Jukebox Junction USA Published by Lilly Press Editor: Judith A

Home , Do Something to Me, Monika Dannemann, The Kinks, Wine It Up

River Poets Journal Jukebox Junction USA Published by Lilly Press Editor: Judith A. Lawrence River Poets Journal Co-Editor: Joseph Reich Special Edition All future rights to material Jukebox Junction USA published in the River Poets Journal are retained by the individual Authors/Artists and Photographers. A Poetic History To How Music Moved You November - 2009 Special Edition CONTENTS: Page #

Poets & Writers

Barbara Crooker 3 Robert Cooperman 3 Bruce Majors 4 Charles Rammelkamp 4 Davide Frame 5 Lyn Lyshin 5 Kenneth Pobo 6 Natalie Villalon 6 Nils Peterson 7 Roger Craik 8 John Riley 8 Peggy Landsman 9 Anthony M. Majahad 10 Dianna Robin Dennis 10 Debby Forte 11 Barbara Eknoian 12 Elaraine Lockie 12 Judith A. Lawrence 13 Delbert R. Gardner 14 Gretchen Fletcher 15 Jacob M. Carpenter 16 Richard Roe 17 & 25 Laura E. Holloway 17 Beatrice M. Hogg 18 Beth Browne 18 Vera Long 19 Joseph Reich 20-21 Carole Longo Harris 22 Louis Gallo 23-24 Neal Whitman 26 Julia Ponder 26

Editorials As I’ve mentioned before, one of the best things I just wanted to sincerely and earnestly say how about being an editor of a literary journal is the many wonderful and thoughtful submissions Judith writers you meet along the way, whether locally, and I received over the past few months for our across the USA, or internationally through mail or theme issue, "Jukebox Junction," which likewise email correspondence. just made our task that much more challenging in having to choose and boil down and triage it all into Joseph Reich and I were enjoying occasional email one thematic and salient collection; appearing to chats on all kinds of things, from poetry, prose, music touch on musical periods and influences all the way and art, to food, Philadelphia, NY, sharing some back from the Twenties to the present day, and favorite bands, singers, songs and groups we were encompassing a whole wide range of eclectic enthralled of and then one night in an email musical forms and genres. Joseph mentioned, “wouldn’t it be great to have a themed issue of poems that were inspired by music We were also pleased to have received a variety or favorite songs?” of submissions from so many different regions of the country, from small town to rural to suburban to the The idea really intrigued me as music plays such a big city, as well as internationally. large part in our lives. If I taped all the CD’s, records and cassettes back to back in my home I For all of those who didn't make it, I just wanted would have enough music to play continually all year to say how honored and grateful we were to have and then some. received your submissions, as well as your willingness to share with us what appeared to be I often question why I have this impulse to buy yet some real profound and sentimental and nostalgic another album when I know that I may not get around memories, and do hope the experience was as to playing it for some time, but the thought that it’s cathartic for you as it was for us. there, accessible for when I’m in the mood, allowing the luxury of the occasional laid back day or night, I believe what Judith and I have put together pulling out that old chestnut, sliding the disc into my here is a real insightful and intriguing, engaging and player knowing it will take me away, weave images absorbing collection as evidenced by "Jukebox and magic into the fabric of my life, and every once in Junction," and now please feel free to dig in at your a while even inspire a poem. own leisure, and mosey on down memory lane to the melody of your choosing, and wherever that path may The Jukebox Junction USA Special Edition has happen to lead you! been a labor of love. The difficult part of pulling this collection together was that there were so many Joseph Reich wonderful submissions it was difficult for both Co-Editor Joseph and I to make the final selections. Jukebox Junction, USA

In our selections, the poet’s names were removed from their submissions, and each poem was assigned a number in place of for unbiased selection.

I hope that you enjoy this wonderful collection and that the lyrics, music and poems bring back some meaningful memories and inspiration for you as well.

Judith A. Lawrence Editor/Publisher 2

Name of Songs: Thunder Road, Independence Day, Name of Song: Dark Star 4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy) Hungry Heart Artist: Grateful Dead Name of Album: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Name of Album: Live/Dead, 1969 Band Live/1975-1985 Setting: The Fillmore East, NYC Name of Artist: Bruce Springsteen Love Interest: Not Nearly as Important as the Music Verse: Dark star crashes, Pouring its light into ashes. Me 'n Bruce Springsteen Take My Baby off to College The Night the Dead First Played “Dark Star” at the Old Fillmore East We hit the turnpike early, O Thunder Road, every inch of the car packed: sweatshirts, prom Dark Star: a black hole. gowns, teddy bears, such heavy baggage. She's both But to us at the old Fillmore coming and going, this shy violet of a child, that night, “Dark Star” meant the teenager too hostile to be in the same room, the music of the spheres: breathe the same air. Now she dozes beside me as the car spools up the miles, and I slip in a favorite Pythagoras might’ve been up tape, raise the volume. Her skin, edible, a downy near the stage, twirling peach, her long hair unwinding. My foot taps the to the beat the drums laid down accelerator with the beat; the Big Man, Clarence hypnotic as a snake charmer, Clemons, pours his soul out his sax, yearning, the guitars and keyboards weaving, throbbing, as the turnpike pulls us west, like the dance of DNA molecules, bisecting Pennsylvania, tunneling through the the universe forming that night. mountains: Blue, Allegheny, Kittatinny, Tuscarora, this big-muscled, broad-backed hunk of a state. Garcia’s guitar a pterodactyl soaring on thermals, diving We drive deeper into the heart of anthracite, for prey just under the surface, the wind blows through the dark night of her hair. then stroking skyward again A harmonica wails and whines, brings me back to my higher and higher, almost more tie-dyed college years; sex looms like a Ferris wheel, than music was capable of. carnival lights in the water, but we've reached our exit, here she is, it's independence day, ready or not, And all the while we swayed Pittsburgh, city of smoke and grit, polished chrome like a field of wind-weaving barley and glass, soot streaked buildings, pocket on this night of pulsing handkerchief neighborhoods, abandoned planets, comets, and stars. steelworks, the Monongahela River. I deliver her again, heavier this time. When we left the concert hall, We set up the room, she turns cocky and sulky, dawn was turning East Village breaks into sobs when I leave. buildings the color of doves.

On the return trip, I play the same tapes over and “What the hell was that?” over. The miles roll by, I'm driven by the beat, one friend asked. everybody's got a hungry heart, nearly there: “I don’t know,” I answered, Lenhartsville, Krumsville, Kutztown, “but I never wanted it to stop.” green rolling hills dotted with cows, Pittsburgh's iron and steel filling the horizon ©Robert Cooperman in the rearview mirror.

©Barbara Crooker

Name of Song: Purple Haze Name of Song: In the Middle of Nowhere Name of Album: Are You Experienced Artist: Dusty Springfield Artist: Jimi Hendrix Year: 1965 Year: 1967 Setting: Middle of Michigan Setting: Tennessee Technological University Hometown: Albion, Michigan College Student, Loose lifestyle Season: Fall, cool evenings Love Interest: The Sixties Verse: Baby won't you tell me/What am I to do?/I'm in Hometown: Dayton, Tennessee, Small Town, USA the middle of nowhere/Getting nowhere with you. Season: Quiet waves, Summer Verse: Purple haze all in my eyes, Hooking the Gut uhh/Don't know if it's day or night/ You got me blowin, blowin my mind/ In the middle of Michigan, Is it tomorrow, or just the end of time? just past the middle of the century, CKLW, the AM station out of Windsor, Flying Like Angels provided the background music to the movie of our lives. We made John’s Place an icon, Across the river from Detroit, Pabst Blue Ribbon like sacred wine, they played all the current hits a watering hole for the lost. to the teenagers in the cars Somehow we always got back to school. in the small towns in the middle of nowhere, Minds blew at the edge of knowledge, a non-stop stream of hit songs psychedelic dynamo, free love time, as we circled through the town, leaning toward darkness or light six or seven of us high school boys ––freedom was hard. packed in a single car, singing along to Motown, Jose Garcia wore ringlets of love the Jefferson Airplane, in army green, stepped on a land mine, the Dave Clark Five, came home in a box. Beatles, Animals, Rolling Stones. Didn’t make it back to school. We orbited the planet that was our town, our universe – We thought the smoke-filled days, liquid nights hooking the gut, in the local phrase – would never end––now it seems like, Victory Park, the college campus, what’s the song? Purple Haze… past fast food joints and ice cream stands, smoking cigarettes and talking But we were cool in that purple mist about the girls with whom driving the dark side of the road, we were getting nowhere. flying like angels going nowhere in the smoky, yellow van with blue flowers ©Charles Rammelkamp and the red door painted black.

