Music for Motoring

Few things match the open road with the top down and the radio blasting in the front seat. The car and the AM radio is one of the most storied pairings of modern technology, forever immortalized in films such as "American Graffiti." If you didn't have a Thunderbird or at least even know Suzanne Summers you still wanted the experience of the wind in the hair and the Beach Boys singing the praises of California girls, right?

Not always. But the endless highways and ever changing scenery of America or any picturesque part of the world such as this pass in New Zealand pictured here have always been irresistible to millions of car and driving enthusiasts, myself included. I remember my first cross-country trip in a blue Pontiac my parents had given me during my sophomore year at college. I drove from Baltimore to Dallas by way of Atlanta which was two days of torture because the speed limit was still set at 55 MPH and this old Pontiac only had an AM radio. Between traffic, watching for cops and constantly fidgeting with the dial to find any listenable station I somehow survived the trip with an overnight stop in - wait for it - Meridian, Mississippi. Sigh.

Good music was not only a requirement to help pass the miles but that certain types of music had to match specific moods, the time of day and the surrounding scenery. Classical in the morning along the coast can be a good and relaxing thing but after dark in the desert following eight hours of driving, not so much. Still, the limited range of most stations required channel surfing roughly every two hours even for the more powerful signals. It was always amusing and frustrating to be tuned in to 103.7 and then without even changing the dial a country crooner would suddenly pop up, grieving the death of his dog over a longneck beer where Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes had been lamenting their women not knowing them by now!

XM Radio went a long way in guaranteeing never ending streams of clear sounding music that would play all the way across the country, a huge step-up from local programming and without commercials. Even for the most die-hard "Office Lite" fan, though, there has to be a change in flavor every now and then. Moreover, as much as I wanted steady listening I wasn't about to pay a subscription for something I used to and still could get for free. I could always bring my own.

My cars over the years have featured 8-tracks to cassettes and then CDs. Through the 90s and the turn of the century I would have a box of my favorite CDs in the passenger seat next to me and boast of my skill at changing out discs by feel without taking my eyes off the road. Still, this practice was dangerous and cumbersome, exposing myself and other motorists to accidents and my collection of music to theft. Something, anything, needed to come along that would make driving easier.

Like others with a huge collection of CDs I resisted the iPod as long as I could. I'm rarely one to jump on a fad right from the beginning, not buying my first iPod until 2008. Sifting through the accessories I found what I was looking for...a cassette adaptor that would let me enjoy my playlists through the car stereo. At last! Personally crafted music exactly suited to my tastes from my own collection and in the listening order I desire. Skipping a song or changing an entire playlist meant simply thumbing the flywheel. The "Shuffle" feature makes it even easier. Today the only reason not to have good music is simply whether or not I want to hear any at all.

Now if only I could afford a late model car that comes with a docking station so I could get rid of that high pitched feedback whining through the adaptor thingy!

Gotta go.

Nothing to Nutbush

Fan or not, the lyrics are burned in to the brain of just about anyone over the age of 12 and under the age of 80.

Church house, gin house
School house, out house
On Highway Number 19
Where people keep the city clean.
They call it Nutbush. Ol' Nutbush.
They call it Nutbush City Limits.

Memorial Day Weekend found me heading towards southern Illinois from Texas after an overnight stop in Memphis. It was a Friday morning and the family was not due to gather until Saturday morning so I had all day to wander around the area and see what there was to see. A quick ride on I-40 East towards Nashville, I took the exit at Stanton to pick up US Highway 70 for Brownsville, the major town at the southern end of Tennessee Highway 19. Nutbush was halfway between Brownsville and Ripley and Brownsville was only 12 miles ahead of me in classic cotton country of the kind few people see or want to know about.

Were it not for the fact that I was on that road on purpose and specifically looking for landmarks related to Tina Turner I would have missed the sign that said "Nutbush Unincorporated." Moreover I would have driven right through it at top speed and not even realized it was over that quickly. From one house every two miles to three houses within the last mile before town is not something city mice like me automatically take note of.

Nunn Road peeled off to the south to a Methodist church and the town cemetery, Forked Deer Road to the north and Tibbs Road off of that back to the east towards Brownsville. The "gin house" sat smack in the middle of this small collection of roads, a seed mill as opposed to the romantic image of a speakeasy or juke joint. Nutbush was too small for one of those then and remains that small today. A wooden school sat at the head of Nunn Road but the sign declaring its name was gone with no indication if it was a middle school, high school or K-12.

Other than this one sign above a recently re-opened general store there is no other indication in or around town that Anna Mae Bullock was born here, where she may have lived, worshipped, worked or played as a child. The proprietress inside told three different stories she herself had heard of possible homes linked to the rock superstar, each one in a different direction on the compass, but ultimately admitting that she herself had no idea.

