Monthly Archives: April 2007

45. ‘cept under our feet*

Song Blog,

The first time I heard Michael Franks was after school one day during my final teaching year. Carolyn and I shared a room – she was the mainstream teacher, I was the special educator. After Carolyn left for the day, Howard would slip around the folding wall that separated the rooms. We’d talk about life and marriage. Teaching and children. Books and music. Blacks and Whites.

One day Howard played an album I’d never heard of. I liked it immediately. I don’t remember the song that hooked me, but Howard told me how he and his wife loved the music of the musican, Michael Franks. How they tried to get to his concerts whenever he was in the area. He showed me the album cover – a man’s hands cupped, holding a dragonfly. The album cover was in sepia tones, as are the photographs in the liner notes.

Howard loaned me the album, but after a while I decided to buy one for myself. I liked listening to it in the car on the way home from teaching. It calmed me down before getting home to my own children. My husband thought the music was ok, but he didn’t really like it all that much – typical of his reaction to most music I listened to.

A couple of years later I bought another Michael Franks album and was in for a shock: Michael Franks is white. Michael Franks is not African-American. Michael Franks is not Black. He is white.

See, Howard was African-American. I assumed that his favorite musician would be too. The album cover was ambiguous. It still looks like a Black man’s hands holding the dragonfly.

When I listened to the songs again, after the discovery, they sounded different to me. Isn’t that weird?

Here he is playing Eggplant (which is actually one I don ‘t know)

And wouldn’t you know it – he’s going to be at the Birchmere this weekend!

* obscure reference to Dan Bern’s Different Worlds

44. Dawn Chorus

Birds, Song Blog

I had a great idea for a post while in Savannah. Every morning while we were at our Tybee Beach Cottage I’d wake up to lovely but loud birdsong, so I was going to get up a little earlier and record some birdsong from the beautiful wrap-around porch, post it online, link to it and write a post called Yardbirds or something like that.

As you can see, I didn’t do that. No excuse except laziness.

However I will post a link to a track from an album I bought many years ago. Our friends, Neal and Marie, told us about a public radio program that began with birdsong. We never got Morning Pro Musica down here in the DC area, but I was able to buy a copy of a record album with the bird song from Morning Pro Musica.

Whenever I am awakened, especially in the spring, to the music of birdsong, I think of this radio show that I never heard.

Listen to some dawn birdsong. It might have been from Savannah, but I suspect it was from Massachusetts.
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43. See me, feel me, touch me, hear me

Song Blog

I thought that I first heard The Who’s Tommy, on my own, but just recalled that it was my cousin Pam who introduced it to me. I remember sitting in her bedroom listening to the album and crying over poor Tommy’s predicament. Her brother, Jeff, was annoying us by making fun of our tears.

The next time I remember Tommy was when I saw the stage play in London with Tim, George and Candy.

When I met my husband-to-be, he was also a fan of the Who – although not a fan of Tommy so much.

My daughter and I watched the movie on cable a couple of months ago. She loved it so much that we got out our Tommy albums (Dean, the purist, owned the Rock Opera and I’d bought the soundtrack to the film) and listened to them. Clare has since moved on to other music, but the brief interlude where our tastes meshed was sweet.