©Bruce Majors

Dusty Springfield - at home Jimi Hendrix 4

Song: Mississippi Name of Song: Me and the Devil Blues Album: Love and Theft, 2001 Artist: Robert Johnson - Blues singer/song writer Artist: Bob Dylan Hometown: Virginia Hometown: Venice, Italy Season: May, drizzle Verse: Well my ship's been split to splinters and it's sink- Verse: You can bury my body down by the highway side ing fast. I'm drowning in the poison, got no future, got no Lord, my old evil spirit can catch a Grayhound bus and past. But my heart is not weary, it's light and it's free. I've ride. got nothing but affection for all those who sailed with me. May, Drizzle, Virginia Mississippi Sixth day of pewter. This song in my mind The cat coils under recurs, persists the microwave, ex- and it’s like that land down south cited by garbage with houses with verandas trucks as I open filled with large leaves from whose margins mail, a little cautious raindrops hang and never fall as if something and clouds and sun clash quietly dangerous could be and pools linger harmlessly there. Bruise sky. for a long time after the floods. Ozone’s cheap perfume in the trees. I think This song steps forward with the stride of Robert Johnson of the long-legged heron and with it flies, with a poisoned drink eyes so accustomed at surveying and at one in one hand from some with the slow wings’ beating and the trees’ swaying. one sure he’d been cheating with his wife, I see this room without me, sang bury my body by the window-panes reflecting branches and sky, the old railroad it’s a big room, sign so I can catch a Robert Johnson like the big pace of the song’s refrain ride on the old Grey- (One of two, possibly three and I think it’s great to shed your skin and breath hound bus and ride and photos taken in his short life) and keep walking kissing that land ride. Dead at 28, a where we know everything changes voice says as the cat just to let nothing change. coils on terry cloth as if it was purple velvet ©Davide Frame maybe dreaming of gizzards or being worshipped with flayed salmon and sparrows

©Lyn Lifshin

[Robert Johnson's death is as mysterious as his life. The prevailing theory is that he was poisoned in a juke joint in Three Forks near Greenwood, Mississippi. He was buried beside the highway, where the busses pass by, in the small Zion Church cemetery near Morgan City.] Bob Dylan in Mississippi 5

Name of Song: Gingerbread Man Name of Song: Wu-Tang Clan Ain't Nuthin' ta Fuck Wit Name of Album: Mony, Mony Name of Album: Enter the Wu-Tang (26 Chambers) Artist: Tommy James and the Shondells Artist: Wu-Tang Clan Year: 1968 Year: 2008 Love Interest: Stan (no name in song Setting: Princeton University, nerd camp though speaker calls himself a Love Interest: the philosophical stoner guy gingerbread man) Hometown: Alamo, CA Season: Spring, more cool than I would Season/Weather: clear summer night like Verse: Ti-tiger style/Tiger style/Tiger style (Wu-Tang clan ain't nothin' Verse: Hey girl, if you lost your way ta fuck wit)/BANG IT/Tiger style (Wu-Tang clan ain't nothin' ta fuck Reach out and take my hand wit)/Tiger style (Wu-Tang clan ain't nothin' ta fuck wit)/Tiger style/Tiger I’m a gingerbread man style (Come on!)/Bang it! Huh! Come on!

Gingerbread Man Untitled

Flip it over. I agree, Swaybacked groaning table we commandeered “Do Something To Me” held up by our faith in shouting and swaying raw summer nights is a great A side, roaring tiger-style banging our life-love but “Gingerbread Man” (we knew everyone else was dead) with a badass backbeat we thought could have Top 40’d and protested nothing except fall and on its own. The guitar the waning of dazing pseudo dangerous days craves a kiss. It’s OK, a few hands and Wu-Tang Clan gave us shields and arms beyond repulsion guitars can be in our fun and need for each other promiscuous. I’m a danced on the table it was our sinking ship gingerbread man, too. smoothing our springing anxieties At my worst I’m crummy, with burgeoning laughter and foreign courage overdone. At my best, you kissed me alien raw wandering it became everyone’s bacchus kiss I taste good. Songs are we were squished hugged chanted courted red blood cells— and there are so so many give me enough of them, I hung batlike prostrate and ready off that table I can stay healthy. to touch cool grass remember there was an earth to catch me ©Kenneth Pobo never felt screamed sang laughed safer someone else commandeered the speakers animal and nervous with the hastening escape of such nights as we proclaimed all with comic savagery (fear of losing it all): ain’t nothing’ to (laughter) wit living on ruckus that threat of collapse and rumbling still

©Natalie Villalon

Tommy James - 1960’s 6

Name of Song: Go Way From My Window I can’t remember the first part of her program – Year: 1950 maybe some 19th century German art songs Live Concert: Gladys Swarthout about babbling brooks and the beloved which I likely Setting: Centre College, Danville, Kentucky wasn’t ready for. At the end she sang, Love Interest: None “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” which Hometown: Mt. Vernon, NY explored a place in me I didn’t know existed, Season/Weather: Fall, Cold. Dreary and then, “Go Way From My Window” : Lyrics: Incorporated in piece Go way from my window Go Way From My Window Go way from my door Just leave me with my broken heart I’m sitting in a bar – drinking a martini larger than I’d And bother me no more, make at home – because I do not want And bother me no more. to drink alone. I am, of course, drinking alone. I’ll give you back your diamonds, I like the noises, the “warm, drunken wash of voices,” I’ll give you back your rings the beat of the bad music just beneath disturbing loud But I’ll ne’er forget the love we knew – I’m aware that the gin is good and I’m aware that As long as song birds sing, I’m thinking of Gladys Swarthout when she came to As long as song birds sing. Danville, Kentucky in the fall of 1950 to perform at the basketball court which four times a year doubled her big voice carrying passion so darkly that no as a ballroom and once in a blue moon as a concert sweet-voiced Judy Collins ever could seduce me a hall. I’m sitting in the bleachers listening, something decade later. to do in a town and time when any something was better than the usual nothing. My drink is gone, though the ice cubes I suck on are reminiscing about the good times. I float above the clinking beer glasses remembering how beautiful and exotic she was – broad-chested, ©Nils Peterson dark-haired, big-voiced, and I remember wondering what we were both doing there. I was sitting next to my roommate, also from New York, who in the spring would serenade the girl’s dorm singing “Some Enchanted Evening” in his fine baritone, and when his former girl would not come down and join him (these were the days of girl’s dorm lock- downs and house mothers and the like, and it was maybe two in the morning, his voice muzzy with drink) brought out a pistol full of threats. He waved it around and shortly after waved goodbye to the school.

One could say “girl’s dorm” then; Breckinridge Hall was the boy’s dorm in turn. The returning GI-billed soldiers lived in Vet’s Village, ran a never- stopping card game, and supported a steady trickle of moonshine from the hills. I was 16 and a long way from home which mostly felt good.