A small working farm community has little in the way of tourist facilities or attractions. I was in Nutbush for little more than an hour and even drew the attention of a local state trooper who saw my camera, wrote me off as another out of the way tourist and rolled back to Brownsville from whence he came. I packed up the camera and rolled west to US Highway 51 for Illinois. I had family to meet that evening for dinner, Tina wasn't in town and small town troopers are not particularly happy if they feel they have to come back.

Nutbush really was and remains to this day a "quiet little old community." A one horse town if ever there was one.

Gotta go.

"This Is It" New Zealand Style

Michael Jackson had passed away early in the Summer of 2009 just eight days before launching his paradoxical "This is It" comeback tour with 50 shows in London, England. I am glad I was able to see him live once many moons ago during the "HIStory Tour" but was pleased to hear later that Summer that his estate would be releasing a documentary film of the rehearsal footage. Those are the kind of extras found on a DVD of the full concert; since there would never be one, money grab that it was it was a good idea just the same to show the world what might have been.

My one dilemma was that the premier, October 28th, would be during my first week of vacation out of the country. Not to worry, my host family in New Zealand said. I had already planned to be in their part of the country that week and they had decided to go themselves so it was no trouble to arrange an extra ticket for the event. Sweet! On vacation, in New Zealand with old friends and seeing the last show of shows from one of the world's great showmen.

New Plymouth, New Zealand, is next to nothing else in the civilized world. Mt. Egmont, or Taranaki in native Maori, was itself kicked out of the Lake Taupo region by the other three massive volcanoes there after a fight over a girl according to legend and lore. Auckland and Wellington, the national capital, are five hours each to the north and south, respectively. There is a small industrial port but the town otherwise serves as a place to live peacefully by the sea and raise a family away from the madness of Auckland, the largest city in the country. This bucolic town/village by the sea is like a home away from home for me, filled with breathtaking scenery, caring friends and quiet times. It is not the place to expect cordoned streets, huge crowds or impersonators in full gear.

The theater did engage the velvet rope cordon but they needn't have bothered. The space eventually filled up but there was no mad rush for choice seats in the venue of roughly 300. There was a moment of silence for Michael, then the lights fell and the show began. The "Kiwis" enjoyed an early chuckle when one dancer from across "The Ditch" only got as far as "I'm from Australia..." before breaking down crying. What, we thought, are we in for if they're blubbering before we even get into the film too deeply?

The young "crunksters" laughed out loud again at some of Michael's more uninspired antics such as lying on his back and kicking his legs in the air but they were in lock step with the back-up dancers who were primarily their age. One dancer pulled off an aerial barrel roll during "Shake Your Body Down" that nearly got the entire audience on its feet but this is New Zealand where over the top displays outside of sports arenas are frowned upon. Still, "Billie Jean" was the crowning moment it always has been, the last time it would be seen live and the moment when every dancer on stage and in that theater first decided what they wanted to do for a living. It was a bittersweet homecoming for those of us who knew him when.

Michael played New Zealand only once during the "HIStory Tour," appearing in Auckland over two nights in November of 1996. Maybe some in the theater that night in little New Plymouth were there. Many surely pretended this was the actual concert come to New Zealand at last and enjoyed it for what it was. The small remainder simply saw it as an interesting night on the town, a two hour diversion like any other film.

Either way, we all agreed that this concert, this documentary, would have topped them all. One thing we couldn't agree on was how long he would have stood there on opening night to all that applause before lighting in to the first number. Five? Ten? Fifteen minutes? Who knows?

Gotta go.

Pressed into Zurich

Our software developer was based in Zurich during the time I lived and worked in Chicago. I had joined a team under a "train the trainer" program where, having demonstrated my abilities to lead a classroom, I would take our new software product out to the masses and provide onsite instruction and support during the transition. Things got off to a rocking start from the very first day when we discovered the product was not even close to being "in the can" and ready to take out. They were still building it and we, none of whom had any developing background, were being pressed in to service to help out!

Part of that bargain was flying to Zurich to meet with our Java developers face to face to really test and scope out each line of code as it was being written. Following a quick flight to Paris and a change of planes we arrived in Zurich, one of the most interconnected cities for public transportation on Earth.

From the main train station we walked a short distance across the Bahnhof Bridge to our little boutique hotel, the Central Plaza. "Boutique" because, word to the wise, when the rooms are described as "cozy" it means they are on the tiny side. One of them was even round! The service was excellent, however, and we couldn't beat the location with the train station just across the river and several street car lines converging right outside our door.

Zurich is the cleanest city over 500,000 on record, bar none. We were amazed at the lack of trash on the streets, no visible graffiti in the central areas and most of all, the fact that Lake Zurich, this massive glacial lake that is the living heart of the city, is clean enough to swim in. Ferries shuttling commuters from one side to the other were dodging pleasure boats as well as bathers out for their daily constitutional and leaving we, the grizzled Americans dumbfounded at the spectacle. This from one in the group who had never seen a combination toilet (and bidet) and got a real cold jolt as a surprise one morning.

