Rhythm and Views

April 13,2006

Last Saturday Eva and I went out clubbing. We visited the Fasching Jazz Club in downtown Stockholm. The club is very well known as it has been continuously running for 67 years. It has seen the great and not so great cross it stage in those years. The club looks exactly like you would think a jazz club would. It's long and narrow with exposed brick walls. A balcony wraps around three of those walls and the stage is in the center of the club against the fourth. It has two bars and those tiny tables that are unpractical for any more than one person. Really, due to modern civic laws, the only thing missing was the tobacco smoke.

The band that night was an R&B ensemble with a seven piece backing band and a soul singer from, believe or not, Ft. Lauderdale. I called a soul singer, and indeed she had a strong voice and importantly can sing in key. But soul shouter would be a better description for her. She needed just a dose of subtlety. My humble opinion is that if you start out over the top with those soulful whoops and wails, the only place you can go is louder. Nonetheless, the place was packed, she was personable and she endeared the crowd with her own special brand of Swenglish. The band, especially the drummer, was good; and when they stretched out and got into a groove, they were very good.

The two bars were keeping the crowd well öled (öl is Swedish for beer), the food was good and the Viking Princess and I had fun time. At one point Eva said she couldn't get my attention while the band was playing. Not unusual, as I get very focused on bands while they work. Not so much the music, but how they present it, the signals between members, how they react to unanticipated problems and the like. I've always related bands to sports teams. They practice and practice, go over play lists and then go out and perform. But another thought got me on this tangent.

Our singer was singing (of course, what else would she be doing?) the Aretha classic Ain't No Way. The way the Queen of Soul sings this song is a clinic in how to bring out pathos and pride in about three minutes. No one short of angelic can come close to this delivery of Ms. Franklin's.
While the musical Rolodex of my musical mind was spinning out Song-Soul-Female-Franklin, Aretha it occurred to me that I have been doing this musical thing for (gulp!) 50 years! For a half century I have been involved with listening and appreciating this modern music called popular.

Hound Dog by Elvis was the first record I ever bought. I was seven years old and I spun it on the sound system of that era, an RCA 45 record player. But I think it was the advent of the transistor radio that brought the youth of my era together has a tribe. The transistor allowed us to bring “our” music anywhere we went. You might say that it was the iPod of the late 50's and 60's. But unlike the iPod, the transistor was shared. The whole group could listen at the same time. And we all listened to WABC and WMCA, and guys like Cousin Brucie and B. Mitchell Reid would play the latest, tell us what was cool, and who was a star. They were the My Space of our time. And we all knew the words to all the hits.

We fell all over the Beatles as they introduced us to the LP. And we anxiously awaited each of their releases and bought them the day they were released. It was the Beach Boys and the Motown Sound arriving along with the Brits that came in on the tail of the Beatles' success. The LP was really not more than a collection of singles on one big black platter. It was Sgt. Pepper's that changed us forever.

Now we listened to albums, putting them on and following along with the lyric sheet looking for any hidden meanings or messages. We still all bought the same albums, but really, those days were numbered. Music became fractured and portable sound went individual (except for that brief but loud “boom box” era). If you have ever driven any long distances, and were searching up and down the radio dial for anything to listen to, what happens when that oldies station pops up from somewhere in another part of the country or from that small town you just passed through? Or when you hear Satisfaction or Up on the Roof?

We could say we get a chance to be 14 again sitting on the blanket on the sand with your pals around catching rays and checking out the opposite sex whispering those things so important to 14 year olds.

Most likely, you'll be like me. Reach down, turn up the volume and sing along. “…But when I kissed a cop on 34th and Vine, He broke my little bottle of, (all together now) Love Potion #9.