Name of Song: Apeman Name of Song: Mercy, Mercy, Mercy Name of Group: The Kinks Name of Album: Live at the Club Year: 1973 Name of Artist: Cannonball Adderley Setting: Heard this when I was having a miserable time Year: 1976 as an English schoolboy in Aberdeen , in the north of Setting: Attic of the old farmhouse where I grew up Scotland (but I always liked this song) Love Interest: Kristy Ketchum Verse: I'm an apeman, i'm an ape ape man. Hometown: Rural North Carolina (features car horn --mentioned in the poem--and traf- Season/Weather: Summer, of course, hot and sticky fic and city noise) (there are no lyrics to this song)

"Days" (which is another Kinks song) Mercy

The man who honked his car horn twice When I was a boy and self-born in religion my aunts, In the opening bars of “Apeman” by the Kinks uninterested in being washed Watches his granddaughter play in the sand In a municipal recreation ground with the saving blood of Jesus Christ, On an afternoon in south-west London. called me Preacher Boy. (They both lacked imagination and made a series And as he thumbs in line the brittle worms of bad marriages.) Of Captain Black into their greaseproof sleeve Come Sunday mornings I traveled alone And tongues it closed along the join, in a white shirt, clip on navy-blue tie, He is not thinking of that afternoon When the Sixties seemed to sigh their last and go, penny loafers shined the night before, And he, just as was told to do, down a failure of a county dirt road Opened the door of his Ford Cortina studded with rocks And, as if annoyed at someone pulling out, that jabbed through the red soil Banged two times with the heel of his hand like a reef slicing a surf. The plastic disk the size of half a crown In my memory it is always cold fall. At the end of my walk I'd wait for the bus He was only someone someone knew Who knew the Kinks. He never met the band. to the Providence Primitive Baptist Church, Now the sun of another century practice my weekly verses, press Slides westward. He muses that there used to be my wet hair back with a ten-cent black comb. An air-raid shelter where she’s playing now Beneath the cheerful tunneling I strapped myself to the word of God; And unfamiliar playground characters stood and swayed when hymns were sung; Which must be from American TV Where during bombing raids wanted death to be a wool glove. (His father used to say) the neighbours smoked, But the hold of that ancient agony collapsed Played darts and cribbage, crossed their fingers, hoped the first time I heard Cannonball Adderley That Jerry wouldn’t score a direct hit, and his Sextet play “Mercy Mercy Mercy.” And felt how small it was to be alive. It was recorded live in '66. Cannonball was gone before I heard The elms that stood through four kings’ reign Are spreading into twilight now. his funk rise from the turntable He asks himself how many years remain. and wash the sea of salvation away. The little girl is dawdling, looking back All was lost. What could I do? To where her pail-shaped castles in the sand Day spun into night! Are growing smaller as she’s led away. I became blind as a fish with scales for eyes. That touch of the dark felt right. ©Roger Craik ©John Riley

Name Of Song: "Nothing" Bucking the needle at every turn, Name Of Album:The Fugs First Album Knocking it out of the groove. Artist: The Fugs Year: 1965 ©Peggy Landsman Setting: Dream Town, New Jersey Love Interest: No one in 1965. After 1972, Richard Logan. Hometown: Newark, New Jersey Season/Weather: Fall, brisk and drizzly Verse: Sunday nothing, Monday nothing, Tuesday and Wednesday nothing, Thursday for a change a little more nothing, Friday once more nothing...-Tuli Kupferberg

Nothing Dreaming

Tuli Kupferberg and I are dancing. He is light-years ahead of me, Maybe old as twenty. I myself cannot be Many moons past eight.

We aren't holding hands exactly, Only our fingertips touch. Fugs Final Performance Concert - September 16, 2003 They are sticky. We've been noshing Messy chunks of halvah, Melting chocolate gelt. [Founded by Beat poets Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg in 1964, The Fugs pioneered a Mr. Slowpoke, my uncle Phil, blend of Beat-style lyrics, political rant, Fresh from a stretch in eternity, comedy and jug band music that influenced Roller-skates across the floor Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention, On wheels of salted bagels. The Velvet Underground, The Stooges, "Kam mit tsores!" he calls to us, and Alice Cooper.

And time, the way it does in dreams, Tuli Kupferberg gained indirect notoriety as the Whirls by, dreidel-like, real life "guy who jumped off of the Brooklyn Revealing all its sides Bridge and lived," immortalized in Allen To me. Ginsberg’s epic Howl.]

I am...I am distracted by Allen Ginsberg, excerpt from Howl Kaleidoscopic visions And winks from my mind's eye. “who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked away unknown Tuli, meanwhile, is spieling and forgotten into the ghostly daze of His nada, his gornisht, his nothing. Chinatown soup alley ways & firetrucks, not even one free beer,” I am turned around.

Cracked and scratched beyond repair, One of my favorite 78s Is skipping like mad past all the best parts, 9

Who was that trumpeter Name Of Song: Symphony #3 by Aaron Copeland Name Of Album: Copland: Symphony No. 3 accompanying some forgotten blues piece, Artist: New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, recorded on a graphite disc – circa 1920? Conductor Year: 1980 What happened? Setting: NYC - Avery Fisher Hall Hometown: Hopewell, NJ Did you die from an overdose Season/Weather: Crisp NY day - don't remember the of Sportin’ Life’s happy dust? season Verse: "Fanfare for Common Man" used as a theme for Were your notes absorbed various Olympic Games, is the basis of the final movement. into the ether of time, or handed down to your children Copland's Third "Common Man," in Four like the ancient Greek epic? Movements, New York, Avery Fisher Hall

You bear me to another world; I I spiral inward; your rich tones how can I write for filling the hollows of my soul. instruments with leaky pens black dots on white page When your music ends, its haunting echoes I solely desire still reverberating in me, to write me on your body the radio announcer with this warm finger can’t identify you. touch your coldly drawn He calls you a lost chord. breath, crescendo in C 'til notes multiply, die ©Anthony M. Majahad II dreaming your hands jazz body weeps, sighs, together we dance along brass

III audience restless ears disregard anguished notes hid in open chords

IV racing to leave, they trample our feet, curse our seats run for subways, cabs

we ponder Common Man's ability to miss his own life's refrain

©Dianna Robin Dennis

Name of song: Stairway to Heaven By the cool black window Name of album: Led Zeppelin 4 (released in 1971) my cat Natasha on her pillow, Artist: Led Zeppelin purrs Year: 1973 or 1974 There is something out there Setting: My bedroom The stars of promises past Love Interest: Just being alive, shared friendships, the moon and little bits of matted sun rock music. Boys were still in the future are fanned by jasmine breeze, Hometown: Barrington, R.I. skirting through the curtains Season/Weather: One late summer night and in between her whiskers Verse: And as we wind on down the road/Our shadows to smells of Indian summer taller than our souls/There walks a lady we all know/Who and a cricket applause, shines white light and wants to show/How everything still and pulsed with hope and fireflies turns to gold,/And if you listen very hard/The tune will come to you at last./When all are one and one is all/To be We sing our prayers at night a rock and not to roll./And she's buying a stairway to dreaming we are that lady heaven. answering the piper's call the sultry swells of Robert Here's To A Memory And A Favorite Song and Jimmy's silky strumming in our ears

Candle plume and verse converge upon the moment ©Debby Forte sway across the wall, gather on the ceiling a canopy of promise explodes just like a preacher's storm moves us to religion

Cloistered in my room on the corner of the second floor in nineteen- seventy- three or four we sisters in faith, a tribe eternally linked sing in tounges known only to our breed

We wear our hair hung loosely, parted down the middle shirts, an east indian gauze jeans low waisted, belled our clogs and wooden sandles scattered on the floor

Burning incense of solidarity we let all pretense go our shining pollyanna eyes always looking forward never back

Inside that little room on Linden Drive the air is warm the Spirit alive we watch our shadows dwarf our souls and know the difference