More surprises were in store during our stay as I discovered the Zurich Opera had mounted a production of Carmen with tickets available that weekend. The last opera I had gone to was a Stuttgart performance of "Hansel and Gretel" when I was about nine years old so I was fairly excited about the evening. Even my less than enthusiastic but "what the hey" co-workers perked up after I hummed a few bars of "La Habanera."

"Oh, I know that one," and off we went to enjoy George Bizet's comic masterpiece. Our seats weren't the best and the staging seemed skewed more to one side of the stage than the other but the true miracle of the evening was the mezzo-soprano singing the title role that night. Operas alternate the lead singers to allow their voices to rest; our Carmen had just sung the night before but when the scheduled diva for our performance called in sick our Carmen, the trooper, was pressed in to service. Flawed as the main character was, her voice was flawless.

As was Zurich itself.

Gotta go.

When, South Africa, When?

A few years ago my "Wingman" and I were wanting to go to South Africa. I call him my wingman because we are good friends who travel well together, having been to both Europe and the South Pacific with no trouble at all. Our elaborate plan for South Africa included trading in miles for First Class all the way on Emirates out of JFK on the new A380 and connect in Dubai for the flight to Capetown. Less than six months after the service began, however, Emirates pulled the A380 from New York which had been running twice a day and averaging maybe 150 people. That plus the falling economy scotched our plans for the trip but it wasn't the first time I had made plans for South Africa and cancelled them.

South Africa is simply not a place to "hit it and quit it" in some long weekend tour of highlights. It's too far for one thing, too big, too diverse in landscape and arguably the most complex western society on the planet. Kruger National Park, world famous for the "big five" rhino, hippo, lion, cape buffalo and elephant populations, is in the extreme northeast of the country, nearly 1000 miles away from the historic and volatile playground of Cape Town, home of Table Mountain, world class beaches, Robben Island and shark tours in False Bay. Durban and the KwaZulu Natal region lay nearly two hours by air along the coast to the east again, offering a heady mixture of Miami Beach climate and tribal war battlefields.

Then there is the rich music scene of which I've been a fan since Paul Simon came out with "Graceland." A pungent mixture of reggae, hip hop and tribal rhythms, South African music is on the world stage like never before thanks to acts such as Freshlyground, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, the Soweto Gospel Choir, Bongo Maffin, Thandiswa Mazwai, Yvonne Chaka Chaka, Danny K (listen to this one) and the many iterations of Johnny Clegg with his Zulu based band Savuka. Previous generations will remember the late Miriam Makeba for "The Click Song" and "Pata Pata."

That is a lot of land and sound to cover and the reasons most people schedule close to a full month in the country to make it all worthwhile. Like most Americans, however, I don't have four weeks to dedicate to one vacation. Like most people in general I have concerns for my health in a land where one in five is HIV Positive to go along with "lesser" illnesses such as diphtheria, malaria and hepatitis A and B! Like most people in general again I have concerns for my physical safety where news reports constantly stream stories of desperate poverty and endemic crime- tour books even blame baboons by the side of the road who have learned that foolish foreigners that stop for photos with their windows rolled down are easy pickings for a good carjacking.

Where the United States is a rough half-century ahead of South Africa in true freedom and democracy for all citizens, and where some will argue there is still some ways to go, South Africa remains in the grip of significant social teething.

Over twenty years after Mandela was released the recent murder of an extremist has the world press up in arms to report how the entire country is all but on the verge of social collapse. White Afrikaners are concerned with mounting evidence of corruption and largesse within the single-party government under the African National Congress - poor blacks remain disenfranchised and poor while, in a theme stretching the whole of sub-Saharan Africa, those in power live in luxury behind gated communities. That is, if I am to believe everything I read coming out of a country some 9,000 miles away.

It has been, again, 15 years since the 1995 Rugby World Cup that outsiders are led to believe did so much in beginning the healing and coming together of a truly dynamic society.

I have traveled to every "civilized" corner and continent of this planet and never been concerned with or thought to ask how my race will affect my experience overseas. That is the gift and benefit of 50 years of social progress in my own country, the confidence to travel abroad in both physical and social security. Three times I have tried and failed to get to this incredible country; I don't have 50 years left to play with.

When, South Africa, when can I come and visit you?

Gotta go.

Learning Lenny

Stevie Ray Vaughn is known as one of the most accomplished electric blues musicians ever to have come from the United States and certainly from the great state of Texas. He was the original John Mayer as far as white American blues rockers are concerned, both of whom have shared the stage with B.B. King and Eric Clapton. Vaughn, however, seems to be a fading star on popular radio only 19 years after his untimely death. It can be argued that his one crossover hit was "Crossfire" from 1989.

