Day: March 16, 2020

MJ Monday-Music: Simon & Garfunkel/Paul Simon


Paul Simon wrote a good portion of the soundtrack of my life. From The Cyrkle’s hit  “Red Rubber Ball” to his solo album Graceland, I was a fairly steady Paul Simon fan. (I lost track after Graceland. I’m not sure why.)

My favorite years are, of course, the Simon & Garfunkel years, and his first two post-Garfunkel solo albums (he recorded a solo album before S&G “hit”, The Paul Simon Songbook).

In high school I wrote a term paper comparing the lyrics of Paul Simon with those of Bob Dylan. I found many parallels.

Even now, when I am officially older than dirt, I continue to sing snatches of his lyrics as situations warrant. One of my favorites is “I’ve got the paranoia blues…” which is from his first post-Garfunkel solo album,  Paul Simon.

A younger generation was recently introduced to the power of his lyrics when Disturbed covered “The Sound of Silence.” Does it make me a traitor to admit what Disturbed “did” to the song is far more powerful than Simon’s version?

 

 

Digging in Upstate New York

Digging things up was a minor trend in upstate New York back in the 1800s.

Joseph Smith Jr started it in 1823, when he dug up a buried book written on golden plates near Palmyra, New York. This discovery led to the establishment of the Mormon religion. 

Throughout the summers of my youth, local TV stations ran a Public Service Announcement for the Hill Cumorah Pageant, a reenactment of Smith’s adventures on the hill. Once, at a writing conference, an editor said to me, “Oh, I’m from upstate New York, too, a small town outside of Rochester you’ve probably never heard of. Palmyra.” I responded “Hill Cumorah Pageant.” “That’s the one,” she replied.

Twenty or so years after Joseph Smith did his thing, George Hull and his cousin Stubbs Newell decided to play a hoax on the American public. Hull commissioned some folks in Iowa to create a “petrified giant”, which he then buried on his cousin’s farm in Cardiff, New York.  A year or so later, his cousin commissioned a couple of people to dig a well on the spot where he’d buried the petrified giant.  And thus one of the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated on the American public came into being: The Cardiff Giant.  PT Barnum, when he couldn’t buy the original, commissioned his own and made a fortune off it.

The Cardiff Giant isn’t nearly as well known as Mormonism–but it does have a niche following, and people tend to co-op the name on a regular basis. There’s a baseball team in Cooperstown, NY (where the real giant currently resides, a folk-rock band out of Indiana, a wrestler, a winery, and a bar in Brooklyn.

Yet the place where he was disinterred barely rates a roadside marker, unlike Hill Cumorah.

I know, because I grew up next door to the farm where the giant was unearthed.

 

MJ Monday: MJ’s Music–Loreena McKennitt

I discovered Loreena McKennitt back in the olden days when I hung out on various writers forums. I fell in love. She has an ethereal voice. Her music is haunting. She composes many of her own pieces, and is heavily influenced by both Celtic and Middle Eastern themes. I have most of her earlier CDs. My favorite is The Book of Secrets, which has her stunning version of “The Highwayman”, a poem by Alfred Noyes.  I frequently use her “Sacred Shabbat,” an instrumental, for meditation.

I own two of her seasonal releases: “A Winter Garden” and “To Drive the Winter Cold Away”.  In a world where raucous Christmas music hits the airwaves November 1, these two CDs are islands of serenity. There are only so many versions of “Jingle Bell Rock” and “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” a woman can take.

Loreena McKennitt is a good antidote to the madness of the season.

MJ Monday: MJ’s Music-Aida Soundtrack

Y-Chromo was in his high school production of Aida. To this day, it remains my favorite of his school play (including the role of Tony in West Side Story, which he rocked!) The story is based on the opera, with music and lyrics by Tim Rice and Elton John.

I’ve heard people say the only good song in the play is “My Strongest Suit.” They would be wrong. There are many wonderful tunes.  There’s a CD of covers,  including such artists as The Spice Girls, James Taylor, Sting, Tina Turner, Boyz II Men, Shania Twain, Lenny Kravitz, and others. It’s a good CD, although I still prefer the original Broadway sound track.

When the show came to our city, almost everyone from the high school cast went, even though it was several years after the fact. The consensus was our kids were better in their roles than some of the professionals we saw that night.

While I was researching this blog, I learned that my favorite Monkee, Mickey Dolenz, played the same role on Broadway my son played in high school.

How cool is that?

 

MJ’s Musings-Book Bingo: Best Selling Romance: JAK Promise Not To Tell

The Book Bingo category is BEST SELLING ROMANCE and what better book to fill that square than Jayne Ann Krentz’s 2019 release Promise Not to Tell. This story is the third in a trilogy revolving around adults who, as children, survived an intentionally set fire in a cult compound where their mothers were hostages.

Three of the male survivors were adopted by the local cop. As adults, they formed a detective agency. Each story of the trilogy revolves around finding the cult leader who tried to kill them so many years ago. Each heroine has a different issue for which she needs a detective’s help.

If you’re a fan of romantic suspense, I highly recommend the entire trilogy.