Name of song: Tears on my Pillow Name of Song: Goodnight Irene Name of album: A single Name of Album: In Times Like These Artist: Little Anthony & The Imperials Artist: 1950, my father/2006, Arlo Guthrie Year: 1959 Years: 1950 and 1999 Setting: Lake Hopatcong, NJ Setting: 1950, a song at bedtime/2006, a concert hall Love Interest: Ronnie M. in San Francisco, CA Hometown: North Bergen, NJ Love interest: My father Season: Summer, warm Hometown: Big Sandy, Montana Verse: You don’t remember me, but I remember you Season/Weather: 1950, all seasons/2006, autumn Twas not so long ago you broke my heart in two Verse: Irene goodnight, Irene goodnight Tears on my pillow pain in my heart caused by you Goodnight Irene, goodnight Irene I'll see you in my dreams The Summer of Possibilities Song from the Other Side I entered Lake Hopatcong’s only ice cream parlor. Arlo knew the secret He was standing behind the soda fountain long before scientists conceived cloning and I noticed his white blond hair. He discovered it in the guitar strums Just so I could see him every day, and famous folk lyrics from his father I ordered sundaes, apple turnovers Toured the country with reincarnate rituals and banana splits. Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation songs By summer’s end, I had gained ten lbs. that released Woody from his sound-proofed box One day he canoed past our hotel dock looking for me, But did he know how many but I had gone home for the weekend. other resurrections he wrought Many nights that winter I fantasized How the first bars of Goodnight Irene how I would be more outgoing could recall forgotten renditions from other fathers and by summer Like one who sat singing beside a bed I’d land a date with him. banishing nightmares and cooling fevers I arrived at the lake on a sunny With such nostalgia that the daughter June morning and he whizzed by thought Irene might have been her mother in his pink convertible with three friends. Did Arlo know how his lyrics released Later, I entered the ice cream parlor those moments long held in ransom expecting to see him, but found out Before breasts budded he had just left for the Navy. and fevers that became adolescent endemic That summer, every time I heard refused to be soothed by a song “Tears on my Pillow” And there was no antidote on the radio for the parental paralysis that followed I cried for him. ©Barbara Eknoian Frozen feelings that endured the test of time While the daughter slipped on them in icy dreams Until songs from the dead melted early memories That dribbled out and down her cheeks in a concert hall ©Elaraine Lockie Little Anthony & the Imperials 12

Name of Song: I Only Have Eyes For You A tall angular young foreigner Group: The Flamingoes with Elvis pompadour Year first released: 1959 advanced quickly to my side, Setting: First Ballroom Dance bowed courtly Love Interest: James Dean and swooped me in his arms. Hometown: Philadelphia, PA I looked up into wistful brown eyes, Season: Late Summer, balmy knew instinctively Verse: are the stars out tonight…I don't know if it's cloudy or I would break men’s heart’s that night, bright…I only have eyes for you… and the music played… as he crooned in faltering English in my ear… Boulevard Ballroom my love must be a kind of blind love… I can't see anyone but you… The year I turned eighteen Sha bop sha bop... I emerged from my cocoon, all that was terribly wrong ©Judith A. Lawrence magically righted.

On the wings of my metamorphoses I floated down a flight of steps leading to the Boulevard Ballroom, next to Big Boy’s Buns and Hamburgers, and the Boulevard Pool where the previous summer I lost my bikini top…not enough there to fill an A-cup.

A transformed image emerged complete with Nathalie Wood hair, alabaster blemish free skin, red, red lipstick, batting curled eyelashes, perfectly straight seamed silk stockings, strappy tapping black sequined high heels, The Flamingoes dressed in a borrowed low cut cinched swirl of dark gold, forest green, and deep purple fluid chiffon, an emerald pendant gleaming on my breast, with sparkling matching dangling earrings, the scent of Chanel clinging in the air.

The ceiling was ablaze with stars, cut crystal balls spinning fantasies, twinkling jewels rotating on the floor. Capricious Gods watched hushed in the wings.

With an intake of breath I glided nervously toward the line of young men waiting on the sidelines with fresh haircuts, decked out in their best suits, silk ties, white dress shirts and gleaming polished shoes, the same men whom only a year before had not taken a second glance Nathalie Wood & James Dean Rebel Without a Cause suddenly shifted interest toward me. 13

Name of Song: An Affair to Remember The myths and legends her appearance brought (Our Love Affair) To mind. Name of Album: Nat Cole Sings the Great Songs (1966) "Come back," I called, pretending calm; Artist: Nat King Cole, performer; words by Harold "It's a bit dangerous, love, and--well, the child--" Adamson and Leo McCarey; music by Harry Warren Year: 1969 "Yes, the baby," she agreed, sobering, Setting: Grand Canyon And the not yet obvious fetus made her grope Love Interest: Marilyn Hegarty Gardner Her way to me with care, back from the wild Hometown: Keuka Park, NY Where she had ventured without fear of harm. Season/Weather: a blisteringly hot September Then breathing freely, we gazed from behind the rope Verse: Our love affair is a wondrous thing/That we'll At the canyon carved as the patient river streamed rejoice in remembering/Our love was born with our first An aeon or so before our souls were dreamed. embrace/And a page was torn out of time and space/Our love affair, may it always be/A flame to burn through ©Delbert R. Gardner eternity/So take my hand with a fervent prayer/That we may live and we may share/A love affair to remember

Love at the Rim (For Marilyn)

Leaving Vegas after 8:00 p.m., We drove through the night, my bride of a year and I, To avoid the oven of the desert day. The stars were flares viewed through a velvet screen, And we heard Nat sing about "Our Love Affair" A dozen times to help Miss Holiday Inn Broadcast her own love message through the air. Next morning we stood on the Southern Rim (After a few hours' sleep inside the car) And tried to comprehend the giant chasm Licked into shape by the wandering Colorado.

At a lookout point my wife did a frightening thing: Nat King Cole She walked a jutting ledge to where a tree-- A straggly-haired cliffhanger of a pine-- Had clawed its roots between the rocks. She climbed The crooked trunk and wrapped it in her arms, Then twisted around toward the canyon rim So all I saw of her were her willowy arms About the trunk and one foot on a limb.

Soon her face appeared beside the trunk: Several pine needles sticking to her hair And a pixie smile in her hazel eyes, As she crooked a finger at me in mock seduction, Made me laugh at her despite my fear. But there was the precipice, and I forgot Movie - An Affair to Remember 14

Name of Song: Que Sera, Sera Name of Song: “Memories are Made of This” Artist: Doris Day Artist: Dean Martin Year: 1956 Year: 1956 Setting: the beach in Palm Beach, Florida Setting: Stand of Australian pines in a vacant lot by Love Interest: boys Lake Worth in West Palm Beach, Florida Hometown: West Palm Beach, FL Love Interest: boys Season/Weather: hot summertime Hometown: West Palm Beach, FL Verse: When I grew up and fell in love, Season/Weather: hot summertime I asked my sweetheart, 'What lies ahead? Verse: Take one fresh and tender kiss 'Will we have rainbows Add one stolen night of bliss 'day after day?' One girl, one boy Here's what my sweetheart said: Some grief, some joy 'Que sera, sera, Memories are made of this. 'Whatever will be, will be; Sweet, sweet memories you gave-a me 'The future's not ours to see. you can't beat the memories you gave-a me 'Que sera, sera, 'What will be, will be.' 50’s Girls

Beach Party Under the shade of pines we stretched taut stomachs Phosphorescence drips from bodies (we’d dared to bare in two-piece emerging from the night ocean, suits) across the hoods of Fords a black, horizonless and laid down coats of wax extension of the night sky. rubbed in wide swirls on trunks and fenders, taking care They trudge through sand not to scratch the surface carrying collected driftwood, as we caressed tail fins. blankets, and transistor radios Before the sun could dry the wax, as Doris tells them “Que sera, sera.” we buffed our boyfriends’ cars to mirrors that reflected They laugh away nervousness faces eager to please boys and shake dark drops of ocean who stood by and shared onto the bodies of their friends Luckies while they compared sitting in pairs around the fire waxes, cars, and girls. Someone's transistor who will eventually make their way on a blanket was tuned away from the others and become to Dean Martin telling us an archipelago of isolated islands that memories are made scattered down the beach. of this – even this small moment we would remember forever. ©Gretchen Fletcher ©Gretchen Fletcher

Doris Day Dean Martin 15

Name of Song: Nightswimming thighs, knees, ankles Name of Album: Automatic for the People into piles on wet grass. Artist: R.E.M. Hearts pump. Year: 1995 Arms cover. Setting: Farm creek in rural Midwest Girls rush Hometown: Oregon, Illinois to hide. Season/Weather: Warm summer night Boys smile Verse: Nightswimming deserves a quiet night with wide eyes I'm not sure all these people understand racing and straining It's not like years ago, not to miss. The fear of getting caught, Of recklessness and water Heart beats pound waves. They cannot see me naked Long hair These things, they go away, and smiles Replaced by everyday float on the creek. Stomachs squeeze The Naked Moon Smiles Down and feet kick beneath. Fireflies join and drown. Moonlight rushes through trees, The naked moon smiles down. pulls apart fat leaves, drenches the black night ©Jacob M. Carpenter in white candlelight and the moon smiles, filling the air as bright as possible.

