Still Crazy After All These Years*

I watched the last hour and change of the Saturday Night Live 40th anniversary special. I knew it would be impossible for someone like me, who reveled in the antics of some of the minor characters--Dr. Jack Badofsky (Tim Kazurinsky) and Operaman (Adam Sandler) spring to mind--but there were palpable yawning gaps in what they presented.

I did enjoy the too-brief clips of actors breaking character, but they didn't show Debbie Downer at Disney World. Adding Jon Lovitz to the necrology was a weird but funny touch (He's not dead yet), and it reminded me that folks like Jan Hooks, Jon Belushi, and Phil Hartman were gone all too soon.

But the two moments that really gave me pause to reflect both involved Paul Simon, a performer who had graced the 8H stage at 30 Rockefeller Center many times over the years.  The first was Miley Cyrus singing "50 ways to leave your lover" sounding for all the world like Reba McEntire in her prime--but hardly my first choice to cover that song, especially given her stage antics of late.

The second, and far more poignant, was Simon himself, singing "Still Crazy After All These Years". Looking downright elderly--and I guess he's entitled, being 73 (but when do the pop stars of our youth gain the right to look their age?)--he creaked through the song, leaving out some of the high notes, but it was as though he had the presence of mind back in his early thirties to pen lyrics of such wisdom and strength that would serve as inspiration to the next generation of singers and songwriters. They've become timeless, along with Bob Dylan's "My Back Pages", Harry Chapin's "Taxi", and Dan Fogelberg's "Same old Auld Lang Syne". There are no doubt other songs like that, and I'll add them as I think of them--but I'm not the only one who knows song lyrics.  If you think of them, let me know.

Onward, SNL, to whatever the future holds.

Cheers.

*--Paul Simon, 1972

Songs of Innocence and Experience"

I was advising a student this morning, and it reminded me of what a great opportunity music school can be. He was looking for Mozart piano sonatas, a typical enough request, in particular K. 331, which includes not only the well-known "rondo alla turca", but a delightful, lilting first movement. In some dusty corner of my brain I remembered an old promotional recording I'd received many years ago from the Eastman School of Music, on which was a piece by the late U-M composer William Albright, one Sleepwalker's Shuffle, the opening of which was based on the opening of that first movement.

My memory being what it is, I mistakenly told this young composition major that it had been composed by William Bolcom. He responded with the question I'd hoped for--'who's that?" So i took him through the story about how he'd won the Pulitzer for his first set of 12 etudes for piano, when in fact people were remembering his magnum opus from the year previous, "Songs of Innocence and Experience", a complete setting of the poems by William Blake, using everything from Reggae to 12-tone to (yes) cowboy waltz. If there was ever a 20th century musical version of "everything but the kitchen sink", this was it. (Bad joke alert). Bolcom was obviously saving the kitchen sink for Lime Jello Marshmallow Cottage Cheese Surprise (no, really, this song really exists).

I was in Ann Arbor, and attended the North American premiere of the work, which featured Charles Holland, Leslie Guinn (cowboy music), and Richard Taylor(rock and reggae sections)--and that was just the baritone soloists! I attended the dress rehearsal, and I have a lot of stories, but I'll just make you suffer through one. Carl St. Clair, then associate director of bands, was sitting a couple of rows behind me, taking in everything.

This piece was a study in contrasts, and undoubtedly displayed Bolcom's dazzling talent in many different musical genres; There was a piece called "the shepherd", which started with rather noisy, menacing music, and just as suddenly stripped down to two violins playing ever so slightly off key, but unmistakeably a country waltz. I hear Professor St. Clair guffaw loudly, but the best was yet to come--as opera luminary Leslie Guinn steps up and, in his best semi-cowboy yodel, sings "How sweet is the shepherd's sweet lot, from the morn to the evening he strays". Gustav Meier (conductor/traffic cop for the performance) stopped to correct something, but the choir gave Prof. Guinn a rowdy cheer for decidedly stepping out of character.

I DO wish I didn't have to leave before the semester's over, but c'est le guerre..I've done good work while I was here, and I left a lasting, positive impression on nearly everyone I worked with. Yet. 

Onward...

*--William Blake, set to music by William Bolcom over the course of 25 years (1955-1980)..