1. The Tarriers were one of those commercial folk music groups so brilliantly mocked in Christopher Guess's 2003 film, A Mighty Wind. They had a few hits in the late 50s; most notably their version of the "Banana Boat Song," the same tune that a year later put Harry Belafonte on the map. What I didn't know was that for years they were given credit for writing the calypso-tinged classic. Not only that, but one of the members of the group was the actor, Alan Arkin, whose name appears on the 1957 Glory Records 45. I collect 45s and this thing popped up in a batch of records I got on Ebay. (Ebay has made life during quarantine worth living.) I don't have a lot of patience for the commercial folk music of the Revival years, but this thing is is truly weird. It is, in fact, two songs. On the one hand you have familiar verses from Belafonte's "Day-O" version, but it also borrows lyrics from the Caribbean folk song, "Hill and Gully Rider." The only reason I know that song is my elementary school music teacher used to make us sing along with Kingston Trio records. A little digging showed that even though they're given song-writing credit, the Tarriers tune wasn't particularly original, but borrowed from a number of Jamaican folk songs. So these four white dudes from NYC managed to cobble together a Top 10 hit AND touch off the thankfully short-lived calypso craze of the period. And yeah...Alan Arkin. I'm still trying to get my head around that one.
2. Music and the Great Betrayal: My time during the pandemic has been marked by a retreat into sound. My early quarantine playlists were rife with free jazz and noise, but that quickly morphed into a prolonged descent into the worlds of rockabilly, postwar country, New Orleans r&b, and the punk rock of my youth. The trashy, the soulful, the funky--the sublime. The more obscure, the better. I used to wonder why I couldn't just find one genre to call my own, but now I surf the waves of obscure musicians and bands that too few people care about or have even heard of, and I don't worry about where it is all going to take me.
I figure my pandemic playlists will someday show me where I was at the time of America's fall. Maybe then the flight to the margins of listening culture will mean something. I think what I'm listening to somehow correlates to the profound sense of betrayal I'm feeling. We are back in school and, despite the science of the virus and good old common sense, I am back in front of a classroom. Trust me, it is one thing to have some sense that your employer could care less about your well-being; it is an entirely different thing to know for sure they don't. My college canceled graduation last May for safety reasons. At that time there had been approximately 61,000 COVID deaths. Now we're back in the classroom--nearly 7000 students are back on campus. Nationwide there have been more than 180,000 deaths and projections are nearly 450,000 will die before this thing is under control. What changed? Is it, maybe, the chance to vacuum up a semester of student tuition and housing dollars and student fees? I can't say for sure because we faculty plebes were excluded from the decision-making process, as usual. Hell, we had to fight for a mask mandate! "March or die!" And the communications now emanating from the administration conjure up an alternative reality where it is always sunny,and an elixir of milk and honey rains from the sky. Kremlin scribes at the height of the Cold War would be proud. When did it become so easy to refuse to see what is right in front of your face? When did our lives become a line on the balance sheet of the corporate university. Maybe its been that way for a long time, but this disease has flipped on the light switch and its right there for the world to see.
The music I'm obsessing over is angry and despairing; its full of joy and danger and the life spirit. It isn't appropriate for work. It is my work. Charlie Feathers has come back to Earth an angel and Benny Spellman is still scheming on his fortune-teller. Surf bands from Buffalo, New York, are showing their classmates how to boogie, and Syl Johnson's tears stream down the face of America. An angry beauty is still beautiful and if its all the same to you, I'll just sit right here with the headphones on and wonder if the sun will ever rise for us again?
**I started this post more than 9 months ago. There have been occasions when I opened this blog and stared at it for awhile, but I guess I hit the lockdown wall and no words would come. Instead of "finishing" the post, which, honestly, isn't going to happen now, I figure I'll just hit "publish" and move on. Here's to the hope that a simple act will jump start a little writing. Or not.**