Bare frogs bound from shadows to the water. Black crickets chirp in delight. Blazing fireflies hover in anticipation, flashing to add their light.

Deep water rushes to the bend then slows fighting not to be swept past, humming softly, begging, encouraging, persuading.

Electricity heats the air as t-shirts and jeans Released - July 15, 1993 (UK) rush through outstretched arms, over heads, past goosebumps and skinny

Name of Song: Ring of Fire (Carter & Kilgore) Name of Artist: Gail Davies Name of Album: Ring of Fire Setting: upon seeing Gail Artist: Johnny Cash play The Station Inn in 6.5.08 Year: 1963 Setting: Nashville, Tennessee Nashville in the Dark Ages Love Interest: Darlene Residence: Marietta, Ohio I. Season: Spring, 1963 Verse: Love is a burning thing/and it makes a fiery ring/ The 12th Avenue Illuminati make their way bound by wild desire/ I fell into a ring of fire through the shadows of skeletal warehouses in the June dusk. The Burning They move like late September moths Like a bottle of beer on a dare, to the subtle glow of a secret I chug down a mug of scalding legend. Her name black coffee with four sugars is a shibboleth. at a corner table in “The Pit,” exam cramming, paper writing, II. boozy weekend, busted romance. People pulsate through neon flicker and buzz, Like a slinky landing on a step, clogging arteries in the heart of town, unaware Darlene sinks into a chair, laughs of its bloat -beat-beat-beat- meaningless like the wicked sister who steals rhythmic pounding beneath the steady dull boyfriends; she’s high octane caffeine, hum of a city-wide flat-line, custard-filled doughnuts, a torch song, unaware of atrophied limbs and empty shoes, a concert grand sharply tuned. unaware that the soul is at the Station on the outskirts of town. She says, Bach and Glenn Gould, I fugue for the four voices of a torrid wind; III. Errol Garner, leaves falling on keyboards; Earl Hines, keys dancing in infirmaries. She opens her arms wide, I mention my ex- and Darlene shakes her fingers her hair, bountiful and wind thrown wide, her mouth… like a set of bellows fanning flames, Her lungs blossom like the hip slinging vamp of the gypsy’s dance. Blues and Bluegrass. I can hear my roommate muttering clichés about fires and frying pans, squared circles. Beat. Beat. Beat. I’ll skip the pep rally, leap into a flaming ring Not enough. Not enough. and sizzle like sirloin on open fire at a beach bash. Gail Davies Outside, 12th Avenue is bare as bone. Regret grins as a cruel relative, leaves its rain check, instructions ©Laura Eleanor Holloway for fire extinguishers. Beguile me and burn me, douse me and leave [ “For years Gail Davies has been like one of music's me a smoking ruin, my heart peeled private treasures,” wrote William Zmudka in the like scorched skin. Send Johnny Cash book, Her Music Is Her Own, “Jealously hoarded by a for the dregs. relative handful as someone special, a sort of gourmet's delight. “] ©Richard Roe 17

Song: That’s The Way of the World Name Of Song: Into The Mystic Album: That’s The Way of the World Name Of Album: Moondance Artist: Earth, Wind and Fire Artist: Van Morrison Year: 1975 Year: 1987 Setting: Pittsburgh, PA, in my friend Crystal’s dorm Setting: Chico, CA room, song playing on her stereo Love Interest: Thomas, II Theme: Reflections on My First Year at Hometown: Chappaqua, NY the University of Pittsburgh Season/Weather: Early winter, cool and dry Hometown: Lawrence, PA Season/Weather: Spring Into The Mystic Verse: We come together on this special day/Sing our message loud and clear/Looking back, we touched on "We were born before the wind, sorrowful days, future pass, they disappear/You will find also younger than the sun" peace of mind/If you look way down in your heart and -Van Morrison soul/Don’t hesitate 'cause the world seems cold/Stay young at heart, 'cause you’re never, never old/That’s the It was on the roof, way of the world... the south side streets quiet and still Fresh Woman the skies of your town not quite a city to me, At seventeen- bright with stars. I stepped onto the bus To travel from naiveté I had seen the Milky Way To knowledge on a Colorado highway years before On my own for the first time. but that meant nothing now. We smoked and laid our heads back On a bright September morning- to the click of aluminum chairs. Everything changed We were together for a while Small-town girl to the Steel City- though we knew it couldn't last. The Cathedral of Learning Beckoned with promise You loved me so much With vistas unimaginable. you said it had to be past life stuff like the words in that song Now in Spring- and I liked that. Confidence is born I was young and you With the turn of a page- missed your lost youth. Filled with wisdom- Voyages of a lifetime I went and moved on and you stayed there Start with just one fearless step. but the mystery of the stars never left you and the song sailed on in my memory. That’s the way… ©Beth Browne ©Beatrice M. Hogg

Van Morrison

Music: Country Artists: Varied Years: Ongoing Setting: Stillwater, OK Love Interest: Othadell Long Season/Weather: Summer/Hot

Tom T. Hall Elvis Presley With Fans - Tupelo, MS George Jones

George Jones; Tom T. Hall; Elvis

I forget appointments, dates, and time of day but I remember old love-songs: She’s My Lady; Lady Love; Come Back, Lady; This One’s for You; I Don’t Know What You’re Doing But Keep It Up!

I pull up onions, dig down deep in the hard-packed soil to find a bucket of red and white potatoes. I cut the okra pods from the tall leafy stalks. I’m itching to my elbows; should have worn long sleeves and gloves. I pick a basket of fat, juicy tomatoes, eat a couple of tiny sweet tom-a-toes. I carefully pull from the vines crisp greenbeans and pickle-size cucumbers, leaving the big ones for seed. I pull a few red-globe radishes and some tender leaves of iceberg lettuce.

It’s getting hot as blazes. I turn on the garden hose, let the cool water flush through my fingers, over my arms, splash some on my face, and quench my thirst before I sit down in the shade of the house to cool off. At the sink, I wash the gritty off the vegetables, break beans and put some on to cook. I slice a platter of red tomatoes, cucumbers, white onions, and place the radishes and lettuce on one end of the platter, with a few chips of ice. I cut the okra, put some on to fry and put a few bags in the freezer. I check the roast and make a pan of brown gravy.

It’s time for my favorite DJ’s show, so I turn on the radio, lean back in a cane-bottom chair and listen to Country Music. Looking Back I Should Have Married You; If I Have to Steal Your Love, I Will; Middle Age Crazy; You Light Up My Life; Chains of Love. Tom T. sings May The Force Be With You Always. Eddie Arnold sings For the Good Times. George Jones closes with If My Heart Had Windows. I heave a sigh.

I forget phone numbers, street addresses, area codes, zip codes, but I remember songs by John Denver, Glen Campbell, Lou Rawls, Charlie Rich, Charley Pride, and, most of all, Elvis. Maybe my heart, mind, and soul have been brainwashed and re-programmed with songs on the radio, in the long lonesome years. I scrape the new red potatoes, slice some to fry, turn the burner down under the skillet of okra, make tea, chip ice, listen to the news (all bad today).

