HAPPY FATHER'S DAY "FATHER AND SON"

Here's a video from Cat Stevens to the song "Father and Son." It is hard to believe why Cat Stevens, who turned to Islam and changed his name to Yusuf Islam, could reject his work when he became a convert. It's not that the songs are typical Rock subjects like sex, drugs and Rock n Roll.

It does seem that he has come around and started singing his songs again. "Father and Son" actually has two voices singing. The slow modulated voice is the father and the higher more emotional voice is the son. The video starts slow because he is tuning the guitar but it's worth it. Enjoy and Happy Father's Day to the fathers out there. Being a father is truly one of the best things ever. Mostly.

THE "MY GENERATION" STUTTER

It's always interesting to go back and learn something about a song. Particularly a song that you've heard hundreds, if not thousands, of times. In this case I'm referring to "My Generation" by The Who.

Specifically, I'm referring to why they decided to stutter in the song. What's up with that? There are actually a few explanations for this. One of these is that they got the idea from the John Lee Hooker song "Stuttering Blues." Here's just a sample of the lyrics.

I'm a stut-stut-stut-stutterin' man.
And I can't talk worth a damn.
Sometimes I wanta cry.
Sometimes I wanta die.

They don't call them the blues for nothing. The song could very well be about himself, because it turns out he stutters. Who knew. I've known of John Lee Hooker for a long time and even have songs of his. His "Boom Boom" with his booming voice is a blues classic. And so is his "Boogie Chillen." Yet I never knew he stuttered. He was illiterate as well. That's a new one on me, a writer who is illiterate.

It also turns out there is another Blues legend who stutters as well. And his name is BB King. Again, who knew. I've never even thought of this before, but now that I know he stutters, I wonder what the B B's stand for. He must've had a horrible time saying his name.

Another explanation for Roger Daltry stuttering in "My Generation" is that the band was making fun of the British upper class stammer. Kind of like that Hugh Grant stammer.

Whatever the reason for the stuttering in the song, it seems to work. And there was no reason for the British Broadcast Corporation to ban the song because they didn't want to offend people who stutter. Thankfully, when the song took off, they changed their tune and started playing it on the radio.

SOMETHING IS HAPPENING

To paraphrase a Mr. Bob Dylan, Something is happening and you DO know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones. In this case, the Mr. Jones is me. And what is happening is that my speech is improving. You see, as I've probably mentioned on another blog entry, I've stuttered for most of my life. And if you know anything about that, or if you know anyone who does, it's not a particularly easy life.

It's a constant state of stress caused by something almost everyone takes for granted. Speaking. Opening your mouth and conversing with someone. Anyone.

I have a nephew who stutters worse than I do and my five year old son started copying him. You could tell he was just mimicking him. "Daddy" was suddenly "da da da daddy." We had to tell him to knock it off and fortunately he did. Occasionally, I would find myself stuttering while conversing with my son too and I hated it. So I figured I gotta do something. Now. My wife has somehow tolerated it all these years, but even she wants me to do something.

I took years of speech therapy in high school and college. And it did help some because I used to be worse. But it's not enough. I want to be fluent. I want to say my name without the dread of contorting my face while I say it. I want to be able to say my wife's name too.

So I went online for a book and of course there are tons of them. One book that caught my attention is "Understanding & Controlling Stuttering." What it says, basically, is that some people stutter because they use the Valsalva mechanism to speak. The Valsalva mechanism is used by everyone whenever they try to lift a heavy weight and hold one's breath. It is also used whenever you push while on the toilet bowl. To put it bluntly, I've been using my butt hole muscles to talk. That is the craziest explanation I've ever heard. And it's precisely what I do. My stomach tightens when I speak and so does my sphincter. I can't get over it. This is crazy. All this time and no one has ever told me to relax my sphincter. Except, of course, for my doctor when he's checking my prostate.

