I think of how freedom tastes like
a crisp sparkling soda
where the sun meets sand
head meets heart
these are the places I always go
when the light shines on the back of my hands
today, especially
I remember that our paths aren’t all the same
that my skin tone is in itself, a token of value
one that grants freedom
the benefit of the doubt
a price that others often find themselves paying
the sea, its tides
I’ve embraced the waves
because by nearly drowning
I’ve learned how to swim
Plucking fruit from the tree
tip toe, out of reach
dancing on our feet
nectar on your lip
I was once told that
peeling an orange in one fell swoop
was somehow a marker of good luck
how many times did I have to get that right
to be lucky enough to have you now
windowsill, lined in herbs, vivid still, I can smell the way freshly cut grass danced in the breeze we’d run through it like confetti
Watching the lilacs
Blooming just outside the door
Charming their fragrance
So beautiful their colors
They’ll return year after year
©2020 Annette Rochelle Aben
Money
• Memphis garage-punk musician Jay Reatard, née Jay Lindsey, once made a single with another musician in Austria. The agreement was that together they would issue the single for a European tour, and that later Mr. Lindsey would be able to use the single for another project. Without authorization, the guy in Austria made copies of the single. According to Mr. Lindsey, he “pressed it on a clear, six-inch square that plays from the inside out,” then sold the single on eBay for $280 per copy. He did send Mr. Lindsey a few copies of the specially pressed single. Of course, Mr. Lindsey wasn’t happy that an unauthorized use was being made of his work, so he told the guy in Austria, “Since you gave me nine copies, I’ll sell them on eBay and have enough money for a ticket to Austria to kick your *ss. He chilled out after that.” Actually, Mr. Lindsey kept one copy for himself, but unfortunately lost it when moving. He gave the other copies away to friends who he knew would keep and not sell them.
• Tom Mathers, the founder of the Mathers Fund, learned the hard way the truth of these words: “If you find a great growth company, don’t sell it just because it gets a little pricey — you may never get back in again.” Back in the 1960s, he and his wife wanted to buy a piano. He owned shares of stock in Disney, and since he thought that the Disney stock was pricey, he decided to sell his Disney stock and use the money to buy the piano. Over the years, of course, the price of Disney stock rose higher and higher and higher, and because he had sold his Disney stock, he lost out on all that growth in the price of Disney stock. As you would expect, he sometimes looks at the piano in his living room and complains, “That’s the most expensive d*mn piano on the face of the planet!”
• In 1967, Frank Sinatra and his daughter Nancy recorded “Somethin’ Stupid,” which was a monster hit for them, spending a month at No. 1. Nancy remembers, “The whole thing took about 20 minutes. We recorded it in two takes, and the only reason it took two was that Dad kept singing it ‘shumshing shtupid’ to make me laugh on the first one, and we couldn’t finish it.” After recording the song, Frank said, “That’s a No. 1 record.” Mo Austin, a honcho at Reprise Records, disagreed, and said, “No, it’s a bomb.” In Nancy’s office today is a photograph of Frank and herself from that recording session. Nancy describes the photo in this way: “Coming out of a balloon in my dad’s mouth are the words, ‘Silly b*stard bet me $2 it would be a bomb.’ And attached [to the photograph] is a $2 bill.”
• Dolly Parton is a smart artist, and she is a smart businesswoman. In 1974, Elvis Presley wanted to sing her song “I Will Always Love You.” But in order for that to happen, Mr. Presley’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker, required that Ms. Parton sign over half the rights to the song. Ms. Parton declined to do that. Way to go, Dolly! The song has made millions of dollars. Ms. Parton explains why she declined to sign over half the rights to the song: “I knew it was one of my best songs, but it wouldn’t have mattered what song Parker wanted the publishing on. That’s money I’m earning for my family. I couldn’t give it up. It was already a hit for me, but then after Whitney Houston recorded it and I did it two more times, once with Vince Gill, well … I’ve made gobs of money off it.”