But then I hear the chug-chug of my dearly beloved’s John Deere tractor coming down the road. I rush out, letting the screen-door slam behind me, then I run across the barnyard, take off the chain and hold the gate wide open. © Vera Long (previously published by Anderbo.com - Vera Long was the winner of the 2006 Anderbo Poetry Contest) 19

Name Of Song: Red Red Wine Name Of Album: Labour of Love Artist: UB40 Year: 1983 Setting: 116th & Broadway, Columbia University, buzzed & happy Love Interest: All those mean pretty girls in high school who turned to fantasy Season/Weather: Crisp Fall Evening Verse: Red red wine/It's up to you/All I can do I've done/ Memories won't go/Memories won't go/ I have sworn every time/Thoughts of you would leave my head/ I was wrong, now I've found just one thing makes me forget...Red red wine... UB40 Red Red Wine

Dear Sister,

Just the other evening when I felt my mind playing tricks on me I was thinking how there is something so comforting & self-affirming about memories & how they hold such a rare & rich & even transcendent sense of meaning of unconditional belonging & that they can never ever really change or betray like almost everything else in Nietzche & Voltaire's wicked & self-interested & nihilistic conception of humanity & how in many ways they are diametrically opposed to all of Freud's defense-mechanisms free & fleeting without any sense of boundaries & yes God Bless the opposite of man's transparent manipulating & how there's something so nice & necessary & surreal even so real about a memory as just the other day I was telling Erica about that first freewheeling evening I had spent with you & your crew up at Columbia & so without further a-duh as she might very well say let there be no further delay with any of this stray storytelling somewhere around twilight making suppertime with those sexy sexless girls from Barnard & how there were all these different kinds of pastas & wines most likely very well just one pasta & one wine yet I'd like to kind of continue on if you don't mind & on came on at the perfect time the song "Red Red Wine" by that Reggae group from The Eighties from London or England I think the lead singer was white & making that our theme song for the rest of the night spending good times with good ol Juan who just got an A on some sort of Art History paper & we all sat around in this cluttered circle of squares as he eagerly passed it around page by page (saying such spirited things like "Hey! Are you finished with that one?" & us hesitantly answering "Uhhh...No, not exactly quite yet...") explaining & analyzing what he believed to be all these brilliant nuances of symbolic meaning with a beaming & childlike mentality & clearly he was very insecure & interesting & there was this other Don Juan type of guy who was making at us Casanova eyes while I believe rolling blunts & I remember you & your friends (might have even been Tamara that pretty Borderline girl from Argentina who always got involved with crazy men strung out on heroine or else was always the other women in some strange triangulation of cheating wives & husbands) telling me how he couldn't have any real significant relationships unless there was some type of intimacy or physical contact of some kind or another & me thinking how could that really be so right or wrong considering what a complex & cruel city of overwhelming & unnecessary suffering & I even looked up to him for his willingness to engage in such wild & needy escapades of what I considered to be a righteous type of reality rather than all of this pathetic & absurd pointless philosophizing that really gets you nowhere I mean there was really so much more to be said about these romantic adventures than any kind of cer-ebral bullshit banter where it is true you always ultimately end up excruciatingly lonesome lusting & longing literally lamenting about some past present or future lady while spending the whole evening tossing this fantastic frisbee on some big empty quad in the middle of a blessed dripping sleepy-eyed city trying to find it the last second before it came hurling at our higher than holy happy heads with the fast & funny & fine high on "red red wine" dry comic athlete Harry Lipman & then all of us piling into some taxi & barreling down Broadway forgetting time & reality with a certain amount of liberating laughter & explosions of levity & him 20

holding his frisbee out the racing taxi against the palm of his hand in the whipping breeze to test all the rules & laws of gravity & somehow sneaking it beneath his coat or maybe even being the clever punk that he was checked it with that big black bouncer at the door & boogying all night at Studio 54 for the first time with your older sibling that meant the world to me & then noticing in the bathroom with oblivious backs turned from me Juan & Harry pissing side by side & Juan asking Harry if he liked my sister & me thinking that that was kind of cool yet how odd it was to view these two older college guys I couldn't help but to really admire & like casually & nonchalantly chatting about your sister conversing at the urinal & then somehow falling asleep stripped down to the bare essentials in the deep dark night of the Upper West Side thinking & dreaming & thinking about that delicious & blissful night not really thinking at all about the future & thinking how this was a damn fine notion & how Kerouac & Ginsberg & even Hemingway & Buddha must have felt & were not so much wrong & how they were even right & how it was the first time in my life you did not see me merely as this annoying little pest yet someone who kept up with the best of them waxing eloquently about Joyce & Dostoevsky & shocked the hell out of you with my literary ramblings instead of simply being this bad boy thief who accrued a solid D average & how it is sincerely so strange to be writing this to you exactly twenty years later the night before I am about to move into my new home with my new wife looking out to some luminous lawn at dreamy dawn seeing it draped with a gentle dew or snow or some kind of meteor storm & how I suppose now it's time to finally move on & how there's so much to really be said about a simple memory which beholds all the meaning & true sense of belonging that can ever & will never betray you like anyone or anything like some lifelong companion that will stay with you 'till eternity even when you're sinking in some sea nile wheelchair of old age babbling with a saucer of tea looking out to some strange & spectacular sea humming the bars that seem all too familiar & might even sound a little something like that soliloquy "Red red wine..." ©Joseph Reich

Studio 54 - 70’s - unknown photographer

Name of Song: Paper Doll (written by Johnny S. Black, 1915) Artist: Mills Brothers Year: 1943 Setting: Apt. #45 East Main Street, Bradford, Pennsylvania Love Interest: Gerald & Parma (otherwise known as Boss & The Doll) Verse: I'm gonna buy a Paper Doll that I can call my own A doll that other fellows cannot steal And then the flirty, flirty guys with their flirty, flirty eyes Will have to flirt with dollies that are real

Boss & The Doll Music at the Do Drop Inn (excerpt from “Vincenzo’s Promise,” a book in progress)

During the forties, when money was really tight, Gerald bought Parma sheet music for her player piano. Paper Doll, was one of their favorites. On Friday nights, when Parma played poker with “the gang,” Gerald stayed home and listened to Your Hit Parade on the radio. He knew all the lyrics and crooned just like Bing and Ol’ Blue Eyes.

On Saturday nights, Big Band sounds flowed through their upstairs apartment dubbed the Do Drop Inn. Laura, Gerald’s sister, played the large carved oak player piano positioned in the center of the living room. Sing-a-longs were popular. Cousins took turns pumping the pedals to rotate the paper piano rolls. They created strange sounds by pumping the pedals backwards and loved to peek under the lid and watch the felt covered wooden hammers pound out favorite tunes: Indian Love Song, Yes, We Have No Bananas, World War I songs and Broadway show tunes. The funniest song was, I’m My Own Grandpa by Dwight Latham and Moe Jaffe.

A neighbor skillfully tapped the mother of pearl keys on his accordion and squeezed out Lady of Spain, O Solo Mio, and Back to Sorrento. Polish friends whirled around the living room on the first note of Beer Barrel Polka. Parma’s friends, dressed to the nines, sometimes celebrated New Year’s Eve at #45. Once they celebrated at the Moose Club where Gerald sang along while the Mills Brothers performed Paper Doll.

After WW II Parma went to work in a resistor factory for money to buy a washer, dryer and new living room furniture. She also decided to give the player piano away because it took up too much space. Two strong men attached the piano to heavy ropes and lowered it from the porch railing to the sidewalk. The whole neighborhood watched and prayed the ropes wouldn’t break. The new owner took the piano to his hunting camp. Rumors spread that he chopped up the beloved piano for firewood.

During the fifties, Parma was always in the kitchen rattling those pots and pans. The former Kane High Charleston Champ couldn’t resist joining the teenagers. She cut a mean rung on the linoleum floor. Romantic Gerald, who only slow danced, got caught up in the Twist. After a double hernia operation he kept his promise to dance the Twist at his daughter’s wedding.