So what now, you may ask. Well, all I can tell you is that I'm c-c-cured. Just kidding, they do give you some vocal exercises to do. One of them is to start every sentence with aaahh. This is because saying aaahh causes the rectal and stomach muscles to relax. This is true because I do not stutter when saying words that start with "a". Anyway, I have been doing some of these exercises and it seems to be helping already, whenever I remember to use it in speech. Stuttering is also a habit that needs to be changed. I need a new habit of speaking without using all those unnecessary muscles I've been using.

And to get to the point of this blog, this does not mean I will be doing interviews once we start doing the podcasts. Because, well, there is the issue of me hating the sound of my voice. I will remain in the background as producer.

I just thought I'd let you know a little about this and next week I'll do a blog on songs where the singer stutters. And if you know anything about stuttering, stutterers don't stutter when they sing. But that's okay, the songs are pretty good anyway.

So here's "My Generation" by The Who. Roger Daltry does a terrific job singing and stuttering. Everyone else is great too. Especially Keith Moon. He is so entertaining to watch on the drums. And watch out for debris.

A MEMORIAL DAY STORY

There's a story of Memorial Day on Wikipedia that blew me away. It seems, according to a professor David Blight of Yale University, that freed slaves from the South were the first to observe Memorial Day. They did this by going to a Union soldier's mass gravesite in Charleston, North Carolina, digging up their remains and re-interring them in individual graves. They then placed a sign proclaiming it as a Union soldiers graveyard.

Imagine this for a moment, someone actually thought this up. To dig up dead bodies that have been dead for a few years. Then separate the corpses and bury them in separate graves. This is crazy. And then,he, or she, probably a he, told others this cockamamie idea. And they went along with it. In other words, other people thought it was a good idea too. This, in and of itself, is an amazing thing to me. And to top it off, they did this in the South, where memories were still fresh in the minds of many people in the area about Union soldiers killing their Confederate comrades and destroying their home towns.

I can just imagine some of these former Confederates harrassing the former slaves about digging up the enemy and giving them a proper burial. Where the memorial part began was that a few years later, in 1868, they went back to the graves and decorated the graves with flowers. Memorial Day first began as Decoration Day. It also was first a memorial for Union soldiers, but then it expanded to all other soldiers as well.

I usually don't think twice about Memorial Day, other than what to put on the grill or where to find the best deals. But this year I will think of these former slaves who put their lives on the line to give thanks to these soldiers who lost their lives to free them. It is so easy to just say thanks, say a little prayer for someone and then move on. It takes a special someone to do something as moving and as memorable as these former slaves did to these unknown soldiers. On second thought, it might not be such a crazy idea after all. I salute these people whoever they were.

Ray Charles is a true American genius and he performed the best rendition of "America The Beautiful" ever. Some people have wanted this song to be the national anthem but The Star Spangled Banner won out. Anyway, here is Ray performing the song for your enjoyment.

Happy Memorial Day.

BALLAD OF JOHN AND YOKO VIDEO

I'm trying to do some changes to the blog and one of the changes is to have a video embedded on the blog. This being so, I figured which video to place. I mean, there are literelly thousands and thousands of videos out there. The easiest thing to do was to have one of what I was listening to at the moment. So "The Ballad of John and Yoko" became the one and I thought, I wonder if they have a video. And so they do. The great thing about this song is how John Lennon sings "You know how hard it can be." He sings "be" with four syllables. Check it out. The bass part is also great. One thing I might've said before is that the good thing about Yoko, if there is such a thing, is that she inspired John to create some great songs. And this is one of them.

The interesting thing about the song is that only John and Paul recorded it. George and Ringo were not involved. Another thing is that the song was banned in some radio stations in the U.S. because one of the lyrics says "Christ" and "crucify." One of the things I haven't noticed, which they have on Wikipedia is that Paul sings back up vocals but does not sing the "Christ" lyric. I'll have to check that out as well.

Anyway, enjoy the video and hopefully there will be more changes. Eventually.