***
Copyright by Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
***
The Funniest People in Music, Volume 3 — Buy:
Smashwords: Many Formats, Including PDF
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003Y8XQ8S/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i125
BRUCE’S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: “Beach Bunny” from the album PAISLEY BEACH
Artist: Los Venturas
Artist Location: The record company is Green Cookie Records, located in Thessaloniki, Greece.
Info: “Los Venturas have to offer a warm, varied, powerful and danceable instrumental live set, with one single purpose at heart: throwing a decent party and set the scene for one hell of a night.”
All tracks by Los Venturas except:
“Mr. Rebel” by Eddie Bertrand
“Caravan” by Duke Ellington / Juan Tizol
“Mathar” by Dave Pike
Price: Name Your Price (Includes FREE) for Track; price for seven-track album is €7 (EUROS)
Genre: Surf
Links:
https://greencookierecords.bandcamp.com
https://greencookierecords.bandcamp.com/album/gc034-paisley-beach-10-digital
Mishaps
• Jazz musician Dizzy Gillespie played a trumpet with the bell pointed upward. The story is that someone once accidentally sat on his horn, bending its bell. At first, Mr. Gillespie was angry, but then he discovered that he preferred the trumpet that way. Afterwards, he ordered all of his trumpets to be made with an upwards-pointing bell.
• World-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma is a busy man — so busy that in October of 1999 he left his $2.5 million Montagnana cello in the trunk of a New York taxicab. Fortunately, he had a taxicab receipt, so police located the taxicab quickly. The cello was still in the trunk — the taxicab driver had not even realized that it was still there.
• While singing for the Metropolitan Opera during the 1950s, soprano Lucine Amara ran into a problem: New York can be a dirty city, and in the days before air conditioning dust settled everywhere in her apartment soon after dusting. She once cried, “I long for home! Even our dust is clean in San Francisco!”
• David Byrne, former front man for the Talking Heads, is a cyclist. In 2008, he crashed on West 14th Street in New York City. Two police officers arrived and asked him two questions: 1) Were you drinking? and 2) Are you David Byrne? Both questions have the same answer: yes.
• Even very good musicians can have an off night. A team of musicians led by jazz saxophonist Branford Marsalis once mightily messed up “April in Paris.” After they had “played” the song, Mr. Marsalis announced to the audience that they had just heard “April Embarrassed.”
• While acting in the stage play Brouhaha, Peter Sellers danced a waltz right off the stage and into the orchestra pit, bruising himself badly. Comedian Spike Milligan sent him a telegram, asking, “Are you a member of the Musicians’ Union?”
• Camille (Charles) Saint-Saëns once attempted to accompany a duet sung by two girls who were never together in their vocals. He stopped playing, then asked, “Now tell me, which of you two am I supposed to accompany?”
• Operas may have been more fun in the past than they are today. When George Frideric Handel’s opera Sersewas produced, it was enlivened by Caffarelli, the lead singer, who liked to goose the sopranos on stage.
Money
• Welsh singer Tom Jones is known both for his voice and for women throwing their underwear at him. The first time a woman gave him her underwear while he was performing was in 1968 at the Copacabana in New York. He was sweating, and since people had been eating at the supper club, a couple of people gave him their napkins to wipe his brow with. Then, Mr. Jones remembers, “This one woman stood up — up with the dress, down with the drawers. Took ’em off and handed them to me.” He wiped his brow with them and said, “Sweetheart, watch you don’t catch cold.” Mr. Jones married at age 16 and has stayed married. While he went to London to make it as a singer, his wife worked in a battery factory to support their young son. Mr. Jones vowed to make it big so that she didn’t have to work and so that he could support his family. One of the great achievements of his life was making enough money that his father could retire from working in the Welsh coal mines at age 50. Tom Jones himself could have ended up in the coal mines, but he contracted tuberculosis at age 13 and the doctor told Tom’s father, “Whatever you do, you can’t put this boy in a coal mine because he has weak lungs.” Mr. Jones says, “And the weird thing is, with weak lungs I’ve become a f**kin’ singer.”