Name Of Album: Already it is Dusk, String Quartet Aside from Earth, the solar system has proved Artist: Henryk Gorecki desolate, inhospitable, alien . . . we are alone; Year: 2005 we alone devise both pogroms and space probes. Setting: Viewing Photos of Titan Transmitted to Earth No aliens, friendly or otherwise, no angels. Hometown: Radford, VA Gorecki composes another hymn to dejection, and I, Season: Winter/Dusk headphones in my ears, listen to it forty years ago in my grandmother’s kitchen, before it was written, Listening To Gorecki’s Already it is Dusk while Viewing before we photographed Titan, and, thereby, the First Photos of Titan Transmitted to Earth From the created it. In the dream I become alive in the past, Huygens Probe, 2005 drink tea alone in my grandmother’s kitchen, except I am not alone . . . there is that presence In the dream I’m back in my grandmother’s kitchen, (but not my grandmother, not Gorecki), an ally. an art deco, vault-like affair with fifteen-foot ceilings. The room is warm and oceanic; The cat, Opie, has managed to squeeze into a sealed tin I feel content as soft flames or liquid . of sliced beets, and it’s my job to open it up I can gaze into the dark sky and suppose (excerpt from “Vincenzo’s Promise,” a book in progress) so he won’t suffocate. A stranger stands beside me, the speck of light I see is a planet, and revolving a misty figure, the revenant?, to observe my progress. around it serenely, a forbidding moon, a place I use an old-fashioned can opener, and when the lid so remote, so impossible, that the air chills just about snaps off, I pull it back while still attached, and my lungs turn to ice. But only for a moment . . and Opie leaps out like one of those goofy coils then I remember that the dream, more real than Titan in tubes of fake peanut brittle or popcorn. or the present, chose me; it’s peculiar logic crafted me. Bloody juice sprays onto the checkered tiles, And with gladness, I boil more water on the stove. but at least Opie is free, and unambiguously alive, unlike before, when both alive and dead at once, ©Louis Gallo he floated with the beets. We have this power – to close a deal with the wink of an eye.

Gorecki must be the saddest man in the world. I would like to invite him into my grandmother’s kitchen serve some tea, ask about the veiled, funeral women. Liquid methane flows on Titan, with temperatures of minus 298 degrees. There is something holy about a day when we all witness what no one else has ever seen. The staggered white and black tiles of a thirties’ kitchen, the profound basso of Poland, Henryk Gorecki Saturn’s moon . . . Saturn, god of melancholy. At the moment I am about to drink a glass of burgundy, which by itself will send me stumbling up the stairs into a bedroom, far from that kitchen, and Poland and Titan, but, on the other hand, when I ooze into uroboric sleep, I hope we can all agree that already it is dusk, and already it is dawn.

Say Gorecki sits in a café in Warsaw imagining himself on one of the rocks of Titan. He is frozen solid but observes the rivulets and streams of natural gas forking around his feet. The terrain Photo of Titan Transmitted to Earth From the reminds him of the convolutions of a human brain. Huygens Probe, 2005

Name of Artist: Mick Jagger It’s what you get when wish fulfills itself: Setting: Mick Jagger comes to me in a dream, niches, wormholes, cracks and rips-- looking sad and melancholic. where real life hides, where you hide, where Marilyn, Mick and Sylvia hide, where secrets burst The Hidden Life into flavors so new, so startling, the universe changes.

In 1959 Sylvia Plath dreamed The plot thins; you’re back on the narrow, that Marilyn Monroe manicured her nails, waiting for some clink, chirp or pssst to happen. Marilyn, though still alive, itched Or not happen. Until, again, to swallow those pills three years later; with the precision of radioactivity, and soon thereafter Plath’s pruned fingers dream fangs puncture the jugular turned a greasy knob until it hissed. and transport you drop by viscous drop: Me, I’m stuck with Mick Jagger. an Atlas truck loaded with Marilyn’s furniture He drifted forth in tattered clothing, meek, runs out of gas on the interstate; spectral, not the raw Liverpudlian bloke on stage. Plath’s casket of lost journals rests on a glacier; I’m here to help, mate, he said sadly, Mick’s larynx squeaks, a smudge of ash. fusing his rheumy otiose eyes into mine. Me, I cling like a hangnail to the static What you don’t know hurts the most, he said. of applause that anoints with slow rain. Think I want this job? It’s a hot little Swedish model Me, I’m beating time on some dashboard. I’m after . . . but here I am, by the grace of St. Jude. So if you don’t mind, let’s get on with it. ©Louis Gallo

And that’s it, I swear . . . he receded into some cloudy vista, and I, heart pounding, shot up in bed. I just met Mick Jagger! I cried at the darkness, only to fall back into deeper slumber, remembering nothing the next morning.

So I relate this nugget from the perspective of the dream and all that happens beyond ourselves, the way autonomic nerves sizzle and bristle without our consent or awareness. All that churning, all that rock & roll.

Of course it’s a bit odd -- Mick Jagger Marilyn, a woman, comes to Sylvia; Mick, a man, to me. Should have been the other way around, should have been sexy. Mick and I can still kick around some. And suppose Plath dreams about Marilyn now. Or Marilyn, Plath? Or Mick, me-- fat chance on the latter, but mysteries abound. Don’t you get this feeling that the pieces of our puzzles have fallen into disarray? Don’t you just want God to arrive with a corps of angelic engineers and cleaning people? Bob Vila would do, maybe Miss Manners . . . or some ancient Greek shoulders carved out of stone. Sylvia Plath Marilyn Monroe 24

Name of Song: Mood Indigo (Bigard, Ellington, Mills) (3) Name of Album: The Duke Ellington Songbook Looking out the window at night, Artist: Ella Fitzgerald w/Webster, Peterson, the moon’s an orange blaze; Ellis, Brown, Stoller its light stings like sleet. Year: 1957 Stars are the words on a page Setting: Los Angeles, California you can’t comprehend. Love Interest: Ellie (1959); Maryanna (1963); learned to Jettison the moon, it shows sing the song in 1998/99 you dark circles under your eyes. Hometowns: Whippany, New Jersey (1959); Marietta, Cover the stars, put the book Ohio (1963); Madison, Wisconsin (1998/99) away, don’t bother to mark the page. Seasons: Any season, after dark Verse: Always get that mood indigo/. Since my baby said good- The radio plays a number you requested bye/ In the evenin' when lights are low/ I'm so lonesome I could at a small cafe, jazz trio, bass player’s cry/'Cause there's nobody who cares about me/ I'm just a soul yellow fingertips on blue strings - - who's/bluer than blue can be/ When I get that mood indigo/I used to sing it as a duet, making up could lay me down and die. nonsense syllables, little love words. You can’t turn it off, this melody that blue That Mood Indigo would sing if it could - - haven’t gotten around to those “cure for blues” (1) clichés sent by friends. It’s like sitting alone, watching television, a movie that seems vaguely familiar - - (4) someone’s gone away, someone else looks It’s a song Ella sang at Duke’s place, for that someone and there’s no one to tell that blue kind of rightness, you, you have already seen it more than once. like a navy dress trimmed with white lace. You sit alone sipping tea with honey, (2) nibbling on a hazy blue memory. Lately you’ve been morose. People ask if you’re O.K. Ella - - you heard her live years ago You used to like their little jokes, in Jersey, phrases that sipped your tea the stories, but now it seems pianist’s chords squeezing lemon slices. they want to spill the crumbs Let memory take its course, of their lives on your lap, the song repeat its chorus, an endless trail of faithless lovers, and wait for that last phrase, fights with the boss, impossible hold on to that last note children - - They’re cobwebs as long as you can. in your face, burrs sticking to your pants - - you itch ©Richard Roe to brush them off.

You want to play solitaire but have no idea where you put the deck of cards. So, there’s no use and besides you don’t like the way the jacks stare at the queen of hearts.

