard album chart. Its single “About Damn Time” also climbed to No. 1 on the Hot 100, securing her place as one of pop’s established stars.

But “Special” is also a reminder that she is one of pop’s most idiosyncratic performers, too. Lizzo’s throwback-minded anthems are full of internet-primed catchphrases, and she remains a peppy outlier in a pop music landscape dominated by performers who largely traffic in melancholy, not joy. (Lizzo’s Complicated, Joyful Pop, NYT, 7/27/2022)

Note to self.

Make time this week to find this album and give it a listen.

I lead some peppy outlier in my days right now.

7.22.2022 – artist inspired

artist inspired
creative challenge sung word
sew words in music

Inspired by an article on the career and life of one Gilberto Gil.

(UPDATE from the next day – there are some really good words here and I can do better – not fond of the haiku – we shall see what can be done to bring about a better arrangement – 7.23.2022 8AM)

According to Wikipedia, Gilberto Passos Gil Moreira, a Brazilian singer-songwriter and politician, known for both his musical innovation and political activism. From 2003 to 2008, he served as Brazil’s Minister of Culture in the administration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Gil’s musical style incorporates an eclectic range of influences, including rock, Brazilian genres including samba, African music, and reggae.

The article, Gilberto Gil at 80: ‘Bolsonaro has a retrograde worldview, an opposition to any advance’ recounts the long life and career of the Brazilian singer who I don’t know much about but I will know more someday soon.

The last paragraph was worth reading all the other paragraphs.

The last paragraph was a quote.

Mr. Gil said, “The artist who is inspired by poetry and the creative challenge of the sung word has always something to say. And I like this embroidery – I like to sew words into the tissue of music. So, until the forces that provide this work disappear, I will keep on answering the request of that young singer who wants a collaboration, or that new author who asks for lyrics. As the saying goes: as long as there’s bamboo, there’s an arrow.”

I like that a lot.

The artist who is inspired by poetry and the creative challenge of the sung word has always something to say.

And I like this embroidery – I like to sew words into the tissue of music.

So, until the forces that provide this work disappear, I will keep on answering the request of that young singer who wants a collaboration, or that new author who asks for lyrics.

As the saying goes: as long as there’s bamboo, there’s an arrow.”