***
Copyright by Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
***
The Funniest People in Music, Volume 3 — Buy:
Smashwords: Many Formats, Including PDF
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003Y8XQ8S/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i125
BRUCE’S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: “I Remember Everything”
Artist: John Prine
Artist Location: Nashville, Tennessee
Info: “A two-time Grammy-winner, John Prine is among the English language’s premier phrase-turners. … a remarkable career that has drawn praise from Bob Dylan, Kris Kristofferson, Bonnie Raitt, Roger Waters, Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen & others. He is a 2019 Rock & Songwriter’s Hall of Fame inductee, a Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame member and a PEN New England Lyrics Award.”
John Prine’s life dates are October 10, 1946 – April 7, 2020. He died of the coronavirus.
This song was recorded in the Prines’ living room.
Written by John Prine & Pat McLaughlin.
Price: $1 (USD) for track; this track is a single.
Genre: Americana, Singer-Songwriter
Links:
https://johnprine.bandcamp.com
https://johnprine.bandcamp.com/track/i-remember-everything
Mishaps
• In opera, singers must be heard in the back rows of the opera house. Occasionally, this striving after volume results in a spray of saliva that can drench an innocent co-star. The tenor Pasquale Brignoli was known for his spraying. While on stage co-starring with Brignoli in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, contralto Emily Lablache asked him loudly, “See here, my good friend, can’t you for once spit on Donna Elvira’s dress?”
• The Russian Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Modest Altschuler, was playing Beethoven’s “Leonore No. 3” at an outdoor park. Just as the first trumpeter, stationed away from the orchestra, raised his horn to his lips to play the offstage fanfare, a park policeman ran over to him and grabbed the trumpet away from him, saying, “You can’t do that here! Don’t you know there’s a concert going on?”
• One of Frank Cottrell Boyce’s friends visited a pub where he heard a band playing an expert version of Eddie and the Hot Rods’ “Anything You Wanna Do.” When the band took a break, he bought them all drinks and advised them to form an Eddie and the Hot Rods tribute band. The band’s singer replied, “Nice idea. The only problem with it is that I am Eddie. And these are my Hot Rods.”
• Chubby Wise played fiddle for country singer Hank Snow. During a concert, Mr. Wise’s bow caught Mr. Snow’s toupee and flung it out into the audience. Someone in the audience went home with a very unusual celebrity memento. (Once, Mr. Snow got too close to the edge of the stage and fell off. He said, “Godd*mn it, Chubby. Why don’t you watch where I’m going?”)
• Fanny Brice was persistent. Once she was singing her big number in a show when her voice cracked — something no one could believe. She made the orchestra begin the song again, and she sang again, and her voice cracked again. So she told the audience, “Just stay in your seats. We’ll get it this time.” And she did get it, and she received a huge ovation from the audience.
• Bobby Jax played in his junior high school marching band in Paragould, Arkansas, where his most memorable exploit was falling on his rear end during a halftime performance. Because of this exploit, his fellow band members implemented the annual “Bobby Jax I’ve Fallen and I Can’t Get Up Award.” Bobby good-naturedly became the recipient of the first award.
• Ernestine Schumann-Heink was rehearsing Wagner’s Das Rheingold, in which she played a nymph. She and the other women playing nymphs were connected to wires that raised and lowered them to simulate diving and swimming. Unfortunately, she disliked the motion and screamed, “For Heaven’s sake, let me down! I’m the mother of eight children!”
• After retiring from opera and movies, Geraldine Farrar began giving musical concerts. Mishaps sometimes occurred at these concerts. At one concert, a storm knocked out the electric power. Therefore, Ms. Farrar gave the concert by the light of candles. She held one in front of her, while her pianist played by the light of two candles stuck in potatoes.
• Opera singers sometimes have very tight travel schedules. On her way to London to perform, soprano Eva Turner stopped at Las Palmas to sing the part of Leonora in Trovatore. Her ship sailed just a half-hour after the final curtain, so her fellow travelers were treated to the sight of Ms. Turner in full costume climbing up a ladder to get on board.
***
Copyright by Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
***
The Funniest People in Music, Volume 3 — Buy:
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