Ella Fitzgerald - 1940 - Photographer - Carl Van Vechten 25

Name Of Song: A Tisket a Tasket Name of Song: Georgia on My Mind Artist: Ella Fitzgerald (tenor sax: Wayman Carver) Name of Album: The Genius Hits the Road Year: 1938 recording on the jukebox at amusement Artist: Ray Charles park in 1965 Year: 1994 Setting: Paragon Park in Nantasket, MA Setting: Chattahoochee River Bank Love Interest: Nancy Siegel Love Interest: G. Fox Hometown: Framingham, MA Hometown: Griffin, Georgia Season/Weather: summer vacation Season/Weather: Summer, hot and sultry All the other kids were into The Beatles. Me? I love jazz. Verse: Melodies bring memories Old time jazz. That linger in my heart..... Verse: A-tisket a-tasket Some sweet day when blossoms fall A green and yellow basket And all the worlds a song.... I sent a letter to my love Georgia, Georgia, no peace I find.... And on the way I dropped it Georgia, Georgia, the whole day through Just an old sweet song keeps Georgia on my mind. East of the Sun, West of the Moon The Chattahoochee I made a list of all the places I would go before, as Wayman Carver once put it, This river runs deep, deep and wide. “The dude left town.” The sounds of the river go deep down inside. Young fellows never hear of him, which is a shame. Do you hear the sounds? Listen very close, I mean, he was –– correctoroony – is – To the sound of the river that you love the most. the father of my man tool. Yeah, the jazz flute is my gig. Think of the ones who have been on the Chattahoochee. I went first to the last place anyone would go. Have felt this cool water, Sautee’ and Nacoochee. Easter Island. They’ve walked on this ground, Daddio, this place is far out. And heard these same sounds. 2000 miles West of Chile. The rippling water, the wind on their face, 2000 miles East of Tahiti. The songs of the birds in this wondrous place. From the navel of the world, the mysterious land of the giant stones arises. Go back , back, far far away, I stood in front of the huge stone heads, “moia,” This is the place that you want to stay. that dot the coastline and knew they were cool cats. Can’t you see them standing there? They dug what I blew at dawn. Washing clothes on the river bank without a care. A letter to Nancy. Standing on the rocks in their bare feet, A-tisket A-tasket. Spearing the fish that they all will eat. ©Neal Whitman The people on the river come and go as they will, But for the river constantly going nowhere, time stands still. ©Julia Ponder

Ray Charles Wayman Carver - The Troubadours Band 26

Facts/Legends

Bruce Springsteen: Bruce originally wrote Hungry Heart for the Ramones back in 1978, but John Landau (his manager) told him he should keep it because of Bruce's past history of giving songs to other artists and them having hits with the songs. It became his first # 1 song.

Grateful Dead: The band was going by the name The Warlocks and Jerry Garcia went to a dictionary and said "whatever I point to will be the new name". He then opened up the dictionary and placed his finger on the page. When he looked down, he had chosen "Grateful Dead", which is an American folk myth. When a person pays to bury a body that no one claims it is said to appease the dead & making him grateful - the Grateful Dead.

Jimi Hendrix: The working title of the Jimi Hendrix guitar classic" Purple Haze" was "Purple Haze - Jesus Saves" and was based on a long manuscript, according to the late Monika Dannemann ("The Inner Life of Jimi Hendrix"), "Hendrix's lover at the time of his death." In the manuscript Hendrix stated that the entire meaning of the song came from a dream he had. Ms. Dannemann said, "he looked down on earth and saw an unborn fetus waiting for its birth. At the same time he saw spirits of the dead leaving earth. Screams from the children were reaching into the heavens. The earth became engulfed in a great flood, and later in the dream he was walking under the sea. Part of the song was about the purple haze which surrounded him, engulfed him, and in which he got lost.

Dusty Springfield: Mary Isabel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien was born in West Hampstead, England, to an Irish family, and was raised in the West London borough of Ealing. The name "Dusty" was given to her when she was a girl, since she had been something of a tomboy in her early years. Dusty was brought up listening to a wide range of music, including George Gershwin, Rogers & Hart, Cole Porter, Duke Ellington, & Glen Miller among others. She was a fan of American Jazz and the vocalists Peggy Lee & Jo Stafford. Her father, a tax consultant used to tap out rhythms on the back of her hand, encouraging Dusty to guess the musical piece. At age 11, she went into a local record shop in Ealing and made her first record, one of Irving Berlin’s songs, "When the Midnight Choo Choo Leaves for Alabam."

Bob Dylan: Dylan's harmonica is heard on records by Harry Belafonte, George Harrison, Steve Goodman, Roger McGuinn, Booker T. and Priscilla Jones, Doug Sahm, Carolyn Hester, Ramblin' Jack Elliott and Sly & Robbie. Among the pseudonyms Dylan has used when appearing on others' records have been Blind Boy Grunt, Tedham Porterhouse, Robert Milkwood Thomas, Roosevelt Gook and Bob Landy.

Robert Johnson: According to a legend known to modern blues fans, Robert Johnson was a young black man living on a plantation in rural Mississippi. Branded with a burning desire to become a great blues musician, he was instructed to take his guitar to a crossroad near Dockery Plantation at midnight. There he was met by a large black man (the Devil) who took the guitar and tuned it. After tuning the guitar, the Devil played a few songs and then returned it to Johnson, giving him mastery of the guitar. This was, in effect, a deal with the Devil; in exchange Robert Johnson was able to create the blues for which he became famous.

Tommy James & the Shondells: Mony Mony - the band had the music written, but needed a girl's name for the title. Tommy looked up and saw the corner of the Mutual Of New York building sign, “MONY. “ “They went up to Broadway and talked all these strangers into coming down to the studio and going 'Mony, Mony!’ “There were all these serious guys out there having lunch, and we said, 'You want to sing on a Tommy James record?” Laguna

Wu-Tang Chan: The name "Wu-Tang" is derived from the name of the mountain Wu Dang (Wudang Shan) in northwest Hubei Province in central China with long history associated with Chinese culture, especially Taoism, martial arts and medicine.

Gladys Swarthout: When Gladys did the movie "Champagne Waltz" in 1937, she sang her songs in five languages, adding French, German, Italian, and Spanish for the foreign versions of the films, making them quite popular overseas.

The Kinks: At the conclusion of their summer 1965 American tour, the Kinks were banned from re-entering the United States by the American government for unspecified reasons. For four years, the Kinks were prohibited from returning to the U.S., which not only meant that the group was deprived of the world's largest music market, but that they were effectively cut off from the musical and social upheavals of the late '60s.

Cannonball Adderley: Known for his voracious appetite, Adderley's high school friends originally nicknamed him "Cannibal," and the name evolved into "Cannonball."

Led Zeppelin: Stairway to Heaven - On January 23, 1991, John Sebastian, owner and general manager of KLSK FM in Albuquerque, New Mexico, played the song for 24 solid hours to inaugurate a format change to Classic Rock. It played more than 200 times, eliciting hundreds of angry calls and letters. Police showed up with guns drawn after a listener reported that the DJ had apparently suffered a heart attack, later because of suspicion that - this being 8 days into the Gulf War - the radio station had been taken hostage by terrorists dispatched by Zeppelin freak Saddam Hussein. Weirdest of all, lots of listeners didn't move the dial: "Turns out a lot of people listened to see when we would finally stop playing it."

Van Morrison: According to a BBC survey, the song, “Into The Mystic” has such a cooling, soothing vibe, it is one of the most popular songs for surgeons to listen to whilst performing operations.

Ella Fitzgerald: In 1932, Ella’s mother, Tempie, died from serious injuries she received in a car accident. Ella took the loss very hard. After staying with her Father Joe for a short time, Tempie's sister Virginia took Ella home. Shortly afterward Joe suffered a heart attack and died, and her little sister Frances joined them.

Unable to adjust to the new circumstances, Ella became increasingly unhappy and entered into a difficult period of her life. Her grades dropped dramatically, and she frequently skipped school. After getting into trouble with the police, she was taken into custody and sent to a reform school. Living there was even more unbearable, as she suffered beatings at the hands of her caretakers.

Eventually Ella escaped from the reformatory. The 15-year-old found herself broke and alone during the Great Depression, and strove to endure. Never one to complain, Ella later reflected on her most difficult years with an appreciation for how they helped her to mature. She used the memories from these times to help gather emotions for performances, and felt she was more grateful for her success because she knew what it was like to struggle in life.

UB-40: stands for "Unemployment Benefits" form #40, a reference somewhat well-known in the UK but not known in the states. The boys came up with the name for the band while standing in line at the unemployment office. It was the name of the form you had to complete to receive unemployment benefit at that time in Britain. The album cover was a mock UB40 form