you and i must make a pack… a pack?

when i was young, i knew it wasn’t cool to like the osmonds (even though i watched their cartoon series every saturday morning.) however, i had no such fear of being uncool when it came to the jackson 5 (whose saturday morning cartoon i also watched. i often wondered whether the people at rankin/bass just altered the cartoon osmond’s faces and tweaked the storylines a little bit. no matter to me. i watched anyway.) in retrospect, i often wonder whether the older kids in both families felt screwed because their respective little brothers got all the attention. it’s 40 years later, and while i still know the names of the other brothers from both families, i couldn’t tell you who was who. i bet marie. la toya, and janet thank their lucky stars they were born girls.

but back to michael, michael, i LOVE you michael (a phrase i continue to hear in my dreams, decades after a particular concert.) somehow, the song i’ve always connected with, the song i’ve always cherished from their repertoire is i’ll be there. sure, there are moments when the pronunciations of certain words mystified me (as i alluded earlier, i could never figure out what michael meant when he sang  you and i could make a pack — we could bring salvation back. what the hell kind of pack did he mean, i wondered — a bag full of hope? a pack of lies? oh, if only the child could include a t at the end of that word.)

ah well. the song tugs at the heartstrings; and while i know there are many of my friends who think it incredibly uncool of me, i have loved this song for decades. this may change, now that an insurance company has taken it over and made it the center of their latest commercial campaign. i just don’t want to have to associate this song with state farm.

(once again, they’ve paved paradise and put up a parking lot. gah.)

i guess michael needs cash now that he’s gone belly-up. and, true to form, this song is there to help.

i know what you’re thinking, and i’m thinking it too: a sour milk sea? gross.

george harrison wrote this lovely ode to spoiled dairy during the white album time period.  ah, that magical, prolific time when there were so many songs and only two albums to hold them. this, like a number of other lovely songs ended up on the cutting room floor (or ended up on other lps.) however, sour milk sea was recorded by harrison’s friend and apple recording artist jackie lomax.

and what a lineup you get when you’re an apple records artist in 1968: george harrison and eric clapton on guitars, paul mccartney on bass, ringo starr on drums, and nicky hopkins on keyboards (the latter played on an amazing array of works in the 1960s-80s and got screwed out of royalties on just about every single one of the works, thanks to his status as a session man.) not too shabby.

sadly for lomax, a great song and a great lineup does not guarantee fame and fortune, especially when you’re depending on the clunky money hemorrhage that was apple corps  in the late 1960s.  a fascinating (and now sadly out of print) account of the time by the “house hippie” recounts the mismanagement and utter insanity that took place in the house that john, paul, george and ringo built. in short, the single did okay but did not propel him to worldwide renown. (hell, apple floundered james taylor’s early career; if james taylor couldn’t get big while there in the early 1970s with songs like carolina in my mind and something in the way she moves, no one could.)

too bad, too. it’s a great song, and lomax provides a fine delivery, a loopy cross between george and marc bolan meets old musichall. the instrumentation is what sells it to me, especially hopkin’s wild piano.

but considering what happened to his career, i wouldn’t be surprised if lomax had a few moments of sour grapes.

and we were sharp. as sharp as knives. and we were so gung ho to lay down our lives.

it’s difficult for people my age to truly remember vietnam as anything more than a piece of the country’s history. we remember the nightly news, the pictures, the horror; but i don’t think we truly grasp the turmoil and the polarization that this nation experienced.  one of the earliest memories i have is of this young girl running away from her accidentally-napalmed village. she was about my age; and the photo riveted me, making me wonder whether i would possess her strength and courage if the tables were turned.

in the early 1980s, newsweek published an incredibly eloquent story about charlie company in vietnam.  we had subscribed to newsweek as far back as i could remember; it was my number one news source  as a child because unlike the new york times (which i also read, as well as the asbury park press), it had the most vivid photos. (and i would read this at breakfast, which was probably not the smartest thing to do; i thought i was going to be sick many times, especially after photos of victims of ugandan despot idi amin and after the whole jim jones guyana episode.) when i read the article about charlie company, it brought it all home to me. yes, i knew my family had been against the vietnam war; i knew we hadn’t agreed with nixon or any of his policies.

but these were just a few of the guys who didn’t have the luxury of agreeing or disagreeing with policies and politics. for whatever reason, whether they were true believers or whether they simply could not escape the draft, here they were, in southeast asia, fixing to kill or die. my heart was wrenched reading about those who made it and those who did not. and for the first time, vietnam became more than just a piece of history to me.

i suspect billy joel had read the same article, too.

anyway, it’s memorial day. and while i have ranted about the non-vets who take the opportunity to invade our nation’s capitol with their noisy motorcycles and often rude selves, i will think more on the people who did what they felt they had to do — or were forced to do — by a government that insisted upon it. if there’s only one thing we’ve learned since vietnam, we have learned that we appreciate the soldiers, even if we completely disagree with their mission.

and so it is with iraq.

so godspeed those serving in iraq. i’m appalled at how many soldiers have been lost for an operation that was misguided in its efforts to uproot terrorism. i’m ashamed at my country for putting them in harm’s way for the wrong reason. their lives are all precious; and no one should ever have to die because his or her president is trying to even the score for his father. i hope instead that we redouble our efforts to become safer in a world where the original culprits still linger and flourish.

i truly hope our current vets all come home. safely.

and soon.

hang onto your guitar. apparently, it can take a long time to get it back.

glam rockers mott the hoople, a UK band on the verge of breaking up in the early ’70s, ended up getting a song written for them by a fan. the fan: david bowie. the song? suffragette city.

they. turned. it. down.

the superfan gave them another song. (i give bowie a lot of credit — this sort of generosity simply never happens, much less twice.) this time, they took it, and all the young dudes became a huge hit for the band.  i love that song, but i must admit a serious soft spot for all the way from memphis.

the first time i heard this mott the hoople hit, i was about to watch the movie that inspired the TV show alice.  for reasons i still cannot explain, i watched that show fairly religiously. i suspect there  must have been a show on before it that i really liked and due to my own personal inertia, i would watch alice, too. (certainly not because i liked that lady who constantly asked all to kiss her grits.) i figured the movie would also be just as amusing (and perhaps with the same annoying laff track.) in fact, it wasn’t exactly what i had expected, and i don’t think i made it halfway before turning off the TV.

but what DID make an impression on me was the song over the opening credits. all the way from memphis made the experience worthwhile; i couldn’t get it out of my head.  i didn’t realize for a long time that the song was about a touring rock star whose guitar ended up in a completely different town than the town the guitarist was next playing. i just thought the pounding piano sounded amazing, and the hook was terribly catchy. it took me years, though, to figure out who the hell was singing it. (i was only about 11 or so when i first heard it.)

guitarist mick ronson (who also ended up touring with bowie) sadly passed away very young from liver cancer; but frontman ian hunter still performs. the remaining band members are playing some sporadic concerts this year, even.

and i suspect no one will be  mislaying any instruments.