MORE SONGS ABOUT MOTHERS

John Lennon isn't the only singer-songwriter who's composed songs about mothers. On last weeks entry, I wrote about three songs John recorded about his mother. Other artists have as well. One of these is Paul Simon, who had his first solo hit with a song called "Mother and Child Reunion." It's a terrific song, although it's really not about his mother. One of the more interesting interpretations about the song is that it is about a chicken and egg dish called mother and child reunion. Amusing, but far-fetched. Unlike Weird Al, Paul Simon doesn't sing about food. I actually prefer Simon's voice over Garfunkel's if you can believe it. Garfunkel has a nicer voice and Simon and Garfunkel's hits probably wouldn't sound as good if they were sung by Paul. Simon has a more interesting voice though.

Pink Floyd has a pretty good song called "Mother" on their album "The Wall." "The Wall" is an amazing concept album that has become an absolute classic for good reason. Supposedly, the idea for the album came to Roger Waters as a result of spitting on a fan during a concert. It also became a movie of the same title. "Mother" is a song about an over protective mother. In the song, Roger Waters sings the son's part while David Gilmore sing's the mother's part. They sound the same to me though. But what do I know. To my untrained ear, the legendary Bon Scott and Brian Johnson of AC/DC sound the same.

Madonna has a song out called "Mother and Father," from the "American Life" album. Madonna lost her mother to breast cancer when she was six years old.

There are more songs about mothers out there that I haven't really heard. If you're interested, check out Allan Raible's blog about mothers.

For all the mothers out there, Have a Happy Mother's Day.

JOHN LENNON'S SONGS ABOUT HIS MOTHER

It's not often you get a renown singer-songwriter who records three songs about his mother. And yet, that is what John Lennon of The Beatles did. He wrote "Julia" for the White Album. He wrote two songs as a solo artist in his debut album John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band about his mother. One simply called "Mother" and one I never heard of called "My Mummy's Dead."

Julia Lennon gave birth to John while the Germans were bombing Liverpool during World War II. Her sister Mimi ran to the hospital during the air raid to help her sister. Around the age of five, John started living in his aunt Mimi's house because her aunt kept complaining to Social Services that Julia was living in sin with an unmarried man and sleeping in the same bed with them. Mimi was the one who raised him although Julia was in daily contact with John. I don't think John wrote any songs about his aunt Mimi.

Julia seemed like a fun girl. She had a great sense of humor and knew how to play guitar and accordion. She bought John his first guitar, but John could only play it at her house because John's aunt Mimi was against it. She taught John how to play guitar and piano accordion. The song "Julia" is from the White Album. John sang and played the instruments without the help of any of The Beatles. John took some of the lyrics straight out of a poem by Kahlil Gibran called “Sand and Foam.” These lyrics are “Half of what I say is meaningless.” The lyric “Julia, Julia, oceanchild, calls me,” is supposedly about Yoko Ono. Yoko means “child of the sea” in Japanese.

The song "Mother" was written by John and produced by Phil Specter. Ringo played on drums and supposedly John asked George to play but George refused because he hated the song. The song was influenced by John doing primal therapy. This therapy is based on the belief that neurosis is caused by childhood trauma that has been repressed. This trauma has to be re-lived to be cured. The song also mentions his father though not by name.  His name was Alfred, but was known as Alf. Never heard a name like that except for a smart alecky life form with a sitcom by the same name. Alf was an absent father, although he almost ran off with John to New Zealand when John was six.

The third song that John Lennon recorded about his mother was called “Mummy's Dead.” The song is only 49 seconds long. The song is about the pain of losing his mother. Julia was killed by an off-duty police officer who was driving under the influence. John was seventeen at the time.

Who knows how many songs John wrote about Yoko. Gotta figure that one out one of these days. Some of them are actually really good. So in that sense, thank God for Yoko. There must've been something John saw in her that most of us don't see. Still don't in fact.