The blues has rarely been a genre that has drawn my attention or interest. I simply couldn't relate to music that only ever lamented lost opportunity. Hard rocking blues a la "SRV" (Stevie Ray Vaughn) was even further away from my preferred styles of music. Vaughn's style matched his persona, hard edged, hard living and hard charging. Come to think of it you'd think it would have been right up my alley!

A recent Saturday was only the second full day of opportunity to play with my new digital camera and try new photographic techniques and styles. It would be a nice day to visit the Laurel Land Cemetery in Dallas, Texas, just south of downtown. The cemetery of choice in Dallas for glitterati is Sparkman-Hillcrest where the saying goes "Bury me at Hillcrest overlooking Nieman-Marcus (at Northpark Mall just over the eastern fence). Tom Landry, Mary Kay (Ash), Mickey Mantle and Greer Garson rest here but only one nationally recognized name lies at Laurel Land: Stevie Ray Vaughn.

The weather couldn't decide if it was going to rain or clear up into bright Autumn sunshine. In Dallas in early Fall count on getting both. The objective for the camera was "macro" photography, or the taking of very close-up shots of floral subjects - no better place than a cemetery. And I can pay my respects to Mr. Vaughn who has a unique place of honor on the grounds. The Vaughn Estate owns a small traffic island in the middle of a crossroads where Stevie and his parents rest in peace by themselves. Some biker fans were there ahead of me and, not wanting to disturb them or be disturbed myself I looked for interesting subjects to try out my fledgling camera skills.

Circling back around the bikers had gone but two 40-something guys in an SUV had beaten me to the punch. I discretely tried to find more subjects until they had departed when the most haunting thing occurred. Stevie's music started to play, a slow, gentle, lilting melody wafting through the air over his grave, teasing and tossing the balloons, flowers and leaves strewn upon his facing stone. Had the cemetery installed speakers to continually play his music and invoke his spirit? What WAS that song? The moment may have been a tad disconcerting but the song was simply gorgeous.

It was "Lenny," an ode to his then wife. And it was not coming from the eternal ether but the SUV. The two 40-somethings were playing it with the windows rolled down in tribute to their icon as they gazed upon his marker. The marriage ended and Stevie became yet another musician gone too soon at the age of 35 but in the strangest of ways his music lived on that day and captured a new fan in me.

The hard charging songs of his catalog remain beyond me but "Lenny" and another even more powerful musing, "Riviera Paradise" are two songs I might never have discovered otherwise.

Gotta go.

Music and Me

My first relocation was from Kansas to Germany when I was only 18 months old. I didn’t that from then until now I would average a change of address every 18 months of my life, from as long as 9 years to as little as 10 months. Music helps me remember.

Like many others I’ve come to associate certain songs with specific places, either for a specific memory or due to a general feeling. I don’t have a song for every city or country I’ve visited or lived in but here is a sample list and the reasons why:

Indianapolis – “These Eyes” by The Guess Who. They and Three Dog Night were all over the radio in the late ‘60s and early 70s when my family lived here. I liked “These Eyes” better than “Joy to the World” or “Domino” by Van Morrison.

Dallas – “In the House of Stone and Light” by Martin Page. It was 1994 and I was about to move from Dallas to Los Angeles. It anchored me to Dallas while setting the stage for life in L.A, echoing in a way the journey of the man in the song.

Atlanta – “Boogie on Reggae Woman” by Stevie Wonder. You couldn’t find a bigger artist in 1974 when my family lived here for just under a year.

New York – “Piano in the Dark” by Brenda Russell. It caught me as I was walking along 43rd heading for the office. The lilting jazz simply said this is how New York must feel.

Los Angeles – “Tinseltown” by Ronnie Jordan. Funky jazz instrumental that made the year I lived in L.A. quite positive. This was a “go-to” when things weren’t going well.

Heidelberg – “Strawberry Letter 23” by the Brothers Johnson. It was my first “grown-up” funk album and, along with “This Will Be,” “Best of My Love,” “Get Down Tonight,” “Getaway” and “Jive Talking” made 1975 a very upbeat year along the Neckar.

Boston – “Giving You the Best That I’ve Got” by Anita Baker. This was a rough year for me but Anita got me through. It was warm and smooth in a rough, cold place.

London - “White Ladder” by David Gray. I was in London on business when “Babylon” first caught the ear of the world. I liked this one better and felt it my own personal link to the city.

Paris – “Another Day in Paradise” by Phil Collins. I was staying with a friend for a few days here while this tune was all over the radio. Collins wrote a perfect paradox about the hardships of the disenfranchised versus the everyday lives of others.

I can’t wait to find out what song will connect me with Rome or Moscow!

Gotta go!